Have Your Say – Missing Features in Sim Racing

[Andy-R]

Sim racing is an alternate universe where F1, GT3 and hypercars swarm like so many flies. I'd like to see more variety of content with more low end or obscure race series and cup cars (top marks AMS.)

Dynamic racing line/grip.

Subtle differences (in power/weight) for each skin of a specific car (top marks AMS.)

Success ballast.

All the basic options like warm up lap, standing and rolling starts (looking at you AC.)

Not having to change controls/settings for each car (top marks AC) this could be taken one step further with things like dog-leg gearbox incorporated into the control settings.

Built in driver safety rating system with a big virtual stick to whack inconsiderate drivers over the head with.

A sim like GT Legends that works with the HSCC or other modern historic racing series to bring historic cars as they are now (because data/access.)

Rain. Many sims feature UK tracks but they don't feature rain, this is too simcade.

 

[Jimlaad43]

Day/Night cycle and rain should really be a must for every sim, especially those with big online racing communities. I'm sure a rain threatened GT3 Assetto Corsa race night on RD would be great fun.

I'd like to also see stuff like oil slicks appear in games. Driving a historic car and it blows up, leaving a trail of oil that you spin off on.

 

[leseb64]

for all sim

-thoughtful and intelligent Simracers

 

[rosgillies]

A bug free Sim!

 

[Charmin]

We need smell. Fuel, rubber, exhaust etc. Please someone make me a smell generator!

You mean something like that?

 

[Gogui96]

There's a couple of things that I really miss on nowadays sims.

The first one is a good damage model. We all can agree that no sim has a proper model, and that's rests a lot of realism to a product who want to simulate real live racing.

The second one is an easy way to understand by data what's happening to the car when doing setup. Yes, there are external programs which can analyse telemetry collected by the car and then you can have a look to it, but i would like to see this implemented on the game, without need of a 3rd party program. Or instead this, a simplified screen with data ingame.

 

[DaVeX↯]

"Every SIM laks of what the others SIM have"
(After that he goes silent again, the temple turned black again, I was amazed and scared by his sentence)

 

[darkelf1]

a easy to use track editor, You just use mouse to draw some shape, then one click to generate unlimited random track layout.. like draw a circle to generate a Oval,lol...

And one click to add models, trees, grass, buildings,bilboards, ai line, pit lane,etc as you want.... And a huge mod community to create these model packs.

Just like play in simcity, you build easily, not those complicated AC track builder. My dream...

 

[fortyfivekev]

As someone who mostly races offline I would like more "realism" around race weekends, seasons and careers. I think the driving in the sims I like (AMS, rF2, AC) is pretty good now but the big difference between simracing and real racing for me is that in simracing there is no motivation to look after your car or yourself so you tend to drive quite differently to real racers.

I don't want to take away the opportunity to hop into an F1 car for a blast when I feel like it but would also like a career mode with permadeath and some limited aspects of budget management which like it or not is a big part of real racing.

 

[Shadowoff]

I wish to see in atleast one game an AI which can keep up with the best drivers around... Offline racing is boring as there is no AI which can compete at the top and to find some competitive and fair random online lobby is more luck than anything else. As conclusion: You will have to find a league but not everyone has the time for that meaning that those will always be bored and jump off the sim racing train.

A better AI is all Im asking for

Edit: And some more official real life liveries

 

[Shap]

Trading paints solution for all sims (build in).
Natural camera tracking (track cams).
Training mode that makes practicing particular corners possible.

 

[Brownninja97]

There two areas where sim racing is horrible. Teaching us anything at all Assetto corsa, iracing, raceroom, rfactor 2. They are all honestly a complete joke at helping the user understand how to properly drive a car.

This could be solved via the driving school from gtr2 or a licensing school from gran turismo, this really closes it off for new people to enter the sim racing side of things, we are expected to go to other sources to learn.

The second part is no proper campaign, doesnt have to be amazing but some sort of progression path can help a lot, it attracts people into this scene whether its hardcore or not its for the best of this community and will ultimately result in increased sales for the sims we all love, in my opinion project cars did very well with this, hopefully the next generation of sims coming in the next two years can fix that

 

[Terry Rock]

A good UI would be nice.
They're 'all over the place' in most titles currently out there.
Much as I love AC, years in...I still don't have options to arrange little things like replays properly.
There is no arrange by time, alphabetical naming order, etc...
I have to scroll endlessly just to select a particular track.... car selection is okay, since I can just select the brand and immediately see what's available.
Rfactor2...Again, what can I say there.
Years in...and I still don't understand it.
I can fix a $50m business jet, but I can't understand a sim racing UI.... It's perplexing.
Raceroom Edition...another PITA UI.
I don't want to build the physics model for every single car I want to take on track.
Give me less freakin' options (vertical loading, lateral force, etc..).
I'd instead prefer a car that drives as it should when I jump into the virtual cockpit. I don't mind a small bit of 'tweaking' here and there.
As it stands now, I feel like I'm partially doing their job in having to configure what I want every single car to feel like.
PCARS...nuf said. I don't even have that game.
CM-F1 series...same as PCARS.... F1-2010 was the last time I owned anything CM. Probably never will again.
AMS...ah!...close...but missing point of reference marker during replays.
What's the point of giving me a PLAY, REW, FF button, if I don't know where I am in a replay?
I've posted that issue months ago and still don't have a solution.
Every single title is lacking in the UI field.

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

Pick up and play stuff, good career/championship mode.

If you want to actually race in a sim you must adjust each and every aspect before actually doing it, SP mode should be more streamlined than that.

A sim that actually tried that, AC, has done it poorly and abandoned it, never bothered to include the new content bought after launch.

 

[Zuffenhausen Weiss]

Aside from lack of training mode (I prefer a mix of GTR2, Gran Turismo and RBR), my gripes with AC is the sun glare which sometimes causes me to crash as people rarely drive in front of the sun without sunglasses/visor at 30mph let alone 100mph

Other gripes with both AC and PC2 (from watching other people's videos), the lack of blue flag even if a car is parked on the track (it's okay in GPL but this is a simulation of modern motorsport, not a portrayal of 1960s racing)

the ability to be able to still drive flawlessly even after a 30mph crash or constantly bring your engine over the redline. IIRC, when I've played GTR2 11 years ago, you could set a mode where you would never be able to get away with any of these

But then as a small company, it's easy to accept that the game is still "under development" unlike the high-budgeted bug ridden simcade farce that is PC2

 

[CC]

Engine sounds generally could be better. AMS is probably the best i've heard in this regard, but watch any good onboard video on youtube and it's clear that we're nowhere near that yet.

Would make a huge difference if someone is able to achieve something that sounds more realistic.

Youtube videos sound nothing like real life they all are mostly using gopro cams or some kind of sports cams and this totally kills the audio , do not know how you came to this conclusion that youtube videos are accurate representation of realistic audio , you ever been to an actual race event at some point ?

 

[JoelRR]

Hearing damage, threat of death, exhaust fumes, and hot ass chicks.

Well, sort of

 

[Will Mazeo]

proper pit crew (with them pushing your car out of the pits as happens in real life)

Btw in this part I meant these situations

your crew could help you to get out of it, block user controls if needed (for the sake of reducing the chances of the player messing with it all).
Damn it man... I wish the tracks in simracing were alive just like real life
Heck right now some sims cant even let you go to pits under FCY without giving you a penalty for being 1cm ahead of the car you should be following (that is not going to pit)

 

[MarcG]

For me the one biggest feature missing is "Human Like AI", that is AI that reacts to the surroundings as close to a Human would as possible. Things like reacting accordingly to incidents, different driving lines based on conditions, more personality traits like revenge after being taken out, controlling oversteer/understeer accordingly. I know some Sims do try and do some of these things now but for me they are still a long way from what a Human would do in any given situation, so currently we are a long long way from that, even the sims with the best AI are nowhere near Human enough yet.

I also foresee a future where the AI become so Human like that Betting companies start having Virtual Races to bet on just like they currently do with the Horses, that would be fab....oh yeah and racing them would be great as well of course.

 

[CC]

Trading paints solution for all sims (build in).
Natural camera tracking (track cams).
Training mode that makes practicing particular corners possible.

How you mean by trading paints solution ?
scratches impacts with damage ect ,
This could be done easily by making all damage to use masks , each car / livery as its own identifier ,
meaning each car works by a minimum of 3 base colors you store within its packed structure ,
base example R,G,B upon impact it simply applies the base colors to the opposing car through color codes , simply no textures just identifiers stored in a file , strange how no one uses this techniques probably the most simplest thing to implement