Have Your Say – Missing Features in Sim Racing

[Shaun Clarke]

Effective use of real pit stop strategy, and the ability to swap fronts to rears, and swap just 1 or 2 tyres, not all 4.

 

[ARTeam]

Rain, Im missing rain.
And more different tracks, many sims having nearly the same tracks.more city tracks,
More touring car mods like wtcc.
Good ai

 

[apex11]

A real sense of what a pivotal part the tyres play. Ride 2 does this well, you have bike on stock road tyres, do few laps, upgrade to better tyres, do some laps watch your times tumble etc etc, you are better and faster because of the tyres.
Real focus on the car / tyres and how actually the racing cars can flatter the driver with how wonderful they are.
In simland its like we want to pretend all race cars are terrible handling death traps waiting to spin off into walls at a mere breath on the throttle pedal... its simply not the case.
Its very frustrating for people involved in real Motorsport how the sim world can't cope with the idea racing cars are amazing things and the driver isn't 100% the reason they are so good...
Lost count of the amount of race driver friends and track day addicts who say sims are making things a lot harder than they should be...(granted it is getting better, but i still here people saying some games have too much grip, no one ever complains about too much grip in real life! They LOVE grip!)

 

[Erwin Sch]

• Online races every hour, for just one car/track combo, that changes every week. To qualify, you put a laptime on a weekly leaderboard (time trial), and on top of the hour all online drivers who want to race are grouped into a server for a race. By focussing on one track/car combo, hopefully fixes the problem that there are 100 (nearly) empty servers, like in AMS currently. There should be enough players for a good race if everyone drives the same content in organized hourly races.
• Realistic tyre-tyre collisions for open wheelers. And risk of punctures after contact with bodywork.
• More detailed timing data, so in the garage the user can see what's going on in the current session; purple sectors, top speeds, tyre used, etc. And your own a laptime history, with fuel consumption per lap and tyre usage.
• After the race, an overview of the race with statistics like fastest laps, highest climb in positions, lap chart. Ability to watch the replay while chatting, posting replay timestamps to share race highlights.

 

[ShredatorFIN]

Lot of things mentioned here, but... Adjustable mirrors. In triple screen side mirrors often useless.

Also, not really feature but simulators are often very "dry" circuit racing. And when the game setting is more "fun" and open world, then handling is crap. Why not combine the two one day?

Would like to see NFS type cop chase game, but with real handling and real collision consequences. Or TDU type of thing, with better physics.

But game studios think people who enjoy stuff like this, won't care about deep handling model or wheel support (and vice versa, "ppl who like real handling enjoy just dry things")... imo big mistake.

 

[BillGuy]

This is kind of specific to people who do a lot of ad-hoc casual driving but…

I would really like to have the ability to browse all saved setups within the game but before entering any event or session. Not even the content of the setups. Just enough to see which car/track combinations I have a saved setup for.

 

[NtsParadize]

Realistic lights, realistic sounds and damage

 

[HoiHman]

- Adjustable AI during races.
- Rewind
- Realistic Hand tracking in VR

 

[Tormentor]

- A driver license for online races. A new sim could bring grand turismo style licens tests (offline) and depending on your results you get a driver license for online races.
- re-start online races
- Unique (personal) cars skins for onlíne races.
- The ability to pause and save a race MID RACE.
- If you bring new stuff, do it 100% - i.e. RRRE brings Indycar without ovals, DTM92 without the old tracks

 

[delpinsky]

My perfect sim — considering proper physics, tyre model & force feedback the pillars of a sim:

- next-gen graphics and lighting model, for a photorealistic look of the whole scene.
- wider area laserscanned to create more detailed tracks. This way the immersion will be deeper. Looking at the obects/trees/landscape in the distance it will feel like being in a real life track.
- Single AI driver files to recreate lifelike driver behaviours and rivalries. No more generic AI. This way we can create more realistic Custom Championships and Career Mode.
- pre-race grid full of mechanics/race engineers around the cars (just like in F1 2017).
- grid girls.
- after race parade lap with stewards waving flags (like it was in Geoff Crammond's GP Series)
- podium ceremony with national anthems & champagne.
- safety car.
- stewards running in to recover cars, moving them into safety areas or using cranes.
- cameras attached to the car chassis or inside the cars, with proper subtle vibrations/shakiness (sliders per car to mod the vibrations), to give to the replays a realistic, frantic look, like the actual anction cams. No more static and flat footge for replays.
- soft body damage model.
- real life Motorsport Series, licensed or using just single licensed cars and tracks (with fictional names to edit, to create Custom Championships or a Career Mode as close as possible to real life Motorsport events).
- DLCs containing Motorsport Series.
- private/practice sessions with AI cars to add, so we can drive freely alone or with other cars.
- hotseat-mode multiplayer, to drive with your friends on the same PC, using turns of few laps or minutes. Just like it was in Geoff Crammond's GP Series, where you could decide how many laps per human player to drive and let the AI driving your car when a friend had his turn ready.

- REALISTIC ENGINE SOUNDS. Eargasm!
This is what Motorsport is for, besides competition and technical innovations.

 

[BenCollins]

Proper collisions. A whack of a car against yours.
They are never quite right.

 

[apex11]

Lot of things mentioned here, but... Adjustable mirrors. In triple screen side mirrors often useless.

Also, not really feature but simulators are often very "dry" circuit racing. And when the game setting is more "fun" and open world, then handling is crap. Why not combine the two one day?

Would like to see NFS type cop chase game, but with real handling and real collision consequences. Or TDU type of thing, with better physics.

But game studios think people who enjoy stuff like this, won't care about deep handling model or wheel support (and vice versa, "ppl who like real handling enjoy just dry things")... imo big mistake.

Would be worth it just to watch the sim community implode.

 

[NtsParadize]

- A driver license for online races. A new sim could bring grand turismo style licens tests (offline) and depending on your results you get a driver license for online races.
- re-start online races
- Unique (personal) cars skins for onlíne races.
- The ability to pause and save a race MID RACE.
- If you bring new stuff, do it 100% - i.e. RRRE brings Indycar without ovals, DTM92 without the old tracks

Are you the one who plays serious all the time?

 

[FeltHat]

Why not combine the two one day?

$$$
thats why

well, try beamng after next big update drops, it would probably be closest to your vision but still nothing like realistic nfs

 

[BenCollins]

Beam NG physics are really amazing. The collisions are exactly what you would expect to happen.

The way things are progressing in racing sims, we will have some truly perfect stuff in the near future.

 

[Shap]

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

As far as I know you cant upload your own skin to a server. And make it downloadable for other participants. I've only seen it working with the 3rd party solution called "trading paints" for Iracing.
But your suggestion about making scratches on another car with the color of your own car sounds pretty cool. RSS GT1 opportunity?

 

[Charmin]

My biggest wish would be a game where you have a whole season of a series. Today we just have a few cars from one category, sometimes just one. I really miss GTR2, where you had all the cars and tracks from one series. I like what Racerrom did with the DTM and the ADAC GT Master and i hope to see this more often. Assetto Corsa with the license of the Blaincpain Series would be something.

 

[Two]

Proper collisions. A whack of a car against yours.
They are never quite right.

I've been wanting proper collisions for quite some time. All SIM developers fail at this as far as I know. What I think needs to be implemented is a "mass" & "COG" field so that we can get more proper collisions than we get now. Spinning out from getting a small bump on my fender is so rage-quit-inducing it makes me want to punch the developer(s) in the face for not having proper collisions.

 

[MarkR]

Stewards, driving standards & behaviour and flags. The first thing that happens on any real track is some sort of briefing from the stewards about driving standards and behaviour (plenty of loading screen time in most games to reinforce similar messages). These rules are then enforced as I know all too well from one or two tellings off over the years. Having a set standard of behaviour, track limits, flags etc lets everyone know where they stand. This is the biggest element of realism missing from driving games for me - people exploiting unrealistic glitches and using the excuse 'the game allows it' to justify behaviour. All of this should also be switchable for those times when people don't want them, just as with switchable assists that is fine with me. F1 2017 did a decent job of this (warnings and penalties for even small rule breaches like crossing the pit lane exit line) as does Motorsport Manager to some extent. Forza 7 makes no attempt at realistic behaviour even as an option and is much the worse for it.

Grid girls though, yeah they would great too. I have no interest in buying loot crates to dress up my Forza 7 driver doll. Outfits for my grid girls though...sell me those loot boxes

 

[TrumpetReich]

I'd like a better sense of death at any moment. Maybe set up the game to crash the system and set your pc on fire if you hit a wall.