Opinion: What Do You Think Is Missing From Sim Racing?

Paul Jeffrey

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Have Your Say - Tino66.jpg

Reviving an old topic from a couple of years ago, we would like to know what the RD community think is missing from the current sim racing landscape.

The subject was brought back to my attention by RD staff member @Daniel Monteiro during The RD Podcast recording earlier this evening, and I thought it might be worth throwing this question back out to the community to see if opinions have changed since 2017.

Sim racing does indeed continue to improve and get bigger at a seemingly endless rate, but even with all the progress made since back in the early 2000's, I'm sure it is fair to assume plenty still remains to be done in order to tick all those boxes our sim racing faithful would like to see in the hobby we all so love.

With that in mind, it's feeling like the time is right to ask you all this (rather large and broad) question once again:

What have you always thought should be part of a sim-racing game but somehow has (almost) never made it to any game?

Over to you, folks.

Screenshot Credit: Tino66

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To me, the so-called "serious" sims concentrate on the physics too much, and neglect the simulation of other aspects - specifically the visual and audio aspects of how the driver receives information. Two examples that drive me nuts are lack of realistic mirrors and use of screen overlays instead of pit-to car radio. You know why the aviation industry builds those multi-million dollar simulators, and doesn't just use MS flight sim? It's all about the pilots' interaction with their environment. We've got VR now, but most of today's racing sims either don't allow or can't reasonably be driven without some kind of HUD elements. A related aspect is that the graphics need to be optimized for driving, not screenshots - take a lot of detail out of the places that you don't see when driving, and get better framerates/resolution/draw distance.

The other thing I'd like is for more sims to have a cohesive set of cars, tracks, and basic race rules. It doesn't have to be a licensed series, but for each car, try to get at least 3-4 tracks that it actually races on. And at least have appropriate standing/rolling start options for whatever the cars in a sim actually use.
 
The physics of a modern sim, and having a "real world" city and surrounding areas environment along with tune-able parts available on the real factory and aftermarket for the available vehicles and be so precise, that a guy could even use the game as a test bench for his own real life project. How much would that cost? Get to work on those licenses and give us a price!
 
Proper racing rules, proper safety car implementation, manually selectable grid (including the ability to pick each individual livery), full historical grids, including manufacturers which don't exist anymore, better AI.
 
To me, the so-called "serious" sims concentrate on the physics too much, and neglect the simulation of other aspects - specifically the visual and audio aspects of how the driver receives information. Two examples that drive me nuts are lack of realistic mirrors and use of screen overlays instead of pit-to car radio. You know why the aviation industry builds those multi-million dollar simulators, and doesn't just use MS flight sim? It's all about the pilots' interaction with their environment. We've got VR now, but most of today's racing sims either don't allow or can't reasonably be driven without some kind of HUD elements. A related aspect is that the graphics need to be optimized for driving, not screenshots - take a lot of detail out of the places that you don't see when driving, and get better framerates/resolution/draw distance.

The other thing I'd like is for more sims to have a cohesive set of cars, tracks, and basic race rules. It doesn't have to be a licensed series, but for each car, try to get at least 3-4 tracks that it actually races on. And at least have appropriate standing/rolling start options for whatever the cars in a sim actually use.

Actually we build those multi million fsim because the authorities require so.

We also do “lower fidelity” fsim used for training.
 
  • Deleted member 503495

"Completedness" and attention to detail.
 
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