Red Flags in Sim Games

[John Bergqvist]

Hi, can anybody think of whats good about having red flags in sim games? i fear i might have started a war with the rfactor devs on twitter about it lol

 

[Lewis Fergusson]

Realism.

 

[John Bergqvist]

can anyone think of sim games where there have been red flags?

 

[Kris Leeten]

Didn't Toca uses a lot more flags (don't ask me which version, I'm not even sure it has...)

Edit: Project Torque mentions a red flag (link- Hitting the opponents maliciously with the car)

 

[Nick Deeley]

F1 97 on the original Playstation, I was at Brazil. All I remember is I switched view to another car and decided to drive around like i was in that car, rather than my own, which was god knows where on the track. Then, a red flag appeared at the top of the screen, and before i could switch views, the finishing result screen loaded up.

No idea what happened, but thats the only time ive seen a red flag in any racing game.

 

[John Bergqvist]

yeh ive got that. it only happens when you are damaged beyond repair on the track. the finishing result was not because the race had been red flagged, rather you were out of the race because of damage. kind of pointless really then lol.

 

[John Bergqvist]

anyone else? any other reasons why theyd be good in a sim?

 

[G-Kraft]

It would be fun if the weather in sims turnd out to be like in F1(malaysian GP)...only get half the points if the race get black flagged.

 

[John Bergqvist]

yes. and if the race did get red flagged, youd could see all the crew pushing the cars around the grid etc. and you could choose if you wanted to 'do a Kimi' i.e. get out of the car if you thought there wasnt going to be a restart, and then lose out if there was.

 

[Jamie Wilson]

I can't really think of anything particularly beneficial; in the sim world, procedural realism is rather secondary to vehicle dynamics realism etc. The only situation I can think of is in a league race for example, the RD calls out a safety car near the end of a race (presuming a need for safety cars in the first place, that would be welcomed), and as it's so near the end of the race it may as well be red flagged for time limit reasons - but that said, you can set laps+time as a race length parameter so .. hm.

 

[John Bergqvist]

MMG told me they would have red flags and a safety car ingame, plus in multiplayer you could assign a dedicated SC driver. My Job! lol.

 

[Damian Henderson]

There's been many Red flags at various leagues pulled out by admin direction, there is also manually driven Safety Cars you could use just to add more realism, adds to the work load though.

 

[Brian Duddy]

Didn't Toca uses a lot more flags (don't ask me which version, I'm not even sure it has...)

Edit: Project Torque mentions a red flag (link- Hitting the opponents maliciously with the car)

Project Torque's red flags are warnings for aggressive driving, similar to the real-life black and white flag.

TOCA Race Driver 3 does indeed have a great many flags; off the top of my head it has green, yellow, white, black, checkered, black/white, and the meatball flag (it's the only game I've ever seen that has that one). I believe some recent NASCAR games have the red flag w/ yellow X that indicates the pits are closed, and F1 07 (for example) features the debris flag.
I never have actually seen a racing game with a properly implemented red flag, though. Nor have I seen NASCAR's blue flag (without the yellow stripe!) or black flag with a white X, but then again I doubt even most fans know about those!