Why weather in a game?

[bobdihi]

I wonder why majority of people are so obsessed with a weather condition in a game.
I dont think that drivers in a real world are so keen to drive in a rain. They just have to.
On the other hand we in sim world dont have to. So whats the fuss about including a rain in a game?

 

[Ho3n3r]

I wonder why majority of people are so obsessed with a weather condition in a game.
I dont think that drivers in a real world are so keen to drive in a rain. They just have to.
On the other hand we in sim world dont have to. So whats the fuss about including a rain in a game?

Immersion. You simply want to test as many facets as possible compared to real life. Of course, really bad implementations of it doesn't mean much, but some sims are closer than others.

It teaches you adaptability, patience, throttle/brake control and thinking on the fly - straight up dry race strategies can be boring and predictable, but nothing wakes you up like a weather-shaped spanner in the middle of a league race.

To flip the question around: why not? If every race was wet, fine, I agree it gets boring, but a random wet event here and there as we have in reality, is great IMO.

 

[LTNINGFan]

Immersion. You simply want to test as many facets as possible compared to real life. Of course, really bad implementations of it doesn't mean much, but some sims are closer than others.

It teaches you adaptability, patience, throttle/brake control and thinking on the fly - straight up dry race strategies can be boring and predictable, but nothing wakes you up like a weather-shaped spanner in the middle of a league race.

To flip the question around: why not? If every race was wet, fine, I agree it gets boring, but a random wet event here and there as we have in reality, is great IMO.

I couldn't word that any better. I remember my first experience with weather and it's changes was F1 Championship Edition (F1 97 for most of the rest of you outside the states) for the first Playstation. So much fun...

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

So whats the fuss about including a rain in a game?

Appeals to me in the same way as night and day transitions. It's beautiful and an extra challenge.

 

[Kuckoo]

I wonder why majority of people are so obsessed with a weather condition in a game.
I dont think that drivers in a real world are so keen to drive in a rain. They just have to.
On the other hand we in sim world dont have to. So whats the fuss about including a rain in a game?

Same reason why we like reliability/unreliability, tires that wear, damage modelling, changing time of day, etc.

Immersion.

If we wanted it to be easy, we would just zip around in mindless arcade racers, and not worry about the idiosyncrasies and minutiae of motorsport.

 

[Terry Rock]

It is okay to ask for enhancements like rain, night transitions, etc...as long as you use them once implemented.
Understand...there will always be compromises.
It is just the nature of the beast.
Think about the massive workload to properly code for complete dry transitioning...to partial wet....and then fully wet conditions.
That represents massive effort especially if you have multiple models of car across a platform.
There is first massive grip in the dry...huge loss in partial wet and then a re-gain of some grip but also the addition of aquaplaning in full wet conditions.
My full-time job is that of a flight simulator technician.
In the five years since our sim was certified, I cannot list the sheer number of changes that have been made in software.
That practice holds true across the entire flight simulator industry...regardless of company offering the training.
It is a never-ending process with engineers requesting access to our development server to adjust and or build loads for official promotion.
Changes happens on an almost daily basis.
It is not an easy task...which is why I have the utmost respect for good developers.