Many modern simulators now have impressive damage simulation both physically and visually affecting your car and handling, in fact it's become one of the main features in games like BeamNG and Wreckfest.
How important is damage in a racing simulator to you, do you use it, does it change the experience for you and do you find it useful or problematic when racing online?
Here are two different scenarios:
I personally find that on a track like this it makes a huge difference to the immersion, the way you drive, and you're respect for the track.
If you were offered a drive in real life at somewhere like Silverstone you might feel reasonably safe and confident, with its large run off areas and reasonably flat layout.
Get offered a drive at Bathurst however and you may not feel quite so sure of yourself and not want to push it too hard due to those hard concrete walls being so close, and steep downhill sections where a lockup under braking could be very expensive at least, and very dangerous at worst! I know I'd be feeling a lot less confident here!
But in a sim with damage turned off, you really miss out on that feeling, respect for the track and the element of danger, you can just shoot the car down the Esses and the Dipper clattering and bouncing off walls all the way. Infact when I've raced there online I've seen the phrase "Pinball alley" used in the chat box used so many times!
If I turn the damage up to full here, then for me at least this track is a totally different ballgame (pun intended). I really start to feel the extra atmosphere and apprehension this terrifying track conjures up! I'm thinking about those walls all the time, I can feel my whole body tense up every time I get close to one, I'm treating my breaks with all the finesse I can muster on the way down the hill, I'm locked in and concentrating hard!
If that's in an online server, that may have been a one hour race you'd spent planning for and tuning for well in advance. Thats going be pretty disappointing and unless you've got a plan B lined up, it's a lot of time wasted, however you may just make it through safely and feel great afterwards!
With damage off you may lose a little of the buzz of zipping through a small gap safely, but at least you know you've got a guaranteed hour of racing even if things go a bit sideways.
It's certainly true that a race at one of the tracks mentioned above (or any other like them), could very easily be over after a few laps with damage turned on, but here's a funny thing, with damage turned off there tends to be more pile ups and stop / starts every other lap simply because people will clatter the walls and end up facing backwards in the middle of the track, because they can!
Another paradoxical thing I've noticed is if you take a game like Wreckfect, where you can turn the damage from just visual to fully performance impacting (or 'Realistic' as the setting is called in game), a game where the point of it is to win by wrecking! There now seem to be lots of servers springing up touting themselves as 'clean racing', using the realistic damage setting and populated by drivers trying to race without wrecking or damaging their cars, in fact some of those servers are cleaner racing than I've had on some public servers and even organised servers in simulators without damage. Go figure that one out, maybe it's all about the challenge?
One last thing I'd like to mention before I wrap this up, what do we all think of under carriage damage (or damage from impacts below)? Some sims that have pretty good damage simulation still don't have this at all! I was so impressed when I jumped into Raceroom, hit a large sausage kerb at speed in an open wheeler, got launched into the air and realised when I landed that my suspension had collapsed, I almost fell off my rig!
Now, imagine if every sim had this, what it would mean for turn one at Monza! Even with all other types of damage turned off, this one thing alone might just stop everyone just hitting the sausage kerbs there and causing a big mess! They’re there for a reason! Or maybe not, what do you think?
Leave your views in the comment section below.
How important is damage in a racing simulator to you, do you use it, does it change the experience for you and do you find it useful or problematic when racing online?
Does it work online?
If you jump into an online race in something like Iracing or Automobilista 2 (both of which have extensive damage modelling), and the server is set up with full damage active, do you find that it changes the way people drive, in that people may give each other a bit more space, drive more considerately, not take as many dangerous risks and do everything to look after their car. Or do you find it can cause problems?Here are two different scenarios:
- The server has damage turned on but also only allows drivers with safe pings to connect, it also has a good ranking system turned on and only lets people join with a decent safety rating, hopefully eliminating the chance of wreckers joining and also drawing drivers in who won't quit early if they pick up some damage and have to pit.
- The server has damage turned on but no ping limits, ranking system or safety rating, allowing anyone to join wreck and quit early.
Does it change the experience, does it change the track?
Take a track like Bathurst, would turning the damage on here totally change the experience for you, even if you are offline having a practice session with no other cars on track?I personally find that on a track like this it makes a huge difference to the immersion, the way you drive, and you're respect for the track.
If you were offered a drive in real life at somewhere like Silverstone you might feel reasonably safe and confident, with its large run off areas and reasonably flat layout.
Get offered a drive at Bathurst however and you may not feel quite so sure of yourself and not want to push it too hard due to those hard concrete walls being so close, and steep downhill sections where a lockup under braking could be very expensive at least, and very dangerous at worst! I know I'd be feeling a lot less confident here!
But in a sim with damage turned off, you really miss out on that feeling, respect for the track and the element of danger, you can just shoot the car down the Esses and the Dipper clattering and bouncing off walls all the way. Infact when I've raced there online I've seen the phrase "Pinball alley" used in the chat box used so many times!
If I turn the damage up to full here, then for me at least this track is a totally different ballgame (pun intended). I really start to feel the extra atmosphere and apprehension this terrifying track conjures up! I'm thinking about those walls all the time, I can feel my whole body tense up every time I get close to one, I'm treating my breaks with all the finesse I can muster on the way down the hill, I'm locked in and concentrating hard!
What's the payoff?
Simply this, after running a bunch of fast but clean laps at somewhere like Bathurst or Macau with damage on full, I'm sweating, the adrenaline is pumping, and the sense of achievement is immense! Step things up and have an actual race either against A.I. or online and make it to the end without totalling the car and you're sense of achievement goes through the roof, you'll be on cloud nine!The pros, cons and paradoxes!
Obviously if you have a race in a simulator with full on crippling damage, you could total your car so badly on the very first lap, that you can't even make it back to the pits and that's you're race over, as is the risk in the real world.If that's in an online server, that may have been a one hour race you'd spent planning for and tuning for well in advance. Thats going be pretty disappointing and unless you've got a plan B lined up, it's a lot of time wasted, however you may just make it through safely and feel great afterwards!
With damage off you may lose a little of the buzz of zipping through a small gap safely, but at least you know you've got a guaranteed hour of racing even if things go a bit sideways.
It's certainly true that a race at one of the tracks mentioned above (or any other like them), could very easily be over after a few laps with damage turned on, but here's a funny thing, with damage turned off there tends to be more pile ups and stop / starts every other lap simply because people will clatter the walls and end up facing backwards in the middle of the track, because they can!
Another paradoxical thing I've noticed is if you take a game like Wreckfect, where you can turn the damage from just visual to fully performance impacting (or 'Realistic' as the setting is called in game), a game where the point of it is to win by wrecking! There now seem to be lots of servers springing up touting themselves as 'clean racing', using the realistic damage setting and populated by drivers trying to race without wrecking or damaging their cars, in fact some of those servers are cleaner racing than I've had on some public servers and even organised servers in simulators without damage. Go figure that one out, maybe it's all about the challenge?
One last thing I'd like to mention before I wrap this up, what do we all think of under carriage damage (or damage from impacts below)? Some sims that have pretty good damage simulation still don't have this at all! I was so impressed when I jumped into Raceroom, hit a large sausage kerb at speed in an open wheeler, got launched into the air and realised when I landed that my suspension had collapsed, I almost fell off my rig!
Now, imagine if every sim had this, what it would mean for turn one at Monza! Even with all other types of damage turned off, this one thing alone might just stop everyone just hitting the sausage kerbs there and causing a big mess! They’re there for a reason! Or maybe not, what do you think?
Leave your views in the comment section below.
