Column: Why Karting Isn’t Succeeding in Sim Racing

I really enjoy playing kartkraft, it's a shame that a certain company killed it.

karting in AC has been on my list for a while after trying superkarts at barbagello raceway in Western Australia. there is a couple patreon only sodikarts i have my eye on that i here are good. and there are tons of tracks already.

From playing what I've been told are very accurately modelled karts in sims, I have learned that I have zero desire to ever do karting in real life. Just the least fun thing to do in any sim.

Racing fans don't aspire to be kart racers, so there's not usually a ton of desire to emulate some kart race at a kart track they've never heard of. Everyone at a kart track would rather be in a grand prix, in the sim, no one is stopping you.

Actual drivers who are in kart clubs often get the keys to the track and can practice when they want and the sim is too removed from the reality of driving a kart for it be worthwhile. Or they are in cars and have no longer have interest in karts.

wolftree said:

From playing what I've been told are very accurately modelled karts in sims, I have learned that I have zero desire to ever do karting in real life. Just the least fun thing to do in any sim.

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Honestly I've raced karts in real life and yet to play one sim that properly replicates it. If you ever have the chance to try a kart on a proper race track, give it a go.

I recently went karting for the first time since I was 14 and had a really good time. Figuring out where the limit is, trying to be as precise as possible while keeping the thing from sliding (as rental karts take forever to regain lost momentum), finding lines that allow certain turns to be taken flat... Proper fun! And exhausting, too, I was sore for a few days after 10 mins of practice and qualifying each, plus a 30-minute race

However, as cool as the real thing is, I am not sure how well it can transfer to sim racing. It's so unique when it comes to seating position, the vibrations that you feel literally everywhere and the vision (because there is no bodywork around you) that it might just not work as the fun parts of experiencing it yourself are very hard to replicate.

Could also be a factor that you can actually go drive a kart yourself pretty easily whereas racing a car on a circuit requires more effort (and money, of course), so people prefer to drive the stuff they probably never will in real life. Just a theory, though.

Karting can be great, but the faster they get, the more precise you have to be with your inputs, and I don't like the micro steering inputs required to not scrub off speed. When it rains in karts with slick tyres then that's when the fun starts, you can express yourself and actually turn the wheel, braking distances get longer, and it's more like driving a tail happy car. Karting transfers even worse to simulations than cars do, so perhaps that's why karting sims aren't as popular.

Karting is the absolute purest form of racing.
It is also where I started, having owned a 250cc shifter.
That said...I have never found a simulated kart game which did it accurately.
I will admit to not having tried any of the latest simulations since 2018.
The reason I completely abandoned that sector of simracing was because of pure disappointment.
One company after another would come out praising their soon-to-be-released, great product.
They'd then fail and on those few occasions when they did get it out the door, it was horrible.
The carts would spin at every opportunity...even touching the slightest of curbing.
It was almost as if they had 300 pound pendulum weights hanging on either extreme of their vertical axis.
Karts and old road cars in simulation are most often horribly represented.

Racing a Porsche 917/30 in real life? Not a chance.
Racing a Porsche 917/30 in sim racing? Hell yeah!

Racing a kart in real life? Uh, yeah, I go to one of 3 places near me and shell out $20 a race.
Racing a kart in sim racing? I think I'll just go do the real thing. Seems kind of a waste for my $700 sim rig...

wolftree said:

From playing what I've been told are very accurately modelled karts in sims, I have learned that I have zero desire to ever do karting in real life. Just the least fun thing to do in any sim.

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Do yourself a favour, if you any decent kart tracks near you and you're physically able to have even a 10 minutes session in a rental kart, have a go. It's great fun. Simulators are great and all but you can't judge without experiencing the real thing first. It just doesn't translate.
(Not to mention, using simulators as a yard stick to determine what cars are fun and what aren't doesn't seem the brightest idea...)

Looks like that people from here thinks that race rental karts and KZ2 is just the same hahaha.

Anyway, kartkraft was just amazing, a shame that it has been killed.

I can kart for real sometimes, in a rental.

I can't drive a real LMP1 / LMDH / Indycar, so I use simrace for those.

Plus, karts are more difficult to simulate than cars as mentioned already.

I did some karting in AMS 1, but just because I wanted to experience the same kart track at Interlagos where my father used to race, and it's not a good option for me to do for real nowadays.

kilder said:

Looks like that people from here thinks that race rental karts and KZ2 is just the same hahaha.

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I don't see anyone making this claim in this topic, and why are you specifically mentioning KZ2s, lol this website attracts some real weirdos.

wolftree said:

From playing what I've been told are very accurately modelled karts in sims, I have learned that I have zero desire to ever do karting in real life. Just the least fun thing to do in any sim.

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IMO, you have no right to judge any sim driving if you havent done karts in real life.

Karting is a different animal, you need excellent tyre model and chassis flex model to get it right, not many variables to tweak or fudge. Usually results are either sloppy machines or killing beasts, nothing in between. And as they are not easy things to jump into, they can be neglected, like it usually happens in simracing.

Now, as others said, karting is much more than rentals with lawnmower engines. The best ones, besides being a massive adrenaline rush that will beat big racing cars, are not cheap to get, and have high running costs. It will easily get budgets above regional grassroots series.

We've driven more in karts than in any other car in a simulator, so it would be strange if we said there's nothing to driving karts in a sim. But, having said that, it is completely clear to us that driving a racing kart in a simulator is completely different than in real life. In fact, I dare say that realistically simulating a kart in the current generation of simulators is impossible and will probably never be possible. The most important aspect is moving your body while driving. I don't know of any simulator to which you can connect sensors that detect the movement of your body. Even if those options were there, it would still not be the same. In a moving kart, the g-forces influence the movement of the body. In a stationary simulator, a driver can move his body, but it feels completely different without these g-forces.

Movement of the body has a great influence on the driving characteristics of a kart. Karts have (with a few exceptions) a rigid rear axle without a differential. This means that both rear wheels turn at exactly the same speed. The bends of a kart circuit are much tighter than the bends of a normal circuit. As a result, the rear wheels of a kart will twist enormously in a bend if you do not take this into account. An experienced kart driver moves his body outwards in a bend, causing the rear wheel to come off the ground on the inside of the bend. This eliminates the friction from the rear wheels. This also eliminates annoying understeer and allows the kart to corner much faster.

With most karts that we have tried in a simulator, you go through the bend on four wheels and you suffer from too much understeer. And those are rFactor, rFactor2, Assetto Corsa, Kart Racing Pro and Kart Sim (in rF2). We have not tried KartKraft ourselves, but we were told that it is disappointing in terms of realistic driving characteristics compared to Kart Racing Pro.

Still, we drove a lot in karts in a simulator. And that was not only because we enjoyed doing it, but also for training for karting competitions in real life.
We realize that driving in a simulator is never the same as driving a real kart, but that does not mean that you cannot practice anything. If you participate in a championship that involves driving on kart tracks where you have not driven before, you can learn the lines on these kart tracks in the simulator.
I have done my best to fine-tune the driving characteristics of the kart in the simulator using feedback from the kart drivers to minimize the difference between the simulator and driving in real life. And I have found something to do about the annoying understeer in the corners. By adjusting a trick with the driving characteristics of the kart, you can drive the kart around the bend on three wheels. That, just like in real life, requires some skill. But the experienced kart drivers who tried it were surprised how much driving such a kart in the sim resembles driving a kart in real life.
Unfortunately, so far I have only been successful in the old rFactor, and not yet in Assetto Corsa. I now know how I can achieve this in Assetto Corsa via a detour. I just don't know yet what influence this will have on driving in Assetto Corsa and therefore whether I can achieve the desired effect. So that remains to be seen.

It is important to realize that only experienced kart drivers drive a kart around the bend on three wheels. It takes a lot of time to properly develop this skill. If you occasionally go karting for fun, you will most likely never drive around a bend on three wheels. Moreover, if you only go karting occasionally, it will probably be in a rental kart. A rental kart drives completely differently than a competition kart.
Nowadays you can drive a Sodi RT10 (or RT8) rental kart on many kart tracks. Fortunately, a mod has also been made for Assetto Corsa, and you can also find it here on Overtake. This mod not only looks nice, but it also drives quite well. Most Assetto Corsa kart mods we have tried were disappointing, but this Sodi RT10 drives quite nicely. Moreover, as a driver of a rental kart you usually do not drive around the bend on three wheels. This means you don't have to worry about this not being simulated properly in Assetto Corsa.
The sound of the Sodi RT10 kart in Assetto Corsa is disappointing. But in Content Manager you can also choose a different sound. I thought the sound of the Shelby Cobra (from Kunos) was a bit close to what you hear when driving with a helmet on in a real Sodi RT10.

If you never drive a kart in real life and only in the simulator, then none of this matters at all. Then you try to see if you like it, and if so, I would say enjoy it. If you are going to try the Sodi RT10 in Assetto corsa, you must realise this simulates a rental kart. In real live, people with no experience drive in these karts. That is why the brakes on these karts are much less powerful than you are used to from racing cars in the simulator. So, if you slam on the brakes, little happens.

And, if you've never driven a real kart, it's important to note that most karts only have brakes on the rear wheels. When braking in a corner you immediately experience enormous oversteer. It is better to only brake in a straight line before the bend.

Do you not like existing kart tracks and would you rather drive on an F1 circuit in a kart? I have a solution for that too. Grand Prix Karting tracks are kart tracks with the layout of a Formula 1 circuit but the dimensions and finish of a kart circuit, as if they could exist in real life.

And would you like to drive cars that are approximately the size of a kart, but look more like F1 cars and also drive just a little bit like F1 cars? Then try Formula Student. In the absence of really good racing karts for Assetto Corsa, I have adjusted the Grand Prix Karting tracks to make them optimally suitable for Formula Student. And if you really like this, you can even participate in an online championship. We've made it easy to access. You don't have to be an alien, everyone can participate. And you can also participate in individual races, it is not necessary that you participate in the entire championship.

In my opinion, the main problem (of quite a few) with karts in the sim is the lack of tactile feel.

We know from driving any car in real life and then driving any car in a simulator that you can't feel the G forces in the simulator in the same way. Feeling how the car is moving is incredibly important to be able to know how to treat the car while driving it under different conditions corner-to-corner. In order to competently drive cars in a sim, we need to reintegrate this feedback in our minds through the use of visual feedback and whatever tactile replacements we can buy (rumble motors on the pedals, chassis, and seat, motion rigs, etc.). This is why a good force feedback wheel is important-- it makes up a large part of that feel recreation, as well as being a realistic input force we get from real cars. Having a display system that takes up a large part of your real field of vision, whether that be triples or VR, is also critical to infer the movement of the car relative to the background and other objects on the track.

In my short years of experience driving comp karts IRL as compared to my use of karting simulators (KRP, KK, and various public, private, and personal kart mods for AC), I believe that the input forces to your body's inertial position/rotation sensors (inner ear) are significantly more important in karting than in car racing-- to the point where even the high-level consumer's level of feedback recreation (VR or triples, good DD FFB wheel, etc) isn't quite enough to overcome that lack of feedback. Similarly to how knowing the "angle of attack" of a dirt oval car is important to knowing how the car will keep its momentum and how it will respond to pedal and wheel inputs, knowing the exact pitch and roll of the kart relative to the racing surface and the direction of travel versus the kart's heading is just too important and too lacking in a simulator to adequately recreate to the point of sufficient immersion for having fun, or for low-level driver training (pre-setup, seat time replacement, etc.). High-level driver training (track familiarization, etc.) can, of course, be done in a karting simulator, but to me (and I suspect many other users) there's just something too far gone about the sensory input required for me to be truly immersed in a karting sim in the same way I can be in a car sim.

There are, of course, other shortcomings, such as the lack of the extra inputs a driver has in a kart as compared to a car (or car simulator), namely leaning/weightshifting, but most if not all of those can be recreated assuming the physics developer has enough access to the physics system of the simulator (which AC, through CSP, does provide now), either through automated means or through extra actual inputs (imagine load cells on the side cushions of a seat for weightshifting).

Karts basically suffer from the same issue as Bikes in Sims, although less severe , if only the motion system not only outputted forces but also received forces ... a Kart is driven with more then the wheel , its the entire body... nevertheless Karts in AMS2 are quit fun, Kartkraft was also cool...

Track day
Go Kart or ...........



Hard choice

Durge Driven said:

Track day
Go Kart or ...........

Hard choice

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Well, I have been told by someone who owns one ( not this one but the modern generation), it drives like a kart. Problem is however, he has not raced in a kart, so I think he does not really knows the difference.