1. A simulation tuner system. Buy realistic performance parts and install them on your realistic road car with realistic consequences, which would tie into...
2. Grassroots motorsports. Instead of professional racing with the usual GT/touring/prototype/open wheel cars we've all seen a million times, why not a simulation that focuses on something like SCCA or a higher-budget LeMons. Start with an ordinary car, build it into a race car yourself, and go racing against other people (whether actual people or just AI) who have done the same thing.
3. AI that want to live. The AI should try to avoid crashing and want to preserve their cars, like real people would. You might be aware of playing a simulation, but AI should behave as if their finances, health, and lives were on the line. On lower AI difficulties, AI should drive like novice racing drivers, more timid, cautious, and conservative than higher-level AI, instead of being the same mindless line-holding zombies, only with restrictor plates eating all their horsepower.
4. Timed point to point racing. DiRT Rally without the dirt--tarmac hill climb or rally stages where you drive alone and have to try to beat the AI drivers' times. The sort of irregular, narrow roads that make great driving roads for sports cars make terrible race tracks because it's nearly impossible to pass on them. Timed point to point races make the lack of passing irrelevant.
5. Automatic transmissions. I don't mean the typical driving aid, I mean giving certain cars actual slushboxes with torque converters and realistic behavior unless you remove the transmission and replace it with a manual (see #1 and #2 above).
6. More non-competitive modes like free roam driving that emphasize the fun of driving a car for its own sake, and reward players of any skill beyond "this is the gas, this is the brake", even if they're not experienced enough to compete online or are not race-driver material at all (lack of reaction time, nerve, etc.). The entire sports car market exists as essentially expensive toys to entertain their owners by carving up back roads at whatever speed the driver is comfortable with, yet this aspect of driving is completely ignored by sims--you can jump into a $300,000 grand tourer in a sim but nowhere can you go grand touring in a simulated grand tourer.
7. GAME DESIGN. For a sim to break out of the tiny niche of a niche everybody is stuck in, it will need good presentation, and it will need this more than it will need a tire model that's 3% more accurate than last year's tire model. This means nice menus, music that exists and doesn't suck, a car-porn photo/exploration mode, etc.
8. More air-cooled Porsche 911s. The greatest sports car ever built hardly ever gets covered in sims except if you're lucky a 3.0 RSR or one of the generic GT/cup models from the '90s. No 911S, no 2.7RS, no 930, no 964, no 993...
So basically what I'm imagining is a much more hardcore version of Gran Turismo 1 without the terrible AI or those awful license tests everybody hated. People flocked to the original Gran Turismo because the cars were exotic enough to be new and different (being JDM cars that Americans didn't have access to) but familiar enough to relate to (because they were sports cars and not full-on race cars, and some of the cars had USDM equivalents), and GT Legends was the biggest hit of the isiMotor games because the old race cars, being hot-rodded versions of ordinary cars of the era without hideous Motec instrument clusters or extreme aero setups that make the car handle like a UFO, had a similar broad appeal. Making an even more detailed simulation of professional FIA series that nobody outside of a shrinking European audience cares about isn't the way forward for sim driving. Sim racing is a genre that forgot why anyone would ever want to drive a car fast in the first place, and that's why it's in the state it's in today. Video games are supposed to be fun, sports cars are supposed to be fun, but all something like iRacing wants you to do is work.
On the hardware side, instead of developing ever more expensive and powerful direct drive wheels and all that silliness, why not start implementing FFB pedals and shifters? People will spend thousands for marginally more accurate steering feel but don't see any problem with the transmission feeling like a dead fish? It's so bad you might as well just stick with flappy paddles.
2. Grassroots motorsports. Instead of professional racing with the usual GT/touring/prototype/open wheel cars we've all seen a million times, why not a simulation that focuses on something like SCCA or a higher-budget LeMons. Start with an ordinary car, build it into a race car yourself, and go racing against other people (whether actual people or just AI) who have done the same thing.
3. AI that want to live. The AI should try to avoid crashing and want to preserve their cars, like real people would. You might be aware of playing a simulation, but AI should behave as if their finances, health, and lives were on the line. On lower AI difficulties, AI should drive like novice racing drivers, more timid, cautious, and conservative than higher-level AI, instead of being the same mindless line-holding zombies, only with restrictor plates eating all their horsepower.
4. Timed point to point racing. DiRT Rally without the dirt--tarmac hill climb or rally stages where you drive alone and have to try to beat the AI drivers' times. The sort of irregular, narrow roads that make great driving roads for sports cars make terrible race tracks because it's nearly impossible to pass on them. Timed point to point races make the lack of passing irrelevant.
5. Automatic transmissions. I don't mean the typical driving aid, I mean giving certain cars actual slushboxes with torque converters and realistic behavior unless you remove the transmission and replace it with a manual (see #1 and #2 above).
6. More non-competitive modes like free roam driving that emphasize the fun of driving a car for its own sake, and reward players of any skill beyond "this is the gas, this is the brake", even if they're not experienced enough to compete online or are not race-driver material at all (lack of reaction time, nerve, etc.). The entire sports car market exists as essentially expensive toys to entertain their owners by carving up back roads at whatever speed the driver is comfortable with, yet this aspect of driving is completely ignored by sims--you can jump into a $300,000 grand tourer in a sim but nowhere can you go grand touring in a simulated grand tourer.
7. GAME DESIGN. For a sim to break out of the tiny niche of a niche everybody is stuck in, it will need good presentation, and it will need this more than it will need a tire model that's 3% more accurate than last year's tire model. This means nice menus, music that exists and doesn't suck, a car-porn photo/exploration mode, etc.
8. More air-cooled Porsche 911s. The greatest sports car ever built hardly ever gets covered in sims except if you're lucky a 3.0 RSR or one of the generic GT/cup models from the '90s. No 911S, no 2.7RS, no 930, no 964, no 993...
So basically what I'm imagining is a much more hardcore version of Gran Turismo 1 without the terrible AI or those awful license tests everybody hated. People flocked to the original Gran Turismo because the cars were exotic enough to be new and different (being JDM cars that Americans didn't have access to) but familiar enough to relate to (because they were sports cars and not full-on race cars, and some of the cars had USDM equivalents), and GT Legends was the biggest hit of the isiMotor games because the old race cars, being hot-rodded versions of ordinary cars of the era without hideous Motec instrument clusters or extreme aero setups that make the car handle like a UFO, had a similar broad appeal. Making an even more detailed simulation of professional FIA series that nobody outside of a shrinking European audience cares about isn't the way forward for sim driving. Sim racing is a genre that forgot why anyone would ever want to drive a car fast in the first place, and that's why it's in the state it's in today. Video games are supposed to be fun, sports cars are supposed to be fun, but all something like iRacing wants you to do is work.
On the hardware side, instead of developing ever more expensive and powerful direct drive wheels and all that silliness, why not start implementing FFB pedals and shifters? People will spend thousands for marginally more accurate steering feel but don't see any problem with the transmission feeling like a dead fish? It's so bad you might as well just stick with flappy paddles.
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