Have Your Say: Why Do You Enjoy Sim Racing?

[Caramidaru Andrei Bogdan]

@Paul Jeffrey @everyone #yolo )
Like many said, I am living the dream of being a racing driver be it in a virtual world.
I take simracing very serious and I treat this passion more than just a hobby, I want to be the best as I can be and fight with the fastest people out there, I want to be competitive and have EPIC fights, I want to fill the adrenaline rush when I have a good run or make a crazy pass, I want to sweat the effort out and feel the burn when FFB is too strong.
I do understand people that treat it like just a game or are doing it for the TS banter, the beautiful graphics or the proper immersion, I do it because this get's me as close as possible to my childhood dream, and I put competitiveness above immersion that's why maybe I AM THE FASTEST SWINGMAN VIEW FWD CAR driver in RaceRoom ))

 

[Yapci]

Come on guys we are all here because babes think it's cool and real men stuff!

Oh ok, no women thinks that. Damn!

Arrg what the fell, we got porsches, virtual pit babes will be enoug now. Are you hearing kunos/reiza guys?? PIT-BA-BES!

P.S: simracing is great, cheaper than real life racing, less risky, more funny and you can race a wide variety of things with wheels and cars!

And you can do it drunk!

 

[Ghepa888]

Hello everyone, I'm using Google translate, because my English is poor and I want to answer this question intelligently.
I'm Italian born in January 1968 in a city of Emilia-Romagna (the region from the Italian peninsula, as may be the Scotland and Wales in England, to make me understand better), the land of women and motors (as they say in this region), Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and Ducati, all built in my region, also the track of Imola, so the races and the speed is in my DNA, or in the blood.
My mother says, that the first time I walked was the first Christmas,
my parents had given to my older brother, a red toy car with pedals, my mom says that my eyes lit up and with my open arms I went to the toy car, Ferrari is my blood ah ah ah ah. Since 1974 I am passionate about motor racing, specifically Formula 1, of course my heart beats the rhythm of the Ferrari engine.
See these heroes, as Ronny Peterson, Mario Andretti, John Watson, Niky Lauda and many others and try to emulate them, driving Kart downhill constructed of wood with ball bearings for wheels, going down the slopes from the condominium garage, aged between 7 and 9 years old, crazy things kids.
Nowadays, a parent yell upset and worried, telling you idiot (well! This part also to us), and we would close in your room in front of a monitor.
The second part no, because at that time there was only the TV. So, for me, the simulators are the realization of dreams, of crazy little boy, who was running down the slopes, with a dilapidated downhill kart.

I hope I have written well, so that you understand me, google translate it translates words and does it well. The real difficulty is to convey the emotions and feelings that I live and I have lived, too, in my memories tell of crazy kid. To let you know when I'm behind the wheel in front of my PC, I'm not sitting in a room, in a comfortable chair, but they are inside a real racing car and I compete ...... And I go back to being the crazy kid who was running down for downhill, imagining to be a famous racing driver.

Good day to all

 

[DaVeX↯]

Tutto chiaro, non preoccuparti della traduzione, importante passi il messaggio!

MOD EDIT: Got it, do not worry about the translation, important steps the message! (Google Translate)

 

[Stephen O'Sullivan]

A famous chess saying: "Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe". The same could be said for sim racing. We all take different things from the pastime. I like the sense of theatre, the variety, the occupation of eyes, ears and all my limbs, the glorious sounds, the stunning car and track models, and the exploration of physics, racecraft and technology. It is easy to learn from and emulate the many inspiring YouTube videos of real and sim racing.

I also enjoy grabbing my toy plastic wheel and screaming "nnneeeeeooooowwww!" as my inner ear hears Murray Walker and James Hunt expound on my attempts to thrash a Mini around Imola.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

For me, my dad and my grandad were car mechanics, we shared a yard with a lot of ex Team Lotus guys who were still building race car replicas so I was always going to be a petrol head.

How awesome is that! Ah man I bet those were brilliant days and you must of seen some amazing things during those times Brilliant stuff

 

[Fat Rich]

How awesome is that! Ah man I bet those were brilliant days and you must of seen some amazing things during those times Brilliant stuff

I was always breaking bike bits and getting them welded, one day there would be a big pile of straight tubes, a few days later they'd be cut and bent into all sorts of weird shapes. Then they'd start to be clamped to this odd metal jig on a bench which looked nothing like a race car... eventually this beautiful space frame chassis would emerge from the chaos

Then he'd start on the suspension wishbones, pedals and gear levers. Another guy at the top of the yard made and repaired fibreglass bodies, if he didn't have space in his own workshop he'd store all these exotic cars in ours. As a kid I got to sit in all sorts of Lotus cars from the 60s, 70s and early 80s but it was already becoming clear that I was too big to go racing, no headroom and my feet were too big to work the pedals

These were the guys who built the cars that Jimmy, Graham, Stirling and other legends raced in, I didn't realise just how cool that was at the time.... I just wanted my bike fixed!

Now all the workshops are gone and it's a timber yard and an Asda supermarket.

 

[John Fuqua]

I like motorsports, not as much as the NFL but it's fun on the PC, being able to drive some of the classic Indycars and F1 cars from the 70's I remember seeing on TV as a kid is lots of fun and as they and the tracks get more and more realistic, even better.

 

[GTAce]

I was always a huge car nut since my earliest childhood days. I could pronounce many car brands before I could talk properly. Because of a handicap, I'm not able to drive cars for real, so sim-racing is the closest I can get to experience the feeling of driving.

That's also one of the reasons why I love to give daily drivers a spin in my sim-games. Driving cars I might drive in reality if I could is neat.

I could write a huge essay about all the small, lovely things sim-racing can provide, but most of you know these yourself.

 

[DND]

The racing bug bit at 10 years old at Road America in 1972 watching the Can Am's with the likes Denny Hulme, Jackie Oliver and David Hobbs racing Porsches, McLarens and Shadows. Here I am many years later and the dreams of racing have never faded, I knew that the means weren't available for reality even then but I did envision that one day I would be doing more than racing down the block on my bicycle imagining the sounds and feel of motor racing at its virtual best.
My first virtual racing experience was on an arcade game called Pole Position and fed that game copious amount of quarters ($.25 usd) earned from my paper route. Years later when PC's hit the market I fed my passion something substantially more than that and played Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix games, from that point forward I would be hooked.
I have had the opportunity to drive a street vehicle on a few tracks IRL and can say that Sim racing for me provides all the excitement, including pre track-time jitters I felt. I like that I can pull up a track and car, on my PC, that used to be run by all the greats and experience with brilliance and beauty what the software developers have accomplished. I am in awe of what developers are able to accomplish using the latest hardware and continue to push the limits to bring to us Sim racing that is now literally VR Racing. Those dreams as a kid are now here, in my house I can experience those same dreams in a real way and it makes me happy. As the AI gets better the experience continues as well. Some scoff when I tell them of Sim racing, some try it, and those that do think it's pretty awesome too.

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

Now all the workshops are gone and it's a timber yard and an Asda supermarket.

Sadly that seems to be the way of the world nowadays

How cool would it be if those guy's still worked in the back yard and could knock you up a nice Lotus shell to put your sim stuff in... now that would be one hell of a kick ass cockpit

 

[M-Bimmer]

can't really take a BMW M4 DTM around the ring whenever i want or a formula one car from the gold V10 era to the old Monza in real life....we all know that feeling whether it is a track we love to race on or a car that we want to master. Take for example, this guy with his Cayman GT4 he is either at spa or the ring (would do the same if i have no family or kids) and at least i am able to do the same whenever i want to (even if it will never be the real deal but i can live with that ).

 

[Celestiale]

I was always a huge car fan. Just like @GTAce i knew pretty much any car brand, and most models by looking at them before i could form a complete sentence. My second word after "Mama" was not "Papa", but "Audi-Ato". I guess Audi was my favourite brand when i was 2 years old .
70% of the books i had as young child have been picture-books of car manufacturers. I spent around 90% of my childhood pocket money for Siku-cars

(was never interested in those fantasy hotwheel stuff), and used them for "turn-based racing" on car carpets

.

In the end i had like 500 cars (most bought in flea market) and dozens of car carpets, both bought and self made, put together to form one huge race track (using little cones to mark the track ), and friends over to have several hour long races...
when i was 11 or so i got my Xbox and Project Gotham Racing (later 2), and shortly after my first (non-FFB) wheel, some cheap junk - i had several games, but i spend 90% of my gaming time in PGR, over years..
When i got 14 and discovered girls and booze, and "didn't have any time" anymore for gaming, sold my Xbox and stopped completely. But didn't lose my passion for cars, i started imagine what car to buy aged 15, and always kept myself informed about all the cars out there, in all price ranges..
When i turned 18 i bought myself a Peugeot 206 (had some money from being snowboard teacher), and pushed the car to the absolute limit. Learned myself FWD drifting and handbrake turns within month, used roundabouts for drifting (once flying out of it, sitting down on the cycling way, pretty shocked ) Disclaimer: no humans or animals were harmed. My tyres went to slicks within one summer, and after 2 years my rear axle broke (wonder why ) which was an economic total loss...by then i had amassed good money being a DJ since 18th birthday, and spent my whole money on a buffed up Mercedes SLK (yeah, that's the significance cars have in my life). Did the same kind of stuff then like with my first car, luckily the German quality made sure that nothing broke, and after 2 sets of tyres being "slicked" within month, i became calmer.
With loads of spare time i rediscovered PC games for me aged 23, but i realized that the kind of games i played as child don't do it for me anymore.
Started with War Thunder because a friend had it (my love of cars is almost being matched by aircraft, especially WW2), and then gradually transitioned to serious combat flight sims within 2 years..at the same time i still played car games of course ..Dirt's and Grid's to name (with gamepad)...
By that time, i seriously didn't know that there is something like a car Sim. I genuinely thought, Dirt3/Grid is the most realistic a car game can be...then i discovered some dubious "Assetto Corsa" in an early access program for 13 bucks...didn't wait, and bought it. Realized that it's undrivable with a gamepad, and shelved it. A bit after i got to know a guy in flight sims (by now a good "real life" buddy) who was a semi-professional kart-racer, and he also told me about Assetto Corsa. I told him i think it's ****, and he told me i have to buy a wheel to get the right experience.
In the winter of 2014 i got a fracture in my spine at snowboarding, and couldn't walk for month, pretty much tied to home.
My buddy then persuaded me, since i had really nothing else to do, so i bought a used Logitech Momo for 40 bucks. I could sit, and i could use my feet luckily.
Fired up AC, took the Alfa GTA on the Nordschleife and started...and was baffled out of this world....i had unbelievable fun just lapping the Nords with different cars, so i ordered the T300 only a month later, and shortly after Fanatec pedals, because i was immediately convinced that this Sim racing is a big deal....brought me, together with flight simming and friends through the hardest time of my life...since then i bought pretty much any Sim, and drive/race them just for the love of cars...still mostly street cars, since those interest me the most.
Since then i had pretty successful studies, and hope to be able to drive most cars of AC IRL as well, at least the street ones Definitely know, the next car will again put a huge chunk in my then a lot bigger wallet
But even with less and less spare time, i know i'll never completely stop to take a Sim drive here and there you can just drive and do and experience stuff you can only dream of in real life

 

[Paul Jeffrey]

I bought the youngster one of those road mats! He likes it but I get frustrated when he keeps cutting the corners all the time

I'm currently teaching him how to do a lap at Imola in SuperStars V8: The Next Challenge on Xbox 360. He's pretty much got the first complex down now up to Tosa, but it's very hit and miss atm. He's only 3 so I'll keep working on him. Need to get him hooked early so we can go karting in a few years....

#livingoutmydreamsthroughmychild

 

[AngeloBonito]

I Love cars, love race, love art, love drive, my gosh!!! SIMs has all this together!!!

 

[Joerg Baermann]

I enjoy sim racing mainly because of the price difference there is between it and irl racing.
Just imagine how much a bad setup would cost, crashing the car because of pushing the limits over max, driving like every car one can think of, track fees plus insurances and biggest plus must be that you can't get hurt.
It's also really cool how much racing games have evolved since F1 on the C64, plus all the hardware choices available today.

 

[Celestiale]

He's only 3 so I'll keep working on him. Need to get him hooked early so we can go karting in a few years....

That's insane at this age...didn't even know what a computer is when i was that age . Race driver in the making?

I enjoy sim racing mainly because of the price difference there is between it and irl racing.
Just imagine how much a bad setup would cost, crashing the car because of pushing the limits over max, driving like very car one can think of, track fees plus insurances and biggest plus must be that you can't get hurt.

Fully agree...nothing wrong to get the car to the ring (Nordschleife) here and there, but if you are sane, you'd never go anywhere close to what you do in a racing sim.

 

[amogley]

I wrote an article awhile back for a website and these are a few paragraphs that sum it up for me ...

... there is a physical immersion that anyone who has driven will instantly recognise, it’s like muscle memory but on a full body scale. Sitting down, one hand instinctively reaching for the wheel, the other reaching for the gear change, even if you had intended to sit down and play FIFA or Battlefield, the ‘rig’ acting like a stripped down version of “Christine” draws you in and with the wheel in front of you, it just demands to be driven.

And when it is driven, when you grip that wheel you know that it’s going to be your friend one moment and your foe the next. It provides that nuanced and subtle feedback that just cannot be achieved with a controller, not even on the Elite controller that is so highly regarded amongst Forza fans. That subtle signal the moment understeer or oversteer threatens to take over control of the car, no amount of rumble through two plastic triggers can replicate that. There’s the less than subtle combination of force feedback and Dirt Rally with the two conspiring together to dislocate joints in your hands, arms, shoulders or all three. There’s a pure physicality that cannot be matched. Even the act of manually declutching and shifting gears. The movement and action of the gear stick as it slides through the h-gates, you can’t go from 7th to 5th to 3rd on a controller. There’s something rugged and raw, almost macho about that simple action. Mammoth sessions become genuine endurance races, arms and shoulders aching, leaving you crawling from the race seat bathed in sweat.

It’s all familiar to any drivers, but it’s never easy under racing conditions, even if they are only virtual. Driving a virtual racing car with hands and feet feels so much more demanding than just using a controller. And those demands, the feeling of being so much more physically involved, means that successes, however minor, feel all the more rewarding. The realistic physics mean that real driving and racing theory can be used in practice. The moment that I consciously corrected oversteer in a Porsche GT3 heading around Silverstone balancing the throttle and countersteering could only have been bettered if it were in the real thing. Those moments - admittedly rare in my case, I’m still learning - when you feel like a virtual “Stig”, a legend in your own living room, there is a blurring between fantasy and reality that is rarely captured in any other gaming genre.

When you slip behind the wheel, you could be slipping behind the wheel of a real car, and because it is a virtual model, it could be any car. From Fangio’s Maserati 250F (in the upcoming Assetto Corsa), Jim Clark’s Lotus 49, through to Hamilton’s Mercedes F1. From historic legendary cars through to cutting edge hypercars of today, it’s all possible, and through the simulations, each and every one has their own characteristics and unique feel. For race fans and car fans, the options are simply breathtaking.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Hi, my name is Ron and I am a racing addict.

Hi Ron!

(this is SA right? Simracers Anonymous)

 

[Alex Townsend]

This is one of the best questions ever and one I think my wife now understands.
Why do we do this?
Why do we take time out of out busy and stressful lives to do something that can also induce stress?
Why do we spend so much, (relative to the actual sport of course), to compete?

I've read the responses in this thread and can see that there is a genuine common denominator, we all strive to be challenged and most of us are either age old Motorsport fans or new ones, sometimes as a direct result of this virtual past time.

For me it started before I could crawl. Literally.
My Mother and Father took me to my grandparents house so they could go and watch the new Star Wars flim. Yes. The original episode IV... giving away my age a little.
Apparently I cried that Mum and Dad were leaving me as any pre-toddler would I guess. Now I'm a Father myself I get it now...
But my uncle Paul, faced with a crying baby ruining his quiet evening without the parents, did what he had to do and brought down his massive box of matchbox cars. I played for hours with those cars and even when Mum and Dad finally returned, from the epic movie that was to reshape cinema as we knew it, I really didn't register their return. I was already obsessed.

As I grew up I enjoyed all forms of Motorsport on tv. Didn't matter if it was two wheels or four. I loved the purity of the hunter and the hunted.

Fast forward to the late 90s and work mates all decided to go to an F1 race. We were all fans but had never been to an actual race. I invited my brother too and before you knew it we were hooked. This was the V10 era after all and it was hard not to be humbled by the sheer assault on the senses that a grand prix used to be.
From there it was anything. WTCC, BTCC and DTM. It was all amazing and at Brands Hatch a stand advertising a drive with the Clip Cup was on offer. Yes I had to pay early on to get in but once qualified we all had to earn our place. I was within tenths of the guys that had raced F3 and Formula BMW so I had a shot at least.
I'll have to admit that, at the time I was playing PGR CMR and Forza on Xbox and GT on PS.
Anyway, I nearly got a full 75k season of Clio Cup racing but it came down to karting... now I hadn't done much apart from some indoor stuff so being out there with twin engine karts on open air wet circuit was a little daunting. I qualified last and finished a lap or two down, I sucked. But the rush was insurmountable. I loved it and was hooked.

I decided that since I didn't do that well in the karting that I'd look into taking it up as a sport. Man this stuff is expensive. It was lucky that it was the end of the season and I could buy my kart stuff and then pay for the racing the following year...
5 seasons of epic racing in the UK, France and even Spa, I'd pretty much drained all my finances and, with a serious relationship blossoming in the middle of it all, I had to make the decision to quit. For now.

For me, taking up online sim racing, with a decent PC and racing wheel and pedals etc , was a way for me to continue the rush of racing. It's pure and unadulterated. I can race in a serious league anywhere in the world at some of my favorite tracks that I'll probably never get to race at for real, instantly.
Sometimes I can just lap and lap and lap. Constantly pushing the limits and myself without any human or AI competition whatsoever and it's still heart stopping.
Then there are the people. The awesome community here. The constant news, releases, mods, updates and new titles. It's just an awesome place to be and when my wife asks I can say that you'd rather me in the back room living a slither of my dream than out drinking, gambling or whatever those men do without an honest hobby.
I love racing. Motorsport. Sim racing. RD. It's all so good.