Oh wow, thanks for much so all the positive responses, where do I start ?
I have a question: How much is your butt gives you more information than the steering wheel?
Butt and the general feel of G forces is by far the biggest factor that informs you about the car movement. For example this car was setup for lot of understeer ( which I suppose was done on purpose, because understeer is generally safer then overseer, and the team of course wants to bring car home in one piece) , so yeah, lot of those corners where I break late, the most feeling of understeer was coming from the butt and the sound, the steering wheel didn't really tell me how much I need to steer for car to grip back. I would of course intentionally reduce steering angle to see if the car grips back, but it would be the general feel of G forces combined with visuals, rather then my steering wheel telling me what to do - at least that's how it felt to me
Great article, thanks for sharing. Racing the car felt quit familiar to the VR simracing. Now that you have raced, how does the VR simracing feel?
as I said in my initial write up, this was one of the things that really surprised me a lot, having a helmet on ( partially reducing my FOV, and having something heavy on my head) felt very similar to having a VR headset. One of the big difference (of course) was that in real life, I often just glance with my eyes, whereas in VR you have to turn your head, but it felt strangely familiar, so SIMRACING , especially in VR, isn't really that far off !
You do feel way more tired though in real life, after that 1 hour of driving, I felt bit tired and also bit dizzy,
Dizziness came from constantly looking at mirrors trying to monitor the traffic around me, and when you do that in corner where you are trying to go as fast as you can, it was something that my body isn't used to , whereas in VR, I remember doing even 2 hours stints, felling completly fine
that being said though, of course real life is another level,
you feel things like smelling that Golf Diesel when you got behind it, or if someone spins out, you feel the rubber smell ( ooh the rubber smell.. )
but when you consider the amount of money, yeah I gladly take sim racing , because even when this kind of racing I would call "affordable" , it's still way way way more then what you pay as sim racer
Just out of interest how did it compare to Project Cars seeing as people love to bash the game for being unrealistic?!!
here I will say, this always does depend on a particular car, because one car can feel great while other doesn't feel so good in a given sim,
that being said though, the car ( mind you it was NOT on slicks, but on sports tires) did had a bit of a floating ( it didnt' felt razor sharp), and also, there was a bit of a feeling of the car not having enough downforce, so while undesteering it would feel like it's sliding off, not having enough grip, feeling bit floaty
and this is something cars in pCARS or rFactor2 can feel like. in AC for example, it feels like the cars are bit too planted , .. but then again, those cars , especially on slick tires, I didn't drive, so they probably do have way more grip and downforce
as far as Brno racetrack goes, it feel very close, Brno is very smooth track and very wide, which is captured well in pCARS
But did you practice a bit on the track with the car before the race?
I did ran few laps in pCARS in VR before I flew to Czech Rep. But I have driven on the track before ( with Nissan Primera ( not BTCC) and my Nissan 350z , so I knew the track quite well, although my coach did show me few different lines in few corners then what I was doing in games... especially later turn in points.
How much did this cost you in total?
racing gear I payed around CAD $500 ( glows, balaclava, shoes and socks) * I took this as an investment into the future, so the next time it would be cheaper, although I'm tempted to buy my own racing suit
race itself costed about CAD $1000 ( this covered 1 hour in car, everything payed - tires/fuel/service etc., starting fee payed by team etc.)
and while I did flew to Czech from Canada, it was part of our seeing family trip, so I didn't include that in this
i will update my post as well with these
