New era of e-motorsport

[Slawomir Judek]

Without a doubt we are going to face soon one of the biggest changes in simracing history. Actually, the history isn't that long because simracing games with multiplayer mode have been on the market from not more than 20 years.

The release of Rfactor 2 and Assetto Corsa gives us, without a doubt, new opportunities in terms of gameplay, tyre model, physics, immersion and many other aspects directly or indirectly related to the motor sport. The question is: do the people really want to move forward in terms of difficulty, realism, immersion and complexity of all the proccess and things which are present now and would be even more difficult in the future?

Before I write down my thoughts I would like to highlight that I would like to see at least one serie which does everything possible to be as close to the reality as possible. The best situation would be if something similar to the FIA would be created (an organisation where there would be several different series like open wheelers, touring cars, GT cars and so on). All my thoughts are related to this one serie or virtual FIA organisation, not to all series, leagues etc.!

Things related to gameplay

Will we see drivers who behave like in real life or at least closer to the reality? What I mean is the end of ESC button and crashes mainly. All rules we have in real life serie could be implemented to the game as well, for instance speeding in pitlane = penalty, heavy crash = end of a session or very long repair and so on. The main issue in my opinion is that drivers are carefree because if they crash heavily they press a button and can start again from the pits. It's impossible to have 100% realism (lack of g-forces, etc.) but there should be a possibilty to get as close to it as possible.

Things related to motor sport

In my opinion e-sport could be something similar to what we have in real life. What I mean by that is there should be sponsors and money involved in e-sport. Of course, not amount of money we have in real life but at least decent sums of money for teams, drivers, race engineers, etc. Thus quality of driving, broadcasting and all other things could be much better. I repeat again, it wouldn't be for all. Only for those who treat simracing very seriously and I think for amateurs only. I mean amateurs and pro drivers shouldn't race together. So, the point is money. It's not a secret that when money is involved people behave differently. However, I think it could be good for everybody because it could create new possibilities in simracing.

Follow me on twitter if you like the blog: @realsimdriver

 

[GamerMuscle]

For a game to work as an E-sport it needs users, unfortunately sim-racing has almost no player base maybe 50-90k people , so unless something drastic happens no advertiser would want to get involved and prizes will remain small or non-existent.

Games like star-craft , DOTA or even Counter Strike , have at least 1 million players and probably 100k or so players interested in competitive play.

Until sim-racing establishes itself as a thing in its own right it will remain as simply a pore-man's imitation of real world race driving , which to a general audience will always be dull and secondary to the real thing.

I think if Sim racing were to have a future as an E-sport it will be from largely ignoring real racing, Sim-racing should take as much depth and realism as possible in the physics as this all contributes to a better racing , but then try as best possible to ignore the structure , barriers to entry , cost and limitations found in real world sport.

You can see with something like R3E it might get the user penetration for it to be feasible to offer reasonable prizes that attract sponsors and attract a casual spectator audience.

Simracing will never be like real car racing and in many ways that's a good thing , real world racing is also almost entirely about how much money you have , the probability that you can make to a pro level on skill alone even if you were a top 20 world class driver is almost nill. Its not even worth considering trying to get to a pro level in race driving unless your parents had 4-20k to blow on you from a young age , or if you are over 20 happen to have around 90-200k personal cash to blow.

Skills found in sim-racing are obviously still transferable to the real world and I would still like to see cross over competitions and linkages between real world racing and sim racing. But so far any of these cross over competitions are limited promotional exercises for a non racing brand like Sony and not in actuality an attempt to find a skilled race driver but a way to lend legitimacy and sales to a simcade mass market title. ( don't get me wrong GT academy is still fantastic , and i hope they do more of them , Its just important to recognize it for what it is)

The same even applies to non game based competitions or scholarships where they allow you to enter to win a year drive. for example ( http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=485479 ) Which I attended (as a photographer) and the winner is not chosen on raw speed or from pure competition but on how well they will present the brand , how keen the drivers outwardly appear or how well they passed the arbitrary tests.

The real charm of Sim-racing is that is can offer almost all the challenge and skills of real world racing whilst remaining fair , allowing people to succeed through pure competition , dedication and skill rather than some external factor.

 

[Mo Selvarajah]

Things related to gameplay

Will we see drivers who behave like in real life or at least closer to the reality? What I mean is the end of ESC button and crashes mainly. All rules we have in real life serie could be implemented to the game as well, for instance speeding in pitlane = penalty, heavy crash = end of a session or very long repair and so on. The main issue in my opinion is that drivers are carefree because if they crash heavily they press a button and can start again from the pits. It's impossible to have 100% realism (lack of g-forces, etc.) but there should be a possibilty to get as close to it as possible.

T

........do you only play in public servers or something.
none of that really applies in league racing.
the only way to stop crashers in casual racing is a decent voting system/reporting the name/ip on forums which are associated with the servers
the 100mbit servers on GTR-EVo are an excellent example of this.
people report the crasher with video/screenshot, their steam id or name gets recorded and they are banned. the banned person can also lodge appeals or argue it out on the forum.

also you are aware that since rfactor 1, speeding in pitlane has been a feature of almost all simracing games i can think of,
as has car damage/repair time.

 

[mapu13]

I read through your post and found it to be a bit strange. Since almost everything you're writing about (and more) can be said about league races which already exists since some years. To be modest, maybe we are going to face an evolution of sim racing, but talking about a new era in sim racing is a bit bold, an overstatement if you ask me.

 

[Chronus]

^^ Agreed!

I had seen his post over at NG and it strikes me as one person jumping the gun - as many others are doing (there was an interesting discussion with Ducfreak, freejrs and some others about this).

If one pays attention to the post it is easy to see the OP focuses on physics to justify this "new era" of simracing.

The release of Rfactor 2 and Assetto Corsa gives us, without a doubt, new opportunities in terms of gameplay, tyre model, physics, immersion and many other aspects directly or indirectly related to the motor sport.

Thing is, nobody knows in detail the tire model and the physics engines of AC and rF2 but the developers (obviously, Stefano puts a lot of faith in it and thus his considerations about NKP/AC and professional simulations).

A dozen or so people start talking about physical modelling (DK and AJ among them) and all of a sudden comes the bandwagon and people to jump on it - without any regard for what it really entails.

Curious.

 

[Requiem84]

Will we see drivers who behave like in real life or at least closer to the reality? What I mean is the end of ESC button and crashes mainly. All rules we have in real life serie could be implemented to the game as well, for instance speeding in pitlane = penalty, heavy crash = end of a session or very long repair and so on. The main issue in my opinion is that drivers are carefree because if they crash heavily they press a button and can start again from the pits. It's impossible to have 100% realism (lack of g-forces, etc.) but there should be a possibilty to get as close to it as possible.

Slawomir, it sounds like you did not play netKar Pro in it's early releases.

It had a feature, that the server could enable for the 'real' mode. With this enabled, if you crashed your car in qualifying, it was possible that repairs took too long for you to join the race. If you wanted to change your suspension during the session, you had to wait a few minutes.

If you esc'ed back to pits, you had to wait 10 minutes in the pits for the towtruck to bring your car back etc.... This was a hardcore as you could get it.

All features you want were already in netKar Pro. Problem was, very very few people used it. It was big fun in league races with the famous GPChampionship (I remember qualifying in Monaco was a real thriller, always afraid to crash and to have too much repair time...), but for the public servers, this feature did not work at all, and servers with the hardcore setting on stayed empty.

This is just not the way to enjoy yourself on a sunday afternoon. If someone hit you in qualifying, you problaby miss the race. It's not your fault, so what do you do? You quit the game. It's only interesting for league racing.

As it costed the devs of netKar Pro a lot of time to develop this feature, they finally didn't support it anymore.

It could be interesting for one of the modders though. I'm sure someone will get into it.

 

[Slawomir Judek]

I heard about these features but Netkar Pro wasn't popular and I have never had the full version. Only now when I bought AC TP I have the full version but I just can't play it. I'm waiting for the demo of AC. I say again. I don't want every server to run features like this. I only want to have a possibility to run a server or a league with these features. I hope it will be implemented in AC.

 

[Requiem84]

I heard about these features but Netkar Pro wasn't popular and I have never had the full version. Only now when I bought AC TP I have the full version but I just can't play it. I'm waiting for the demo of AC. I say again. I don't want every server to run features like this. I only want to have a possibility to run a server or a league with these features. I hope it will be implemented in AC.

It won't be, I think I have read the developpers have said so.

1. it's not a very popular feature, 2, it takes quite a bit of time to get right.

But like I said, I'm sure some modders will make something happen .