Driving experience vs being fast

[TonyRickard 17]

When someone says they don’t care about stage times it can sound a bit of a cop out out. Worst still it can seem a bit snobbish, citing realism above gaming the system.

I have been sim racing since I first discovered Lombard RAC Rally on the PC in 1989. Since then circuit racing sims have captured my imagination. Of course the Colin McRae & Richard Burns Rally titles got my attention but I was really into league racing with Grand Prix Legends at the time so they rather took second stage (excuse the pun!).

Two and a half decades on and DIRT Rally turns it around back in rallying favour for the first time. It is pretty much everything I could have dreamt of when I drove that Sierra Cosworth with a joystick all those years ago with its rudimentary graphics and PC squeaker all those years ago.

For me it is all about the driving experience. I have hotlapped and league raced on virtual race circuits for over fifteen years. Maybe I have reached an age where the online competition is less of an attraction I don’t really know. 

The appeal of rallying for me over circuit racing is the unpredictability where conditions change between recce and stage, between car 1 and car 20 and drivers deal with what is thrown at them. Rewind to my days of marshalling on the RAC Rally and pace notes as such didn’t exist, instead a rudimentary road book with directions.

This works pretty well offline up to a point , however, online it rather mirrors online circuit racing hotlapping where a driver can complete many laps to optimise their lap times by repeatedly driving corners, crashing many times and finding how much every corner can be straight-lined by cutting to the point they get penalised.

Furthermore drivers will find tweaks to maximise performance like reducing the steering degrees to very low levels to enable really fast steering. In my own experiments being able to go lock to lock without moving hands absolutely destroys my best times with the default profiler settings using the real car settings.  For me it destroys the illusion of driving, rally drivers have to work at the wheel and going from lock to lock isn’t something that is done at speed, yet we can in a sim and it is very (too?) effective.

So I fall into the realism camp where ultimately stage times aren’t the ultimate desire, whilst driving as fast as possible within a self-determined realistic style is.

That isn’t to belittle the online leaderboards. It is an admiral goal and requires a huge amount of skill and dedication, just that IMHO there can be a trade off between feeling like driving a rally car fast and being a really fast sim rally driver.

[KevM 44]

People will be thinking I have two user accounts Tony - lol

[RyuMakkuro 6]

I have the best driving experience when I'm pushing the limits of the car as far as possible. Just completing a stage isn't enough for me, but at the same time I don't care much about online rankings. If I'll score high, it's a bonus. If I'll score low, I know there's a lot more room to improve, which means I can have better experience still.

Personally, I think those that want to be strictly era authentic are forgetting one thing. It's 2015 nowadays, if someone would be a rally driver and they would want to have lower rotation on the wheel... they could get it. Some custom made steering rack most likely and they're done. Same with every single part about the car. They can mod it as long as it follows the rules.

The illusion is something that our own perception creates, not other people, things etc.

[KevM 44]

For immersion, what view do you use @TonyRickard  ?

& Ryu, we have historic & modified classes friend, you aren't really supposed to modify a historic car.  I don't know how well these things are checked, but putting a quick-rack in, may be seen as breaking the rules of the class

[TonyRickard 17]

RyuMakkuro said:

I have the best driving experience when I'm pushing the limits of the car as far as possible. Just completing a stage isn't enough for me, but at the same time I don't care much about online rankings. If I'll score high, it's a bonus. If I'll score low, I know there's a lot more room to improve, which means I can have better experience still.

Personally, I think those that want to be strictly era authentic are forgetting one thing. It's 2015 nowadays, if someone would be a rally driver and they would want to have lower rotation on the wheel... they could get it. Some custom made steering rack most likely and they're done. Same with every single part about the car. They can mod it as long as it follows the rules.

I did say driving as fast as possible within a self-determined realistic style, i.e. getting the best you can out of the car on the stage with the setup and settings you have.

Many of the cars in DIRT Rally are from a past era. DIRT Rally provides the settings to have the steering rotation exactly as the drivers of the era would have had. Of course it isn't a huge fantasy to change the rack, just as you can drive a Mk2 Escort with a sequential gearbox in 2015 but it needs to be in the realms of reasonable in my view. A rally car with less steering degrees than an F1 car whilst retaining the turning circle of a rally car slips too far into fantasy for me. Of course the software needs to support old sim racing wheels but I do question whether the effectiveness of extreme steering locks is correct, effectively using the wheels like rudders which is the opposite of what any rally instructor will tell you about how to rotate a car.

[RyuMakkuro 6]

TonyRickard said:
I did say driving as fast as possible within a self-determined realistic style, i.e. getting the best you can out of the car on the stage with the setup and settings you have.

Many of the cars in DIRT Rally are from a past era. DIRT Rally provides the settings to have the steering rotation exactly as the drivers of the era would have had. Of course it isn't a huge fantasy to change the rack, just as you can drive a Mk2 Escort with a sequential gearbox in 2015 but it needs to be in the realms of reasonable in my view. A rally car with less steering degrees than an F1 car whilst retaining the turning circle of a rally car slips too far into fantasy for me. Of course the software needs to support old sim racing wheels but I do question whether the effectiveness of extreme steering locks is correct, effectively using the wheels like rudders which is the opposite of what any rally instructor will tell you about how to rotate a car.

Let me put it this way.

For you, realistic style is an illusion that the car in the game is set-up exactly as it was in its racing days. For me the realism doesn't exist, or rather it's not needed because I sit in a building in front of a monitor. So I'm looking for a driving experience, not realistic experience. I simply don't need the illusion of realism to enjoy driving in a game.

Another thing. A car can have a massive steering rotation and a turning circle so bad it rivals those of an F1 car. The bigger the steering rotation the more smooth the movement of the wheels is, but at the same time it's less responsive. Too small rotation will be over-reactive though. Steering rotation has almost no impact on cars turning circle, it's down mostly to suspension and general layout of the car.

And Kev, if there's a modified class, that means it's modified. If it's historic, that means it has to be historically accurate (which it can't be due to power loss over time in the engine, but that's a small detail) in its mechanical state. Point is, there's a place for everyone, so why not accept others like it more practically rather than "realistically"? Neither of the ways is "better" as it comes down to personal preference. One prefers illusion of realism, second pure experience, third something completely different. None is better or worse.

Generally speaking, the very concept of different "camps" is bad on its own. We're all playing the game (well, excluding me, too much slenderman puncture edition for me) because we enjoy driving experience of it. All the rest shouldn't matter at all.

[KevM 44]

Ryu, your first paragraph makes me giggle, your a legend!!!  :D

We can treat it as Rally Sim, or Rally Game.  Caters for both, but that's where times become a nonsense.  I think it works fairly well as an immersive sim, I can flip over & be fast-ish in Sega Rally mode too.  I generally prefer the 'rally driving experience' than scoring a place high up on a leaderboard though, so normally play sim-setup & push the tail out for laughs!

[Operator1 4]

Games provide an experience.
Leaderboards provide competition.
Each player buys their own copy of the game, which means each player is free to choose: the experience, the competition, or a bit of both - so each player can have the fun they want in their own way.

[JZStudios 631]

I'm not even sure what the point being argued is. Tony likes a realistic setup... uh... okay? Good for you I guess. You didn't really put a question or statement in that would really warrant a response, just an opinion? statement? Are you trying to say the online doesn't work for you, or you want more randomness? Any driver in the real world would keep lapping until they get a good time. I'm no rally expert, but I doubt these guys do the stages blind, and as such, am not bothered by people finding the fastest lines. After all that is the point of racing isn't it? To be fastest? In any case, I usually play with 720 dor, and if I'm not on Greece and don't need a handbrake, I use the realistic mode of shifting. (Otherwise I set my shifter in SQ and use it as a handbrake) If I feel like going faster, I'll bump it down to 540. I know a lot of these guys use around 270 though. Realistically, it makes sense that they could set up the wheels like that. It's personal preference, and again, you could set up real cars to do that if you wanted. I again don't know about historical rally rules, but a dor rule seems a bit stringent.

[Procver 3]

Well I think both being fast and experience don't exclude each other, and if you manage to combine both you get the best of Dirt Rally.
For example: when I first bought this game I was looking for rally simulation, an experience as close as it can get to racing. My first option was to use the helmet cam, but with one monitor you have a narrow angle of vision, so I switched to bonnet cam, for everything else, no assists and as close to reality as possible.
Once was able to finish stages without crashing I started to go for better times, and that's how I got relatively good and enjoy every minute of it feeling as if I were a Miki Biasion or something.

[cjl9 12]

 Miki Biasion. Wow, there's a blast from the past.

[dynt 0]

For me I think the profiler settings on steering rotation is a bit miss leading, the quick rack I had on my Gr 4 escort was 2 and a 1/4 turns lock to lock moving on to the last rally car I owned a WRC Subaru this was also just over 2 turns lock to lock.

For me the biggest difference in realism is force feedback, I recently managed to pick up a used EECI 7000, this wheel is a complete beast and can replicate real life feedback to an incredible level. However if you dial it up to levels replicating real life feedback it hugely hampers the setting of fast times as you are fighting the forces of what the wheel is replicating so I have to dial it right down to get some where close on online events.

[TonyRickard 17]

RyuMakkuro said:

For you, realistic style is an illusion that the car in the game is set-up exactly as it was in its racing days. For me the realism doesn't exist, or rather it's not needed because I sit in a building in front of a monitor. So I'm looking for a driving experience, not realistic experience. I simply don't need the illusion of realism to enjoy driving in a game.

Another thing. A car can have a massive steering rotation and a turning circle so bad it rivals those of an F1 car. The bigger the steering rotation the more smooth the movement of the wheels is, but at the same time it's less responsive. Too small rotation will be over-reactive though. Steering rotation has almost no impact on cars turning circle, it's down mostly to suspension and general layout of the car.

Yes it is an illusion, for me that is the magic of race sims, the ability to trick our brains into feeling something like driving a car. As we progress the race sims we loved become obsolete because something kills the immersion. Typically this is physics but it could even be a dated graphics engine or sounds that are not synched etc.

As it stands DIRT Rally sits right up there for me for the sensation of driving. Until I wind down the steering degrees, go faster over the stage but it brings in odd feelings where applying extreme steering angles increases steering way beyond slip angles. try this on a skid pan and see what happens!

Of course the turning circle remains the same, as all we are changing is the rotation lock to lock. The point is the ability to effectively get from lock to lock with a quick flick of the wrist is nothing like a real rally driver ever does. The driver uses a subset of the full rotation at speed. I think people confuse on board vids where they see maybe 360-400 degrees of movement max and translate this to a 400 degree wheel rotation. The drivers are using 360-400 of the total rotation be it 1080, 900, 720 or 540 etc.

In the sim we can seem to drive effectively almost maxing out the steering and this feels at odds with real driving. The problem is that to support low degree wheels and controllers to reduce grip beyond slip angles or increase risk of damage having the front wheels at extreme angles to the road where they are more susceptible to hitting ruts and stones would penalise a portion of the customers.

The point is that for some we seem to need to make a choice between driving sensation and online competition and it isn't just sour grapes for not being the fastest! It isn't just about having a nice feeling about authenticity driving an 80's Sierra, it is the immersion of feeling like driving a rally car. Like going back to old software, going back to old hardware settings can be an immersion killer.

[TonyRickard 17]

dynt said:

For me I think the profiler settings on steering rotation is a bit miss leading, the quick rack I had on my Gr 4 escort was 2 and a 1/4 turns lock to lock moving on to the last rally car I owned a WRC Subaru this was also just over 2 turns lock to lock.

For me the biggest difference in realism is force feedback, I recently managed to pick up a used EECI 7000, this wheel is a complete beast and can replicate real life feedback to an incredible level. However if you dial it up to levels replicating real life feedback it hugely hampers the setting of fast times as you are fighting the forces of what the wheel is replicating so I have to dial it right down to get some where close on online events.

If you enable soft lock in DIRT Rally and select the maximum degrees in the profiler it will give you the correct steering rotation for each car, be it 3 turns lock to lock for the Fiat right down to 1.5 for the Fiesta.

Speed of steering does seem to be an important factor, hence reducing steering degrees and lowering FFB resistance seem to improve stage times (at the expense of driving feel IMHO)

[OzoreXS 0]

Well, everyone needs to find its own hardware/software setup in order get joy from the game.

Some of us prefer to "respect" as much simulations factors as possible, because it (as you said) means a a closer challenge to reality.

Other just prefers to adjust the game and their hardware just to be fast / or the most "enjoyable" way possible.

Lets have one thing clear: racing is about being fast. 

When both worlds collide (simulation close to real life + competition) is where the game (or SIM) and the best players shine. You can join some serious leagues where AIDS are not allowed, or restarts, or playing with gamepad... 

So, once more, to each his own.

Overall leaderboards are the most absolute display of the best players. To see how good driver we are, we all should get into Top Gear course or a go cart hotlap :)

[TonyRickard 17]

OzoreXS said:

When both worlds collide (simulation close to real life + competition) is where the game (or SIM) and the best players shine.

From my personal experience of many sims when simulation and competition collide is when the simulation can start to show cracks with exploits be they bizarre setup combinations, course cutting, hardware or just plain weird driving styles.

I don't want to start belittling other sims but there are countless examples.

[KevM 44]

Sebastian Loeb/Ogier are both great drivers, but they don't sit on the bonnet to drive fast, and dont have Alt+F4 when things go sunny-side up!

What Tony is stating is, you can try to be like Seb & drive with a wheel on Soft Lock, using an interior camera and enjoy the pure sim experience for what it is.

Or you can exploit the 'Assists' the computer-game provides, you can sit on the bonnet where you can see things our Seb friends have to 'judge',  reduce your rotation and FFB to assist steering input and reaction (or use a pad), Alt+F4 every time you crash or puncture and hot-lap til the cows come home, to end up up the top end of the "DRIVER" (lol) leaderboards (not to even touch on Training modes) 

[Porkhammer 78]

KevM said:

Sebastian Loeb/Ogier are both great drivers, but they don't sit on the bonnet to drive fast

The difference is that they drive in real life while we sit in front of a tiny computer screen not feeling or seeing where the rest of the car is from the very restricted cockpit cam. Your argument is rather flawed.

[Cortextual 146]

I can appreciate your point of view, and I understand not wanting to sacrifice realism and feeling that you're handicapped by it. You certainly are, and the fastest way won't be the most realistic, that's just how it is. There's no way around it though, it's the nature of playing a game rather than driving a car, and all this post boils down to is you saying you would be faster if you optimised your set up for going faster. Yea, obviously.

Do you doubt that if Latvala could saftely drive while sitting on the bonnet with 200 degree steering and beat Ogier he would do it? He'd drive hanging from his testes if it would get him a couple seconds closer to that smug French git.

[RyuMakkuro 6]

Porkhammer said:

KevM said:

Sebastian Loeb/Ogier are both great drivers, but they don't sit on the bonnet to drive fast

The difference is that they drive in real life while we sit in front of a tiny computer screen not feeling or seeing where the rest of the car is from the very restricted cockpit cam. Your argument is rather flawed.

Especially when human eye allows us to see way more than a 16:9 aspect resolution monitor. Driver in a car will have a field of view similar to a 3 monitor setup in a cockpit camera. Generally speaking, nothing from real life can be translated directly into a game since again... we're not sitting in a car, we're sitting in front of a monitor, in a building, in a stationary position.

Funny thing is, I remember one Road Book where they linked a video with a Daily run of Kevin Abbring in DiRT Rally (Impreza 95 on Sweet Lamb). He was using hood camera. An actual rally driver sitting on a hood to drive fast. I think that "debunks" Kev's theory ;)

[bogani 756]

The actual cockpit in cockpit cam usually takes away too much vision to feel realistic in my opinion, so with the monitor just behind the wheel, dash cam is the best one for me. You really need three screens to mimic something close to the peripheral vision you have IRL.

[KevM 44]

Porkhammer said:

KevM said:

Sebastian Loeb/Ogier are both great drivers, but they don't sit on the bonnet to drive fast

The difference is that they drive in real life while we sit in front of a tiny computer screen not feeling or seeing where the rest of the car is from the very restricted cockpit cam. Your argument is rather flawed.

OK, so for a rally sim, something that simulates something that's real, but on a computer, we shouldn't sit In the car, cos that's NOT how the real drivers do it??  Or because its only a game?

[RyuMakkuro 6]

bogani said:

The actual cockpit in cockpit cam usually takes away too much vision to feel realistic in my opinion, so with the monitor just behind the wheel, dash cam is the best one for me. You really need three screens to mimic something close to the peripheral vision you have IRL.

I agree, dashcam definitely gives the most authentic experience, or rather the view the closest you would have to IRL. After all, if someone is using a steering wheel, he'll be seeing two steering wheels with cockpit camera. Pretty sure there's only one steering wheel in a car...

[Porkhammer 78]

KevM said:

OK, so for a rally sim, something that simulates something that's real, but on a computer, we shouldn't sit In the car, cos that's NOT how the real drivers do it??  Or because its only a game?

Like I said, small screen... cockpit cam on a small screen. And one is supposed to find this realistic how? You don't see as much as you would in real-life. Not even close.

What part of this don't you understand?

[bogani 756]

It's a good thing most games, even sims, have multiple views to suit most of us :)