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Don't get me wrong, I love sim racing and I've no doubt that non-drivers can learn the basics of operating a car and reacting to the environment, and existing drivers can use it as a tool to help learn tracks, threshold braking etc.I figure that if 'domestic grade' racing simulators are good enough for people like Max Verstappen and Lando Norris to use as learning tools and ways to unwind after real races, then they must have some relationship to real driving! Just like the real thing? No. Something like driving a real thing? Well, good enough to keep me in front of my PC for many hours a week.
What I meant was that even though sitting in my motion rig with all the fancy FFB kit, loadcell pedals, VR, surround sound, wind fans, tactile transducers etc etc is a fantastic experience and the closest a layman will get to simulating driving a real car... it's still a long way off actually feeling like driving a real car. Even £50k motion rigs won't simulate progressive g-forces, grip sensation or suspension compression (or fear and a sense of mortality) like we experience them in a real car, because we are still sitting still in a stationary seat and bypassing a few of Newton's critical laws of motion. VR does a good job of fooling the fluid-filled canals in our inner ear but there are still big gaps in essential sensations.
I've heard joypad users (nothing against them - I was one for years) praise the realism of car mod physics too, but driving with a controller is no more realistic than firing a gun in Call of Duty and being amazed at the realistic kick from the joypad rumble.
TLRD: I love sim racing for what it is (a game, basically), and want it to be as realistic as possible... but at the end of the day it's a very limited facsimile of driving a real car.
But it's the best one we've got, and I'm perfectly OK with that.
And it IS bloody good fun.
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