Okay... here we go...
That being said, and please take no offence at this, it is utterly idiotic to assume that GT4 or any other game, simulator or computer program can help prepare you in any way become a race car driver.
you wont become a real racing pro by playing GT4, i can assure you that. a video game is a video game.
anyone who is using this game as a stepping stone to racing or even driving is probably fooling themselves to some degree.
sorry, but thats the truth (according to me).
Well, I went directly from GT3 (not even GT4) to winning an autocross championship in my rookie year.
I had no prior RL experience at all. None. Nada.
I came home with a 3rd place trophy at my very first event. I beat several racers who had been doing this for years.
That's _NOT_ normal for someone with zero experience.
Before going out to the first event, I really wondered whether what I'd learned on GT would translate onto the RL track at all. I feared that it might actually make me worse because I'd have to unlearn and relearn everything. But no... it really did translate onto the track.
I expected to be last. I was _SHOCKED_ when I got that first trophy. I didn't see the championship trophy coming either... I had not been tracking the points since I had gotten only third or second place the entire year. I only came in first once. But... basically, I was consistently in the top three all year long. And in the end, I had the most points just because of consistent finishes. I had no idea until I saw in the schedule that I was supposed to go to an award cerimony!
I really can't understand why you guys are so absolutely certain that GT can not help with RL. I submit myself as living proof that it can.
Most of you seem to putting racing on such a high pedastle... as if it were completely unreachable by mere mortals or something. I keep trying to tell everyone that it's more accessable than that. Anyone with $10-40 to spare can go do it.
Now... if you guys think my claims are BS...
Let's get one thing clear here... I did not win a Formula One championship. I did not win a professional championship of any sort. This was an amateur racing series. I wasn't competing with the fastest drivers from around the planet. On the other hand, these guys ain't slow either. And some of them have multiple decades of experience under their belts. Fortunately for me, the really really fast guys were running in the heavily modified classes *whew*. I didn't have to face them.
I've shown you pictures of my car. I've shown you pictures of my car on the track. How bout this... video footage from my very first autocross event. It was available on DVD through the race organization. You can watch me spin out off the course... use my turn signals to indicate when I'm going to go around the hair pin like a total noob... and set a fast lap that takes the 3rd place trophy. All in the same day!
My first autocross videos
Okay... here's my advice for anyone who wants to use GT as practice for RL.
First, don't play it as a game. Play it as a simulator. That means avoiding the things which GT does not simulate. Most notably damage. No touching walls. No ramming or bouncing off of other cars. No running over curbs hard (just a little is okay, but anything steep will break the suspension in half in RL). No wheels in the grass at all. None of that funny business at all.
Turn off all driving aids. You won't be using them in RL. Use manual tranny only. Turn off music while you drive.
Turn off all the extra virtual gauges like the suggested gear indicator and the virtual map and all that. You don't have these gauges in RL. And your driving style must not rely on them.
Mostly practice time trials. See how fast your laps can get and see how consistent you can make your times. If you make contact with _anything_, stop the session. Turn off the game. You just crashed your RL car. Keep this in mind... it changes how you race. This is not a 'fear of death' thing. Part of racing is weighing risk against potential gains. It just won't do if your lack of fear of the wall leads you to hit it once every 20 laps. That is nowhere near reliable enough for RL.
Practice with the AI cars. People around here whine that it's impossible to get around them without contact, but that's not true. Interacting with the AI cars forces you onto alternative lines and into (very) late braking, and this is good stuff to learn. You need to have significant car control to be able to go side by side through a turn with the AI without any contact. Start with using roughly equivalent cars and work your way down to beating the AI without any contact using very inferior cars. You should be able to consistently win races starting from 6th place without having any contact with anything.
Avoid sliding and/or spinning your tires. GT does not provide a realistic simulation of tire wear (nor does it try to). In some ways, the tires wear much faster than RL. In other ways, they wear much slower. You should know that sports car tires wear _MUCH_ faster in RL than in GT when they are sliding. A powerful sports car like my vette can take a brand new set of street tires and turn them into corded slicks in only _30 seconds_ by spinning them on dry pavement. Sliding or spinning tires is very very bad. Sideways motoring is a no no. Drifting is good, sliding it is not. (And I mean real drifting, not the extreme sport thing)
Pick up some good books on racing and performance driving techniques. Learn from any source you can. The proper techniques are not instinctive. We're not born knowing them. And GT doesn't really teach them. But it's a good venue to practice them.
As soon as you are able, get out and do this stuff in RL! Seat time in GT is only a fraction as good as seat time in RL. It takes a lot of practice in GT to be the equivalent of a small amount of practice in RL. But on the other hand, seat time in GT is much easier to come by.
I have been practicing in GT for a very long time. And I've been studying racing techniques and all that. So it's not like I just got 'all golds in the license tests' and then immediately went out and started getting trophies in RL. I had done a HUGE amount of practice in GT. I'd been practicing on it off and on for years. I had an enormous amount of simulated experience under my belt. And it paid off.
But even a small amount of practice work with GT can help. One of my racer buddies sold his Celica GTS and bought an RX8. He was concerned about the move from FWD to RWD. He was nervous he would spin out and end up in a dangerous situation on the track. So I set up GT4, and we spent a couple of hours training him on the RX8 simulation in the game. Sure enough, he did have troubles spinning the thing out at first. But he caught on and got used to the shift pretty quickly. And then a couple of weeks later when we ran on the real course, he never so much as put a wheel off or had any troubles at all. And he did comment that the training time on GT4 had helped him make the transition so he never had a scary 'moment' on the track in RL.
do you know how it feels traveling 200+ MPH? sure I can drive average 220+ MPH on the superspeed way. do you think I can actually drive a F1 on the indy500 course? man it will scare the **** out of me
Are you sure you can drive an F1 in the game? I think when people are saying that since they can easily drive race cars in GT, that means it's not realistic because they couldn't drive one in RL... in fact, they're giving themselves too much credit. They really can't drive those cars in GT.
How many folks here can drive the Formula GT at full tilt around Cote de Azure for 60 laps without ever contacting a wall. I can't manage it, and I doubt anyone here can either.
If you can't manage that, then you can't really handle that car in GT. And you can't handle an F1 car in RL either.
- Skant
Your car is always in fine shape in GT, but it could be sick in RL.
) - I guess it's different when you don't have to pay to repair the car you're driving eh... 
