How has developing GT skill affected your life?

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tedgreene
I'm very impressed with the skill level of many of the posters here, evidenced by your times on the TT demo.

It takes a tremendous skill and ability to stay focused, visualize driving lines, be super sensitive to how the vehicle reacts to your inputs, problem solve, and more, to really reach those levels of skill. Clearly, the top drivers have put a lot of time into their craft.

I'm curious if any of you have noticed how developing high level GT skills have made you better at other things in your life.

Are there benefits to investing long hours into developing skill, that go beyond the simple fun of playing, and real life driving skill? Is it a worthwhile way to spend your time, beyond just playing a videogame?
 
I may not be as good as most people on here, but ive been playing GT since the first and must say i think it has affected my real life driving. About a year ago i started going to track days and even at the first event i felt at home and running at a good pace. My dad was surprised the first time having never been on a track (hes a racing instructor, and actually taught Lucas).
I think that GT definitely helps your real life skills, teaches you the correct lines and even pretty accurate car control...

i always think of the track time on GT when i go to real track days.
 
"How has developing GT skill affected your life? "

My wife left me :P na, just messin :dopey:

I think it is an exercise to keep your motor skills sharp in general but it's not an investment with much dividands except for the friends(or enemies) you may make.
 
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GT and other PC sims have helped me pick my line much better during track days, as well as taught me about brake threshold and has also probably saved me from an accident on the road on at least a few occasions when I've locked up.
 
Not much......... but it's effected me more on the negative side if anything.

My wife gets angry at me quicker, and if i have a bad session, i get angrier quicker!

Seriously though, the one thing it (GT Academy) has taught me is that i'm nowhere near as good as i thought i was.....
 
Sure, I take it easy on the roads and leave the racing moves for the game. Too many people out there on public roads trying to be race car drivers in half-ton pickup trucks, Civics and delivery vans.
 
Same here, I get my fix with driving GT that I don't feel the urge to drive crazy or fast on public roads anymore. So I could say it's been positive except for the wife. :sly:
 
Had a moment in my MX-5 the other week where a bit of GT theory saved my bacon. Came into a corner a little too quick and downshifted to third just a bit too enthusiastically and it kicked the rear end out. I'm pretty sure if it wasn't for GT I'd have put it in the ditch. Same also happened at a roundabout that was soaked in diesel, the rear end stepped out pretty alarmingly (at only 20mph) and without thinking I naturally corrected like I would in GT. I'm pretty sure if I'd never played GT before I'd have been in the hospital by now and mourning for a dead car. :scared:

I know GT isn't very realistic but I'm convinced it is a useful tool for learning the theory behind how to control a car when the unexpected happens.
 
There's one really important point to remember about GT and real world driving, which is that the best road drivers never need to use advanced car control skills because they have used their superior skills of observation to avoid the situation in the first place. This is the fundamental tenet of onroad advanced driving. Courses that teach pure car control have been proven, after studies, to give drivers a false sense of confidence leading to greater crashes. This is why advanced driver training has in some quarters got a bad reputation, and certainly any pure car control course will not improve road safety.

Or as the old aviation saying goes, "above average pilots use their above average airmanship to ensure their above average flying skills are never needed".

To answer the question about GT affecting life; positively, my friends regularly come round for 2P battles (well, male friends anyway I am yet to see any woman who regards GT with anything other than a tolerant bemusement), and notwithstanding the comments above, I've learned more about driving and am better on the track now.
 
^^wat?

I think GT has taught me a lot about real world driving skills. I don't race in real life, but I drive a lot for work, and little things like braking and weightshift while cornering, correcting from slideouts, and finding efficient driving lines has been hugely influenced by my GT experience. I don't believe I have been given a false sense of confidence or something like that, if anything, it has given me a better appreciation for being responsible on the road.
 
I can say it's taught me too be smooth and easy on the throttle and with steering inputs. Thats really all it can do, in my opinion. Driving in real life, while the game may offer some realistic settings and characteristics, can't really be compared, given the effects of g-forces and how you react when your life and personal belongings are on the line.
 
GT4 helped me a lot to memorize Nurburgring and to be able to be competitive in VLN racing right after a few practice laps in real life. GT5P helped me to develop some BASIC skills on how to control high hp RWD car.
 
The GT series along with other similar sim type games have helped improve my real life road track event lap times for sure. 👍
 
-Besides car control it helps me practice to be more consistent on nailing the apex every single time.
-Now I am faster than my brother at track days... but not as fast as my dad...yet.
-The wait for GT5 has helped me to be more patient on more important stuff.
-It helped to strenghten my relationship with my dad because he is very competitive (unfortunatly it has weakened my dad's relationship with my mom :D...).
 

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