Sunday, November 28, 2010

Do Car Driving Games Make You a Better Racing Driver?

By Raymond Anthony


Right now there is certainly no question that car driving games are entertaining! Getting to drive cars of your choice on quite a few of the most desirable tracks throughout the world, while going head to head against other sim racers couldn't be anything but a great time.

What is simply not as well recognized, is if car driving games really make for a good training aid?

Yes! says veteran driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

During a recent interview, Dale was quoted as claiming that when he is going to a new track, its takes him just about an hour to get himself up to speed, and its not until that hour has gone by that his feedback actually becomes usable to the team's engineers. Now, instead of "wasting" that hour, Dale heads out onto the brand-new track on his computer, long before he ever arrives at the actual facility.

So, how is it that a racing video game might actually make you a far better racing driver? Lets take a look...

Above all, the tracks in modern PC racing games are exact replicas of the real thing. Advanced technology, including precise GPS information is used extensively by developers when making a new track. This translates to a seriously realistic virtual racing experience and equipped with this, racers might get to learn not only the entire layout of the track, but also their braking and turn in points for every single corner.

As an example, any time you head into turn one inside the track of your choice on your personal computer, you will find the fact that trackside objects in the video game are precisely the same as the trackside objects in the real world. Moreover, their placement along the side of the track, relative to the corner, is precisely the same as their placement in the real-world.

Likely the next most helpful section of the online racing experience is the car setup. The engineers that design today's games put immense effort towards the game's physic model and this leads to a far more "realistic" feeling race car. Ad to this the plethora of adjustments that one can produce in the garage, and the outcome is that the virtual racer has the opportunity to do extensive testing of various race setups; all from his computer. While the exact settings probably will not transfer to his race car, the principles behind the adjustments to transfer over, and that is going to make the driver drastically more valuable to his team when it comes to giving feedback to the race engineers.

Last but not least, we now have the actual head-to-head racing that today's online racing experience provides.

Within the real world, many a race has been kissed goodbye as the result of an incident that occurred when the driver made a miscalculation in judgement. To phrase it differently, many races are lost in the first turn as a result of a collision.

With online racing, the mental component of the competition is precisely the same as it is in the actual sport. The exact value of being able to get all this added competitive seat time is massive, and without going through the PC racing experience, the only way to get all this seat time was to go to the track. Now, without spending a dime, today's budding racer can log literally hundreds of hours of practice against other racers; all from the ease of his PC. Of all the benefits we've just covered, this one is likely the biggest.

Trust me, I know from experience.




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