Have Your Say – What’s the Hardest Style of Sim Racing?

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Sim racing is a diverse hobby, encompassing dozens of categories and sub-categories. Which do you find to be the most challenging?

In our latest Have Your Say article, where your responses are the real story, we want to hear about what style(s) of driving you struggle with in sim racing. Whether it’s something you can’t seem to grasp despite a concerted effort to learn, something that involves skills you’re too intimidated to learn, something you thought you understood before looking at a leaderboard ranking, or any other reason, we want to hear it. Below are some ideas, but whatever makes you shake your head in frustration, we want to hear about it in the comments below.
  • Drifting – Whereas some driving styles involve frantic activity from the driver, drifting done right is smooth and seems like it should be achievable. Scratch the surface of drifting, however, and you realize that drivers are sustaining perfect levels of traction loss in high-horsepower cars while moving the car around a complex course just inches from surrounding walls.
  • Rally racing – Speaking of traction loss, how about taking a racing car with acceleration comparable to the best supercars out to snow or dirt covered winding tracks, often at the edge of a cliff. Oh, and you probably won’t have the course memorized; you’ll need to listen to coded calls from your passenger to determine what challenges are ahead, only seconds before you come across them.
  • Formula 1 – Whether it's the modern generation of F1, which are the fastest cars to ever compete in a race series, or older, more unforgiving F1 cars with brutal speed and less downforce, watching real-life F1 drivers gives us an appreciation the incredible pace and precision demanded by these cars. This is something hard to replicate for most of us at home.
These are just a few examples, but of course we want to hear your specific story. What is the most difficult form of racing for you?
About author
Mike Smith
I have been obsessed with sim racing and racing games since the 1980's. My first taste of live auto racing was in 1988, and I couldn't get enough ever since. Lead writer for RaceDepartment, and owner of SimRacing604 and its YouTube channel. Favourite sims include Assetto Corsa Competizione, Assetto Corsa, rFactor 2, Automobilista 2, DiRT Rally 2 - On Twitter as @simracing604

Comments

Grand Prix Legends from 'back in the day'. 1967 Formula 1, no wings crap tyres and too much power. They didn't want to go in a straight line and hated corners and took years to master. Still play it to this day, released in 1998 and due to the avid fanbase looks amazing with updates still being made.
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Broken fantasy cars that are harder to drive than the real race cars because sim devs used to think making things harder made their sim look more advanced.
 
Grand Prix Legends from 'back in the day'. 1967 Formula 1, no wings crap tyres and too much power. They didn't want to go in a straight line and hated corners and took years to mater. Still play it to this day, released in 1998 and due to the avid fanbase looks amazing with updates still being made.View attachment 537342
To bad it only runs at 30 FPS if you want to race with AI. That's the only reason I don't play it anymore.
 
Broken fantasy cars that are harder to drive than the real race cars because sim devs used to think making things harder made their sim look more advanced.
I think they're harder to drive, because you're missing much of the informations you get in a real car. It's much easier to drive fast in a real car, because you feel what the car is doing before you can see it or feel it on the steering wheel.

On the sim, you have to wait until you see your mistake on the screen or for our crappy plastic toy wheels to react.
 
I think they're harder to drive, because you're missing much of the informations you get in a real car. It's much easier to drive fast in a real car, because you feel what the car is doing before you can see it or feel it on the steering wheel.

On the sim, you have to wait until you see your mistake on the screen or for our crappy plastic toy wheels to react.
It's actually the opposite because in the real car is hot and loud and you are jostled around by G-forces and the pedal/steering inputs are less precise than with even a mid-level FFB wheel (with the exception of the brake feel and clutch feel that are still crappy compared to the real car even if you spend $1000s on your pedals).

We also have perfectly functional seat-of-the-pants FFB in modern sims, it's just up to the devs to make it happen instead of the cop-out option of "well the real car has no meaningful steering forces so our sim isn't gonna have them either". What you are describing hasn't been true in sim racing since at least since 2002 when Live for Speed was released.
 
It's actually the opposite because in the real car is hot and loud and you are jostled around by G-forces and the pedal/steering inputs are less precise than with even a mid-level FFB wheel (with the exception of the brake feel and clutch feel that are still crappy compared to the real car even if you spend $1000s on your pedals).

We also have perfectly functional seat-of-the-pants FFB in modern sims, it's just up to the devs to make it happen instead of the cop-out option of "well the real car has no meaningful steering forces so our sim isn't gonna have them either". What you are describing hasn't been true in sim racing since at least since 2002 when Live for Speed was released.
Then maybe it's just me. At least for me, the seat-of-the-pants FFB in modern sims can not replace the real forces and the intuitive feeling for the car. Over the years, I visited some track days and driver coachings on Bilster Berg and the Nordschleife and found it much easier to drive than in the sim.
 
To bad it only runs at 30 FPS if you want to race with AI. That's the only reason I don't play it anymore.
Last time I played it was already possible to run in 60fps, and I'm talking about at least 5 years ago, who knows what the modding community has done in those 5 years.
 
Last time I played it was already possible to run in 60fps, and I'm talking about at least 5 years ago, who knows what the modding community has done in those 5 years.
Yeah, but only for multi player racing. The AI in single player races doesn't behave correctly with 60 or even more fps.
 
I think circuit racing. I was allways into all kinds of aff road racing, and rally is my favorite, somehow it keeps my focus better than circuit racing where you have to be very precise and jus go around the same corners over and over. Though lately I got a hang of circuit racing. But the easiest I think was death racing, where I usually just kill all competitors and many of spectators/bystanders.
 
I’ve never really done that well at Rally games. I find it difficult to drive and also process the pace notes, its like my brain can’t cope. If I can learn a rally stage, then I get a lot better and faster, but I can appreciate that’s not really what rallying is about.
 
Pretty much everything, honestly.

I like sim-racing games but I probably suck at all of them. And most likely always will. Don't have the patience, nor the motivation to get better at them, and getting better equipment to play them is expensive (wheel, VR or triple screens, etc). Unlike most people here, sim-racing isn't my main hobby and I like to play other games and do other things, like vector art. I treat AC as some sort of "playing with cars" in a way that leaves a better taste in my mouth than messing around in a game like Forza Horizon where nothing feels substantial.
 
You cannot be consistent in a sim as you would be in a real race car.
The answer is simple - fear of dying or getting hurt.
In reality, that fear is always with you on a subconscious level. Even Senna admitted it back in the day.
And fear is forcing you to be consistent. That applies to most people on this planet except for lunatics like Gilles Villeneuve and Stefan Bellof. Those guys had no fear.
But in a sim, even on a high end VR setup with all the motion gizmos, you still know it isn't real. Your subconscious is telling you that.

I know this may not be a popular opinion, but the only way you can really forget you're in a simulation and start driving it like it's the real deal is - smoke some funny cigarettes and crank up the FFB on a DD wheel to the point it gets dangerous. Put your VR on. Pick a vintage open wheeler on a bumpy track.
That was the only time my subconscious stopped telling me it wasn't real.
And I was pretty consistent.
Or have a friend with a baseball bat willing to smack you around everytime you crash! ;) But yeah it's all down to concentration and nothing concentrates the mind more than danger....although in my case extreme danger leads to stress and that leads to a trap door opening in the back of my skull and my entire brain and all it's cognitive abilities escape!!!!
 
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Endurance races (especially 24 hours) are exhausting, but the slow burn type. Keeping clean but fast and consistent is difficult. Doing so while keeping to a strategy, keeping in mind the bigger picture even more so. And then you wake up at 4AM after 2 hours sleep for a triple stint, having already done 4 hours racing before you slept.
I find endurance the easiest of the 3, of course you need a good plan and a good team, but when you have these thing, after some laps most things just work without thinking too much, in my opinion.
Maybe just because that is the type of racing I do the most.

But I would also say rally, in the really fast cars, one mistake and that's it.
 
Modern powerful laserbeam focus cars like F1 for example. I dont know how you guys do it. I need a little bit older but powerful cars. I need to be able to have a little more breathing space during cornering. I love older formula tho and F2 and F3. F1 is too fast and precise for my brain.
I feel the exact same way, I got pretty ok in the 2012 lotus that is in AC, but I can't even race Ai in any of the other new f1 cars. They are still very fun to drive to.
 
1. Rally. I just suck at it, no matter how many times and how hard I try.
Maybe because it needs a totally different mindset than track racing...

2. Oval racing, but not because I'm bad at it, but because it's nerve-racking.
Knowing that the tiniest mistake can ruin the race of at least 10 other drivers is just terrifying.
Getting along with that terror for hours at an end just kills me.
 
It's actually the opposite because in the real car is hot and loud and you are jostled around by G-forces and the pedal/steering inputs are less precise than with even a mid-level FFB wheel (with the exception of the brake feel and clutch feel that are still crappy compared to the real car even if you spend $1000s on your pedals).

We also have perfectly functional seat-of-the-pants FFB in modern sims, it's just up to the devs to make it happen instead of the cop-out option of "well the real car has no meaningful steering forces so our sim isn't gonna have them either". What you are describing hasn't been true in sim racing since at least since 2002 when Live for Speed was released.
Probably a bit of both, with single / triple screen racing, you can get distracted faster, vr is better for that, but that can be straining for your eyes.
In the real world you won't get distracted (because of the fear of crashing) but you will probably experience fatigue, depending how fit you are and how hot and old the car is.

So I would say, it's both difficult, but for different reasons
 
For me it's anything on a road course that relies heavily on aero for grip.

As an oval racer first the idea of speeding up to increase grip levels going into a corner just doesn't compute for me. Not in any time frame that is remotely useful anyway.
 

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