Immersion vs competition?

[stigs2cousin]

Hy guys,

to make it clear I´m not attacking or flaming against other drivers, its of genuine interest to me how you handle your online racing.

The questions is how to adjust your rig comes from a race i had a few days ago:

I got my ass handed to me by another driver and rightfully so, he was much faster than me

But why was he faster?

He extended the track to the curbs and took four wheels over the white line, all wheels over the curbs.
AC didn´t scream track limits, so the rules were exploited, but not broken.

When I tried the (brutal) curbs almost shook my rig apart, painfull punches in the wheel and the bassshaker under the seat going crazy. I´ve had a little track experience with lapping my personal car and bent two wheels on the NGK Chicane on the NBR GP. That did not feel this brutal.

He later told me that he toned FFB down so he doesnt feel the curbs and is faster that way.

So whats your take?

MFG Carsten

 

[BrightCandle]

There is a middle ground and sometimes there isn't a lot of choice about that, gear matters. I can set my T-LCM peddles relatively heavy but no where near what a modern F1 or other unassisted vehicles can do so I can get to 100% with a lot less physical effort and I in practice set it up more like a road car feel soft and squishy because I prefer it that way. I don't have my FFB pulling as hard as it can, I need enough to feel what the car is doing reliably but I also want to happily drive without tiring my body out.

Actually where I think this gets a bit more icky as a discussion is something like iRacings brake settings. A bunch of the cars in iRacing regardless of what you do lock up above about 70% brake pressure. Most other games 100% is usable in the big stops but not so in iRacing cars the wheels will always lock. In fixed setup you have to have great muscle memory or you set the game up so that you can only ever achieve 70% of brake pressure by adjusting the config. This makes it much more like the other sims but it also makes it easier to find the peak braking pressure compared to those that don't do it and it can be worth a lot each lap.

In IRacing again you can also get third party software to enhance the game in various ways and using one you can get better seat of the pants feeling to get better feeling for the rear of the cars movements, in effect giving you more information through your FFB that others don't have. But then a guy with bass shakers or a motion rig is also getting this information where a guy without does not, someone with DD is getting more fidelity in their FFB and someone with 200KG pedals is going to find it easier to find that 70% brake point. Where do we reasonable say one is exploitation and the other is just reasonable, is buying more expensive gear always OK but adjusting the games provided settings to compensate for worse gear not ok? Because there are plenty of people that have no issues with someone spending a grand on pedals but find the config adjustment cheating despite them aiming at the same goal of better control of their braking. What about setting a curve? Jimmy recently did that on his pedals, mine can't do that, is that cheating even if you have a loadcell and not the software?

So to some extent I think given we are all driving with differing amounts and levels of gear it is a bit of an icky subject with subjective areas of morals where someone says buying better pedals is fine but adjusting iRacings config is not, despite the fact that finding points like that are much harder on lower end pedals. Exploitation of the track limits is a major part of professional racing too but since we can turn penalties off in game or they might be flawed in some areas we often end up turning them off with no option to fix them. With penalties being overly zealously applied in some games you end up in the daft situation that having them on ruins races and off does too and we have to ask people to race reasonably and it becomes subjective and impossible to enforce.

I am not sure I come down too hard in any one direction here because I can't settle within myself a reasonable position. I recognise the difficulties with making these judgements on what type of "aids" and behaviors are OK and which aren't where what we are doing is working around issues in our sims and gear, the current environment is rife for exploitation and knowledge leverage. But then so is real racing, its just different in the sims. I doubt most just choose one direction or the other, it is a blend for a variety of reasons.

 

[Mr Deap]

Don't know why you push the agenda to drive the car realistically when every car is an understeer mess.

 

[stigs2cousin]

Don't know why you push the agenda to drive the car realistically when every car is an understeer mess.

Sorry, don´t understand your statement.

But then, I don´t do FWD (other than in company cars)

Try the Skippy, if you have understeer there maybe better take a cab.

MFG Carsten

 

[Mr Deap]

Sorry, don´t understand your statement.

It's an exploit, because you insert your own rule to the videogame. That's not how you play competitive games.

Pure & true competitive racing is about how far you can exploit within the game rule.

In simracing you get trolled by peeps who share stuff that doesn't work in the game. Yep the kind who mix reality with game.

That kind of mentality allow other peeps to win effortless.

Who's more toxic?