Opinion | Racing In The Rain

[DND]

We want to know your thoughts on wet weather driving in sim racing...

It seems more often than not when a thread is started for a sim that has either been updated or releasing a DLC. within a few replies it degenerates into what the sim doesn't have, case in point rain and day/night cycle.

My curiosity is; how often do you race in the rain compared to your overall laps recorded?

Vote in the poll and let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

 

[robt100]

I love racing in the rain, I just really wish places like ACC had more public servers running wet races. It adds a whole new layer of strategy, especially in drying or worsening conditions. Oh, and I seem to be much faster vs the rest in the wet than dry which helps

 

[CDwyer]

Mostly race in Raceroom, so.....no.
Its an option I appreciate having in a game, but one I very rarely use, except in a championship when you take what you are given.

 

[Andy-R]

Seeing as some games dont have rain e.g AC, I chose to answer 'how often would you choose to race in the rain' and went with 25% of the time

 

[homieffm]

I would like to race in the rain more often, but 90% of the online sim community are chickens who only drive in perfect conditions. ;(


Another point would be (in ACC) that it needs to be improved visually, you still don't see any puddles.

 

[el_mattpro]

I think that Racing on wet surfaces helps a lot to improve your racing skills, and not only that but the way you create a Strategy to overtake in track and pits, as you have tyre degradation as well and you lost grip for every mistake that can cost you the race, specially with the brakes sensivity without ABS, in racing sim you can't "find the grip" outside the line in some corners because none of them simulate that, but once you race in real life on rain condition you start to learn over the years where to run outside the racing line to have more grip and overtake without spin, stuff like that. I don't like to race in the rain that often in racing sim if it is online because a lot of time your car get push/hit/ruin from other people mistake because they don't know how to proper race in rain condition or whatever the reason is, in wet surface it is more often to encounter crashes into you, specially on first lap and we all know that the first lap in online race (dry weather) is already a pain in the ass.
The other thing that i love about rain condition is the visibility, specially in real life, you have to improve your references (brake/throttle mark on track) because you need to pay atention as you're not seeing a sh*t if you're behind other cars.

 

[Alexandre]

I like rain races, but as an offline racer most of the time a find it very hard to set a properly difficult that makes AI runs in the same level of me among wet and dry conditions.

 

[williang83]

I guess that more option should have been added to the poll, like i would race way more but my favorite sim either does not offer or the AI perform badly in mixed wet/dry races.

In my case iRacing does not offer rain and rF2 simply pretty sucks when it comes to rain. ACC is interesting but ..... gt3 sucks

 

[Alistair McKinley]

I love to race in the rain and in the night. Most of the time when I race in ACC I race from night to day in wet conditions using time acceleration. I simply love how these conditions are implemented in ACC (feeling, graphics, sounds).

Edit: I also play AMS, R3E and others sims/games which do not offer (believable) rainy conditions, so I didn't vote.
If there was rain in AMS/R3E I would definitely choose rainy conditions there as well.

 

[Epistolarius]

I enjoy the challenge of racing in the rain, it's just the (difficult to develop, I'm sure) implementation that has often left something to be desired.

Rain is part of real life racing and has huge influence on strategy, there's no reason not to have it.

 

[Copef1]

One of the most memorable multiplayer races I ever had was in the rain at Monza, on GTR2. That being said, I race in the rain less than 10% of the time. In fact, if a sim doesn't have wet weather it wouldn't bother me at all, provided everything else was good. Don't get me wrong, I like racing in sims in the rain occasionally, but not having it is not a deal breaker for me.

 

[FeltHat]

Watching Copa Trucks racing in rain was super fun, cant wait to recreate it in AMS 2

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I haven't really been happy with rain in games since Grand Prix 3 that was released in 2000.
Granted, GP3 didn't have proper wet physics in the sense that rubber gets slippery etc. But they did have rain moving in from one side of the circuit, so parts of the circuit got wet quicker, it also had drying line where the cars drove, it even had weather that could change numerous times during a race, with different strength of rain, so you really had to choose between inters, soft/hard wets and monsoon.

Seeing how rain in simulated in modern games, it feels like there's not really been much good development on this over the last 20 years. So I often end up being disappointed.

 

[thepharcyde]

I love racing in the rain, I just really wish places like ACC had more public servers running wet races. It adds a whole new layer of strategy, especially in drying or worsening conditions. Oh, and I seem to be much faster vs the rest in the wet than dry which helps

Lol Schumacher, me too

 

[michelforest]

Wet weather is a nice option that makes a game more realistic. And just like in real life, I prefer a dry track, but once in a while, it’s a nice challenge.

 

[Ricoow]

I love racing in the rain, I just really wish places like ACC had more public servers running wet races. It adds a whole new layer of strategy, especially in drying or worsening conditions. Oh, and I seem to be much faster vs the rest in the wet than dry which helps

Next week Sunday we have brands hatch with high rain probability *hint hint*

 

[mantasisg]

I absolutely loved the very first release of ACC in early access. To me it was perfect, the Lambo was super believable in every possible conditions to me, and I think I did drive about 1/4 or 1/5 in the wet. To me it would be perfect to spend from 10% to 25% time in wet tracks.

But since rain is hardcore, I expect to never get anyhting like I experienced in ACC early access first release anymore. And car in rain doesn't work right if car doesn't work right in dry track in the first place. Rain is big puzzle piece of the realism picture of which few actually cares deeply about.

 

[Ricardo Rey]

It doesn't matter to me either way really. But to make things real it should be based on probability (surprise) based on real tracks. Some tracks have a higher probability. How many races did F1 or DMT race in rain last year as an example. Likely not in Mexico, but more so chance in Germany or even Brazil for the time of season.
OK. I am over-complicating. Haha

 

[Will Mazeo]

There are basic features every sim should have because they are too important part of the real thing (I mean we are talking about simulating racing, right?), one of them is rain.
Any excuse to avoid having it is bullshit. But then some very important "sims" out there think their players are not competent enough to park their cars in a pit stall so they make the cars uncolidable, imagine driving fast under rain...
Only exception is oval racing because they simply cant race under rain.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

I clicked "less than ten percent" because I play iRacing 90% and they don't do rain yet. In Dirt 2.0 the rain is fine but not on tarmac, in ACC the AI is just way better in rain than in dry conditions (read the other way round: I'm way worse in rain than in dry), so I have my probability set to sth. like the 10% mentioned above. On the ACC ranked server we had sunny practice, rainy quali and drying track in race yesterday night. I really liked the extra level, plus I noticed: other chaps sucked at being quick in rain, too, set my best ever quali time on a ranked server

edit: oh, yes, and NASCAR never runs in rain, so anyone doing a NASCAR sim gets off scott free.