Vettel on not taking part in sim races

[Eckhart von Glan]

Interesting bit in a portrait just published on the F1 homepage:

"His team mate Charles Leclerc won his first race of the season, albeit virtually, when he triumphed in the F1 Esports Virtual Grand Prix series earlier this month, less than a week after getting a copy of the F1 2019 game.
A number of F1 drivers, including Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Alex Albon, have turned to their in-home simulators to get their racing fix and pass the extra time they aren’t used to having.
Vettel hasn’t been one of them, but maybe the bug has bitten. “The truth is I didn’t have a simulator until a couple of days ago, so I haven’t been tempted because I didn’t have the chance,” he says.
“I have heard a lot of things about it, so I figured I should get one and try, but I still need to set it up properly. Generally I am not going to foresee a career in sim racing - I think it is more something to try for fun.
“I’ve grown up with some of the stuff and I have been playing some games, but to be honest since I had kids it’s not the first thing on my list to do. But we’ll see how much time there will be.” He adds: “I’m aware that some people take it very seriously and spend a lot of time there, but I also enjoy doing other things so it will be a bit of a mix.”

rings true

source: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/...ferrari-temporary.7n53fuKRXm8pQ8skg90OAY.html

 

[Warren Dawes]

Max Verstappen put in a very impressive showing in this week's Virtual Australian V8 Supercars Championship. He came in as a special guest wildcard for Round 2, , and managed 3 second places out of 4 races.
So impressive, they are trying to get him in more often.

 

[Antony Snook]

Vettel needs a break from racing after the shenanigans of 2019. (Remember the Montreal tantrum)

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

Verstappen is so often on iRacing that even I "met" him on a GT3 server one night (unless it was of course his dog playing under his name, ain't no telling on the internet)

 

[Adrian Herrera]

Funny how there is now a mainstream perception of what simracing is and we the hobbyists know the subtle differences. For example they mention Max and Charles as two examples of success from F1 drivers in the sim world, however we know that Max races against the best simracers in the most hardcore online series, while Charles has fun playing the F1 game with other high profile players. Both are worlds apart in terms of realism and dedication yet for the mainstream they are the exact same.. real drivers playing video games.

 

[M3ME]

I mean if you really break it down, aren't we just some guys playing video games?

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

so true

 

[Terry Rock]

Wish those guys were racing an F1 series under Assetto Corsa or something a bit more serious.
Watched an online F1 lap of CM' F1 2019 a few weeks back with car teleport to pit box. It was a bit disappointing.
Is that what they're using for virtual racing?
If it is, I can certainly understand why these guys have opted out.

 

[millen]

Vettel takes delivery of first sim racing rig

www.motorsport.com

 

[maelstrom]

Vettel needs a break from racing after the shenanigans of 2019.

He's having one (along with everyone else in F1)!

 

[Mike1158]

I recall a sim racing event at a GP years ago where DC raced against and beat a sim racer who then had a hissie fit and called DC a 'cheat'. DC, very calmly said, "I should hope I would win, I am supposed to be a professional".

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

DC?

 

[BrunoBæ]

Wish those guys were racing an F1 series under Assetto Corsa or something a bit more serious.

Conserning which of the racing sim(plifications) is most realistic is quite impossible to answer.
Because none of the existing sims are.

They are quite different - or rather the cars does behave slightly different in most of the critical situations where the tire models is pushed to the limits of its validity - but none of them does react like the same cars would behave in RL.
No rocket science concluding this.

What Im trying to say is that eventhough all the existing racing games are completely unrealistic then there is a difference between competing in as example Mario Kart or the more wellknown racing sim(plifications).
But the difference is only that the more advanced racing games does try to simulate more of the different physical forces acting on a car in critical situations.
Which means that if we take as example a corner on a track then the more simple racing games does not alter the car behaviour much from entering the corner to exiting it - while the more advanced racing games does alter the behaviour a lot of times dependent of both driver inputs, settings of the car and status of the car and track.

But eventhough some of the more advanced racing games have the same code offspring then even cars in those does behave different in later incarnations.

My personal conclusion on this is that the more forces the different racing games is able to simulate the more fun and (probably) challenging it is to master them - but because none of them is realistic then the comparasment between the advanced racing games should go more in the direction of what feels more intuitive right in urgent situations than what because of the devs theoretical explanations about the internal physics and tire model SHOULD be more "correct".

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: The term "challenging" does NOT imply that the more forces a racing game try to simulate the more "difficult" it has to be to control. Because it could probably be the other way in sertain situations that an advanced racing game feels more intuitive than a more simple one.

 

[Terry Rock]

I think people quite misunderstand what a sim is.
My job title is 'Simulator Technician'. It has been for the last 6 years.
This is a topic I am well versed in and can speak about freely.
A sim...even the USD $10m one I work on everyday, has some deficiencies.
A sim replicates most of the conditions of the appliance it represents within a prescribed tolerance.
Those tolerances are called out in a Qualification Test Guide which we maintain over the life of that device.
That is the definition of a simulator in a nutshell.
Almost all racing titles currently do that....some more than others.

 

[Jan Larsen]

DC?

David Coulthard I believe. He's usually referred to as 'DC'.

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

Ah, I was running various "District of Columbias" through my mind and it didn't make sense. thx!

 

[BrunoBæ]

I think people quite misunderstand what Im trying to say.

A sim replicates most of the conditions of the appliance it represents within a prescribed tolerance.
Those tolerances are called out in a Qualification Test Guide which we maintain over the life of that device.
That is the definition of a simulator in a nutshell.

A sim replicates most of the conditions of the appliance it represents within a prescribed tolerance.
I take your word for this because you title yourself as a "Simulator Technician".

But just because you in your work by technical reasons need to reduce what it is a sim tries to "replicate" to some "conditions of the appliance it represents" doesnt mean that people using racing simulators cannot understand the sim as some kind of more or less close virtual replicating of reality.

And furthermore then your rather narrow technical definition is very close to some tautological definition where the endpoint is included in the startpoint in the "definition".
This can be seen if we reduce your definition to the simple meaning of your sentence:
A sim replicates the conditions of the appliance it represents.

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: Im not trying to patronize your rather technical and reductionistic definition of how you in your work need to understand the term "simulation" - just saying that its probably not the only valid definition of a simulation.

 

[Enagee]

Just curious, i haven't really seen any particular treads on the F1 eSport series with the F1 drivers. Considering its great for sim racing i thought I'd see it on the main page here.

I don't care for the title much am sure the F1 drivers don't really too but it's equal for the drivers and its good fun

 

[Eckhart von Glan]

some of us have been collecting current development in eSports here,

eSports in Sim Racing to take off

And Lando, Stoffel and Real Madrid keeper Thibaut Courtois all took part. Original story here. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/formula1/51900475 This is the video I think.

www.racedepartment.com

but you're right, it is not front page news, I just checked the last couple of weeks: never was.

 

[Terry Rock]

Conserning which of the racing sim(plifications) is most realistic is quite impossible to answer.
Because none of the existing sims are.

They are quite different - or rather the cars does behave slightly different in most of the critical situations where the tire models is pushed to the limits of its validity - but none of them does react like the same cars would behave in RL.
No rocket science concluding this.

What Im trying to say is that eventhough all the existing racing games are completely unrealistic then there is a difference between competing in as example Mario Kart or the more wellknown racing sim(plifications).
But the difference is only that the more advanced racing games does try to simulate more of the different physical forces acting on a car in critical situations.
Which means that if we take as example a corner on a track then the more simple racing games does not alter the car behaviour much from entering the corner to exiting it - while the more advanced racing games does alter the behaviour a lot of times dependent of both driver inputs, settings of the car and status of the car and track.

But eventhough some of the more advanced racing games have the same code offspring then even cars in those does behave different in later incarnations.

My personal conclusion on this is that the more forces the different racing games is able to simulate the more fun and (probably) challenging it is to master them - but because none of them is realistic then the comparasment between the advanced racing games should go more in the direction of what feels more intuitive right in urgent situations than what because of the devs theoretical explanations about the internal physics and tire model SHOULD be more "correct".

CatsAreTheWorstDogs: The term "challenging" does NOT imply that the more forces a racing game try to simulate the more "difficult" it has to be to control. Because it could probably be the other way in sertain situations that an advanced racing game feels more intuitive than a more simple one.

Concerning the highlighted statement above, you could not be more factually misinformed.
Stating that none of the current racing titles are remotely "realistic" is a bit of a stretch.
Sure!....some cues are missing due to the nature of home-based simulation.
That is always going to be the case.
The moment you depress the accelerator and are able to turn the steering wheel to drive onto track, you are simulating something.
Now where things differ... is accuracy.
I'll tell you a little about how this is done at the professional level.
We don't just set up a simulator, walk away and never touch it again. This is an on-going process.
Years into it, it is still being tweaked.
That's is the reason why we have motion, sound, control loading and any number of other engineers constantly logging in to make changes.
As to the statement that realism cannot be determined....How do you think we do that for data points that cannot be captured during flight test?
I'll tell you... We have pilots who fly the aircraft on a regular basis at the extremes of its operating envelope (mostly test and demo pilots).
They come in...fly the sim and evaluate everything from feel to handling to recovery.
They're labeled 'Subject Matter Experts' or SMEs for short.
The data plots I mentioned earlier can then be 'tailored' based on the existing flight test referenced data.
This is how the process works.
On the race simulation side of things...Do you believe the guys at Kunos, RRE, S397....heck even CM just come up with data without some kind of reference for the base?
As to validating levels of realism...many, many drivers race sims?
Those are your SMEs...
While all sims are not accurate, it is a bit silly to state none are.