Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Indianapolis 500 Winner Announced
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to this Codemasters press release announcing the winner of the virtual Indianapolis 500, ahead of the actual race this weekend. Apparently Sam Hornish Jr. surged ahead at the last minute to win this pre-race simulation, which was staged using Codemasters' newly released IndyCar game for Playstation 2. Is there any reason to hope that these sports sims (racing, baseball, football, soccer, and so on) have a real possibility of predicting the outcome of matches, or entire seasons?
I enjoy the new Games section on Slashdot but simoniker really needs to improve his posts and stop making those one sentence comments at the end of posts that are often blatantly obvious and quite frankly annoying and add nothing to the discussions. Here are some examples:
On Indy 500 game:
Is there any reason to hope that these sports sims (racing, baseball, football, soccer, and so on) have a real possibility of predicting the outcome of matches, or entire seasons?
On Matrix game:
More proof, if needed, that games are seriously big business.
On online games:
Opinions?
On Sega dropping prices for games:
Seems like good news for gamers.
In other sports, past performance may be a better indicator of future performance, even with slightly different environment variables. There are exceptions (numerous, I'd think) like Tom Glavine's first outing as a Met in windy, 38-degree weather (no moisture on the hands for the nuanced friction of a typical release). Rain has a similar effect, but it's more obvious.
And you could say, in football, the Dolphins don't win in the cold, the Packers win in the snow and so on. There, even the changing environment could be figured into a simulation.
But racing is more impacted by microclimates, and those can hardly be predicted for weather forcasting. Particularly at Indy, where the cars don't even use brakes in normal operation (speed primarily drops as the cars drift in the corners or from the associated throttle lift), the simulation goes well beyond the car, track or driver.
And even there, besides the obvious mechanicals, the amount of crud on the track (oil, fuel, rubber, water, carbon fiber threads) and the different rubber compounds available for the tires, the driver is often the least predictable. A sim can say "Schumacher drives this way on this track," but who could have predicted the actions of the unpredictable, talented amateur Kimi Raikkonen? He had no base of data from which to draw, but he scored points as a rookie.
The longer races allow for an exponential increase in all of the above unknown factors. The microclime on turn three changes hour to hour. The new C-compound Pirellis leave more crap on the outside of the hairpin than expected. Billy Boat has a minor case of the flu that is tiring him more rapidly.
So, I'd have to allow that, given a large number of weather scenarios (temp, pressure, wind, sun/shade, precip) combined with weighted random factors for mechanicals and driver behavior, you might predict a portion of a race, like the standings after the first few laps. By feeding live data during the race, you might come closer to predicting the outcome as well.
But remember, if it's possible, a Formula 1 team would likely already be doing it.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Using statistics will get a reasonable margin of error, but if we always knew a winner was foreordained in any sporting contest nobody would gamble on them anymore.
Also, it'd be tough to take into account the factor of coaching. Sometimes you'll get a coach like Buddy Ryan who will actually put out bounties on opposing players, hoping that a vicious defense is going to hit them right off the field. As long as there is a human at the helm of a sports team, it will be very difficult to predict what even the most talented squad of individuals can do.