Slashdot Mirror
NASCAR Coursebuilders, Drivers Consult Videogame Version
Thanks to the St.Petersburg Times for their article discussing how NASCAR videogames are giving the real-life drivers tips on a newly redesigned course. According to the piece, which discusses the "$10 million... redesign of Homestead-Miami Speedway", the drivers are checking out EA Sports' new NASCAR title for tips on the as yet undriven new layout: "'The boys playing the video game said Homestead's going to be real fast,' said Busch Series driver Scott Riggs in September... 'With that new banking in there, they could be pushing 180 (mph) in the straightaway'." The coursebuilders at the International Speedway Corporation also got their first look at racing conditions from the game, according to an EA spokesman: "The first time we went down and showed the game to the ISC people they were jumping around the office... [the redesign] was going to add roughly 30 mph to the top speed and shave five seconds off a lap."
Stuff like this makes me love technology.
Practical uses for our tech toys.
Pretty Pictures!
WAY back when Geoff Crammond's F1GP came out, there was a story like this. A rookie driver who'd never driven Spa-Francorchamps (in Belgium) was racing in a touring car race at the circuit. To get to know it, he played F1GP and did a load of laps in the game to get to know the circuit, went out next day and won the race.
I also remember hearing that Jacques Villeneuve, back when he came to F1, played F1 video games to get to know the circuits.
It's a great idea. If the tech is there, use it, and games are getting SO realistic these days that a lot of racers agree that the sims we play these days pretty much nail what it's really like.
Shave 5 seconds, thats not so much a shave as a slash. 5 seconds is a huge difference in laps times.
For Formula One, Jacques Villeneuve once said a few years ago he used Microprose's Grand Prix 2 to refresh his memory before the race. The fact that NASCAR drivers say they are doing so doesn't mean they haven't been doing it for years.
I guess the interesting bit is that they didn't have to develop it.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
I'm sorry, american car racing is the dumbest spectator "sport" ever. They just go around in a big circle. For crying out loud, once you and your competition have both sweated out which is the best spark plug, and you're left on relatively even terms, one might as well just play a good video game simulation of the race rather than actually driving around in circles all day. It glorifies gasoline consumption and pollution, and its about as interesting as repeatedly slamming your head in a car door.
I'm told, back in the day, americans invented airplanes. I don't believe it, if this generation were warped back to 1903, they wouldn't give a hoot about Orville and Wilbur, they'd be at the carridge races.
Go ahead, mark me troll, mark me offtopic, make me your foe, I've got Karma to burn on this issue.
From an economic point of view, its a lot cheaper to have your driver play a $300 video game (PS2 system, [insert game name here], and memory card) than it is to get some time on the race track.
Here's a map.
You'll notice that there is a track inside the oval. This was probably also part of the redesign, and will be used for other types of racing besides NASCAR. For example, the Formula 1 racing at Indianapolis (spelling?) takes place partly on the oval, but also on the inner field section as well.
I'm an old-time Formula 1 fan who's never liked NASCAR, but I do respect it. The danger is certainly there - enough people have been killed doing it. And it does require a certain level of race technology - the cars have to be both fast and tough.
A Formula 1 car would not succeed in a NASCAR race because the engines are not designed to run at full throttle for an entire race. NASCAR cars are also designed to touch when they're running in packs - this is known as "bump draft". Drafting so close is dangerous but one of the best ways to get maximum speed out of both cars - the car in front goes faster because it isn't pulling a vacuum behind it, the car behind goes faster because the car in front is breaking through the air for it. Contact at 180mph isn't exactly safe and is not something you could do in an F1 car without various exposed wings breaking off and the car spinning out almost immediately.
And drafting really is the core of NASCAR. If Formula 1 is a explosion of automotive violence where drivers violently throw their cars around the turns and cut each other off - NASCAR is a slow burn.. a game of stealth with the drivers slowly stalking each other, using the position of others to their advantage and playing out their strategy to give them an advantage in the pack.
What I'm trying to say is that NASCAR is a very pure form of racing. Because while knowing how to drive is important, the emphasis for the drivers is almost entirely on strategy - friendships, enemies, favors and a little luck to help nudge or draft your way to the front of the race.
I personally can't watch NASCAR because I don't care for the drivers, but I've also stopped watching F1 because I don't care for the wildly unmatched cars and that the same people with the best cars always win.
Also, bear in mind that some countries have their own mind-numbingly boring sports as well - people in England and much of the (former) commonwealth enjoy watching games like cricket, for example.
I remember a few years ago they spent millions redesigning a track, only to discover the banking, while improving traction and increasing top speed, occasionally caused the drivers to 'grey out' -- that is, the same condition that affects pilots at their G limit. It wouldn't be too hard to calculate that into the game and have it register on screen as an alpha value. Of course, that might not get the track designers jumping around. or it might.
What's next? Pressurized drivers' suits to keep the blood in their heads?
The EA "NASCAR Thunder" series is not as popular among the drivers as the Papyrus n2k3 sim. Unfortunately, EA has acquired sole rights to the franchise, so this year's Papy version will be the last. There are a great deal of addons for it already--new tracks, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series mods, etc.
Quite a few of the drivers play the game, especially for practice on the non-oval road courses. They describe the physics as being pretty close to the real thing. Some race online, most notably Dale Earnhardt Jr who has participated in several league races.
There is less opportunity for specialization in individual sports like car racing, and hence, fewer opportunities for transcendent performance. I'm sure some drivers are better at taking the inside lane, others can trade paint more roughly, but I doubt any one of those skills will win someone a race. I can watch the Pistons' Ben Wallace dominate defensively or marvel at Keyshawn Johnson's showboat catch last week. These guys can be role players pushing the limits of what's possible in their sports. In NASCAR I suspect a broad range of above-average skills is what wins races.
There is too much emphasis on hardware. I know that the top racers all have virtually identical hardware, but surely you'll admit that teams with less financial backing have an inherent disadvantage, and that many races are lost before the car leaves the garage. I realize baseball suffers from the same money = wins problem. But then, I don't care for baseball either. The furor that can erupt over a spoiler being a couple of millimeters higher than regulation is about as interesting to me as reading posts on which processor is more overclockable -- which is to say not at all.
There is a cap placed on what is possible. For safety reasons there are hardware limits imposed. Perhaps football will have to introduce something like this someday, but for now the fact remains that today's football players are the best in history. Same goes for today's average baseball player. Basketball is a poorer example, but the physical capabilities of those athletes certainly have expanded. In racing, technological caps ensure that drivers can only do so much.
Which brings us to the most important point: the stakes are too high. Okay, there may be more dangerous sports (although I would like to see the statistics) -- skydiving and rock-climbing come to mind, I guess, although I wouldn't call them sports really. Boxing probably wreaks more damage on its participants (I'm no fan of boxing, either). At least these are in some way poetic, pitting man against man, or against nature, and stripping the contest to its bare essentials. Testing what humans can do, and who can do it better.
Racing is loud, long, repetitive and artificial. It's techno-fetishization with a high potential for death. It's about as ugly a sport as I could possibly imagine -- one carried out by screaming, polluting machines on strips of blacktop, and where the highlight reels are filled by brushes with unnecessary death. It's horrifying.
Maybe it's because I follow F1, but does the top speed on the lap really say much about the course? I mean, shouldn't there be "driver challenge"? You can make a given course faster and faster, just by increasing the banking. Big deal. Is it more interesting to watch, or does it make for a better race for the drivers?
There are chiefly two differences:
1) Car racing glorifies pollution to no purpose. (not that other sports don't pollute, but its more a side effect than the main event)
2) The major part of car racing - the driving - is so easily simulatable, they might as well play it in a simulator.
(But I do agree, in general, that sports are a lot of running up and down a court for no purpose, and caring about shit that has nothing to do with your life)