Slashdot Mirror
New Racing Simulation Distances Itself From Gamers
waderoush writes "In an unusual move that could alienate a large segment of potential customers, iRacing.com, an online racing simulation company that opened its site to the public on August 26, is calling its system a 'driver development tool' that isn't designed for PC or console gamers. 'We don't think of ourselves as a game company,' says one exec. 'World of Warcraft has a real appeal...But our system is more serious, frankly. If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.' In fact, to distinguish its system from MMOs, the company has come up with a new acronym to describe its simulation: MMIS, for 'massively multiparticipant Internet sport.'"
I think you can.
Come on. Oh we are too good to be called a game, but come play it. Give me a break.
'MMIS, for 'massively multiparticipant Internet sport.' That is one hell of a tongue twister.
Anything and Everything about the Net
As an autocrosser (SCCA SOLO II), I must say, most "racing" games don't really take the edge off in the winter. Gran Turismo 4 for the PS2 did an OK job, but not a great one. I look forward to this nice little niche. =)
Can all fish swim?
I tell you...some day, I'd love to have a job in marketing!!! Bunch of wackos I tell ya!
New MMO startup is completely full of itself, wants to sell you overpriced hardware.
It's clear that this is a game, they're just targeting it to people who normally sneer at "gamers", and who have a lot of disposable income.
I read the internet for the articles.
Stop taking yourself so seriously and lighten up a little bit. Requiring a subscription and a racing wheel should be enough to weed out the mad 1337 gamers. Do you really think all the WoW people are going to suddenly poo their pants over a racing game?
"have are you a member of any sort of racing organization? Have you ever even been in a Solstice?"
... can you even get any more cliche than adding an "i" to the beginning of your name?
"no but I play iRacing"
Now, that silly MMIS acronym? That's 100% publicity stunt.
Hey this is great! This game sounds like an A-Hole magnet! Consequently, that means less A-Holes in other games, and more fun for the rest of us!
Their statement is silly and can be ignored, but the idea of an online racing league leads to an interesting question:
Supposing a lot of the winners turn out to be "gamers" (not race drivers in real life), would such an accomplishment give them any kind of head start into a real racing career?
A game is a game is a game... whether you call it a simulation or a VE or a VR...
Or maybe not.
I've had the opportunity to go on a track a couple times, and have also driven a couple interesting cars. My take is that the games are really a lot of fun, but don't quite give the same experience as, you know, real life. For example, accelerate hard from a stop and some cars will torque steer, some start to fishtail, some compensate electronically. When I shift gears I often go more by the sound of the engine rather than the RPM gauge because it's easier for me. Some of the games do this, but others match the sound to the speedometer rather than the tachometer.
I'm not saying I'm anything but an average guy who has in interest in cars, but I enjoy figuring out how each car responds. That's missing in some of the games I've played. Not that that's a bad thing, just a different goal than a simulation.
If driving in a hot car for 5 hours @188MPH isn't considered a sport... ...sitting in front of your computer for 5 hours DEFINITELY IS.
If you are serious about racing, our product is for you, because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school.
I don't know about you, but nothing gets my adrenaline running like feeling those virtual G's I pull when taking sharp turns. I mean, seriously, that shit is more realistic than driving my sports car on the open roads.
I didn't RTFA, but I'd just like to say that saying "it's a simulation, not a game" is a statement of design goals. I take it to mean, "There are people who prefer realism to gameplay, and we are targeting those people." It means that unless I value that realism, I might have more fun elsewhere. Not sure how elitist they're spinning that, but at its core it's a valuable bit of information about the software. ... that said, doesn't seem like news...
I like how these guys think. I too am producing a serious online simulation project that isn't really aimed at lowly "gamers".
My "iShitting" bowel movement simulation is an exciting new way to experience the joy of a good crap with thousands of friends from all around the world. iShitting will allow serious shitters to compete in such areas as Stench, Log Size, Color, and Composition (with bonus points awarded for visible undigested food, gum, etc). World of Warcraft has a real appeal... but seriously, folks, do you think that somebody who pretends to be an elf has what it takes to produce (and survive) the truly gargantuan masterpieces that professional shitters are famous for? Get real.
For the sake of realism, iShitting requires a full-size USB or Bluetooth toilet controller. iShitting will not support any gamepad, keyboard and mouse, wireless wand and nunchuk, Spaceball, trackball, joystick or paddles.
Like the good folks at iRacing, I also feel that iShitting should not be called a simple MMO. I have devised my own clever acronym that captures all that iShitting is: MMSGBMBMSOPF (Massively Multishitter Stinky Gigantic Brown Messy Bowel Movement Simulated Online Production Facility).
Wait a tic, isn't a pedal and wheel just a way of remapping controls, akin to plugging in a gamepad instead of using your keyboard? If that's the case, how would they know you're using "approved" controls? Developers, if you're reading this, I play Trackmania United with a keyboard just fine, thank you very much.
Does that mean anyone who wants to turn RIGHT is out?
Will there be a virtual infield or bleachers for fans to support and enjoy your online sport?
And of course:
Will it run on Linux?
Oh, so it takes less time than actually playing WoW.
Ok, not a Beowulf cluster, but what if they made an arcade version of this that someone could use for $1 a pop? They could install systems at racetracks around the country where people could simulate the racing experience. It would also be a good marketing exercise. Someone could try it for a $1 and then buy the subscription version for home use.
For those of us who WANT true simulations, this is a very good thing. There are few simulations out there, but a lot of games.
Now, if only they'd come out with something similar for flight sims...
Maybe this will draw off all the super-hardcore sim enthusiasts who are constantly bitching about how PC and console racing sims aren't realistic enough.
Then the rest of us can enjoy our racing games where fun is more important than that last decimal point in the suspension and tires simulation, without all the tiresome whinging. Games like GRID, for instance.
Hans
I personally think this is great. I am always looking for good racing SIMS to brush up my skills with. That way I can stay proficient when I'm not actually on a track in my car. I will definitely be signing up to check this out.
And of course spending thousands of hours behind a joystick to learn to pilot a 747 in Microsoft Flight Sims and do it properly, is not the same.
Personally I won't play this. For my money, if I'm racing, I'd rather shoot some pedestrians, or run them down, and have the cops chase me in GTA, much more fun.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"because getting on a [simulated] track with a full field of other drivers and racing against them safely involves as much commitment and time investment as if you went to racing school"
So you truley believe that:
buying a $50 USB steering wheel
paying $10/month for your racing game
racing from the comfort of your home in your underwear
the biggest fear of dying is malnutrition
Equates to:
renting a $200,000 racecar or using your own car
flying or driving to a racetrack and renting it for $50-$1000
suiting up with flameretardant clothes, full face helmet, full body restraints
feeling G forces, pure adrenaline, and the fear of bursting into flames at any moment
Of course, why didn't I see it!
So who will I play Halo 3 against now?
Trent Reznor.
There's an excellent racing simulator out there already; Live for Speed. I was impressed by it's realism, cars handle as expected. They've modeled suspensions well and the game even accounts for tire flex. There are guys out there who've set up cars specifically for drifting and that's pretty much all they do. If you've got a controller that supports it you can even play with a clutch pedal.
It also scales up nicely to high resolutions, and it performs well. I had it running at 2560x1024 across two monitors and it ran consistently at 50-60fps on a 3ghz P4 with a Radeon 9800 Pro.
Where the game is likely to disappoint is in the lack of cars. Most of the cars are inspired by actual models but not the real thing and the tracks aren't based on actual courses. Although they did manage to get approval to include a BMW Sauber F1 car in the game. That car is impressive.
Contrast that with Gran Turismo which has a huge library of actual cars. Although despite the amount of work Sony supposedly has put into those games I've never been impressed by the physics and even worse, the AI.
So I'm curious about iRacing but not yet impressed. And I can't say I'm keen about all the oval tracks and the Nascar leanings.
1) iRacing buys rights/code/everthing related to NASCAR Racing 2003, Sierra/Papyrus's final great NASCAR sim.
2) They then chase off a lot of modders for the game (who were making custom tracks, etc), threatening legal action etc etc. (see: http://forum.tmcarthur.net/viewtopic.php?t=52) After meeting resistance, their lawyers presumably move on to more productive activities, like kicking puppies.
3) Now, years later, they finally get around to releasing a new "racing simulation" based on what's now 6 year old code. And they want people to pay out the bum for it.
4) rFactor is probably better anyway.
Good luck with that, guys.
And now you've gotten Slashdotters to participate in a Massively Mutating Tongue Exercise (MMTE).
looks like the definition of oxymoron im-not-so-humble-o
I will wait for the "couch-potato weight lifting" console.
robn8r
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
MM seems to require O. Particularly that first M.
Diablo 2 at your LAN party was Multiplayer, and sometimes O, but never Massive.
Are there games that are O, but not M or MM? Eventually we could just say ORPG or OFPS and the MM will be implied.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I take it this means I can't shoot missiles at the other cars?
Booooooring!
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
You're kidding, right?
Tell me if you've heard this before:
"Ampheta-Slim is too powerful for the casual dieter. Only use it if you need to lose at least 40 pounds or more."
or
"Possible side effects of Erectrify are a boner that lasts more than four hours..."
Yeah... those really scare customers away. So, again, we hear "Oooh. Our product is so good, it's probably too good for you... so you'd better not use it."
...because people know about it.
They don't call it the "Secret Car Club of America" for nothing....
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"Also, unlike game programmers, our poo doesn't stink."
It's not a movie, it's film.
It's not a comic book, it's a graphic novel.
It's not sex, it's making love.
We're not a company, we're a group of people dedicated to pretentious bullshit.
http://torcs.sourceforge.net/ It runs on Linux, but no network play yet.
while they may cater to "real drivers", they will never take off as well as other sims no matter how good it performs because: 1. no internet = no iracing, will they refund you if your ISP goes down? I doubt it. 2. Creativity - mod teams love new game engines to play with (like mine shamefulplug idtsimulations.com). Without a community to add to it, you are stuck waiting (or paying) for them to make new content. 3. your experience is only as good as the cheapest piece of hardware in your system. They cant control that.
So since this is supposedly a simulator and not a 'game', how do they explain the effects of internet latency?
Do you have a "Blood alcohol" meter that goes up as latency increases or something? Or am I supposed to ignore the fact that I turned left 100ms before the game (sorry, simulator) decided I did, which resulted in me NOT being able to make that 90 degree turn at 65mph when in reality (since this is a simulation, not a 'game')I did so quite handily?
Oh, and since this is soooo different from driving 'games', can they explain why I still don't feel the G forces in turns?
Sorry guys, but I ALREADY OWN A CAR and can drive it anytime I want.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call it a duck. This looks like a game and sounds like a game. I call it a game. That doesn't mean it's not a faithful simulation of racing; it just means the publishers are either really full of themselves, trolling for publicity, or both.
"the company takes a laser scanning rig to each racetrack it intends to simulate, documenting the tracks at millimeter resolution to produce 3-D 'bump maps' that enable the software to reproduce the behavior of cars passing over the surfaces more accurately. 'Next is the modeling of the tires and how they behave at various angles, pressures, and temperatures'"
I've played iRacing during it's invitation period, and I have to say that although it feels amazing at speed, there are components that don't feel right. Such as, from a standing start it is impossible to spin the wheels, even when red-lining in neutral and quickly shifting to 1st. Personally, netkar pro has a more realistic physics feel to it (although I've never raced real cars).
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I think the author of this article may have taken things the wrong way. I don't think they meant "gamers not wanted" or anything like that.
What I think they mean is that this racing sim might not have appeal to gamers accustomed to more arcade style racers.
I've let people try Grand Prix Legends (GPL ... a landmark in physics-realistic racing sims ... done by the same people as iRacing) on my modest game rig before, and they'd typically hop behind the wheel, mash the throttle and spin the car in the pits.
I'd reset things, and after a bit they'd get it out onto the track where they'd typically attack the first corner at 150MPH and go straight off the track, and crash. After a few of these, and other similar incidents, many would get frustrated and say it wasn't fun, or was boring. Others, of course, would be completely hooked on sim racing and go out and buy a wheel and pedals and GPL immediately.
Basically, sims aren't for everyone. Some people just prefer an arcade racer, or some game in which you can shoot missiles at other cars, etc.
Learning to drive a physics realistic driving sim requires a lot of patience and practice, but is very rewarding. The sims typical emphasize physics realism over graphical realism. Sim racers don't care as much about flashy graphics and photo-realistic looking cars as much as they do about physics, accurate (physics/mechanical) models of cars, tracks, and tire physics. That is, they care that the car behaves as close to how it would in reality much more than how it looks. Don't get me wrong, we love great graphics too, and the more photo-realistic the graphics, the better, but never at the expense of good physics.
When GPL came out, many commented on how primitive the graphics looked as compared to contemporary games. They didn't understand that sim racers cared more about the fact that GPL accurately modeled the effects of fuel sloshing around in the tank than whether the trees off of the side of the road looked realistic.
Hardcore racing sims like iRacing aren't new. Nor is the racing sim scene (just google "race sim" or "sim racing" and you'll see lots and lots of sites devoted to it). There are lots of people even at this moment racing in things like Simbin's sims (GTR, GTR2, RACE, GTR Revolution, etc), ISI's R-factor, etc. Before that there were sims like Papyrus' Grand Prix Legends (which still has a thriving community, BTW, even though it is nearly 11 years old), and EA F1 series (made by ISI BTW), and the NASCAR games, etc. There are also leagues, championships, etc, similar to what's out there for many games.
You can go out right now and buy GTR, R-factor, whatever, at a price much cheaper than the average shooter and go sim racing tonight (you may want to spend some time practicing against the AI cars first, though :P ).
What's new is the subscription and "MMIS" model. We'll see if it works. I think the idea here is to actually try to have a profitable business model that will allow them to update/upgrade and support the sim into the future. It also looks like they're aiming to establish a sort of virtual racing sanctioning body similar to the SCCA, and turn it into a "sport", similar to the professional gaming scene (ESWC, etc).
As for the driver development aspect, instructors at race driving schools like Skip Barber and Russel Racing routinely employ hard core race sims as part of their driver training. You can learn a lot of the basics in a good sim, as well as familiarize yourself with an unfamiliar car or track before hopping into/onto the real thing. They appear to have a relationship with Skip Barber, which may mean they will employ iRacing in their curriculum.
Anyway, I don't think they set out to snub "gamers" but to differentiate themselves from the arcade racers that most gamers are familiar with, and the typical gaming business cycle/model.
I can say that iRacing does distance itself from gamers just to make sure gamers don't expect a game when joining.
It's nothing like a racing game expect that it is also about racing.
When you start out as a rookie in iRacing you are expected to show that you can drive safely on the track with others.
Show respect, don't mash into cars and the last few % of speed is of little importance.
When you get a D class license you are shown your iRating (a relative speed index) and from this point speed and position on the finish does become an issue..you will want to be fast and start pushing the car to your limit.
When 60-80 people sign in for a race (very common) the server will select people of the same skill level and put them together, this way everybody has a chance for a good finish.
The skill and safety system is really complex and extremely well put together.
I would advice all simracers that don't have a huge problem with the price (that won't change) to give it a shot, get the skippy car and race VIR...there is NOTHING like it on the market today and I have raced them all..GTR series, all big rFactor mods, Netkar Pro, LFS..you name it I raced it.
I recently had a business meeting with these guys and saw what they are doing. Their goal is to give real drivers more "track time" without the hassle or expense. They capture actual tracks using survey grade laser measurement equipment that is accurate to the millimeter. They analyze the road surface and build cracks, bumps and other surface anomolies into the siumulation. They have captured every tree and other environmental feature and render them in position - this was feedback they got from drivers who needed to see the trees in position to feel as if they were on the actual racetrack. I "drove" Laguna Seca in a stock car and it is not anything like a "video game." Their goal is to have you actually learn the track and be ready to race when you get there. While the simulation lacked the tactile feel, sounds, etc. of actual driving, I was pretty sure I was getting all the feedback I needed to familiarize myself to a specific track and car for when I arrive at the track for a race. My guess is early adopters were expecting a flashier experience and they needed to clearly state their mission to set the right expectations.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
I've played Life for speed and it looks like lfs is a much better game! (http://www.lfs.net/) and its cheaper. I paid one time for a license and can play all I want online..
So it's like VATSIM with race cars instead of planes?
Video Production Support
I might be missing something, but I don't see a demo. Can I try before I buy?
Maybe that's what makes it so hardcore. Real men don't need a parachute -- they just jump.
Not to break up the typical uninformed speculation and narcissistic jacking off going on in the comments so far (I've been a slashdot reader long enough to be familiar with the status quo here), I figured a few people might find it interesting to have some actual information on the sim and its quality. I was fortunate to be given an opportunity to subscribe to the service several months prior to release, in May to be precise, so hopefully my opinions may be useful to someone.
In terms of what the product actually is, I'd say it's an online racing service first and foremost, which just happens to come bundled with the best proprietary simulation software available. The $20/month or $156/year is similar to the costs of participating in most of the top-level simracing leagues that have been around for years, so for many of the people who will be interested in this the cost really isn't going to be a big deal. Inevitably people are going to constantly compare iRacing to WOW or EverQuest or whichever MMO their ADD-addled brains are currently obsessed with, but really the way the service operates is closer to a virtual sanctioning system...SCCA, NASA, USAC, whatever.
The cars and tracks, which range from $10-25 a piece (aside from the 2 cars and 7 tracks you start with) seem a bit pricey, but the justification for the cost is down to the development expenses. Each asset in the sim is laser-scanned down to millimeter accuracy. The cars are modelled using real engineering data provided by iRacing's partners, each component is measured and weighed, the tire model is highly detailed (modelling things like sidewall flex, multiple contact patches, etc - stuff that most sims which use a simple Pacejka slip-based approach don't take into account), the force feedback is based purely around the forces being transmitted to the steering column via the car's tires and suspension (i.e. exactly what you'd feel in a car that isn't fly-by-wire), and the tracks, being modelled to millimeter accuracy, feature the most detailed bump-mapping that has ever been achieved in a consumer-grade simulation.
The sanctioning body (which is called FIRST), is run in a manner that is similar to real racing with a full rulebook, protest system, and so forth. Progression in the sim requires you to drive safely, as there is an automated system which keeps track of your incident points (things like hitting other cars or stationary objects, spinning, or leaving the track surface) and calculates a safety rating based on your performance, heavily weighted towards your most recent performance. There is also something known as an iRating (among the tons of stats the system automatically tracks for you) which rewards you for finishing well in races and is used to match you with drivers of similar ability in races.
Blah blah blah, so what's the point, right? Well, the simulator, which is constantly evolving, is easily the best thing you're going to find without visiting a top Formula One team. It's not perfect, and it's constantly in development, but the pure driving experience and the skills required to be successful in the sim are closer to real driving and racing as you're going to find anywhere else. The safety rating system, which may seem weird to people who haven't experienced it, essentially replaces the "fear" and/or "maybe I shouldn't do something stupid here and destroy my car" aspects that are missing from simulated racing, which means that a vast majority of the time your races will be clean and courteous. Once you've gotten some experience under your belt, you're able to drive more powerful cars against more skilled drivers on more difficult circuits.
The overall feel of the sim/service is like SCCA-style club racing. The service is very professional, the simulator is of the highest quality, and the community is...well...it's a nice mix of the best and most helpful simracers in the world, a bunch of really nice people who enjoy racing their nuts off against people who quickly become familiar faces,
I've been racing at iRacing for some time now, I can tell you the graphics are great and the physics are even better. But most of all, the racing is 2nd to none online. Hard racing every lap, and of course there are wrecks, spins, etc. but I rarely see anyone intentionally wrecking someone. Call it what you want, but I have a blast running it and yes I am heavily invested in Sim Racing so the cost of iRacing is very little compared to the cost that I put into the hardware I use. At the end of the day, I can't afford to quit my day job to race in real like as I have other commitments so iRacing is the next best thing. Besides, too old to be a young gun. :)
NADS gives u real Gs;-)
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/portal/site/nhtsa/menuitem.ec22fb0a0adebfd24ec86e10dba046a0/
* a friend from nhtsa told me the NADS chief had a big banner in his office reading "go NADS"
Everyone should sign up for an account and drive backwards to piss off the "serious racers"
My Blog - http://www.jasonernst.com/ Academic Website - http://www.uoguelph.ca/~jernst
For SIM style games, there tends to be two crowds - one looking for a lot of action and a quick reset if you go flying off the track, get shot down, or in some other way "die". The other group is looking for a system that most closely models reality (i.e., if you crash or die, you're out of luck). The main difference is that as you get closer to "reality" it becomes dramatically harder. What comes to mind as a good example are the Dynamix series "Red Baron", "Aces over Europe", "Aces Over the Pacific" and "RB II". The games tried pretty hard to simulate both aerial combat as well as the flight model. My impression was that part of why they were not particularly successful was simply that they were considered "too hard". In the campaign mode, if you died it was "Game Over". You could reset from an earlier spot, but you did not get multiple lives etc (a couple of the versions went so far as a closing shot of your tombstone with as I recall taps being played). I think that will be the greatest challenge, simply whether there is enough of a audience for a true "SIM" (assuming it's as described) versus a watered-down reality to make it easier for the masses.
hmmph: NADS models the thickness of road-marking paint...and the response-time needed from the hardware is an order of magnitude higher than that of a flight-sim...
http://racer.nl/
The graphics aren't great and the crash physics suck, but you won't get much better realism than that, and it runs on Windows, Linux or MacOS. Lots of addon cars and tracks are available. All cars are fully tuneable and all tracks are fully editable! There's even an AutoX track available for download. Online play basically isn't going to happen though. There are only a few servers (which you have to search for manually) and the chance of you being on a working one the same time as someone else is basically zero.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The guys who made metroid prime 3 were trying to say it was an entirely new genre, a first-person adventure, not a first person shooter. I mean, sure, you shoot in it, but this is an adventure, not like doom or anything. Of course, this was more for elitist fans. If you liked FPS, it made no difference.
If it's anything like Metroid Prime: Hunters on the DS I'd say that's a fair description. Shooting was a fairly small part of the (single-player) game. People who are into FPSes, like my dad, get bored with those games. Doom 3 has more shooting than MPH but it's similar. He generally enjoyed the game but was often fed up with the reading, exploring, and puzzle solving. He wanted to run around dropping masses of vicious demons and generally blowing shit up like the previous Doom games.
Games like Doom 1 and 2, RTCW, Pariah are traditional FPSes which are very different to games like Doom 3, the Half-Life series, MPH, or as an extreme example of how far from a FPS games that involve shooting from a first person perspective can be, Trespasser.
Get the opinion of someone who's into traditional FPSes and not the newer adventure/shooter type and they'll explain the differences.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Anyone that has really driven a race car in anger knows the difference between the FEEL of Grand Prix Legends and FEEL of even FORZA2. Personally, I CANT WAIT TO GET HOME AND GET THIS!
Ohh spiteful one tell me who to smote and he shall be smolten!
"I'm just an avid racing sim gamer."
No, pay attention. Now you're an avid racing sim Internet sport participant.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'