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.'"

Comments

Can you say publicity stunt?

[bonkeydcow]

I think you can.
Come on. Oh we are too good to be called a game, but come play it. Give me a break.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Opportunist]

You make fun of it, but it's a real issue.

Have you ever been in game development? If so, what was the reaction of people outside the IT biz when you told them you're making games?

Creating games is usually a whole lot more complicated and requires a lot more knowledge and experience than the average business application, due to quite a few reasons. You need considerable mathematic knowledge, you need(ed) good assembler skills, you need to know a lot about the APIs you're working with, your code is incredibly time critical so optimization is a core issue for you, etc. All that and more does not apply at all to business apps. I've seen people in business app development that went straight out of some sort of evening school and were put behind a project to create productive code, with little care about stability, safety or reliability. Some bozo at Q&A will do that.

Yet when you talk with people outside the biz, the guy doing business apps will certainly get a lot more credibility than you, who're "only" making toys.

I can see why a company does not want to be associated with "toys", that their product is a "serious" racing simulation. Whether it's a marketing stunt is debatable. It certainly is. I just doubt it's just to get some publicity. I can very well see why a company would want to put some distance between themselves and the "toys".

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Blakey Rat]

It's the same thing as, say, Microsoft Flight Simulator as compared to Crimson Skies. Both are "flying simulations," but Crimson Skies is obviously a game, while Flight Sim is designed to run as accurately and realistically as possible.

I don't see why there's any confusion here at all. What they're offering is a racing simulation that isn't designed to be a video game, it's designed to be as realistic as possible. Even "realistic" racing sims on consoles aren't all that realistic if you look at how they handle collisions (for example).

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[philspear]

Pubwiictstund..

No, I can't. Damnit! There goes your funny mod.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Quasar1999]

Maybe... but I truly hope it isn't a publicity stunt, but rather a simulator.

I remember buying the original Need For Speed 'game' and enjoying the relatively realistic simulation they pulled off. Ever since then every game out there has been about arcade style play. I do think there is a market for those of us that want simulator style racing/driving games, and why not make it an online community thing.

The new acronym they came up with to describe it, now that was just stupid. But perhaps it helped get some VC money... so I'm willing to put up with it, if they deliver a good simulator.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Austerity Empowers]

And I thought they were just trying to appeal to the elitist instinct in many gamers.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[sumdumass]

Your probably on to something here. I'm betting they want to make this distinction early on so when the start banning people who cause crashes or drive recklessly, they can say see, I told you.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[PinkPanther]

Unlike the rest of you, I am not an elitist.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Quasar1999]

Road and Track's The Need For Speed released in 1994 was for the time, pretty realistic simulator on a 486 PC. All other NFS titles since then have been eye-candy arcade style, but if the original was certainly aiming for the simulator feel (even if it wasn't as realistic as it could have been). NFS porsche unleashed attempted to go back in the realism direction as well, but EA killed it and instead went for the stupid wannabe street racer modding crowd, with arcade physics. I just hope no stupid kid plays the game and then tries to drive his Honda Civic at 150km/h on city streets. The GT series on the Playstation 2 was about the only other game I can think of that wasn't pure arcade crap.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[polar red]

Creating games is usually a whole lot more complicated and requires a lot more knowledge and experience than the average business application

I would prefer to say different rather than harder. Creating business apps also requires some skills that are not found in games, for example : disentangling the business rules, interacting with users, making sense of the 20 year old system which consists of cobol-programs, jcl, ... all written by 20 different people which aren't there anymore, and you're stuck with a database which is a melting pot of 3 older systems ...

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Goldberg's Pants]

iRacing is simply the MMO business model applied to the racing genre. Sadly a bunch of my race sim buddies have fallen for Dave Kaemmer's bullshit and subscribed. However the reviews I'm hearing from folk are primitive graphics etc...

Papyrus know how to do racing physics. Grand Prix Legends is ten years old and still holds it's own on the current crop of sims from ISI, Simbin etc... But this just screams of publicity stunt. It's basically a subscription based ranking system. It's kinda like a virtual SCCA.

Dave Kaemmer stuck a stake through the heart of the NR2003 community when iRacing first came into being as First Racing, and threatened a bunch of folk with lawsuits, actually DID take Tim McArthur to court if I recall (ultimately settled out of court), just so they could reuse code from NR2003 for this thing. Apparently modding a now five year old video game was somehow damaging their business. They changed their name to iRacing after all the bad publicity of threatening their potential customers with legal action.

I'll stick to sims made by DECENT companies who don't screw their users over, thanks.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[cgenman]

You see this elsewhere in the gaming world. In europe, there is a huge market for historical simulations for obsessed history buffs. They could tell you how heavy a particular shell fired in WW1 was, how long it took to forge an average pike, death rates in small vs large villages in the renissance, etc. And of course there are a lot of different names to these things (historical simulations, etc) to try to differentiate these from the more casual "games" people play.

In America, we have groups of people obsessed with flight simulators. These are both the people who take 8-hours on a saturday to fly from Boston Logan to SFO in their kitchen, and the more esoteric people who take 3 months to fly a moon mission. Sure, you could call Microsoft Flight Simulator a game, but it is more accurately described as either a Simulator, or a Borderline Creepy Obsession.

Calling a game which requires that kind of creepy dedication a "sport" doesn't seem all that far off from a categorization standpoint, and it helps them to connect their game with people looking for that kind of thing. I can't comment on the game itself, but this positioning seems understandable.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[427_ci_505]

Howdy.

Try out any title made by Simbin on the PC: GTR, GT Legends, GTR2, and RACE.

GTR is FIA GT1 and GT2 cars, like in Lemans.
GTR2 is more of the same.

GT Legends is FIA GTC65, GTC76 and TC65 classes in a game.

RACE I believe is WTCC racing.

They are very realistic and have a pretty active community. They also support a clutch pedal and H-pattern shifter setup, if you have one.

Disclaimer: I don't work for Simbin, I'm just an avid racing sim gamer.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Shotgun]

You're on the right track, but I wouldn't use MSFS in the comparison. It is still mostly a game.

I draw this distinction, because MSFS uses static profiles to draw the physical reactions of their models. This has the drawback of limiting the model to known configurations and conditions. They have a Cessna 182 modeled very closely, but the realism goes out the window if you try to alter the model to add a spoiler or clip a bay off the wings.

I would have used XPlane against Crimson Skies. XPlane builds a dynamic model based on pre-generated airfoil data. Extend or move the wings around and the plane's behavior changes accordingly. XPlane began life as on guys attempt to create a simulator to save him money in pursuing an IFR certificate.

However, in either case, your are correct. The realism based programs don't include such things as guns or targets. It's not a game, as much as a simulator. Go to an XPlane fly-in and continously fly around where you're not supposed to and they will eventually kick you off the server. Things are tied closely to the real world. I expect that this racing simulator is similar.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[zevans]

I'd love to be an Elitist, but the closest I can get is an ooliteist.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[Opportunist]

As someone who has done both, I can vouch for business apps being heaps easier to code than even the simplest game you could imagine.

Disentangling the rules: Yes. One person. Often, not even that. It depends on what exactly you're doing and how complicated the system is you're working with, but generally you need one person, if that, to "translate" the requirements of the business people to the requirements of the IT people. From there on, it's straight coding, and easy coding to boot.

Interacting with users: Again, a one-person job. Usually also the task of the team or mission leader, not the average coder.

Making sense of legacy systems: Actually one real issue not found in games (usually). You have to be compatible with some ancient software written before you were born. But rarely this is an issue. If you're not tasked with maintaining this museum piece, you're usually writing for an interface. And that's usually quite trivial.

In general, it's usually easier. Most companies are quite happy with code that "somehow" works, no matter whether secure or fast. At least the latter is a huge issue with games. If it's online games, the first becomes an issue too. It might surprise you, but there are more people busy "hacking" game systems than business systems.

Re:Can you say publicity stunt?

[somersault]

I think it's more likely (or at least I hope so) that their game is just very realistic and that most 'gamers' wouldn't even enjoy it anyway. I've been playing GT: Prologue over the last week on 'professional' physics mode as opposed to the default 'standard' physics. While it is still fun, it can also be highly frustrating compared to most driving games. You have to be very controlled and sensible, just as with real racing.

In some cases (especially with the Ford GT on 'sports' class tyres rather than racing class) I think it was actually more difficult than driving the real car - if you didn't give the exact small amount of throttle required through the corners the car would just oversteer and spin out. If you gave a bit too much throttle through the corners, the car would oversteer and spin out. The traction control was no use as it just cuts out the power completely for any skid (as does the active stability management, so I just drive with all the aids switched off). I'm not sure if that's realistic as I've never driven a real Ford GT, but it seems it's pretty dangerous to cut power off altogether during a fast corner in a rear wheel drive sports car! I've now unlocked unlocked the 'S' class of races and they include the ability to tweak the suspension settings though, so I may try later to get the GT into a more drivable state where I'll be able to go more than 3 respectable laps without spinning out!

Anyway, after the whole Ford GT fiasco I was getting frustrated and tried the 'standard' physics to see the difference - instead of spinning out at every corner I could pretty much be as crazy as I wanted to, and would only spin out when I did something extremely stupid. I hardly even needed to follow proper racing lines to win a race. I lapped a couple of seconds faster than my best, most controlled time on one track in the GT-R and didn't even have to do any slipstreaming to get that time. IMO the 'standard' physics seems to involve making the tyres a lot more sticky,. Then it doesn't matter if you mess up your braking a little, and you can carry a lot more speed round the corners. Much more fun, but not very realistic.

So if they are wanting to leave out all the crap and just make a pure racing sim, good for them. They will be limiting their audience sure (I remember hearing complaints a few years ago about certain driving games being 'too hard'), but they will attract people that are actually interested in proper motor racing.

If they really want to make this serious the game will require a steering wheel. In most driving games you can use a keyboard without much fuss at all. But you definitely couldn't control a real 500HP rear wheel drive race car adequately with a keyboard, which is just a bunch of on/off inputs. Perhaps if the vehicle had extremely wide and slick tyres you'd be fine starting and stopping, but it would still suck for cornering. The latest PS3 joypad has all analog buttons (even on the 4 way d-pad) and is more workable, but a steering wheel and pedals is still the easiest control method. Even with a steering wheel I can still imagine a lot of gamers trying a realistic sim and crying because they can't powerslide around every corner and still end up in 1st place, despite starting at the back of the grid. That's not an elitist attitude, just a realistic one. The point is that only those who have done a bit of learning about vehicle handling and racing technique would be able to get anywhere on a true racing simulator (unless the AI was set to be just as poor as the player). That type of thing is meant to be for enthusiasts rather than gamers. In reality there will be a bit of overlap of course, but one style of game isn't likely to suit the extreme ends of both crowds. Real race drivers want to be able to finely tune suspension setups etc. Gamers want to ram into cop cars.

Does it come with Hooked on Phonix too?

[nickswitzer]

'MMIS, for 'massively multiparticipant Internet sport.' That is one hell of a tongue twister.

I like it!

[rmadmin]

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. =)

A better headline:

[jandrese]

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.

Re:A better headline:

[martinw89]

Yeah. From the article, it's a $20 monthly or $156 annual subscription. THEN, to get anything more than absolutely shitty cars (Pontiac Solstice??) and shitty tracks you have to buy your way up.

Re:A better headline:

[hardburn]

Solstice is an oddball choice. Miata would have been a better one for that class of car. Looks like they're associated with Skip Barber Racing Schools, which leans towards using Mazdas. They're based out of Laguna Seca, which is a Mazda sponsered/owned track (not sure on the exact ownership status), and they use Miatas in their racing program. I see they also have the Formual Skip Barber 2000 in their car list.

Tracks look like they're heavily set on American tracks. Silverstone is the only European track that sticks out to me, and I don't notice any Japaneese tracks. There's still plenty of good tracks in that list (like Laguna Seca and Road America), but I tend to think that a racing sim without Nurburgring Nordschliefe is only half finished (GT5 Prologue, I'm looking at you).

While not perfect, the Gran Turismo series is good enough for race training, IMHO, provided you combine it with a good racing wheel. You won't learn everything you need to know, but you can learn shift points, braking points, oversteer/understeer, overtaking, track layouts, drafting, and being able to think fast enough to keep up with the speedier cars. Just keep in mind its limitations (like imperfect tire physics and lack of a damage model) and you can learn quite a lot of the fundamentals.

Re:A better headline:

[Luyseyal]

THEN, to get anything more than absolutely shitty cars (Pontiac Solstice??) and shitty tracks you have to buy your way up.

Well, as this is a simulation and not a game, I expect you will be able to sell advertising on your rig to make up for the extra purchasing costs.

-l

Guys

[martinw89]

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?

Not a game. So?

[Bieeanda]

The only difference between this and a hard-core flight sim (whose players --pardon, enthusiasts-- have been known to sink multiple thousands into a simulated cockpit) that I can see, is that your tires aren't supposed to leave the ground.

Now, that silly MMIS acronym? That's 100% publicity stunt.

Sport?

[Trojan35]

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.

Simulated Racing Track

[r_jensen11]

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.

Similar to my own project

[dorix]

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).

Re:Similar to my own project

[Chris Burke]

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).

Hey, that's neat, it's an acronym and an onomatopoeia.

Why so Serious?

[SendBot]

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.

Oh, so it takes less time than actually playing WoW.

Re:A-Holes Unite!

[Zephyn]

"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!"

Actually this 'non-game' seems targeted at the sort that believes putting an i in front of the name magically makes it superior, along with the people who use it. Perhaps 'i-Holes' would be a more accurate expression.

WTF?

[llZENll]

"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!

Life for Speed

[MaWeiTao]

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.

So let's review

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Eh

[Anonymous Coward]

eWhatever is so 1990's, iWhatever is so 2000's. We need something for the 2010's....perhaps oWhatever?

Re:Eh

[Irish_Samurai]

I think that's supposed to be Racing v2.0 or someshit.

Re:As opposed to?

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Exactly. Why pay for a simulated real life experience? I get videogames so I can do stuff that doesn't normally happen in my day to day life.

I guess it is the same reason people rent porn. C'mon, who would rent porn that is realistic with normal/ugly people .. and the sort of thing that your mom and dad do on their anniversary?