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Gran Turismo Gamer Becomes Pro Race Driver
An anonymous reader writes "Back in 2008, Lucas Ordonez lived what seemed like an ordinary existence. The 22-year-old Spanish student was an avid motorsports fan, but he lacked the suitable investment necessary to become a professional race driver and had virtually given up on racing. Besides, he was already knee-deep in trying to complete a Master of Business Administration (MBA). But it was Ordonez' passion for virtual racing, particularly his love of Gran Turismo, that made him stand out from his peers — both off the track and eventually on it. In just a few months, Ordonez' life was transformed from console dreamer to racing the real thing at a real race track in Europe. And Ordonez managed to do the unthinkable: go from the couch car to the race car, and win."
Not really, because with porn it's more about the equipment you have than your skill level in using it.
I happen to know for a fact that the current SCCA prosolo and solo2 national champion has played GT extensively as well.
Why not? They use flight simulators to train pilots. This is the same basic idea. There is no question learning course layouts via GT would be very helpful if you were placed on the physical track you've lapped many times virtually. I've tackled the virtual Nürburgring enough times that I would be able to put in decent hot laps on a first visit much quicker than someone who didn't have much experience on the track layout from a video game and had to tread more carefully.
The main thing is to build up the physical stamina you need for whatever level you race at. Most people could never handle Formula 1, but they could probably handle a 2-liter touring car.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
More importantly, racing is about car control. A mass-marketed sim like Grand Turismo does not approach the levels of realism required to be an adequate sim for learning this.
I do believe alot of you are just wanting to rant and not actually thinking about the article before you post. Yes yes I know you want to sound all suavely sarcastically intelligent and like a world experinced person in your comments but your not.
The article nor does the guy say "I became a professional race driver by only play gran turismo, it taught me how to race like a pro and until I played the game Ive never even seen a car before".
All the article is saying is he loved professional racing so much and because he loved it he played gran turismo because as well know, a terrifc racing simulator game. Was just saying he loved racing so much that he not only wanted to do it but played games about it and had a passion for it and nothing else.
So pull your heads out of your collective asses because it doesnt say his racing skill was all thanks for gran turismo.
You haven't actually done your research obviously. Several drivers have in fact used the Gran Turismo for car control. There's an interesting interview with one driver who said he's used Gran Turismo to practice certain tricky corners before getting to a track because wrecking the car in the game is a lot more forgiving than doing it in real life.
Gran Turismo has the graphics mapped down to the location of the markings on the asphalt and the positions of the trees from the real tracks. The tracks aren't flat either, they have bumps and unevenness from the mapping of the real asphalt. While the game doesn't map a few interesting bits like tire wear over time or vehicle weight changes from fuel usage, it is in fact very very accurate.
In fact, most people I know who enjoy Gran Turismo, including myself, have a hard time explaining why to our gamer friends who insist "its not fun" because its too realistic.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Absolutely false. Read up on the "Red Flag" exercises. The "enemy" is an elite unit whose *only* duty is to perform as the enemy in these exercises. They almost always win, since this is all they do. This is expected, and desired, as it's expected that the training unit will learn much more from having the crap beat out of it.
The baddies in the US's current war probably do not have the sophistication in chemistry to develop the right kinds of explosives to crack armor, like a full-fledged nation.
RPG-7 is still good enough to deal with an Abrams (or any other modern tank), you just need a lot of them if it has reactive armor on it, but the later is still not impenetrable. For a similar example with Russian tanks - during the first war in Chechnya, Chechens often assigned up to 10 people to target the same tank - eventually one or two would hit the spot in reactive armor that is already "used up", and that would be it. That's not even mentioning tandem rounds etc (which are all also available for RPG-7).
There are also guided AT missiles. Sounds complicated, but in reality the old mid-70 Soviet stuff was already decent (if the AT crews don't mind exposing themselves to risk), and they were provided in large quantities to e.g. Syria and other such wonderful countries (and then, quite possibly, partially sold elsewhere).
In short, a lone tank is still a coffin on threads in any urban setting (or, really, anywhere enemy AT infantry has sufficient cover to come close enough). That's why tanks are always supported by infantry!
Think back of all those flight simulators.
Somebody even came up with statistics proving that people who had used flight simulators at home would pass the license test faster.
With a modern main battle tank, I think the best you can hope to accomplish with something as small as an RPG is to disable it by attacking the weak points (like the treads) and then figure out a way to set it on fire. Reactive armor is NOT the primary protection against the shaped charge, things like composite armor and depleted uranium are, and this stuff can (and has) stood up to kinetic penetrators and real anti-tank missiles at close range.
RPG-29 was successfully used against T-90, Merkava, Challeneger-2, and Abrams in the field. Granted, that is more advanced than the usual RPG-7 (though by no means unavailable), and the round in question was tandem. But still, this shows that man-portable weapons are as dangerous to tanks as they ever were.
The reasoning is actually very simple: it's much more expensive to increase and improve armor than it is to increase and improve the charge. After all, armor has to shield large parts of the tank, while charge only has to penetrate a single point.
Also, of course, how well the armor stands up against kinetic penetrators is not particularly relevant to how it will stand up to a shaped charge. Composite armor - like Chobham - is pretty decent against older-generation RPGs, but, as shown by my earlier reference, it's still not invincible. Also, Soviet/Russian tanks use similar techs in T-80, which didn't prevent Chechens from blowing up a lot of them in Grozny, even with just RPG-7. It may stand up well to one or two hits, but repeated hits to exact same point will eventually reduce the efficiency of the inner layer to the point where it won't disperse the particle stream sufficiently, and then - boom.