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Videogame Driving Skills Don't Apply In Real Life
the digital nomad writes "When driving cars in videogames, you're often forced to see everything from a third-person perspective. Now, what would happen if you tried to drive while limited to that odd view in real life? These folks decided to find out."
I still credit the training I received for playing long hours of Night Driver with saving my life in 1981. I was cresting a hill late at night on a two-lane country road when I was suddenly faced with an oncoming car in my lane. Using the exact same right-left swerve that I practiced so many times in the video game, I avoided a head-on collision by hitting the shoulder just in time, and got off the shoulder before sliding down the ditch.
The real question should be "Would I have still missed him had I not played so much Night Driver?" There's no way to answer that, of course, but for now I'll stick with the "my anecdotal evidence runs counter to your theory" attitude.
John
Can't RTFA since work blocks Gizmodo (seriously? WTF?). However, my first thought after seeing the article summary was "You know, Grant drives this way in real life all the time on Mythbusters."
You were very rarely forced into 3rd person, it just gave you an advantage of situational awareness, wrt other cars and seeing into corners. And it was better, because the perspective of 1st person was so shit because of tech (640x480 and even 1024x768 does NOT cut it), and so now - take EA Need for Speed SHIFT or GT or Forza, those games give you working cockpits that still have enough resolution out the windscreen to see into corners and feel speed properly, and dirve in a more realistic manner.
The death of 3rd person is coming, the tech is now here to simulate proper driving - so we are doing something in real life that was anachronistic to begin with....
Speaking only for myself, I can say that Gran Turismo greatly improved my real-life driving skills. I learned about following a line, about preloading suspension, and just about how to generally handle a car. When I first got my Subaru Impreza I was already able to go fast because I knew how an AWD car behaved from playing that game. Some of the skills are clearly not applicable to street driving, but some equally clearly are.
As there's already been an article about how some well-ranked race drivers went to a track and posted better-than-average times, probably as a result of their experience, this article is -1, Troll. It's possible not to learn from playing driving games, but since pro race drivers use off-the-shelf video games to prepare for races, it's all a lot of shit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There's a video on youtube of a guy who tested real vs virtual drunk driving by playing GTA 4 sober while Nico was virtually drunk, then driving with Nico sober while himself being totally smashed. Unsurprisingly, the drunk Nico-sober player combo was much more accurate, while the opposite resulted in much more destruction and mayhem.
Outside of Mario Kart type games I never liked that view and I've never used it. I never saw it's appeal given that it's difficult to position the car properly on the track or get a proper sense of distance. And that's not to mention you can't even see what's immediately in front of your car. About the only benefit I see is that you could spot another car hiding in your blind spot. It does allow for more of a spectacle when racing. Undoubtedly someone could get good with this view, but that doesn't make for the ideal camera position. Then again, I also never liked the dashboard crowding my view in games. In real life the dashboard isn't as intrusive in my field of vision as it is on the screen.
Indeed.
I've noticed my gear changes to be much smoother since I started playing Life for Speed, to the point that a passenger in the back seat commented on the car having a "smooth automatic transmission" while I was driving stick.
The other way around doesn't necessarily hold true. And even the best of the best can have problems against the hardcore gamers:
Video
This is a Danish language video, but it pitches Tom Kristensen, Mr. Le Mans, eight time winner (a record) in the 24 hour Le Mans, including six times in a row against a Danish hardcore gamer and national champion in GT for the PS2. Game is GT for PS2 on the Le Mans circuit.
Granted, not exactly a fair match-up, as Tom doesn't have much (if any) experience in that game, but he manages to do a 3:23 lap, which is pretty much what he expected to do before they played. By comparison the qualifying times for the 2009 Le Mans was 3:22.888 for pole position.
The gamer ended up at 3:15, which is an insane lap of Le Mans. Obviously not doable in real life, and I suspect most gamers would be scared shitless the first time they ended up in a situation where they feel the back-end sliding a bit, but the point remains - gamers can beat the pros at the games.
http://www.dailytech.com/Champion+Gran+Turismo+Gamer+Becomes+Realworld+Racing+Champion/article17035.htm
It kind of does. Get them playing something stupidly arcadey like Ridge Racer against the best gamers and things would be very different. If games like GT weren't so close to real life then the race drivers' skills would not apply. Sure some elements in the game are simpler than real life (thinking of stuff like modelling temperature and wear in tyres and the condition of the road surface etc, but some games even attempt to simulate that stuff), but the overall handling characteristics of cars in games these days is very similar to real life.
which is totally what she said
If you played racing games with a steering wheel input (e.g., Daytona USA), it might have been a lot easier for you. In many arcades the controls were "broken in," so turning the wheel slightly did hardly anything unless you were at top speed, which is very similar to a real car.