On Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:05:41 +0100, Asgeir Nesoen wrote:

> I disagree; I would say that the sensation of speed actually *is* one of
> the aspects of racing that may be simulated properly.
>
> What kind of sensory input do you have when out on the RL track? You see
> things passing by, you hear your engine sings, you see your rev meter,
> you feel the rumble. Of those, I'd choose rev meter and "engine sings"
> any day, and both of those can be simulated properly, given a decent
> sound system.
>
> You read your speed with your ears, and you use your eyes to place the
> car on the track, you use your eyes. Loads and loads of drivers out
> there have no feel, or perception of speed whatsoever, and this stems
> from a lack of sensitivity in their ears. I always said that a truly
> great racing driver must also have a musical sense...
I wonder how well you can really judge the speed by the sound. It seems
to work well at low speeds, but at high speeds it's much more difficult.
Human ear apparently has logarithmic sensitivity to the frequency, but
the speed depends on revs linearly. For example, there's about 1000
difference between C# and D in 11th octave. That's about 6%. Considering
that good musician can likely tell about half of variation, that 3%. At
300km/h it's 9km/h. Not too bad, but probably not good enough for driving
at the top level. And that's assuming that one is in perfect environment
for listening. Driving sim without sound is kind of strange, I felt
uncomfortable without it, but I could go at practically the same speed as
with the sound.

In a sense, I'm not sure that feeling the speed is even important. It's
not like it's written at every corner at what speed it should be taken. I
think it's more of a judgement of the rate of change of the angle of your
viewpoint in comparison to the curvature of the turn. It sounds kind of
weird, but one can drive the track he has never seen quite fast and in
this case knowing one's speed doesn't help one much.

> A novice driver with no fear for his life would go too fast in RL too,
> because the skill to read speed comes with practice, practice, practice.
> Judging speed is one of the key factors of becoming a racing driver, and
> it is the key to race simulations well, too.
>
> However, what you *can't* feel is the minute changes of grip, the
> details of the racing surface, the tyre response and changes. FFB has
> improved this in the front axis area, but this is still the main problem
> and shortcoming of a sim. My main gripe right now is the ability to read
> what takes place at the rear end of my cars.
And in real live you don't even know how much traction will be in the
coming corner (and by the time you arrive there it may be too late) - it
mostly comes from experience in recognising what you see (probably it's
more applicable to rallying than to track racing, where the traction
rarely changes dramatically).
>
> All this comes from reading the Gs you pull, and this can never be
> simulated per se; we'll have to wait for that back-of-your-skull
> connector to simulate that.
I wonder how much one feels G directly and how much through the pressure
on the body parts. The latter can probably simulated relatively easily -
it's not necessary to have 1:1 pressure scale.