Realism and Laguna Seca

FiringSquad: At the top of the question list for most of our readers is the question of GT3’s realism. You gave us a little bit about how realistic the braking is, but what about the other parts?

Bob: It’s really good. One of the hardest things about racing games is that you don’t have the G-forces to give you feedback, but the acceleration and turning in GT3 are both very good. Little things such as your car leaning backward when you accelerate, which you don’t consciously notice, make it work. In general, when you’re driving the game it’s very realistic.

FiringSquad: Where do you think GT3’s realism fails? The tire wear model is something a lot of gamers have noticed seems awkward.

Bob: Well, there are certainly limitations to the realism. The lack of real collision, let alone the fact that you can’t hurt yourself automatically makes people drive sloppier.
I’m a picky racer but I understand what they’ve done with the tire wear. Since you asked, the tires do go out way too fast. Normally, it’ll be 30 minutes or so before you really start to notice it and even then, your tires don’t get so bad after the initial drop, maybe 1 to 2 seconds a lap. In the game, when your tires do go, they keep going too far so it’s as if you’re driving with slicks in the rain. I think the reason they did that is to keep people from getting bored (just a guess). In the real race, you really have to keep track of your tire wear and it keeps you thinking.

When you race, you don’t want to be simply thinking about what you’re doing right then at that moment. You have to be thinking about what you will be doing 5 minutes from now, 5 laps from now. In the case of something like 24 hours of Daytona, I was thinking about what I would be doing 12 hours from now. As a race driver, you always have the natural urge to go as fast as possible, but you need to plan to make sure the car will be running well throughout the race. By making the tire damage faster, the game forces you to constantly think about your driving. I’ve also noticed that your tires wear out faster if you bump into a curb or hit other cars.

Oh, another thing that’s not realistic is how the computer cars can sometimes pass you on the outside, run over dirt, and still end up with a faster speed out of the turn. That’s just impossible. [laughs] For the most part, the cars are really good, but there are some things that don’t make sense to me such as a having a Lotus Elise beat a Corvette (could be the driver huh). My favorite part of the game is later on, when you have the F1 cars since it’s pretty close to what I used to do. Some of the passing maneuvers the AI makes aren’t very real though.

When I first played the game, I was really impressed at how good the game feels, and with time that’s when you start noticing the little things. Laguna Seca, for example, is spot on…except for turn #10.

FiringSquad: What do you mean by spot on? Do you mean the track is accurate or that actually feels realistic?

Bob: Professional drivers have been using PC simulators for some time to learn the tracks before they go do the real thing. The only thing is that car dynamics on the PC aren’t as good. Racing Laguna Seca in GT3 is almost identical to racing the real Laguna Seca. I remember going through turn #2 the first time I played the game, and since Laguna Seca is a track I regularly did, I kept thinking to myself how this felt just like the real thing as I trail braked through the turn (you need to be really good with the brakes at Laguna) and the line you need was very close.

When I had my student try out Laguna Seca on GT3 I noticed that the mistakes he was making on the real track were the same mistakes he was making in the game. That’s when I really knew that the game was good. You have to understand that Laguna Seca is one of the hardest tracks in the nation besides Sears Point and so the more times you can practice the better. The problem is that it’s expensive and difficult to get as much time on the track as you want to practice, and some cases testing on the real course is actually illegal due to testing limits for some classes. That’s what makes GT3 so useful. Once we had set up the in-game cars to mirror what’s really being driven, he and I spent the whole day playing the game. The difference between my student’s real lap time and game time on Laguna Seca was less than a second.

FiringSquad: So what’s specifically wrong about turn #10?

Bob: I’m not sure, but there’s something about the game that forces you to go slower in the game than you do in real life. This is the second to last downhill turn in the track. If I studied it more I could probably figure out what’s wrong, but I’m pretty sure it’s just some small difference in the geometry, mostly on the exit.