Talking to a friend I race in racing sims games with, we started talking about how we approach tracks and learn them. We get close to the same times lap wise but we seem to racing in totally different ways, got told how I did it was weird as shit.
Now neither of us has had any sort of race training at all obviously. We both learned on racing sim games with wheel and pedals.
But when I told him:
I dont pay attention to the track as a whole, I remember it as order of what gear number, count how many up/down shifts in and out of corners, and which side of the track to be on which naturally lends itself to opposite of which way the next turn is. (say left side of track must mean right hand turn)
I couldnt tell you what they track 'looks' like as an overhead, but I can give you steps of where to be and how many up/down shifts to do when you do see a corner.
Does anyone else race like this? It felt natural to me as the best way, so assumed it was how to do it.
Like part of a track might be to me:
-As fast as possible, keep left.
-turn is opposite direction of side I am on aim for apex in 2rd gear around 3/4 rev limiter.
-Go as fast as possible keep right.
-Down shift 4 times from 6th to 2nd keep revs high, turn is opposite direction of side I am on.
-upshift to 5th and hold on right again, turn opposite 2 downshifts to 3rd.
-Downshift 2 more times to 1st and turn hard.
-Get back to 6th gear with 5 upshifts and keep on left for downshift 3 times to 3rd, then 1 more to 2nd.
..and so on and so on.
So when I start a race, as I race I think to myself:
GO! 6th gear stay left, 2nd gear turn, 5th gear stay right, 3rd gear turn, flat out 6th stay right, 1st gear turn.
While doing the gear changes counting to myself to note the gear I am in:
[Taking off: 1,2,3,4,5,6]...[5,4,3,2]...[3,4,5]...[4,3]...[4,5,6]...[5,4,3,2,1]...(yada yada)
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Go waaaay too fast into every corner, ideally fuck up everybody else's ideal line in online play and ideally wreck them out of a corner they were taking carefully. And if the game supports game ending damage *finger kiss* perfection.
After that I put the spoons away and play a shooter.
I don't play racing sims so a lot of that talk went beyond my head but here is the ending video of a nice 'car show' from 2001
Simple version: I dont learn the track really, I learn what gear a corner is, and remember the gear corner order.
Like ask me for some random track what it's like I default to thinking in what gears I need to downshift to for each corner from start to finish: 2nd gear, 3rd gear, 1st gear, 4th gear, 2nd gear, 2nd gear, 3rd gear, 1st gear (repeat until laps are done).
To me anyway its better than learning speeds for each apex and where to brake and throttle: Practicing a track I eventually learn "OK fastest I can go around that corner without losing it is high rev 2nd gear" so it's now a '2nd gear' corner for me.
Which seemed so obtuse to do it that way to him. And his way of learning 'apex turn start and break speed, apex point and max speed, apex point exit throttle point" seemed the same to me. As to me its WAY more info to remember, and speeds and points can change as track or tires warm.\
Which he accounts for as race goes on, me I know 2nd gear is my rough max and 'play it by ear' turning in until I hear very faint tire scrubbing each lap.
Talking to each other the other was surprised "Really?...thats how you do it?"
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
Go waaaay too fast into every corner, ideally fuck up everybody else's ideal line in online play and ideally wreck them out of a corner they were taking carefully. And if the game supports game ending damage *finger kiss* perfection.
After that I put the spoons away and play a shooter.
Go waaaay too fast into every corner, ideally fuck up everybody else's ideal line in online play and ideally wreck them out of a corner they were taking carefully. And if the game supports game ending damage *finger kiss* perfection.
How many racing accounts you have?! Because I think I have raced with you in at least 5-6 cars in the same race at the same time, many times..
-We don't control what happens to us in life, but we control how we respond to what happens in life.
-Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times. -G. Michael Hopf
Disclaimer: Post made by me are of my own creation. A delusional mind relayed in text form.
I don't play racing sims so a lot of that talk went beyond my head but here is the ending video of a nice 'car show' from 2001
Simple version: I dont learn the track really, I learn what gear a corner is, and remember the gear corner order.
Like ask me for some random track what it's like I default to thinking in what gears I need to downshift to for each corner from start to finish: 2nd gear, 3rd gear, 1st gear, 4th gear, 2nd gear, 2nd gear, 3rd gear, 1st gear (repeat until laps are done).
To me anyway its better than learning speeds for each apex and where to brake and throttle: Practicing a track I eventually learn "OK fastest I can go around that corner without losing it is high rev 2nd gear" so it's now a '2nd gear' corner for me.
Which seemed so obtuse to do it that way to him. And his way of learning 'apex turn start and break speed, apex point and max speed, apex point exit throttle point" seemed the same to me. As to me its WAY more info to remember, and speeds and points can change as track or tires warm.\
Which he accounts for as race goes on, me I know 2nd gear is my rough max and 'play it by ear' turning in until I hear very faint tire scrubbing each lap.
Talking to each other the other was surprised "Really?...thats how you do it?"
Edit: Was going to write, 'I see/understand' but wanted to use this meme which says the same thing in Japanese because I found it funny for some reason
I remember the layouts of most of the popular official tracks so usually, I try to adapt to them on the fly without thinking too much. It's not a consistent strategy though , especially for long races with a decent AI in place that doesn't resort to any silly rubber band effects. Games like ACC, Automobilista 2/Project Cars 2, and the F1 titles of late for instance are satisfying when it comes to offline racing, though there's still a long way to go for fully believable non-lunatic AI systems.
The biggest obstacle is nailing the braking distances since those vary massively from class to class, and a little misjudgment can be lethal when driving supercars or modern open-wheelers. It's trickier when one adds motorbike games into the mix too, as playing with all the braking helps manually disabled requires special attention.
@Pumpy: you should try Wreckfest (online) with the proper damage activated, it's entirely designed around doing that at every single corner
Like part of a track might be to me:
-As fast as possible, keep left.
-turn is opposite direction of side I am on aim for apex in 2rd gear around 3/4 rev limiter.
-Go as fast as possible keep right.
-Down shift 4 times from 6th to 2nd keep revs high, turn is opposite direction of side I am on.
-upshift to 5th and hold on right again, turn opposite 2 downshifts to 3rd.
-Downshift 2 more times to 1st and turn hard.
-Get back to 6th gear with 5 upshifts and keep on left for downshift 3 times to 3rd, then 1 more to 2nd.
..and so on and so on.
So when I start a race, as I race I think to myself:
GO! 6th gear stay left, 2nd gear turn, 5th gear stay right, 3rd gear turn, flat out 6th stay right, 1st gear turn.
While doing the gear changes counting to myself to note the gear I am in:
[Taking off: 1,2,3,4,5,6]...[5,4,3,2]...[3,4,5]...[4,3]...[4,5,6]...[5,4,3,2,1]...(yada yada)
You’d be surprised how much of this is another side of the same coin. Your brain just hasn’t clicked yet the visual part of knowing the track and the analytical part you described above. I don’t think either is enough, though. For example, what you describe is very, very specific to a particular tuning of a particular vehicle. I don’t think it would scale to remember purely analytical view of tracks, unless you race the same vehicle with very similar tuning profiles.
The biggest obstacle is nailing the braking distances since those vary massively from class to class, and a little misjudgment can be lethal when driving supercars or modern open-wheelers. It's trickier when one adds motorbike games into the mix too, as playing with all the braking helps manually disabled requires special attention.
Many professional drivers use visual cues in the track layout for muscle memory to start braking.
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, especially for long races with a decent AI in place that doesn't resort to any silly rubber band effects. Games like ACC, Automobilista 2/Project Cars 2, and the F1 titles of late for instance are satisfying when it comes to offline racing, though there's still a long way to go for fully believable non-lunatic AI systems.
