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SIMS - can they help you be a better rider?
- Thread starter Mad Mike
- Start date
Educate me, what is SIMS? Like a motorcycle riding computer simulator?
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I've probably done a couple thousand hours of driving and riding games/sims over the years. Driving sims with a proper wheel and pedals are pretty good. You can learn a lot about rear-wheel drive dynamics, for instance, and the muscle memory transfers over to real cars.
Riding sims have been much less satisfying, at least the ones that I've played the most (Tourist Trophy, Milestone's MotoGP series on PlayStation, and GP Bikes on PC). There is no controller that even remotely emulates counter-steering a real motorcycle, and the riding experience is completely lacking any of the feedback that makes riding a real bike interesting and fun.
Especially on the Milestone games, you just push the analog control stick over and you're immediately at max lean angle - it's impossible to lowside the bike. It's also impossible to lock up the front wheel, regardless of how far you are leaned over or how hard you mash the brake, so unlike a real bike there's no realistic fear of lean angle or of locking up the front wheel. The controller really sucks for fine adjustment of lean angle, so you almost always just go to max lean angle and then adjust the radius of your turn with the throttle or brakes. GP Bikes on PC will lowside if you lean it too far, but there's zero warning when that's about to happen, so that's very frustrating.
Sims can lead you into some bad habits. If you don't have a head-tracking setup (the movement of your head lets you look into the corners) or a VR setup, you can get into the habit of just looking at your braking marker instead of looking through the corner because the conventional view is fixed straight ahead, with a very narrow field of view. That doesn't work out well once you're on a real bike, especially on a real track. You can also develop an irrational fear of getting rear-ended at the end of a straight, because the AI riders are complete morons and will attempt to ride right through you if you take a more gradual approach to braking.
But, one thing that sims have given me is a much better understanding and appreciation of the race tracks that I watch in real MotoGP. for instance.
Riding sims have been much less satisfying, at least the ones that I've played the most (Tourist Trophy, Milestone's MotoGP series on PlayStation, and GP Bikes on PC). There is no controller that even remotely emulates counter-steering a real motorcycle, and the riding experience is completely lacking any of the feedback that makes riding a real bike interesting and fun.
Especially on the Milestone games, you just push the analog control stick over and you're immediately at max lean angle - it's impossible to lowside the bike. It's also impossible to lock up the front wheel, regardless of how far you are leaned over or how hard you mash the brake, so unlike a real bike there's no realistic fear of lean angle or of locking up the front wheel. The controller really sucks for fine adjustment of lean angle, so you almost always just go to max lean angle and then adjust the radius of your turn with the throttle or brakes. GP Bikes on PC will lowside if you lean it too far, but there's zero warning when that's about to happen, so that's very frustrating.
Sims can lead you into some bad habits. If you don't have a head-tracking setup (the movement of your head lets you look into the corners) or a VR setup, you can get into the habit of just looking at your braking marker instead of looking through the corner because the conventional view is fixed straight ahead, with a very narrow field of view. That doesn't work out well once you're on a real bike, especially on a real track. You can also develop an irrational fear of getting rear-ended at the end of a straight, because the AI riders are complete morons and will attempt to ride right through you if you take a more gradual approach to braking.
But, one thing that sims have given me is a much better understanding and appreciation of the race tracks that I watch in real MotoGP. for instance.
I think you'll get a wide range of replies from people based on their experiences or their ignorance.
A competent sim that mimics the actual environment, conditions etc. Could be considered a very useful tool. But, these learned "sim" skills must then be used in an actual real world environment to be practical and also there are thousands of factors a sim cannot recreate that could be found in the real world. Using sims in my opinion may not make someone a better street rider as the situation, conditions, interactions on the street change constantly. But for track use I can see a sim possibly being a big advantage as you learn the track and the conditions can be monitored/controlled. But me sitting on the couch with a controller and a beer playing even the best sim on a console would do little to aid in actual riding or driving but my thumbs would be faster.. Just my 2 cents.
A competent sim that mimics the actual environment, conditions etc. Could be considered a very useful tool. But, these learned "sim" skills must then be used in an actual real world environment to be practical and also there are thousands of factors a sim cannot recreate that could be found in the real world. Using sims in my opinion may not make someone a better street rider as the situation, conditions, interactions on the street change constantly. But for track use I can see a sim possibly being a big advantage as you learn the track and the conditions can be monitored/controlled. But me sitting on the couch with a controller and a beer playing even the best sim on a console would do little to aid in actual riding or driving but my thumbs would be faster.. Just my 2 cents.
boyoboy
Well-known member
some pro racers will use a game - to learn a track they don't know.
It won't make you a better rider, but it will teach you the way the track goes...
a track ready 250/300/400 may cost as much as an elite game set up lol
save for the bike. shrug. and learn on a real bike and track.
It won't make you a better rider, but it will teach you the way the track goes...
a track ready 250/300/400 may cost as much as an elite game set up lol
save for the bike. shrug. and learn on a real bike and track.
Mad Mike
Well-known member
Simulations for racing are different than those for flying, building cities and doing surgery.
Racing provides the driver with a lot of feedback that you're not getting out of a simulator. How do you get the physical feedback? As a rider and driver, these are not bit parts my brain processes, that feedback is giving you everything you can't see.
Other than learning track lines, I don't see how a thousand hours of simulation could replace a few hours on the real car or MC.
Have you tried one? Force feedback is pretty good at letting you know the tires are about to let go. Obviously the vast majority of the simulators do not provide realistic feeling rotation or g forces so those are obviously missing from learning the complete experience.
I drifted a friend's STI a few years ago after a dozen track days and race school. I have a base line from track irl on motorcycles and obsessively read books specific to motorcycles.
The sim helped immensely with what I can do theoretically, and how far I am from that target. Though a certain racer5 instructor popping wheelies out of a triple apex left handers showed me how much of a chicken **** I still was lol
Edit: forgot to mention, focus training is huge. I've no natural aptitude for motorsports so sims helped with this immensely.
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Looks like a great price if you want to pick up a setup @mimico_polak Wheel, motor, pedals, chair and stand for $700.
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Wow that is a sweet deal...except I don't have an XBOX so that particular wheel is useless to me at this point in time. Need something that'll run PS4/PC.
I may throw out a stupid offer on the weekend and see if the guy bites. I'll need a diff wheel 100%.
I may throw out a stupid offer on the weekend and see if the guy bites. I'll need a diff wheel 100%.
Oh that's what this thread is about, I thought SIMS was some kind of training acronym or something.
Even though it was just with a regular gamepad, when Tourist Trophy was set to advanced or pro controls, whatever it was that let you brake the front and rear individually, I always felt that was the closest games got to inputs mapping to anything at all approaching reality. IIRC you couldn't lowside on flat ground, but if the turn had a bump in it or something you could if you were fully leaned over.
Otherwise - and I'm speaking as someone who loves video games - motorcycle games usually have such alien controls that they don't hold my interest for more than a few minutes. I was almost interested in Ride 3/4 but the bikes sound disappointingly bad. Like early 2000s bad. I do think that even in games that don't control great, you can learn something about track layouts and entry speeds etc.
If Polyphony Digital released a new Tourist Trophy that'd probably be enough to get me to buy a PS5. I legit bought a Kagayama Shoei X-11 because that was my favourite helmet to use in the game
Even though it was just with a regular gamepad, when Tourist Trophy was set to advanced or pro controls, whatever it was that let you brake the front and rear individually, I always felt that was the closest games got to inputs mapping to anything at all approaching reality. IIRC you couldn't lowside on flat ground, but if the turn had a bump in it or something you could if you were fully leaned over.
Otherwise - and I'm speaking as someone who loves video games - motorcycle games usually have such alien controls that they don't hold my interest for more than a few minutes. I was almost interested in Ride 3/4 but the bikes sound disappointingly bad. Like early 2000s bad. I do think that even in games that don't control great, you can learn something about track layouts and entry speeds etc.
If Polyphony Digital released a new Tourist Trophy that'd probably be enough to get me to buy a PS5. I legit bought a Kagayama Shoei X-11 because that was my favourite helmet to use in the game
Yup, Mosport big track is modeled in GP Bikes on PC and Ride 4 on PlayStation/Xbox/PC, and maybe others. I watch lots of video to learn tracks too, but a sim/game can be somewhat better even with the unrealistic controller because you can experiment with the consequences of your own braking and acceleration decisions.
But just like watching on-board track video, a game will tend to flatten out any sensation of elevation if you're playing it on the little viewport offered by a conventional TV. The field of view is just too narrow, like tunnel vision, and everything feels flattened out. I have a head tracking setup (the movement of your head lets you look around), but it doesn't really help with that problem since it's still just the same 16:9 viewport panning around. The larger field of view from a VR setup (which I haven't tried) might give you a more realistic elevation experience.
Haha, yup. Here's a local GTAMer (not me): youtube link
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