Pandemic Paved the Way for Sim Racing, but Will It Last? (nytimes.com) 58
It takes more than gasoline to make a racecar run. It requires money. And money requires sponsors. And sponsors require spectators who they hope will become customers. Which became a problem for motorsports when Covid-19 shut down tracks worldwide early last year. The cash drought put teams, tracks and race series in danger of extinction. From a report: The industry turned to an emerging phenomenon -- simulated racing. In these highly realistic video games, cars obey the laws of physics and race on reproductions of real-life tracks that are accurate down to the last pavement seam. In an experiment, NBC and Fox replaced the canceled races with sim races. No one knew if digital cars would draw viewers and pay off for sponsors. Traditionally, racecars served as high-speed billboards leading consumers to clamor for the engine oil proved superior by the winning car. Could a sim car sell engine oil, having neither an engine nor oil?
Ten months into the experiment, sim races seem to be paying off, as television and web audiences helped to salvage the 2020 season. And now sim racing gives teams a new source of revenue, gives sponsors a more accountable form of marketing and has interested a young audience that motorsports have struggled to capture. Soon sim racing will face the real test: Can it retain fans and sponsors when real cars are back on real tracks and real spectators are in the stands?
Ten months into the experiment, sim races seem to be paying off, as television and web audiences helped to salvage the 2020 season. And now sim racing gives teams a new source of revenue, gives sponsors a more accountable form of marketing and has interested a young audience that motorsports have struggled to capture. Soon sim racing will face the real test: Can it retain fans and sponsors when real cars are back on real tracks and real spectators are in the stands?
Sim First Post (Score:2)
This is simulated first post.
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Take a gander at my UID. May explain my behavior. Now get off my simulated lawn whippersnapper!
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Plastic fantastic (Score:2)
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it's more accessible, in that you don't have to be young, healthy, and have years of practice. Any lardloaf can play these thematically-inspired games and get good at it for a fraction of the time and effort and cost.
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For FIFA perhaps. You're not going to win a realistic racing sim without years of practice.
For that matter, real racing doesn't particularly require you to be young or healthy to excel. You need to be strong enough to compensate for the g-forces, but beyond that the competition is based on your skill, your car's capability, and the speed and skill of your pit crew.
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Depending on the car(s) in question. Some of those newer indy cars look like you'd need a four year degree just to understand the basics. Some of them have so many buttons on the steering wheel I don't know how you'd keep them straight at speed with gloves on. I'd imagine it takes more than strength to know when to adjust the fuel trim or restraint system parameters during which parts of the track.
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F1 is what I was thinking of. Brain got mixed up on body types.
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Have you ever driven a race car? It requires absolute peak physical fitness and strength. It also requires total awareness. These are all traits that mean younger people have a distinct advantage. To cite the relevant statistic: "whilst the vast majority of [F1] championships between 1960 and 1993 were won by racers in their thirties, only three 30-something champions have been crowned since". The average age of an F1 driver is 27 and going down over time. There is a reason for that.
The same statistical
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Spoken like someone who's never navigated a corkscrew at 80+mph in the rain...
NASCAR... well, I suppose it has it's own challenges, but I wouldn't disagree with you too strongly.
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In defense of sim racing, I don't think its an entirely apt analogy.
Racing involves physical stamina to stand up against the g-forces, overriding your natural fear of death, and a lot of technical skill.
Sim racing can't really do the first two and thus I agree isn't really a replacement for real racing, but it does a hell of a good job at that last one. With an expensive (but not insanely so) sim rig and modern software you can get pretty damn close to emulating the actual behavior of a race car. Submission
Grassroots Motorsports (Score:2)
*Your local SCCA, BMWCCA or Porsche Club of America chapter holds races in a parking lot near you.
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How many grassroots motor sports have huge audiences comparable to NASCAR, Indy 500, etc.?
Nothing against them, they're just not in the same league commercially. You may as well say the article ignores the fact that realistic sim racing has been around for decades. The article isn't about the sport, it's about the commercial spectacle surrounding it.
Re: Grassroots Motorsports (Score:3)
You don't need to own a fast car either. If evreryone jas a piece of shit car, frankly it's even more fun! Becaise you don't care... it will be OK even if you wreck it. It will be OK if you lose, because it was the car's fault or because you did something hilarious. (My bro managed to literally break my axle and make the front wheel roll through the finish first, so we declared the wheel the winner! :D)
Cost me a bit more than the Top Gear ones, but it was still more for my money than any sim could ever offe
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* Any competitor can purchase the winning car for $500
So that either keeps the cost of the cars down, or one very rich competitor eventually having made all the cars competing.
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Those organizations all suck, just look at the ridiculous rule books.
No doubt. I used to have a 240SX with full racing suspension as a result of those rules. The 240SX used to be in E/SP but it kicked too much ass there because it was so well designed so they moved it up to D/SP where it had to compete with 3 series with V8s so it wouldn't kick ass any more. So I got a retired race car cheap. Shoulda never got rid of that car, it was wicked, if a bit slow... anywhere but a corner, where it was the fastest thing around.
Better than real life (Score:3)
I haven't watched regular NASCAR for years because they made it boring. I watched a couple of sim races last year. They were actually entertaining. The racing seemed better because all of the cars were similar enough that it took the big money out of it. The racers were also more aggressive because who cares if you wreck a bunch of pixels?
It will never replace the real thing because you can't replace the roar, feeling the power as they drive by, or the smells.
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Yea, that's kinda how I anticipated it would be. I don't think it would be conceptually very difficult to throw some well-done and high-budget 3d graphics design into the post-production process and actually make it much more entertaining than traditional racing.
Re: Better than real life (Score:3)
You *watched*.
For actual racing, it's the opposite.
Sims will never ever be as exciting as the real thing.
Ever made a jump in a rally car? Ever drifted througg a gravel hairpin corner?
The fun doesn't happen in front of your eyes. It happens inside your belly and butt! It's like a rollercoaster, except you're in control.
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Indeed, but real life racing isn't cheap. Most people don't have much opportunity to do it, certainly not regularly enough to get good.
On the other hand a PS5 and Gran Turismo is much more affordable. Okay it's not quite as heart pounding but it can still be very rewarding, and it means many more people can participate.
I wonder if in the long term it will make racing overall a lot better. At the moment there are many mediocre drivers who can simply afford to participate, like paid F1 drivers. Imagine if the
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It depends on what people are into racing for - I personally don't see the draw of sim racing for the sports I'm interested in (F1) because sim racing takes away huge aspects of the sport that actually interest me.
With sim racing there is no car development, the car doesn't improve between tracks and throughout the season, theres little to no chance of screwing up a cars track-specific setup in sim racing because the handling isnt modelled to that accuracy, theres no track progression as it rubbers in over
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The real loss (Score:3)
Seems to me the real loss if sim racing manages to keep going after the pandemic, is that the physical races are unlikely to continue to to be profitable - I seem to recall that they've already been struggling for years.
And to hell with the spectacle, the real value of the physical races was the way they drove innovation - pick a standard automotive feature today, odds are it was first developed to provide an edge in the racing circuit.
Of course with ICE vehicles on their way out, most of the races are losing their importance in that regard. But electric racing is starting to build momentum, and could provide a similar benefit to electric vehicles if they'd loosen up the regulations a bit. Not much innovation coming from a race where every team is driving practically the same car.
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Sim racing might act like pirate copies of music: you could claim they take away from the real thing but actually they widen the base so more music was actually bought. More spectators and more drivers.
Now the shift to electric, that might kill racing.
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Do an Sim demolition derby! (Score:2)
Do an Sim demolition derby!
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Translations (Score:2)
It takes more than gasoline to make a racecar run.
Gasoline is easy to get if you have money.
It requires money.
Yes
And money requires sponsors.
Sponsors are only needed for the money.
And sponsors require spectators who they hope will become customers.
To keep the sponsors happy to get the money.
But as others in this thread have pointed out, there are grassroots forms of racing that require a lot less money and therefore a lot less of all of this. Autocross can be nearly as cheap as sim racing.
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Do a track day or budget endurance racing. It costs way more but it's cheaper per minute than autocrossing, and waaaay more fun.
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That part kind of muddled your thesis.
Highly Realistic? Who needs it? (Score:2)
I was a physics major. I just assume a spherical car and watch Marbula-E.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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posted the wrong link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Bringing in the younger generation! (Score:2)
I've been doing iRacing for about 5 years now. I had heard about the service back when they were first getting started 10+ years ago, but at the time it seemed too expensive and too immature for me to pull the trigger. Then in 2015 I went to Vegas for a family vacation and got the chance to drive a Ferrari on the small road course at LV Motor Speedway with Dream Racing. They had you first spend about 45 minutes driving the track in a simulator and turns out it was iRacing they were using. After doing the s
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I did race in a couple of online events in Grand Prix Legends (Papyrus), but the lag was immense.
I've always been keen on simulators, but only against AI - and there's not much excitement racing against robotic, pre-programmed opponents.
Fast forward to early 2020 and I finally gave iRacing a shot. I al
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It's a bit scary when people discover the problem with virtual worlds is not that they aren't as good as the real thing but that they are better...
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Totally minor, but you drive a WRX from 1988? I thought those cars started their life like 10 years later than that. I have a 2019 STI myself and love it (also previously owned a 2003 WRX... till I totaled it).
I also love sim racing (mostly dirt rally 2 for me though). Are you still using your G29? I recently upgraded from that to a Fanatec DD1 and it is super. If you're spending that much time in-sim you might as well pony up for the good gear, as long as it doesn't break your entertainment budget.
who buys oil based on NASCAR results? (Score:2)
"Traditionally, racecars served as high-speed billboards leading consumers to clamor for the engine oil proved superior by the winning car. Could a sim car sell engine oil, having neither an engine nor oil?"
Admittedly, I'm not a but NASCAR fan. Still, who purchases oil or engines based on how a NASCAR team does? Everything in those cars down to the ash tray and cup holders are nothing like what you'd buy in a store. I actually own a high performance car, and I put in it whatever the manufacturer says.