I’ve never got racing simulators. They don’t feel right with a controller (or, worse, a keyboard and mouse), but even the finest peripherals by Thrustmaster or Logitech don’t feel like driving a real car. They’re clearly just controllers, and no amount of haptics has ever persuaded me otherwise.
I’m not a big fan of cars, either. I understand that Ferraris look cool and McLarens go zoom, but what need is there for a car that can go 200 miles an hour when you’re legally limited to 70 by the British government? What use is that gorgeous polished exterior when it’s parked on a driveway in Liverpool for most of its life? And don’t even think about making a joke about hubcaps, because I’ve heard it all before and it’s a Thatcherite lie spread by Tories when they were justifying the “managed decline” of the city because we dared stand against them.
But recently, my perspective changed. I’m not going to go to my nearest dealership and finance a 250 GTO or Bugatti Byron or anything, but I finally get why racing sims feel the way they do.
Racing Simulators Feel Nothing Like Real Driving
The thing is, I’ve only ever driven three cars in my life. When I passed my test, I drove around in my dad’s old banger, which was ancient even for 2012. Then I graduated to my mum’s cheap hatchback, which was slightly newer but quite grim to drive. The clutch is absurdly high for some reason, which made every trip into a chore. It was only when I bought my first car, a second-hand Skoda hatchback ~50,000 miles, that I started to enjoy driving. This car is much more modern; it has fancy things like power steering and automatic windows. And boy, is it smooth to drive.
It moves off with a gentle hum, it changes gear as smooth as butter, and nothing rattles when you’re on the motorway. “Now this is driving,” I think to myself on long trips. But it still doesn’t feel like video game driving.
I drive manual (or ‘stick’ as some of you would have it), and there’s a tactile feeling to everything you do while driving. The gearstick emits a satisfying clunk when you put it into position. You can feel the hum of the engine when you press on the accelerator, however gently. You get a feeling for the car, you understand what each of those sensations means, and you react accordingly.
I know it’s time to change gear by the sound of the engine, by the feel of the clutch, by the little number that flicks up on the dashboard. Racing sims have none of that. Flooring the accelerator feels like pushing a button that makes the pixels show you the effect of going faster. No amount of fake understeer accurately feels like taking a tight turn a little too fast. Every gearbox peripheral feels too smooth, too fake.
This is why my driving games have been restricted primarily to arcade titles. Burnout Paradise, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, you know the drill. Games where I can purposefully crash into cops or throw banana skins at my fellow drivers. If the driving doesn’t feel real, then I want it to be really unreal.
A Change Of Direction
But I’ve seen the light. I understand what racing sims are going for. And all it took was driving a fancy(ish) car on holiday.
It’s a long story, but after one hire car company messed up my booking, I had to beg, borrow, and all but steal my way into a vehicle. Everyone involved was very apologetic and helpful, but there was only one car left in the entirety of Cork airport, and it was much nicer than what I’m used to driving or had anticipated picking up.
Wallet significantly lighter but glad I could finally get on the road for a two-hour drive through the Irish countryside, I had a fully-automated SUV at my disposal. This is why I’ve described the car as fancy(ish). A Peugeot 2008 is no Lamborghini, but it has more technological whizzboops and whatnots than I’ve ever experienced in a car before.
While it was (thankfully) a manual gearbox, everything else was automatic. The wing mirrors whir inwards when you lock the car. The headlights detect the light levels and respond with the appropriate brightness. The windscreen wipers know how much rain is on your windscreen and automatically wipe. There is cruise control and lane assist, and plenty more gadgets and gizmos that I didn’t have time or need for.
It all seems glorious and technologically impressive, but the actual driving weirded me out a little. When I pushed the accelerator, I couldn’t feel the engine beneath my toes. The gearstick moved so smoothly I wasn’t sure it was even in gear. Even the speedometer was digital, robbing me of any semblance of tactile feedback from my driving. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really like it. Everything felt like I was pressing a button that told the car’s computer to do the thing. Nothing felt like I was driving, and that was disconcerting. But it felt exactly like I was playing a video game.
This vehicle also had various cameras attached that felt like pressing buttons on a game controller for alternative views of the race. The reversing camera is fairly standard on nice cars these days, but I didn’t anticipate a top-down view of the car to aid parallel parking.
At that moment, I got what all the fancy peripherals were going for. Where I’d thought they were failing to accurately recreate the driving experience, this is what nice cars actually feel like. I was only driving a $40,000 car, but that’s nearly ten times what my car cost me. I can only imagine what it feels like to sit behind the wheel of an Aston Martin or a Bentley. But I’ve got just the thing to simulate that.
When I got home, I immediately dug out my pedals, steering wheel, and gearbox. The Thrustmaster stuff is great quality, and now I understand that they are accurate to the feeling of driving a fancy(ish) car. I’ve done some laps of Silverstone in a DBS. I’ve taken to the winding roads of Scotland in a Rolls Royce. I can’t feel the road beneath my pedals, I don’t get the sense of an engine raring to go when I accelerate, but I figure that’s an accurate sensation.
When I take to the real roads, I’ll stick with the tactile, fuel conserving, hatchback. But a whole new world of racing simulators has opened up to me, and I’m ready to hit the digital highway harder than ever before.
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