Gamers deemed too fast for real-life race | Hacker News Reader

Gamers deemed too fast for real-life race

uk.eurosport.yahoo.com

103 pointsColinWright35 comments

Put simply: they are too fast for the beginner series and too inexperienced for the pro series.

An important clarification but I still feel great pride at fellow gamers showing people what's what.

Good clarification, that point was lacking in the title and most of the article.

Which means ultimately that they are dangerous, right? They drive too fast to be safe with the other slower beginners and they don't have the experience needed to be trusted to make good decisions with the people who drive in the faster circuit. It doesn't seem wrong, it just seems like a natural consequence of learning in a simulator.

Yes, came here to say this. Article is sensationalist.

> Which means ultimately that they are dangerous, right?

I think that's the implication. The worry is that the claim isn't reliable. A driver who can control a vehicle at higher speeds than you will always appear "dangerous."

And similar claims were used to exclude women from the Indy 500 until years of women in F1 and NASCAR illustrated the prejudice was absurd.

It's admittedly a tough call though. On the one hand, the claim's being made by insiders with vested interests and skepticism towards outsiders. On the other hand, the cost of letting in dangerous drivers is far higher than the cost of prejudice, so there's a reason to err on the side of caution.

They are actually dangerous.

I am one of the people who learned in a simulator, and then bought a real car.

Simulators teach some bad stuff, the wheel is amazing and it's just like the real one, but the pedals are not and the use of mirrors is totally different from the real thing.

Also, in simulators any mistake is simply a reset away, there is no survival instinct. This is a very important point, and I think, the most crucial difference.

They are dangerous because those cars, real or virtual are driven to the limit and the most minimal difference in perception will be amplified in those conditions.

Having said that, in a real car, I can brake better, with more control and faster than people who have only driven real cars. I have never missed a shift, and I change gears in less than half a second (I drive a stick). And I have never crashed. But I have never tested a real car to the limit.

To those who complain about the title, don't blame me. Many times in the past I've created a more informative title and used it, only to have to "reverted" by the mods.

Well for a subject with such gravitas I can sympathize with the mods.

I don't know what the submitted title was, but the corrected "Gamers deemed too fast for real-life race" is dishonest link-bait at it's finest. <sarcasm>Well done</sarcasm>, mods.

"Gamers perform too well in real-life to be considered amateurs" would have been nice.

I realize it is for better sensitivity and control, but the lack of shoes in the picture is amusing.

On a more serious note, maybe taking that talent and having them move up through the ranks on lower series to get the experience to go pro is a viable option. If the talent is as good as they say, then they'll do well on smaller carts and get the experience to race professionally quicker. Nissan should just make it the "senior-class" part of their program.

Eventually, market pressures will result in new accepted standards for training with greater utilization of simulators. Hopefully, there won't be any deaths resulting from using too much simulator training.

The type of games these players play, how seriously they take them, and the advanced setups they use mean a more honest headline might be: "The best amateur racers with countless hours of simulator time are sometimes better than professional racers."

I wonder how much of that could be due to being less sensitive to danger than they should be. If most of the conditioning was in a context where there were never any severe consequences for failure, you'd expect trainees that were considerably more aggressive than those conditioned in contexts where consequences could include death.

That always stood out to me in Ender's Game. Especially when Ender had to learn the lesson to not be so flippant with the units under his command.

That doesn't translate. I spent considerable time playing racing simulations, and still my first time on a real track was an intimidating experience.

One personal anecdote may well be true and valuable, but it still isn't usable data.

Normally this rejoinder is used by people who have provided data and received an anecdote in response. However, you haven't even provided an anecdote . . .

Well, no, of course not! If you look above, I asked a question. In case you are wondering, it wasn't a rhetorical question.

My estimated likelihood that you pose questions in order to make subliminal rhetorical points and so tend to readily project that behavior onto others would have increased, but one anecdote isn't usable data.

EDIT: Also, I see I forgot the question mark, which may have caused confusion.

The issue isn't how you felt, it is what kind of behavior you learned in the simulation context which would transfer to what you did on the real track. Doubtless your intimidation affected your behavior, but if a simulation can improve real performance then it is unlikely that a little intimidation completely erases all the tendencies learned in the simulation. It can't be assumed that things which improve performance will transfer, but things which could be dangerous won't transfer.

In my case my hands were numb and in pain from the strong grip.

After a while (days? weeks?) you get used to the real car and the racing simulation muscle memory comes back.

Possible, but I'm guessing that the massive amount of simulator time, muscle memory, and practice are probably closer to the true explanation.

In a realistic simulation, which Gran Turismo aims to be, being more aggressive than in real life is not an advantage.

Apart from the cost of training, where the GT players have the advantage is that failure is not as penalizing as it would be in a real car. If you crash, you can be back on the tracks in seconds for no cost and no time in traction. If you mess up a corner you can restart.

Rather than desensitizing them to danger, it allows for exploratory driving, which, especially when combined with the amount of track time available, would allow skills to be learned much faster than in the real world.

That is to say, the learning processes for someone driving a simulator and someone driving a real car are not the same, but these approaches must converge to a common end point which is the best driving style in order to be the fastest car on the track.

I though that was only the case for Gregger Huttu.

This is a terrible title. What actually happened was "Gamers deemed too fast for real-life Professional/Gentleman class"

It's a weak title for at least one more reason than that. Clicking through obviously isn't a Herculean effort, but without doing so I (and I suspect many others) would have had absolutely no idea what sort of competition was being described.

This is cool, but shouldn't be all that surprising. The article doesn't go into any metrics used to test beginner racing candidates.

It's essentially like pairing astronauts who have done extensive virtual testing with people who have limited field experience. You expect the former group to outdo the latter, but obviously they will underperform against those who have done extensive field work in space.

And so on. Many programs use virtual testing as a precursor to field work. So I'm not surprised that expert gamers who have probably clocked in near 10,000 hours of virtual racing can beat comparatively greenhorn racers who know how to drive a car but don't have much actual racing experience.

Am I the only one that was reminded of The Last Starfighter?

As opposed to discussing an article it seems that normality amongst HN is to now debate the choice of title.

Or sometimes the aesthetics and usability of the webpage the article is on.

Not that our meta-comments are much better.

Apparently iRacing <http://www.iracing.com/testimonials/>; has some value in helping drivers train for different tracks.

Perhaps when we can race real cars via remote control (with ultra low latency obviously) the gamers will rise :)

One might suspect the same could become of other genres cough FPS cough ;)

> One might suspect the same could become of other genres cough FPS cough ;)

Like America's Army?

I remember reading an anecdote about the development. Apparently the intent was a game that could be used to train real soldiers and it received millions of tax dollars of funding. However, as it was also intended to be sold to the public, the developers 'gamified' it because in playtests gamers saw it as 'boring' and even 'unrealistic' (because the basis for realism is usually Hollywood). This in turn made it too unrealistic for use as a detailed training program within the army.

I'm surprised they don't just keep the program alive underground and teach the drivers to shoot for second place among the amateurs.

It's not like they're incapable of driving slower.

And Surgeons who play video games are better surgeons… isn't the fact that intense game playing teaches skills clearly evident at this point?

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