Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

N2003 yes; RBR... no way. That's always been one of my peevs about RBR TBH, it just really doesn't look during replays like the car is interacting with the roadsurface. At least not to me. Sure, on large bumps, you can see a reaction but the rest of the time the general impression is like the car is hovering awfully smoothly on the course.

I disagree: http://torttu.net/temp/rbr/slomo_test.avi (15 MB)

I also agree but a different thing irritates me in RBR, which is the weight transfer. That slomo vid probably shows RBR at its best but if you watch some WR record replays, it looks pretty weird...

Quote :

with those cartoony no suspension movements there is not even the "I" of the word "immersion"..

I'm sure that's what got me hooked on LFS. Watching the replays, or driving around from the TV camera perspective, just watching the car interact with the road. I'd never seen anything like it...

Quote from deggis :

How about RBR & N2003? In certain situations those are even more convincing.

rbr has those very static surreal looking wheels ... it looks like the car is actually on the road but the car itself looks a lote like its part of an arcade game
and ive never played nr2k3

Best looking cars I've seen are the RH2004 and Prototype C mods for F1C99-02. Even the brakes glow dynamically. Unfortunately, the cars don't look like they're attached to the track in ISI replays.

edit update: forgot to include a link to a video:

f1chktv.wmv

Best suspension view while driving and in replays that I've seen was in a budget racer (maybe because the movement is exaggerated), Ford Racing 2. Sample videos:

fr2stk.wmv
fr2stk1.wmv

Quote from AndroidXP :

On RSC they mostly live in fairytale dreamland.
PS: "Get back on topic, NOW!"

LMAO

rfactor has quite an impressive feel of weight and momentum behind it that lfs sometimes lacks. Get badly out of shape and there are just situations you can't recover from, unlike LFS.
Steering feel with standard settings is utterly atrocious - with custom file fiddling it is improved, but still nowhere near as subtle as LFS.

is there a bumper cam on rfactor? if no, this is simply the reason why i won't drive it.

Quote from ZORER :

is there a bumper cam on rfactor? if no, this is simply the reason why i won't drive it.

you drive with the bumper cam? illepall

Quote from Madman_CZ :

you drive with the bumper cam? illepall

you drive with a real and virtual cockpit? illepall

The only way to drive a simulation is from the cockpit

your own, not a pretend one stuck over the windscreen

Look, the reason you should be driving from cockpit is cause it's the best view to gauge the width of your car...

Quote from Nard :

Look, the reason you should be driving from cockpit is cause it's the best view to gauge the width of your car...

Why? You can't see the car, so the chase view is the best for that.

I got your point, just joking.

Quote from Blowtus :

your own, not a pretend one stuck over the windscreen

But you don't have your own in your room, do you? So i need a pretend one, because it feels like i am in a car..

Quote from ZORER :

is there a bumper cam on rfactor? if no, this is simply the reason why i won't drive it.

Aren't driving / camera / cockpit views configurable in rFactor via ini/cfg files? All previous isi titles are.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

But you don't have your own in your room, do you? So i need a pretend one, because it feels like i am in a car..

I have a seat, steering wheel, pedals. Sure, they don't look particularly realistic, but I find the driving experience more realistic having them real and slightly funny looking, instead of looking fantastic and stuck on what I use as my windscreen...
I don't mind that others think differently - but I do think this 'troo hardkaw sim racers only use cockpit view' business is a little funny

I've even moved my monitor a little to the left so I sit in front of the right hand side of it

Quote from Blowtus :

I have a seat, steering wheel, pedals. Sure, they don't look particularly realistic, but I find the driving experience more realistic having them real and slightly funny looking, instead of looking fantastic and stuck on what I use as my windscreen...
I don't mind that others think differently - but I do think this 'troo hardkaw sim racers only use cockpit view' business is a little funny

I've even moved my monitor a little to the left so I sit in front of the right hand side of it

But cockpit view isn't about using your monitor as a windscreen. It is a view from inside the car. Thinking of the monitor as the windscreen surely won't help with immersion or simulation. When you drive your car you don't look at your windscreen, you look at the scene ahead. Your immediate environment (the cockpit) blocks your view in places making an open panorama impossible to achieve. Bumper cam provides an open panorama with no obstruction to the scene ahead. Other views have similar drawbacks where the whole car can be seen while driving or the view is from an impossible perspective like the roof or bonnet for example. The people you stereotype as hardcore sim racers are simply people who realise that any other view other than an in-car or cockpit view will give less immersion, be less realistic and give an impossible open and/or unobstructed panorama laid out before them. If a person is trying to provide the most realistic environment in which to operate their simulator then they will usually learn how to use cockpit or in-car view. The "business you find a little funny" is a logical approach to sim racing, not a hardcore approach. You might call it hardcore or think of it that way but those who prefer it and try to suggest its benefits are acting on logical ideas and in practice it does indeed seem to make a difference to the immersion and realism even if only on a basic level. In comparison with a bumper or chase cam, cockpit or in-car view is always going to be the more realistic option from a driver's perspective. Regardless of field of view capabilities or the impossibility of simulating peripheral vision, being surrounded by a cockpit is always going to provide the more realistic immersion for a simulator. So I would argue that it isn't necessarily accurate to say those who prefer cockpit view are hardcore sim racers. Having to learn the footprint of the car, its boudaries and so on, from the cockpit is similar in real life when you first drive an unfamiliar vehicle.

Cockpit view helps me feel like I'm controlling the simulator. Bumper cam and other external or oddly-placed cams makes me feel like I'm just driving through a simulation. I think that is perhaps the best way I can describe it.
I hope this helps improve the understanding of the reasoning behind the ideal of cockpit view, no matter which view you might prefer.

Quote from Gunn :

But cockpit view isn't about using your monitor as a windscreen. It is a view from inside the car. Thinking of the monitor as the windscreen surely won't help with immersion or simulation. When you drive your car you don't look at your windscreen, you look at the scene ahead. Your immediate environment (the cockpit) blocks your view in places making an open panorama impossible to achieve. Bumper cam provides an open panorama with no obstruction to the scene ahead.

When I drive a car I can see the scene ahead in far better detail than cockpit view allows. Selecting a view that comes closest to simulating this ability to see the world outside my car gives me the best sense of immersion. When I turn cockpit view on I feel like I'm driving a silly attempt at a simulator - when I have it off I'm much better able to focus on just driving. This is how I personally find it - for you to think you can tell me the view to use for my own best feeling of immersion is laughable.

Quote from Blowtus :

- for you to think you can tell me the view to use for my own best feeling of immersion is laughable.

For you to think I was doing so is rediculous. I even used several words to make sure that my post was of an informative nature, not accusative.

If you aim at nothing, you will surely hit it. You just hit the bull's eye.

Sorry, I guess I just found stuff like "Regardless of field of view capabilities or the impossibility of simulating peripheral vision, being surrounded by a cockpit is always going to provide the more realistic immersion for a simulator." a little... arrogant? I'm more than happy for you to find your view the best - I'm a reasonably intelligent, logical, interested person, and I don't find your chosen view the best. We have a difference of opinion As far as I can see we both have logical and reasonable reasons for our selected views.

Quote from Blowtus :

Sorry, I guess I just found stuff like "Regardless of field of view capabilities or the impossibility of simulating peripheral vision, being surrounded by a cockpit is always going to provide the more realistic immersion for a simulator." a little... arrogant?

I have no control over the shortcomings of using a flat screen to depict a 3D environment. I'm not the cause of the problem, I have nothing to be arrogant about.

If I were to just post an opinion rather than an insight I would simply say: "the presence of cockpit view does not by default make the software a simulator, but the absence of a cockpit view by default makes it an arcade game". But even in light of this opinion, my reasoning for favouring the cockpit view is the same as before. And I don't harbour ill-feelings towards those who don't or won't use the cockpit, I'm just trying to show why others might use it and that it isn't really about being hardcore, it's just about being in the car. Driving from inside the car is just a logical outcome and it is natural to pursue this line. It isn't an elitist ideal or anything like that, if you know what I mean.

'I use this view because it's more realistic' would seem to be a far more elitist view than 'I use this view because I find it more realistic'

I still don't get it. Suppose I had myself a car chassis / seat / steering wheel etc, and a big screen mounted in place of the windscreen. That would seem a pretty decent setup yeah? You wouldn't want a cockpit view on that, would you?

Folks, currently the most realistic view to play driving simulations is sitting in a real car surrounded by monitors, or a big screen with multiple beamers projecting the picture around you.

Debating about what is realistic on a 19 inch monitor is quite... controversial, because right now there's no way to have a realistic 1:1 view in LFS. It would be quite close, if we used cockpit camera and set the FOV to about 30°, so the most you'd see from the cockpit would be a little stripe on the lower bit of the screen. Pretty much any view we can use is wrong, because the FOV is off by huge amounts on each one. Moving the camera forward in cockpit so you just see the hood? Unrealistic. Turning off the cockpit? The same. Using bumper cam? Even more so. Using chase cam? Let's not talk about this.

Now, setting aside the FOV issue, there's nothing to debate - the cockpit view is clearly the most realistic. But I have to agree with Blowtus here, Gunn, you're mixing objectivity with subjectivity. Defining what is realistic is rather objective, because you can do scientific research and testing on it. But you can't simply say what is more immersive, as it is different for each person - it's a 100% subjective thing. It would be like saying the colour green looks better than the colour blue. Or oranges taste better than apples.
Blowtus might aswell be more immersed by using a bumper cam. You won't believe it, but there are even alot of people who feel immersion when playing an ISI sim, whereas for me it feels like playing an unrealistic hovercraft sim with the default wheel FF effects you can try out in the control panel. Each to his own.

Here we go again with LFS vs my socks illepall . I myself play LFS , rFac , GTR and Richard Burns and i like them all . All those games have differente aspects , making them real hard to compare to one another . rFac arcade ? What a joke !!! Try playing rFac with no helps at all and then tell me if its still an arcade game illepall . Everyone has differente tastes , one likes pizza the other macaronni , so the one that started this post should be fartted on 4 times

Quote from W1ldPort75 :

Here we go again with LFS vs my socks illepall . I myself play LFS , rFac , GTR and Richard Burns and i like them all . All those games have differente aspects , making them real hard to compare to one another . rFac arcade ? What a joke !!! Try playing rFac with no helps at all and then tell me if its still an arcade game illepall . Everyone has differente tastes , one likes pizza the other macaronni , so the one that started this post should be fartted on 4 times

QFT!!

Except for the fart part