Quote from SamH :

hehe.. well, we can all favour an individual sim over all others. I'm well-known for my LFS fanboyism but recently I've come to realise that the sport of simracing is bigger than just "our corner of the market". Sure, I'm only happy when I'm racing in LFS, but it doesn't *have* to mean that I hate all other sims, or that I must criticise them at every opportunity. Though I have done, and often, I gotta stop doing that. Sim racing as a sport is now very important to me.. and it's something I want to help get recognised in the real world. It's a bit of a paradigm shift, but I really think it's worth doing

[edit] and what she said ^^^

What He and She said

Wow, i was'nt expecting such erudite replys,

I was'nt suggesting to kick up a sim v sim competition/argument, merely a driver v driver situation, just to see how the likes of Bawbag/Biggie/Biohazard etc would compete with the likes of Gregor Huttu and his peers.

But i can see how such a competition would stir up the old emotions and end in the old my dads bigger than your dad thing.

Certainly the one sim and one sim only route's not the way to go, think of all those talented developers picking up their dole cheques every week as a result.

Dunno, it was just something thats been lurking around the back of my mind since joining LFS and coming across the likes of Flotch and Biohazard etc online and seeing them driving impossibly quickly, and wondering how they'd stack up against some of the other well know names in sim racing. And i'm sure it would be relatively easy to sell a "World Sim Racing Championship" to a sponsor.

Maybe one day....... lets hope.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Actually the opposite is true. In Europe broadcast regulations are preventing me from airing the STCC as a show in its own right on television because it would constitute a half an hour advertisement for a single commercial product, namely LFS. I can do a one off, or a program that includes STCC as well as other sims, but I cannot make a "Sim Touring Car Cup" program, unless I can get recognition from the olympic commission that sim racing is a sport (need 20k CTRA registered drivers (names & email) just for a start) - not an olympic one, but just recognition as a sport. Dealing with the olympic commission isnt easy, their bribe level is higher than the FIA.

...

Not questioning what you said but what you said sounds a bit strange to me. There have been many TV shows about Counterstrike games, for example, that haven't been one-off shows, at least here in Finland. (I say, in Finland because in Finland our beloved spokesmen of the people go into extremes with being EU legal. If a potate needs to be red we spraypaint it. So if it can be done in Finland, I doubt why it couldn't be done in UK...) There have been many other examples where a game or games have been the main thing in the shows, like the gameshows in the 90s where you could call your phone and use the phone as your control or the later ones were the players are in a studio environment. But in essence those are very similar as a spectator intertainment point of view...

I understand that the issue may be about is simracing as a sport and a sport that can be done only with certain software - which may seem like a sponsor. But to be honest I don't see any difference with simracing show and a real racing show. The real ones are filled with sponsorship ads. Watching the V8 supercars you have the Toyota leaderboard and NOS&HKS time difference gizmo. They actually use those names! Or in a chess/snooker game the make of the table/chess pieces/referee's underpants is shown in LARGE text.

Summa summarum, I don't see any difference why a "Dodge Daytona 500 sponsored by Cokaine cola on" is more real sport than the "Overpower UF Aston endu 72h race". Or why the latter needs some kind of approval - I doubt there are over 20000 oval racers in UK either so how come they can show that too? Maybe I missed something but it just doesn't add up...

Hyperactive, yep.. this has been my counter-argument too. In the UK, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) was swallowed up by OFCOM (in 2003 iirc), and has made the whole question/answer a lot more muddy. The person who gave this info to Becky (who's now gone off to get drunk, to celebrate her new job) is a TV producer, but I think is talking from the back of his pelvis. Still, it's a consideration, although I don't think it's make-or-break. If what the guy says is correct, it's easily countered by incorporating the STCC in a weekly broadcast, covering all sim racing, where the STCC race happens one week in 4. This way, the programme is not solely LFS-oriented - if indeed this is in fact an issue, come the crunch.

Has anyone thought of contacting Motorstv about this?, they run a racing sim program 3dmotors (which IMO is dieing for some more sim content).

I've been trying to get MotorsTV on my bloody TV. I've had it with Virgin Media, and I'm ordering a couple of sky boxes.

@Becky: If you sell it as part of eSport, this all should be easier

I swore to myself that I wouldn't reply when I looked at these forum because i'm drunk, and infact, realising now that the words are slipping out of my head as I write this, i'm not going too... I'll come back to the valid questions and try to give them a valid answer, there's a lot I havn't spoken about. One thing I want to clear up though I think I said European law when I meant British law - I was pitching to broadcast from Britain on a satelitte that covered Europe, but as I say i'm a bit too drunk right now to go (damned typos are getting at me too) into any details so I will come back to this.

*hic*

judging by how drunk you are i assume the job pays well ?
anyway grats on the new job

Wow that actually reads pretty well. Oh God I hurt.

Quote :

My next question however is this.. With the current culture of 'my sim is better than your sim' amongst racers, how easy do you think integration between sims will be to achieve?

That's something that a lot of people in the sim communities will always squabble over, but provided those people organising events and keeping the sport moving forward dont get caught up in it then all will be well, drivers can have their preference, as long as organisers remain above it.

Quote :

Will differing sims be thought of in the same way as differing forms of motorsport (eg F1 vs Nascar vs Touring Car etc) ?

Herein lies exactly how we have to rise above it. Forget the old ways, for sim racing to move forward it has to rely on the strengths of its various competitions. Forget 'LFS' world championships, and think more along the lines of 'STCC' and 'SSCA Endurance' and various others. The leagues are what is important, what drives the leagues is fairly tertiary.

Tbh, i've got so much software in the works for season 2 of STCC that LFS is a fairly minimal part of the whole thing. All the major leagues use a lot of supporting software now, from real time applications to web management back ends. The sim that is used is just one part of the equation.

Quote :

Not questioning what you said but what you said sounds a bit strange to me.

The whole thing surrounding the problem the STCC is facing in getting TV coverage is actually quite convoluted. There's more than one aspect too, on the one hand there is a regulatory issue that the show as originally envisioned isn't legal to broadcast in the UK - which is really frustrating - because Scawen needs to eat and put fuel in his BMW. We can get around that by pitching as an eSport but we dont want too, we wnt to pitch as a motor racing event, eSports have a different audience and frankly it's a tiny one. I spoke to the guy who broadcasted the eSports world championships across the world last year and in his words "It was a lot of effort for a show that nobody watched.".

Independent television in the UK accounts for a grand total of 30,000 viewers. This is all the viewers of ALL the non-mainstream 6 channels. 30,000 viewers is nothing, we've already eclipsed that in the past with STCC and I believe Vykos has too. Traditional broadcasters are already looking toward on demand television as the future, so the sim racing culture of trying to break into the traditional market is somewhat against the trend. The problem here is real TV being considered as 'better' because TV is still a miracle in the eyes of the consumer, and we are consumers. The fact is that the internet is much bigger than television, we as sim broadcasters need to come to understand this and figure out how to maximise our coverage and publicity.

Thinking about it, why would STCC or any other league broadcast to a smaller audience on television in a limited number of countries, broadcasted at a particular time on a particular day and have adverts thrown in by the television channel when all that could be done from a web site to reach an international audience at any time (on demand) and have adverts thrown in by us instead?

The first step in moving this sport forward now, I believe, is for the wider world to see us as a sport. The FIA have already proven and stated quite clearly that their only interest is in selling licences for games. They dont see Sim Racing as a sport. In the UK the MSA is equally naive and yet wonders why numbers in karting are falling. Some other countries have better luck, NASA in the US and the SBF in Sweden have already embraced sim racing so there is hope for the future for official world wide recognition for sim racing.

However, getting official recognition from any sporting body with sufficient real world clout would do the job, which is why I will soon be holding a conference with key players in both communities with the aim of achieving this. I'm currently researching an alternative way...

If Sim Racing is officially a sport then a lot of hurdles are removed for league organisers, along with a governing body to further promote the sport and help league organisers there is a lot of potential for the development of the sport as a professional past time.

Without organising and unifying each league organiser is still on their own, with whatever skills they have at their personal disposal, and sim racing will never amount to more than the skill, time and dedication of what 1 person can achieve. That isn't going to make the sport grow.

Mazz,

You're not the first to suggest it and as a matter of fact Shaun and I have discussed something like it.. Maybe someday in the future

we think it's a great idea..

Implementing it may be a bit of a task..

Darin

Quote from Mazz4200 :

Hi Darin, here's a little thought i've had rattling through my aging and slightly potty brain for a while now.

For many a year the name Gregor Huttu has been well know as probably the best sim racer on the planet. As far as i know he and almost all of the quickest guys from GPL migrated into GTL/GTR and Rfactor. But since i moved to LFS and raced against some of the quickest guys here, i've always wondered how our "Aliens" would compare with the likes of Gregor Huttu et al.

You seem to have both contacts and influence in most of the popular racing sims out there, kinda like middle men if you will. So, do you think it would be possible to arrange some sort of Inter-Sim Championship ? i.e a round at an LFS track, then another at an Rfactor track, GTR, GTL etc. Obviously it would take a tremendous amount of cooperation and time from the drivers and organisers etc.

Perhaps if each sim has some kind of playoff to find maybe 3 or 4 guys to represent their sim and then all come together to race in a "World Sim Championship". I can imaging the viewing figures would be quite high if SRT ran the races live.
Granted there will be problems with familiarisation and a driver not having such and such sim. But, if i knew one of my guys were competing and in a sense representing me and my game, i would'nt mind giving a few quid to buy him another sim (hopefully others would feel the same way to).

It's just a thought, don't be afraid to say it's a crap idea, and feel free kick me back under my rock.

I'd like to say a few things on the subject of sim vs sim..

There is not one perfect sim.. All the sims out there have components to make a perfect sim. Matter of fact, Im sure you'll see an SRT segment on what Shaun and I feel would make the perfect sim.

LFS definitely has a lot of those components.. I can say now from experience ( I raced in the MOE event today) that it has it's short comings in some areas as well. One of my complaints is that I was literally lost out there today on the track. Especially after I flipped the car and was able to Shift - P back to the pits and start all over..

Now when I say lost.. I mean I had no idea where my closest competition was. I have the map, but it doesn't give me any reference has to who is near me. I also had no idea what was going on with my tires, or damage to the car...It's probably me not being familiar with the F9 - F12 screens.

On the other hand.. One thing I really liked about the LFS enduro experience was the driver swaps being seemless.

Bottom line is.. For rfactor, it depends on the mod.. When you find the good ones, they can be really good and feel just as real as LFS.. There's honestly some really horrible mods out there as well that feel worse than the old Pole Position..

Thats one area that LFS beats rF, the quality of the cars and their feel on average. With no quality control in the rF world, LFS beats rF hands down..But rF beats LFS in a lot of categories as well..

Anyway.. I can go on for hours.. SRT will be covering all forms of sim racing because we feel there's real racing in every one of them.. From back in the Nascar 1 days on Hawaii to LFS, rFactor, ARCA, NR2003 and the Sim Bin titles, it's all racing.. It may not have had as real a feel, but my adrenaline was pumping the same.. Thats what it's all about...

Oh and on the subject of Greger Huttu vs Bawbag, etc.. For a while in our communities we've referred to them as Aliens.. Put Greger in LFS and he will be an Alien... Put Bawbag in rF and Im sure the results would be the same..

I would be interested to see the two or a similar pairing go head to head.. There's also some amazing drivers in the world of stock car sims. Derek Wood comes to mind.. This guy is fast in anything I've seen him in. GTP cars, Trans Am, Stock cars, you name it.. Put him against Greger and Bawbag and Im sure he'd give em a run..Putting it together is another story.. Maybe in one of my SSCA endurance races someday

Speaking of.. How about an LFS team driving in my 8 Hours of Nurburg? Shaun and I ran in your community (which we feel at home in by the way).. how about some of you come over to ours for a race.. Shaun and I will take you under our wings and it would actually make for a great story.. Some of the best rfactor drivers participate in the SSCA races.

Quote from DarinSRT :

[...]Especially after I flipped the car and was able to Shift - P back to the pits and start all over..

Now when I say lost.. I mean I had no idea where my closest competition was. I have the map, but it doesn't give me any reference has to who is near me.[...]

That's only down to the organisators being (overly) generous... Flipped your car? Tough luck, you're out... Better luck next time...

The fact that people somehow got round it by sticking your two races together shouldn't distract from the fact you were out of the race...

I'm not denying that LfS has many shortcomings, but that has to be the worst point ever to criticize LfS...

Quote from bbman :

That's only down to the organisators being (overly) generous... Flipped your car? Tough luck, you're out... Better luck next time...

The fact that people somehow got round it by sticking your two races together shouldn't distract from the fact you were out of the race...

I'm not denying that LfS has many shortcomings, but that has to be the worst point ever to criticize LfS...

I mostly agree with this, though it's become something of a tradition in LFS endurance racing that flipping/getting stuck in the sand doesn't mean the end of your race. This is, again, mostly down to the incompleteness of some of the sim's features (damage model, safety cars/full course yellows, some odd flipping/sand behavior, etc).

Also, Darin, while I agree that LFS is feature-incomplete, there are lots of creative and useful workarounds for problems like the one you've mentioned. The LFS Tracker, which keeps track of the overall running order despite disconnects and Shift-Ps, was in use throughout the 12hr race and would have given your team (and you, with the help of TS or Vent) an idea of who you were racing against.

Darin please, if you watch only this race all this names were on same pace as Bawbag: [n1lyn, Jonesy_, Sracer, Jay, Vince, DreaF, Clownpaint] and don't make Bawbag like king of LFS! And there are some other names who haven't drove this race but they still can win Bawbag
And yeh, they all are aliens
___________

F9-F12 are great when you get used to them and know everything about them....
Map is ok, it can't be bigger, you have to learn what color means what on map! I hope we'll get new color for restricted cars soon, someone should suggest that in suggestion forum
Be thankful for any kind of map, irl you don't see anything (i think in GTR, GTR2 you also can't see map), but you have your team mates, LFS Race Spectator and they can inform you just like irl ^^

Quote from Origamiboy :

..... but it seems everything may be a bit too fragmented for the public as a whole to take sim racing seriously.

Even if only twenty-two of you take it seriously, I'll come to watch you race.

@Darin: you guys should consider a dedicated LFS correspondent, because you are constantly missing the mark on several points and it seems to be only due to a lack of knowledge of the interface, features and culture of Live For Speed, not due to a lack of enthusiasm or effort on your part to showcase LFS on your show.

To speak with authority on any subject, the speaker or writer should truly know their subject. You guys don't appear to know it well enough to speak credibly on its behalf, at this time. I can admire your drive and enthusiasm, but please take some time to slow down and smell the roses.

In reponse to Darin feeling lost in race. I agree LFS itself does not provide adequate support, but LFS has something Rfactor does not which is called insim. The community has provided some applications which gives you info on these things via the insim interface. I use LFSrelax which would have done the task Darin refers to quite nicely.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Actually the opposite is true. In Europe broadcast regulations are preventing me from airing the STCC as a show in its own right on television because it would constitute a half an hour advertisement for a single commercial product, namely LFS.

If you had enough support from the community that the game publishers all wanted a piece of the action, you could provide some sort of competitive contract - each year the publishers would compete to be the STCC sim - that way, you could get around the 'single commercial product' issue without having to use multiple software applications...
I guess at this stage, requiring them to bid would be out of the question, but some sort of open vote in RSC or some equivalent multi sim forum might be adequate ?

Quote :

...I cannot make a "Sim Touring Car Cup" program, unless I can get recognition from the olympic commission that sim racing is a sport (need 20k CTRA registered drivers (names & email) just for a start) - not an olympic one, but just recognition as a sport. Dealing with the olympic commission isnt easy, their bribe level is higher than the FIA.

It's not really surprising. If the olympic commission let any marginal hobbyists define their own sports without stringent rules, all the existing sports they ratify would be devalued, and the organization would become a laughing stock. If sim racing truly is a 'sport', then it should be easy enough to fulfill their requirements!

Quote :

For sim racing to reach a wider, larger market, we have to use more than one sim in order to proove the point that commercial interests are not what matters. The sport has to be stronger than the "computer game".
.........

The future of the sport definately lies in inter-sim collaboration, as far as I am concerned.

I don't think it's viable having the public face of sim-racing spread over multiple sims.
If the different sims all have to be involved (and I agree they do), have a qualifying series for each sim, and have the premier publicly aired series use one sim per season - chosen competitively by some fixed set or rules agreed upon by all 'manufacturers'.

--------------------------

Having said all that, I personally don't think sim racing is going to 'happen' as a spectator sport any time soon.
No-one outside of the community is remotely interested - they think we are a bunch of overgrown obsessed nerdy children ! (I tend to agree )
The only people who are interested who aren't actually sim-racers (includes drifters and cruisers) are hoping to make a buck out of the ones who are.

I've been sim racing on and off since 1999, even when I'm not actively racing, I'm following the news, and keeping up with developments. I watched exactly one of the STCC broadcasts. I though the quality was high, and I was entertained, so why have I only watched one? On TV, there are numerous real racing series and any of them provides a far higher entertainment level. Drivers are putting their lives and careers on the line, manufacturers gamble millions of $$ on the outcome of races that can be decided by a mistake in the pits or a change in the weather, the skill level is extreme and the physical conditions demanding. This is high drama - the highs are exhilarating, the lows are gut wrenching, the participants are gladiators and heroes, all good spectator sports have these features, and they just aren't there in sim racing - they're not there in sim anything.

I don't want to be negative, I think that the STCC and CTRA have done some great things for sim racing, and that Becky and Sam are hero's of this community. However, I'm not being devils advocate here - I really don't think the world is ready for sim racing as a spectator sport, and until there is high risk, melodrama, celebrity and danger involved, I don't think it's ever going to be. Maybe when we get to the stage where 'virtual' skill is valued as highly as real world skill, the situation may improve, but we're never going to get around the fact that sport is all about physical challenge, and what very limited physical challenge there is in sim sport is not visible to the spectators. Maybe close up reaction shots of the racers faces as the get flipped by a physics bug will help (seriously), but thats a long way off I fear.

An example that highlights at least part of this is the Intel Racing Tour. Just having a big prize to win or lose made a huge difference to the spectator appeal at least for me. I was far more interested by the outcome of the intel racing tour than any other sim event that I was not a participant in. Even though there was no replay or 'broadcast' (at least that I was aware of), and that it was only for Germans. The fact that the losers really lost something and the winner really won something - there was real risk that spectators could empathise with.

Anyway, thats enough negativity for now

cheers, and please don't take this post the wrong way.

Col

if you felt lost on track Darin, then I have to put that on some lack of preparation. Every other team uses in MoE Teamspeak for communication, there are always people telling the drivers what's going on, Using tools like the RaceSpec and the official Moe-tracker. Due to the fact, that when you are flipped, your endurance experienced would have been over IRL too, you should call yourself happy, to be able to continue the race Why should a sim provide then some help in positions actually? The thirdparty tools do that enough, and as I said again: You and/or the team you drove in was then not well enough prepared. I'm actually frightened that you will put a little wrong view on this subject, as the race showed for all the well prepared teams, that it was close, that infos were where they belong and every team had it's helping teamleaders/pit-talkers at hand.

Actually that's more real than any computervoice telling me to pit next lap....

e.g.: We recalculated our last two stints and that put us very close to third place, put some pressure on cyber, they did the mistake and we finally could ensure a podium, after being in the race for first place till hour 5 or so and then dropping back due to own mistakes and bad luck.

Damn Col you are right.
If there is something to win it's much more interesting, I know how big drama it was for me in OPS league where i almost lost prize because of bad qualify

I think this is mostly why i stopped with public racing, even if there is nothing to win, like in MoE, i like to race that more then on public pick up races because competition is so high and if you made good result there that's something and if you do only one mistake it costs and it costs a lot.

I hope awards will be soon big part of sim racing, but we can't have them if we don't have sponsors, and we can't have sponsors if we don't have spectators, and there is no spectators if there is no broadcast, but if there is broadcast with no awards involved no one will watch... and it all goes in circles

1st, sorry for kinda hijacking this thread

I had another thought related to sim sports being interesting to spectators.

If you look at sports in the wider world, then generally, the sports that have large crowds of spectators are more appealing to the television audience. It as if the real spectators at the event help to connect the TV viewers to the event in a more real way. Look at the way TV sport producers use spectator reaction shots to much - it makes the TV viewer feel like they are part of that group right there at the match/race/game. Its a huge part of the enjoyment - being part of a large group sharing the ups and downs - the glory and the pain. (look at the way politicians and celebrities use this dynamic - just watch baseball to see big name celebs 'connecting' with their public by going to the game)

How can sim sport achieve a similar effect?

For the participants, it would be feasible to have close up reaction shots, that are edited into the action - similarly to how some motor racing have in-car cams pointing at the drivers face, but how could we provide cues to connect the individual 'live' spectators to each other to provide a group experience ? and how can we present that group in the edited race broadcast ?
Those are much more difficult challenges.
I guess we wait until processors and bandwidth are good enough so that we can have Massively Multi-spectator Online Sports (... hmm need to add an H to that MMOSH is better than MMOS IMO lol.) where you could actually see the other spectators sitting in seats - with webcams tracking their real faces and pasting them onto avatars - and mics mixing their chears into the ambient audio...
Maybe thats when sim-sports will start becoming a seriously viable business endevour ?

Col

Its not just visual reactions that would achieve that Col, but audio clips from teams TS servers interjected at approprate times would give some insite for the viewers, I think the sort of quality broadcasts by the likes of STCC and MOE in the past are top notch, and are getting better and better with each release. Once established I think Simsports could offer more to the viewer in an "on demand" way like TV is going anyway.

and with addon,s like the "trackcam"? that was used during last years moe broadcast to give different, and more realistic camera positions ect, and the style of commentary makes a big step into producing shows people want to watch and keep watching.

SD.

I too would find spectating much more enjoyable if there was more there to connect the sim racing to the people behind them. This would be much more feasible at some sort of LAN event, cameras infront and behind each person, another camera on the pedals perhaps. Actually have all the drivers together at the podium at the end, film people shaking hands and generally looking happy together. I like the audio idea also.

As anyone at the last LFS UK meeting will attest, it was good being able to talk with everyone you just raced straight after the race.

Sim Racing is already doing the right things to attract spectators and we're getting better at it too, the appeal threshold was crossed a while ago and a number of leagues, not just my own, have reached reasonable audiences. tbh, I got wrapped up in going to telly next year and then pursued it for a while only to realise I would be broadcasting to a smaller audience if I kept on walking down that path.

What sim sport needs isn't prizes. We already have off track drama (although we dont report it very well because of visual media limitations at the moment), we have the on track drama.

What we dont have is the publicity. That, put simply, is all that is needed.

Public relations & Marketing is what sim racing needs.

The top broadcasts also need to work together to pool resources, X-Cam and other TV camera style programs are an absolute minimum - if I see another broadcast where the camera focus' on 1 car again I will scream! rFactor needs to implement some form of insim. LFS needs to improve it's graphics. Aside from that though, what we need is the current sim broadcasters sharing and pooling resources and working together to bring all our developments and resources together.

Then we can have a winner.

In my league I have a format designed for spectators, good camera control software and obsene bandwidth hosting. The pre and post race show sucks, I mean REALLY sucks. I've got X-Start for use at the end of this season and start of next season to improve it a little, but the bottom line is this part of the show sucks.

The SSCA format isn't spectator friendly. The camera follows one car and the director cuts are not neat. Pit stops are as eventful as LFS' (GTR2 has got this right with the graphics settings on high). It needs a highlight show rather than a full 12 hour livecast.

PSRL suffers SSCA camera problems, and will put 15 drivers on the grid with exactly the same F1 car and paint job. It just doesnt make sense.

We can all improve, but we've all already proven that we can draw large numbers of spectators, what we need to do is help each other to get better, work together, share resources, share technology, share expertise and recruit some commentators who speak Korean.

Then we need to publicise much better. There's no point putting a post in for a show to get spectators at RSC and LFS. That's not enough. We need to be in the mainstream media.