Videogame Driving Skills Don't Apply In Real Life 241
the digital nomad writes "When driving cars in videogames, you're often forced to see everything from a third-person perspective. Now, what would happen if you tried to drive while limited to that odd view in real life? These folks decided to find out."
Night Driver FTW (Score:5, Interesting)
I still credit the training I received for playing long hours of Night Driver [wikipedia.org] with saving my life in 1981. I was cresting a hill late at night on a two-lane country road when I was suddenly faced with an oncoming car in my lane. Using the exact same right-left swerve that I practiced so many times in the video game, I avoided a head-on collision by hitting the shoulder just in time, and got off the shoulder before sliding down the ditch.
The real question should be "Would I have still missed him had I not played so much Night Driver?" There's no way to answer that, of course, but for now I'll stick with the "my anecdotal evidence runs counter to your theory" attitude.
Re:Night Driver FTW (Score:5, Funny)
I used to play a lot of Rad Racer as a kid. While taking my first driving lesson the driving instructor chided me for turning the wheel left and back to center then right and back to center in order to keep the car going the way I wanted it to. She immediately grabbed the wheel and strongly suggested the car would go the way I pointed it, at which point I realized a wheel doesn't behave the way an NES d-pad does.
True story.
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I tried parachuting out of a moving car after playing Just Cause 2.
Didn't work so well...
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I used to play a lot of Rad Racer as a kid.
I played way too much Excite Bike. Unfortunately I don't own a motorcycle. Also, the DOT frowns on placing large ramps on the road.
Re:Night Driver FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you've joking about Rad Racer but it reminds me of a game that really did help me once.
So as for the main title, i.e. @"Videogame Driving Skills Don't Apply In Real Life" ... I totally disagree with this idea. Games really do help.
When I went to America (for the 1st time), I got a hire car. Problem was I had never driven on what I consider the wrong side of the road! (I'm from the UK). That plus I had never driven an Automatic car and I had been awake for over 24 hours straight, which made my first faltering few miles scarily interesting (to say the least) until I happily found the first hotel, which I jumped at the chance of stopping at.
The next day I took a cab into the city and during my initial exploring I by luck found an arcade and so I spent over 2 hours solidly playing Crazy Taxi, driving like a psycho around every road. After 2 hours solid my brain was reprogrammed enough so that I automatically took left and right turns correctly for American roads etc... I wanted to get to the point it was totally second nature for me to do the right thing.
That game helped me so much. After that point it was automatic for me to drive ok on the roads and my 2 week holiday out there, I didn't even attempt to make one mistaken turning after my training on Crazy Taxi.
So games really can be very helpful.
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I had GTA Vice City for PS2, and an icestorm hit. My car was frozen in place, and I had a long weekend. So I just let it melt. Meanwhile with nothing better to do or no place to go, it was 3 days of GTA. I played in the virtual rain a lot and learned a lot about sliding around. I think it was one of the driving course things where you have to make it cross-island and back under a time limit, and I kept having to re-try.
Thaw came, I got in my car to go to Burger King. Pulled out the driveway, blew thro
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I watch LA drivers do this every day. Kids spend 10+ years driving with a d-pad/joypad before touching a real car.
Watch carefully for drivers changing lanes by bump-bump-bump, and avoid them.
Re:Night Driver FTW (Score:5, Funny)
When I was younger one of my favourite games to play was Road Rash. [wikipedia.org] and it saved MY Life back in 2005. I was riding along one evening when I was suddenly found riding along another motorcyclist. My natural instinct was to whip out my 5 foot chain, beat him with it senselessly until he wiped out into a traffic sign, and continue along at breakneck speeds, only to stop for some hookers and booze.
The real question should be "Is there any chance Jack Thompson is going to read this post?". There's no way to answer that, but for now I'll stick with the "By God I sure hope not" attitude.
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You're funny, but the video does not lead to the conclusion that game skills don't apply. An interesting experiment, but real life is not sitting in a dark cabin looking at an overhead monitor. We would have to compare driving skills of gamers and non-gamers, with similar experiences (accounting for country road drivers vs. city drivers), in order to even come close to such a conclusion.
Flight sims used to be very unrealistic, but they were still used and effective at giving people practice in uncommon si
Re:Night Driver FTW (Score:4, Informative)
Video game driving skills do apply to real life:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/sports/othersports/04nascar.html [nytimes.com]
http://www.dailytech.com/Champion+Gran+Turismo+Gamer+Becomes+Realworld+Racing+Champion/article17035.htm [dailytech.com]
Quote: At the camp, Ordoñez proved a natural at racing in real world cars. He found his "experience to be consistent in the laps and to know the perfect line in the tracks" had helped him to be able to recognize real-world braking points.
As for the article/story:
1) The camera angle was too low for the car, and it was fixed.
2) In GTA3 etc who cares about hitting small stuff like traffic cones?
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Yes, I wanted to point that one out too. I suspect that it also has a lot to do with how Gran Turismo aims to be a driving *simulator* and not so much a game. Most game designers drop a certain level of realism from their games to make them more fun, but the designers of GT are a) car nuts and b) totally of the mind that driving race cars is plenty of fun all by itself, thankyouverymuch.
To prove his point, and to prove that not only is GT realistic, but works well as a racing trainer, Gran Turismo's directo
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I think video game car skills do apply.
I can think of two times:
I was driving home from a ski trip, behind two other cars and one SUV. Car number one goes around a turn, slides on a patch of black ice, and plows into the mountainside. Car #2 brakes, takes it slowly, and slides out into the mountainside. SUV brakes, slides out, hits the mountainside. I hit the patch of black ice and controlled the slide using skills learned (no shit) in Gran Turismo and came out cleanly. Felt pretty bad ass - my friend was c
Re:Night Driver FTW (Score:4, Interesting)
the problem is that in the current driving school they teach you to drive in the fairly non standard conditions, at low speed and with good grip. you never get to experience what a car will do when understeering, oversteering, skidding, or on low traction surfaces. that on the assumption that you should always drive safely.
but you can foresee everything and always be safely driving - going on 20mph on interstates is unsafe as going at 150mph, as you're a sitting duck waiting to be tramped from the random right-overtaking truck.
the only way you get to experience the rubber effect of a car suddenly recovering from oversteering is in games. and that saved my ass:
I was overtaking a car, he was at 40mph and the road speed limit was 55, so I started overtaking him when suddenly one car coming out from a garage invaded the lane I was using for overtaking (which was totally clear without any other car incoming)
I hit the brakes with to much force, while turning to return into my lane, and that caused my smal subcompact car to oversteer and this is where a gamer experience came into place: instead of panicking and braking even more, I downshifted and floored the throttle, while counter steering, preventing the car to spin out. which is still something that an unexperienced driver could pull out, but then I anticipated the sudden grip regain putting the steering wheels straight so that when the suspension rebounded from the sudden force now again affecting the wheels, the car was on a neuter configuration and didn't had any sudden change of direction.
by then I had slowed enough to safely get behind the car I was overtaking and dodging the one that invaded the lane. and this happened in a fraction of a second - you can't think about this sort of stuff, you need to have the experience of how car handles while on extreme situations and you just don't get that on real life.
sure, if I had that playing need for spede by now I would be dead, thank god I played a lot of simulators of low power cars, much like mine
WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
What? When I play my racing games I'm in my seat with a G25 steering wheel playing "games" like iRacing.
And yes, the skills translate very well into real life. But don't take it from me, take it from the pros.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRacing.com [wikipedia.org]
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Your quote refers to learning the tracks not learning to operate a vehicle.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they're the same thing.
The learning of the track without the vehicle simulation is called a map.
If the skills didn't translate between the two, doing the in-game version wouldn't be useful at all.
Note that professional race car drivers up against the best gamers almost always win in Gran Turismo "shoot-outs" despite not being hard core gamers themselves; their in-car skills translate to in-game as well.
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their in-car skills translate to in-game as well.
Okay. But that doesn't mean that the inverse is true.
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http://www.dailytech.com/Champion+Gran+Turismo+Gamer+Becomes+Realworld+Racing+Champion/article17035.htm [dailytech.com]
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It kind of does. Get them playing something stupidly arcadey like Ridge Racer against the best gamers and things would be very different. If games like GT weren't so close to real life then the race drivers' skills would not apply. Sure some elements in the game are simpler than real life (thinking of stuff like modelling temperature and wear in tyres and the condition of the road surface etc, but some games even attempt to simulate that stuff), but the overall handling characteristics of cars in games thes
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Play Gran Turismo, inside cab view, with a steering wheel, pedals and a shifter, then were talking actual training.
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"God help us if a bunch of kids learned their driving skills from Need for Speed Underground series...."
Wait - this is a trick post, right? I thought ALL kids learned to drive exactly as you describe!
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The best defense is a good offense.
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The best defense is a good offense.
The worst offense requires the best defense money can buy.
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Even without that there are certainly benefits. Tracking multiple objects, extrapolating the path of other cars, watching the road ahead.
Sure, driving thrid person in the real world is extremely hard. Lots of people find it harder to drive a car in a video game compared to real life, but there certainly are some basic skills that video games can teach.
If you want to find out if driving games make people better drivers you have to test the real world, first person driving skills of people who play games vs
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed.
I've noticed my gear changes to be much smoother since I started playing Life for Speed, to the point that a passenger in the back seat commented on the car having a "smooth automatic transmission" while I was driving stick.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Interesting)
The other way around doesn't necessarily hold true. And even the best of the best can have problems against the hardcore gamers:
Video [youtube.com]
This is a Danish language video, but it pitches Tom Kristensen, Mr. Le Mans, eight time winner (a record) in the 24 hour Le Mans, including six times in a row against a Danish hardcore gamer and national champion in GT for the PS2. Game is GT for PS2 on the Le Mans circuit. [wikipedia.org]
Granted, not exactly a fair match-up, as Tom doesn't have much (if any) experience in that game, but he manages to do a 3:23 lap, which is pretty much what he expected to do before they played. By comparison the qualifying times for the 2009 Le Mans was 3:22.888 for pole position.
The gamer ended up at 3:15, which is an insane lap of Le Mans. Obviously not doable in real life, and I suspect most gamers would be scared shitless the first time they ended up in a situation where they feel the back-end sliding a bit, but the point remains - gamers can beat the pros at the games.
jeremy clarkson (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a top gear video a few years back where Jermey Clarkson ran laguna seca in gran turismo then drove the same car on laguna seca. His gran turismo time was something like 15 seconds faster per lap which he equated to the fact that you do not get the same sensations as you do in a car, and that you don't have to worry about any self preservation in a game itself so you take risks that you would NEVER do in a car.
As a track junkie i pretty much agree with this.
Easy. (Score:5, Informative)
Stop playing your driving games in third-person view.
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Amen, the first thing I do is toggle out of 3rd person view. And besides, these guys were pretty dorky about it. Too bad, because it looks like they had the exact right setup to test the theory, but they didn't allow any time to adjust to the perspective, which is NOT exactly like a video game. Let them drive the course a few times, and even these dorks could have done it as well as they would have in the game.
Re:Easy. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only that, the position of the camera is wrong. Notice that in the shots of GTA4, the camera is high enough that you can see the ground a few meters in front of the car. With the rig they set up, there's a massive blind spot that stretches 20-30 meters in front of the vehicle.
If they wanted to really duplicate the average video game, they would have had to make the camera boom a couple meters longer... and turn the boom into a hydraulic actuated arm than can be raised, lowered, and swung around the vehicle.
But the whole thing is rather silly, as the reason third person perspective is used in driving games is to get back some of the field of view that's lost when you're limited to a small computer screen. The video is cute, but all it proves is that a poor implementation of a poor substitute for real-world perspective isn't a good way to drive through an obstacle course.
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In other news, car analogies are 100% on-topic here.
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Grant and Jamie (mythbusters) have done something similar but more difficult, using an RC controller, while in a completely different vehicle. The only problems they have had is losing transmission with the controller, or trying to control a bus with bad steering linkage to begin with. It isn't easy, but they have done just fine, without the benefit of being in the vehicle and having a direct view of what they are controlling.
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They also had a horrifyingly bad angle, usually the third person camera is much further up then that.
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yup, MS wireless force feedback wheel, forza 3, bonnet view (i find that in cab view restricts what you see much more then real life), and away i am
I have a fair feeling that my race-gaming does indeed translate to real-life driving-skills, such as spotting ideal-lines and such
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I can't play a serious driving game in third person. Burnout Paradise on the other hand is all about watching your car get wrecked :)
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Well, this is the limitation of having one fixed view, in a real car you can turn your head slightly to get a 160-180 view. In games you do not have this freedom, so looking over the car gives "sortof" the same viewing freedom.
I find if I play racing-games from the cockpit view (games like Need for Speed, when it still was good), I'm limited in the game as I can't estimate how deep or far to take the corner as I would be IRL.
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Too bad the article
What?! (Score:5, Funny)
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No but you still need to jump over a pit or throw back something else if a Red Shell is after you.
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You mean banana peels DON'T make cars spin out?!
Yep. Taking mushrooms to make you go faster is also a bad idea.
It can happen... (Score:2)
...if you're driving a Chevy Spark.
http://images.thetruthaboutcars.com/2009/10/chevrolet_spark_1.jpg [thetruthaboutcars.com]
i beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
On the ride into work this morning, I drove over several pedestrians, flipped my car twice after hitting guardrails at the wrong angle, and took 5 minutes to get unstuck when I drove through the plate-glass window of a coffee shop. I'd say I've learned everything I need to know about driving from video games.
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Re:i beg to differ (Score:5, Funny)
i played a fair bit of PGR4 on the xbox, this game also have motorbikes as adversaries, but if you drive a car you can easily bash them into the guard rail, setting them back an easy 10 seconds.
Then one day i sat at the lights, and a motorbike stopped next to my, and "if i bash him as soon as the lights go green, at least i wont have to worry about him" flashed through my head....
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You accidentally that sentence.
What about this guy...? (Score:5, Informative)
Granted in his case the main thing that helped him was practicing consistency in hitting braking points and adherence to a proper racing line. I doubt the game actually improved his physical ability behind the wheel.
Re:What about this guy...? (Score:4, Interesting)
Speaking only for myself, I can say that Gran Turismo greatly improved my real-life driving skills. I learned about following a line, about preloading suspension, and just about how to generally handle a car. When I first got my Subaru Impreza I was already able to go fast because I knew how an AWD car behaved from playing that game. Some of the skills are clearly not applicable to street driving, but some equally clearly are.
As there's already been an article about how some well-ranked race drivers went to a track and posted better-than-average times, probably as a result of their experience, this article is -1, Troll. It's possible not to learn from playing driving games, but since pro race drivers use off-the-shelf video games to prepare for races, it's all a lot of shit.
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Speaking only for myself, I can say that Gran Turismo greatly improved my real-life driving skills. I learned about following a line, about preloading suspension, and just about how to generally handle a car. When I first got my Subaru Impreza I was already able to go fast because I knew how an AWD car behaved from playing that game. Some of the skills are clearly not applicable to street driving, but some equally clearly are.
Some skills like following a good line that you might not think applicable to street driving actually are. Just because you're following a racing line doesn't mean you have to be going at racing speeds. Those same lines (or slight modifications), when driven at a lower speed can reduce tire & break wear, and give you a bigger margin of safety if you happen to hit a road hazard that reduces grip (bump, pile of leaves, sand from last week's snow, etc.).
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If you watched the video, the tone of it isn't trollish at all, nor is it a scientific experiment. They're using a fake Houston Oilers football helmet and
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As an avid Impreza driver, I would love to agree w/ you on all of these points but the limiting factor in learning how a car actually handles from a game is feedback, particularly steering. Don't get me wrong, braking, lines, and shift points are all things you can learn from a game but I would disagree that you can learn exactly how your car will handle. As a great example, I was making a right turn into traffic and floored it. The car over steered and required a steering correction which was much more dif
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http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/12/04/1516204/Gran-Turismo-Gamer-Becomes-Pro-Race-Driver [slashdot.org] Granted in his case the main thing that helped him was practicing consistency in hitting braking points and adherence to a proper racing line. I doubt the game actually improved his physical ability behind the wheel.
Okay, that's one guy. How many copies of the game have been sold?
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I'm going to assume you're an unintentional troll. Read the story.
Now read it again. Which part of "it was a contest -- and he was the winner" don't you understand? Not every person who gets into Gran Turismo is going to be a race car driver, not even a significant fraction of them. However, the contest proved a point -- that being good at a simulator does in fact help you win real races in a real car.
PS this whole subject is stupid -- of course simulators work. Driving simulators are no different from
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Rather than.... (Score:3, Informative)
Jump through two articles to get to the source....here ya go [roosterteeth.com] C/O Rooster teeth, enjoying the riches gained from RvB I'm sure.
I enjoyed it, but this is idle/humor material.
Mythbusters! (Score:2, Interesting)
Can't RTFA since work blocks Gizmodo (seriously? WTF?). However, my first thought after seeing the article summary was "You know, Grant drives this way in real life all the time on Mythbusters."
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Off-topic:
It's because many of the pictures are cached on Gawker's central servers. For a VERY long time, it was blocked here at my office as well. I repeatedly submitted requests to have it unblocked, but to no avail. We finally got a new (much friendlier) head of IT about three months ago, and based on what he told me, it wasn't Gizmodo that was blocked but Gawker's main servers (likely because of Fleshbot utilizing the same server to host its images). He blocked the Fleshbot domain, but opened up the
Myth confirmed (Score:3, Informative)
Haven't the Mythbusters proven again and again that operating a vehicle from 'non standard' driving perspectives is quite difficult?
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Haven't the Mythbusters proven again and again that operating a vehicle from 'non standard' driving perspectives is quite difficult?
Pretty much. If you've paid attention, you'll note that when they remotely control a vehicle they do it on closed tracks/areas and don't do any complicated maneuvering - normally they only travel in a straight line with them. Despite having steering control.
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Well and more importantly, they spend a lot of effort just trying to travel in a straight line. Remember Grant trying to jump that bus? He took like 30 tries.
Though it's quite possible that the bigger difficulty was driving-by-joystick. When they set up that rig for full-size steering, they did alright. (does anybody know the name of that? it's driving me crazy).
Which interestingly goes right back to this 'story'. Perhaps the problem is people driving with joystick, instead of the point of view.
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If you're not a R/C car driver. It takes a few hours to make a good R/C car driver.
Some never figure out the steering reversal when going toward vs away from you.
Same deal with R/C aircraft, R/C boats. R/C robots are just unusual looking R/C cars, so same deal there.
But once you learn how to drive R/C, its not "difficult"
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Everything is difficult if you haven't practiced it. Once you do practice, I'd imagine it would be almost as easy as driving normally - almost, because you aren't getting inner ear feedback from the exact movement of the car.
People use remotely controlled vehicles all the time.
Games vs. Real Life (Score:2, Insightful)
Forced? No. (Score:5, Interesting)
The death of 3rd person is coming, the tech is now here to simulate proper driving - so we are doing something in real life that was anachronistic to begin with....
Misformulated argument, misformulated article (Score:5, Insightful)
In real simulation games you are forced to view the game through driver's view, which is LOWER than the field of view you would have in a real car, because 2d screen cannot accommodate a human's fov from a first person perspective.
so, argument is formulated wrong. its not 'videogame driving skills dont apply in real life', but, 'videogame driving skills in games that allow 3rd person view do not apply in real life'.
otherwise, all the simulators the military is using to train tank drivers, pilots, captains etc would mean bullshit.
Also, bad test. Wrong angle and FOV. (Score:3, Insightful)
Compare the angle and field of view of GTA shots (27 seconds into the video [youtube.com]) and the angle and field of view they've used for the test.
Over half of the screen is missing and the driver is trying to navigate the car from a "frog's-eye view" as if sitting on a chair being dragged behind the car.
Ergo - he can't see anything directly in front of him in the radius of about 50 meters.
What's next?
"Proving" that you can't drive a tank through a wall by trying to do the same with a van?
Interestingly, some skills remain sharp (Score:2, Funny)
While the participant's driving skills were impeded, their ability to hit prostitutes with bats remained sharp even in third person.
Credit where it is due: Roosterteeth did this (Score:5, Informative)
Rooster Teeth Shorts, Immersion (Pilot) [roosterteeth.com]
Not cool that Gizmodo didn't give them credit. These are the same guys that do the Red Vs Blue machinima.
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As well as the Drunk Tank podcast, and some online comics. All in all the RoosterTeeth guys are pretty close to the funniest of the little internet entertainment companies that seem to have popped up.
Simpsons Road Rage (Score:2, Funny)
I find that the Simpsons Road Rage point system for pedestrians is very accurate.
It's what I base my vehicular homicide priorities on.
Oh noes! (Score:2)
yawn... (Score:2)
Beaten to the punch again! [hackaday.com]
That said. I think the lack of a decent field of view has much more to do with the difficulties. In a car, I can see just over 180. Most of that is motion sensitive. However, it's more sensitive than nothing at all!
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also GTA DWU (Score:3, Interesting)
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Daytona! (Score:2)
I don't know about the view, but the handling of the car in the old Daytona arcade game is freakishly similar to that of a Miata at about half the speed. This led to an interesting drive home; bad enough that I started driving the Miata like the Daytona car, worse that it actually worked.
I never liked it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Outside of Mario Kart type games I never liked that view and I've never used it. I never saw it's appeal given that it's difficult to position the car properly on the track or get a proper sense of distance. And that's not to mention you can't even see what's immediately in front of your car. About the only benefit I see is that you could spot another car hiding in your blind spot. It does allow for more of a spectacle when racing. Undoubtedly someone could get good with this view, but that doesn't make for the ideal camera position. Then again, I also never liked the dashboard crowding my view in games. In real life the dashboard isn't as intrusive in my field of vision as it is on the screen.
Acceleration (Score:2)
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have you never been on a gimballed ride? your mind can be tricked into feeling acceleration with simple motion.
Carmageddon (Score:3, Funny)
angle? (Score:2)
that is a horrible angle, you cannot see anything unless it is like 20 feet or more in front of the car.
Camageddon (Score:2)
I practiced driving in Carmageddon. Now, no old ladies with a walker or any cow is safe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon [wikipedia.org]
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/the-making-of%E2%80%A6-carmageddon [edge-online.com]
Now, get off my road!
Is Hollywood any better? (Score:2)
If I paid attention to driving in the movies, you need to constantly sway the steering left and right in order to stay in a straight line, and every time you declutch and shift a gear you need to do an elaborate jump-cut to a close up of your foot on the pedal, and then your hand on the gearstick. Neither of those seem like particularly safe practices to me.
Still, at least I've taken their advice about caravans to heart - those things are death traps! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaiA9ksZGS0 [youtube.com] (5:30)
I Watched TFV (Score:2)
Stupid study... (Score:2)
... a real study would be to take say a real racing wheel device, hook it up to a decent game with semi-real driving characteristics and see if it improves one's driving ability.
What about people using logitech's G25?
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/gaming/wheels/devices/131&cl=gb,en [logitech.com]
Driving = world's most boring video game (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong side of the road training... (Score:2)
Driving via a WiFi link. (Score:2)
I've driven a real vehicle through a remote link. We could run our DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle through a WiFi link. Originally, we tried using a joystick, which worked very badly. Everybody overcontrolled. We had to get a Logitech USB steering wheel and pedals. With that, the vehicle could be driven remotely.
Driving through a game pad is hopeless. Most video game cars on consoles have their CG below ground level (which is physically impossible in the real world) to make them stable when overcontr
This just in... (Score:2)
Studies prove that playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare does not increase a soldier's ability to survive an actual firefight or roadside bombing.
Flight simulators (Score:2)
Can't drive 2^78135971 (Score:2)
These folks decided to find out.
Why?
Flawed test (Score:2)
GT4 and X Plane 9 (Score:2)
I find the 1st person view in Gran Turismo 4 to be a decent driving simulation. I've driven a couple of cars similar to real ones I've driven, and they seem about right. You can easily tell the difference between front/mid/rear-engine cars. My favourite is the Honda Beat, a car I could never drive in real life, because I'm far too tall.
I also have X Plane 9 on my Mac, and find it limited compared to the real thing. The cockpit visibility is inferior, you can't feel the plane or (easily) determine its atti
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