Can we objectively judge car behavior or car physics in sim racing?

I think the GT3/Es in particular objectively have too much overall traction and/or too much traction with spinning tyres / high slip angles.

That is without question, clear as day when driving them with traction control off, they're just way too planted when booting the throttle out of slow/mid speed corners, even in wet conditions.

That is not me expecting cars to be incredibly difficult to drive to be realistic, I'm not expecting a GT3 car to be snappy and difficult to drive, just to have a bit of controllable rear traction loss under hard acceleration with no traction control.

 

thing is, ams2 ars behave in such a different way than other sims, same car on same track, that either all other sims got it wrong or ams2 got it wrong. if we follow Occam razor law..I'm fairly confident the second is the most plausible.

 

That is another tricky and rather complicated question because different sims use different engines, different car physics and different tire model physics. It also brings up the question, should we compare cars in AMS2 to cars in other sims or to cars in the real world? What about the cars from the Brazilian Motorsport scene which are only in AMS2 and don't have equivalents in other sims?

 

At least its not difficult to "judge" some kind of objectively if a virtual race car begins to slide in corners at speed below 80 km/h - where any RL car would happily survive without any slide problems.
But this general racing game problem is not any more prenounced in AMS2 than in any other racing game.

But to the best of my knowledge its only good ol netKar Pro that has solved this virtual vs RL problem by including two tire models. One for below 80 km/h and another for higher speeds + some code to help the transition.

ByTheWay: Any other of the commercial racing games including AMS2 does believe that cars cornering at slow speeds does just slide gradually less until they does stand still. While any RL driver does know that its almost impossible to get even a normal road car to slide on dry tarmac cornering at about 50 km/h. Even good ol grand ma knows that

 

To me that is an interesting question. Many know that I don't have the sim but judge it by video and real-life video and by seeing some comparisons with Project Cars 2 which I played a lot.
When you look at all sims you see some sort of signature in the physics.
So I look at what most of the cars have in common in a sim and you are starting to see how the physics behave.
You see that in AMS2 also. And it is much different from other sims. Before you shoot me down I also see much of Project Cars in this one, but it is getting molded totally to Reiza liking. So it is getting further and further away from PC.
One thing that is very confusing to me with this title is looking at the replay and looking in car.
When you look outside the car in replay footage (not just 3th person view) the car behaves beautifully and then when you watch the driving from inside it looks totally different. You can see massive sliding etc...
Also when you look inside the car behaviour most of the time is not smooth but there is some sort of jankiness that is certainly not there in real-life footage. It sometimes seems to turn a few times in a corner.
To me, you can judge these things against real-life footage and you don't have to drive the sim to see that imo. Especially if you see that time and time again in different cars.
The same with the bounciness. You can find many videos and most of the time it isn't as bouncy. Unless the camera is attached to the helmet. But this gives a much different sensation in the car so it is very jarring effect in the sim. Most of the time you see high-frequency oscillations in the real footage but with low amplitude.
I think that is one of those things where AMS 2 can gain a lot in how they represent real life.
But there is something in the way the car turns that is not smooth and how it grips. That's why the RSR is well-liked I think because that is where I see the things that I have said above the least and where you can compare it to real-life pretty good. So imo it is pretty important that it looks the same as onboard footage. To me it is not as important to have just the same setup or the same driver and such. Because for example, there are great differences in setup in F1 but if you would switch footage between the drivers you would see not much difference between the cars although they are all different. Yes, it becomes important if you nail it very good then these details become important but imo that is still pretty far off. I thought I wrote here because it seems like it would be something you would ask me. And why I think you can judge while not driving the sim.

 

Can we all just accept the fact that sims are still miles away from how an actual car drives and handles?

And that some sims get some aspects better than others but its really gonna take another couple of generations in hardware and software until we can really say sims are “realistic”?

Until that time just enjoy whatever resonates with you most.
At this point in time that means multiple sims for different reasons for me.
Being a fanboy in the simracing community means missing out on a lot of good stuff.

 

off course I'm talking about the cars in ams2 that are also available in other sims.
and I don't think it's a tricky question, when you see that - for example - a Porsche 911 GT3 behaves in a similar way in literally every sim apart from ams2, one has to ask if ams2 is the one who got it wrong. same applies for the groupC cars, which have the singular feature of behaving like a magically auto-centering rubber band in ams2 with no evident difference in their input response at 60kmh or at 310kmh, and the exact same lack of challenge of driving any GTE car in the game.
so in short, can I objectively judge how a race car should drive? no, I'm no race driver.
can I compare ams2 cars to the same cars in other sims, or different car classes inside ams2, and judge their quality given those comparisons? yes, and the result is quite ... interesting to say the least. and last thing : when you need to rely on a number of reasons to justify the way a car behaves in the sim, you have already something wrong in it.

 

Perhaps people need to be educated on the definition of emulators versus simulators..
Emulating reality is a lot less demanding on hardware, software and the skill level of users than simulating reality.

 

I agree with you here that we are still a good bit away from truly simulating car physics on a home PC and at this point in time should not expect that from a $40 software. Said that, if I look at titles like BeamNG.drive it gives me hope that we are not that far away anymore. I also enjoy different sim titles for different reasons. I think every sim title has a little niche that the other some title does not have which keeps things interesting. As example, I use RaceRoom because I like TCR class cars. With AMS2 I was introduced to the Brazilian Motorsport scene and developed a great interest in the real world racing in Brasil. So yes, multiple sims for different reasons.