As a car enthusiast growing up in the Age of Information, I have played just about every racing game to come out from the late ‘90s to now. I’ve seen the evolution (some would say, “fall”) of the Need for Speed series from a fun-loving Lamborghini-versus-Ferrari staple to the dark, superficial tuner mess it has ultimately become, and watched the simulator genre rise from an overly-detailed racing driver training tool to a fair medium with paths of entry for casual and hardcore racers. While the racing sim genre may seem like a narrow niche, there’s a surprising number of games within the category; rally, road course, oval, street. Developers will come and go, too, like the aforementioned NFS (with its simulator-oriented Shift offshoot) and Codemasters’ long-running Colin McRae rally series (which left the simulator genre for the Americanized X Games vibe with DiRT).

In world of real driving (and real racing), there is a great deal of debate over whether these types of games help drivers or not, and how much the player needs to truly achieve a realistic experience - so let me set the record straight on the benefits of racing games.

I’ve had the good fortune of experiencing great simulator racing equipment in combination with great simulator racing games, and I’d like to give my input on the subject of video game driving to real-world driving, starting with how games get it wrong. It seems to be easy for people to shout this out immediately with no evidence, but there are some key parts that even the most accurate games are incapable of representing.

The first is gravity, which is surprisingly open-ended in the game design world. Even in a single game, Test Drive Unlimited (an excellent game featuring the entire island of Oahu, Hawaii, as your virtual supercar playground) the system of gravity is varied greatly with the two realism modes; in the first, players are adhered to the Earth with tremendous force, while the second sends you soaring through the air for hundreds and hundreds of feet. This latter scenario is despite the mode being satisfyingly realistic.

It’s an issue even Top Gear has covered, indirectly, in their Gran Turismo-versus-real-world challenge with a real NSX at the real Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. One of the reasons for the video game’s impractically superior lap times was that Laguna’s 300-foot elevation change approaching the corkscrew was not accurately recreated. This is an issue throughout the sim-racing world, as it’s difficult to measure the effect a hill has on cars (and whether the game would be fun if this were accurately interpreted).

Another gaming flaw comes from the equipment. In my experience, using a Logitech G25 PC/PS3 racing wheel, the controls are exactly like a real car’s - at three-fourths scale. Even wheels from other companies, like heavy-duty Fanatec collection, are noticeably smaller than those of real cars (Logitech’s are 11”, while Fanatec’s are closer to 12”). This is not without reason for what is effectively a toy; I got a VW wheel at a car show swap for $5 and considered replacing the G25’s rim with it, but it was just absurdly large. Of course, it’s the same diameter as the wheel a Civic, for example, but in comparison to the G25’s small shifter, small pedals, and small force feedback motor, a normal-sized wheel is just too big.

But that’s the biggest difference between the gaming world and that of real-life driving. Sure, there are the specifics like tire models and suspension setups, but every PC sim racer knows that you can get it exactly the way you want with mods. But as a kid who played these games before getting my permit and license, I can attest to a proper gaming setup and proper games being a great tool for learning how to drive. Thanks to the G25, I adapted comfortably to driving manual within two weeks of getting my permit. My first experience driving on public roads was even in a manual vehicle. Thanks to video game clutch control practice, stalling was a non-issue, too; the two times I stalled were months after I started driving, and one was because I simply forgot the car was on. And, of course, when the first snow fell and the Subaru Legacy I was driving that day went sideways, I powered out of it instinctively with a dash of opposite lock, and it was a few seconds before it occurred to me what I had done.

This naturalization of driving is possibly the greatest advantage of video games to the real world. Not the kind that anxious parents claim when they say racing games are creating dangerous drivers - the male mind creates this issue, not video games - but one that prepares young drivers for car control in the real world. And if you’re a parent concerned your child is learning bad driving technique from playing NFS on a console, don’t. Driving with a console controller doesn’t even trigger the same emotions as a wheel, and kids learn very little of driving from it.

The movement has been gaining strength, too. While console gamers and the majority of PC players were often unaware of the games existence (like from popular Swedish developer Simbin), the sim-racing world has grown to include some popular genres and game series. The competitive Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsport games (currently on the fifth and fourth iterations, respectively) manage to be open to both traditional racers and new audiences. As a PS3 owner, I’ve experienced GT5 as it went from a hopeful 2007 release to the 1000-car behemoth it ultimately became when released years later. In fact, a number of the pictures you see here are from that game.

So, what to make of sim racing’s advent? With the right equipment, it’s a fun and helpful way to teach kids car control at a young age, and to keep up racing ability for those who want to pursue it later on (oh, yeah - race against difficult AI or online, and you’ll learn how to follow a racing line, fast). Okay, so it’s not true driving, and there are some differences even with a quality setup like the G25, but in all, it’s a worthy pastime for the junior driving enthusiast.

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Images used, taken by me in the following games (in order of appearance):
Gran Turismo 5 (summary link)
Gran Turismo 5
Test Drive Unlimited (with mods)
Race On/Race 07
Test Drive Unlimited (with mods)
Gran Turismo 5