What Are The Similarities & Differences Between ACC & Real Life Racing?

Follow me on the Socials.

Catch my Livestreams here.

Editing/Thumbnails made by:

My Sim Rig:

#esports #simracing #assettocorsacompetizione

[egj]

I REALLY love to hear this. For us normal people that will never have the chance to drive cars like these its so fun to listen and learn about difference. Thanks for this insight.

[_Sennek]

ACC really does get a lot of things right, but there is always room for improvement. Great to hear some insights from someone with real life experience.

[boostedmedia]

Excellent video mate. Thanks for the plug too, and for letting me use your real life footage. All the best with Merc Esports this year!!

[TMVideoProductions]

I decided to get into karting a few years ago (2-stroke on sprint tracks) after being exclusively a sim racer for over 20 years. I very quickly realized that sim racing had, not only, not fully prepared me for that experience, but had also taught me some bad habits I had to 'unlearn.' Chief among those was constantly looking back. I always wanted to know what was going on behind me because it was always so easy in sim racing with the virtual mirror and, in some cases, the 'look behind' button. When karting, every time I turned my head to look behind I would go into the next corner and make a mistake. Eventually, I learned that you need to focus ahead, don't worry about what's happening behind you, and if someone tries to pass you, you will see them in your peripheral vision.

[skylerdavis]

Great video James. I think the kerb/bump physics are the biggest thing for me. Even just as a spectator watching a real life race you can see plainly that the cars handle the kerbs far better. Honestly they prevent me from enjoying some of the cars in the game because of how random it can feel.

[hansa_ml]

It's really cool to hear about similarities and differences between sim racing and real life racing so detailed from someone who actually does both. Even if you had gone much further into detail I think it wouldn't have been boring at all. Great video and hopefully we get to see more of that. Good luck for your racing this year!

[blanchimont]

Some may throw the baby out with the bathwater, but ACC is clearly close enough to reality (other sims as well) that it can be used as a tool to improve our race craft. not that most of us will get the chance to race irl, but i have seen some have the attitude that a sim will never be close enough to reality to be worth putting time into, resorting to a "just buy a real car" response, but as this video and James's entire journey shows, Sim racing can be a powerful tool to complement real driving, and I think that's something that is incredibly special.

[gosimracerjoe]

Love this. Appreciate your perspective and highlighting ACC is indeed a game. An amazing, intense, fun, immersive game. Although I do wish it would bite you the same in real life so we would have fewer incidents, but that's just me 🙂

[gianlucarisa]

God bless you, James! You more than any other one are the missing link between real life and sims. They will always be parallel lines that never intersect, but if we are getting more and more close to real life, is because of people like you. Keep up the good work, and good luck for the next year in Mercedes!

[LPX]

16:20 my theory for this might be the fact that the rev limiter from the Mclaren seems different between irl (which on your Spa clips seems to be at around 6500-6750 rpm) and ACC, where you need to upshift at ~7500 rpm, this might also be one of the reasons that causes the sound to be slightly off that you discussed earlier in the video 🤔

[thonczarenko]

I highly recommend getting bass shakers to feel more of the road and other things. I use SimVibe and now run 8 shakers for different parts of the “car”. Flat spots you’ll feel in your whole body. I now added G belts from Simexperience and now I feel braking, corners and bumps at my shoulders. These two things are a cheap way to get a lot of motion feedback.

[DarkDMD]

Hey dude, your production quality has really taken a big step forward. I always enjoyed your content but this is another level of presentation. Keep it up!

[Ermz]

Regarding the sound - since this is the only aspect I feel qualified to comment on - I think the primary difference is that it's been mixed a little strangely in ACC. Even comparing to RaceRoom, you can hear a sort of overprocessing in ACC which makes the engines sound brittle and distorted. It sounds like they've recorded the main components to recreate the interior cabin sounds, but the way they've been mixed together is just a bit off.

[Sauron.]

hahaha the video editing! =D Love this sort of content ! good use of memes and video editing!

[mrmidnight]

Exactly why I subbed! This exact video!

You say ACC is spot on for laser scanned cars and tracks. But Iracing is also laser scanned and feels COMPLETELY different. Especially corners and track width between the 2 games seem SO different. Yet they’re both laser scanned.

And I was told iRacing worked with race teams to tweak the cars in their game. But I feel the same ACC feels so much more realistic and Iracing GT3 let’s bad drivers be too fast.

[adamsvette]

Thank you for making this video. I would love to hear more about what you think about different things

[tarmacterrorist.thepotato]

Thankyou so much for making this video James! This is absoloutely superb! I've been waiting for such a long time for a real racing driver to do an indepth comparison between real life racing/driving and simracing, and yes its been done before (by a couple of the folks you mentioned in the video), but nothing as detailed as this!

The fact that you point out the great similarities between the two but, also the glaring differences! Its massively obvious that you are not beholden to any developer, there seems to be no money involved, just seems very honest and passionate! Its obvious there is nothing like that gagging you or preventing you from any honest criticism, and that is so good, please keep making videos like this!

It was so interesting to hear about things like the physical effect of flatspotting! Having never driven a racing car with soft slicks its very interesting for me to hear that it really is that severe! The only thing IRL i can relate to that is driving a real car and feeling that one of the tires has a bubble, getting out and checking to find there most certainly was, so, off to the tire shop ASAP! (I've had the experience of a garage fitting some alloy wheels without using shoulder bolts, realised what they'd done pretty quickly when the back end swang out violently around a corner during normal driving. Luckily I caught it, got out, checked, yep, wheels trying to come off over the bolts! But thats another story)

You asked in the video about if there are any more differences/similarities we'd like to hear about (talking of which I very much agree about the kerbs in ACC! I also love Kunos, and all the rest of the sim devs, but kerbs are definately a quirky thing in Kunos sims). I would be very grateful if you could give me any information about the differences between racing tires and road tire's, and you're opinion of tire physics in different sims in general vs real life.

Which sims do it (or elemts of it) well, which don't. (maybe one sim simulates grip before the edge really well but over the edge is not so good, another sim might be the other way round etc).
Its so hard to get an honest opinion about this! As well as racing im also interested in drifting and, by the end of this year I somehow, someway, want to experience proper high speed drifting for real and try it for myself! Obviously this involves tire behaviour way over the limit!
On the one hand you hear that if you are on soft racing slicks and you loose grip, its just gone instantly, and you spin! On the other hand I've heard folks on RL drifting forums asking wether its possible to drift on racing slicks and the answer from many has be "Of course you can! They just dont last very long and the break away is very sharp!).
Its hard to know who to believe when you take a sim like iracing (which i've only just got into) and the tire model is very aggressive when over the limit (almost like the car actually accellerates sideways rather than just sliding). I have to add to this btw that the new tire model is more forgiving, but i've tried some of the legacy cars which are still on old tire model, and I just flatout don't believe it, as in you can spin a full 180 at 30mph just by blipping the throttle! Then I get into ACC and I can drift all day on soft slicks If I like, and in a manner in which feels like real life (for the small amount of times I've had the oppertunity to be sideways).

Like yourself, I'm not picking on iracing or any sim here, they all have things I love about them, but they all have things I question about them. For instance I find the way cars travel over kerbs more realistic in RF2 and AMS2 than I do in ACC. But then there are certain differences I like about the way a tire breaks away in ACC more than I do in AMS2.

I love hearing what you said about G-Forces and head movement! I know most sim racers (especially for high stakes competition) will try and keep things as still as possible to gain the advantage. I'm much more into the full simulation value of driving a car (like the way the FFB feels in say RF2 whn its set just right, feels like real life), so if a sim have lots of camera movement options (AMS2 is the absoloute best in this one department, it has option for controlling all the individual G-Forces etc), I turn them on!

I've driven down enough Norfolk country roads to know your head does not stay still even at 60mph, and i've done a bit of Karting (shale speedway and grass) to know you and you're head get vibrated and thrown around like crazy at 60mph in those things. I love AMS2 for this aspect as in VR I can set the lateral G-force to the point where it forces my view way out around a high speed corner and in turn forces me to physically lean my head right over to compensate, I actually get a mildy achey neck after a while! Also I can set quite high vertical G's. Does'nt make driving competively easier but makes it more realistic!

Anyway sorry I seem to have gone into full on waffle mode, but I wanted to put the effort into this reply as I cannot tell you enough about how much I appreciate this great video of yours!
Thankyou so much for this! Cheers!

[johnhargreaves]

Really interesting piece that, very illuminating as there aren't that many people with good experience of both sim racing and pro racing. You tend to get people who are an expert at one or the other but not both. I like how you said that some of the differences barely even matter, it's just a game at the end of the day, but it's also clear that there are still some major areas that game developers can improve on.
Good luck with your GT3 racing you're doing a grand job. I often drive the McLarens in most sims and it's probably quite a lot to do with your videos when I think about it.

[gpopchev]

Thank you for this great video. You answered many of the questions I have been asking myself for the last 1-2 years.

[sky]

I used to club race and have done many track days. That being said you kind of touched on it but in sim racing obviously you don't have to worry about personal injury to you or someone else. Of course that is the main reason for over aggressive drivers in sim racing. Great video and enjoyed watching. 🙂👍