Sports Realm

There is no question that car driving games are fun! Getting to drive cars of your choice on some of the best tracks throughout the entire world, pitted against other sim racers couldn’t be anything but fun.

What is just not as well known, is if car driving games actually help to make for a good training aid.

According to Dale Earnhardt, Jr, the actual correct answer is always a resounding YES!

During a recent interview, Dale was quoted as declaring that when he goes out to a fresh track, its takes him over an hour to get himself up to full speed, and its not until that hour has passed that his feedback actually becomes useful to the team’s engineers. Now, in lieu of “wasting” that hour, Dale heads out onto the new track on his computer, well before he ever arrives at the actual physical facility.

So, how is it that a video game can in reality make you an improved racing driver? Lets have a look…

First off, the tracks in modern PC racing games are exact replicas of the real thing. Advanced technology, including precise GPS computer data is used extensively by developers when generating a modern track. This creates a exceptionally realistic virtual racing experience and furnished with this, racers will get to discover not only the total layout of the track, but also their braking and turn in points for every single corner.

For example, if you go to turn one around the track of your choosing on your personal computer, you will see that the trackside objects in the game, are precisly the same as the trackside objects in the real world. Moreover, their placement along side the side of the track, relative to the corner, is exactly the same as their placement within the real-world.

Possibly the next most worthwhile piece of the online racing experience is the car setup. The engineers that design today’s games put immense effort directly into the game’s physic model and this ends up with a substantially more “realistic” feeling race car. Ad to that the plethora of adjustments that one can make in the garage, and the outcome is that the virtual racer has a chance to do extensive testing of assorted race setups; all from his computer. While the exact settings probably will not transfer to his race car, the principles behind the adjustments to transfer over, and that is going to make the driver considerably more valuable to his team with regards to giving feedback to the race engineers.

And finally, we have the actual head-to-head racing that today’s online racing experience provides.

Inside the real world, many a race has been wasted as the result of an wreck that occurred when the driver made an oversight in judgement. To paraphrase, many races are lost in the first turn due to a collision.

With online racing, the mental component of the competition is precisely the same as it is in the real world. The significance of being able to get all this bonus competitive seat time is tremendous, and without having the PC racing experience, the only way to get all this seat time was to head to the track. Now, without spending any cash, today’s budding racer can log literally thousands and thousands of hours of practice against other racers; all from the convenience of his PC. Of all the positive factors we’ve just covered, this one is possibly the biggest.

Believe me, I understand from experience.

Angelo Dyrzra has been a PC racing games enthusiast for over 10 years. To learn more about car driving games and also enter to win a free game, visit his PC racing games website.