RaceRoom isn't bad about this, but whenever I race online it's always on my mind. Situational Awareness when driving is crucial, especially when in a high traffic environment. For those us without triple monitor setups, it can be very difficult to know where exactly other cars in relation to yours when you're going two wide down a corner. There's a few things you can do to help, so I'd like to point out a few different ways to tackle it. Some of these aids are a bit artificial, but personally I think the benefits outweight the drawbacks, especially considering maintaining SA is so much more difficult in a game versus real life. If you ask me, these are tools to give parity with real life. iRacing does this very well, and very naturally, through both its spotter system and a very large and wide angle virtual mirror. Between the two of them, it's nearly impossible to not know if a car is nearby. The mirror is so large and wide enough that usually you can tell if a car is right next to you. If a car is next to you but doesn't show up on the mirror (as is the case in this screenshot), then your spotter will usually catch them and you can make a quick glance to the right. As a side benefit, the spotter also really helps with immersion and makes you feel as if you're racing on a team. Another game that does this fantastically is Assetto Corsa with its Helicorsa app. It has a few different configurations so that it doesn't look so artificial, but either way this little thing is so effective and foolproof that I honestly think every game should include some version of it. I love racing with it, because with it and my single limited FOV screen I can comfortably and safely drive in traffic at speed. It benefits everybody involved. Yes, I understand that in real life you don't have a radar screen showing you cars, but this is one of those situations where I think gameplay comes first and at the very least this should be an option that is enabled by default. That way, the majority of pick up players in online races are now suddenly much more aware than they were before, without having to be schooled or personally invested in the practice of safe racing. Like I mentioned before, there are much less intrusive configurations of this app if you don't want to go all the way. Assetto Corsa also has arrows that appear on the edges of the screen to signify that a car is there. A few other games do that and it's decently effective, but I find it hard to read. I'm a big fan of games with mechanics that make good situational awareness easy. It's something that benefits everybody and makes for cleaner racing all round. While I don't expect for R3E to adopt something as dramatic as a Helicorsa (even though I would 100% support it), I think at the very least the virtual mirrors need to be made much larger and with a wider field of view. R3E's virtual mirror is really tiny and has a prohibitively narrow FOV. I also wanted to open this topic for discussion because I think it's something worth talking about in racing sims. RaceRoom is quickly becoming one of my top choices when I decide to do some simracing. With the dramatic improvements as of late, the future of R3E is very encouraging and I'd love to see it made even better with quality of life improvements such as this.
I like the idea of arrows or a spotter or text but what ever happens i don't want that mirror from iracing. I had to turn it off because someone was along side me but i could still see there front in that mirror so i would turn in and hit them. It is the single biggest immersion breaker in i racing, but i still want a virtual mirror just with a realistic fov like the one in raceroom
Interesting topic. I, personally, am a bit old-fashioned when it comes to virtual mirrors. I switch it off whenever possible. However, some of the cars have their mirrors positioned in a way that it is hard to look at in a normal driver view. And this is still the case although I already use a FOV of 1,3. Additionally some of the "real" mirrors are odd when it comes to aspect ratio or resolution. It's not always correct. So I help myself with the look left/right buttons, which I have mapped to the most left and right buttons on my wheel. I use them all the time to look around. Thus I can quickly check if somebody is in a dead angle of my view + mirrors. Pushing both buttons at the same time gives me a backward view, so this is covered too.
No forced or on by default arcadish features on my screen please, it's possible to have awareness without virtual aids
@Why485 well written and some great points, at the moment I'm driving using the look left/right buttons in combination with the mini map to try and get a feel for where others are but, the angle for look left/right doesn't always show where others are, this wouldn't be a problem if I drove in cockpit view as it would show the mirrors but, as I'm about 10ft from my screen, cockpit view isn't feasible as it feels disconnected and in 720p, takes up a lot of the screen, so, bumper cam for me which still leaves blind spots. Fortunately, I've become rather adept at using the force to sense when someone is along side but this can make me overly cautious at times lol.
Find it very difficult to have spacial awareness when returning to track after leaving it as mirror is blocked by a dozy banner stating the obvious, annoying and dumb!
Mini maps fine to a point but the amount of times I've waited at pit exit as maps telling me a group of cars are just exiting first corner but in fact they're 300 yards away and all pointing in wrong direction! Generally use rear view to watch anything approaching fast but flicking to side views just throws me off apex and into gravel usually! This is why I believe that divisions decided through proving sessions, this puts everyone into a group they are of equal ability with, 24 to a division, 8 or so races (best 6 results count so a couple races can be missed without penalty) top 4 go up a division bottom 4 down. Gives something to aim for and I'm sure will improve everyone's driving as you don't want to be pissing someone off who you know you have to race against regularly (or maybe you do!) Surely only a small tweak on the leaderboard idea but then what I know about coding could be written on the eyeball of a little purple head! I'm waffling again!
You have a point, it does get a little distracting having to look around all the time and the mini-map isn't perfect for situational awareness, guess I've just got used to it with so many years on Gran Turismo, it wasn't until recently that they added support for this sort of thing but, I don't play that anymore so never really became accustomed to it lol.
Interesting subject. My situation is this: I use a 42" LCD TV but as I'm a sofa-based gamer in my living room, I'm sat further away from the screen than I would like. Cockpit is my preferred view and in order to get it feeling right from this distance I have to run a lower than default FOV and move the virtual seat as far forward as it will go so I can see more of the track and less of the dash. This means my peripheral vision is limited. Like others, I use left/right views mapped to the D-pad on my wheel so I can quickly glance to the side if needed. I also rely on the virtual mirror as the in-car ones are 'out-of-shot'. This works well enough for me and I consider myself a clean racer with good situational awareness. Personally I dislike any on-screen arrows or spotters pointing out nearby cars. Ok, this kind of thing may work well in more casual racing games, but I don't feel comfortable with it in the sim-racing genre where the standard of driver *should* be higher, and that includes race craft and etiquette. I appreciate the reality is different. The iRacing mirror is a good, not too unrealistic concession and I also like the three virtual mirrors found in rF2/GSC.
I agree with the topic starter. Sometimes the simulation aspect is improved more by not by leaving the (reality-reducing!) computer- and screen-interface of the PC untouched and "as close" to reality as possible, but by working around the unavoidable limitations of overall perception that actually reduce realism. Artificial though simple solutions work around this deficit and help to improve the simulation experience. Personally, I like wide-angle mirrors very much, like in iR, they are unobtrusive, but achieve a huge effect. Also, the red arrow rotating around the virtual wheel in AC when another car is within collision distance to own car, works very well and intuitive. I would recommend to avoid using additional apps. The helicorsa app however I too was initially enthusaistic about - but found it to be distracting to always scan it in the middle of a dogfighting pack, and I tend to ignore it. Therefore, I do not use it anymore. Radio callers like in Nascar2003 or iR also work wonders. Personally I have the idea to have the screen boundary flashing a bit when turning into that direction and there is a car in the dead angle at your side that I approach that way. Situational awareness is especially important in MP, even more in driving on public servers. There is no argument for not enforcing a certain minimum of SA aids in public server racing, imo. If one thinks there is, one has never experienced one of the typical zoom-and-boom festivals and zig-zag-orgies that public server racing all to often implies. These slaughtering festivities always come down to either people being unable to master their car and overestimating their abilities - or lacking situational awareness (or the intention to wreck other people). TrackIR is a good method too, of course, but it is no one-cue-for all. When sitting in cars where the centre mirror is positioned in such a way that you cannot see it in normal straight-forward perspective, there lies a certain risk and distraction in always needing to turn the head and change the whole camera angle in order to quickjly look in the mirror, it is NOT as intuitive as in reality. I occassionally even crash or get off track when being disoriented for a split of a second when doing that kind of camera angle change via trackIR. Also, it does not tackle the loss of realism in cars that do not have centre mirrors or any usable mirrors at all. Again, the realism argument does not score here when wanting to have it like that in the sim as well, for in reality drivers get compendsation for that via radio, sound, bottom feeling, physical sensation and so on. All this you do not have in a sim.Calling these losses "realism" ? Hardly. Instead we talk about preferred ways of personal imaginations, how one imagines the real thing to be - but it isn'T that simplistic in reality. So, to summarise it all: yes, a reasonable use of magical gadgets to improve situational awareness is highly recommendable. It does not reduce but increases realism. That sounds paradox, but it is true. P.S. Use of such aids independently from chosen driving perspective, should be considered. In AC I drive cockpit view almost exclusively, but in R3E I mostly use hood camera in most car classes. In Dirt Rally, I use dashboard camera only.
Why not just implement two small leds near the edges of the mirror, one on the right side and one on the left, and let those signal you when an other driver is on either side of your car. The devs would have to make two trigger boxes, each on one side of the car. Then when a car is on the right of you (in the right trigger box) the right led in the mirror will turn on and the same for when somebody is on the left. You don't have another text field, arrow or voice interrupting. Just something small, simple and effective.
I use cockpit view with the virtual mirror and I'm constantly looking left and right and back. I have to admit that I used the chase cam for along time but switched to cockpit view about 6 months ago. The most difficult thing to get used to was the situational awareness and I still struggle with it and I wouldn't mind an aid. It's the reason why I resisted different views for so long. But I decided that it was time to grow up and I'm glad I made the change. I do however still use the chase cam for the 1st few turns in a crowded race then switch back to the cockpit. It really helps, and I'm ok with (temporarily)sacrificing immersion so I don't wreck others.
Exactly, but with the notice that I 'm simracing for many many years. It's all about experience...I mostly "sense" my opponents when they near which is also a result of years of experience, and as long you have skilled driver's around you it's fairly easy to anticipate their next move cause it is mostly that what you would do yourself in such a situation...I do understand that noobs or occasional driver's would welcome some aids to get more adapted, but after all you just have to jump into cold water and learn what has to be learned to "survive" MP racing unharmed...can be rough if you're not used to....yes Using cockpit view (Singlescreen), virtual mirror and left/right/back -buttons btw. I also like to keep it as realistic as possible, and when listening to real DTM Drivers for example one thing they always state after incidents is: "We're sitting so low and far back in our cockpits that except for what we can glimpse through our mirrors we're practically blind"
I use cockpit view with 0.6 fov, single screen. Like @James Cook, I also like to push my seat view quite far forward. I have the virtual mirror turned on (I wouldn't like the fov on this to be wider) as well as the track map for me to glance at every now and then. I'm no longer using look left/right, however. Had these mapped to the 2 buttons on my G25 but required them for other purposes and I don't miss them. Something I would recommend doing is turning up the opponent's car volume. I've found this helps let me know when I have someone up alongside me. This combined with the virtual mirror is enough for me. I will say though, that you can never have enough options in game for things like this. I know a lot of people don't like arrows or that helicorsa app in AC but if it helps some people to learn and get better, I see no harm in it, as long as it can be disabled.
This is essentially what the simplified version of Helicorsa does. It'll just display a lit up quad to warn you that something is there and you should watch that side of the car and probably maintain your line. I like your integrated mirror idea though, it's a very unobtrusive and simple solution. For the record I run a 0.7 FOV on a 27" display. I should be running 0.5 according to the FOV calculator, however I always run ~10 more degrees than the recommended values so that I can see. In RaceRoom I eventually settled on one step above even that at 0.7 so that I had a little more peripheral vision. I was really struggling with traffic until I did that. The minimap is helpful to tell if somebody is nearby, and I make heavy use of the glance left/right buttons bound to buttons on my wheel. Like I said before, RaceRoom isn't bad about this, but I think it could be better. Since this is a gMotor derived game I tried to edit the .PLR file so I could modify the virtual mirror to get the 3-wide one you see in rFactor and GSC but it's encrypted and hands off. I'm hoping that more virtual mirror options get added. I'm also approaching this topic from the perspective of playing pub races, so I'm biased towards making clean racing as accessible and easy as possible. In league environments where the standard of driver is higher, they could be more easily turned off or even forced off because you can count on the other driver. If any more aids get added, it's a given that should be optional. If somebody has a setup where they can (or choose to) race without a HUD then they should be able to turn off any elements that they think are unnecessary. I suggest making them default so that new players know they are there and an option. If you don't like an option, it's trivial to go into options, turn it off, and never see it again.
I think S3S does a pretty good job at providing options to disable or enable things. A lot of different sound options, finally the option to disable the corner markers etc. So yeah obviously it should be an option to disable an aid like this if you feel like not needing it.
What about blocking the mirror like this: Close to a corner while fighting to another player. For me the biggest mistake i this game.