What's Wrong With This Picture: Some Of The Pixels Edition
Alright, take a close look. There’s something not quite right about this picture of a brand-new Nissan GT-R luxuriating in a rather fancy garage. Any ideas?
While it’s certainly more rewarding to play John Mayer tunes for an audience of inebriated single mothers at some local bar than it is to play Guitar Hero in one’s living room, the dividing line between fantasy and reality in the racing world is slightly fuzzier. Even those of us who can afford a new GT-R, which is one thing, and afford to run it on a track, which is another, can’t afford to wreck a dozen of them in a day trying to find a faster line around a track in Japan. Even if the money’s no object, the risk is nontrivial.
For that reason, a lot of gearheads spend more time on the virtual racetrack than the real one, as do Formula One pilots and many well-funded “gentleman drivers” in prototype classes. Practice and visualization are critical when test time is limited. Will Forza 5 be useful to those of us who only get out to a track a few times a year? I don’t know, but I do know this: it looks good.
More by Jack Baruth
Comments
Join the conversation
Jack, Thank you so much for writing so eloquently what I've always thought! Playing guitar for single mothers, obviously, but also why we gear haeds spend more time in the couch than on the track. I make a decent living but have 2 daughters, soon a mortgage, etc As much as I would love to take laps, even in an old beat-up miata, the cost is simply too high for that to be a hobby in my case. Maybe when the girls are out of college and the mortgage is paid off. In the meantime, Forza is a great fun vs. price equation. If the fun is far lower than lapping is, cost is EVEN lower, and time consumption is better too, as getting to the track can be a serious hassle.
I don't have one of the new consoles, so Forza was always out of the question. But I do have a kickass PC, so I spent countless hours playing Need for Speed Shift 2 with it hooked up to the TV in my living room and a Logitech G27 Racing Wheel, Pedals and Stick Shift tossing my cars around tracks I could only dream of driving on. Lap after lap I'd tune my car just to make it a little better. To get that gear shift just right. My friends and I would come home from class or work and set a time on a track, post it to Facebook and see if they could beat it with a similar car. Would I rather drive a real Cobalt SS around Spa-Francorchamps? Sure, but it's not gonna happen.
Well what I thought was wrong with this picture is that there's a Ford ad on top of it! http://imageshack.us/a/img266/4028/6p51.jpg
This is an old post now, but I just found a couple of nice videos to compare. Forza 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzEEMxC4O6E Looks like a lot of fun, but nowhere near as real as iracing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISOJ76u3KeA