By the way, I just thought that it could be a good idea to write up a little "getting started in sim racing" guide for the people who have never played such a game before.
I started out with a few simple guidelines that I came up with, if you guys can think of anything else, feel free to remind me, I'll add it up.
Guide to getting started in sim racing.
1: Turn off every assist. This includes traction control, ABS, automatic transmission, and so on. The only assist that should be considered ok is the autoclutch, if you don't have one with your steering wheel.
You may ask yourself "Why?" thinking it will be easier to progressively turn them off. NO.
Why? Because turning them off later, after you've gotten used to having them, will be ten times harder than just turning them off straight at the beginning, and getting used to not relying on them.
2: Start with a front wheel drive car.
Unlike in many other games, rear driven cars are particularly hard to handle, and will easily spin you out if you are unaware of what you are doing. This may lead to a lot of frustration. Starting with a FWD car will allow you to learn the physics of the game on a smoother learning curve, and will allow you to focus on important details such as not locking your wheels during braking, learning the tracks and their curves, finding the APEX, etc.
3: Do your first run alone, no AI/other players on the track.
Having other racers around you may be a lot of fun, but it WILL make learning a lot harder, since you will have a lot more pressure, and tempted to go faster than you would otherwise do, and end up in a wall.
4: TAKE YOUR TIME, unless you have already played a real racing simulator before, this will be a very steep learning curve. For reference, Gran Turismo, Forza, and Need for Speed Shift, while great games, are not even close to being as accurate as these games are. It WILL be frustratingly hard at first, so it is very important that you take it slow, and learn the physics.
5: Steering wheel.
Get a steering wheel, just do it. Keyboards and gamepads, from personal experience, do not work well with this genre, unless you turn on every single assist in the game, which in itself, breaks the whole point of the game being realistic. Do yourself a favor, and get yourself one, some can be had cheap, and still do pretty well.
