Things You Can Learn From Driving Games

So I've been playing Forza 3 for my Xbox, using a driving wheel I ordered through Amazon. Makes it playable and you can use your hard learned skills that way. Driving was very difficult for me to learn in the beginning, and my parents insisted I learn it properly with a stick shift, since cars back then cost about half what automatics did. Its a good skill to have. In Forza your choices for first car are several entry level, under 100 HP bubble car hatchbacks with tuning options you invest in as you go, using your race prize money. But you have to win to get prizes to invest in the car to make it fast enough to win more consistently. When I first played it, I only had the basic Xbox controller which expects you to have sufficient fine-motor control to use a 1 inch joystick to steer a car at 110 mph. It isn't the most effective and I didn't have the control yet. I cheated by bashing into cars and pushing them off the road because at the lowest settings the game won't penalize you for it. Later, I turned on full damage to remove the temptation to drive like a monkey with ADD and the wheel let me pass cars without hitting them, mostly going between them at start or picking a different line through corners or late breaking and trying to accelerate out at the end of the turn, which is tricky if you know anything about Apexing.

My first car in the real world was a VW Bug, built when I was born, bought as a wreck, and rebuilt by my Dad who had a replacement engine just sitting in the garage. We fitted it, replace fenders, pulled dents, bondo-ed the dings, sanded, painted, replaced glass and rubber seals. Turned it into a new-ish car. We also installed a stiff bus suspension to it so it rode so hard it was like you were sitting on the road itself it was so rough. Not fun. The seat belts held you down into the seat. It would take about 5 minutes of adjusting for a passenger to fit. It was all manual, not fancy coiling motors. It was rough and it rattled and it only got 25 mpg and max speed was 55 mph, and could only hit 60 downhill with a tailwind. I drove that car to SF once, for a job interview. Was pretty awful. It was okay on the mountain roads where I lived, but nothing as nice as Dad's Acura Integra, which had loads better suspension and brakes and way more power. My bug would fight you from first to second gear. There was no synchromesh gear between them so if the RPMs were exactly right, it wouldn't go into gear. It would fight and fight and sometimes you'd have to double clutch just to have any hope and usually by the time that happened you'd slowed down so much you may as well go back to first. It was a pretty horrible car. I'm not nostalgic about it at all. No heater until you'd arrived somewhere. No window defrost. I carried a towel in the car to wipe it clear on straightaways. This was really dangerous because I lived in heavy fog every morning and most evenings, so driving in fog with fogged up windows can get you killed. Kids these days have no idea what hardships my generation went through. Oh, and it had a carburetor, not fuel injection, so it idled fast to keep from stalling and adjustments were more mystical than effective. Eventually a hippy drove into me and the frame bent, the car was totaled.

I used the insurance money to buy a BMW 320i, a car which needed an engine rebuild due to terrible pinging on revs so I had to advance the ignition and lost a lot of power but was really fast, great handling, great transmission and power, and used the most expensive gas. Since that was 30 cents more per gallon back when gasoline was 78 cents a gallon it was irritating every time I filled up. It was a high compression engine, slippery rear wheel drive and you had to be really careful in the wet, even after I put good Pirelli sport tires on it. It was wonderful. I miss that car. I will probably buy one on Forza, though the M3 is pretty similar to what I had.

Forza has some good roads on it, but my favorite if the Japanese mountain road called Fujjimi Kaido. I don't drift it, of course, because I am sane, and tire noise isn't going into speed or handling. I often heard tire noise right before a crunch or sudden silence followed by sirens as the Fire Department checked for survivors every Saturday night, back where I grew up. This road really needed some fire department presence near the summit, but perhaps the locals decided to make it more fun by letting them die. The road has places you can literally drive off a cliff, and there's few straight stretches longer than a few hundred yards at a time. Most is twisty and takes your full attention to get right. I love it. I wish there were more roads like that in the game. The ones I grew up on would be great. Its already a fantasy driving sim. Why not include the Trinity Grade, or the 12-West run to Bodega Bay, or River Road from 101 to Jenner? Twisty, through tiny towns and redwoods alongside the Russian River. Or the Mt Tamalpais Road from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach. Its famous for its hairpins and beloved of the rich with Porsche 911 Turbos since its really good at killing them. Driving games really could use more real-world roads. And there are plenty worth racing on. The section of Hwy 20 from Williams to Lakeport? Wow. Twisty and fast. Great in any car that handles. And there's Elk. I would love to run that at 100 MPH. There's also 128 from Cloverdale up through York and Anderson Valley to Noyo Harbor. Twisty, followed by Fast, then redwoods again. These are fantastic road racing courses you can do if you're careful and willing to deal with the tickets if you get caught by the highway patrol. And probably arrest.

There need to be more tracks for track days. Sears Point, and I refuse to call it anything else, is a serious road course but narrow and hard to pass on and impossible to see the outputs of many of the turns. Laguna Seca is pricy and fun, but extremely technical and its down near Santa Cruz, north of Monterey. Buttonwillow in San Joaquin Valley and Thunderhill north of Sacramento off I-5 near Willows, which is not the same as Button Willow.  These are the norcal tracks. Why aren't there more? You don't have to be rich to have fun racing. Even silly comedians like Clarkson, Hammond, and May proved you could do Rallycross racing for less than a golf membership, around $5-6K starting with used cars and the needed legal safety gear (roll cage, harness, fire extinguisher, plastic windows not glass). If the economy improves even a little, it would make sense to give boys with the reflexes and aggression to race the place to do it, instead of killing themselves on roads like my generation did. And the one before, too. I hate 70's muscle cars not because they're loud, but because the inability to corner killed quite a few teenagers where I grew up. Dead, not just hospitalized. Back then murder was rare but death by car accident was #1 killer of the youth. Usually solo accident.

Driving games bring home that power isn't everything. Sideways grip from your tires, which allows you to corner, and suspension, which keeps the tires on the road so they can grip are so important. Races aren't in straight lines most of the time. They have corners. I have to sadly agree with Clarkson every time he complains that American cars can't make turns. At speed, they'll kill you. Its all those straight axels. After 50 years, Mustang is FINALLY getting wishbone suspension. Its like a revelation at Ford, learning about this new fangled technology that's been in use since 1920? Really. And you want me to invest in your company? Are you insane? Still, some of their newer cars are pretty sweet. Had I a proper job I'd think very seriously about a Fiesta ST, which won Road and Track car of the year. Its Turbo charged, front wheel drive, manual transmission, trick differential and traction control so handles like its on rails and weighs little enough to be properly fast. Probably rattles and is full of plastic as well, since its Ford and they never heard of plush interior or fit and finish, but what can you do? I suppose fix it up myself, though I might be better served picking up a WRX Subaru instead, as they're also fast and furious with a turbo charger, real all-wheel drive, and handle well. Considerably heavier. I'd like to see Subaru replace their heavy diffs with aluminum cases and drop 30 pounds of weight, if not more, and start replacing body panels with aluminum since lighter is faster. I guess they aren't interested. A pity. That's another car to drive in the Forza game to see how it is.

A sensible solution to real world racing is buy up hilly roads that counties are abandoning, link them together, lower the regulations from Nerf-stringent back to risk taking, and build a dozen of them around the state. I bet that Altamont Hills would be great for racing. Pave some of those gravel roads, widen others, get at least 3 miles of track with some decent straightaways and that serves Stockton, Tracy, Livermore Valley and Contra Costa County and the East Bay Area. North Bay is already going to Sears Point, or taking their chances on the mountain roads. A good track in Copperopolis would make use of that land better than sitting empty or winter grazing since there isn't enough water for vineyards. Thunder Hill already serves the North Valley. A track inland from Eureka would be a good idea, though the area is so broke I'm not sure who but pot bootleggers could afford it. Everybody else is too poor. And once pot is properly legal, they might be too broke too. Socal can figure out its own tracks. I suspect there's informal tracks near Vandenberg AFB near San Luis Obispo. Salinas and Monterey and Gilroy are all going to Laguna Seca. And Buttonwillow serves the South Valley. So really, they don't need that many more tracks. Three more should cover it. Put in temporary rally cross using permits on sections of public road and private dirt roads and you have enough races for both kids and professionals to be happy. I suspect the dirt roads over the slopes of White Mountain near Bishop would be dandy, as would the roads up the East side of the valley, past the radio telescopes. So many options. So much fun.

The game is great because you can road test cars. Turns out the Mid-Engine Lotus Exige really doesn't handle that well, the Koenigsegg is almost undriveable getting loose on turn apexes if you're the least careless with the throttle, the Yaris is great fun with minor tweaks for horsepower and stiffness in the suspension, and the Porsche tries to break loose due to its weight being on the back, just like I remember when I drove one a few thousand miles on an adventure to Alaska. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't have taken that car mainly because the 150 miles of frost heaves in the Yukon near Watson Lake (and by near I mean 100 miles on either side) wore out the suspension. The car was sagging when I arrived in Anchorage. Hell of a trip, though. Really something. I'm glad Dad did that for us.

I find myself wishing there were more real-world roads mapped into this driving game. The physics engine is believable, which helps with the reactions matching reality. This is plausible training. I am really noticing my concentration improving the more I play it. Its intense and demanding and its great for focus. Speaking of Focus, the Ford Focus is a fun one to drive, as is the VW Scirocco GTI. Very quick car. The hot hatches are light and fast and they grip on turns very well so save you from your own mistakes, of which there are many. I'm barely half as good a driver as I was when I was a youth. I don't have the reflexes anymore. I don't have the attention and skills. I'm a pale shadow of my potential all those years ago. A pity that the economy wasn't interested by the time I got ambitious and has reverted to economic cannibalism. Oh well. I can hope things improve, but I don't see that as possible till the govt stops destroying us.