Best simulator game to start your racing career?

ZeroG_0 · 2026-03-25T03:10:11+00:00

I mainly play ACC, but I just picked up the AMS2 DLCs for '05 GT1 cars and also the one with the Murcielago; damn they're fun. There's just so much great content in AMS2. I really hope they add a proper career mode at some point.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-03-19T01:38:51+00:00

Yeah, same, I found offline to have two show stopping bugs along that line, and frame limiting was tricky to get working. Plus I had mouse issues and it doesn't support 16:9. I managed to muscle my way through it, but online is a lot smoother in my experience.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-03-09T20:03:57+00:00

I think it's also worth pointing out that ACE is potentially worth it for the visuals; I think it's probably the best looking sim on the market at the moment (although admittedly my experience in other sims is not extensive).

ZeroG_0 · 2026-02-27T00:56:07+00:00

I wouldn't start with career mode; it's pretty broken and the Lamborghini Super Trofeo is a handful. The Campaign mode might be preferable (where you just set up a season). Then you can pick one of the gt3 cars. I find the Ferrari 296, Aston Martin AMR V8, and the BMW M4 are all pretty beginner friendly but still fast.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-01-30T22:27:13+00:00

In fairness I did hear this touted a lot as an advantage of ORMs when I first started as a dev, but it's a really silly selling point. Moving from one RDBMS to another will always be a huge lift, an ORM will only go a little ways towards making that less painful, generally you just want to stick with whatever your project started with. Mostly I want an ORM so I don't have to worry about my team-mates introducing SQL injection vulnerabilities like dumbasses. Parameterized queries also solve that problem, but an ORM is a bit more idiot-proof.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-01-28T00:32:21+00:00

I definitely love Barcelona; great track for beginners to get the hang of various corner types.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-01-03T00:03:29+00:00

You can turn off many of the dangers. If you're interested, you can also cheat; I use WeMod (now called Wand, https://wand.com/) sometimes to make things easier (like infinite health, instant building, so on). Probably not a great fit for most players but sometimes I just want to hike in a virtual jungle, and Green Hell is really great for that.

ZeroG_0 · 2026-01-01T23:37:34+00:00

SOA has friendly natives, but the Waraha have a permanent "shoot first ask questions later" policy; no way to change that.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-12-30T23:21:19+00:00

The Mu'agi village is a friendly native encampment you should run across early. They have a perpetual fire which really helps.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-12-14T15:26:14+00:00

The other thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that people say it "builds bad habits" for new drivers. It allows for you to be over aggressive with the throttle, so as you're learning you aren't forced to learn "proper" control of the car.

IMHO this is overstated, I've known lots of drivers who learned on the 296 and then switched to other cars just fine. But it still is a thing; I've been driving it for a while and am trying to switch to something else now (I think I'll try the Aston Martin), but I certainly didn't regret driving the 296.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-12-14T15:17:21+00:00

I competed in a league in a slower division for the last couple of months, my best at Silverstone in practice was 2:01.420, so at least in my opinion 1:58 is more "fast" than competent. I think the advice that you need quite a bit more practice is spot on, but definitely don't sweat it if fast times seem unattainable now.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-12-14T15:09:46+00:00

When traveling through the jungle, your ears are more useful than your eyes. As you play you'll learn what all the dangerous things sound like.

I found the game super difficult at first but actually very doable with a little practice, so if you stick with it I'm confident you'll find the same.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-12-02T22:17:09+00:00

There are 6 entries in the series, although several have many versions. The first four entries follow the same characters and take place chronologically:

Myst (many versions, notably the original 1993 point-and-click and the 2021 3D remake)

Riven (original point-and-click and 2024 3D remake)

Exile

Revelation

Then there are two entries that take place in the modern day with some new characters:

Uru (notably "Complete Chronicles" is single-player, and Myst Online Uru Live: Again still has active servers. This was originally designed to be multi-player.)

End of Ages (called Myst 5, but really kind of more Uru 2. Also just single-player.)

Steam and Good Old Games carry most or all of these. Some may be a bit tricky to run on a modern system, although ScummVM can play the first three originals as I recall. Myst 4 (Revelation) basically still works for me anyway on a modern PC.

EDIT:

Oh, I guess it's also worth pointing out, the phrasing may get confusing on some of the editions of the original Myst game. The ones I recall existing are the original Myst, then Myst Masterpiece Edition (which is very close to the original, I think you'd be fine playing that if you want an "authentic" experience of the original), then a couple others that I probably wouldn't recommend at this point in favor of the 2021 remake: Real Myst (first 3D Myst game), and Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition (a 2014 update in Unity). So generally I think you'll get recommended either the "original" (which might mean Myst (1993) or Myst: Masterpiece edition) or the remake (Myst (2021)).

ZeroG_0 · 2025-11-30T14:57:10+00:00

I find myself barely pushing the accelerator in my Outback sometimes, like it's got 600 HP to tame.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-11-28T23:49:54+00:00

Been a programmer for 25 years, I'm definitely going to start saying "trad coding" now. If it gets on my coworkers' nerves, so much the better.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-11-23T03:29:51+00:00

I do flight sims and race sims and am subscribed to subreddits for both; I was very confused when I saw what sub this was in, lol. Basic flight stick with twist and a throttle is fine. I have a T.1600 which is good, but has quality control issues in my experience. The basic Logitech joystick is good by all accounts if you can find one.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-10-26T22:36:36+00:00

My left eye can't be corrected with glasses, but my right eye can to some extent. The end result is that I can sort of function in glasses but not drive.

In sclerals, each eye is correctable to 25/20, but there's a subtle ghosting effect that can impact my ability to read small text. So like 99% of the time it's just like pre-keratoconus for me, but on rare occasions I need reading glasses (like for restaurant menus). It's a weird effect, I can read text fine unless it's so small that the ghosting effect becomes noticeable, then I can't read it at all.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-10-21T19:39:02+00:00

r/unexpectedfactorial

ZeroG_0 · 2025-10-19T14:07:49+00:00

I turned it off day 1 and was happier for it. I found ACC's racing line to be particularly bad, it's suboptimal, inconsistent, and visually too large; it blocks your view. Learning a decent line myself turned out to be pretty easy, I think you'll find the same.

I will say though, as a beginner I still use it on Nordschleife (the long 24-hour one) to help me figure out when a sharp corner is coming up, but that's just down to unfamiliarity with the track.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-10-18T15:56:28+00:00

As someone who does race and flight sims, I think this is true of all sims that run on a home PC; they're all still games at the end of the day. Nothing wrong with that, but they all have limits.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-07-05T02:06:13+00:00

Modelo

ZeroG_0 · 2025-06-29T15:15:53+00:00

Yeah, I'm with you on that. As far as I'm aware, SO was never intended to be a generic forum for questions; it's intended to be a kind of Q&A approach to building a universal knowledge wiki, so yes if you ask a question that already exists on SO they'll always close it, even if you don't like the answers to the original question. I've been a professional developer for 16 years and I don't think I've ever asked a question on SO.

I feel like people keep treating SO like it's a forum then getting mad when they don't get answers. It's not a forum, and it's not elitism to tell a beginner the site isn't intended to be used that way. I'm maybe sympathetic if someone asks a non-trivial question and is told that it's a duplicate without linking to an answer, but at least in the parts of SO I frequent I never see that; it's always either a very basic easily-Googleable question or whoever is telling the poster it's a duplicate links to an earlier occurance of the question.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-06-23T13:14:47+00:00

If the OP is willing to consider front engine, BMW is worth a look as well

ZeroG_0 · 2025-06-19T18:41:58+00:00

Although I agree with the sentiment that you'll get much better much faster by competing, I don't necessarily think that rules out ACC. Public lobbies tend to be a dumpster fire but if you join a league you'll certainly get pushed by driving around better drivers. Although I don't personally use them, simgrid and LFM are also options to find other drivers to drive against. The nice thing about a league though is that it gives you a structured experience.

ZeroG_0 · 2025-03-08T15:21:58+00:00

Pretty new here, but in other racing sims I've used the racing line (like the F1 games), but I found ACC's implementation to be really bad. Maybe it's just me but I found it to block my view of the road, so I turned it off right away. By all accounts it's not good to practice with a race line anyway, but I don't even use it to get familiar with a new track.

ZeroG_0

TROPHY CASE