Homeschooled

HOMESCHOOLED

Knowing what comes next before you arrive

Don Canet

In my job, the ability to learn a track quickly is an asset when attending a sportbike launch held at an unfamiliar circuit. Over the years, I’ve had a number of opportunities to utilize racing video games as a means of getting a leg up on the learning curve, with very positive results.

My first foray into video-game training was in preparation for a visit to the Suzuka Circuit in the mid-’90s for a five-lap romp on Mick Doohan’s works Honda NSR500. As you may well imagine, the road comes at you quickly when screwing on the power aboard a GP racer, and it certainly helps to know what’s over a rise or around the next blind bend.

All 13 miles and 75 corners of the Nürburgring are present in Sony’s PlayStation 2 titles “Gran Turismo 4” and “Tourist Trophy,” while “Project Gotham Racing 3” and “Forza Motorsport 2” deliver the goods in full HD on Xbox 360.1 played them all extensively prior to taking real-life laps of the Ring and revisited each upon my return. While each game provides a viable recreation of the actual road, I believe GT4 and TT-the former featuring cars while the latter has bikes—offer the greatest attention to visual detail, sharing an identical track model as they were produced by the same developer, Polyphony Digital.

While quite good visually, they do suffer from a fundamental flaw I’ve noticed in many racing games: too wide a field of view. While offering exceptional peripheral awareness, the game’s locked wide-angle view makes objects ahead appear farther away and the road narrower than in reality. My prescribed workaround with these two games is to select the old-fashioned 4:3 screen aspect ratio in the game’s options menu and then allow my 16:9 widescreen

TV to

strictly from an onboard perspective, delivers a pretty realistic visual representation from rider-eye level.

Making the transition to riding the real-life Ring required a number of laps to become familiar with such things as surface conditions, corner camber, braking points and proper gear selection. But not once did I ever second guess whether it was a second-gear right or a fifth-gear left lurking beyond the next rise in the road. This allowed me to get right down to refining my line from the outset.

Be smart in your approach, however, as video-game jocks have accounted for enough accidents in recent years that many Ring regulars are quick to discount the value of virtual learning. You can take it from me: If your virtual practice is done properly and you respect your own real-world abilities on the actual Ring, it’s a very valid learning tool. Perhaps those old-school stalwarts could stand to reboot their logic? -Don Canet