Learning new tracks

[madmatt]

I actually had a recent experience with this. It had been a few years since i had been at the big track @ Willow. I watched a few videos on youtube, even a turn by turn instruction with turnpoints, reference points, breaking markers, etc.

I got there pretty confident that I knew what was coming, and (like GM2 said) it looked like another planet. Particularly the omega. The videos gave no perception of the elevation changes - big hill up, blind turn down. Took me a few sessions to figure it out.

[gm2]

i still don't like it through there at all.  4a & b kinda force you to use neutral throttle, makes me really uneasy.

that and the blind, downhill, decreasing radius bs. 

[madmatt]

i still don't like it through there at all.  4a & b kinda force you to use neutral throttle, makes me really uneasy.

that and the blind, downhill, decreasing radius bs. 

plus 8 & 9 are either boring, or terrifying. Either way, disorienting.

[Jester]

Admitted racing sim geek.

Console games not so much as they're all arcades and have a limited number of tracks, but I would think a good PC sim would help a lot for gaining some knowledge of racing lines, braking points etc. prior to getting on track for real.  For bikes there really isn't anything out there except arcade games (i.e. motogp 08 etc.), but there are plenty car specific sims that would be worth it.  rFactor is probably what you'd want to look at as it is an open source modable meaning there is a ton of tracks available for free from rFactorcentral.  The sim itself is around $35 from Trymedia (online download, no disk).  The only thing more realistic is IRacing, which is an online only subscription based "game" that really is aimed at the proffessional racer.  They physically go to each track and laser scan everything down to the grass blades and do the same for the available cars.  As such it is ass expensive; $15/month + $10-$20 per track and car.  iRacing has some noteable professional racers as subscribers.

Its not new, but Tourist Trophy that came out for PS2 was a fantastic bike sim I thought.  Lots of different tracks there and while old, its still a blast to play.  I thought the physics were pretty solid.  You can essentially gain a handful of competitive SBK's... the suzuka 8hr bikes.

[derby]

check out the interview w/ spies:  http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=19757.0

he mentions learning the track layouts w/ video games in the first part of the interview.