Professional Drivers Mess with Forza Motorsport 2
“Do you guys have (the circuit) Long Beach in this game? I’ve never driven it before and I need to learn it for the next race,” asks professional racer Mika Salo on the Risi Competizione Ferrari racing team while checking out a build of Forza Motorsport 2. The game and its three screen, wheel-enhanced setup were brought to the first race of the 2007 season at Sebring International Raceway in Florida to some surprisingly interested drivers who deal with the real thing every day.
Community man Che Chou guides us through the journey. “I can say with a high degree of certainty that, outside of one or two of the younger tech crews, nobody on the Risi team plays (or have played) videogames. This conjecture, combined with the fact that these folks work on and drive the real thing day in and out made me even more apprehensive to pull up the Risi F430GT in the game for hotlaps on Sebring,” he says. “After all, it’s one thing to impress gamers and bystanders with your simulation — it’s another altogether to put the simulation up against the real thing (which was parked literally about 10 ft. away from our triple-screen setup).”
Things worked out for the best, however, as professional drivers and crew members lined up to check out the Forza Motorsport 2. “[The] gameplay session with the Risi drivers was an absolute success story for Turn 10. We not only discovered that our game met their quality bar in terms of realism, but also that Forza 2 was actually useful in helping them memorize their lines and hone their reflexes on Sebring.”
Source: gametab.com
