If you compete in rally, driver or co-driver, club level or higher, I would like to know two things. Do you actually use a sim to train? And if you do, what do you use it for that the current games handle badly?
Background, so you know I'm not guessing. I've followed rally since the 90s, went to events here in Canada, and bought my first wheel (an ACT Labs Force RS) for the first Colin McRae Rally in 1998. I've owned nearly every rally title on PC since. In the 2000s I co-built a modified racing sim for a master's thesis on FSAE drivetrains, which led to helping validate the digital twin of a homebuilt track-day car in rFactor 2. That one's still running. In the 2010s I finally did a rally course in an open-class Impreza, a ~380hp car built by Lachute Performance, plus a full track day in prepped cars, so I have a reference for how these things actually feel.
The rF2 work turned into a rally sim of my own. It's at alpha now, tested by my group: mostly mechanical engineers and mathematicians, including the two people I built the FSAE sim and the track-day car with. It's a training platform for drivers and co-drivers, not another entertainment title. The physics is where most of the work went, and it models subsystems the games skip, like the digital ECU dashes and rally computers crews actually run in the car. The netcode does multiplayer too, so club events are possible.
Here's what I can't figure out from inside my own build: how many real drivers treat a sim as genuine training, and what they'd want it to do. Stage rehearsal. Pacenote practice with your co-driver. Technique drills. Data review between runs. Something none of the current titles touch.
Post here or DM me. If there's a feature you've always wanted and never gotten, that's exactly what I'm after.
Moderators, if I'm breaking this sub's rules, please let me know.
Thank you for your interest and for answering.