OPTION to Force Cockpit in multiplayer?

Why should I or those so called "PRO'S" in esport "pro" have it easier and better than the real deal? Do you see drivers in real life sit on the Halo or on their T-CAM?

Do you ever see drivers in real life sit on the couch with their feet in the air and a controller in their hands looking at a monitor?

Real life and digital racing is not the same. It can't be the same. 

Why should I or those so called "PRO'S" in esport "pro" have it easier and better than the real deal?

Why should esports drivers have it more difficult and worse than the real deal? A real driver can feel the car, look around, smell, talk to the engineer. An esports driver has way less feedback than a real driver. To compensate a little for the lack of feedback, we've got FFB and we can change the camera angle to improve the feedback we receive. Again, it can't be the same.

Most of the hotlap times in TT are also TCAM times, seconds faster than the real drivers do. WHY would that be?

Because TT is a mode in which every possible element is in an optimal state to get the most out of the car. No tyre wear, no overheating, no dirt, no wind, no fuel, There's also no risk involved for a simracer. If we botch a hotlap, we'll be on the next try in 5 seconds. We have unlimited time to try and set one fast lap. Real drivers only get 12 minutes and 2 to 3 attempts at most. Just to prove my point. Max Verstappen did a 1.28.997 at Bahrain in 2021 to secure pole. The first video of a cockpit cam TT I can find is doing 1.26.542, almost 2,5 seconds faster than the real deal and 2,5 seconds slower than the fastest T-cam hotlap I can find (Lucas Blakeley 1.23.924). It's not (just) the camera point that makes esports driver faster than real life drivers. We don't even know what Lucas Blakeley can do on TT with cockpit. Maybe he can set a 1.24.100? We can not assume that cockpit is 2,5 seconds slower, because most players use T-cam so it's only logical that the fastest times are achieved with T-cam.

my runs are always in cockpit mode, without assists. I'm simply a hardcore lover of F1 and I want it as close to real as I can get.

That's perfectly fine and I admire you for doing that, it's just not that important for esports to be as close to real life as you can get, because of the reasons I gave earlier. The more realistic you try to make it, the more difficult you make it. You could argue that this would make it even less realistic, because it gets more difficult than real F1. Again, it can't be the same.

The same goes for those so called "MASTER" skilled drivers in ranked lobbies who get to that level with all assists enabled and thus winning races easy from non assist drivers. Non assist lobbies should be standard option. There should be more "hardcore" options to create a fair and level playingfield.

I see non assist drivers winning from assist drivers aswell. It's all a matter of who's racing who. If you're really fast (and you want to achieve that MASTER rank, you should be able to win from assisted drivers (who are limited by the assists like TC which makes them slower). If you can't win from a TC user, you aren't a master of the game. 

But as with everything, CM doesn't care a single bit for the hardcore players like you or me or everyone else who would like these options.

Baseless claim. If they didn't care, you wouldn't be able to drive without assists in cockpit mode. Just because they don't have a non-assist/mandatory cockpit cam lobby, doesn't say anything about whether they care more or less about you than any other driver. As far as I'm aware there is only one sort of ranked lobby. Which would mean that Codemasters only cares about players that use the exact assists that are allowed in that mode? No, it's just that they tried to find a standard that would give everyone the chance to compete with drivers with the same pace. If you want to race without assists, find a league!

And I think that it's simply because they don't know how to create something like that.

Baseless claim. They could. But I don't think they would because it would hurt the amount of players that are active in those lobbies. There's just not that much drivers that would play 0-assists and cockpit cam in ranked mode. By putting everyone in the same lobby, Codemasters makes sure that there's always somebody to race against, even if it's someone who uses different assists than you.

FYI: I don't use any assists, but I do use T-cam. And I'm perfectly fine with the non-assists leagues I'm active in. Just as I'm fine with racing ranked lobbies against assist users. If they are as fast as I am, I'll have fun racing them.

ABS ON IS FASTER 

click link for video tested by Marcel Kiefer who is convinced ABS makes you faster because you can brake way later without penalties.

i tried some online, and me without ABS trailbraking get divebombed by ABS abusing people who then ACTUALLY MAKE THE CORNER TOO! 

plus the TT times don’t lie. It’s like christmas how it lights up with ABS

@IGNxLegendZz , fair comment, accept your respectful response, thanks. 

My counter counter counter (if you will :P ) is that its harder to adapt camera angle than assist level. Also, if, for example, ranked was limited with a force cockpit, how many people would truly play this and see it as a valuable addition? Honestly, not too many. If anything, a hindrance to joining the session.

Now, possibly in a League format with established core of players who all want it, sure. But you could just force it in the league rules if done externally. From my experience, I wouldn't join a lobby where I can't play on my camera settings, regardless of game. 

Finally, where does it end? FOV? Angle? Something will always appear more 'META' than something else.

Something that has to be clear: F1 by EA/Code is a simcade that only cares about including as many players as possible. The focus and commitment is not the same as in simulators. They leave OP driving aids like ABS that don't even exist in the car and flood Hotlaps with these aids, imagine the rest... seen through the eyes of the producers, they just want as many drivers as possible playing the game and that's it. No need to strain like people who play unaided (as the car really is), and are often even faster than them.

@IGNxLegendZz Yeah can agree, always trusting the other league racers to respect the rules. From my experience, most league racers are a community within a community and respect rules regardless.

I guess the overall point would be pure audience for it as its simple in theory to add and remove things in-game, but its justifying the resource vs reward for the player. 

Respectful discussion over a point though. Kudos, lot of time for that.

@Jato_Italiano , as I'm committed to devils advocate here on this thread. :P 

Some interesting comments here:

"Seen through the eyes of the producers, they just want as many drivers as possible playing the game and that's it" -  In some ways true, in a lot, no. We of course want as many players playing our game as possible, who doesn't? But that constitutes creating a game that everyone can be invested in and want to play. Considering the F1 franchise, as a core game experience, is about the hardest game to get into for rookie players, with an incredibly high ceiling of ability, assists are a must.

The harsh reality is there's no one here who could get into a F1 car of any generation in real-life and be able to even get it off the grid. Its all about compromise. Imagine if we made a game where no player could get out of the pits without stalling, wouldn't be much fun?

"No need to strain like people who play unaided (as the car really is) and are often even faster than them" - Always someone quicker than you. Always someone quicker than me, my forum race results will be testament to that.  Unless you are Jarno Opmeer or something, there's still a challenge for you somewhere. 

For me, I respect and appreciate those quicker than me and also understand that there are people who are slower than me in-game who have a lot of fun doing so. The core driving experience is excellent imo, and this has always been my opinion since 2012.

@BarryBL

You're right, it is a niche request.  It's for leagues, and back when we had about 20 different F1 201x leagues, we'd have only implemented this in our top/most competitive leagues where people are putting in 30 hours a week of practice because the level of competitiveness is that high.  Because it's so high, we want no question about integrity and fairness.  We want everything to be completely equal.  We don't want any debates about whether TC or T-Cam make a fast driver faster or slower.  For public lobbies, sure, and even for our lower leagues, sure, players can play with the option to use any assists and any view.

Again, we just need this to be an OPTION, just as all the other assists are options when setting up a multiplayer league.  I'm not trying to force this on anyone except for competitive league racing where everyone would have already signed up for it and known exactly they're getting.  For public lobbies, you can see the assists allowed before joining so that there's no surprises.

No, we can't just force it in the league rules as you suggested.  Sure, we can write it, but it's not so easy or realistic to trust hundreds of strangers around the world.  We can try to verify it with video, but you'll always get people saying their PC isn't fast enough to record while racing, but we don't really want to be watching hundreds of videos anyway.  We've jumped through so many hoops over the years to ensure our leagues are fair - we've had to have users run scripts on their PC's to show they're not using any "trainers", or we've even had to do something similar to make sure now one is using a wheel while having their input device set to controller.  The problems with the view seems to be the very last one.  Let's not let it keep ruining the top leagues.  The number of drivers we lost for issues like this was crazy.

And if you can't recognize that this is a serious, valid request, I'm concerned.  Every other sim will let you race in cockpit cam and only cockpit cam.  There's a reason for that, and it's integrity of results.  Please just give us the option to add this where needed.

@moogleslam Don't worry, I see the validity for the request. 

I'll ask the question of if we can get any objective analytics behind the idea, and try to figure out the true demand of such a addition. Its reward as a entire player base vs resource. Have to remember that we are more than willing to make additions, but we just need to find the numbers across the whole game to justify its addition and the expense of valuable dev time. 

Fortunately for the whole F1 game and its sanity, I'm not a programmer or you would all be in trouble. So I'll consult with the experts.