[Alex Leif]

Helicorsa is great and for anybody starting out it is a must. BUT, I think it encourages you to rely on it too much. I personally got to the point I was looking at the radar when I really already knew the other car was there and I should have been looking where I wanted to put the car, thus losing little bits of time here and there.

When I switched to crewcheif and removed helicorsa I felt like I was able to focus on the driving again, incidents did not go up and my consistency improved. But I had put in well over 100,000 km in AC MP using helicorsa by that time; so had really got used to feeling where the cars around me were without having to keep looking. Surround sound helps too

[Afonso Quelhas]

Racing with Helicorsa is like, the opposite of realism. It's borderline cheating IMO, playing without it you have to check your mirrors during your battles, which makes you lose some time (as it is in real life).

Helicorsa/Car Radar simulates what you very much would have in real life, which is situational awareness. In real life, even in a big helmet and surrounded by your racing seat protectors on either side, you can pick up thousands of tiny hints about what is going on around you via reflections in mirrors, reflections in glass, on dash board elements... along with audio cues you get spatially that not a lot of video games simulate all that well. You get very little of those in a video game, and if you only have a single monitor there is a giant gaping hole in your situational awareness that you really should have in order to race up close and personal with other humans in any decent capacity.

In other words, it isn't cheating. It's something every sim should have on by default the second you are in a multiplayer situation.

The real problem is that i think you are both right, Tanguy and Russell. 
I totally agree with you two on both statements, even if they are appealing for different and opposite measures.
Per example, in Tanguy case i agree because i've raced other sims in the past and never had nothing like helicorsa to help on track and even so, i managed to race without crashing or having contact by just using what your FOV shows you, mirrors included and also sound tips. And when you raced with people that could do the same, races were pretty clean, intense and more real in my opinion. The advantage of not using apps like helicorsa is that it helps people to get more spatial awareness, and most important...responsibility for it, that comes after some practice. But the problem is that it only seems to work if everyone has the same spatial awareness and practice and works even worse if mixed with people using apps like helicorsa and others that don't.
So that's why i also agree with Russell, and as long as we don't have a way yet to replicate all those real life hints, and as long as we continue to race with some drivers using just what he would had in real life and other drivers using apps like helicorsa, the spatial awareness levels will be dangerously different from a driver to the other, so you are better off by using something like helicorsa at the moment imo, if you take in consideration the actual ac physics/contact and srs incident system.

[James Blint]

Even more cheating than Hellicorsa 




If everybody had triple screen or VR, it would be easy to not use it. Since it isn't the case for most, i think we are all better off racing with this type of hud, in 2-3 wide we lack some important peripheral vision, or the ability to have a quick peek on a side.

[Pawel Kusmierek]

Racing with Helicorsa is like, the opposite of realism. It's borderline cheating IMO, playing without it you have to check your mirrors during your battles, which makes you lose some time (as it is in real life).

If you have a single-monitor setup and properly set up FOV, you can't see your mirrors except virtual mirror (which has huge blind spots). You can't see what's going on to the left and right of your car. Unless you make VR mandatory, helicorsa/car radar are necessary. Or a lesser evil.

[Thomas Soehmisch]

OMG. We have it again. Each racing game has frequently it‘s discussion about forced cockpit view. It always starts with the silly realism argument although it absolutely doesn’t affect the realism of the cockpit driver weather the others drive with bonnet, wing man or spectating cam. And as for now also in every discussion about that at some point one driver reveals the real argument:

It is all about jealousy - that the other driver might be better because of it‘s view. For me this is whining at it‘s best. For me it would be some kind of dictatorship if one part of the community forced others to drive in a way they don‘t want. 

As a side note: More than ten years ago I also used cockpit view in rFactor on my 17 inch screen. I thought it was realistic but nowadays I state me wrong. It was more of driving and looking out of a tank than a race car. Now I drive Forza Motorsport with wingman camera and gamepad as well asand AC from the bonnet view and with the good old red MOMO. I want clean races. I want fun. Let me drive the way I want as long I do not ruin your race.

An other question:
Would you (the cockpit drivers) leave the game or SRS if they refused to force cockpit view? I don‘t think so. But would we (the bonnet drivers) leave SRS if we were forced in cockpit view? YES we would! So if you want as empty AC servers as R3E already has then forced cockpit view is the way SRS can go for.

[Jorge Cercadillo]

If people are clean, I don't mind what camere they use.
And impose internal camera I think would be unfair for some, if you have a small monitor, cockpit camera sucks.

I installed recently Helicorsa, and it's good for cars that don't have good mirrors, but playing in VR I prefer regarding the mirros than helicorsa.

[Jaroslav Černý]

Even more cheating than Hellicorsa 




If everybody had triple screen or VR, it would be easy to not use it. Since it isn't the case for most, i think we are all better off racing with this type of hud, in 2-3 wide we lack some important peripheral vision, or the ability to have a quick peek on a side.

What is even more than helicorsa? Having a rearview screen?

I hate helicorsa, tried it sure when it came out but it's inaccurate, distracting and not worth bothering when you are already aware of your surroundings. To me it's a distraction app for experienced drivers and an app that will make new drivers NOT learn how to be properly aware of their surroundings.

Racing with Helicorsa is like, the opposite of realism. It's borderline cheating IMO, playing without it you have to check your mirrors during your battles, which makes you lose some time (as it is in real life).

If you have a single-monitor setup and properly set up FOV, you can't see your mirrors except virtual mirror (which has huge blind spots). You can't see what's going on to the left and right of your car. Unless you make VR mandatory, helicorsa/car radar are necessary. Or a lesser evil.

I have my screen 24" setup with FOV I prefer and am used to. I can see rear view mirror + virtual rear view mirror and driver side side mirror (not that I really need it much for racing). Virtual mirror has again it's FOV so adjust it if you don't like the default star telescope view.
I can see and hear what's on my left and right, you know there are binds in the menu to set your buttons or keys to look left and look right and look back? You can also change the angle and speed of the head turning.
There is really no excuse to use helicorsa other than laziness.

If people are clean, I don't mind what camere they use.
And impose internal camera I think would be unfair for some, if you have a small monitor, cockpit camera sucks.

I installed recently Helicorsa, and it's good for cars that don't have good mirrors, but playing in VR I prefer regarding the mirros than helicorsa.

I don't mind what camera they use either as long as they are aware of their surroundings whether it's by using mirrors and side views or VR or they cheat with helicorsa or other app like that or the built in red distraction markers.

24" I always use in car view as in I see hands, wheel, dash, often 2 mirrors, etc. Nah it's 23.5", not even 24" my bad.

It's all about what FOV do you use, if you're running star gazer telescope FOV well then no surprise you can't see anything Some people do use that, such as 28deg FOV etc. on a single monitor, it's quite obvious when you watch many of these on track as they are literally clueless of what is around them. Sure it may give them a wanna be fake 1:1 view compared to real FOV at that distance to their monitor but the result is they are like a horse with blinds on their sides and all they can see is tiny tunnel forward.

---

If someone wants to use the cheating helicorsa, so be it, it's their loss anyway. But there are already built in ways in most sims so that you can see and hear what is around you and behind you. There are always some blind spots, true, ever drove a real car? Yeah there are blind spots too, on most of them. Do you drive your real car with a radar on the roof and screen on a dash showing cars around you? Or do you have one of those self driving toasters? Younger generations... won't even know how to drive soon let alone race, the decline in driver quality is real.

[Russell Sobie]

It is like you went through this thread, read all the points I made, and then created a post disagreeing with every point! I don't think you really have much to see in Helicorsa since you appear to be out in front most of the time... so of course you are aware of your surroundings: there's no one there! I don't think you should even be attempting to shame folks using a radar app, especially if they aren't great at situational awareness.

Helicorsa IS inaccurate, to be sure, since it doesn't do orientation (which is pretty important)... but Car Radar is perfectly accurate as it uses the actual model position and orientation to indicate where cars are around you. I use a combination of the two since Helicorsa has the background image that you can mod and has "side by side" indication. Works really well. I think if someone has even the remotest problem knowing where other cars are in relation to yours they should be using a radar app. Or two. And not feel the slightest bit like they are cheating.

[James Blint]

What is even more than helicorsa? Having a rearview screen?

I hate helicorsa, tried it sure when it came out but it's inaccurate, distracting and not worth bothering when you are already aware of your surroundings. To me it's a distraction app for experienced drivers and an app that will make new drivers NOT learn how to be properly aware of their surroundings.

You would know i guess if you had watched the video maybe a little further, nowadays all teams in GTE/LM for example run the Bosch CAS-M (Collision Avoidance System), it's essentially a more advanced Helicorsa/CR on the rear view LCD screen. Of course nobody use these apps in AC for what's ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSBnvLnG_jo

Im sure you have a perfect surrounding awareness that you don't need anything, but when even very experienced drivers in real find this improving safety in close racing and traffic, simracers shouldn't feel that bad to be more comfortable with it at times, especially if they don't race in VR.

[Jaroslav Černý]

Except these are multiclass races with cars that do have rearview screens. I have no qualms with AC replicating that for those cars. Neither does AC do rain or night racing at least not by default and even if some server runs night settings then you don't have to install the night mod and race in day time instead. Endurance multiclass is a whole another animal not even done in AC.