Just curious about how much difference you are driving in KK vs in real-life.
Personally, I have only raced in LO206 real-life. The slowest engine in KK is KA100. I have done a good amount laps in Geel with KA100 and I m still almost 2s off the top in the leaderboard. I try to go smooth but based on the YouTube video I can find, top driver are trying to “slide” most of the corners.
Here is a video for reference:
There are some big differences in driving technique between KK and real-life. Flinging the kart somewhat sideways and rotating the kart with big steering inputs and braking seems to be what gets you near the top of the leaderboards, but this wouldn’t be nearly as effective in real-life.
Take a look at the comments in our KartKraft thread (which has turned mostly into an iRacing thread at this point) for more info.
I sorta dropped out for now to Irace so my thoughts are based on incomplete info.
Just prior to quitting there was an unusual thing going on that did introduce completely nutso driving to take advantage of a glitch.
That has since been patched and I don’t know what it’s like now.
In general though, KK does a really good job of simulating a kart and I think you’d enjoy it and get something useful out of it.
I am not sure that the driving not being exactly like real life matters all that much. It’s close enough, imho. There are aspects that are not true to life. TJ mentions big inputs, for example. Grip is perhaps too strong in some ways, etc.
But, it’s seat time in something that is pretty close to real. It helps me, I think. I certainly never feel “rusty” when I get on track IRL.
Kart simulators biggest problem is the relative lack of steering input. So difficult to get that feeling right on a simulator.
Thanks for the comments. I guess KK should be good enough for me for now. The goal is just to get more seat time in before summer race season. The leaderboard time just too crazy, but I guess seat time is all what I need
I think you will enjoy it. It’s not much of a “game” at this point in that there isn’t multiplayer. The Time Trials is pretty much the only thing cooking.
I think that KK is definitely useful for training in a kart in that the game is “quick” like a kart is. Same twitchy steering rack. I am driving a car in iracing these days and it’s remarkable how long and slow a turn is, relatively, in a car, how much more mass there is to get around.
I don’t think hopping into iracing would be as useful for a warm up. The energy cycle of a kart is so quick, it’s cantilevered steering so unique.
Even though the mechanics of the sim aren’t perfect, the kart feels and drives like a kart. I can’t think of any other way to get equivalent practice, other than hoofing a real kart.
The main point is, don’t get too discouraged if you’re far off the leaderboard times in KartKraft. It’s a fairly close simulation, but your pace or lack thereof won’t necessarily translate to real-life. If you suck on KK, that doesn’t mean you suck in real-life, or the other way around.
Dom is right in that the quick pace of driving in KK is a good representation of real-life driving, even if the handling and feel isn’t perfect, so it can be good to get reps in for real-life reaction times and things like that.
leaderboards are full of aliens. What I learned in my brief experince is in order to get those times it requires bigger inputs. no direct relationship between your times in KK and IRL, but practicing on KK can keep your brain up and makes you more comfortable starting a season.
This pretty much sums it up.
World record chasing is like a world unto itself. It’s a hyper specialisation where you start having to play about with hardware settings. Very low FF is often something ‘aliens’ use, combined with weird set ups and exploiting physic bugs. Oh, and hours and hours and hours of practice. It is very skillful, but as suggested a ‘quick pace’ in most sims is often pretty close to RL.
Hey Guys,
I helped out with the development of Kart Kraft over the years as it’s Melbourne based and even feature on the game for a laugh!
I can’t match the pace of these online guys as there’s intricacies that suit a game over a real life kart. But the game still gives you a good understanding of the fundamentals, apexes, braking points, throttle points and overtaking opportunities.
Instead of just accumulating seat time, I encourage you to really dig into the experience to learn as much as you can. That is, when you make a mistake, crash, and hit the reset button to try again, then before you head back on track, also hit the reset button in your head, and try to diagnose exactly why you crashed (the cause/effect relationships that resulted in your destruction 
). Think about the four stages of crashing:
Ask yourself if you ‘felt’, something around stage 1 or 2, that you ignored, and might have allowed you to avoid the crash if you had taken action then. Or, if you didn’t recognize what was happening at the time, think back and see if you can pick out the ‘signals’ from your memory of the experience that indicated you were in trouble.
Also, I’m not sure if KK provides ‘data’, but if so, use that to try and identify opportunities for improvement.
For example, I’ve been chasing an alien’s time at Long Beach in iRacing. There was one turn that I was 0.15 off the pace, and struggling with the car snap oversteering (and scrubbing speed) at the exit of the turn. Looking at the data, I could see I was turning in a little early (so taking a slightly shallow entry), which was causing the major part of rotation for the turn to shift from around the apex to the exit of the turn, which was causing the outside rear tire to ‘overload’ when I tried to accelerate hard (that’s my cause effect analysis).
You could stop at this point (once you’ve identified the ‘issue’), and you will likely be able to improve your performance. However, if you take it a step further, and try to understand WHY you are making a mistake or sub-optimal choice, then you can really leverage the information/experience/lesson that you have.
For example, regarding my previous example, even though I’m not sure exactly why I was turning in early, mentally digging into it…
(it think it was a combination of not trusting the front end on the way in, not wanting to turn later and built too much rotational momentum early in the turn-because the car is very ‘snappy’, and maybe a dash of that’s my default ‘style’)
…gives me perspective, and things to consider when working out how to actually ‘fix’ the issue.
In the case of this example, I used imagery to prepare, and then used my understanding of the problem to simply ‘force’ myself to change my turn in timing/technique until it was established as a habit. The new habit I created fixed the snap oversteer and put me on pace with the alien through that turn.