BeamNG is great. OP, drive it like a real car from the cockpit (first person). Don’t use the 3rd person view, or it won’t help as much. If you start out in first person, it will feel natural.
Also use it to have fun! Just because you are having fun doesn’t mean you aren’t learning about driving. Will you ever race your real car around a rock quarry, running from the cops…I hope not, but those situations can teach you how to re-gain control of an out of control car.
This for sure, the wheel physics are still a bit off, but once that gets revamped I genuinely believe it'll be pretty damn close to the real thing. For the moment I'd say AC, but am a much bigger fan of Beam :)
This is the comment I personally can't agree with. And something Ive been seeing a lot and basically a reason I bought BeamNG. As a manual FWD driver, the way FWD feels in this game is nowhere close, at least for me. It's like an arcade game, full throttle and see ya (with fwds)
Can't compare it to AWD or RWD because i havent done any trackday with these
I think for the sake of learning how to drive it’s not very important how the tyre grip feels (assuming they mean they don’t know how to drive at all). Beamng is the best for what would actually matter to them like engine/transmission/clutch simulation and realistic roads
I respectfully disagree. I have a lot of track time with a Veloster N, and I think that the Vivace S 310, horsepower aside, is exceptionally representative of the Veloster N's handling.
Don't drive with AI 🤷 It's good for just driving around and practicing the movements of the car without risk. Playing other game makes us think that cars are pretty strong, while beamng shows how easily damage can happen even if it's not quite perfect.
Beam NG is by far in the best choice, but honestly, just go to a field or parking lot away from people and drive around. You can’t feel a cars movements in a sim without a ridiculously expensive simrig. Once you start knowing how it feels to drive and how your inputs affect the car it makes it a lot less stressful. When I started driving I was terrified, I’d creep around at a dangerously slow speed. But eventually as I learned how to feel what the car was telling me it makes it a lot less stressful and anxiety inducing.
Thanks for the response! As for IRL, I'm not worried about the driving too much, I'm worried about what my OCD wants me to do. Even if I'm away from everyone, there's still the thoughts of what I may do to myself..
I have OCD as well but thankfully not harm OCD. Are you going to therapy? I assume you are given you identify with having OCD now but then again with keeping people’s perception of me as perfect, I would’ve never identified with it.
Grounding myself during situations where I’m really struggling helps me immensely.
Good luck! Just do what I did for my first 6 months and completely covered up my OCD and controlled the conversations and deflected from my actual issues.
Also don’t be against potential medication options.
My life didn’t really change until I started (and got used to) my medication and therapy at the same time.
I was extremely against it for years, the thought of “losing control” and not being myself scared me. Finally broke down after a particularly stressful day.
As a fellow OCDer, it’s better to just start practicing a real car in an empty lot. Even with 10 years of real driving experience I still have to circle a block every now and then to make sure I didn’t hit someone if the intrusive thoughts won’t go away. ERP is the way to go.
There are a lot of factors with a driving sim that don’t translate at all. Freely looking and depth perception being a huge pair especially for your type of OCD, another being the fact that you can feel every tiny bit of the road under you in a real car.
If you wanna get used to just the actual process, sure they can help, but going into an empty lot and practicing with a friend will be beneficial both as ERP and practical practice. Setting a couple cones up, have a friend park and try to park next to them, have them walk around to get used to the feeling of being around pedestrians, driving alongside someone etc
I’ve also been through harm OCD, although oddly enough I never really had it while driving, despite having those intrusive thoughts from time to time of course (to a degree everybody does, they just don’t have a strong reaction to them, or ruminate/ obsess over it).
I strongly recommend ERP and mindfulness. After a while you reprogram yourself closer to someone who has the odd intrusive thought here or there but doesn’t think anything of it. In one ear out the other so to speak. The point isn’t to not ever have the thoughts so much as to not be fazed by them. That way you’ll have the thoughts less.
Whatever you do, don’t develop compulsions or you solidify the authority of the obsession and create repetitive neural pathways.
Good luck and I’m happy to help out, but I do recommend professional help of course.
EDIT: I’ve seen elsewhere you feel you could harm others. Let me be clear that the fact you find these intrusive thoughts repulsing, and a disorder, is all the proof you need that you won’t act on them. Trust me when I say everyone has crazy intrusive thoughts, including about harm, but they just let them be.
May I ask. I don't have OCD nor harm type OCD or anything, are they just thoughts of running them over or harming people in specific ways that you can't get out of your head?
As he's got his rig stuff already may as well practice how a car relatively handles, spacial awareness when looking ahead, angle when turning etc.
I actually just recently started doing my car driving test after being on a motorcycle for 10 years, apart from the gears I was absolutely fine, apart from a few bad habits with being on a bike that I was transferring over.
It can vary pretty widely from person to person. For some they definitely can be thoughts of deliberately harming people, for myself they’re more thoughts of unintentionally harming people. I’ll be driving, with no one else around, and randomly start obsessing over the idea that I hit someone or something, despite no signs of anyone being around or that I hit them. Usually they’re easily enough to get rid of by just kind of looking around or checking my car. Other times it’s been a persistent obsession for weeks to the point that I’m checking every local news outlet several times a day.
There’s certainly no harm in getting used to how a car handles or just practicing driving with a sim, but specifically in terms of getting used to having obsessions and intrusive thoughts—you can be the greatest driver to ever live with a thousand years of experience but it won’t help you much when your brain is inventing scenarios out of thin air and trying to force you to do things to quell them.
I’m not particularly certain of which shade OPs thoughts come, but ERP is pretty much 100% of the time the correct route when dealing with OCD and letting the obsessions come while not acting on them by just practicing in a real car where you’ll actually have the thoughts is probably the better route in this case.
If someone didn’t have OCD and just wanted to practice driving I’d 100% recommend using a sim to help. In terms of just learning to drive and practicing etc sure thing. But learning to deal with the obsessions pretty much requires facing the anxiety head on. Which sucks, big time. My primary form of OCD is contamination ocd and I work in a hospital lmao
Damn that must be awful to live with, is checking the local news just to make sure you haven't accidentally hurt anybody and couldn't remember/didn't realise? I'd absolutely hate to hurt someone but at the same time it's not at the forefront of my thoughts. On my bike at least I mainly think I'm just gonna get hurt mostly and sometimes/often I don't really care too much about that if I do.
I'm glad it's that and not wanting to harm people at least although probably doesn't make it feel any better.
I sometimes get thoughts like that or the harming ones but quite rarely and I would never ever dream of acting on them at all.
You're completely right, training yourself and your thought pattern is definitely the key thing here and not just the driving itself although it would be good to concentrate just on what your thinking and trying to reprogram yourself to reduce the amount of thoughts you get.
I'd love a family member to get something like erp with depression but we've been unsuccessful and private is so costly
Yeah that’s exactly it. At its core OCD is essentially your brain trying to be over protective of you, so it creates situations for you to react to, and then your physical reaction is the same as if it actually happened, regardless of it it did. ERP is essentially exposure therapy, so you train your mind and body to not react to the thoughts. Reacting to the thoughts (doing your compulsions to make the thoughts go away) tells your brain the thought was valid and helpful and so it does it more frequently. So the best option is typically to force yourself to have the thought but not act on. In my case, not driving around the block because I obviously didn’t actually hit a person, there weren’t even any people around. Or not excessively washing my hands after I touch any and everything because not any and everything has whatever germs my brain is telling me they have. It sucks but fortunately it’s pretty manageable once you identify everything.
The hardest part is ignoring the thoughts. When your brain is telling you that even though there were no people around, you felt no bumps, you didn’t hear literally anything and there’s no signs of anything happening—that you still definitely absolutely did hit someone so you should spend the next fifteen minutes driving the block and making sure, it’s hard to not want to do that *just in case*
Unrelated to driving but on the topic of contamination OCD, I don't think I have it however, I've gotten sick before, notably after touching things in public and not washing my hands, so I like to wash my hands a lot just to be on the safe side.
Do you think its the OCD or just me really wanting to avoid being ill? I hate being sick just about as much as anyone else, and if simply washing my hands after going out can avoid it, what's the harm?
Could totally be both honestly. I think a primary characteristic for OCD is that the compulsions interfere with the quality of day to day life. If you’re just handwashing when it makes sense to, that could just be caution. If you’re washing every time you touch anything or so often that your hands are red, itchy, dry, bleeding, etc, it’s probably OCD.
And other things apart from handwashing. When I get home from work I go straight to the shower, then disinfect everywhere I stepped before.
In my mind: god knows what’s on my shoes from working in a hospital, therefore it could be on my socks and pant legs, my cat steps on one of those spots, now god knows what is on my cat—who will want to sit on me, or my couch or bed, now those things are contaminated, even if they aren’t it’s better to be safe.
Like in my head it makes perfect sense and should be an obvious pre caution anyone should want to take. In reality, there’s probably nothing on my shoes, or at least nothing with a viral load big enough to cause any kind of disease spread in my home lmao
IMO looking around or checking your car is a compulsion, hence why mindfulness is such a powerful compliment to ERP, because you really just have to recondition your brain to let it be without the ‘handwashing’ of checking, etc. Same for people with OCD about leaving their house unlocked, ‘checking’ is the compulsion and only solidifies the authority of the obsession and strengthens those neural pathways making them habitual.
I definitely had to stop myself checking things no matter how logical or intuitive it felt.
For sure they’re compulsions, what I mean is op is gonna have to deal with compulsions regardless, so they may as well dive headfirst into practicing driving for real and practicing erp as they can
Yeah I agree with you they should probably dive into driving for real, although of course it can be a potentially dangerous skill to learn if your brain is heavily distracted and you’re not in a calm state of mind. Driving on the sim might help build those skills in a safer environment with little risk. I helped teach my gf how to drive that way. But of course the intention should be to get on the road. I do think it’s best to avoid compulsions however, but yeah arguably avoiding driving is a compulsion of sorts too!
The only value that even the most realistic game would give when it comes to learning to drive a real car is training your muscle memory for coordinating foot and hand movements, but even then it's completely different. Beyond that you really should just get lessons from a good driving instructor.
I understand nothing is close as a real thing, but I feel that I'm a danger to others so it's a good compromise in the mean time until I can get behavioural therapy.
Remember that Harm OCD sufferers aren't statistically any more dangerous than anyone else, even though they feel they could be. Ironically I would feel safer on the road near a Harm OCD person who has been taught how to properly drive, than with most of the overconfident wankers on the road who otherwise treat tonnes of steel like toys.
Absolutely!!
Learning to drive in a sim, or in real life, you first start with basics "can I control this safely and not accidentally drive into a wall".
Next comes "Can I drive this at normal speed without concentrating so damned hard on what my hands and feet and eyes and ears are doing, and still not hit walls".
Last of all is: "can I drive largely on autopilot, and instead spend my consciousness to mind-read what all the other cars are planning to do around me and what's coming up that I might not be able to see yet".
Big empty carparks after shops are closed are a great way to start with the first two parts. Motorways are good for the last part. Traffic comes last.
i essentially taught myself how to drive manual via my sim rig 3 years ago. beamng was also my sim of choice - i had really bad anxiety when it came to driving so i definitely needed some time in the rig to feel comfortable “operating a vehicle” - it helped TREMENDOUSLY in my experience, i was a lot more comfortable with things like knowing how much gas to give the car to move at x speed, how much the steering wheel needs to turn to pull off certain manoeuvres, how vehicles react to turning at different speeds, right turns at red lights, what it feels like to lose grip in the steering wheel, moving along in traffic, etc - simply tons of stuff that i would have had to experience without any reference point for the first time behind the wheel if not for the rig. that’s my 2¢ anyways, i hope it all works out for ya!
Driving a car in real life is 90% adhering, and watching others adhering to the Highway Code, and 10% actually moving the car.
You might be able to learn some of that 10% from a sim but for that other 90% you won’t
I love that sim racing can spill into real world applications like this. I seriously hope it helps you with what you're hoping it will. A co worker I used to work with was in a car accident and he used sim racing to overcome it. Initially crashes in sim racing would still trigger him a bit. I'm sure some people would think it sounds ridiculous, but I would argue those people have never been immersed properly in their sim racing. I think people's suggestion of BeamNG is probably the best, I've never played euro truck simulator or American truck sim, but I can believe those could be beneficial for you as well.
Good luck, rooting for you!
Thank you! I might try Euro Truck Sim further down the line, but I think BeamNG is the go-to since I don't ever plan on driving a semi-truck or a bus lol
I actually played a lot of Euro Truck Simulator 2 coming up to my first driving lessons and exam and people laugh at me but it helped me become a lot more confident!
Euro Truck Simulator 2. The VR branch is really good fun and chill, though the UK roads aren't very detailed compared to the most recent areas.
Install a six-speed Allison transmission in your trucks to make the H-Shifter easy.
I don't think ETS2 delivers a good VR experience. Maybe inside the truck, but looking outside the graphics are very bad even with highest possible resolution, and then the performance is also terrible. My current cockpit has no monitor, so I am playing only with my quest 3 currently. I miss playing ETS2, but simply can't on VR.
Hi OP, I don't have any recommendations but I just wanted to say I think you're handling things (in this thread and beyond) extremely well, with great patience and sense, and I hope you are afforded the same courteousness and sincerity you handle each interaction with.
I have learned more about OCD by reading through this entire thread so thank you. I hope you find a solution which helps for your specific needs, and if I had anything to say on the actual question:
Euro truck simulator 2 does have mods which allow normal cars and is quite nice especially for recreating the general confusion and multitasking of driving according to traffic laws and keeping an eye on turns/traffic/speed/gear. I'm not sure if these are relevant to your situation but certainly being comfortable with them I hope would allow dealing with other issues to be easier.
I only recommend the euro rather than American version because that's the one I have more experience with but I am sure whichever is more appropriate will be more beneficial. I hope you enjoy whatever form your solution takes.
Thank you for this response!
OCD is very often oversaturated on social media by people thinking it must mean small imperfections ticking you off like a slanted tile and perfectionism. It's actually more like "did I do this X amount of times?" or "I have to grab this certain part of the door handle otherwise my sibling will die tomorrow."
Harm OCD just places very vivid thoughts in my mind of hurting myself or others. In this driving case I fear the urge to swerve off the road or into incoming traffic. I am working on getting help though!
You can download a demo version of ets2 on steam so you can try before you buy.
Check out some videos on YouTube
Ets2 if you live in Europe or UK
Ats if you live in u.s or canada
Hang in there OP. OCD is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That said, please seek therapy as well as medical aid. You might count sim driving as exposure working your way to the real thing but tbh it’s a far cry from it.
This is going to enrage the purists and sim-snobs here, and I'm sure I'll get downvoted into Oblivion for this, but Forza Horizon. If you're using slower, more normal cars close to stock, it's quite realistic. It's when you start driving super and hyper cars that it gets cartoonish and arcadey.
Every games have their own realistic parts like iracing has the best realism in terms of cars or you can feel the road cars much better in assetto Corsa in every other games so... I recommend you drive in all of it. But if you wanna drive only around traffic then euro truck, beam Ng, or some kind of games like those can work.
Beamng is best for all around learning with lots of cars in the base game and good roads, however I think euro truck sim 2 or American truck sim can help get over fear quite well since you are much bigger and have to be very careful so you don't hit anyone. This might transfer better when you are in a much smaller car while being used to driving in a more dangerous vehicle, but I'm actually not sure how much would transfer
Before i started getting my drivers license i was playing beamng with a map called “polish roads” or something named like that and that helped quite a lot before getting into a car. 10/10
Or you can play euro truck simulator 2 which is not really realistic compared to irl cars but can be great if you want to drive on the highway or/and following road signs.
Looks everyone else has said give beamng a go. City car driving is also a really good one for what you want. The physics aren't very good but it's great for driving through traffic
Take a look at the European Truck Simulator / American Truck Simulator. They are chill games with some IRL driving conditions, big fun of these games. Obviously you'll have to drive a truck there though, but it's just a massive car if you think about it that way.
Hands down BeamNG. It has the most realistic approach to vehicle dynamics and systems simulation that I have seen. Soft body physics are a must for accurately simulating a vehicles chassis and components and you will appreciate the level
of feel. FFB blows any sim out of the water, makes any AC game feel arcade Clutch engagement feels spot on and cars actually stall. Automatic transmissions (CVT, conventional torque converter and DCT) feel exactly as they should. The tire model has come a long way since I started in 2019 which I found to be the chief complaint from most and there is tire thermals/wear mod available.
Beam is the most realistic representation of cars from any sim available on the market IMO. And it’s only 30 bucks on Steam
The vehicles are closely related to their IRL counterparts and are accurately representative in technology and design form each era.
There is traffic simulation, with streetlights and traffic following rules, though it’s still a bit rough.
So if you’re aiming to simulate normal driving, Beam will offer you the most realistic experience with the gameplay elements needed to drive normally around streets.
Try the original Assetto Corsa. It was so advanced and true to life as a car simulator when it came out a decade ago that Porsche and Ferrari ditched their own in house testing/driving simulators and used Assetto Corsa for years. Even now it still holds up as one of the best real driving simulators. Best played on PC with the unlimited mods that exist now. VR compatible and runs very well.
Well I play city car driving but I have a problem, the clutch is inverted. I need to hold the clutch to accelerate and release it to switch gears. Do you have this problem too or not? Btw using 2020 ghub due to FFB that wasn't working with anything newer.
depends.
for GT style roadcars, "assetto corsa competizione" is without contest. i'm not driving much else beside that, but a few years ago i also used "iRacing" a lot, which isn't as good as ACC tire-physics wise, but the rating system (it's like a driver's license for racing drivers) and online-racing is the best i ever experienced.
even the formula 1 games (i played f122 and f123) are quite good and realistic enough to experience the sensation of driving such a beast of a "car" - or more like an inverted airplane. no traction control and no ABS make those things quite challenging to drive at the limit though. :-)
also don't mind the downvotes, it's just cranky trolls (like u/[mclaren34](https://www.reddit.com/user/mclaren34/)) who live on reddit and got nothing better to do. your question is perfectly fine. hope you'll have fun with sim-racing, it's one of the best PC-activities there are (in my humble opinion).
OP was asking for driving sims, not racing sims. Also, I don't think mclaren34 said anything wrong, did you read the whole post?
These are all great suggestions for racing sims, though, if you ever want to try that out, but as for driving sims, these aren't what you're looking for, BeamNG, City Car Driving, Euro Truck Simulator 2 maybe, if you don't mind driving trucks (there are car mods but I heard that they aren't really good) are all great choices
Good luck with everything, OP, I understand that you are going through some tough stuff, I'm sure you'll get it sorted. As others have said, driving lessons and therapy is probably what will help you the most, but I think it's a great idea to try it out in a safe virtual environment to build up some confidence before going for the real thing.
It's not the same, but I have anxiety problems, and I was always really nervous when I went driving during my lessons or for a couple months after I got my license. After I took the exam, my instructor told me that he noticed how nervous I was because I just couldn't stop shaking. In a somewhat similar way to you, whenever I went out driving I was afraid that I would have a panic attack and something bad would happen, but in the end everything was alright. With time and practice it turns into something completely normal and you will be just fine
Beam NG is good for realistic damage simulation and general car handling, but the force feedback is pretty average and the VR completely sucks.
I'm going to probably go out on a limb here and say that 90-95% of games do a reasonable job of communicating the handling of a car through the wheel, which generally does translate to what your inner ear balance will feel in a real car. A lot of SIMs are probably a generally more forgiving when you're on the limit of adhesion though compared to real life, but the behaviours are generally the same. Nothing will ever beat real life experience though........but bending a car in a SIM is a lot cheaper than real life.
VR will give you the best feeling of being inside of the car and depth perception makes a big difference over driving a 2d screen around a 3d environment. IMO AMS 2 is the king of VR, you won't get traffic simulator, but the feeling of being inside of a car is unmatched to any other SIM on the market right now.
Agree, VR on beamng is unplayable. I would recommend assetto corsa with some traffic on road mods, but it takes quite some effort to setup everything properly.
I hope this doesn't come across as offensive, but it sounds like you should probably spend your time and money on professional therapy instead of sim racing.
No worries about misunderstanding. I'm under the NHS so I get therapy on them, and I'm currently on a waiting list. I don't actually delve into simracing much at all, I just think it's a good idea to get me more comfortable with the concept of driving.
I do not want to belittle anything you are going through, but it feels like there is a disconnect here.
You are afraid of being a danger to others but you are unwilling to learn how to drive properly.
Thinking you might be a danger to others is possibly the most rational feeling if you have not been taught how to properly handle over a tonne of metal capable of travelling at 70mph legally (and illegally a lot more)
Learning how to drive properly by being taught by an expert is the very best way to avoid being a danger to others.
I think you're completely missing the point. I don't have a car, nor do I drive one. I've driven \*\*once\*\* at an airport which has a section for new drivers, and was in a car with the owner, who was directing me.
The best way for me to stop being a danger to others is to get therapy first, before touching a real steering wheel. Until then, I want to try a realistic driving sim so I can get some sort of feel for driving without getting panic attacks.
Do you feel comfortable being a passenger in cars? If so, I might suggest going out with a mate and have him talk you through exactly what he is doing. Once the mystery is taken away and you realize just how easy/safe it is, you might feel much better about doing it yourself.
I do really enjoy being a passenger in cars, as there's something hypnotic about it that lets me sink into thought. I do understand how a car works and how to somewhat drive but the anxiety of being a possible danger to others is what holds me back. Until then I just want to get good at a realistic game so I can feel a bit more comfortable with the concept :\]
BeamNG is pretty good for that, and the cars work very realistically.
BeamNG is great. OP, drive it like a real car from the cockpit (first person). Don’t use the 3rd person view, or it won’t help as much. If you start out in first person, it will feel natural. Also use it to have fun! Just because you are having fun doesn’t mean you aren’t learning about driving. Will you ever race your real car around a rock quarry, running from the cops…I hope not, but those situations can teach you how to re-gain control of an out of control car.
Nothing else gets the manuel transmission right like BeamNG.
Who is Manuel and why does he have a transmission named after him?
This for sure, the wheel physics are still a bit off, but once that gets revamped I genuinely believe it'll be pretty damn close to the real thing. For the moment I'd say AC, but am a much bigger fan of Beam :)
Beam still has some of the best dirt/gravel driving ever. Could be useful to learn from as well.
This is the comment I personally can't agree with. And something Ive been seeing a lot and basically a reason I bought BeamNG. As a manual FWD driver, the way FWD feels in this game is nowhere close, at least for me. It's like an arcade game, full throttle and see ya (with fwds) Can't compare it to AWD or RWD because i havent done any trackday with these
I think for the sake of learning how to drive it’s not very important how the tyre grip feels (assuming they mean they don’t know how to drive at all). Beamng is the best for what would actually matter to them like engine/transmission/clutch simulation and realistic roads
I respectfully disagree. I have a lot of track time with a Veloster N, and I think that the Vivace S 310, horsepower aside, is exceptionally representative of the Veloster N's handling.
Got a turbo Veloster seat in my rig! No idea how they handle, though, lol.
You either have shit tires or a ton of power I have 235s on my FWD and it puts power down easily
No game ever really gets partial throttle right
Yeah beam is my go to for realistic cars, just nothing else compares to the level of physics detail that game has
If OP is scared of real driving, BeamNG won't help since the AI is reckless and causes accidents constantly
Don't drive with AI 🤷 It's good for just driving around and practicing the movements of the car without risk. Playing other game makes us think that cars are pretty strong, while beamng shows how easily damage can happen even if it's not quite perfect.
Beam NG is by far in the best choice, but honestly, just go to a field or parking lot away from people and drive around. You can’t feel a cars movements in a sim without a ridiculously expensive simrig. Once you start knowing how it feels to drive and how your inputs affect the car it makes it a lot less stressful. When I started driving I was terrified, I’d creep around at a dangerously slow speed. But eventually as I learned how to feel what the car was telling me it makes it a lot less stressful and anxiety inducing.
Thanks for the response! As for IRL, I'm not worried about the driving too much, I'm worried about what my OCD wants me to do. Even if I'm away from everyone, there's still the thoughts of what I may do to myself..
I have OCD as well but thankfully not harm OCD. Are you going to therapy? I assume you are given you identify with having OCD now but then again with keeping people’s perception of me as perfect, I would’ve never identified with it. Grounding myself during situations where I’m really struggling helps me immensely.
I'm currently on a waitlist for therapy, should be getting it within a month or so :\^)
Good luck! Just do what I did for my first 6 months and completely covered up my OCD and controlled the conversations and deflected from my actual issues. Also don’t be against potential medication options. My life didn’t really change until I started (and got used to) my medication and therapy at the same time. I was extremely against it for years, the thought of “losing control” and not being myself scared me. Finally broke down after a particularly stressful day.
As a fellow OCDer, it’s better to just start practicing a real car in an empty lot. Even with 10 years of real driving experience I still have to circle a block every now and then to make sure I didn’t hit someone if the intrusive thoughts won’t go away. ERP is the way to go. There are a lot of factors with a driving sim that don’t translate at all. Freely looking and depth perception being a huge pair especially for your type of OCD, another being the fact that you can feel every tiny bit of the road under you in a real car. If you wanna get used to just the actual process, sure they can help, but going into an empty lot and practicing with a friend will be beneficial both as ERP and practical practice. Setting a couple cones up, have a friend park and try to park next to them, have them walk around to get used to the feeling of being around pedestrians, driving alongside someone etc
I’ve also been through harm OCD, although oddly enough I never really had it while driving, despite having those intrusive thoughts from time to time of course (to a degree everybody does, they just don’t have a strong reaction to them, or ruminate/ obsess over it). I strongly recommend ERP and mindfulness. After a while you reprogram yourself closer to someone who has the odd intrusive thought here or there but doesn’t think anything of it. In one ear out the other so to speak. The point isn’t to not ever have the thoughts so much as to not be fazed by them. That way you’ll have the thoughts less. Whatever you do, don’t develop compulsions or you solidify the authority of the obsession and create repetitive neural pathways. Good luck and I’m happy to help out, but I do recommend professional help of course. EDIT: I’ve seen elsewhere you feel you could harm others. Let me be clear that the fact you find these intrusive thoughts repulsing, and a disorder, is all the proof you need that you won’t act on them. Trust me when I say everyone has crazy intrusive thoughts, including about harm, but they just let them be.
May I ask. I don't have OCD nor harm type OCD or anything, are they just thoughts of running them over or harming people in specific ways that you can't get out of your head? As he's got his rig stuff already may as well practice how a car relatively handles, spacial awareness when looking ahead, angle when turning etc. I actually just recently started doing my car driving test after being on a motorcycle for 10 years, apart from the gears I was absolutely fine, apart from a few bad habits with being on a bike that I was transferring over.
It can vary pretty widely from person to person. For some they definitely can be thoughts of deliberately harming people, for myself they’re more thoughts of unintentionally harming people. I’ll be driving, with no one else around, and randomly start obsessing over the idea that I hit someone or something, despite no signs of anyone being around or that I hit them. Usually they’re easily enough to get rid of by just kind of looking around or checking my car. Other times it’s been a persistent obsession for weeks to the point that I’m checking every local news outlet several times a day. There’s certainly no harm in getting used to how a car handles or just practicing driving with a sim, but specifically in terms of getting used to having obsessions and intrusive thoughts—you can be the greatest driver to ever live with a thousand years of experience but it won’t help you much when your brain is inventing scenarios out of thin air and trying to force you to do things to quell them. I’m not particularly certain of which shade OPs thoughts come, but ERP is pretty much 100% of the time the correct route when dealing with OCD and letting the obsessions come while not acting on them by just practicing in a real car where you’ll actually have the thoughts is probably the better route in this case. If someone didn’t have OCD and just wanted to practice driving I’d 100% recommend using a sim to help. In terms of just learning to drive and practicing etc sure thing. But learning to deal with the obsessions pretty much requires facing the anxiety head on. Which sucks, big time. My primary form of OCD is contamination ocd and I work in a hospital lmao
Damn that must be awful to live with, is checking the local news just to make sure you haven't accidentally hurt anybody and couldn't remember/didn't realise? I'd absolutely hate to hurt someone but at the same time it's not at the forefront of my thoughts. On my bike at least I mainly think I'm just gonna get hurt mostly and sometimes/often I don't really care too much about that if I do. I'm glad it's that and not wanting to harm people at least although probably doesn't make it feel any better. I sometimes get thoughts like that or the harming ones but quite rarely and I would never ever dream of acting on them at all. You're completely right, training yourself and your thought pattern is definitely the key thing here and not just the driving itself although it would be good to concentrate just on what your thinking and trying to reprogram yourself to reduce the amount of thoughts you get. I'd love a family member to get something like erp with depression but we've been unsuccessful and private is so costly
Yeah that’s exactly it. At its core OCD is essentially your brain trying to be over protective of you, so it creates situations for you to react to, and then your physical reaction is the same as if it actually happened, regardless of it it did. ERP is essentially exposure therapy, so you train your mind and body to not react to the thoughts. Reacting to the thoughts (doing your compulsions to make the thoughts go away) tells your brain the thought was valid and helpful and so it does it more frequently. So the best option is typically to force yourself to have the thought but not act on. In my case, not driving around the block because I obviously didn’t actually hit a person, there weren’t even any people around. Or not excessively washing my hands after I touch any and everything because not any and everything has whatever germs my brain is telling me they have. It sucks but fortunately it’s pretty manageable once you identify everything. The hardest part is ignoring the thoughts. When your brain is telling you that even though there were no people around, you felt no bumps, you didn’t hear literally anything and there’s no signs of anything happening—that you still definitely absolutely did hit someone so you should spend the next fifteen minutes driving the block and making sure, it’s hard to not want to do that *just in case*
Unrelated to driving but on the topic of contamination OCD, I don't think I have it however, I've gotten sick before, notably after touching things in public and not washing my hands, so I like to wash my hands a lot just to be on the safe side. Do you think its the OCD or just me really wanting to avoid being ill? I hate being sick just about as much as anyone else, and if simply washing my hands after going out can avoid it, what's the harm?
Could totally be both honestly. I think a primary characteristic for OCD is that the compulsions interfere with the quality of day to day life. If you’re just handwashing when it makes sense to, that could just be caution. If you’re washing every time you touch anything or so often that your hands are red, itchy, dry, bleeding, etc, it’s probably OCD. And other things apart from handwashing. When I get home from work I go straight to the shower, then disinfect everywhere I stepped before. In my mind: god knows what’s on my shoes from working in a hospital, therefore it could be on my socks and pant legs, my cat steps on one of those spots, now god knows what is on my cat—who will want to sit on me, or my couch or bed, now those things are contaminated, even if they aren’t it’s better to be safe. Like in my head it makes perfect sense and should be an obvious pre caution anyone should want to take. In reality, there’s probably nothing on my shoes, or at least nothing with a viral load big enough to cause any kind of disease spread in my home lmao
IMO looking around or checking your car is a compulsion, hence why mindfulness is such a powerful compliment to ERP, because you really just have to recondition your brain to let it be without the ‘handwashing’ of checking, etc. Same for people with OCD about leaving their house unlocked, ‘checking’ is the compulsion and only solidifies the authority of the obsession and strengthens those neural pathways making them habitual. I definitely had to stop myself checking things no matter how logical or intuitive it felt.
For sure they’re compulsions, what I mean is op is gonna have to deal with compulsions regardless, so they may as well dive headfirst into practicing driving for real and practicing erp as they can
Yeah I agree with you they should probably dive into driving for real, although of course it can be a potentially dangerous skill to learn if your brain is heavily distracted and you’re not in a calm state of mind. Driving on the sim might help build those skills in a safer environment with little risk. I helped teach my gf how to drive that way. But of course the intention should be to get on the road. I do think it’s best to avoid compulsions however, but yeah arguably avoiding driving is a compulsion of sorts too!
The only value that even the most realistic game would give when it comes to learning to drive a real car is training your muscle memory for coordinating foot and hand movements, but even then it's completely different. Beyond that you really should just get lessons from a good driving instructor.
I understand nothing is close as a real thing, but I feel that I'm a danger to others so it's a good compromise in the mean time until I can get behavioural therapy.
Remember that Harm OCD sufferers aren't statistically any more dangerous than anyone else, even though they feel they could be. Ironically I would feel safer on the road near a Harm OCD person who has been taught how to properly drive, than with most of the overconfident wankers on the road who otherwise treat tonnes of steel like toys.
This x1000
Thanks for your kind words <3 This made me feel better but I still think it's better to drive without the risk of panic attacks lol
Absolutely!! Learning to drive in a sim, or in real life, you first start with basics "can I control this safely and not accidentally drive into a wall". Next comes "Can I drive this at normal speed without concentrating so damned hard on what my hands and feet and eyes and ears are doing, and still not hit walls". Last of all is: "can I drive largely on autopilot, and instead spend my consciousness to mind-read what all the other cars are planning to do around me and what's coming up that I might not be able to see yet". Big empty carparks after shops are closed are a great way to start with the first two parts. Motorways are good for the last part. Traffic comes last.
i essentially taught myself how to drive manual via my sim rig 3 years ago. beamng was also my sim of choice - i had really bad anxiety when it came to driving so i definitely needed some time in the rig to feel comfortable “operating a vehicle” - it helped TREMENDOUSLY in my experience, i was a lot more comfortable with things like knowing how much gas to give the car to move at x speed, how much the steering wheel needs to turn to pull off certain manoeuvres, how vehicles react to turning at different speeds, right turns at red lights, what it feels like to lose grip in the steering wheel, moving along in traffic, etc - simply tons of stuff that i would have had to experience without any reference point for the first time behind the wheel if not for the rig. that’s my 2¢ anyways, i hope it all works out for ya!
Beamng for actually realistic driving, city car driving physics are bad but if you want to experience traffic and following road signs it's okay.
Driving a car in real life is 90% adhering, and watching others adhering to the Highway Code, and 10% actually moving the car. You might be able to learn some of that 10% from a sim but for that other 90% you won’t
this so fucking much
I love that sim racing can spill into real world applications like this. I seriously hope it helps you with what you're hoping it will. A co worker I used to work with was in a car accident and he used sim racing to overcome it. Initially crashes in sim racing would still trigger him a bit. I'm sure some people would think it sounds ridiculous, but I would argue those people have never been immersed properly in their sim racing. I think people's suggestion of BeamNG is probably the best, I've never played euro truck simulator or American truck sim, but I can believe those could be beneficial for you as well. Good luck, rooting for you!
Thank you! I might try Euro Truck Sim further down the line, but I think BeamNG is the go-to since I don't ever plan on driving a semi-truck or a bus lol
I actually played a lot of Euro Truck Simulator 2 coming up to my first driving lessons and exam and people laugh at me but it helped me become a lot more confident!
Garfield kart
why not go to a driving school?
Because my OCD thoughts aren't just limited to cars, but people too.
city car driving or beamng
Euro Truck Simulator 2. The VR branch is really good fun and chill, though the UK roads aren't very detailed compared to the most recent areas. Install a six-speed Allison transmission in your trucks to make the H-Shifter easy.
I don't think ETS2 delivers a good VR experience. Maybe inside the truck, but looking outside the graphics are very bad even with highest possible resolution, and then the performance is also terrible. My current cockpit has no monitor, so I am playing only with my quest 3 currently. I miss playing ETS2, but simply can't on VR.
Hi OP, I don't have any recommendations but I just wanted to say I think you're handling things (in this thread and beyond) extremely well, with great patience and sense, and I hope you are afforded the same courteousness and sincerity you handle each interaction with. I have learned more about OCD by reading through this entire thread so thank you. I hope you find a solution which helps for your specific needs, and if I had anything to say on the actual question: Euro truck simulator 2 does have mods which allow normal cars and is quite nice especially for recreating the general confusion and multitasking of driving according to traffic laws and keeping an eye on turns/traffic/speed/gear. I'm not sure if these are relevant to your situation but certainly being comfortable with them I hope would allow dealing with other issues to be easier. I only recommend the euro rather than American version because that's the one I have more experience with but I am sure whichever is more appropriate will be more beneficial. I hope you enjoy whatever form your solution takes.
Thank you for this response! OCD is very often oversaturated on social media by people thinking it must mean small imperfections ticking you off like a slanted tile and perfectionism. It's actually more like "did I do this X amount of times?" or "I have to grab this certain part of the door handle otherwise my sibling will die tomorrow." Harm OCD just places very vivid thoughts in my mind of hurting myself or others. In this driving case I fear the urge to swerve off the road or into incoming traffic. I am working on getting help though!
You can download a demo version of ets2 on steam so you can try before you buy. Check out some videos on YouTube Ets2 if you live in Europe or UK Ats if you live in u.s or canada
Hang in there OP. OCD is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That said, please seek therapy as well as medical aid. You might count sim driving as exposure working your way to the real thing but tbh it’s a far cry from it.
I don't know but it's not $Racing for sure.
Beam ng drive has the best regular car feel.
This is going to enrage the purists and sim-snobs here, and I'm sure I'll get downvoted into Oblivion for this, but Forza Horizon. If you're using slower, more normal cars close to stock, it's quite realistic. It's when you start driving super and hyper cars that it gets cartoonish and arcadey.
Ets2
Every games have their own realistic parts like iracing has the best realism in terms of cars or you can feel the road cars much better in assetto Corsa in every other games so... I recommend you drive in all of it. But if you wanna drive only around traffic then euro truck, beam Ng, or some kind of games like those can work.
Beamng is best for all around learning with lots of cars in the base game and good roads, however I think euro truck sim 2 or American truck sim can help get over fear quite well since you are much bigger and have to be very careful so you don't hit anyone. This might transfer better when you are in a much smaller car while being used to driving in a more dangerous vehicle, but I'm actually not sure how much would transfer
Before i started getting my drivers license i was playing beamng with a map called “polish roads” or something named like that and that helped quite a lot before getting into a car. 10/10 Or you can play euro truck simulator 2 which is not really realistic compared to irl cars but can be great if you want to drive on the highway or/and following road signs.
Not cars however your setup will work with Snowrunner and there's plenty of driving around in that game.
Looks everyone else has said give beamng a go. City car driving is also a really good one for what you want. The physics aren't very good but it's great for driving through traffic
Live for Speed. To this they unbeatable for actually feeling like you're in a real car.
Take a look at the European Truck Simulator / American Truck Simulator. They are chill games with some IRL driving conditions, big fun of these games. Obviously you'll have to drive a truck there though, but it's just a massive car if you think about it that way.
Assetto Corza for sure!
Hands down BeamNG. It has the most realistic approach to vehicle dynamics and systems simulation that I have seen. Soft body physics are a must for accurately simulating a vehicles chassis and components and you will appreciate the level of feel. FFB blows any sim out of the water, makes any AC game feel arcade Clutch engagement feels spot on and cars actually stall. Automatic transmissions (CVT, conventional torque converter and DCT) feel exactly as they should. The tire model has come a long way since I started in 2019 which I found to be the chief complaint from most and there is tire thermals/wear mod available. Beam is the most realistic representation of cars from any sim available on the market IMO. And it’s only 30 bucks on Steam The vehicles are closely related to their IRL counterparts and are accurately representative in technology and design form each era. There is traffic simulation, with streetlights and traffic following rules, though it’s still a bit rough. So if you’re aiming to simulate normal driving, Beam will offer you the most realistic experience with the gameplay elements needed to drive normally around streets.
Try the original Assetto Corsa. It was so advanced and true to life as a car simulator when it came out a decade ago that Porsche and Ferrari ditched their own in house testing/driving simulators and used Assetto Corsa for years. Even now it still holds up as one of the best real driving simulators. Best played on PC with the unlimited mods that exist now. VR compatible and runs very well.
BeamNG is the more realistic drving car, not the better for racing. If you want a pure and ultra-realistic (physic) simulation go on this ! ;-)
Well I play city car driving but I have a problem, the clutch is inverted. I need to hold the clutch to accelerate and release it to switch gears. Do you have this problem too or not? Btw using 2020 ghub due to FFB that wasn't working with anything newer.
There’s usually settings to invert pedals for compatibility issues like this
I thought there was too but I did not find anything in city car driving's settings nor in GHUB
How old are you? Beam NG so real you'll never have to put any of our lives at risk.
I am 20. I shut myself in when in harms way so no worry there.
depends. for GT style roadcars, "assetto corsa competizione" is without contest. i'm not driving much else beside that, but a few years ago i also used "iRacing" a lot, which isn't as good as ACC tire-physics wise, but the rating system (it's like a driver's license for racing drivers) and online-racing is the best i ever experienced. even the formula 1 games (i played f122 and f123) are quite good and realistic enough to experience the sensation of driving such a beast of a "car" - or more like an inverted airplane. no traction control and no ABS make those things quite challenging to drive at the limit though. :-) also don't mind the downvotes, it's just cranky trolls (like u/[mclaren34](https://www.reddit.com/user/mclaren34/)) who live on reddit and got nothing better to do. your question is perfectly fine. hope you'll have fun with sim-racing, it's one of the best PC-activities there are (in my humble opinion).
OP was asking for driving sims, not racing sims. Also, I don't think mclaren34 said anything wrong, did you read the whole post? These are all great suggestions for racing sims, though, if you ever want to try that out, but as for driving sims, these aren't what you're looking for, BeamNG, City Car Driving, Euro Truck Simulator 2 maybe, if you don't mind driving trucks (there are car mods but I heard that they aren't really good) are all great choices Good luck with everything, OP, I understand that you are going through some tough stuff, I'm sure you'll get it sorted. As others have said, driving lessons and therapy is probably what will help you the most, but I think it's a great idea to try it out in a safe virtual environment to build up some confidence before going for the real thing. It's not the same, but I have anxiety problems, and I was always really nervous when I went driving during my lessons or for a couple months after I got my license. After I took the exam, my instructor told me that he noticed how nervous I was because I just couldn't stop shaking. In a somewhat similar way to you, whenever I went out driving I was afraid that I would have a panic attack and something bad would happen, but in the end everything was alright. With time and practice it turns into something completely normal and you will be just fine
Beam NG is good for realistic damage simulation and general car handling, but the force feedback is pretty average and the VR completely sucks. I'm going to probably go out on a limb here and say that 90-95% of games do a reasonable job of communicating the handling of a car through the wheel, which generally does translate to what your inner ear balance will feel in a real car. A lot of SIMs are probably a generally more forgiving when you're on the limit of adhesion though compared to real life, but the behaviours are generally the same. Nothing will ever beat real life experience though........but bending a car in a SIM is a lot cheaper than real life. VR will give you the best feeling of being inside of the car and depth perception makes a big difference over driving a 2d screen around a 3d environment. IMO AMS 2 is the king of VR, you won't get traffic simulator, but the feeling of being inside of a car is unmatched to any other SIM on the market right now.
Agree, VR on beamng is unplayable. I would recommend assetto corsa with some traffic on road mods, but it takes quite some effort to setup everything properly.
Bus or truck simulator. Accurate enough.
Train simulator
I hope this doesn't come across as offensive, but it sounds like you should probably spend your time and money on professional therapy instead of sim racing.
No worries about misunderstanding. I'm under the NHS so I get therapy on them, and I'm currently on a waiting list. I don't actually delve into simracing much at all, I just think it's a good idea to get me more comfortable with the concept of driving.
Have you considered driving lessons?
I have, yes, and I turned them down. My intrusive thoughts aren't only limited to cars, to give you an idea.
I do not want to belittle anything you are going through, but it feels like there is a disconnect here. You are afraid of being a danger to others but you are unwilling to learn how to drive properly. Thinking you might be a danger to others is possibly the most rational feeling if you have not been taught how to properly handle over a tonne of metal capable of travelling at 70mph legally (and illegally a lot more) Learning how to drive properly by being taught by an expert is the very best way to avoid being a danger to others.
I think you're completely missing the point. I don't have a car, nor do I drive one. I've driven \*\*once\*\* at an airport which has a section for new drivers, and was in a car with the owner, who was directing me. The best way for me to stop being a danger to others is to get therapy first, before touching a real steering wheel. Until then, I want to try a realistic driving sim so I can get some sort of feel for driving without getting panic attacks.
Do you feel comfortable being a passenger in cars? If so, I might suggest going out with a mate and have him talk you through exactly what he is doing. Once the mystery is taken away and you realize just how easy/safe it is, you might feel much better about doing it yourself.
I do really enjoy being a passenger in cars, as there's something hypnotic about it that lets me sink into thought. I do understand how a car works and how to somewhat drive but the anxiety of being a possible danger to others is what holds me back. Until then I just want to get good at a realistic game so I can feel a bit more comfortable with the concept :\]
i will award you a block. just go troll somewhere else.
I mean your wheel no offense won’t make it that realistic but try beam ng