You may be surprised to learn that I do not enjoy driving games. I do not care for Gran Turismo or Forza 7 or WRC 5 or Need for Speed or whatever the latest incarnation of driving game is out there for whatever console I don’t own. Don’t get me wrong, I can certainly appreciate the technical achievement; I wouldn’t even know where to start. The games look fantastic and every year the cars look more like their real world counterparts. But don’t for one second tell me that these are driving simulators. They are games.

The other night I tried out Gran Turismo 5. The game that took 700 highly brilliant Japanese men 7 years to finish. It looks sensational. The track detailing is magnificent, the range of cars is extraordinary and even the sound of the car is spot on. Apparently, they spent many years perfecting the ‘physics engine’; the clump of algorithms that makes each and every car steer and turn and brake like it does in the real world. Great. Well done everyone.

Apparently, I needed to get some sort of license, so I had a go at rally cross in a classic Peugeot 205, one of the most ballistic rally cars ever made. The course was entirely snowed over and I lasted three corners. I was then persuaded to try something easier, driving a Le Mans-spec Bentley on the famous Le Mans circuit. This is better, I thought, wrongly. More traction, more stability, a clearer line into the corners. Again, I lasted three corners. It was frustrating to the point of hair-loss. Why couldn’t I do this? I’ve raced fast cars on racetracks before. Why can’t I coerce this Bentley around the screen?

The thing is, sitting on my uncle’s couch, staring at a large screen and stabbing at buttons on a tiny plastic controller, while trying to get the dog (Scruffy) off my lap and thinking whether I want the coffee my aunt is offering (shouting) from the kitchen is not racing. It’s not even driving.

When I drove home that evening, I did not use my thumb, glued to what is essentially a plastic mushroom, to steer the car. I did not have to hit ‘square’ to brake. The road I was driving on was not pixelated. It was very real, and the sensations of driving the vehicle were very real.

Driving is quite possibly one of the most difficult things you will ever do. There’s a good reason why it’s 2011 and we’re only now starting to see robots that may one day drive our cars without out help. To safely control a car, your mind is taking hundreds of measurements from your eyes, your ears, the balance of fluids in your inner ear and what racing drivers like to call “your internal gyroscopes”. Your brain then makes thousands of decisions  every minute to keep the car on the straight and narrow. And the best part is you don’t even realise. The act of driving, for most of us, has become what we casually call “muscle memory”, even though it’s anything but.

The forces on your body, and how you interpret them, and how quickly you react, determines your ability to drive, and therefore your ability to race. All things your gaming console simply cannot replicate. Unless you have one of these:

Driving simulators do exist, but they are very expensive contraptions. The device purchased by WRC, Formula 1 and Nascar teams is called the Hexatec Driving Simulator, and is available to the public. It costs £120,000. A bit more than a PS3 then. It moves on a six-axis hydraulic platform, can hit you with 2Gs of force in any direction, has three massive screens to mimic peripheral vision and comes with custom software to imitate any race car on any track. Video here and details here. Beats having a pool table in your entertainment room I suppose.

At the risk of sounding like a complete kill-joy, I just needed to clear that up. I don’t mind a quick flurry on a console every once in a while but I just can’t stand it when it’s referred to as driving or driving simulation. It’s like saying a war game is war simulation. I imagine if you asked anybody who’s actually been in a war what they think of Call of Duty 4, they will tell you to politely sod off. I imagine if you ask a racing driver what he thinks of Need For Speed 13, he will say the same thing.