Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
Ghost cars are, on the whole, a nice thing.
In some situations though, they can provide depressive insights.
To explain the subject a bit to the beginner; a ghost car is a concept in driving games. It is a (commonly) transparent car that performs exactly like you or someone else has done earlier. A common thing is to store your best lap on a given course as a ghost car and race against it to push your own records.
So far, so good.
We now get to the fun part. In the generally fun and well-made Project Gotham Racing there are races where your objective is to beat an average lap time, once during the race or for the whole race depending on the race. After your first lap, the game provides a ghost car of your previous lap for you to gague your performance more easily.
Not rarely, I find myself chasing my ghost car lap after lap.
Think about that a little bit.
It doesn't mean that I'm almost improving my time, it means that I'm performing worse each and every lap. Otherwise I'd get ahead of the darn thing sooner or later ... I'm not learning from my mistakes, my knowledge of the course layout doesn't make me better, and seeing myself one lap ago dosen't give a kick that does the difference.
Feels good, doesn't it?