Browser-based driving games exist, and some of them are actually decent
You probably already know this if you've spent any time in car gaming communities, but I'll spell it out because people still ask. Driving Simulator Online is a free-to-play browser game you can launch directly from Roblox. No download, no installation, no launcher bloat. You open it, pick a car, and start driving around a fairly small open area with other players. It's not Gran Turismo. It's not Assetto Corsa. But for what it is, it holds up okay. I've been running sessions on this thing for about three years, mostly just to mess around with friends when we don't feel like firing up a full sim. The physics are somewhere between arcade and mid-tier simcade. Braking distance is forgiving, cornering grip isn't terrible, and the traction loss model actually responds to input correctly, which is more than I can say for half the "simulator" labels I see on Steam.
Driving Simulator Online
Here's how I actually set mine up so it doesn't feel like steering a shopping cart. First thing: grab a wheel if you can. The game is playable with a keyboard and controllers, but a force feedback wheel changes everything within about five minutes of use. Without FFB you're just pressing buttons and hoping. With it, you get road texture and tire slip through the wheel, which makes threshold braking something you can actually feel rather than guess at. The second thing nobody tells you about this game is that the default camera settings are pretty much unusable for anything serious. The FOV is locked too narrow by default, which compresses the world and makes distance judgment garbage. Drop it down to around 90 to 100 degrees if your rig can handle it. Your peripheral vision starts working again and you can actually judge braking points properly. Graphics-wise, keep shadows off and turn down the post-processing effects. I've seen this drop frame times from about 60 to somewhere around 38 on mid-range hardware just from the ambient occlusion pass alone. Running it on 720p with everything at low does the trick if you're trying to squeeze out consistent framerates. The visual fidelity loss is nearly invisible at that resolution anyway because the art style is already pretty stylized.
Engine tuning inside the game is where things get interesting. You can adjust gearing, tire compound, and suspension stiffness from the garage menu. Most players leave this on default and wonder why the car feels vague under braking. Setting the rear bias forward by about ten percent on the rear-wheel drive cars fixes most of the snap-oversteer issues I've seen. It's a small change but it makes the car behave more predictably when you lift off the throttle mid-corner instead of just rotating on a dime. There was one specific edge case that nearly drove me nuts. A few months ago I kept getting rubber banding in multiplayer matches where traffic cars would suddenly snap toward my position when I took certain exits. Turned out the collision detection on the map geometry around the third curve had a bad mesh overlap. The workaround was to take a different exit entirely and loop around the long way. Took maybe twelve seconds longer per lap but eliminated the snapping completely. I reported it through the in-game feedback form, but there was no fix from the devs for months. Let me be honest about what this game can't do. The maps are small. The car roster is limited and nothing really unlocks past a certain point unless you grind for in-game currency, which takes time. Multiplayer sessions can be empty depending on the hour. And the game absolutely will not teach you anything about real driving. If anyone is telling you this helps with actual license prep, they're wrong. The physics model doesn't represent real tire dynamics, real brake fade, real weight transfer, or real road conditions.
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If you want something closer to actual driving simulation, there are better options. Assetto Corsa with the free content packs is miles ahead in terms of force feedback quality and tire model accuracy. rFactor 2 does surface temperature and grip evolution better than anything in this price range. Both require a purchase and a somewhat more serious setup. Driving Simulator Online fills a different niche entirely. The main use case I see for this thing is casual social driving. You want to hop on with three friends, pick cars, drive around, chat, and disconnect in twenty minutes. It does that well. The match-making is basic and lobbies can have anyone from a ten-year-old with a keyboard to someone running a dual-monitor steering wheel rig, so manage your expectations there. The server infrastructure is fine for what it is, though I have seen occasional packet loss spikes during evening hours that make steering feel floaty. If you decide to try it, just go to the Roblox platform and search for it. It's free. No account requirements beyond a standard Roblox profile. Give it fifteen minutes with a wheel and adjusted FOV and you'll know pretty quickly whether it's your thing or not. I still go back to it occasionally, usually when I want something low-effort and social rather than something that demands full attention.
