Quote from ajp71 :

Well assuming the wheels aren't locked won't releasing the brake transfer weight rearward (or at least stop it from shifting forward) which would reduce the grip available to the front wheels.

im not really sure what happens at all and my inexperience with rfactor and its replay function (is there something like a force view ?) doesnt help either
i suspect i might lock the rears under downshifting

and im not talking about understeer as such ... i dont think i was steering at all at that point
it just felt like the car despite pointing slightly into the corner had no intentions of entering it ... sort of a 4 wheel drift on the entry which works just fine in lfs

Quote :

Odd to me it feels like when I drive it a bit like you described, which is how I'd expect a heavy standard road car to behave. I wonder if the track day suspension would make the car behave more like you were expecting it to (I haven't tried it).

ive tried all 3 sets of tyres and while i havent put enough time into any of them to reach a proper verdict i didnt find any fully satisfying so far

Quote :

As for realfeel lag what framerates are you getting I haven't noticed much lag with it TBH.

according to fraps it never dropped below ~75 frames usually hovering somewhere at ~100
and from what i felt i would expect the lag to get "better" with lower framerates

Meant to post the other day when I tried it and...Great work, I honestly never thought rFactor could feal so good, now make a popular race series in the way you've done this please.

Quote from Shotglass :

my inexperience with rfactor and its replay function (is there something like a force view ?)

Completely ignore the replays in rF they aren't physics based, just simply a recording of the cars position, which would be ok if they were more detailed. You won't see nearly as much body movement or be able to do a proper analysis by looking at rF replays. About all you can tell is whether you locked a wheel or see if you clipped a curb or were hit but not a lot more.

Quote :

according to fraps it never dropped below ~75 frames usually hovering somewhere at ~100
and from what i felt i would expect the lag to get "better" with lower framerates

Hey it gets worse with lower framerates Though at around 30 rF plays fine for me and real feel is quick enough. Unfortunately the DFP itself isn't always quick enough on 900 degree mode, which is why I always use 400 in all cars in LFS but for the Corvette 900 is ok.

Glad you tried it Shotglass,

My main gripe with LFS is how easy you get power oversteer. While no expert, I believe that is kinda wrong. I didn't really do anything in parcitular to the Corvette car behaviour, they're just tyres that pull 0.985G laterally and about 1.1 longitudinallyish. There is a fair amount of longitudinal drop off as well. But indeed, its quite planted. I must say in 2nd gear if I combine a little lateral weight transfer with the push of the right foot, it certainly comes around..

I find the car quite sluggish and heavy in feel. I also find it a little lacking in 'attitude changes' when you let go of the throttle or when you steer 'more and more' on a skidpad.. The G force stays nearly identical when you do that and a bit of power overcomes the extra resistance. That feels odd, I expect to loose more lateral G when I have 30degs of lock on where 6 gets me optimal lateral g, or at least expect the friction to slow the car more.

So yes in general the reaction of the car to inputs is a bit muted though that is territory where I wouldn't really claim to know how it should exactly 'feel'. The data is as realistic as I can get it and for now this is how it handles. Once I start aiming for certain driving characteristics I'll leave the 'real data' path and then it just becomes a random car. So its either pretty real, or it isn't because of the data that feeds it, or it isn't because of the non perfect physics engine..

What I do like is the patience you must have. On a track like Barcelona, if you want to do consistent 2:06 laps, you have to be quite smooth on and off the controls and when you reach the limit sometimes (as you do with those laptimes) I find the car somewhere near neutral, slight understeer, slight oversteer and often 4 wheels sliding at the same time. Then I'm really not making big angles slides but nursing the car around this 'zone' of understeer/neutral/oversteer. That is what I like best. I do that with 18degs of lock and my wheel calibrated about 550 degrees.

In LFS I find it hard to drive in that 'zone' as it feels so small. I.e. you enter 'too much understeer' or ' too much oversteer' very quickly and this neutral zone requires VEEEEEEERY precise inputs. Then slightly too much inputs and you're catching a big slide. I find LFS hotlaps to look so odd at times. Driven near perfection but you know that a few degrees of extra wheel lock would have caused a big slide, or 0.2seconds sooner on the gas would have. In the C6 doing this wrong tends to get the car going wrong on 4 wheels a bit instead of having to be so ready to fight a big one.

This is dangerous territory to talk about, but I would be surprised if cars near the limit are so sensitive and will enter 'big trouble' as easily as it happens in LFS. The C6 announces big trouble and it requires fairly big stupidity and on purpose behaviour to really get into big trouble, even when doing quickish laps. Considering the relatively moderate real life track day casualty rate, I simply assume it might be somewhat more realistic than LFS in this regard.

The main gripe with the corvette is that tyres simply don't seem to have enough preference to stay in the 'rolling' direction, going sideways with zero lock versus appying perfect opposite lock doesn't change the yaw of the car enough. Opposite lock works, for sure, but just as the skidpad ''turn more and more'' without loosing grip or speed, opposite lock seems to be like that as well. When you apply perfect opposite lock (front tyres rolling exactly where the car is going) I simply expect that to be about 20x less lateral resistance compared to the tyres pointing straight, say at 25 degrees of where the car is heading.

Ah well.. a perfect world it ain't

If you ever go back to driving it i'd suggest trying the normal and sticky tyres at Barcelona and also at Road Atlanta.
http://rapidshare.com/files/51466266/RoadAtlanta_Beta3.rar (beta, texture detail needs to be at 'max' or sky looks odd)

Of course the usual applies, tripple check you get high framerates, no vsync, render ahead lowered, no dodgy low speed steering overrides, no dodgy head look, speed sensitivity etc etc etc but with you I believe the settings are probably fine

Quote from ajp71 :

Hey it gets worse with lower framerates Though at around 30 rF plays fine for me and real feel is quick enough. Unfortunately the DFP itself isn't always quick enough on 900 degree mode, which is why I always use 400 in all cars in LFS but for the Corvette 900 is ok.

the idea is that with higher framerates you see more lag since the frames come in earlier than the ffb whereas if youre waiting for the frames to show up the delay might be unnoticeable

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

I find the car quite sluggish and heavy in feel. I also find it a little lacking in 'attitude changes' when you let go of the throttle or when you steer 'more and more' on a skidpad.. The G force stays nearly identical when you do that and a bit of power overcomes the extra resistance. That feels odd, I expect to loose more lateral G when I have 30degs of lock on where 6 gets me optimal lateral g, or at least expect the friction to slow the car more.

thats really odd the lateral should drop off by ~15% at 30° steering

Quote :

So yes in general the reaction of the car to inputs is a bit muted though that is territory where I wouldn't really claim to know how it should exactly 'feel'. The data is as realistic as I can get it and for now this is how it handles. Once I start aiming for certain driving characteristics I'll leave the 'real data' path and then it just becomes a random car. So its either pretty real, or it isn't because of the data that feeds it, or it isn't because of the non perfect physics engine..

we could just claim that the rfactor engine is perfect and all our predijuces against american cares are correct

Quote :

In LFS I find it hard to drive in that 'zone' as it feels so small.

hm odd thats one of the things i always thought wasnt pronounced enough in lfs and largely attributed it too the squischy feel of the overly deflated tyres we run most of the time
in other words i always thought lfs was a bit too forgiving

Quote :

This is dangerous territory to talk about, but I would be surprised if cars near the limit are so sensitive and will enter 'big trouble' as easily as it happens in LFS. The C6 announces big trouble and it requires fairly big stupidity and on purpose behaviour to really get into big trouble, even when doing quickish laps. Considering the relatively moderate real life track day casualty rate, I simply assume it might be somewhat more realistic than LFS in this regard.

for a car on stock road car suspension settings id guess it is

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The main gripe with the corvette is that tyres simply don't seem to have enough preference to stay in the 'rolling' direction

hm thats really odd
i just took a quick look into the .tbc files and i couldnt find any aligning moment curves at all ... are they simply not there in rf ?

Quote :

no dodgy low speed steering overrides, no dodgy head look, speed sensitivity etc etc etc but with you I believe the settings are probably fine

no idea about the rf settings i just took the c6 driver that came with the pack and didnt bother looking much further into the settings ... i assume rf is configured just fine with those ? (btw take out the cockpit shaking with speed)

as far as framerates are concerned rf at first seemingly selected dx7 settings or something forcing me to enable vsync to keep my card from frying itself with the load of 300fps ^^

What I recall from LFS discussions a year or more ago.. Someone said that he got less G on the skidpad when he turned full lock,indicating 'a lot of grip drop off after the peak (laterally) .. And IIRC Todd pointed out that something else causes that..

Perhaps rFactor has a friction square instead of a friciton ellipse?

edit:Vsync is pretty bad regarding input latency btw.. And how can you fry your card at 300fps? A dx9 game stressing the card to 4fps will probably cause the same heat buildup.. :S

Quote from Shotglass :

i just took a quick look into the .tbc files and i couldnt find any aligning moment curves at all ... are they simply not there in rf ?

Self-aligning torque in rFactor is derived from lateral force and mechanical and pneumatic trail. The pneumatic trail at any point in time is generated parametrically using the current load on the tyre, the PneumaticTrail value specified in the TBC file (which specifies the peak pneumatic trail by load) and the current slip angle.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

What I recall from LFS discussions a year or more ago.. Someone said that he got less G on the skidpad when he turned full lock,indicating 'a lot of grip drop off after the peak (laterally) .. And IIRC Todd pointed out that something else causes that..

quite simply the force causing the gs you full has to pbe perpendicular to the car while the lateral forces were usually talking about are perpendicular to the tyre ... so its basically just the cosine of the tyre force which at 30° is ~.85

Quote :

Perhaps rFactor has a friction square instead of a friciton ellipse?

lets just say i wouldnt be surprised if it did

Quote :

edit:Vsync is pretty bad regarding input latency btw.. And how can you fry your card at 300fps? A dx9 game stressing the card to 4fps will probably cause the same heat buildup.. :S

dunno for some reason really high framerates cause a huge amount of heat ... i once freak out when i saw that a rc flight sime running at ~700fps pushed my card up to ~100°c

Quote from BuddhaBing :

Self-aligning torque in rFactor is derived from lateral force and mechanical and pneumatic trail. The pneumatic trail at any point in time is generated parametrically using the current load on the tyre, the PneumaticTrail value specified in the TBC file (which specifies the peak pneumatic trail by load) and the current slip angle.

odd niels value is 10 to 100 times higher than the ones in isi cars and still his tyres seem to lack sat a bit

Quote from Shotglass :

the idea is that with higher framerates you see more lag since the frames come in earlier than the ffb whereas if youre waiting for the frames to show up the delay might be unnoticeable

I suppose what you're saying could be true if the framerates are held back by the graphics like they are in rF.

I just wanted to add that everyone who has rf should defenately try the blue mountain track, converted from GPL. It is imho one of the best fictional tracks ever created

I've wasted hours with the Caterham mod (R500s and Hayabusas (?)) driving the Blue Mountain track. The Hayabusa is great on twisty tracks although the tire model gives the spin of death if you step over the angle... Uzzi's Road Atlanta is a great track as well.

The Caterham mod was a pleasent surprise. With more work with the tires it can really be a killer.

EDIT: Charade is a great track too. Tight corners and elevation changes ftw.

Quote from Hyperactive :

I just wanted to add that everyone who has rf should defenately try the blue mountain track, converted from GPL. It is imho one of the best fictional tracks ever created

Blue Mountain is an absolutley fabulous track, TBH it's always the first place I go with the Eagle when I get an urge to reinstall GPL

Quote :

The Caterham mod was a pleasent surprise. With more work with the tires it can really be a killer.

Yes the V8 thing illustrates the need for some refinement in the tire model, it's one of the few cars where it is easy to spin out over a bump under power at 150mph, I don't think the real thing would be quite that tricky.

Quote from ajp71 :

Yes the V8 thing illustrates the need for some refinement in the tire model, it's one of the few cars where it is easy to spin out over a bump under power at 150mph, I don't think the real thing would be quite that tricky.

The powertec V8 is certainly an overkill with the current tires. Actually it feels close to what the FO8 was before the patch - or what the FO8 would have been without aero . The powertec really needs a F1 track to use its full potential. Driving around the Montreal F1 track it felt almost like home but because the higher slip angles causes the spin of doom it really isn't all that fun. 270kW of power is a lot to handle though. LX6 has just 142kW A hundred too little imho!

Quote from Hyperactive :

Actually it feels close to what the FO8 was before the patch

No far worse the old FO8 never gave problems applying power in a straight line at high speed, where as the Powertec will produce wheelspin the far side of 100mph

Quote from ajp71 :

No far worse the old FO8 never gave problems applying power in a straight line at high speed, where as the Powertec will produce wheelspin the far side of 100mph

Like the FO8 without the downforce was what I meant

With proper tires I would love that car

I'll do some skidpadding and see how much grip is lost when steering 34 degrees.. But first, labour.. bah

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

I'll do some skidpadding and see how much grip is lost when steering 34 degrees.. But first, labour.. bah

Labour? The C6 is having a baby??

As kinda expected (ISI is not likely to have such an obvious bug ) initially you don't notice understeer in the lateral G force but when you really apply too much lock, lateral g drops from 0.98ish to 0.83ish.

sounds about right for what id expect with 34° of lock

i gave it another go last night and itstill felt like it didnt really bite much ... sort of bias plyish ... in fact ill even have to admit that with real feel the isi cars (zr or something) didnt feel all that bad as long as you countersteer quick enough to not fall down the cliff of doom

but there are 2 things i noticed while driving the c6 which i found highly unsatisfactory
first of all the engine sound ... this might be a general problem of the isi engine which you cant do much about but i literally had no idea when to shift without looking at the rev counter ... i gotta say i never before was that fond of lfs' sound engine
and secondly the braking squeal of the tyres ... they squeal when theyre locked up and they do when they arent (at least according to the external cam) ... after some ~10 laps i decided to switch on the abs because i was unable to find a good biting point without it

/me ignores all previous posts in this thread.

Tonight I fired up rFactor for a little bit of a play in the FBMW at Brands Hatch Indy in preparation for the weekend. The best Brands yet, but it's still utter tripe (which is why I don't really see the point of real tracks in sims - way way to complex to get 'right). Anyway I digress..

After a while (5 minutes) I was fed up with rFactor again, and was going to do something else. But then I recalled RealFeel people have mentioned, and this Corvette car Niels made... I had a few minutes to spare, and thought why not.

First - RealFeel. It took a while, a bit of fiddling, and lots of RSC searches, but I eventually got it all set up vaguely well. Instantly rFactor felt more real, even with the FBMWs. It was still horrid overall, but a lot better than the shite rFactor was before (and the graphics are terrible!)

So I downloaded the Corvette, not expecting all that much. I read the readme, and installed the upgrades required (and trackday tyres, because I felt like it). Back to Brands Indy...

Let's get this straight - rFactor looks rubbish. All real track mods are rubbish. rFactor *is* rubbish. All of these are out of control of Niels etc, and so my moaning can be ignored (but it's all accurate and true).

Into a race (testing is for girls). Make sure TC and all aids are OFF (they were). Paddock Hill bend... UNDERSTEER. That was horrid. Then I realised I wasn't in a slicks and wings car, but a lumbering yankeetank. Druids... still understeer. Hmmmm. Getting better though. After that I estimated the corner speeds better and...

WOW! It's amazing. Ignoring that fact that rFactor is an unrelenting pile of tosh, this is REALLY good. Slides. Correcting Oversteer. Realistic (ish) car behaviour based on my inputs. Never before has an rFactor slide been remotely near catchable, but I really enjoyed this. I'm going to have a bit of a play over the next few days on different tracks, different tyres, and different wheels settings (more lock, H-shifter etc). But I am SERIOUSLY impressed. And I don't say things like that about rFactor lightly.

I then had a quick go in the apparently awesome GP79 mod, and it reminded me just what an awful 'sim' rF can be again.

I'll use your mod again. Maybe even online! You deserve a pat on the back!

Any other mods lined up? Don't fancy trying to recreate a 1988 F3 car do you?

Quote from ajp71 :

http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Caterham

I haven't had much time to try this version but it was developed in conjunction with the Kangloosh suspension tool and had a heavy emphasis put on the physics, and judging by the not at all bad original it'll be a very good mod.

imo, the race caterhams in rfactor are better than those. imo, those just feel dead and they arent at all fun to drive. the race caterham really is.

Quote from tristancliffe :

I then had a quick go in the apparently awesome GP79 mod, and it reminded me just what an awful 'sim' rF can be again.

Heh, I'm the same way. I was just coming around to the idea that rFactor can actually be quite good after playing around with the C6 and the Caterhams. Then the PCC 2007 mod was released. It's gorgeous to look at but the dynamics are kak and inevitably, of course, it's being praised to the moon.

Quote from tristancliffe :

(which is why I don't really see the point of real tracks in sims - way way to complex to get 'right).

Don't try to start taking tracks you drive in real life in sims too seriously, even the most accurate tracks will have big differences, what's important is that one gets the atmosphere and a unique element added to the experience, there's no way I'm going to race the old Spa, but when I'm blasting the Eagle round in GPL I know it's the closest I'm ever going to get, probably doesn't bare much resemblance to the real thing, but I don't care if each bump is perfectly modeled, I'm there driving a car I'm very unlikely to ever be able to drive on a track I'll never be able to drive against
a field of legendary drivers that I'll never be able to do IRL.

Now if you want to practice Brands then rF can show you the way round if you don't know the track or help you stay fresh driving a single seater (just like LFS does). The only real use for real club circuits in rF apart from being fun to drive is I can let people who know real tracks out on a track they know straight away.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Any other mods lined up? Don't fancy trying to recreate a 1988 F3 car do you?

There is some newer F3 cars (rF3) that have odd suspension, if you can supply some data is it not too big task to make suspension with car factory, I think you should download it anyway so you see what data is needed for it.

One problem has been light cars and tire behaviour with them, Niels did spend really lot of time trying to get GP79 cars to behave but I think it was not possible?

Tires is certainly most difficult part with that, other parts (excluding aero, I think) are not much of work nowdays, I would believe.

Tried the mod for a couple days and I must say I really do like it. Graphics wise it is excellent, and I am impressed that you managed to make the HUD on the dash too.... nice nice.

As for physics... it just feels too easy for me. It should lose traction A LOT easier when you punch the throttle and throw the car around, but the thing just grips so well... no matter what tires I use.

It sure is fun on the 2007 Nord track, that is for sure :up: Nice job I say.

Bit of nords action, not great.. normal tyres, z51 gears.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY5ssFnBTCI