ffb is fine . i had a little trouble braking, so i upped the brake bias to 64%. is the real life brake bias of the bmw that low? i hope someone makes the ZR1 for rfactor soon... or maybe a nice ferrari.

i use these realfeel settings for my dfp, along with the controller.ini settings included in the corvette mod and lfs profiler settings in my sig.

[BMW_E92_M3_2008]
MaxForceAtSteeringRack=-3300.000000
SteeringDamper=11500.000000
FFBMixerRealFeelPercent=100.000000
SmoothingLevel=0

I've been trying out the LeoFFB force feedback plugin alongside RealFeel and have been cautiously impressed so far. LeoFFB generates force feedback based on some of the pneumatic properties of the tyres and can be used alongside RealFeel by turning down the RealFeel FFB mixer setting. The two force feedback plugins working together help to give the car a lively, dynamic feel that I'm starting to really like.

After some more testing, I've decided to dump the LeoFFB force feedback plugin and use RealFeel alone. LeoFFB produces some nice, natural feeling force feedback in some situations but unfortunately there are others where it seems to mask the underlying dynamics instead of communicating them. It's a shame because the steering feels quite lively with LeoFFB but ultimately I get a better sense of what the car is actually doing with RealFeel alone.

the car seems very easy to oversteer with to me, especially under weight transfer to the front (lifting off/braking etc). I was just trying a few laps around old fuji and the lap times i set with it are only about a second off the time i set with the corvette. neither laps were perfect, though.

Attached is an improved tyre TBC file. The previous tyres were too abrupt and pointy which made the car feel a bit nervous and highly strung. The new tyres are more smooth and progressive which makes the car more settled and controllable making it much easier to hang the back end out and hold it in a long, controlled slide.

Extract the contents of the attached zip and copy the TBC file into your rFactor GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder, overwriting the file which is already there.

This is much better.

with the old configuration the car's back end tend to step out on long sweeping corners, without me provoking, this is more progressive and allow better control overall.

hmm i dunno, it seems more "boring" now. its still quite difficult to control under braking, I dont remember if there's an option to lower the max brake pressure in setup, but i'll check. Maybe i am just overdriving the car. i just drove a few laps around the old fuji track and i did a 1'51, which is the same time as the original tires. i need to do more laps i guess.

My comfort zone for braking start below 75% for this car, I agree the braking force is way too high, and it takes the tires rather long to recover from a lock up.

I've done some deliberately erractic driving at lime rock park, almost flicking the car into full lock time to time, the car never seem to go out of shape, it just understeered a bit, then turn into 4 wheel skid, then it'll correct itself! On that part it seems under extreme conditions these tires are too good to be true.

here's a video showing me struggling with the braking. its one of my 1st laps with the new tires. The tires usually can be seen locking up in lfs before becoming so unstable, but i guess that's not the case for rfactor.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iykRUe4kMJQ

Braking performance of the mod was tweaked to match that of the Car & Driver road test. The C&D road test showed a braking distance from 70-0 mph of 163 ft. The mod has a braking distance of 164 ft. This is not to say that the braking profile is totally accurate since there are several factors that influence braking but the gross level braking performance is close.

Road tests of the real C6 and E92 M3 show that their performance is quite close (e.g. C6 does 1/4 mile in 12.7s @ 113mph, E92 M3 in 12.9s @ 111mph and both cars have similar acceleration profiles and cornering performance) so I would expect laptimes of the C6 and the M3 to be close to one another on most tracks.

I agree that the new tyres still need work. The car's too stable and controllable and you can push it very hard indeed before it will get away from you.

Another update attached. Includes reworked tyres and new wheels.

Extract the contents of the attached zip and copy the files into your rFactor GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder, overwriting the files which are already there.

I only have one complain about this mod:
the fuel consumption.
It is quite low, you need less than a liter of fuel for a full nordschleife lap.

Fabri,

I hadn't touched the fuel consumption settings since I didn't think anyone would pay attention to it. However, since you noticed I have adjusted the fuel consumption settings appropriately.

The real car has fuel consumption of 12.4L/100km (19mpg). However, this is for normal driving conditions. Since most of the driving in-game will be done on track, I decided instead to use fuel mileage estimates of 31L/100km (8mpg).

The attached zip contains the revisions needed for adjusted fuel consumption. Extract the contents of the attached zip and copy the files into your rFactor GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder, overwriting the files which are already there.

Note: I calibrated the car's fuel consumption values using the Euroring track because it's the shortest accurate track that I have installed and shorter tracks reduce calibration rounding errors. However, rFactor seems to apply fuel consumption scaling factors for each track so fuel consumption for the car at other tracks might not be exactly 31L/100km (8mpg) as calibrated.

Quote from Fabri91 :

I only have one complain about this mod:
the fuel consumption.
It is quite low, you need less than a liter of fuel for a full nordschleife lap.

I'm not sure, the E36 GT cars that I worked with for work experience used a litre for a typical lap (under 2 minutes) with the 3 litre straight 6 and 1.5 litres/lap with the M5 V8. Admittedly they were full race engines so you'd hope to get better fuel consumption from the road car but the V8 race car would probably be using about 5 litres a lap round the 'ring

Quote from ajp71 :

I'm not sure, the E36 GT cars that I worked with for work experience used a litre for a typical lap (under 2 minutes) with the 3 litre straight 6 and 1.5 litres/lap with the M5 V8. Admittedly they were full race engines so you'd hope to get better fuel consumption from the road car but the V8 race car would probably be using about 5 litres a lap round the 'ring

I was talking about the 20,8km long nordschleife, not the GP track.

EDIT: Thanks, Buddha!

Quote from Fabri91 :

I was talking about the 20,8km long nordschleife, not the GP track.

Ah that makes a slight difference

Okay, one final update and then the car is done.

Tyres again. This new set of tyres should address the remaining concerns about handling, stability and braking.

The new tyres are attached as a zip. As before, extract the contents of the zip and copy the TBC file into your rFactor GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder, overwriting the file which is already there.

For those who don't have the mod or have missed some of the work-in-progress revisions, the full mod with all revisions included can be downloaded from the following links. Installation instructions are included in a readme in the zip.

http://rapidshare.com/files/82 ... _M3_rFactor_v1.2.zip.html

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3NQGQS28

Thanks BuddhaBing, I look forward to giving it a run

Quote from BuddhaBing :

Okay, one final update and then the car is done.

Tyres again. This new set of tyres should address the remaining concerns about handling, stability and braking.

The new tyres are attached as a zip. As before, extract the contents of the zip and copy the TBC file into your rFactor GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder, overwriting the file which is already there.

For those who don't have the mod or have missed some of the work-in-progress revisions, the full mod with all revisions included can be downloaded from the following links. Installation instructions are included in a readme in the zip.

http://rapidshare.com/files/82 ... _M3_rFactor_v1.2.zip.html

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=3NQGQS28

are you running abs on off, low or high? thx for putting time into this car

Quote from Gabkicks :

are you running abs on off, low or high?

I have all driving aids turned off, including braking help and ABS. In the control setup screens, the digital brake rate is 100% and brake axis sensitivity is 50%. In the car setup, I use 92% brake pressure.

The real car does have ABS, dynamic stability control, electronic damping controls and a host of other aids many of which can be tuned, tweaked or turned off using the M3's onboard iDrive system. This makes the car very complex since many of the aids dynamically adjust the suspension, brakes, throttle response, engine mapping, differential, etc in real-time as the car is being driven. Unfortunately, much of this can't be modeled in rFactor.

yeah, i know i've read alot on the M3. i was gonna suggest maybe including a sport setup but i guess its not necessary.

Hey BuddhaBing,

thx for your effort with the M3. Only problem is, I've got severe fps problems. I only drove it on Spa (RSN version) and don't know how low they are, but they're close to a slide show. I don't have those problems with other cars/mods. Is that to be expected with this mod? Nobody else seems to have troubles...

system:
Core 2 Duo [email protected]
Ram 2GB
nvidia 7600GT XXX
Screen res. 1680*1050

Thx,

Linsen

You should be fine with this mod on that system, maybe try DX8 if you're in DX9 or turn shadows off max that can triple your frame rate (even with an 8800GT max shadows aren't worth the occasional FPS drop IMO). Resolution shouldn't matter really, I used to run with about 40-50 fps on an 9600Pro at 1600x1200 in DX8 which was fine so long as there weren't many other cars about.

I've been on DX8 all along, actually and all settings are at "medium", with trilinear filtering. It's pretty much unplayable, still.


Update: It's not the fps apparantly. I just let fraps run and here's the result for the M3:
Frames: 8680 - Time: 187735ms - Avg: 46.235 - Min: 27 - Max: 68

Now this is not great, obviously, but it's not much worse than with the C6:
Frames: 9632 - Time: 198906ms - Avg: 48.424 - Min: 29 - Max: 71

The C6 is, however, very playable with those fps, while the M3 is not.

Dan :

Thanks for registering. It was a lot of work but also very educational. Most of the time was spent chasing down reference material and collecting telemetry on the skidpad.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this exercise was that the car could feel completely different from one track to another. So, for example, if I tweaked the dampers for ride quality at one track the car might end up feeling very balloony on another.

Good luck with your own tweaks!


Linsen :

Sorry, no idea. I haven't experienced that problem myself - the only car I do have performance issues with is the Lexus IS-F.

I uninstalled rFactor a couple of weeks ago so I'm not able to look into the performance problems you're experiencing.