rec.autos.simulators

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

doug.drods..

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by doug.drods.. » Sat, 11 Jan 2003 22:14:47

There's no firewall on my private/game PC at home. I'll give it another try
over the weekend, maybe I'll get lucky.




> > Nope, nothing to interact with. Just a blank (except for please wait
msg)
> > WinVroc start screen, and then the 'not connected' screen.

> If you are using ZoneAlarm or another firewall you'll need to allow access
> for WinVROC.exe. It doesn't need server access unless you host though. You
> need to allow gpl.exe too.

> Malc.

Steve Smit

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Steve Smit » Sat, 11 Jan 2003 23:14:57

It's a great list, Phil!  Everything a body could need to get started in
GPL!  Thanks a lot!




> > Phil Lee put together this sterling list (I added GPL Glance):

> That's twice you've quoted me now Steve. Thanks :) Since I compiled that
> list, I've updated my beginner's guide to include GPL Glance.

> Phil
> ---
> Race Sim Central Administrator
> http://www.racesimcentral.com

John Pancoas

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by John Pancoas » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 04:27:23


> On Thu, 09 Jan 2003 11:59:27 GMT, "Steve Smith"

> >Phil Lee put together this sterling list (I added GPL Glance):

> There's only one thing missing from that list. 'How to add a touch
> more grip to the F1 cars - for us wimp types'. I don't believe for a
> second that these cars were that difficult to drive. Asphalt provides
> some grip and is not like driving on ice. Surely someone has figured
> out how to alter that parameter? No, I don't want to drive the trainer
> cars either.

  I agree Steve.  If you haven't already, try the FD class.  Imo, it has the
grip levels that should have came with the stock F1 class.

John

Malc

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Malc » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 04:36:35


It's not missing from the list, it's pretty fundamental to the sim. The tyre
model may be basic, but tyre technology was nothing like what it is today,
and with a hard enough compound to last the whole race and no aerodynamic
aid, driving on the limit is actually a little easier because the limit of
grip is not such a knife edge as it can be with soft slicks & downforce.
What makes the car so hard to drive is the huge power to grip ratio, not the
lack of grip.

Try setting the wings to minimum & use the hardest compound tyre in the
modern sim of your choice & the car will react pretty much like the '67
ones. Slower, but more fun.

The F2 cars imo seem to have a better grip to power ratio than the F1 cars
in gpl. They have less grip, but alot less power. Try them, many prefer it.

Malc.

John Pancoas

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by John Pancoas » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 04:54:50




> > There's only one thing missing from that list. 'How to add a touch
> > more grip to the F1 cars - for us wimp types'. I don't believe for a
> > second that these cars were that difficult to drive. Asphalt provides
> > some grip and is not like driving on ice. Surely someone has figured
> > out how to alter that parameter? No, I don't want to drive the trainer
> > cars either.

> It's not missing from the list, it's pretty fundamental to the sim. The
tyre
> model may be basic, but tyre technology was nothing like what it is today,
> and with a hard enough compound to last the whole race and no aerodynamic
> aid, driving on the limit is actually a little easier because the limit of
> grip is not such a knife edge as it can be with soft slicks & downforce.
> What makes the car so hard to drive is the huge power to grip ratio, not
the
> lack of grip.

> Try setting the wings to minimum & use the hardest compound tyre in the
> modern sim of your choice & the car will react pretty much like the '67
> ones. Slower, but more fun.

> The F2 cars imo seem to have a better grip to power ratio than the F1 cars
> in gpl. They have less grip, but alot less power. Try them, many prefer
it.

> Malc.

  What's also missing from the grip is the tire model flaw  :)  That's a big
part of it imo.

John

- Show quoted text -

Malc

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Malc » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 05:24:10


Not really that big a part of it. How many of us really know what it's like
to drive a Lotus '49 on the limit? The car reacts in basically the way I'd
expect a real car with alot of power and not alot of grip to handle. The
tyre model is good enough for that. imo it only really becomes important
when you are absolutely on the limit of adhesion, and there's very few of us
that are consistently there in gpl (I'm certainly not), and even fewer of us
simmers than have done it in RL.

I'd also like to use my wildcard "It's 4 years old" argument at this point
if that's okay ;-)

Malc.

John Pancoas

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by John Pancoas » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 05:39:50




> >   What's also missing from the grip is the tire model flaw  :)  That's a
> big
> > part of it imo.

> Not really that big a part of it. How many of us really know what it's
like
> to drive a Lotus '49 on the limit? The car reacts in basically the way I'd
> expect a real car with alot of power and not alot of grip to handle. The
> tyre model is good enough for that. imo it only really becomes important
> when you are absolutely on the limit of adhesion, and there's very few of
us
> that are consistently there in gpl (I'm certainly not), and even fewer of
us
> simmers than have done it in RL.

> I'd also like to use my wildcard "It's 4 years old" argument at this point
> if that's okay ;-)

> Malc.

  According to those who made it, it's a flaw  :)  And it occurs all the
time during cornering, not just at the limit, iirc.  I've said it before,
say it again; pc limitations, etc. don't matter, if the cars were this hard
to drive in reality, they all would have died.
  And the ones who actually did die, the vast majority were from mechanical
causes of the wreck, not losing control, etc., plus, several of the drivers
listed in the game died in sports car races, not F1.

John

- Show quoted text -

Richard Bellavanc

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Richard Bellavanc » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 05:36:21



I'm probably nit-picking here, but the FD class has the exact same
amount of grip as the F1, only less power.  It is simply an F2
(a.k.a. Advanced Trainer) dropped in an F1 (a.k.a. "Grand Prix")
chassis...

Not that it's not a blast to drive, mind you.  I haven't driven
anything else in over a year :-)

--
Richard Bellavance                   COGNICASE inc.
Analyste-programmeur principal       Hbergement, scurit et rseaux
T.: 514-732-8000 #4153               20, Place du Commerce
F.: 514-732-8021                     Verdun, Qc, H3E 1Z6, CANADA

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John Pancoas

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by John Pancoas » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 05:52:18




> >   I agree Steve.  If you haven't already, try the FD class.  Imo, it has
the
> > grip levels that should have came with the stock F1 class.

> I'm probably nit-picking here, but the FD class has the exact same
> amount of grip as the F1, only less power.  It is simply an F2
> (a.k.a. Advanced Trainer) dropped in an F1 (a.k.a. "Grand Prix")
> chassis...

> Not that it's not a blast to drive, mind you.  I haven't driven
> anything else in over a year :-)

> --
> Richard Bellavance                   COGNICASE inc.
> Analyste-programmeur principal       Hbergement, scurit et rseaux
> T.: 514-732-8000 #4153               20, Place du Commerce
> F.: 514-732-8021                     Verdun, Qc, H3E 1Z6, CANADA

> -----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
> http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
> -----==  Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! =-----

  Yep, that's true.  It's more "grip" is due to lesser horsepower.......but
it's still more "grip" anyway you dice it  :)

John

Haqsa

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Haqsa » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 08:36:35

A year ago I probably would have agreed with you, but after becoming
somewhat more accustomed to GPL I don't anymore.  Yes there is a flawed tire
model but I think that it only affects you when you go beyond the car's
normal handling envelope in some way, not just through too much lateral
force but also through too much weight transfer or too much roll.  If you
set the cars up and drive them in a realistic manner I think they respond
pretty realistically.

Remember you are in a car with about the same power to weight ratio as a pro
stock dragster, but you don't have the tires and suspension necessary to
give you the traction that a dragster has, and you don't have the seat of
the pants feel to tell you when you pushed too *** the accelerator.
Your only alternative is to learn through experience how much pedal pressure
is adequate, and to refine your visual senses so that you can really read
the slip angle of the car and respond intuitively.

Also most of the setups available for GPL make the cars even harder to drive
IMO.  They are almost all too stiff in roll, too soft in spring rates
(except for Alison's), grossly underdamped, and have far too little roll
couple.  Even the defaults are a bit flawed, they are fairly well balanced
but don't have aggressive enough differential settings.  A good setup can
make the cars much easier to drive.  I have setups that even make the Honda
easy to drive (at least they do for me. I realize that "easy to drive" is a
very subjective thing).  Frankly if you start with the default setups and
just give them a mild warming over they are much more stable and easy to
drive than anything you are likely to download, and just as fast.  Okay I am
rambling a bit now but the point I am trying to make is simply that the game
is as realistic as you make it - set it up realistically (hint - a car that
is neutral under power is usually pretty tight when you are not under
power), drive it the way they were supposed to be driven (hint - leave the
trail braking at the door) and the cars work quite well IMO.


John Pancoas

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by John Pancoas » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 09:05:06

  Yeah, I know Haq.  Of course, in 1967, they didn't do near the amount of
setup work you suggest, so.............<g>  Don't get me wrong; love the
game, always have, always will.

  But I still don't think it's a realistic grip model.  GPL always reminds
me of what an actual F-18 pilot said once about a new Hornet flight sim that
was being criticized for being "to hard to fly", etc.

  First, he said the criticisms were correct.  Second, he said if the actual
Hornet flight model was put into a sim, folks would label it as arcade, it's
that simple, compared to the above flight sim.
  A counter to the 'ole, "Gee, this is hard....it MUST be realistic" line of
thought.

 My moneys on a bet that the same can be said for racing sims, including
GPL.

John


> A year ago I probably would have agreed with you, but after becoming
> somewhat more accustomed to GPL I don't anymore.  Yes there is a flawed
tire
> model but I think that it only affects you when you go beyond the car's
> normal handling envelope in some way, not just through too much lateral
> force but also through too much weight transfer or too much roll.  If you
> set the cars up and drive them in a realistic manner I think they respond
> pretty realistically.

> Remember you are in a car with about the same power to weight ratio as a
pro
> stock dragster, but you don't have the tires and suspension necessary to
> give you the traction that a dragster has, and you don't have the seat of
> the pants feel to tell you when you pushed too *** the accelerator.
> Your only alternative is to learn through experience how much pedal
pressure
> is adequate, and to refine your visual senses so that you can really read
> the slip angle of the car and respond intuitively.

> Also most of the setups available for GPL make the cars even harder to
drive
> IMO.  They are almost all too stiff in roll, too soft in spring rates
> (except for Alison's), grossly underdamped, and have far too little roll
> couple.  Even the defaults are a bit flawed, they are fairly well balanced
> but don't have aggressive enough differential settings.  A good setup can
> make the cars much easier to drive.  I have setups that even make the
Honda
> easy to drive (at least they do for me. I realize that "easy to drive" is
a
> very subjective thing).  Frankly if you start with the default setups and
> just give them a mild warming over they are much more stable and easy to
> drive than anything you are likely to download, and just as fast.  Okay I
am
> rambling a bit now but the point I am trying to make is simply that the
game
> is as realistic as you make it - set it up realistically (hint - a car
that
> is neutral under power is usually pretty tight when you are not under
> power), drive it the way they were supposed to be driven (hint - leave the
> trail braking at the door) and the cars work quite well IMO.



> >   According to those who made it, it's a flaw  :)  And it occurs all the
> > time during cornering, not just at the limit, iirc.  I've said it
before,
> > say it again; pc limitations, etc. don't matter, if the cars were this
> hard
> > to drive in reality, they all would have died.
> >   And the ones who actually did die, the vast majority were from
> mechanical
> > causes of the wreck, not losing control, etc., plus, several of the
> drivers
> > listed in the game died in sports car races, not F1.

> > John

Malc

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Malc » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 10:26:29


> On Fri, 10 Jan 2003 13:52:18 -0700, "John Pancoast"

> >  Yep, that's true.  It's more "grip" is due to lesser

horsepower.......but

Someone can, and probably has added more grip, but it's not been published
online for a good reason. I understand that in gpl the tyres model grip in a
linear way, where it should exponentially fall off. It would apparently need
alot of work to change this. If there is ever a gpl2 this is probably one of
the things that would be improved.

If you find an engine sound you like, name it f2f3.wav and put it in your
sound folder to change the engine note for all F2, F3, FD etc cars. They all
use that one sound. You need the sound patch for this to work iirc. You can
change the pitch of the engine note in the App.ini in your gpl folder:

[ Engine ]
sampleRPM = 5200.000000

Lower the value to hear a faster note, raise it to make it sound slower.

Malc.

Steve Smit

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Steve Smit » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:42:03

Dave Kaemmer is said to have admitted that a real F1 car was not as
difficult to *learn* as the virtual bolides in GPL.  Which is true...to a
point.  The cars in GPL are *much* harder to drive below the limit (say, up
to six tenths), which is where newbies spend the first few hundred hours of
their nascent careers, BUT way easier to drive closer to the limit.  Need
proof?  You can easily dirt-track around Indy's four 200+ mph
corners...something nobody but Nelson Piquet ever attempted in real life
(and look what happened to him).


> On Thu, 09 Jan 2003 11:59:27 GMT, "Steve Smith"

> >Phil Lee put together this sterling list (I added GPL Glance):

> There's only one thing missing from that list. 'How to add a touch
> more grip to the F1 cars - for us wimp types'. I don't believe for a
> second that these cars were that difficult to drive. Asphalt provides
> some grip and is not like driving on ice. Surely someone has figured
> out how to alter that parameter? No, I don't want to drive the trainer
> cars either.

Steve Smit

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Steve Smit » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:56:45

Haq,

Setups are mostly a matter of personal taste, but there is one trend that's
emerged in the past 4 years: as we have become more proficient at driving
GPL cars, the setups have become more twitchy, which does a nice job of
masking the tire-models flaws.  That is, nobody tried 60/x or 45/x
differentials in the early days because the cars handled like roller skates.
Nowadays, everybody's got incredibly skittish, wildly oversteering setups.
Alison doesn't seem to like aggressive diff settings, so she achieves the
same effect w. sky-high spring rates.

The net-net?  No, GPL's cars don't handle much like real-world F1 cars
(which, post front-engines and before aero, had pillowy soft rides).  I've
likened GPL's machines to some of the worst-handling cars I've ever driven.
But if Steve Kinser, et alia, can get used to the way infinitely-flexible
chassis WOO cars handle on variable-traction dirt surfaces, I guess we can
make GPL cars look like Jim Clark himself was driving them.

--Steve Smith


> A year ago I probably would have agreed with you, but after becoming
> somewhat more accustomed to GPL I don't anymore.  Yes there is a flawed
tire
> model but I think that it only affects you when you go beyond the car's
> normal handling envelope in some way, not just through too much lateral
> force but also through too much weight transfer or too much roll.  If you
> set the cars up and drive them in a realistic manner I think they respond
> pretty realistically.

> Remember you are in a car with about the same power to weight ratio as a
pro
> stock dragster, but you don't have the tires and suspension necessary to
> give you the traction that a dragster has, and you don't have the seat of
> the pants feel to tell you when you pushed too *** the accelerator.
> Your only alternative is to learn through experience how much pedal
pressure
> is adequate, and to refine your visual senses so that you can really read
> the slip angle of the car and respond intuitively.

> Also most of the setups available for GPL make the cars even harder to
drive
> IMO.  They are almost all too stiff in roll, too soft in spring rates
> (except for Alison's), grossly underdamped, and have far too little roll
> couple.  Even the defaults are a bit flawed, they are fairly well balanced
> but don't have aggressive enough differential settings.  A good setup can
> make the cars much easier to drive.  I have setups that even make the
Honda
> easy to drive (at least they do for me. I realize that "easy to drive" is
a
> very subjective thing).  Frankly if you start with the default setups and
> just give them a mild warming over they are much more stable and easy to
> drive than anything you are likely to download, and just as fast.  Okay I
am
> rambling a bit now but the point I am trying to make is simply that the
game
> is as realistic as you make it - set it up realistically (hint - a car
that
> is neutral under power is usually pretty tight when you are not under
> power), drive it the way they were supposed to be driven (hint - leave the
> trail braking at the door) and the cars work quite well IMO.



> >   According to those who made it, it's a flaw  :)  And it occurs all the
> > time during cornering, not just at the limit, iirc.  I've said it
before,
> > say it again; pc limitations, etc. don't matter, if the cars were this
> hard
> > to drive in reality, they all would have died.
> >   And the ones who actually did die, the vast majority were from
> mechanical
> > causes of the wreck, not losing control, etc., plus, several of the
> drivers
> > listed in the game died in sports car races, not F1.

> > John

Haqsa

GPL Newbie; Looking for setup advice

by Haqsa » Sun, 12 Jan 2003 23:49:55

Well being a relative GPL noob myself it's going to be difficult to prove my
point, but let me explain myself.  I have what I feel are fairly realistic
setups for Monza.  I say fairly realistic because inevitably you have to do
things to deal with GPL's tire model, but in terms of diff settings,
understeer, overall stiffness, etc. I think my setups are reasonably
realistic.  I am also using what I feel are realistic driving techniques.
By that I mean for example I am using only small amounts of trail braking
and only where it makes sense, but I do not trail brake all the way in to
the apex; and while I am definitely trying to get a good four wheel drift
going I am not using opposite lock power slides to exit the corners.  I pull
the brake bias back as far as I can get away with but I do not use the
throttle while braking unless I am trying to correct a mistake.  Using these
setups and driving techniques my best laps at Monza are in the 1:28's.  Okay
that's still 2 seconds slower than the world record, but when I look at an
assortment of my best laps in GPLRA and compare them to world record laps,
the differences are very small and very subtle.  The world record lap
holders are not pulling significantly more g's than I am or getting hugely
different straightaway speeds.  They are simply more precise about nailing
their markers and better at extracting the most out of the friction circle.
I can even find laps of mine where I did the Lesmos or the Curva Grande or
whatever as well as a world record lap but then blew it somewhere else.  So
based on this it is my feeling that neither my driving technique nor my
setups are holding me back, it is only my inadequate precision, track
knowledge, and consistency that is preventing me from duplicating those
times.  That's why I feel that the alien setups and driving techniques are
unnecessary.



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