rec.autos.simulators

I keep seeing all this talk of drifting through the corners in GPL,
but I can't seem to get the hang of it. Every time my back end slips
at all it almost instantly spins out. Can someone please explain in
detail the braking/gas/steering technique to get these rear-end
drifts?

Joe

A four wheel drift is when all four tires are about ten precent past their
proper slip angles.  You will go faster then if all four tires were glued to
pavement.  What you all seem to be talking about is oversteer,  where the rear
end of the car starts to slip and the front end still has traction.
Techincally this is not always the fast way   around any corner.  Gernerally a
little bit of oversteer will make a car faster due to driver not having to
fight car thru any given turn and being able to get on the throttle faster.  A
four wheel drift will let driver balance car and go faster trhu any given
corner.  On a Simulation I feel this would be hard to do consistantly due to
needing to feel what the car is doing thru the wheel and your bottom.  Many
drivers never get this right.  If you wnat to see Some Classic four wheel
drifts look at some old Formula One pics on Fangio, Nuvulari,  Moss and Hill.
These guys could make a dishwasher go thru a corner fast.

Racer 23  Ep

So, try going faster! (Seriously, hehe)
More throttle (carefully ;) coming out of the corners.
Run the more forgiving G3 car until you know
what to look for.   This oversteer thing is
unstable. It can feel like a cliff, with no warning.
You have to get to a condition where you can actually
balance it. I can only feel a hint of that so far in
my pitiful 1:30 lap times ;), but it's there.

- Matt

Joe.....
"Explain in detail?"
No, not really, because like a lot of aspects of driving it comes from
both seat-of-the-pants input and also lots of practise.
Basically, 4-wheel drifting is accomplished by balancing the attitude of
the car by using a combination of throttle and steering and whilst
theorists can lay day thousands of words about how it is done and how to
do it, only practise will ever allow you to accomplish it.  That's in
real life, anyway! :-)

Try setting up car to understeer when under full throttle.  Just a slight bit
of understeer.  When you lift slightly to get car to turn the car should rotate
to corner then you will be able to get back to flat out and the car will
pointed the right direct and will shoot thru turn.
This set up has gotten me some very fast laps in CPR where chssis seems very
setup sensititve.

Dave

I have to chime in here and agree, GPL is the first sim so far where my normal
trail braking techniques do not work at all.

I guess the way to sort of describe how to drift is, this sim really requires
scrubbing all your speed off by braking in a straight line approaching
the corner, then match the throttle speed to the corner speed, it is ok
to be a bit fast entering the corner *as long as* you are not on the
brakes, just use the throttle and careful wheel inputs to control the
car sliding entering the corner, but what ever you do, don't hit the brakes,
these cars are extremely rear-heavy and the back end really has a tendency
to come around if the wheel is turned. Again use the throttle and wheel to
control the attitude of the car through the turn, not the brakes.

I'm hoping that with the full version we will be able to sort this out a bit
by adjusting the brake bias a bit to the rear.

Overall I love the handling in GPL, once you get used to the handling you
really get a nice feel when balancing the cars at the limit, no more
of the normal sim technique of full braking then full acceleration, this
sim really rewards smoothness and careful car control. Way to go Papy on
the driving model, previously that was one of the shortcomings of Papy sims
was in the in weak modeling of brake lockups, GPL really feels
good, you can especially tell when you have the brakes at very near lockup
and then crest over the hill and the wheels going light will cause momentary
lockup. Detail like this is what makes GPL such a great step forward in
driving simulation.

Cheers.
--John
--
*kludger AT zipcon DOT com*  | ICQ #7522564  contact me at:
  Seattle, Washington USA.   | http://wwp.mirabilis.com/7522564

That, and the 3D***pit - I think it's much better at providing
subtle visual feedback than static 2d***pits.

Joe