rec.autos.simulators

Surpisingly, what got me started was Nascar Racing Season 2003.
Hearing that the Sierra server may be getting shutdown soon,
I decided to try NR2003 online racing, mostly superspeedway
events, where little skill is required. You're in a tight
pack of 30+ cars, and it's mostly wreck avoidance, pitting
well, and catching a draft soon after you exit the pits.
A typical race lasts about 20 minutes, and you're usually
waiting for another 10 minutes, so about 30 minutes per race.
I managed my share of wins, but realized that I wasn't really
improvingany skills at all while running these races.

I remembered that getting a sub 8:20 at Nurburg was one goal
I had never accomplished, but my previous attempts were just
single lap runs, aborting at the first crash. This time I
setup for 3 laps, and if I crashed, I just reset the car
(new fuel, but cold tires), and kept going, determined to
really learn the track, and the car. It took a while to get
relearn GPL again, all the bumps and jumps in the track,
and one or more incidents on almost every lap, and it was
late so I quit after getting an 8:22.2. After a good nights
sleep, I started up again, and got an 8:18.77 on my very
first lap.

---A---

Driving racecars is like making stew. If you leave it over night and heat it
up the next day, it always tastes better.

Jan.
=---

   Him   I must be making Clam Chowder then,  Cuz I always taste SAND!

dave henrie

Nah it's like riding a bike. Massive risk of injury if you***up, a hell
of alot of effort to travel a short distance & the distinct impression that
everyone else on the road is out to get you.

Malc.

There would only be TCP/IP races, no chat room or list of races
unless someone generates a program to duplicate the Sierra interface.
Also no stats.

Since all NR2003 related code belongs to iRacing now, I'm suprised
that Sierra has kept their server up this long.

They still do it for Tribes 1, which was released in 1998!

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

Did another session, down to 8:15.32 (just barely legal,
there's a 2 wheels on the track rule, and at one spot, my
inside tires were just barely on the outside paint).
That's probably going to be it for right now, as the other
10 tracks need relative improvement.

Having two wheels on the track is only essential for a WR, for anything else
it's just something to aim for. Nurby is hard enough without worrying about
stuff like that.

Rather than moving on to the other tracks immediately I suggest you try to
match your time in another chassis while you are still dialled in to the
track. You can use pretty well the same basic setup for all cars with some
minor tweaks to allow for weight distribution, gearing etc. Try making a
copy of your lo1 (lotus F1) setup file & renaming it to co1, fe1 or whatever
to save copying everything between setups.

If you can match your time in any other car, when you go back to the Lotus
you'll probably set another PB, and so on. I did this for about 4 years to
get my first sub-8, it takes a great deal of patience and time though.

Malc.

ymenard enlightened us with:

I pretty much do that already. Springs at 120/90, differential 85/45/5
(other times 85/45/4). Sway bar total around 350, (170 rear 180 front for
the Lotus, just to make it easier to drive), camber -.025 all the way
around. Front toe in is +0.125 (I don't understand why toe out at the
front would be used on any track bigger than a parking lot).

I'm sure I could probabaly get close in the Eagle (I had previously
gotten a faster time in the Eagle once). The Ferrai wouldn't be so bad,
but then there's the BRM.

Everyone's style is different but imo that's way too stiff for nurby, even
my Silv setups aren't that stiff. You only need stiff shocks & a healthy
dose of ARB at either end. With the chassis that stiff the car must be hard
to control over the crests & won't have much mechanical grip. You don't need
toe-in on the front, just a touch of toe-out to help the turn-in and
whatever toe-in at the back to balance the car against the diff.

Try a softer setup with stiff shocks, and a 60/45/1 diff & see how you get
on. It may not suit you but if it does you'll hopefully find the car is much
more forgiving /on the limit/. Fewer little errors, faster laptimes.

Try the Brab or Cooper then, or whichever your 'other' car is. Most people
have two that they drive more than the others, for me it's the Lotus &
Cooper. If you can match your PB in the Eagle you'll still have improved but
you won't learn as much that way because it behaves more or less the same as
the Lotus.

Malc.

I'm taking advantage of the fact that GPL's grip isn't affected by
overall stiffness. If you look at the transition between Greger Huttu's
GH1 and GH2 setups, you can see he switched to stiffer setups. Alison Hine
goes ballistic, with spring rates at over 150 (using the editor). To
keep the car from pogoing, I set rebound rates to 5, (bump rates are
3 front, 4 rear).

Assuming a car doesn't have inverse Ackerman steering, the inside front
tire can't take as much slip angle as the outside front tire, because
of the rolling torque force putting more downforce on the outside tire.
To reduce the slip angle on the inside tire, toe-in is used (at least
in real life, toe-out is used for auto-cross on parking lot sized tracks).

In GPL, if front braking balance is around 52% (I'm using a conservative
55%), toe-out at the front can stabilize a car under heaving braking.
GPL has this wierd reaction to steering inputs under heavy braking with
this setup. Slam on the brakes, peg the wheel right, and the car ends up
yawing left.

That's a lot of lift throttle oversteer. Even xx/30/1 is pretty loose
for lift throttle. I'm using twin joysticks (left throttle/brake), right
for steer, and when braking, the engine braking is at the max, so I have
to be careful about lift throttle oversteer setting.

If it was just one other car, I'd probably go with the Brabham. Seems like
most of the longer races were done using either the Lotus or the Brabham.

I'll give it a shot though.

Regarding the toe out and front brake balance around 53% weirdness,
I made a video a long time ago. It's like driver induced understeer,
except it happens on a straight.

http://jeffareid.net/cgi-bin/gplrs.wmv