rec.autos.simulators

Well, I bought myself a copy of Rally Championship 2000 last week and
although I am enjoying it and learning all the time, I'm struggling
with how to drive it (I'm used to GP2). Boy, are those roads really
that narrow?

Are there any useful pointers to Rally driving techniques and do you
folks think that a Force Feedback wheel (as opposed to the non-FF wheel
I have) helps ?

Thanks.

--

Dept. of Computer Science,  Utrecht University, The Netherlands  [WHOIS: ehk3]
-------------------- http://www.racesimcentral.net/

http://www.motorsport.co.uk/photos99/movies/manx/vauxhall_bad_day_1.mpg

Rallying is extremely different from closed circuit racing in that you
can't memorize the tracks and race flat out.  You have to take it easy
and pay close attention to the navigator.  There are some tracks where
you can push to the limit and stand a small chance of not crashing,
but they are few and far between.  Usually you should make sure your
car is set up right and take it easy.  A proper setup will always
benefit you more than hard driving with an improperly set up car.

The single most important thing I have learned is to brake early and
gradually rather than hard and late.  You will always keep better
control of your car that way.

I think force feedback helps my driving.  It adds a third input for
your senses to use to drive better.  But at $150 or more for a wheel
it's definitely not a necessity.

Devin

What are your steering settings? Since you just bought RC, you may want to
put your steering sliders in the "player details" and the "car setup"
screens all the way to the left so the steering doens't feel so sensitive.

During beta testing, I received a lot of criticism for trying to tell r.a.s.
that the full version of the sim handled much differently than the demo.
After it was released, some still questioned the accuracy of the car
handling but were actually using the wrong technique and had innacurate
expectations as to how a rally car performs. I think most here at r.a.s. who
initially criticized RC, soon came back and completely retracted their
criticisms.

Also, the weight of the car has been questioned and some think the car gets
airborne/flips too much.
The weight is accurate and with practice, you'll find that you can keep
those wheels out of the air and on the road surface (not in the weeds,
rocks, water, bushes, etc.  :-)   ), and be able to post fast times.

Penmachno South is one of my favorite stages. It's very tight and
unforgiving, but a thrill once you get it right. If you practice on this
one, the others may seem a bit easier.  :-)

As for techniques, probably the most difficult thing for most people to
master is navigating the tighter turns. With a fwd rally car, you will
suffer with understeer unless you can get the rear end to swing around a
bit. Set your brake bias more to the rear brakes, and as you approach a
turn, tap the brakes to lock the rears. Turn, and when you get the nose
pointed towards the apex, hit the gas and let the front wheels pull you
through. It's simple, but many, many, sim drivers expect to powerslide these
cars through the turns like in CMR and it just doesn't happen that way in
real life. In reality, these cars actually slide fairly little. After awhile
though, you will be able to throw the car around any way you like. It just
takes a bit of time to get in synch with the car physics and their off-road
behavior.

It also takes some time to get used to applying more throttle when the
situation seems to be telling you to hit the brakes. An example is when you
are navigating a chicane. If your starting to drift to far outside, you may
want to brake but instead you need to hit the gas and trust the front wheels
to pull you through.

Hope the above is some help to you.

David G Fisher

http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/edwin/ -----------------------

David, you never answered me when I asked you if you have ever raced a Rally
car ?

I have personally accepted RC2000 has how it is, it's different even if I
felt it was over-hyped.  There is some great stuff that's for sure,and some
stages are incredible to race.  The fact that they had to give us the tools
to change the physics says long about the title.  Brake were not modeled
correctly, weight movement and realistic damage was not accurate and I still
say that the sideway momentum was not accurate also.  Sure now that I can
change the physics I've created what I feel is real Rally physics, like in
real life on the Volvo 850T  I raced with a couple of times.

Great tips, it's the way to drive Rally cars I say.  Except that FWD do
powerslide in Rally Racing, they are tweaked for that.  Not as much as CMR,
but not as small as RC2k.  Something I tell also is to always try to
straighten the car as much as possible.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- May the Downforce be with you...

"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realise
how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

What is your best time on this stage ?

Not going to tell you my time !
Sofar I have been on the roof half the time  ;-)

Joergen

Try the Honda. It's pretty good on this stage. I think my best time was a
9:05, but that was an almost perfect run. Being able to regularly reach a
time of around 9:20  would be a much better accomplishment than an
occasional, very fast, hot lap.

Isn't that big jump about half way through the stage a real thrill?

David G Fisher