rec.autos.simulators

the engine begins to act as an engine brake and the car begins to skid.

In real life you can enable the clutch to prevent the engine braking.
Without a clutch in the game you have to gues the acceleration level
which would not influence the wheels rotations during cornering, which
is difficult and unreal.

To cure the problem you're having, move the toe slider all the way left. What
toe setting does in NFS:PU is adjust the front to rear grip bias. Moving
it all the way left increases rear grip and reduces front grip. Overall grip
remains the same.

On some cars, like the 1995 Turbo Porsche, and most of the 4 wheel drive
cars, you move the toe slider all the way right, and reduce the rear tire pressure
a little. Set front tire pressure to 45, and rear tire pressure from 43 down to
41. The GT1 can run with even less rear tire pressure, 40 down to 38.

Some lift throttle oversteer is good with NFS:PU. You can enter a turn a bit
fast, then lift off on the throttle a little bit and the car will slow down and
continue turning in. Without the oversteer setup, this method won't work
and the car will just plow off track if you try to slow down while turning.

Other tidbits:

Front downforce doesn't do anything except slow a car down. The slower
speeds can fool a player into thinking that front downforce is improving grip
since the same control inputs allow a car to make a turn, but what is really
happening is the car is just going slower.

Rear downforce doesn't improve grip at all, just keeps a car from going
airborne. You can test this on the skidpad. Maximum cornering speed is
the same with downforce at 0/0 or 100/0. On the high powered cars,
using downforce of 70 to 80 helps keep the cars on the road over bumps
and jumps.

Setting top gear extremely tall reduces aerodynamic drag. This is only legal
on the race cars though. In the case of the GT1, you use the maximum negative
adjustments on 6th and final gear ratios, making it useless, but you still have
5 gears to adjust for a track. Top speed increases from about 205mph to
235mph at Zone Industrielle with this trick.

The other settings are ride height all the way left, suspension all the way right.

hi,
throttle lift oversteer is when you get off the gas and the engine acts as
a `brake`. the weight of the car is moved forwards a touch and hence
reduces the grip of the rear wheels.GTL,GPL and LFS model this effect very
well, plus countless others which i may not have tried.
Tango
check out any of the many driving guides on the web for detailed
descriptions on the way weight transfer can affect the handling of cars

The skidpad is the test track in NFS:PU, used during factory driver,
but can also be used to test drive a car. The real skidpad is
the inner circle, but to test a car you want to drive on the outside
circular track.

Lift throttle

By lifting your foot off the throttle, some engine braking force
is induced.

Oversteer

As I used it in the expression "lift throttle oversteer", oversteer is
when the back end of a car slides outwards, causing the car to turn
inwards while cornering. This is a common usage, but not technical,
see below.

In the case of NFS:PU, you can setup the cars so that they "oversteer"
a bit when you lift the throttle while turning at the limits of traction.
The cars slow down, but also keep turning inwards, which results in
a decreasing radius direction of travel. With a "non-oversteer" setup,
the result of trying to slow down when at the limits results in the radius
remaining the same or getting bigger, and the car goes off track. With
the oversteer setup, you can enter a corner faster, then lift off the
throttle so the car slows down and turns tighter, improving corner entry
phase speeds.

With a rear wheel drive car, all of the engine braking is applied at the
rear tires, so the car has a natural tendency to oversteer already, usually
too much in NFS:PU, so you need to reduce this by adjusting the toe slider
to the left. With a 4 wheel drive car, the engine braking occurs on all 4
tires, so you need to reduce rear wheel grip relative to front wheel grip
in order to get the 4 wheel drive cars to lift throttle oversteer. Usually
moving the toe in slider all the way right isn't enough, so you run the front
tires at 45 psi (maximum cornering grip in NFS:PU, not in real life), and
the rear tires at a slighly lower pressure, like 41 to 43 for the 911's, or 38 to
41 for the GT1.

On some race cars, like the cars modeled in Grand Prix Legends, the rear end
differential has a seperate locking factor for when the engine is accelerating
and for when the engine is decelerating a car. This can be used to modify
the oversteer reaction of a car to throttle inputs. NFS:PU doesn't model this.

More accurate oversteer definitions:

The technical definition is when the rear tires have less slip angle
than the front tires. The front tires have to be steered slightly
outwards (relative to the car, not to the direction of travel), for
a true oversteer condition to exist.

"Oversteer" in reference to the setup of a car. A car is driving at
moderate speed in a circle, and gradually speeds up. As the car
speeds up and nears the limits of traction, the driver may need to
change the steering input in order to maintain the same turning
radius. Typically in a street car, the steering input is increased,
meanging that the front tires have to be turned further inwards, and
the setup is called "understeery". If the steering input remains the
same, the car is considered neutral. If less steering input is
required, then the setup is called "oversteery". If the driver has
to completly center the steering, so both front and rear wheels
are parallel and all have the same skid/slip angle, this is considered
to be a "critical oversteer" setup. In the case of a car on a sliding
surface, you can go beyond this where the front tires have to be
turned outwards relative to the car, but there's no special term for
this, except for the technical definition of oversteer.

The weight transfer isn't always the major cause of the oversteer reaction.

The following cases are ones where no weight transfer is required in order
to get the oversteer reaction:

Rear wheel drive car - all the braking is applied to the rear wheels.

Racing class limited slip differentials - Grand Prix Legends is a good example
of this.

Less rear tire grip than front tire grip - I don't think this method is
used in real life. It is used a lot in NFS:PU, some use this method in GTR
(harder rear compound tires).

Suspension setup with an oversteer bias, bascially a stiffer front end
than rear end, typically done with anti-roll bars. Essentially the real
world method of change the front to rear grip bias in a car.

racing class "traction control" - traction control in racing cars are designed
to allow optimal slippage of the tires (instead of none). This is different than
the traction control you find on some typical street cars. For Indy Racing
League cars, the traction control is driver adjustable during a race.
Simple traction control just involves adjusting engine power, more sophisicated
systems also use invidual wheel braking. Different racing classes have rules
about what is allowed, NASCAR and Champ cars don't allow any, FIA's formula 1
class only allows engine power management, Dutch Supercar Challenge has no
restrictions at all, the only rules are power to weight ratios that determine
class, and some safety oriented stuff.

I think the tires are funny because its kind of cheap programming. When
at high speeds you do actually lose traction its not really that easy to
regain traction like in NFS. In NFS all you have to do is counter a
little or let off the gas for a fraction of a second and your fine.

Live for speed is "realistic" according to some people.. But I've been
playing Forza for a while and I think thats realistic. At least thats
the most realistic racing game out for console right now that not solely
  GT racing. Live for speed I think is just a drifting game because the
braking corner entry is very very strange in the game and cars I believe
at times should oversteer when punching the gas but they don't and they
continue to understeer... Driftin game also because the only way to
enter a corner without braking in that game is just to use your tires to
slow you down and still successfully exit the corner.

These guys here talk about GTL or GTR or something like that. I think to
them thats realistic.

There's no power oversteer in NFS Porsche Unleashed. You also can't
lock up the tires by braking (when in a straight line).

You can set the rear tires to less pressure than the fronts and
get lift throttle induced oversteer though. For the 4WD 911's
45 front, 42 rear works ok, and for the GT1, 45 front, 40 rear
works well.