rec.autos.simulators

David G Fisher

Achim

Steve

Achim

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He had a few screen lock ups while leading our Sebring race. I think he was
quite far in the lead too.
Dave being the only one that could drive that setup. I never hit 6th gear
during the whole practice and race.
No offense Joachim, but that was bad.

ZZ

--
Richard "ZZ" Busch

Member:
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Regarding the gears, I'd noticed in my tests before uploading the setup
that I was faster with these longer gear ratios than with shorter ones.
That, plus the goal to have some margin for drafting, made me chose
these ratios.

That 1:55.901 I uploaded today was done with that setup btw, the only
difference being tape = 70, and I started with only 10 laps worth of fuel.

Achim

Jason

Seriously, if you don't mind a little constructive criticism, it was well
suited to aliens but not well suited to less experienced drivers.  Speaking
as a less experienced driver I had a great deal of difficulty with
directional control, and with sudden changes from understeer to oversteer.
It appears like what you did was take a typical GPL style alien setup and
make it somewhat more controllable by increasing the front damping.  The
problem is that this only makes the car stable by causing understeer during
pitch and roll events, under any other conditions it is still a bit loose.
Also the setup allowed way too much roll, making directional changes very
difficult.

For a while I was practicing with my own variant of your setup, where among
other things I put on a much bigger front bar and adjusted the damping to
5/4 front and 4/3 rear (rebound/bump).  Very similar to setups I have used
in F1C and GTR.  This was much easier to drive, but was hell on the right
front tire.

Honestly I think there is a serious flaw in the TA physics.  It seems that
anything you do to give the car adequate roll control (bigger springs,
bigger bars) will eat the right front tire.  The only way to control tire
wear is to use wimpy springs and bars.  This allows huge suspension
deflections which are totally unrealistic for these types of cars.  So I can
see how you ended up with that setup and it makes sense from a performance
and tire wear standpoint, but it gives a huge advantage to the aliens who
are used to driving that type of setup.

I still find the PWF expert setups for TA to be the easiest to drive.  They
usually have a much bigger front bar than rear and more balanced damping.
The bigger front bar makes the car inherently stable, and the more balanced
damping allows you to lean on the car pretty heavily without pushing.
Usually they are not so bad for tire wear.  Unfortunately the LeBlanc setup
for this track really felt a lot different than the typical PWF setup and
most people found it undrivable also.

Not sure what the magic setup is for this track.  I really like the track
but I would like to think there is some way of setting up a drivable car
that is not hell on the tires.  Tire wear is bad at the real life track from
what I have heard, but I don't think it is as bad as we experienced in the
race.

Again I question the TA physics.  I still think the Papy tire model is
really not right for these cars, and the high CG complicates things even
further by making the car pitch and roll excessively.  I wonder if they plan
on addressing this at all or if we are just going to have to live with it.
Granted it's a fantasy series, but one would hope it would at least be
similar to real life series like SCCA Trans-Am, V8 Supercars, or DTM, and I
honestly think it is not even remotely like any of them.

But something perhaps worth considering: quick setups like that might best
be tweaked a touch more for forgiveness, considering the range of drivers in
the series.  A click more front brake bias, a click off the rear ARB maybe;
that sort of thing.  Minimal changes at most.  While it would indeed take
the edge off for the quicker guys, the rest would find it more manageable,
and it might make for less incidents, a tighter grid and ultimately closer
competition over race distance.

SB

  You are correct; it doesn't remotely resemble TA racing.  Like 03
pre-patch, completely unrealistic setup settings produce the results needed,
as you've found, among other things, i.e., lowest ride height possible is
way off, etc.

  Just the way it is.  Surprised this hasn't been mentioned before.

Big cop-out, I know, but there just wasn't time for me to come up with of
look for anything I would consider better.

Most of the fast guys got along with it, it would appear. Even in my hands
and alone on the track, it wasn't an insurmountable problem. It just didn't
provide the kind of handling I'd expect from a car like that and thus I
wasn't able to use the road the way I wanted to (which showed up on the
clock, obviously), but the biggest problem was it's a pig in traffic.

It's bad enough to have to have the back end jack down and jump out from
under you while accellerating along the two curved "straights", it's another
proposition altogether if you have to arrange a let bye *AND* drive with one
hand to signal the following driver to pass as well. Also, following a
little incident I had more wear on the left front than on the other tyres
and that really unbalanced it. Gave me all kinds of grief after that (had to
nurse it for 10 laps like that >:-( ).

All of the above made for a foul mood at the end of the race and following
(corrected) quote: "He may be the setup wizard to Neil, but IMO Joachim's
setups are of the Nilfisk variety."(*)

It doesn't matter if it's faster or not in fixed setup racing. Also, I want
throttle controllable wheelspin in *BOTH* 1st and 2nd.

Again: what the setup is capable of in "hotlapping mode" is of no
importance. Especially if this sort of performance is only acchievable by
those who can adapt to this particular style of driving.

Jan.
=---
(*) Rem., for the non-Europeans on RAS: Nilfisk is a brand of vacuum
cleaners, work it out for yourselves...

Mitch

Mitch

However, I can't deny that although I've tried to make it more
driveable, I've still tried to make it fast for me and my driving style.

Most of the issues you described certainly came from this.

 > It appears like what you did was take a typical GPL style alien setup
 > make it somewhat more controllable by increasing the front damping.

I have AAMOF modified my original setup quite substantially to make it
more driveable and still fast. I've increased the front springs, and
stiffened the front rebound accordingly. I've increased the caster,
stiffened both a-r bars, and moved both the weight and brake balance to
the front.

And when making these changes, I've tried to make sure the roll couple
doesn't change much because I wanted to avoid that the setup becomes too
understeering.

I didn't set the rear rebound to 3 because I felt that reduced the grip
too much (it might feel easier to drive, but it will AAMOF make the rear
end less stable).

This was not a 'quick'n dirty mod'. I've worked on this, and tested it,
quite diligently before mentioning it here.

 > other things I put on a much bigger front bar and adjusted the damping
 > to 5/4 front and 4/3 rear (rebound/bump).

I disagree on the rear end. Depending on your rear springs, for my
liking, with these settings the wheels will not have enough contact,
especially considering the soft bump side.

Too stiff settings at either end of the car will cause excessive tire
wear, on both sides of the car. I agree that N2k3's physics are not
perfect, but they're sufficiently credible for me to be fun.

And you're right, the main reason for my soft setups is wear. I'm trying
to keep wear low. With my own setups, I relinquish almost everything for
that, and for keeping the wheels in contact with the asphalt.

Maybe there is none. I've been offering setups for several sims for many
years, and if there's one thing I have learnt, it is the fact that the
same setup can be perceived as anything from perfect to completely
unusable, it all depends on who you ask (excluding the creator <g>)

Achim

[snip]
[snip]

I am most definitely no setup expert but, like fine art, I know what I like
;) I think it's important not to judge a setup simply on your own
experience. For example, I didn't like the RA setup at first and had to
'learn' how to drive it. After that, we could knock out qual pace laps lap
after lap, all race long.

At Sebring, the setup fitted much better. I stuffed up qualifying (as usual)
and by the time I emerged from the pack I was over 20s behind the flying
Dave and Ginger. By halfway, I had whittled 5 or 6 seconds off that and
checked my tyres. They were hardly quarter used and I decided to pit early
coming up to traffic and go like hell for the second half. Things didn't
work out quite like that and instead Ginger was the one that turned an
amazing series of laps after his bf.

My point is, both at RA and Sebring, several of us were able to run very
fast, consistent laps with low tyre wear. I'm not claiming the setups are
realistic or otherwise - I wouldn't know. What I am saying is that you can
adapt your style to make them into effective race setups. Equally, I would
be very happy to run one of your setups - it would be fun if you made one
for Norisring :)

As Mitch said in another post, this winter experience has taught us a lot of
things and I hope provided a lot of fun. I'm loving it ;)

Regards