> Well, you can easily overlay your laps using editrpy or my exrpy program. You
> just output the data for the two laps you are interested in and then use some
> other program such as MS Excel to create a chart with both laps. I've already
> created a chart for the ICR2 Portland track with my best lap (60.348 BTW) vs
> the best replay I could find on the net (57.9XX).
============
I've also found this to be adequate for finding trouble spots on road
courses (probably ovals, too). Very recently, I started looking for
friction circle analysis tools for ICR, and came up only with editrpy.
After a few hours in excel with the exported lap analyses, I ended up
with some pretty useful graphs. The most useful is a plot of elapsed
time to different points on the track for several runs. I overlayed my
fast lap, an average lap, and the fastest lap from an AI car, subtracted
their times from my my hot lap to each point, and plotted that against
distance. A second chart showing speed versus distance helps you
identify the turns on the track. Working the two charts together (you
might combine them into one), I now know where I can pick up some extra
time.
For example, at Elkhart, I carry about a .800 sec lead (much better
power down the long straights) into turn 5, a sharp left-hander at the
end of a very long straight. I brake later than the AI car, increasing
the advantage momentarily to 1.1 seconds, but subsequently lose time in
the turn; overall, he gains about .15 seconds with a cleaner line.
Conversely, my average lap shows me diving even deeper into the turn,
and losing even more time fighting the car around.
There are some other interesting stories in the time-difference to
distance plot, each peak and valley pointing to interesting spots in the
speed-distance plot.
Overall, I think this is adequate for analyzing your line on the track,
not setting up the car. The only thing really missing is lateral
distance from the track centerline at these points (present in the RPY,
but not extracted by editpry). This would be useful in comparing lines
through particularly troublesome corners.
Exporting and then importing data is tedious, making this analysis
difficult and time consuming. A really useful tool would graph the data
directly from the RPY data, interactively zooming in for detailed views,
and overlaying several laps for comparison. It takes hours to do this
using Excel and editrpy, and makes this analysis unavailable to most
users. With the plethora of OCX's and VBX's out there, this should be
possible to do without requiring excel.
In short, the effort would be non-trivial, but the tool very useful to
experienced drivers with a good set-up. I've given up on the friction
circle idea; the lateral acceleration data isn't available without track
geometry, and the calculated acceleration values aren't smooth enough to
be much use.
I might do it, since this is sorta what I do for a living. But then, I
drive ICR to get away from work and reality.
Mike.
