All simracers are cheaters! (kind of... )

[Niels_at_home]

Hello!

I'm not talking about shift macros used in iRacing, although that is rather funny. The physical aspect of driving a racing car is underestimated. Although in the current era of motorsport, there is what George Carlin (RIP) would call a 'pussyfication' going on with more cars using power steering and closed cockpit cars having air conditioning etc, there are still many cars that are quite physical to drive.

Brakes
Your typical sim brake pedal might require about 2kg (4lbs) to press down fully. Perhaps you have a loadcell based brake pedal, but CST's leverage means its still probably about 15kg max (33lbs) and if you have Andy Pastores nice loadcell g25 addon, I believe thats 25lbs or just above 10kg.

To get 4G braking in a GP2 car, or 5G in a F1 car you need a peak force on the brake pedal of over 120kg, possibly more than 150kg! (more than 260lbs, perhaps 330+!). Even in a F3 car to get 3G's its 100kg pedal force (220lbs). That is very very tough and makes us simracers pretty much a bunch of wimps.

But do the brake G's help as a sort of 'automatic force generator' on the pedal? Barely I'm afraid. It will feel different applying 120kg in a static simulator compared to being thrown forward in the belts of a race car, but most of the force must come by stiffening your leg/body muscles. Imagine a 'ragdoll' driver in a car, perhaps only part of the weight of your lower leg might put some force on the pedal. Its old school muscles that press the pedal, with the G forces making it feel different but not much less tough. This is confirmed by some of the racing teams simulators I've seen, I put the brake strength to 200% in order to even manage good braking. And I'm used to 50kg (110lbs) of braking, so these simulators have 100kg / 220lbs or more brake pedals!

You can't do weird simracing techniques and odd throttle/brake at the same time when the physical effort of pressing the pedal is so hard. It is very unrealistic I'm afraid how most of us not only cheat on the physical aspect of braking, but also how it makes us get away with techniques you don't see in real racing.

Steering
How about steering then? Well, powersteering is available in some classes nowadays and I have no knowledge on how much this system typically helps. Perhaps a GP2 car is near the top of what modern unasisted racing cars ask from the drivers steering effort. In the fast multi apex corner at Turkey for example, values of about 25Nm occur. That is 12 times more than a G25. You won't believe it until you feel it. Analysis of an Indycar of some time ago showed that just to go straight (because of the assymetric setup) you need to apply some 20Nm (10x G25) going *STRAIGHT*

Realistic steering loads mean you can't do what simracers can do. Certain fast steering motions, or even the ability to keep the wheel nice and straight over bumps, in real life with these cars, the wheel will decide to a greater extend what is happening. Perhaps some simracers are faster using 240 degrees of rotation and low force feedback. In a real single seater they wouldn't know what hit em! (probably the wall.. )

So?
There will always be a big difference between real and virtual racing, but its good to know just how the physical aspect (and we haven't even talked about the G forces on the body and neck!) influences the experience. Perhaps at some stage iRacing or rFactor 2 or a good rFactor mod are pretty realistic, but nothing is realistic when you look at how most of us control these cars.

Why am I saying this? Well I'm bored, but also to voice some concerns how some simracers feel they're really doing something realistic where in fact this might not be quite true.

 

[Marian Zelenka]

Myname, I am a professional driver and I can tell you that all the accidents are not generally because people are trying to be ayerton senna out there, but because they are in a hurry and are not paying attention to what is going on around them.

These incidents happen always in the night with minimum traffic. Clearly racers wanabe.

I'm glad they don't play Carmageddon. Thanks god for it.

 

[Marian Zelenka]

I believe we should all be doing the same as Finland by now, forcing provisional drivers to take at least 3 lessons on a skidpad before they are allowed to take their driving test. This way you can guarantee that they'll have a little more respect for the grip levels on the road in all situations, and a little more for the speed they travel at.
.

In my country, we finally built a racetrack with skidpad and they started to teach an ambulance drivers for example. They even want to force every single adept for a driving licence to attent that kind of course. I think it would be great.

And driving schools should teach how to drive car properly too. No one will tell you that you shouldn't brake with engine or not to downshift wildly on slipery road because you may spin.

Edit: I meant jumping on clutch pedal when slipery.

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

Everyone should be teaching people about engine braking. It is not a very efficient use of fuel clearly, but the benefits are that you shorten your stopping distance massively, and you reduce the risk of the driven wheels locking up.

This is exactly why instructors in England (and maybe the rest of the UK) don't want you to dip the clutch until the car shakes, although they should be teaching you to drop through the gears at the same time.

 

[Jim Cole]

See, now that is what they actually do teach us truck drivers We use engine brakes all the time as well as downshifting to reduce speed more efficiently than with just the brake. (it also saves the brakes quite a bit which means we can keep the truck slow on downgrades better, heheh )

 

[William Levesque]

You truck drivers clutch about a million times more in a week than car drivers !!! XD

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

You truck drivers clutch about a million times more in a week than car drivers !!! XD

Don't forget they also have to double clutch, and have a half gear for each forward gear, then a low drive and high drive to boot. Now, about racing those things..... I bet thats hard lol.

 

[William Levesque]

That's actually what I meant Alex

 

[Jim Cole]

In all honesty, I only use the clutch to start or stop the rig, after that it is all about using the throttle and timing to move the shifter in and out of gear for upshifts and downshifts. The problem starts when you have to sit at a standing position for any length of time due to the clutch being so heavy. I am not weak and after a minute of keeping the clutch depressed my leg starts to get a little shakey hehe.

In case you are wondering why I don't take it out of gear, I pull bottom dump trailers at times and catch ground asphalt from grinders that are used for road repair. You have to keep moving forward very slowly while they grind or you end up with them dumping the asphalt all over the cab of your truck.

As for the racing question, most all race trucks use a modified 5 speed transmission, so they don't have to go through all 13 to 18 gears the rest of us do.

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

Another perfect shifter.... lol, I still can't work out how the engine and clutch side gears are fine with engaging the drive side gears without releasing the clutch. But yeah, I've seen it done, my jaws were wider than Katie Prices legs the first time I saw it though lol.

Lucky racers Think it's be funny if they did use 13 to 18, imagine Monte Carlo with 18 gears... fun >.<

 

[William Levesque]

And no power steering !!! XD

 

[Niels_at_home]

Engine braking isn't a real influence on stopping distances on normal modern cars. Perhaps in a 60s road car with drum brakes it helps, but any racing application its not a major thing. Engine braking is overdone in many mods, there was this CanAm mod where the engine braking got up to 900Nm, it was MORE torque than the engine put out at full throttle..

Its also very variable, each gear ratio changes the engine braking.

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

Engine braking makes a big difference on modern cars, on the road, and on the track. It doesn't matter if they use drums or discs, it still helps. The single component that affects the difference is the flywheel. Heavy flywheels reduce the effectiveness as the engine takes more time to spool down, light flywheels increase the effect massively, as the engine will return to idle pretty quickly. As for gear ratios, they will affect engine braking only by amount of torque applied to the engine via the wheels rotation.

To understand how this works, rev your road car to 5,000rpm in third gear, dip the clutch and apply the brakes and measure the distance to the stop. Then do the same, but don't dip the clutch, and shift down to 2nd, then 1st, changing at 3,000rpm each time. You will find that engine braking will reduce the stopping distance by up to 30%

Engine braking also happens on the way up the gears as well, thats why we double clutch to match our revs to our speed, in an effort to prevent the car from slowing down when we engage the clutch

 

[Brian Clancy]

The single point to remember is the effective grip of the tires contact patch under deceleration, it does not matter if its engine braking or Brakes that apply the 'stopping' forces. A tire only has so much 'grip' before a wheel locks, and modern brakes can easily lock tires. The reason drivers still use engine braking is often to just be in a useable gear as they brake and to use engine braking to balance the car. It could also be argued that engine braking will reduce the strain on brakes to some degree also

 

[William Levesque]

Brian, this here makes sense

 

[Alexander Rhodes]

I can confirm your right Brian, I use the engine braking in rear wheel drive cars (Ginetta's etc.) to stop me pointing the wrong way into the corner. Front wheel drive cars (Vectra's are big on this) tend to get front heavy on brakes also, so engine braking is used on entry to shed speed that you couldn't drop in the braking zone. In sims it's a little different as your normally on the brakes in entry anyway, and engine braking is so over exaggerated in a most sims, and under exaggerated in others that it isn't as functional as it should be (Although they did a good job with it in netKar Pro).

 

[Niels_at_home]

Engine braking would only reduce braking distances if either the brakes are too weak, or if the brake bias is too far forward on a RWD car. Modern road cars have good 4 wheel ABS systems and on those cars I don't think engine braking makes even a slight bit of difference. Racing cars have good enough brakes and without ABS, they still set the bias more rearwards than street cars might have, so while engine braking plays a role, its minor.

But lets take an example.

The Corvette ZR1 I am modelling has about 125Nm of engine braking at 6000RPM. Say we are in third gear, 1.21 ratio, 4959RPM into the diff, 3.42 ratio 1450RPM at the tire. Torque multiplied from 125Nm to 517Nm. However, there are two tires, so that would be 259Nm per tire.

When braking at 1.25G, the rear tire load is about 2500N per tire, max tire grip is some 3450N. So we can apply a torque that results up to 3450N contact patch force to get max grip. Radius is around 0.32, so that gives a torque of 0.32 * 3450 = 1104Nm

The front tires are loaded around 5000N, max tire grip is some 6300N. Radius is around 0.31 so that gives 0.31 * 6300 = 1953Nm of torque the front tires can take to generate max grip.

The total braking force is 6300 x 2 at the front and 3450 x 2 at the rear gives 19500N total force. The car weighs around 15000N. The absolute maximum braking in this case in G's would be 19500 / 15000 = 1.3G. So at 1.25G in this example, we're near the peak G's..

Lets assume, wrongly, that the rear brake discs are not great. We need 1104Nm torque in the example, 259 of it comes from engine braking. Lets remove engine braking, leaving 845Nm / 0.32 radius = 2641N braking force per rear contact patch.

With Engine Braking
F 6300x2 + R 3450x2 = 19500N = peak 1.3G braking

Without Engine Braking
F 6300x2 + R 2641x2 = 17882 = peak 1.19G braking

With engine braking is 9% higher brake G, but again, only if we assume wrongly that the rear brake disc is too weak!

 

[Marian Zelenka]

"All simracers are cheaters!"

When I see unreal lap times in time attack for race series, ...

Frankly, setup doesn't work (good). You can make things just a bit worse. When I mess with setup, I get +- the same lap times all the time. I set 1:20.756 at Curitiba 08 as my best lap with wtcc 08 bmw car and paddle shifters. Best lap time is 1:18.933. How can they be even a few seconds faster than AI? Huh? Lap times at Puebla 08, ... no comment. :eek:

 

[Jim Cole]

There are quite a few people that are able to beat the AI by quite a bit. It is not all setup either. Knowing how to drive the track and knowing the limits of the car and tires is what it takes. Being able to hit your brake points, turn in points and acceleration points exactly each lap is what the fastest drivers are capable of. I am no slouch when it comes to racing online, but I am still usually minimum .5 secs and up to 3 seconds slower than the aliens.

Setup does make a difference though and exploring how the setup affects car handling is not a waste of time. First off get to where you are consistent at hitting your marks and lap times. then adjust settings on the car to improve those times. Even the fastest drivers can gain a minimum of .5 seconds with a proper setup as compared to the default setup from simbin. Though I do admit for the stock content, the default is not bad for the setup.

 

[Chris Butcher]

Setups don't make the car quicker. They tailor the way the car responds, so they suit a particular driving style.

 

[Marian Zelenka]

Even the fastest drivers can gain a minimum of .5 seconds with a proper setup as compared to the default setup from simbin. Though I do admit for the stock content, the default is not bad for the setup.

I don't like simbin's setups. I gained about second with just a bit tweaking. I must admit, that I never understand that tweaking and I'm starting to learn that.

Although I have got steering wheel for just eight days, I think that I hit maximum at that track. I could be faster, but I don't want to be unfair and cut chicanes much. And I can't be faster with manual clutch. Manual clutch is another level. I'd better start with paddle shifters.

Still, that time 1:18.933 is for Lacetti, I think. On simbin's leaderboard is time 1:19.934 for bmw and I could be third with my time. Maybe it's not so bad. But I'm a bit frustrated and very hard on myself. I should probably just race with 100% AI and than race online with real people. Besides, time attack mode is a cheat and maybe no one with their fastest times couldn't be able to do that time in practice or race.

Actually, I was faster on Puebla with Seat and Chevrolet. They are both FWD, so maybe my style suits better for FWD cars. I don't know, I have to try harder. I'm a bit confused.