I'm the one drifting guys and I can confirm that nobody has yet managed to actually drift the car in gamescon. Some power drifts have been able, but no actual drifts. Also Marco and Stefano do not manage to drift like that at all. You need to know the technique. If you know what you're doing, it's easy and natural. If you don't know, it just won't work.
The car is also setup for drift like this:
- Normal physics, no "special mode"
- street normal tyre, NO "special" tyres at all.
- Stiffer suspension and a bit oversteery (not too much)
- 200kg less weight from the street car
- drift car steering rack with around 50-55 degrees
That's all.
I did my best today drifting (and think i succeeded
) in the short amount of time you get in the Demo (only 3 laps) But as a fan of drifting and someone who can spend lots of tires doing it, it immediatly felt natural and all my techniques worked perfectly! The laps and drifts werent perfect but i was able to string together corners on my first try, which resulted in big smiles and enthustiastic remarks by Aris and Marco. Drifting is
not easy, especially in a new sim with new physics, but if the physics are like doing it in reallife in which you have some experience, and you use the same tricks in Assetto Corsa and they work, thats telling ALOT about how good the physics are.
I hope my friend who filmed it also has the audio from the guys looking and commenting, and i will try to upload a video today or tomorrow. Awesome meeting you guys and making me even more interested in the sim then i already was!
Also drove the Z4M on Monza, which felt just as natural in behaviour, driving it at a slower pace makes the car super easy to handle (as what you would expect from a racecar with slicks and heavy downforce) but when you are going near or over the edge it makes even more sense, the car starts to move and react more which needs fast steering corrections, and for the first time in a sim when braking hard you can feel the rear getting light and swervy (although this was mostly caused by the ABS kicking in, it felt like i expected). The car was setup very understeered so it was hard to determine the true limit of the car but i enjoyed every minute of it trying to catch the P4/5. Which was an AI car. AI is a big work in progress, and for most of us in online racing communites not interesting, but if they keep tweaking it it might be alot of fun using it as a training tool for online racing. The AI was nice and aggresive (bit to much at times in brakezones) but i like them more aggresive then being extremly cautious making for easy overtaking. Watching the AI race against each other showed more of the potential then racing against a human, so i'm quote optimistic about it.
For an early Alpha this is already an tremendous effort! And once again, awesome meeting and talking to you guys, thanks for your time and effort, this is a sim build by enthusiasts, and it shows in many many ways!