Driving the cars

[Sk3ptik0n]

I Have to preface this by saying that I do most of my racing at iracing.com, but my sim adventures actually started with a GT Legends/GTR 2 double disk some years ago. Then I bought Race on and just because I cannot stand the thought that there are sim raging programs I don't own I bought the entire series from Evo on up. I also own rFactor and quite a bit of the major mods.

As much as I like iracing, sometimes I like to drive different cars/series/tracks and the RACE series does a very good job of scratching that itch.

My question is about the handling of the cars. It seems to me that to different degrees all these sims (including rFactor) tend to Have a somewhat different behavior in the turns. By and large when I enter a turn I find that in mid turn the steering becomes very light and the car doesn't turn. If I change the bias to oversteering, then the cars get really hard to control but these feeling really doesn't go away. It is masked by the fact that most of the time you are sideways.

I Have tried different setups with varying results.

What I basically asking is this: Am I the only one feeling that? Is it specific to Simbin's games? Am I dreaming or am I just driving them wrong?

Essentially, when I drive iracing's cars I can feel the front wheels biting the road but I rarely feel that in Race on or GTR2.
Also, I always get the feeling that the cars slide out of the line I am taking a bit too much, as if driving on a wet track.

I should also point out that when that happens, I don't hear the tires squealing, which should mean that I am not passing the edge of traction yet, but when steering gets like that I can turn the wheel anywhere I want and direction doesn't change.

I know I am describing gross understeering, but it doesn't feel really like that.

Anyway, if I am deluded, than no one will be able to understand what I am describing. If I am not, then you guys should know what I am talking about.

 

[Eric Estes]

I know exactly the feeling you are talking about, but I am so used to it now that the loud squealing of the iRacing feedback was and is still a shock to me. From what I can tell, gross understeer is exactly what it is. It doesn't register well with the ffb (especially pushing off), and even MoTeC won't necessarily register it as slip. If you nail the corner at the appropriate speed, you will feel the wheels bite and the corner will just 'feel good', without getting that numb steering-feel.
I have noticed that SimBin does a little bit better job at roll sensation. In iRacing, it seems that as I turn through a corner, it is strictly on the yaw axis, with the horizon 'sliding' left-to-right or right-to-left. In Race, I can 'pitch it in' to a corner and it looks/feels just like that (surprisingly, a lot of what you 'feel' comes from your eyes). There may be some settings I need to tweak in iR though.

 

[Péter Bártfai]

What wheel do you have guys? Just because it depends a lot on the wheel settings. I drove with too nervous setting for a very long time, then found some discussions and thought about the settings myself, and that lead to a much more natural feeling.

In Simbin games the cars have a steering lock in default setups set to about 400-420 degrees of rotation. If you have a steering wheel that have 200 degrees of rotation like mine, you'll have to either set the steering lock lower (like 10 for example, for even more realistic but less useful setting 7,5), or lower the sensivity (like I'm doing right now). Or else you'll have that very nervous steering I talked about, and that can lead to loss of grip when you steer too much (easy to do with default settings), and to bad FFB feeling as well.
The difference between the 2 options btw is: If you lower the steering lock it'll feel the most realistic but you'll be in trouble in sharp corners. If you lower the sensivity, it'll still feel more realistic than default settings, and you'll be able to take sharp turns without a problem. My setting is 24% btw. Based on 200/420/2=0,238.

In case you have a G25/G27/DFP/DFGT/Fanatec or other wheel that has 900 degrees steering, and is set to 900 degrees, then you have to set steering lock to around 30 to get realistic steering, or else it'll be too lazy. And in this case sensivity always should be 50%

Edit:
In other games:
nKPro: 50% linearity for formula cars, 20% for the Abarth
NFS Shift: 14% sensivity (based on 200/720/2)
TDU: sensivity default, linearity on the 4th mark from the left.

 

[slashthetexan]

Actually, before you hear the tire squeal, you'll hear tire scrub, which, at first, sounds like squeal or maybe sliding, but it's not. You actually want that sound when you corner as the scrub is the pavement starting to pull at the tire (or, conversely, the tire starting to pull away from the pavement due to the lateral G's), causing a type of suction that helps your tire adhere to the road.

Turn up the tire scrub and tire squeal sounds in Audio Settings and learn to control the tire scrub. You'll get through those corners much quicker and your tires will heat up properly.