F1 2012 F1 2012 setup values Vs. rFactor/GTR2, etc

[Sk3ptik0n]

I am having a hard time translating my experience setting up cars in GTR2 or rFactor into F1 2012.
By and large, the final effect is not as dramatic, but there is some and I don;t like to enter values just because they "feel" right.
I copied a list below and I am going to indicate the values I have questions about. n/a means I don't need help there.

Aerodynamics
Front Wing Angle:n/a
Rear Wing Angle:n/a

Braking
Balance: F xx% - R xx% Here it doesn't seem to have the same effect as on other sims. In fact, to prevent some of the understeering, I am setting it 49F and 51R and it drives better. Still, is there something I should know?
Pressure: n/a
Brake Size: n/a

Balance
Front Anti-Roll Bar: xx
Rear Anti-Roll Bar: xx
Both of these above don't seem to produce the same effect as I am used to and being a 1 to 10 scale I want to make sure that 1 is soft and 10 is hard.

Suspension
Front Ride Height: x
Rear Ride Height: x
These I assume 1 is low and 10 is high.
Front Spring Stiffness: xx
Rear Spring Stiffness: xx
Again, I am assuming here that 1 is soft and 10 is hard. Right? Then why do I see setups with 1 front and 10 rear? To me that would make the car undrivable with way to much front grip and stiff as hell in the back. Obviously I am wrong.

Gearbox n/a
Engine n/a
Alignment
Camber Front:
Camber Rear:
I don't find this as important and I know in F1 they use ridiculous front camber. But I don;t know what scale they are using For front and back.
Toe Front: 0.15 to 0.05
Toe Rear: 0.50 to .20
Toe is one of those places where I don't recognize their scales. I am used to setting front at minus something (-2 or -20) and on the rear I'll go positive (+10 or +1) but the values above (I wrote in the min and max) mean nothing to me. I don't know if I am in a positive or negative value.

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

Brakes- on most sims i've played to date getting close to 50/50 means you are flirting with locking the rears and consequently the car spinning out before you can even react, on all Codemasters F1's you can comfortably go into rear bias without major trouble.

Roll bars- stiffer rear roll bars seem to make the car a bit sluggish to react and give you good mid corner grip, which is the exact opposite of what i've come to expect... Oh well.

Springs- kinda like what i've said about the brakes, on most sims out there i wouldn't dream of running the rear springs (specially the case considering that we are talking about a tremendously powerfull rear wheel drive car) stiffer than the front, but on F1 2012 you can get away with it and it works like a charm, it doesn't make the rear loose contact with the ground or anything, in fact, even with such a setting the car still mostly understeers.

Toe- i've never been one to mess with toe too much in other sims, but, on all Codemasters F1's, higher values make the car more responsive and a bit more nervous.
I've been told that negative values generate this effect, and the game lacks a minus sign... but since you can't go from negative to positive anyway just ignore it and listen to description the game gives you

 

[Victor Ivanov]

Setups on CM F1 games aren't the same as RF or Simbin games. Basically there is a pre defined base setup for a every track and what you see is just fine tunning of that setup. FE - 1 front stiffness doesn't mean the car is as soft as it can be. It means it's the softest setting allowed for this track. And 1 in Monza is not the same as 1 in Monaco. It's the same with everything except brake balance, gearbox and alignment.

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

That's nothing but a cop out by Codemasters honestly.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Wow, I had no idea it was so screwed up. How difficult would have been to make it more realistic?

Well, if anyone caught my other post, I have much bigger fish to fry with this game.
I am getting the same "Pause screen" bug I used to get on 2010 and 2011, which makes the game pretty much unplayable for me.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

Wow, I had no idea it was so screwed up. How difficult would have been to make it more realistic?

Well, if anyone caught my other post, I have much bigger fish to fry with this game.
I am getting the same "Pause screen" bug I used to get on 2010 and 2011, which makes the game pretty much unplayable for me.

Realistic? How do you know what is realistic? Do you think all of the 24 drivers start their setups from scrap on friday morning and they say - FW - 9, RW 7... Please...

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Realistic? How do you know what is realistic? Do you think all of the 24 drivers start their setups from scrap on friday morning and they say - FW - 9, RW 7... Please...

Now, that's just argumentative. In real life they basically rebuild the cars each time they go to track, but the settings for the shocks, ARB, etc. are expressed in pretty consistent values.

Sure, they use different configurations at different tracks, the wing they use at Monza is not the same they use at SPA so the values will also be different, but I guarantee you they don't use a 1 to 10 scale.
So more "realistic" to me means using the actual values used in RL. In the case of a wing, I suppose those will be Degrees.

But in the case of a video game "realistic" also means using apples and apples even if it is a 1 to 10 scale so that I have an idea of what kind of behavior I can expect by setting a wing at 2/ 8. If that 2/8 changes with each race it makes it a lot more difficult to build reliable setups.

 

[Victor Ivanov]

My point was that none of the drivers does that. They have a bunch of engineers who set the car up and they only say - I need more front grip and I have no front grip or something like that. That's what I like about CM setups, it's just easy. In RF setting up a car is like a quantum physics for me

 

[Leonardo Chaves]

Realistic? How do you know what is realistic? Do you think all of the 24 drivers start their setups from scrap on friday morning and they say - FW - 9, RW 7... Please...

I'll tell you something, if a driver is maxing (and wanting even more) out the wings in completely opposite directions it means that the "engineers" got their "setup range" completely wrong.
I can hear Button on the radio already... lol

Like the game for what it is, this doesn't affect my enjoyment one bit, but that line on why the engineer suggests the same setups for Monaco and Monza (extended to why extreme settings work) is total BS.

 

[Kristian Nenov]

Wow, I had no idea it was so screwed up. How difficult would have been to make it more realistic?

Well, if anyone caught my other post, I have much bigger fish to fry with this game.
I am getting the same "Pause screen" bug I used to get on 2010 and 2011, which makes the game pretty much unplayable for me.

Pause screen? Just play it in Full screen mode.

 

[Sk3ptik0n]

Pause screen? Just play it in Full screen mode.

I wish it was that simple. F1 2010 and 2011 were both in full screen and I got the pause problem all the time. With 2012 I have not yet tried full screen, but the precedent does not bode well for it.
Last night when it happened I was so pissed that I didn't even notice I was in windowed mode, so I really hope that in 2012 full screen will fix the issue, but it didn't in the older ones...

When it first happened in F1 2010 I really didn't care because I hated the game. In 2011 I did care, but no one could help me fix it. With 2012 I tested the demo for a very long time just to see if it would do it. It didn't and that's why I bought it again. First day was OK, second day it happened again repeatedly.