Physics right or wrong?

Disclaimer:
First of all please don't make that a fanboy discussion. I always try to be objective and leave my personal preferences out of the way. I am always willing to accept, if something I don't like on emotional basis, is better than what I like on emotional basis.

Ok I hope I covered that part and this won't get into a "You are a fanboy of this and that thread".

Prequal:
Like most people I eagerly awaited the release of Assetto Corsa. I read about all the licensed content, loved the screenshots and everything. I didn't drive the tech preview, because I didn't want to get a false impression, because it was all still WIP. The day AC was released on Steam I bought it.
I started really testing it after the first update were the FFB was fixed.

I do really like the game and wanted it to be good and so far my only issue are the physics. Most people praise them and they get a lot of love and I do confess, that in external videos they look great.
The car dives in on the braking, you see all the weight transfer and everything. No other sim offers that!

Example:
But as soon as I drive it, it feels just so wrong to me. Just one example: I tested the BMW Z4 GT3 at Monza. I know the track very well and usually drive GT cars, so a perfect combination for me.
Despite all the massive understeer you get everywhere in AC even with setup tweaks, I wanted to point out something you can judge on a much more objective level. So I will talk about the braking distance.

Every racer knows how hard the first braking zone in Monza is. You have a low downforce car and arrive at 260+ kph and have to break down to 60-80kph. So if you look at a lot of GT3 onboards on youtube even with cars, that do have ABS and are a bit restricted due to BOP. They all break before the 200meter board.
That said, I can brake at the 300meter (270kph) board and have the car at a total stand still at 150meters. If I brake for the corner I can brake at or after the 150 meter board.
So we already have a 25% shorter braking zone compared to a real life car with equal or less power and ABS, which I didn't use.

Test conditions:
So now people would start arguing, that I maybe run more downforce and stuff and that is the weirdest thing. I tried to figure out the "worst" braking performance. I used hard tyres and removed all the downforce from the car for this test.

I don't want to get to much into the details of the cornering behaviour and the understeer and that you can just pull on tons of lock and don't get any turn-in oversteer.

Is my opinion qualified?!:
A lot of simracers don't have a lot of reallife experience and I didn't race a GT3 car in my life, but just a quick background:

I drove Race07, rFactor1 and now rFactor2 and I am a pretty good driver in rF2 especially in rear wheel drive touring or GT cars. Even in the new Civic I was racing for wins after 30mins on an unkonw track, so I can quickly adapt to new cars and tracks etc.

In my free time I did some kart races with friends and even on an unkown track with for me unkonw more powerful karts than the average rental karts on a bit cold track I got within 1,9 seconds of the track record within 15min and reduced it to 1,5 seconds in a further 15min.
Keeping in mind that real professional Kart drivers practice their and I had maybe 2 or 3 hours track time in karts ever, I would say I am not a bad driver.

So when I jump out of rF2 into a kart it just feels like home. I apply nearly the same technique and everything. When I jump into AC it all feels wrong. It is so hard to get wheelspin. You can turn the wheel so much, that you would end up in a wall in real life.

I also spoke to some guys with actual racing experience and they got the same feeling.

The end:
I really wanted AC to be a very good sim and I do love everything about it, but these physics keep me from driving it.
In a sim I don't want it to be easy, I want it to be as realistic as possible, but in AC you can apply some really bad driving technique to get quicker laptimes.
 
Not another one of those "this Sim is wrong as i drive other sims with no grip" threads!

Unless you have real life experience of driving that Z4 GT3 then you cannot say this game is 'wrong' no more than you can say all the others are 'right'.

A few real life pro racing drivers have said Shift 2 is closer to the real thing than Forza or GT. Yet most people hate that game.
What you think you know, is not what is necessarily the case.
 
Before going deeper into your post I'd like to say: NEVER judge physics on comparisons with (youtube) video's.

For instance: the braking distance between a qualifying run and racetrim can be huge. Also take into account that irl, drivers have to take car of the brakes and can't slam them lap after lap in endurance series.

Point two: on the AC forum there is a pretty long thread saying that the Z4 is 'too twitchy and too hard to drive, especially under braking'. As you can see, opinions will always vary enormously between simracers. I think there is no ultimate truth regarding 'what is most real', but rather there is a personal feeling about how close to your expectation of reality a simulation is.
 
Not another one of those "this Sim is wrong as i drive other sims with no grip" threads!

Unless you have real life experience of driving that Z4 GT3 then you cannot say this game is 'wrong' no more than you can say all the others are 'right'.

A few real life pro racing drivers have said Shift 2 is closer to the real thing than Forza or GT. Yet most people hate that game.
What you think you know, is not what is necessarily the case.
As I said I have done at least some racing in Karts, which are the starting point for every race driver and there you learn the basic driving techniques, which I can't apply in AC to be fast.

I have not said there is too much grip. There is just an awful lot of understeer, which is a diffrence and I don't argue based on other sims, but on explenations by race drivers and my experiences I did in karts as well as in driving road cars in a track environment.
Just recently I drove a BMW 120d with 180bhp and you can spin the wheels in it much more easily than in the BMW road cars in AC.
So I only said, that I can go from a Kart (real life) into rF2 and feel at home and the other way around. I can't do that with AC. So that is my exact problem. For me my real world experiences don't allign with AC...

Therefore I wanted to start an objective and neutral discussion not something like: "I drive sims with no grip etc..."
 
But as soon as I drive it, it feels just so wrong to me. Just one example: I tested the BMW Z4 GT3 at Monza. I know the track very well and usually drive GT cars, so a perfect combination for me.
Despite all the massive understeer you get everywhere in AC even with setup tweaks, I wanted to point out something you can judge on a much more objective level. So I will talk about the braking distance.

Every racer knows how hard the first braking zone in Monza is. You have a low downforce car and arrive at 260+ kph and have to break down to 60-80kph. So if you look at a lot of GT3 onboards on youtube even with cars, that do have ABS and are a bit restricted due to BOP. They all break before the 200meter board.
That said, I can brake at the 300meter (270kph) board and have the car at a total stand still at 150meters. If I brake for the corner I can brake at or after the 150 meter board.
So we already have a 25% shorter braking zone compared to a real life car with equal or less power and ABS, which I didn't use.

Are you talking about real live cars or sim/games cars? If the real Z4 GT3 brakes like you are saying then i think its a good question that should be debated by people who drove the real Z4 GT3 @ Monza ... or you can debate the braking based on what you see in youtube. Everything else you are talking about (like massive oversteer) its just a opinion from a simracer based on sim/gaming experience ... there are a lot of these all over the net and its just a personal taste from someone like myself that never drove the AC cars in real life and can only imagine how they should behave.

Is my opinion qualified?!:
A lot of simracers don't have a lot of reallife experience and I didn't race a GT3 car in my life

When i started reading your post i got the idea that you had real life GT driving experience but if you only drove karts then i dont think you are qualified to judge Z4 GT3 physics. But of course you can express your opinion like we all can. ;)
 
@Frederic Schornstein ..I think you carry a lot of credibility and I know of another individual within our camp who has drive real gt cars. He too says ac is lacking realism. However, I think because he graphics are so nice and the cars are very drivable...forgiving and so on, people will look beyond the faults of ac and just welcome it. For me, rfactor 2 has the best physics and due to the tyre model, it is by far the best option for endurance races and serious competitions at the moment - unless ac develops a similar model. If it can do that, perhaps people will be forced to drive the car properly and with care. That wouldn't cure all the issues you've mentioned but might make things closer. I enjoy both games for different reasons at the moment but I will keep being patient with ac until i see how it performs in races, multiplayer , career etc. what saddens me is that I've always wanted to learn proper sims so I can get closer to reality...living the dream. However, it seems there are a lack of people who want the same as we've seen with dwindling rfactor 2 racing club event turnouts. Because of its graphics and pick up and play appeal, I think in ac we wil see much fuller grids.

Edit: I haven't driven real life gt cars. However, the braking is massively different to anything ...
 
I had the same feeling before tweeking the wheel's FFB. I've been playing mainly with the formula abarth in AC. I also drive karts, already drove an f3000 and it's the first time in a sim that i feel i'm driving it again. And feel the opposite from you, it's the first time i can actually turn a wheel like real cars, with real roads. I never played rfactor, only GSC, which has a very realistic driving too, i must say.
 
Are you talking about real live cars or sim/games cars? If the real Z4 GT3 brakes like you are saying then i think its a good question that should be debated by people who drove the real Z4 GT3 @ Monza ... or you can debate the braking based on what you see in youtube. Everything else you are talking about (like massive oversteer) its just a opinion from a simracer based on sim/gaming experience ... there are a lot of these all over the net and its just a personal taste from someone like myself that never drove the AC cars in real life and can only imagine how they should behave.



When i started reading your post i got the idea that you had real life GT driving experience but if you only drove karts then i dont think you are qualified to judge Z4 GT3 physics. But of course you can express your opinion like we all can. ;)
I know I have not the experience, but the weird thing is: When I drive a kart or a GT car in rFactor2 or watch pro drivers driving a GT car the technique and driving style is very similar, but when I drive AC I can apply this technique, but it is slow.

So my aim is really to find out in an objective way leaving all my preferences aside: are the physics correct or not?
I want to drive the most realistic simulation. If AC physics are more realistic than rF2, then I have to adapt to it. So taht is the reason why I wanted to start an objective discussion. Maybe we have here some people who have the experience to tell us, which is more realistic.

If they say AC is more realistic then I will focus on that. As stated in the first post I am an open minded guy just searching for the best physics to improve my driving as far as possible :)
 
are the physics correct or not?

That is the question many of us liked to be answered :) only the people who drive the cars in AC can answer that and even if they say here they have that experience we never know for sure. I think Aris did drive most of the AC cars in real life and he says they are trying to make them as real as possible in AC. You can believe him or not ... its your choice. I choosed to believe because the road cars in AC feel more real then on other sims i played and they gave the most real driving experience until now. But its just a opinion from a simracer that only drove cars like Ford Fiestas, Opel Corsas, Peugeot 206 and others alike in real life ... i also drove karts 2 times :)

Your questions are also mine and you sound sincere in your questions ... i hope you find your answers :)
 
Well we heard from real racing drivers who drive the cars in real life that they like it and think it is "realistic"... I remember quotes from drivers about the 599XX, 458 GT2 and the Z4 GT3 where they said things that you experience in AC are comparable to real life (braking, oversteer, understeer etc.)... One quote was specific about the behaviour in abs braking on the Z4 GT3 by the way (should be on Aris Twitter I think). I also remember they had had a couple drivers from a team over and they drove "their" car on the sim and would be close to their real life lap times (within a couple laps) with the "same" braking points etc...

So does this make perfect physics? Of course not but if you want to answer your question you probably have to listen to the guys with the actual data and driving the cars in real life... I will never be able to drive a GT car let alone on the limit so I can't say anything about it. I can only think about what is right or wrong or if it handles like I would expect it to and to be honest when it comes to that AC is my clear favourite right now...

Since we have a lot street cars many people also own these and from what I read (official forum for example) most think it is really good so far...

But it all comes down to personal taste, if you like rf2 then just drive that... I for example never come to grips with rf1 I rather played Simbin titles, iracing etc...
 
Every racer knows how hard the first braking zone in Monza is. You have a low downforce car and arrive at 260+ kph and have to break down to 60-80kph. So if you look at a lot of GT3 onboards on youtube even with cars, that do have ABS and are a bit restricted due to BOP. They all break before the 200meter board.
That said, I can brake at the 300meter (270kph) board and have the car at a total stand still at 150meters. If I brake for the corner I can brake at or after the 150 meter board.
Not true, GT3 cars are definitely able to break after the 200m mark.
Maybe the incurable understeer you mention, comes from breaking to hard and late before a corner.
 
Not true, GT3 cars are definitely able to break after the 200m mark.
Maybe the incurable understeer you mention, comes from breaking to hard and late before a corner.
I rewatched it 5 times, but he is clearly breaking 5 meters behind the 200 meter board. In AC with no downforce I can break around 40 meters later and no the understeer is not a reason of late breaking. I am experienced enough to know, that you should break in a straight line ;)
 
Take into account that in real life you are racing a 200,000 euro car that gets damaged when you crash it :) Not to mention you can get seriously hurt.

Sim racers will always be a lot faster in equal conditions, simply because we are sitting behind a monitor faking that we are real life racers, without the dangerous and expensive conditions.
 
I rewatched it 5 times, but he is clearly breaking 5 meters behind the 200 meter board. In AC with no downforce I can break around 40 meters later and no the understeer is not a reason of late breaking. I am experienced enough to know, that you should break in a straight line ;)
More like 180m when he steps on the braking pedal (watching with a video player frame by frame). So it isn't out of the realm of possibility to catch the first chicane at 150m with a GT3 car (which might not the fastest way to drive at Monza), with a perfect rubbered track in mind.
And you can brake while steering. It is just a matter of brake force, weight transfer and steering angle which determines the friction circle leading to understeer when one component is wrong.
I'm not judging you driving style, just stating that those remarks you've made in the first post are not absolute measurements to judge physics on a sim.
 
Take into account that in real life you are racing a 200,000 euro car that gets damaged when you crash it :) Not to mention you can get seriously hurt.

Sim racers will always be a lot faster in equal conditions, simply because we are sitting behind a monitor faking that we are real life racers, without the dangerous and expensive conditions.

What about those arrogant drivers who think the team's lucky to have them and push to 110% all the time anyway? Because I'm not naming names, but we all know of a few of those. :p
 
Long time since I've been here and I cant find out how to quote. But I just had to log in to reply. But what Bram and Tobias said above sums it up. Remember these are 200.00++++ cars. and that's just for the car. A whole team are working their bum off for you. If you break the car, its not just the price of the parts, in addition to that your team has to work more on something that could have been avoided. Hours go into fixing the car, money and energy.

Also remember that its totally different in real life. You don't sit around in a monitor and in a static chair and pick your ideal line around in comfort. These dudes are carrying G-forces all the time, their bodies shake all the time because of the bumps on the asphalt, only 1 little mistake in a fraction of a second when they have to make it count can lead to a disaster. I dont know if you've raced anything other than gokarts yet, that you wrote. But when you start to drive fast cars on big tracks, you'll experience some bumps that will make you bounce up and down internally/inside you. You can never push maximum in comfort like sitting behind a pc vs real life where a lot of things are at stake. And like another user above said, we're always racing on perfect asphalt conditions. The road conditions in real life will never be the same in a race. Its like photography, after you take a picture, that moment is history.

In my opinion, people need to stop to search for the 100% realistic/authentic cars. If you want to become a good driver, you should practice "Racing" in the sim. Offensive racing, defensive racing etc. It shouldn't be a big deal if the cars brake 40m different compared to real life. First try to race in a proper way, be consistent and fast and train your concentration. Those are one of the most important things in racing.
 
Long time since I've been here and I cant find out how to quote. But I just had to log in to reply. But what Bram and Tobias said above sums it up. Remember these are 200.00++++ cars. and that's just for the car. A whole team are working their bum off for you. If you break the car, its not just the price of the parts, in addition to that your team has to work more on something that could have been avoided. Hours go into fixing the car, money and energy.

Also remember that its totally different in real life. You don't sit around in a monitor and in a static chair and pick your ideal line around in comfort. These dudes are carrying G-forces all the time, their bodies shake all the time because of the bumps on the asphalt, only 1 little mistake in a fraction of a second when they have to make it count can lead to a disaster. I dont know if you've raced anything other than gokarts yet, that you wrote. But when you start to drive fast cars on big tracks, you'll experience some bumps that will make you bounce up and down internally/inside you. You can never push maximum in comfort like sitting behind a pc vs real life where a lot of things are at stake. And like another user above said, we're always racing on perfect asphalt conditions. The road conditions in real life will never be the same in a race. Its like photography, after you take a picture, that moment is history.

In my opinion, people need to stop to search for the 100% realistic/authentic cars. If you want to become a good driver, you should practice "Racing" in the sim. Offensive racing, defensive racing etc. It shouldn't be a big deal if the cars brake 40m different compared to real life. First try to race in a proper way, be consistent and fast and train your concentration. Those are one of the most important things in racing.
I get what you are saying in the last part, but that are all things I have done. I can honestly say, that on a well known car and track I can drive at least at 97% of the capability of the car for 2 hours straight and to be honest even in faster Go-Karts I find the mental stress of reallife racing lower than in simracing, because you have so much information coming to you from the car. So I search for the best physics, which are the closest to the real thing.

Braking zones are not a problem in real life and I think most of the pro racers will break within 20meters of the optimum breaking point unless they need to save the brakes. Otherwise you would see tons of outbraking moves in GT racing.
The biggest struggle coming from Simracing are fast corners, because you have to work against your natural instincts and take the lines you know are fast, but bring you awful close to the tracklimits, which if you are going round at 60mph in a go-kart, is pretty scary.
 
I drove a racing Rotax Max kart, and no theyre not scary. However taking a corner side by side with another maniac is :) One could say driving a real car is easier due to all information you have. But driving a car is totally different. You can brake way too late in a kart and you will only go off track with almost no chance of hitting anything(at least in most corners). In a car if you pass the brake zone the conseqences are much bigger.

Also in real car the brake pedal is much stiffer and harder to use 100%. In a sim rig you simply slam the brakes and youre instantly on the full braking.

Talking about the Z4 the car indeed is twitchy under hard braking. I would indeed be pretty spooked out if that happened in a real car worth a couple 100k € and no Escape button ;)
 

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