Physics right or wrong?

[Frederic Schornstein]

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.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

Frederic don't know if I am qualified in your eyes but I will share my opinion even if I am running in danger to get burned here lol. I've read all the comments in the morning and it's quite shocking really.

However, I think AC is pretty good. Especially the FFB feels really good most of the time. Sometimes I think it's a bit "slugish - unresponsive" which is basically is awesome for the street cars but not for the race cars IMO but the "feel" of the tires/car is very good.
As far as the physics goes I for the most part share your opinion. You get away often with bad moves quite easy.
I've done it on purpose to see what happens under some circumstances and for the most part you'll not get punished. To sum it up I think AC promotes the positive aspects of racing very good but lacks a bit of promoting the negative sides of racing which at the end is also part of racing if you like it or not but that also is one of the reasons why it is that popular I think. (if the negatives are not there nobody thinks of them either so it's not missing for the most people.)

But the biggest thing for me which leaves AC still behind my favorite is that I miss the "walk the line" feeling in AC whilst being on the limit. It's just not dynamic enough in comparison and I am not talking about the environment but the car physics.

At the end it's top sim with a lot room for improvement. But the GFX are pretty darn good man.

Good Morning folks.

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

Here is a video. It is by far not the worst. Especially at the start of the lap you hear the understeer starting (tyres criying) and most of the time he powers through the understeer, which you could maybe do in a real car as well, but after some corners your tyre temps would be sky high.

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

Here is a video. It is by far not the worst. Especially at the start of the lap you hear the understeer starting (tyres criying) and most of the time he powers through the understeer, which you could maybe do in a real car as well, but after some corners your tyre temps would be sky high.

- Understeer is a part of physics too.
- it was lap 1 with fresh tyres: if he could do this for 20 laps without increasing: then i agree: it would be wrong.

PS: don't compare a 80kg go-kart with a 900kg racecar. I did that in real life and wrecked a 300hp race car. Former winning car of the 24h at zolder. I was a talented out door kart racer and had the chance to do a trackday with this car. It didn't end up well.

So if you want realism: if you crash a car in any sim. Sell your pc and sim-rig. ==> game over!!!

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

- Understeer is a part of physics too.
- it was lap 1 with fresh tyres: if he could do this for 20 laps without increasing: then i agree: it would be wrong.

PS: don't compare a 80kg go-kart with a 900kg racecar. I did that in real life and wrecked a 300hp race car. Former winning car of the 24h at zolder. I was a talented out door kart racer and had the chance to do a trackday with this car. It didn't end up well.

So if you want realism: if you crash a car in any sim. Sell your pc and sim-rig. ==> game over!!!

Can you give us an inside how the car did behave?

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

Can you give us an inside how the car did behave?

This is the car i wrecked. It was 14 years ago. I was maybe to young (20) and wanted to proof myself. But i'm back into racing again.

The thing i missed in most sims (iracing-RF2) is the feeling of grip. Because after exitting the pit. There is already a great amount off grip. And after a few corners the car has enough grip to start pushing the car. And after 2 laps the grip off slicks are incredible. The car is really on rails. The reason i crashed was weight shift. A feeling you almost don't feel in a go-kart.

real vs sim:
in real life the feedback force on the wheel is 2x higher then my fanatec clubsport max force. And the break force i need too apply is +/- 80kg on the breaks. Making heel and toe very difficult. I don't do it in real life because i can feel the clutch release much more.
In sims there is allot of "fake" effects. In real you mostly only feel the weight shift of the car. You don't feel every bumb of the road. Those fake effects you feel in your ass/seat.

I started driving a racecar this year and i'm getting the feeling. At moment i drive a bmw E30 on the racetrack. The car has allot of understeer if you don't steer-in properly. So i could drive the car like in the pagani video and i wouldn't lose that much time. But i would have to buy new tires every time.

Realism settings for AC:
Turn off tire noise: slicks don't scream in every corner. Look at some youtube video's. If they do scream, you're in big trouble...
Turn off the fake FFB settings, road, kerb and slip (maybe a little kerb effect)
The first time i locked a (1) tire i didn't feel on the wheel. I felt a lack of deceleration.
Of course i use the fake ffb settings and tire noise to compensate the lack of seat feeling.

AC gives me the most real feel.

More info on real experiences vs AC

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

EDIT: Nothing offensive now

 

[Kristóf Kerekes]

Wrecking an E36 like 14 years ago? That sure wasn't a cheap trick to do. Nice write-up dude, thanks for it.

 

[Jorge Alves]

Of course i use the fake ffb settings and tire noise to compensate the lack of seat feeling.

What values do you recommend in fake ffb settings and tire noise to compensate the lack of seat feeling?

Thanks a lot for your input ... real race drivers reports are allways very welcome

 

[Marian Zelenka]

Was that in post #7034 of thread 3920?

No, that AC video with 458 GT2 on Monza in July. It provoked lots of grumbling.

 

[Xavier de Carvalho]

So after reading through this thread for the last hour or so, I've decided to jump on the bandwagon for a bit. This post is just a general post, it's not aimed at anyone in particular, so feel free to read and if you think any of this pertains to you, then feel free to enter into or contribute to a respectful discussion, not a debate.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But, when you are wrong you are wrong. Some people like to hook on to their opinions and close their minds to the simple facts. If there is hard evidence which disproves your opinion, you need to accept it. Trying to go against fact with your own incorrect opinion is a little bit silly. Please do not enter into a discussion with a closed minded approach.

Just a brief background on myself and my sources. I myself only have karting experience in a racing environment, however i do take my road car to an enclosed environment on occasion to push it and learn the general car behavior etc. Being the son of a national Formula Vee and Formula Ford champion has it's perks too as I can use my father as a reference as to how well certain sims simulate certain aspects of a racing environment. Being friends with National Karting and Main Circuit champions as well as a factory WSK Driver and international Touring Car Champion has it's perks too. Some of you have unknowingly/knowingly raced against some of them in sim racing and I regularly ask them where the various sims lead me astray in terms of how they simulate certain aspects of a racing environment. I don't want to annoy them by dragging them into this discussion so I will only use them as a reference, unless they decide they would like to include themselves in this discussion. Which I welcome them to do.

Right...

So if you're seeking realism from a sim then it's going to be incredibly difficult to find one which would live up to what you're looking for. The reason for this is simple, most of us only race with a wheel, unrealistic shifter (either H-Box which can't simulate gear grinding etc, Paddle shifters, or Sequential shifters), and pedals (in most cases only the entry level wheels and pedals, so no load cell or hydraulic brakes etc). Logitech, Fanatec, ECCI, whatever. These wheels only send limited feedback to us, some of the feedback you experience through your wheel is unrealistic. For instance, when you hit a kerb in most sims the wheel wants to rip you towards the infield. If this had to happen in real life we would have more farmers than racing drivers. Now it may happen in some circumstances, but certainly not all the time.

In sim racing, you don't feel the G-Forces or any of the familiar feelings that you would if you were driving a real car. So unless you're driving in a $100,000.00 simulator which simulates most of the familiar feelings you would experience in a real car, you're going to be disappointed in terms of realism. You simply can't get these feelings through a FFB wheel. Even the really expensive simulator won't fully emulate the feelings from a real car, there is nothing like the real thing since the real thing is the only place where you would experience the real thing.

Various sims can only compensate for the lack of the real in car feeling with things like visual clues and small amounts of different feedback through the wheel. To SIMULATE realism, to trick your brain into thinking that you are doing the real thing. So the question shouldn't be are these physics realistic, it should be do these physics trick my brain well enough into thinking that I am really doing this. This should be the sense of "realism" you refer to, the immersion.

Now, ALL sims have aspects to them which bring about this sense of realism. Some of them give more of a sense of realism than others. So in other words, there are some sims which can trick your brain better than others. So now referring to my sources, they all say that certain sims simulate certain aspects better than others.

For instance during the VWEC which was hosted on the rF2 platform, Kelvin van der Linde who was driving in the GT4 class said that when you drop a wheel on the dirt, it feels very realistic. But in wet conditions he was slipping and sliding about and complained that there was no way that the car was that difficult to drive in those conditions. Now since kelvin is a national touring car champion, and has won the Scirocco Cup championship as well as tested in Porsche Super Cup, I find him to be a credible source. Kelvin prefers iRacing, since he feels like he gets the best simulated feeling from that sim. He says the Jetta in particular gives a very close feeling to what he got in the Scirocco in terms of car behavior. There are some cars which he finds caters to an unrealistic driving style. Like the Mazda MX-5. You can left foot brake, shove the car into a lower gear, blip the throttle a bit, and if it's done correctly the car seemlessly executes a perfect downshift without breaking anything. You just try that in a real car...

I also know of a driver who uses sims like Race07 (as well as iRacing) to get to know the circuits he races at overseas.

Luke Herring, multiple national and regional karting champion sometimes uses Kart Race Pro to help him understand how certain setup changes affect the overall feeling of the kart. He says that the sim properly simulates many aspects of driving a racing spec Kart. However, when he tried the Karts on GSC 2013, he immediately said he felt like he was driving the real thing. The setup changes didn't make as big a difference as in real life, but the overall feel he got was similar to what he get's in real life.

Julian Van Der Watt the WSK driver had similar views to Luke with regards to Kart Race Pro.

My father has tried racing games and sims all the way back from ToCA to Newer sims like rF2 and Assetto Corsa. In almost every sim, he can't get the right depth perception and feeling in a single seater and usually ends up farming more than racing. But when he tried rF2 he said he felt like the sim gave him familiar clues as to how the car was behaving and he had a better feel for the cars in the sim. He tried Assetto Corsa and found it spot on. It was the first time I've ever seen him genuinely push on a racing sim and have a smile on his face. It was also the first time where he was racing more than farming.

For myself, I found that I could get a familiar feel from the cars from nearly every modern sim I've raced on. However, for me nothing comes quite as close as the usual front runners iRacing, AC, rF2, and GSC. All of these sims have very similar characteristics and familiar feelings from real life. For me though, Assetto Corsa is the first sim which has tricked my brain well enough into thinking that I am doing the real thing. In my family, we own a Z4, the same model as in AC. So naturally when I saw it in AC, it was the car I really wanted to test out to see if it was able to give me similar feelings to the real car. The AC version comes very close to the real thing in terms of immersion. It behaves in a very similar way to the real thing for me and does almost everything I would expect it to do, speaking only from my very limited experience driving the car. I get the most natural feeling from Assetto Corsa, and I get a whole lot more familiar feelings and clues in Assetto Corsa which I don't get from other sims. rF2 is coming close lately, especially with the new BTCC car, GSC feels alive but it just doesn't give me the same feeling I get from AC. iRacing is also exceptionally close to AC, but some cars grip levels are a little questionable both when you are at low speed and when you are up to racing speed. I think some cars have too little grip. There are also cars on iRacing however which provide a similar experience to AC. I don't think AC has too much grip, I think they have it damn near perfect. When you drop a wheel on the dirt or when you run onto the astro turf you lose a lot of the traction you get on the racing line.

I think what AC has done right, is get the aspects which have worked in other sims, built on their own experience, and produced an exceptional and extremely well rounded simulated driving experience. For me, it's the sim which tricks the brain the best into thinking it's doing the real thing, by making things feel more natural. The cool thing is that many of the developers are now no longer releasing finished products, but they're releasing an ongoing WIP which means what you have now, has the potential to become even better and can grow into something which you would never have thought to be possible.

The point of this post is to show that the never ending quest for total realism is just that, never ending. This post also serves to point out that every sim has realistic aspects. All of them provide a sense of realism in some way, shape, or form. But some just do this better than others. Some can trick your brain better than others. I've tried to be as factually correct as possible based on what I've learned, what I've heard from my sources, and what I know from my own experiences. If something is incorrect, I do apologise and I do ask that you point me in the right direction so that I can learn from it and expand on my current knowledge.

 

[Miroslav Davidovic]

....snip.......loads of nonsense lol.......................snip
I do apologise and I do ask that you point me in the right direction so that I can learn from it and expand on my current knowledge.

Come to daddy



Just jokin

If my street car acted anything like how the cars act in iracing (or rf2 on a green track) I would be scared to death to leave my driveway and I damn sure wouldn't let my wife drive when it is raining.

Sorry Michael but I needs to be said once. Only very stubborn people can't get the idea after 2 years since the first rF2 release of a theoretical green, dirty, dusty track which is not often the case in RL, but possible and happens as seen @ the first COTA GP. The most part of racing in rF2 doesn't happen on this conditions which one would know if you have enough racing experience in rF2. In addition to that to get the pretty damn accurate tires and brakes in terms of temperatures to work is at least as much important in rF2 as the track rubber is, but that also seems to be a foreign language for the "experienced sim racer".

Most people would be surprised here how similar rF2 can feel at times to AC, just the vehicle dynamics range in rF2 is quite a lot wider and the conditions are changing constantly which makes it quite a lot more interesting for ME.

I've done quite a lot of back to back to back testing with the Z4's (GTE/GT3) in both games @ Silverstone and the results are hmmmmmm very interesting at least to say. The cars are not exactly the same IRL buuuut those differences can be also found in the sims when you simulate somewhat similar conditions, surprisingly or not .
There are still some differences but yeah....that would be here beyond the scope I assume.

Ahh , link.

http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2012/11/14059.html

 

[Bryan O'Connor]

What a post Xavier

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

EDIT: Nothing offensive now

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

I wouldn't know anything about rf2 being out for 2 years as it was only a few months ago that it would run good enough on my system to make a lap. If you think that rf2 is so good that you have to correct every person that has anything negative to say about it why did you make the OP? Is it really that big of a surprise to you and your buddy Andrew that people in the AC section would prefer AC?

If it wasn't for AC I would put up with the graphics that make my eyes bleed and look straight out of 2004 and physics that for every couple things they get right there is something that feels wrong. (IMO) I might even be a member of the league that ya'll organize and run.

I will stick with having laser scanned tracks, 2014 graphics, and physics that IMO are the closest to the real world cars they are simulating.

I dont like your attitude. I was always factual and just raised discussion points and I think we got some good information now in terms of real vs sim, so it was worth for me to raise this topic.
If you read somethings into my posts, that are not there, than just feel free to ignore them

 

[cerebus23]

No no all the actual people that have driven the actual cars and say ac feels right are lying or wrong, and only these armchair pros opinions on the matter are valid.

we need to all go supuku ourselves now and not live with our shame of disagreeing with these sages of the armchair car.

 

[Tr3voRR]

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.

I agree with what your saying, but if any real driver says Shift 2 is close to the reality :s than they were probably talking about their race car bed when they were kids !!

 

[Mapu]

Physics right or wrong?

I'll take the left. No I mean it, these topic are always the same; endless discussions about this and that until a single person comes up with the one and only valid post and what a surprise, this post always has the correct answer to this kind of discussion where everybody makes up their own opinion and presents it as fact.

Thank you Xavier de Carvalho!

 

[Gary Horneck]

I race an E30, setup very similar to the M3 in AC. The physics on that car are fairly close to what my car will do. The AC car gets a little hard to control once the rear has stepped out, but the control inputs on a real car in that situation cannot be replicated in a sim IMO. The butt is the real indicator of what you can get away with most of the time. Braking at the threshold is a little tough in AC, but again, this is a very fine control that is tough to replicate in a sim. I would say Kunos has come about as close as possible with the E30 model. Never driven any of the other cars at speed, but all the BMW's feel like a BMW to me, with all the great traits of their chassis there to exploit.

 

[Austin Ogonoski]

Xavier wins this thread.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

EDIT: Nothing offensive now