Formula-Retro drivability

So was the fan belt/chain/gear driven directly from the engine revs? Or was there something variable? Do we know?

 

Very much enjoying the Retros after the last update. Bt44 is feeling better than ever to me. The Fanny Racer is a bloody handful. It's all or nothing with the grip. It took me a few close encounters with the wall to start to get a feel.

Some of my pet 44 driving habits, such as trying to exploit lift-off oversteer to enter tighter corners faster, translate very poorly to the 46. Off throttle makes for a slippery fanny to be sure.

Also looking forward to human v human Gen2 races. I'm wondering if the Lotus' all round good behaviour will win out over the binary nature of the 46's grip.

Edit... Yeah. A big thanks to MaserV6 for hosting some great Nords races. Well done Sir.

 

Connected through the box somehow, and revs dependant. The V6 Maserati engine uses a Quill shaft with spline to drive ancillaries so is engine speed dependant as apposed to gearbox output shaft BT? So maybe a quill shaft, as its certainly engine revs that make the difference. More research req.

 

Certain amount of slip acceptable though and yes wet can be fun. without too many puddles and spray....lol

More to follow for the human only back to back Lotus vs Bt 46b tbc.
Thanks for Joining race, it was sure a blast and nice way to get to know the quirks.
Grats on fastest lap by 3-4 secs?

 

Brabham (Gordon M) designed the gearbox and Alfa Romeo made the casings and used hewland gears.

The fan used complex series of clutches running from the engine to a large single fan at the back of the car. This resulted in the faster the engine ran, the stronger the suction effect.
The clutches being used to prevent the fan from over-driving the gearbox on gear changes. The material the fans were made from proved to be problematic. While testing at Brands Hatch, the original plastic blades disintegrated, followed quickly by glass-fibre versions. Magnesium versions were then cast, but these were only available in the week preceding the Swedish GP at Anderstorp.
Niki Lauda, realized he had to alter his driving style primarily while cornering. He found that if he accelerated around corners, the car would "stick" to the road as if it were on rails. This is what we see in AMS 2 in this different approach to corners. High revs in/mid/out works a treat but is counterintuitive. and fun to learn.

 

Any translators out there.
Sounds like a good description.
EDIT the altimeter in AMS 2 is also accurate reproduction rather than a simpler red to green, a gauge that may of appeared later

 

Slowly getting the hang of the Retros after the update and find especially the Lotus and the McLaren very pleasant to drive. The corner exit/back on throttle used to be a wobbly affair before but it seems it's been sorted.

The diff settings make sense to me now. I'm running a rather light load and can manage a fairly respectable 1:26:something at Imola '72 which means I can race the AI at 100% somewhat competitively.

Good times!

 

It does say (literal translation): "linked to the engine through a small gearbox end shaft"

 

After the Racin USA update, a lot of cars feel fantastic to drive, and many have been fixed.

But all the retro F1 stuff feels awful. Anything low downforce is impossible to drive. The front tires do nothing. Feels like trying to turn with a rudder. Formula Vintage is awful. Vintage Gen 2 is awful. The car just feels like a boat. Formula Retros and Retro G2's are similarly awful. Absolutely no front grip. None of these cars can get their tires up to temperature now either. So if you could get the tires warm maybe they'd drive better, but it's impossible to do it, so as far as Im concerned they're broken again.

 

I was "complaining" about this and feel like many people dont car/dont want to care/dont notice or simply stop driving/playing. In addition I still feel there is some kind of weird diff behaviour.

One thing has stengthen this recently, I was trying out the Ginetta GT4 CUP and noticed a similar behaviour (actually there are others doing this to an extent, like GT1 Mclarent etc.), high speed coasting provided an annoying understeer no matter the setup, tyre temp or whatever. Extremely similar to what happens in Retro-F.

Now in GInetta, I was able to COMPLETELY eliminate this by turning down viscous lock to 0Nm, then tune it with preload and angles. This was the only change and it has transformed the car completely, so I find it rediculous that some people can still say its a general setup issue, not LSD.

BUT Reiza has now removed to viscous lock option and it seems like it was done without actually removing the locking mechanic. So Ginetta now drives like **** again. I have a feeling that there is a similar "bug" in the background for Retro-F and Vintage. We know for a fact that these cars arent supposed to drive like that (esp. with the evidence from MaserV6's friend). Its even more strange considering the cars feel good in AMS1 and other sims, its only fair to want them as good in a sequel, no?

 

I definitely preferred having viscous lock turned off on most of the cars that used it I found. Funny that you say they removed the setting but may have left it "on". That would explain some of it.

But these cars truly drive awful now. It seems like globally theres less front tire grip.

And to be clear, some of the cars now drive WAY better than they used to. It's not all bad. But the Retro and vintage F1 cars really took a major hit. Formula V12 and all the 80s-90s F1 cars I've tried feel honestly better than they've ever felt in this game.

 

Interesting, your thoughts.
Cant comment as yet because of mainly gte/time etc
no laps in these old favorites classes, apart from brief test of bt44 in storm, hardly a test.
Does not sound promising and would be a shame. Does still seem to be opposing thoughts on some other class''s aspects, but thats not new either.
Retro 1/s did go through a bad/grip tyre change a short while back but that was rectified and grip was restored. hope for the same if it and + /or other. has indeed it has happened again

 

The Formula V12s, Formula V10 Gen 1, Formula Classic Gen 3, and the Formula Ultimate all feel much better and more natural with the latest update (USA Pack Part 1).

I agree with Shadak and IV, though, that the Retros and Vintages are now broken. The front tires stay under temperature and it's very difficult to get the front end working well within normal setup parameters. Hopefully Reiza can make some class-specific fixes, because the global changes definitely took these cars out of a reasonably operating range. (And I say that as someone who, along with IV, recently finished a league season in the Retro Gen 1s and used to really enjoy those.)

 

That's bull**** and the vintage-cars are better or the same. Just revert the setup, increase the steering-lock, maybe run a bit lower break bias and don't expect GTE-handling. They are not that fast through corners and brake performance isn't great either.

 

You act like I dont know how to drive these. I'm near the top of the leaderboards in the Vintage Gen 2 classes and Retro classes in tracks I like. I am not saying Im super fast, but waht I am saying is I knew how to drive them to a certain level before. They no longer work. There is no front grip. The tires do not come up to temperature. Period. IF you do burnouts the rears will come up, but they'll cool back down the minute you stop doing burnouts everywhere.

What are you talking about expecting GTE handling? The historic f1 cars are all I drive in this game. They're all I've ever driven in this game. They are the reason I bought this game and the only reason I still play it. I am not into sports car racing. I am into historic F1 racing. Maybe the Lotus 49, 72, and 79 are worse than the others, I dont know. But there is absolutely no way these cars work in any way shape or form now.

With the lotus 49, I'm second place at Imola 72 and the Nordschleife on the TT boards. You're P8 on the Nords boards. So who are you to say I dont know how to drive it? They drove pretty well before. They dont now. Period.

Looks like a pretty well-balanced car to me. The car doesnt just plow straight ahead when you turn it.


You're entitled to your opinion. But there's a handful of us who enjoy driving these, and if this is how they handle now Im never touching them again. I'll race them in Assetto Corsa and rF2 and Project Cars 2, because they feel better in all of those games than they do right now in AMS2 since the update. Prior to the update I dont think anything could top AMS2's implementation of 60s-70s F1. It was top of the heap by miles. Now it's not.

 

Ok then please explain why turning viscous lock to 0Nm suddenly made Ginetta awesome on high speed coast turning and got rid of the speed threshold stupidity, without doing ANY other changes? Magic? I dont think so.

 

I saw those ridiculous driving techniques used in the Time Trials and decided to stay away from them, since they have nothing to do with real life racing. Looks like you miss your exploit and I hope you don't get it back

Thanks to the nice onboard, but I never saw this kind of driving in the Time Trials. It was more like Scandinavian Flick through corners like in Rally rather than F1. And the colder tyre temps are not since this update but months ago. I was just referring to this update and I can't feel any difference since I'm driving like in real onboards, so slow in, fast out. No drifting BS.

 

What exploit are you talking about? I dont know of any "exploits"? is this a setup thing?

This is me driving the 72 around Imola. This was a world record at one point, but obviously lots of changes since then, but I had a blast driving it.

You do definitely have to brake stomp the weight balance forward on the tighter corners to get it to rotate, but that wasnt the case with the geared diff. That's just how the car has to be driven right now. If you think that's an exploit... I mean... I dont know what to say to that. But you didnt have to do that with the geared diffs and you cant do it on high speed corners, only low-medium speed corners, which feels about right to me.

And if youre talking about the F-Vintage, there literally isnt any other way to drive them but sliding them they just dont have the grip to do anything else, you have to get the weight on the front to rotate and then the weight to the rear to get the power down. Maybe youre the one expecting them to drive "like a GTE car", whatever that means? I mean technically GTE cars are lower downforce, higher power variants of GT3 cars, so they're not that far removed from old school low downforce, high power formula cars beyond weight. But I guess you're too busy trying to denegrate people who have a difference of a opinion to really bother to analyze what you're saying.

Look if you like cars that have front tires that cant get up to temperature and have no directional integrity, that's on you. But if you thought the cars handled okay a week ago, then I dont see how you could think they handle okay now.

I could get the tires up to temperature before. I cannot now. I dont think there's anything I can even do on my side to affect how the tires come up to temperature. I literally did 10 laps at interlagos on the Lotus 72 and the front left got to the mid 50s in temperatures. When you started a race, it would just slowly drop down to mid 50s again. It feels like you're racing with car surfing on a broken front wing.

I raised the front downforce to max, dropped rear DF all the way down, (after starting with default setups of course), and dropped tire pressures all the way down to minimum, and spent 2-3 laps just cruising through every corner in 2nd/3rd gear with maximum lock with the front tires just plowing over and sliding trying to get to them to warm up. Didnt work. After that i tried just "driving" them, and it was frankly a miserable experience and I only kept going just to see if I could get them to warm up at all.

I mean it was always tough to get them to temp, but 10 laps seems excessive? Do you have any advice about how to get the temps to at least the green range reliably? Some setup tweak I havent played with perhaps?