So I've been trying the new content for this update, and I have to say- Reiza absolutely knocked it out of the park with the Formula USAs and Road America, they feel absolutely mesmerising to drive with minimal setup tweaking. The quality of that content is easily some of Reiza's best work so far, and it excites me even further for the release of the G1s. However, while I am extremely satisfied with that section of this update, going to the Formula Retro G3 (particularly the Turbo model) I just can't help but feel as though there's something wrong with the way the car drives. It feels as though the aero/mechanical grip is way off- I do understand this was a transition period for F1 and the real cars wouldn't be refined yet but it just feels so...strange to me. The rear loves to kick out on downshifts, the front end loves to plow in on corner entry, and in general the car just feels disconnected from the road, in a way reminding me of how the Formula Classic G1 felt pre-1.3. As well as this the sound is strangely low on the Turbo model, making it hard to really tell when the power is kicking in. It just generally doesn't really feel satisfying to drive to me. Has anyone got any setup tips for this? And is the car "meant" to drive this way or is something not quite right with it? I get the feeling it might need a hotfix or two to feel a bit more natural personally. Also, I've never created a thread before so apologies if this is breaking any rules or anything: I just can't help but wonder what exactly is going on with this thing
I don't know how these cars should drive, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt, but I feel like either there is not enough rear grip on acceleration or the throttle response is a bit to agressive. I'm talking specifically about the McLaren, but the other two may be similar. What I did setup wise was opening up the diff and generally make the rear a bit softer to have more grip, and I'm also very careful on the throttle. It ususally takes me a few laps but eventually I'm able to drive it relavtively well. I've yet to do an AI race in it though, so maybe I'm just slow but stable.
For whatever reason, they have really aggressive pedal maps, brakes lock at the slightest touch and the throttle is also very sensitive. You need to be extra cautious with your pedal inputs or lower the sensitivity in the control settings. Also the suspension is really stiff, especially on the generic cars where you get heavy FFB knocking and bouncing on historical tracks no matter what values of spring rates/damper rates you use. I had to abandon legacy camera mode because it was just undriveable. But once you learn to be cautious with the throttle and adjust to the bouncing, the McLaren is quite fun. In fact, I'm starting to get convinced that the amount of visual car/suspension movement is independent of the actual suspension settings used. There just are some cars that bounce around no matter what you do to the setup and some cars that just have no suspension travel no matter how soft you make them. Sure, the car feels and drives differently, but the visual motion seems to remain unchanged.
Yeah, was the first thing I did after installing the update, I make sure to do it with every major update
I think it is a matter of taste? About the Formula-USA, I think the Gen3 is much better than the Gen2, It is much more fun to drive, The F-USA Gen2 has a bit of the GT cars feel, probably due to less downforce. I think the Retro-Gen3 cars are fun to drive I like the McLaren very much Perhaps the turbo needs some extra attention, and isn't ready jet The only adjustments I make for not-low-downforce Circuits, are Brake-Bias one or two clicks to the front 59/41 and for corners where the car tent to oversteer i lower the rear Anti-Roll bar setting or raise the front, and for corners that need more steer-in I lower the front Anti-Roll bar setting or raise the rear ARB value
I tested the Retro G3 as well. My opinion: The McLaren MP1 is difficult but with some practice it is possible to drive some laps. I did some laps at Santa Cruz (I know, it's not a F1 track but with that there was no pressure on my shoulder) But the Generic car: When driving through a corner, especially with some higher speed like Hawthorne Bend at Brands Hatch, it feels like a broken rear wing. Turn in is OK, but in mid turn, aero grip is gone suddenly and the car spins. A very strange behavour. I tried to fix this with softer rear springs and less front camber but there was no or less effect. There is an aero issue. Aero grip goes off without any reasen, I think. Such a car in real life is dangerous and a real bad design. The turbo-powered car: Is it a turbo or tractor? Terrible to drive. It's sad, but I think the cars are released a month too early!
Maybe the car has too much yaw and/or roll for the rear wing to stay effective? I learned that aero on modern GT3 is very sensitive to yaw especially, maybe the Retro Gen3 cars are also sensitive to this? In real life it was the first season on normal aerodynamics after a few years of gorund effect cars.
Maybe, but I don't think that one of the best aero engineers with plenty of ideas and knowledge have unlearnt how to build a car. And ground effect is more or less the same as a wing. Instead of a aero designed plate the whole car is aero designed to gain downforce. And because downforce is produced just at rear wing and rear diffusor instead of middle till back at the car as with ground effect, I would expect a more stable car with a touch of more understeering. And because downforce is produced more from a wing which is not or just less ride high sensitive it should be much more stable and less snappy than with ground effect. With ground effect, if air is coming from wrong side (driving over a bump which leads that more air or air from side is streaming into) downforce will be lost suddenly. Best seen here: Or:
The sentence with ground effect was not so important to what I was saying, don't focus too much on that. The crux of my post was about a potential sensitivity of the rear wing to yaw or roll.
@azaris The cars appear stiff due to the need to control the inertias. These cars are really built on the extremes. This leads to some jarring high speed behavior, but either that or wobbly weight transfers. From some of what I am reading here it sounds like some of you are trying to push the cars beyond what they are willing to give. The weight distribution of these cars is very far rearward. This leads to the cars have willingness to turn in, especially at low speeds, but it also provides better rear traction on throttle. Aero is limited but the torque is not. The key to the car is the throttle. You are guiding the car into a corner to find the moment to gently start applying throttle. You don't attack the corners in these cars. These cars are easily upset. Smoothness is important. Couple of things to suggest: -Reduce brake pressure. A lot. 70% maybe even 50%. On many occasions a light brush is all you need. This calms weight shifts down as well. -Don't trail brake too hard. Get most of your braking done in a straight line and find you exit gear about the time you turn in. -Rotate the car on entry with light trail braking and wheel inputs. If the car starts to rotate, apply some maintenance throttle. This shifts the weight rearward again and the car will settle. -Ideally, you want to be on throttle through the apex. When on throttle you are maximizing the aero and stabilizing the mechanical grip. If you aren't on throttle at apex, your weight balance and aero are farther forward which will be quite touchy. -For the naturally asperated cars, be in a gear higher than you think. If its what you think is a 2nd gear exit, try 3rd instead. The cars have plenty of torque and this will give you the comfort to find the rear slip angle when you apply the throttle. -On exit the car will tend to naturally understeer due to its weight distribution and traction. Use your throttle control to find the torque necessary to complete rotation. -For the turbo, the key is...well, the turbo. Try a lower gear than you would expect. You want to be near the point where the turbo kicks in as much as possible. If you're in the the wrong gear, the car will feel sluggish and then kick. You want to be near or on kick as much as possible, the car will be more predictable this way. -If the cars get squirrly when downshifting, try downshifting slower and get you downshifts done in a straight line. The cars don't like gear shifts after you a started the corner, especially down to 1st. I'm no Nicki Lauda. These cars are indeed difficult. Depending on the corner, you're not going to be on full throttle until 3rd gear. Think smooth cornering and smooth throttle. Carefully gauge what you are doing with the traction the car has to offer. A lot of the time you are going to be feeling like you are driving at 50% and that's well enough, especially since the edge of traction is at 55. let me know what you think if you honestly try some of these techniques.
I noticed the Gen3 DFY has a mind of its own, If I change some things in my setup like the wings, It automatically returns to the default value when go back racing from "Edit Setup", or perhaps when I return to "Edit Setup" from racing possible it keeps the values if saved my setup, but I just want to go in and out "Edit Setup" without the need to save all my experiments to prevent me from loosing my settings.
Guess I will chime in with my thoughts about these cars I tested all three Retro G3 models at Silverstone 75. Perhaps not the best track for testing mechanical grip, as there is not a single truly slow corner, but what the heck, it's fun! First, as always, I revised default spring rates and changed them to support the rearward weight when it was needed. Cannot recall from memory, but some had it correct, others did not... The McLaren MP4/1C had problems putting the power down. Brakes well, turns in well, but when it's time to get on the gas, it spins the rears very easily. I would guess there is either something wrong with either the diff settings or the dampers to control the weight transfer back to the rear end when applying throttle. Still, not impossible to drive, just very sensitive. The generic atmo car seemed like it had lots of weight on the rear, and that caused some inertial oversteer between the initial turn-in and the apex. It meant that it needed very very smooth steering wheel input for guiding it to the apex, and sometimes some throttle application to stabilize it. Found this difficult to manage, as it was less intuitive to do than just restraining myself on throttle application at throttle exit like you would on the McLaren. Would try by moving the longitudinal weight bias back forward and see what happens, before stiffening up the rear springs, which could bring other issues. Finally, the turbo car. Honestly, besides my normal complaint about aero drag being too low, thus causing top speeds to be insanely high (seriously, 320 km/h before the chicane on 80% boost?), the overall balance of the car seemed fine. Turbo lag was big, more than Classic Gen 1 cars, but that's exactly what I expected with less developed engines. Still, what is sorely missing is that, as the cockpit is exactly the same as on the generic atmo of the class, there is no turbo pressure indicator, which is a great way to quickly gauge what the engine is doing and when the turbo kick may come to tear down your rear door. These cars may need some setup work to get the best out of them, but frankly, I'm not seeing the issues others are having. Hard to drive? Yes. Undriveable? Not for me, that term to me is assigned to things that behave much more poorly than this. I have to work around the balance and issues, but I can still push on the available grip of the tyres at any moment. And that, to me, is driving.
Trail braking is totally out of the question for me in these cars the way the brakes are right now. Feels sort of like pre-v1.2, that update actually made trail braking feasible in most cars. I'm not sure why we've regressed back to the iRacing-style super-effective brakes on some cars, I thought this was a "feature" in early releases of AMS2 that got eliminated soon after v1.0. What kind of race cars have so much brake torque that the wheels can be locked at full speed no matter what? Wouldn't this mean the brake discs are way larger than they need to be for the grip levels available? That just sounds like extra weight. Were cars from this era famous for having super large brake discs? Also the McLaren after some hours of testing just seems overpowered compared to the Not-Arrows cars. It just has so much more rear downforce, with the DFV I have to run 2-5 wings at Silverstone to avoid constantly losing the rear, but the Macca I can run 5-5 and it's perfectly balanced. Also the AI seems very slow and inconsistent, I have to push it up to 110 skill and they still take off extremely slowly, allowing me to easily pass half the field before t1.
Every racecar that is reasonably well designed can give the driver enough braking power for him to get to the threshold of longitudinal grip at all speeds. Of course, it may be physically impossible to do it at high speeds if it produces lots of downforce, but once you scrub off some, totally possible. Also, not all drivers want the same hydraulic rates for the brake pedal. That's what you can change to your liking in a simple way by adjusting brake power % at the setup. (*) Still, more data must be included in the analysis to come to the conclusion of what's going on: is it the braking power too big? Or is it the tyre losing longitudinal grip too early, causing easy lockups? Checking braking distances may be a good place to start. (*) As an historical racing tidbit: Brembo once released an article of how each driver wanted their brakes to be, and how they used. There, they said that Ayrton Senna was the man who used the highest hydraulic pressure rates of any driver they worked with. He wanted to have all the braking power possible at all times, as he trusted on his skills to control it with sensitive pedal application.
Guys I had the same thing with many cars in the formula class. I found the magic setup change for me. I only changed the engine braking to 10. To it for a spin and set the world record in timetrail
In the releases after 1.3 there has been a pretty systematic move to reduce rear tire grip, which causes them to lock up a lot under braking in a lot of cars. Seems like the tire changes maybe necessitated a change in how the brakes work which hasn't gotten applied yet. Across the board it's way too easy for trail braking to cause spin outs as opposed to snow-plowing.
