I have a few concerns with the GT1s, all rather minor stuff and not really bugs, more observations or inaccuracies so I thought it is best to just clump it all together and get it out so maybe some of it can be adjusted in the next patch. If you are not interested in those tiny details, better stop reading here. I also want to emphasize that this is not some sort of rant, I am very happy with the GT1 cars overall and they are very fun, unique and well made. Most of these are observations from my own research and having watched races, interviews and reports a few times (lockdown was pretty boring) and I will put some sources at the end on why I came to some of the conclusions but if there is anything specific is asked, I will try to find and add it. Firstly regarding the fuel consumption: From my testing the Porsche has by far the best fuel consumption, the Nissan and McLaren are somewhat on par and the Merc is the worst. I tested on a few tracks and at Le Mans specficially, because it is the only where there is a real reference from real life and I got almost exactly 12 laps for the Merc, about 12.7 for the McLaren, 13 for the Nissan and 13.8 for the Porsche. How the fuel consumption was exactly in reality is hard to tell because at Le Mans the Nissan, Porsche and McLaren did 13 laps in race pace with the Porsche probably saving the least, but they were likely all in a similar range. The only thing for certain is that the Merc was clearly the most fuel efficient, even in it's short time in the race being the only car doing 14 laps at a very high pace early on, which could not be matched by anyone even at night. Then there is the performance of the cars. They seem pretty well balanced overall at the moment and I like that they are boped to be able to race each other while still feeling very unique. But the Nissan seems way too fast in a straight line and way too weak on downforce in my opinion, in reality it was about on par with Merc but in AMS2 the Nissan can go over 335kmh at Le Mans pretty easily while the Merc can hit about 325kmh while the much less advanced McLaren easily outperforms it on downforce, so I think both for accuracy and better racing some adjustments there are warranted. Also the Porsche seems to be almost as fast as the Merc and about on par with McLaren in a straight line which is also a bit too quick for a car with only 550bhp. I understand all of this is also setup related but I put some work in it to get the most out of them and while there might be bit more possible, I don't think it is going to change the overall picture. So to sum this up, from my perception the Porsche should be a bit slower in a straight line, the McLaren a bit weaker on downforce, the Merc seems about right and the Nissan slower in a straight line and better on downforce. My third point is the general behavior of the cars. All of this is very subjective however and might be in part setup related so maybe other players can share their opinion, but I personally didn't find anything to work out setupwise: The Porsche was reported by drivers at the time to be extremely gentle and easy to drive, especially close to the limit which was also possibly a reason to add just ABS and no traction control for Le Mans where it was allowed to do so. In AMS2 I feel like it is very "punchy" on corner exit, which seems odd regarding it's lower power compared to the other 3 cars and what I mentioned before. The Merc just feels very odd to me ever since the 3rd spring was added, it felt really good before that but since then it does seem to be very understeery at lower speeds and overall somewhat similar in pace to the McLaren. I have to say I have no clue how to use that 3rd spring though, so that might be part of that problem. It also seems to be very susceptile to blowing the engine, which seems correct at first glance regarding Le Mans but they were absolutely bulletproof after that in the FIA GT series with only 1 DNF in 8 races among 2 cars because of a broken wheelnut. Another very minor detail with the on-board shifting lights on the Nissan and the McLaren: For the Nissan it has an overrev light that goes up at the same time as the shifting light, they should be seperated like they are on the Porsche. With the McLaren it seems to be very far away from the HUD shifting light, this one might be accurate however, it just feels to come up extremely early when driving. Also related to that: The Merc used a different wheel and shifting lights than it does in-game. The ones in game are used nowadays on the car for showruns. I know what it used back then went white-green-red because the former driver Klaus Ludwig mentioned it (possibly similar to the what the Toyota GT-One had on the display as they seem to use the same system) and that it was not on the wheel, I have not seen the actual shifting lights on on-boards though. And my last point is the AI on the Nissan, it is so much slower than all the other cars on most tracks (except for the obvious Hockenheim historic, Le Mans, etc. because of its top speed) that it is impossible with AI files to have a Nissan in the top 6 without going very low on all other cars race/qualifying skill while then being impossible to overtake for the AI because it is so fast and regulary holding up the whole field. Sources: Mercedes wheel (video) on-board (video) Speedtraps Porsche behaviour Fuel consumption (video, German) Fuel consumption 2 (video, German)
Interesting and fine details here - I would also comment that I think the Mclaren is sequential (stick) shifter in the game, but all footage I've seen of onboards shows it being H-pattern. I enjoy H-pattern a lot so if I'm right I'd be lovely to see this changed. The animations wouldn't have to change or anything, just the clutch/shifting behaviour.
From the start of the 1997 season the McLaren F1 GTR longtail had a sequential shifter as part of its upgrade package for the FIA GT inaugural season. Worth mentioning as well that the shifter worked in the “reverse” direction to what is considered standard today - drivers pushed the lever forward to upshift and pulled back to downshift. Check out the footage - brief as it is - at 8 minutes on this video, and you’ll see Thomas Bscher clicking the lever toward him to shift down. https://youtu.be/Fwj-QUPHSwA
The only thing I could add is that putting gameplay first, BOP first, above real life performance, I think is the correct move by Reiza. Like a good fighting game, all cars should have strengths and weaknesses that will allow it to fight for wins at tracks that fit it's strengths. Something that would be a mistake is to make the Merc be all-conquering like it was in real life. It should match perhaps what the FIA would have hoped the series looked like. So giving the Merc that higher fuel consumption to bring it down a peg is the right move. Likewise the speed of the Nissan - fast in a straight line, but lacks a bit of downforce. 100% true to life? Probably not? But if it makes for better gameplay, by all means it's the right call. That bit about cars being stuck behind them - well that's something that can be worked on. But gameplay first - as Reiza is doing.
Of course better gameplay has priority, but balance the cars around their real life strengths. That is exactly what I laid out in my post with the Nissan, it was better in downforce and slower in a straight line in real life than it is in AMS2, so why not implement it that way? It being very slow in the corners and having that much higher top speed than everything else does absolutely not make for better racing. Same with the Merc, maybe don't make it that much better on fuel than everyone else but having the car that had clearly the best fuel economy in real life to have clearly the worst fuel economy is not the correct way to balance it in my opinion. Just tune its strengths down a bit (which in part were its far superior tires which are not reflected in AMS2 anyway) and it is perfectly fine. Especially since on pure performance it seems to be pretty balanced at the moment, maybe even a bit too slow overall.
the top speed of the nissan renders the class more or less into a cup. lfm has spielberg74 with GT1 this week, (who knows why they thought that would be a good idea) the benz and McLaren are around 282-284, the nissan is on 297km/h. Thats broken in my eyes
Spielberg is a very high altitude track, so even if the Nissans topspeed was adjusted the Porsche and Nissan with their turbo engines have a pretty big advantage there because the Merc and McLaren lose about 7% of engine power. Issues like that are not really avoidable unfortunately.
625 m is very high altitude? The problem is the same on every fast track, like historic hockenheim/silverstone. Balancing is not good, and not only in this class. And sry to disagree, issues like this are avoidable as it is only software
This is kind of my problem though and why I feel like we have inconsistent logic when it comes to balancing in the game. We model altitude slowing NA vehicles down at altitude, we have logic like the Chevy Group C being slow because it was in real life, but then we have GT1 having oddities or inaccuracies, DPi being slower than LMDh when it wasn't or it having a 76L fuel tank when it had a max fill of 75L, LMP2 Gen 1 being slower than LMDh when it wasn't, or other cars slow downed/or sped up for balance while others are not. IMO if we are going to the trouble of modeling how altitude impacts performance I'd personally rather have the cars be as close to real life performance as possible and then have an in game BoP system that people could use for online leagues. Then we get accurate simulations while also allowing online lobbies to balance out the field for more diversity. I'd personally rather have cars at the real life performance
Brett if you look qualifying times through a seson of modern GTP vs DPi and LMP2 circa 2019 you´ll find their relative performance is not as less clear cut as you make out to be; they are in fact very evenly matched, with GTP generally at advantage on tracks with longer straights while DPi and LMP2 having an advantage in twistier courses. WRT to cars´ relative performance in historical classes, there is no BoP per se in any of them; rather what we do is "compress" the spread by playing up or down their relative strentghs and weaknesses so that slower cars have more of a fighting chance so instead of having the Corvette GTP be 7-8s off the pace of the fastest Group C cars, it´s only 1-2s; in other classes like GT1 the gap from fastest to slowest is smaller simply because the spread in the real series was tighter, but you still won´t be faster with a Mclaren GTR vs the Mercedes CLK. We do our homework folks but that doesn´t mean we don´t get things wrong; that comes with the territory in modelling so many cars over so many classes, many of which in a historical context from which there is a very limited pool of results to pick from and even more limited performance data that can be hard to find; the forum and AMS2 can only benefit if you focus on raising our attention to what the persisting errors might be with facts, without drawing conclusions as to why they are and indeed some of the issues related in this thread - Merc GT1 having relatively poor fuel consumption, Nissan GT1 being relatively too fast on straights, DPi allowing for 1L more than the actual fuel tank limit are just errors, and now that we are aware they can and will be corrected
Hey Renato you're right I shouldn't have spoken in such generalities. There is more complexity to pace differences between DPi/LMP2 Gen1 and modern GTP, but I think there is a much larger performance difference in DPi/LMP2 Gen 1 in game to GTP than we saw IRL. Looking at race pace, fastest lap, and qualifying data from 2019 DPi is still quite a bit faster than LMDh at most tracks. The only occurrence that I can say there is a shift towards GTP is Daytona qualifying, race race/fastest lap still was slower than DPi, Leguna Seca where the race is now run in the cooler spring than later summer/early fall and probably a bigger factor was with Leguna being repaved in 2023. The other example and another track repaved 2023 is Road America. Otherwise if you look at Road Atlanta, Watkins Glen, Mosport, or Sebring you could see DPi is slightly to much faster than what we have in game and faster than GTP. I'm not the fastest driver by any means and I'm very aware of that, but I think it's clear in game the LMDh cars we have are objectively faster around any track than DPi and LMP2 Gen 1, but IRL I think the data shows DPi was faster and LMP2 Gen 1 is very close if not faster than LMDh, but LMDh would have an advantage of longer fuel runs than both DPi and LMP2 because of the hybrid systems and larger fuel tanks.
I can't say I agree with this part, they are usually very close everywhere I drove them and there are quite a few tracks where the McLaren is quicker than the Merc at the moment. That is not just from driving them myself too but also watching others in these cars. So I hope this can be re-evaluated, like I said in my orginal post the McLaren in my opinion seems to be relatively too strong in downforce even when "compressed" as you laid it out before, which is where it had the biggest disadvantage compared to the Merc and Porsche in real life, like in the 1998 races at Hungaroring where it qualified 6 seconds off of the Merc, Suzuka where it was 7 seconds off the Merc or even early on in Silverstone where it was 5 seconds off the Porsche pole time while it was in relation much closer at Hockenheim or the Red Bull Ring for example. But anyway, I am aware that not everything can be perfectly accurate or satisfactory for everyone
