1.6 - Issues with grip

My issues that still persist with 1.6 are:
- Rear tyres seem to break away too quickly when applying throttle, very little throttle application will make the rear rotate very aggresevely, feels to me like there needs to be a bit more resistance on the tyre to control rotation. Specially pronounced the more mass the car has, f1 cars don't exibit this problem IMO, but it's present in cars with a higher center of gravity and less downforce.
A good example is the catherham supersport at brands hatch, in the harpin a bit of throttle application will initiate rotation on the car, but then very quickly the car will transition into understeer, I admit is a bit hard to explain but it's what I feel.
- Kerbs seem to affect the tyre in a very akward way, I remember in pcars2 people complained about kerbs pulling and I feel the same way in ams2, check how the front tyre is vibrating over the kerb in this clip without the car moving at all. There seems to be some weird interaction between kerbs and tyres:

- Generally I feel like spin recovery is too dificult at a certain point, this one I'll admit I'm not so sure about but atm it feels like recovering from a spin is a bit too hard, there seems to be an angle in which the car will not recover from, but again, this one could just be me still used to the 1.5 tyres to an extent.

 

The first issue is possibly because AMS2 models the throttle correctly, unlike most sims, which are artifically linear. Real throttles ramp up quickly early on, and I'm guessing (perhaps) you're probably not used to it, especially if you switch between sims or have extensive muscle memory. This video explains the issue with almost all other sims:

AMS 1, AMS 2, BeamNG, rF2 (and I'm guessing LMU) have the correct modelling

If you want a more in depth analysis, see these:

 

I'm well aware of the throttle map, and if throttle was the issue, I would experience the same problems in rf2, ams1 and LMU, and I don't, thats why I picked a car and track that can be found in both ams1 and ams2.

 

100% agree, I noticed this as well with the Classic German DTM cars and created a thread about this. The rears span and quickly go into an unrecoverable lazy spin.

Group A Classic DTM tire model issue?

 

After the 1.6 version update, I played for over 200 hours and there were significant improvements in both physics and FFB, but I still found some issues.

Firstly, the grip of the front tyres is relatively strong, while the grip of the rear wheels is relatively weak, which results in many slide of rear. The front tyres seem to have unlimited grip, which is particularly on GT3 cars.
In addition, when the car go on grass, there seems to be a force pulling the car outward, causing the steering wheel to become too sluggish, which is not the same in other racing simulators I play. And when you return to the track from the grass, the car will suddenly accelerate to SPIN, even without any input of pedal or wheel, seems the rear of the car is subjected to an additional force.
I hope you can test these situations, identify issues, and make improvements to improve the physics of the game.

This is the original post of the topic

 

thx, I don't know why the original topic is missing. I've saved the link but can't open it now.
Really wish this issue can be solved soon!

YES, KERBS and one side off road affect the tyre too much. And when the grip is close to limit, seems it will take a long time to restore. In addition, due to the weak grip of the rear tyres, the car often experiences prolonged periods of slight sliding

I feel that the main reason is not about the throttle map, but the imbalance in grip between the rear and front wheels, which often causes the vehicle to be in a state of front gripping and rear slight sliding

yes, I compared the same GT3 car in LMU/ACC/AMS2, on a same track.
I found that the state of the vehicle entering some corners is very different under the same operation.

 

Makes sense. Although I never played it, I do remember hearing about similar issues in the Project Cars games back in the days, so maybe it's an engine thing that needs some sorting out.

 

PCars2 never suffered through this uncatchable weird lazy slide and snap slide issues. The PCars2 tires were pretty elastic and progressive in their break away, meaning if a car started to slide you had ample time to make corrections and catch them. I think the majority of people that had issues catching slide with PCars2 were ones that were too dependant on FFB effects to tell them what was happening. Since the default FFB effects in PCars2 was kinda numb they never could tell what the car was doing and would lose control easily.

I think what's happening here with AMS2 V1.6 is, something is off with the grip on the tires as the longitudinal weigh aggressively shifts in the car. The tires then easily lose traction because of this and you get undersireable handling characteristics on the chassis as that happens. The tires in AMS2 V1.6 do not seem to have a progressive break away characteristic. Which in turn gives you almost little to no window to catch them when they start to slide.
You can also see that the updated tires in V1.6 have little to no grip on the grass. It's a bit too exaggerated. Personally, I fear the updated AMS2 V1.6 might have taken a turn for the worse with the new tire updates.

If you're looking for tire model perfection, ACC GT4 cars and AC Evo are the gold standards, IMHO. When I drive the GR86 in AC Evo early access, it behaves exactly like a GR86 does on a race track. It felt so natural to drive.

 

Who says they’re the gold standard? Everything is subjective

 

This, I couldn't disagree more, 1.6 is so far ahead of 1.5 it doesn't feel like the same sim. For me the issues right now, reside exclusively with a small selection of cars, mainly cars with stiffer tyres and heavier weight, everything else feels right to me.

 

Sure. As far as who? Someone who's driven an 86 on the race track IRL with multiple different tire compounds? The only opinion and experience that matters to me is my own lived experience whether others agree with me or not. Others are entitled to their own even if based on their perception of reality.

Far ahead in what way? Like what about the tire behaviour feels realistic to you?

 

Tyres are more connected to the road in every stage of the corner, entry middle and exit, cars generally feel more planted and grip drop off is more defined than before. In 1.5 you could ride cars in a weird stage of "middle grip" where it felt like 4 tyres were kinda floating, now that doesn't happen anymore. Also in 1.5 you could overdrive cars to ridiculus degrees and get away with them, rewarding poor braking technique to achieve good laptimes, again this doesn't happen anymore.
In 1.5 the general feel I got when I overdrove cars was that the rear tyres were stretching and yaw angles were too agressive, in 1.6 this has been massively improved.

 

So by "connected", are you referring to, the quicker change in directional response due to possibly stiffer sidewall of the tires? Or is this purely what you are feeling differently due to FFB response on your wheel? Sorry but the word "connected" is very vague to me.

My personal experience, when the sidewall on a tire is stiffer, you can get quicker response from the steering wheel. People often refer to this as "improved" handling. I've also driven on competition tires with softer side walls, where there is a noticeable lag from when you aggressively change the steering during the middle of a turn. When I was driving through a slalom on a course, we were once using a tire when your inputs had to be about 0.1 secs ahead of the feature due to the response delay of the tire which had softer side walls.

As far as V1.5 is concerned, the way I think about it is this. Different tires have different levels of slip angle they can tolerate and how they get there. Aero can also play a massive part in the way tires gain or lose grip, so what I'm saying from a purely mechanical point of view (aka cars with limited aero). Usually, the grippier the compound the more yaw and slip angle they will tolerate before they let go. You can usually abuse such tires and they're a lot more forgiving, it's why in the racing community we tell novices to learn on street tires because you can develop bad habits with slick/R-compound tires. The more street/all season a tire (harder compound) the less yaw they will tolerate and the smoother your inputs have to be. Again, each tire from a different manufacturer can have different properties base on compound, tread pattern, carcass and side wall stiffness. Those of us that do this IRL, spend a lot of time studying this to try to gain an advantage on others.

Was V1.5 overly forgiving and allowed a bit too much slip angle? Maybe. To me it felt like R-compound/slicks that allowed a lot of slip angle (perhaps a bit much). The V1.6 just feels a lot less forgiving and less progressive in their break away characteristics. Almost like the pendulum swung in the other direction. I'm not saying one is wrong and the other isn't. As I said, the real world has multiple tire types, so there is no 1 perfect model that a sim can emulate. But if you've driven R compound/slick tires IRL, you know what to expect when they are pushed. I think there is a happy medium somewhere between V1.5 and V1.6.

Sorry for the overly wordy response.

 

The lazy slides were a thing prior 1.6, I think they might started to be a thing around 1.5.3 or slightly earlier because I remember struggling with that personally quite a bit and we had some discussions about the behavior in the paddock club side of the forum (before 1.6, they were unexpected, in 1.6 it's definitely improved and whenever it happens, it's usually clear what I did wrong, though would be nice that I would be able to better catch them. Now there a cliff edge that comes sooner and that part I personally find more what I would expected from what I have heard/read about the tires.

There was a video recently from Coach Dave, I think it was the one where he gave some initial impressions on ACE. When talking about tire behavior (in general), he described tires on the IRL GT3 such that you have a lot of grip until you run out and when it goes, it goes quite abrubtly. Naturally the full characterists depends also on the tire manufacturer.

In any case, I don't think all tires / cars in AMS2 behave the same way, not all cars have such issues with lazy slides and this behavior. 1.6 was definitely not for the worse in this regard, the tires are just more peaky now so I guess some of issues come out a bit easier as a result.

In 1.6, I feel I need to try the cars in more realistic manner and don't need to abuse the game physics as much to be fast (which I wasn't good at).

I do definitely agree that on some cars/tires where you wouldn't expect it, the fronts seem to have too grip much compared to rear or at least it's much much harder to get understeer compared oversteer (even with setup changes). But it's still not like it's that all of those cars are hard to handle, plenty of them feel still very forgiving with the slip angles, yawn and how much you are able to neutral steer and be on throttle very early (GT3 etc.).

Anyway, it's really nice to hear more impressions and opinions of people who have IRL experience (especially those with experience of driving different type of cars and tires/tires of different manufacturers).

 

Correct, and Coach Dave is probably correct about GT3 cars, since he has 1st hand experience with them. He also seem to have a bunch of experience with high end cars. Lucky guy! The rule of thumb is, any car that generates decent amounts of downforce might also experience a sudden loss of grip at medium to higher speed corners. Mainly due to the gain and loss of grip due to changes in aero load. Those types of cars at higher speeds can snap on you if you go over the limit.

On the other hand, I have a friend who races Formula Mazdas (aero car) in real life, and said you basically had to drive the car with a bit of yaw to extract the speed from those cars. He's a very fast driver and has won multiple regional championships. This subject matter of grip gain, loss and instability due to aero interaction is a bit too complex to say if you do X you get Y. This is why we just go out and test IRL and see what happens and build a database on knowledge.

But if you look at lower speeds corner, where the grip is more mechanical (less aero), you usually don't experience a sudden loss of grip unless you just went out with cold tires on a colder day and try to do a flyer before the tires have warmed up. Thus my statement about GT4s and most street cars converted to race cars, you generally have less grip in the medium and high speed sections and they usually don't feel as planted due to a lack of aero. But at the same time the break away characteristics are usually more progressive.

It's why I said earlier, "Aero can also play a massive part in the way tires gain or lose grip, so what I'm saying from a purely mechanical point of view (aka cars with limited aero)."

Man, I'm chatty today. LOL

 

I was talking specifically about the feeling of grip imbalance between front and rear that Icy mentioned, not nessecarily slides, and the ability to (or not) catch them.

Interestingly though, I'm also reminded of this recent video of Yorkie, who's definitely very well versed with the Madness Engine both on the consumer and developer side, talking about AMS 2 v1.6 still having this exact issue; a legacy of the Madness Engine (timestamp of 24:55 in case it doesn't work in the link)

 

I believe many people are aware of the grip issue, no matter how we describe this characteristic. But I am not sure if this feature is a flaw in the Madness engine that is difficult to c, or if it is caused by some datas not being adjusted to the optimal . If it is the latter, then it should be easy for REIZA to correct it.

In fact, I have encountered many situations the vehicle suddenly loses grip at low speeds. Once the vehicle gets on grass or returns to the track from grass, the rear wheels have a strong tendency to slip and spin, even at very low speed, as mentioned in my original description.

I think your opinion that if the tyre's stiffer you can get quicker response is correct. However, compared to some other sims, for example,
GT3 models build grip more slowly when exiting corners.
But because the front wheels have strong grip, we can accelerate earlier and let the rear rotate slightly when exiting the corner.
On the contrary, in ACC, if a large directional input is made according to AMS operating habits in an attempt to make the car rotate, the car is easily get into understeer state instead of rotate.
Recently, I compared the operating habits of several SIMs, and I felt there are many diffirences even on a same car.

 

I have been saying this kind of things since mid-December in here, grass feel weird, kerbs are magnetic, car still too overreacting when the rear catch a musquito sneeze, mechanical interactions are sometime weird on some cars (in regards to suspension geometry, how the bumpstops work and overall toe/camber). I end up having all my setups being weird and tailored heavily to understeer behavior (still the car continues to oversteer) and that allows me to be competitive in most lobby and on time trial leaderboards. I have been told to keep away from grass and to learn how to drive proerly several times, I know I am a gamepad player and my opinion should be discarded, just because, but that's still how this game feels overall.

Again I am having fun with it (racked over 350 hours since 1.6, compared to only a mere 100 before), does not make it issue free though. But I gave up at this point and just accepted that's how this game have to be driven.

 

Grass was the same or worse before 1.6 though, I'm sure about that (and personally I don't have any strong feeling whether its realistic or not, just have to be really careful with the throttle if you end up on grass). I also personally haven't noticed any weird kerb behavior (except that those aren't slippery on wet, but again, that was existing issue that hopefully get's solved in future).

Each sim has it's on weird things and there is often some setup meta as a result. In rF2, it's minimum tire pressures and usually minimum or close to minimum (detached) rear ARB, in ACC you have also all sorts of weird things you do with setup that seem to work the best for whatever reason.

AMS2 definitely isn't generally front limited, and I have been just also playing around with suspension setups and noticed that it's really hard, if not impossible to make the cars I tried (GT3gen2 Porsche and Corvette) very understeery with suspension setup changes, no matter how extreme you go. Often the car just seems to start feel slightly better if you try to weaken the front etc. It could be also that the setup options/range of values available and their impact are very "conservative", that even max/min values aren't that far from "normal" (instead physics being weird because the setup changes might not respond as strongly you would expect).

Honestly though, there are lot of people who find it a lot more fun to drive cars that have a bit more oversteer than very understeery ones (feels more lively and exiting). I'm definitely in this camp for sure.

btw. Renato's post here is a good read: Automobilista 2 V1.6, IMSA Track Pack, Endurance Pt2 & Lamborghini DLCs RELEASED (V1.6.3.5 Live Now) (and it's following posts by Dicra and Renato),