Automobilista 2 June 2022 Development Update

Yes. Samehere. Crimson said to tune setup.

 

And there is so much too choose from now in AMS2. I can't seem to find the time to sate my AMS2 appetite in its current state. I always welcome new content but I can always find an excuse to try this car at that track.

 

The Caterhams haven't had the tyre carcass revisions yet, so maybe they'll be worth another try soon.

 

Maybe you are right. I used to like this car on Enthusia (the PS2 highly underrated sim), but in newer sims I never liked it too much. Maybe I just don't like the car, but like what Konami did with it back them and don't know if playing Enthusia again would had the same opinion.

 

Oh yeah, true. I even checked the list but missed the Academy. I saw the rest in the section without tyre updates and thought that was all of them.

Will be using Ctrl + F next time.

 

So, after a setup folder reset, it's not as blatantly horrible, but I still feel a bit of that high-speed instability. Pouhon at Spa and Copse at Silverstone we're two corners that this kept popping up in both the FCG3 M2 and RKi.

I was fine with the overall aero balance, given at medium to fast corners it felt good. I tried raising the front by a few mm, but I hardly noticed a difference. Maybe it's a damping issue. Before the reset it felt like turning a car with DRS, but now it just feels a little loose. (I hadn't done a setup folder reset for several months and major updates... so that's probably a big part of it... ) Where I still notice it still is at Buenos Aires No. 7 with the long turns that have some bumps.

 

I'll give a try with this car/track combo and try to understanding.

Either, I don't know if the real car is that stable at high speeds. Older cars, overall, tend to be unstable after certain speed because these beasts usually are more motor than ground, but yet I believe that this generation of F1, that already had some huge downforce, should behave better... at least I don't use to have this kind of issue you described in any sim that I tried this kind of car.

 

I just start playing the game again after taking off for more than two months and I don't notice much difference driving my favorite cars on my favorite tracks. I only drive Formula USA 1 gen 1 and 2, Formula V10 gen 2. If there are significant changes, I didn't notice. I usually drive the same cars in the same favorite tracks. If anything, I notice there is a performance drop off in frame rates in VR where I didn't noticed before. By the way, I didn't like any of the NEW tracks. They all look like any other tracks, there is nothing unique to me. I wish there are tracks with identifiable unique landscape to it....such as bridges, tunnel or something that give it a wow factor. VR experience will greatly enhance with these sort of tracks.

 

Almost from the dawn of aero cars it has been the case that the faster you are driving the further rearwards the aero balance moves (because the rear wings are bigger than the front wings and downforce is a product of wing area x speed^2) and so aero cars become more stable at high speeds, not less. The few exceptions were the early 70s F1 cars, because the big airbox hindered airflow into the rear wing.

An aero car that is tuned to snap loose at high speeds is attempted murder, no team would send a driver out like that.

 

Reiza doing a very underhanded attempt at finally giving the Andrea Moda approach some sim spotlight?

For all those that don't know:
Andrea Moda was a team that raced in F1 in 1990 and that had a very different approach to driver safety, disadvantaging one driver by giving him worn material or even rain tires on a dry track...

Apart from that I agree, the default setups especially for the F-USA and some of the F-Classics (I think Gen3Model3 is a culprit here?) are very prone to snap oversteer. It can be fixed by simply moving the rear wing a few clicks up or the front wing a few clicks down (and also adjusting ride height), but out of the box it's not great.

 

The usual example of a deathtrap is the original Porsche 917 that was misdesigned and had almost no rear downforce at high speeds, so the factory drivers refused to drive it in the 1969 Le Mans and privateer John Woolfe died in a crash on lap 1.

 

What about features that was in PCars2? Can you port them over to AMS2? For example, the "FAVORITES" feature where you can save several slots for a specific car, track and weather so that one can load it up and play it instantly. I thought that feature is perfect for AMS2 because it is a game where player like to pick a car and track and just go. What better way to do it quickly than loading up your favorite tracks and cars that you saved from the previous days without having to do it all over again? Is this something you guys don't want to add because you like your game to be uniquely different from PCars2 or is it something you guys simply not interested? I thought that was a cool feature.

 

I did some testing with FCG3M2 at Spa (newer layout) with reset car setup.

First of all, the car is really blatantly loosing the rear at high speed corners and it wouldn't use to happen before as it was a considerably tight car. So I did few tries to fix it.

A) I got it simple and try to just change the longitudinal weight bias arbitrarily all the way to the front. The car behavior got worst overall and didn't fix the long speed snappiness. Them I reset it again and...

B) Simply reduced arbitrarily the front wings from 18 to 12 and it completely fixed the snappiness, but gives the car an undesired understeer in mid and high speeds. Another setup reset and...

C) Raised the rear suspension from 65mm to 72mm (the max the car let me do it) in a attempt to raise the overall car downforce without loose steering responses. The car got a little more grounded with an extra limit of how much I could force it until it snaps, but the snappiness got a little more abrupt. Soooo, one more reset and one more try...

D) That's when I arbitrarily changed the differential clutches from 6 to 2 and... it not only solved almost all the snappiness but gave me more control on medium speed and even more at slow corners (as the first hairpin right at the very beginning of the track, where I cleared alone TWO FKNG SECONDS relative to all my previous laps (I did some good 5 laps with each setup) and, in the end, cleared almost 3s only changing this setting.

Conclusion: The default setup snappiness can be dealt just with a more smooth driving. You can't flat this track high speed corners with it without being inconveniently careful (I did a flat at Eau Rouge, but highly doubt that can repeat it through all laps during a full length race). Reducing the front or raising the rear wings in a subtle way can give more stability and is desired for you to adjust it per track and driving stile). Is also advised to raise the rear of the car a little if experiencing instability. I only recommend to low the front if you have access to good telemetry or can get a good feeling that there is ground allowance, or the car will get unstable and very snappy (even if I don't think that AMS2 fully simulates ground collision but in a real car, that is the procedure and reason why). In the end, reducing the differential clutches or working this device in any other way that make the power transference to the rear go smoother is the most efficient way to not only solve it but also go fast. I recommend that you all begin your setups by solving the differential and them balancing the wings (which, in this car/track combo, could aim to a little less of rear wing). Also, recommend that you put some good laps learning the default setup, because it's not bad, and adapting your throttle control to the car demand. After really learning the default set, them you will change it to get faster not more comfortable... because true comfort in a car, always come from driver adaptation and conditioning. Comfort by car setup is just an illusion.

The only thing I didn't tested is to increase the steering look, that I believe that can be reduced from the default 21º to probably 17º or even 15º and am pretty sure that it will solve the snappiness, but don't know what could happen in slow corners.

My best time here is 1:54.300, but in this "setup test" context. If we mix what I learned from all this trial, do a full car setup and learn how to exploit it, I'm sure that we can drop it considerably at the same time that have a stable and connected car.

Abração!

 

Did another try reset again the setup and only changing the steering lock from 21º to 17º and it strongly helped with snappiness. Best time in four laps was 1:54.720.

The car is supposed to snap in some circumstances, but it's not arbitrarily, not even with the default setup. I think that Reiza did this car right and the physics are working properly, specially because with very fell and intuitive changes the overall behavior gone where it was supposed to go.

There are a few things yet to do and now I will try to build a full setup for hotlapping and see what happens.

 

I have tried the f-classics on default setups around tracks like silverstone and i will say that i agree about the rear breaking loose at high speed. I don’t think it is snappy per se, but actually controllable and catchable when loose. Gone are the days of seemingly-infinite grip during lateral slides at high speed like the f-ultimate gen1 did a year ago.

Its probably quite authentic for the car to behave like this. Check out Hamilton’s crash in qualifying for Austrian gp. He enters the corner too fast and looses the rear. He does loose it and end up in the barrier. Mercedes could’ve added +1 or more wing angle to stop this, but they thought that the speed advantage on the straight balanced out the risk of the car loosing the rear. They expected their driver to not make the mistake so they didn't factor this into the wing angles chosen. My point being that you are allowed to make the setup more understeers if it helps you from finding the wall when the car goes loose. Or it can help you recover in a slide like Zhoe;

 

Yes, the AMS2 physics seems to be in the right place. Of course it's not 1:1 reality match, but there is no sim that get's even closer to that (lets say that current level of simulation is about "30%", being hugely condescending). My "quest for a setup" was more about to make it usable by my skill level that anything else. Our skills are considerably lower than a F1 top driver (or any F1 driver... I believe than even than guys like Mazepin, Katayama or DeCesaris) and it's obvious that we won't be able to properly drive a true aggressive setup like the one that probably Hamilton used in this video (well... even him couldn't drive it lol).

 

From my armchair 20/20 hindsight point of view it has often baffled me how amateurish the early aero endeavours seem. I mean after two world wars and well into the jet age, and with plenty of this knowhow spilling into the world of racing, many late '60s designs were on par with pre-WWI contraptions.

The vanilla 917 you mention is a perfect example of this paradox. You've got a powerful engine and a sleek streamline moderna profile that wouldn't look out of place in a 1930s Flash Gordon movie, but as you say, on the track the car was proportionally more unstable the faster it went. Fast on paper, a suicide machine in reality.

Any aerospace engineer in spe would know that, at least until you approach mach 1 where all sorts of weird things happen, the wings of a plane will generate more lift the faster you go, so flipping this effect 180 degrees should be a no-brainer, provided you don't hide the wings in a place where there's no airflow of course.

 

I like that part.

 

Well, for all intents and purposes it was a flying saucer.