Is setup tinkering a part of sim racing in general?

The reason why im asking is because it seems to me that the vast majority of cars in AMS2 seem to require that you mess around with the setup. Very VERY few are actually decent "out of the box".
As i am a new sim racer with limited experience in regards to the various sim titles im kind of confused as to whether thats supposed to be the case or not?

Furthermore, there is only so much you can do with the setup. If a car feels straight up undriveable chances are you are only going to be able to get it to a point where its only kind of sort of driveable. And im not sure if i would classify ALL of the content in AMS2 as driveable in all honesty. But again with me having a severe lack of sim racing experience, it goes without saying that you should take anything i say with a grain of salt.

 

Simply not true any more. You may want to revisit your settings as something is likely wrong. Start with deleting the setup folder, and if that doesn't work consider renaming the entire My Documents/AMS2 folder.

 

Interesting, would uninstalling and reinstalling work?
I would do it through Revo Uninstaller which makes sure all folders relating to the game get deleted.

 

Just go to your Documents folder and rename or delete the Automobilista 2 folder. No need to reinstall everything.

 

Reinstalling will do absolutely nothing as it will leave the My Documents -folder untouched.

 

Neutral default setup is one thing, tricky car characteristics another, per conditions setup yet another.

So while thorough new defaults have been provided for some cars (also new diff setups for all LSD cars in 1.3), you'll still find that you can't click with some cars as they are either beyond your car control level to drive fast comfortably or they are simply not your cup of tea.

Then finally you will find holes in baseline setups depending on which track and in which conditions you drive. This is less in defence of any current setup and more an argument for setup work being part of sim racing once you get into it deeper. One size does not fit all when you go from one extreme to another. You don't have to learn right away as that would be some learning curve for the hobby! Just keep it in the back of your mind as a thing that will help you later on. Note that it's not about single lap pace necessarily, but staying confident with the car over bumps and with tires working hard in various temperatures over multiple laps.

@steelreserv has a new guide (also old one) going on Youtube whenever you're interested to learn more: How to tune Springs - A Sim Racing Setup Guide feat. Automobilista 2 - YouTube

 

Tweaking a setup is part of simracing, no doubt about it. Developing the car until the handling suits you like a glove and you can go way faster than when you started is an inmensely satisfying feeling.

That being said: besides deleting the Documents folder, which is recommended to do if you didn't after the big 1.3 update, yes, many cars don't have a good default setup. My opinion about it is that most cars don't come with correct spring rates, which are the main responsibles of dealing with the weight distribution. A car with rates too far off of what they should be, as it happens with most defaults, will never feel right, no matter if the rest of the setup is decent. Setting initial values of springs depending of the car at hand is the #1 thing you do on a setup, then you start checking the other values.

 

I like dialling in a car as much as the next person but in my experience ffb can also impact heavily on how the overall sim feels. If you like every last detail filtered back that is very immersive but its not necessarily the fastest. In rain conditions I often dial down the amount of feedback coming back through the wheel as otherwise its just too twitchy with my hardware. There's so many variables in terms of hardware, ffb settings, gameplay settings etc that I imagine its quite hard to develop a setup that is 'The One' that enables you to magically go faster. Its all about consistency and how you and your senses fit into the feedback loop. I personally wouldnt get too obsessed with setup unless there's a particular issue like a circuit characteristic or set of conditions that need to be looked at. But this is just my own view and its no more valid than any others out there.
Ultimately whats the point of gaining 2/10ths of a second if you spin every third lap and lose 10 seconds.. if you can keep the car within half a second of your best lap, every lap, and it feels to you like you can trust it, then youll be competitive in the long run.

 

Lol, what? Most cars for me have very little tune done. Mainly fuel, tyres, arb and maybe a little diff but this is when trying for a best lap. If I want to race Ai I'm happy enough on defaults.

 

In general, and particularly if you don't have high ambitions, you can very well get around with two setups per car that do not deviate to much from the current post 1.3 default setups.

1. hard, stiff and low, high downforce (setup type "Spa")
2. soft, loose and high, medium downforce (setup type "Nordschleife")

hard and soft means springs
stiff and loose refers to roll bars
high and low is chassis height and rake

But in the end it's the driver, not the car or setup. The only type or tracks where setups are the most important is Le Mans types or ovals with long high speed sections.

 

Regarding car driving, is very rare a simulator car with a broken setup. I just remember a Ferrari from a LM mod for rFactor, that had different suspension settings for each front wheel and that made the car incontrollable if not fixed.

Usually, simulators let we enjoy the driving without even look at setups (maybe some fuel changing, but that is it most of the time)... BUT these games rewards those who spent some time under the bonnet and it's an aspect that I usually find a fair share of fun.

If you want to go online or beat some fast times at the leaderboard, you probably want to give your setups some love.

Anyway: IF IT'S IN THE GAME, IT'S IN THE GAME!

 

Ha, you ripped that off from EA Sports.
I remember the PS2 F1 games they did from the early 00's and that was a line they used in them or advertising for them.

 

Well... in some way, folks that are playing AMS2 and rFactor 2 are still playing the EA's F1 2002... at least it's engine lol

 

Can you share some things you do/look at when tinkering and improve the setup. For us noobs to learn from

 

The more things change the more they stay the same, lol.

 

idk guys, i have been comparing the gt cars in ams2 to acc and for example the gt4 porsche is quite good in acc compared to ams2 where its an absolute mess.
Better braking and much less slippery in acc.
Same thing with the M4.