I’ve spent quite a bit of time now testing this mod and comparing it to the original RFPE 4.0 so here’s my two penneth, for what it’s worth.
I do find that I much prefer the original RFPE mod if I’m honest. I’ve never really thought that the original mod suffered from too much grip on gravel and too little on tar but I was keen to try this and see how it panned out. Here’s what I thought –
On tarmac, I do find that the increased grip makes the cars quite understeery (is that actually a word?) and very difficult to position properly. What I like about RFPE is that, after a lot of practice, it feels very natural to induce a slide or a Scandinavian Flick and then get control of the car at the other end. You can feel the weight of the car which makes it easier to determine where the car wants to go and what you have to do to bring it back in line, if that makes sense? I think the increased grip and the resulting understeer makes this much less intuitive and I’m not feeling that weight transference. It just doesn’t feel natural.
If you look at videos of rally cars on tarmac, you’ll see them sliding round corners with scan-flicks or the handbrake, and then almost sliding sideways as the driver battles the torque. Rally cars aren’t set up to be glued to the ground all the time like racetrack cars are.
Again on gravel, I’m not feeling the weight of the car and the reduced grip just feels floaty and unnatural. Opposite to what I said about rally cars on tar, rally cars on gravel are looking for as much grip as possible. On gravel, the tyres dig in and bite the surface, getting their grip from a few millimetres down. When a car slides on gravel, intentionally or otherwise, it’s because the top layer and the ‘biting layer’ have moved and the car is riding the wave, so to speak. Car and surface moving together. With the mod, the slippyness and the sliding feels quite abnormal, as if the surface is staying put and the car is sliding right over the top of it – just like it would do on ice, for example. This makes it quite hit and miss when trying handbrake turns and flicks. There’s no weight to the car and there’s no indication of how or when the car is going to lose grip and control or regain it again. I don’t know how they’ve done it but the RFPE mod seems to have nailed the whole grip/loss of grip feeling.
I hope you don’t think that I’m being negative for the sake of it. I’m just passing my thoughts on. It’s great that you’re trying to do this for all of the cars but it’s just my opinion and I hope it’s useful. Just for clarity, the 3 cars I used to test were ones which I’m quite familiar with and which were all 4 wheel drive. They were also ones which I could directly compare to 4.0 – the Subaru Impreza WRX STi, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X and the Audi Quattro. The tracks I used to test were Germany, Greece and Wales, all in dry weather.
I like the tarmac of your mod I still feel like the ice isn't correct but well done. I would love for you to explain a few things that would be great
