Breaking down the Rental Kart in GSCE

[gamer19]

Interesting review of the (rental) carts in GSCE.

My opinion is that the man knows what he's talking about.
Maybe we could take a few tips here and there.
Reiza guys, perhaps, also.
A couple of my favorite parts:

But the real question is how does it drive, and to that, I gotta say it’s a mixed bag. The real kart, we did pretty much everything possible to try and kill ourselves in, and I spun out a grand total of twice in about six months worth of driving. Just think about that – news articles popped up everywhere saying how it was dangerous as **** to drive karts on the street and that people were dying and **** – and I spun twice.

Even on dirt, it felt like I was playing DiRT 3 with all the assists on. It seemed like no matter what you did, it was damn near impossible to loop the kart. Like having magnets for tires. It never suffered from understeer, and it didn’t have enough power for the rear end to step out unless you did like I mentioned above and threw it sideways intentionally. I can’t stress this enough – slicks on dirt – still felt like we were on easy mode.

(he's talking about REAL LIFE karting!!!)
Anyway...
interesting stuff and I just thought you should read.
Any opinions?

 

[morsify]

Hmm, interesting, but to me it is a strange review - I'm not saying he is not being accurate, but we don't know what chassis or tyres he was using, there are so many different ones of each available.

But overall, to me it doesn't matter how it felt on dirt or on the sidewalk, or trying to do things that GSC doesn't need to simulate.

I raced karts (rental and then my own kart) on tracks, both slicks and wets, I never abused my tyres by going on dirt, street or rough surfaces, so I don't know how that *might* affect them, but on a smooth tarmac surface *designed for racing*, GSC gets it pretty close in my opinion, much closer than the 'reviewer' is implying.

Oh, and I saw plenty more spins/half spins than he is quoting, certainly in rental karts anyway. Yes , slicks stick well to the track, in a way that always amazed me, but under race conditions, trying to drive the kart to it's maximum, rental drivers in particular would often overdrive / brake too late / turn in too sharp & half spin, which GSC shows well as far as I'm concerned.

Just my opinion.

 

[Spinelli]

I've raced multiple rental karts in North America and Italy, and been on a Rotax Max 125 as well. Pretty much the fastest category 125cc (I think) before getting into the 6 speeds. And the guy in the review sounds totally off.

I'm not saying the karts in GSC or any game are perfect, but it's just details that are off, stuff that many people don't even notice or know is an issue (mostly some game-engine vehicle-dynamics issues that are impossible to get rid of - regardless of car-type or modding/car-creation skill - which have been going on in ISI engine based sims as far back as F1 2002, maybe even earlier). Details that happen when you do certain things. Therefore, as a whole, I couldn't disagree more with what that reviewer is saying.

I did a season of school-type F2000s. I only spun 3 times in an entire season of practice, qualy, races, testing, etc. Once in the dry but only because I just quickly touched the grass with my outside rear-tyres while my car was highly loaded, and twice in the rain, however there were about 1 billion moments were I could have spun but didn't because I could sense the car being in a super sensitive state and would do nothing to further aggravate the balance and grip, and I also had many moments where I did have to make very sudden corrections. So I can also say "I almost never spun in an entire year of F2000 racing and I was pushing too as I was leading the championship and had the lap-record for that season" but that would be a load of "baloney" because the car could have spun about a billion times during lapping, constantly. Not only that, but I saw people sometimes spin 2 or 3 times in 1 single lap.

 

[gamer19]

I've raced multiple rental karts in North America and Italy, and been on a Rotax Max 125 as well. Pretty much the fastest category 125cc (I think) before getting into the 6 speeds. And the guy in the review sounds totally off...

Maybe that's the reason for you to have such sifferent opinion about this matter - he was talking exclusive about RENTAL carts. Real life vs GSCE experience. And you talk about "pretty much fastest category". Could it be it, I was just thinking?

 

[Spinelli]

I did about 30 or 40 laps in the rental karts at the Ortona circuit (can't remember the layout, one of the shortest ones, if not the shortest one with the very quick and tight chicane before the last corner). Default setup except less fuel, I managed a low to mid 59s. I don't think I spun it a single time. The kart was very, very similar to real-life rental karts. Pretty darn amazing actually, not just for the rF1 engine, but just in general.

I think there are certain times when if pushed a bit too past the limit, the tyres do a little too much of an exaggerated slideeeee (mostly during some mid-corner understeer moments). So, rather than having a sort of slide-grip-slide-grip where the tyre slides and understeers but you can kind of still feel the front "wanting" to re-grip and doing some biting, instead, it does too much of just a sliidddeeee (until a certain point where you finally regain grip), but that is only if you're going quite past the limit anyways. I'd also like to add that this characteristic (aswell as another one regarding oversteer which I won't get into) is part of the ISI pre-rF2 tyre model that - at one point or another - pretty-much happens in every single car ever made on the rF1 or before engine (the oversteer issue - which I won't get into - even still happens on the rF2 engine, let alone rF1 and prior, although it's gotten a bit better on the rF2 engine but still largely there, and frustratingly so). The kart. or physics engine, is not absolutely perfect (and no game-car or physics engine is), but without dissecting little areas, the kart - in my opinion and based on my real-life rental karting experience - is very, very good. Darn good