I've always felt Race 07 (as well as Race Pro) feels realistic when driven right on the limit. Anything less than that then it feels a bit cranky.
[Not talking about Race Pro, though.]
Well, as with the videos above, my focus is not "SIMBIN cars". It is solely on the potential that GTRE (really, the potential of the physics engine underneath, pMotor2) offers.
In order to understand that potential, the original physics calibration needs to be dropped.
Period.
Default/original physics in all SIMBIN sims (from GTR to RRRE) is designed with one thing in mind ONLY: to appeal to the widest audience possible, not to hardcore simracers. It is, as they say, a business, "not a modding team".
The physics calibration of WTCC/STCC cars is
acceptable (with the exception of inertias).
Regrettably, the same mistakes (the kind that the RSC guys spotted and discussed some 7 years ago) keep surfacing over and over in GT cars, from GTR2 all the way to the Ford GT in RR:
- cars with excessive downforce (and bad CoP's, and wrong Aero distribution)
-tire wise, unnecessary dropofffunction choices, and many many wrong items (slip curves,load curves, grip coeffs, springyness, damper, speedeffects, rollingResistance, street tires slip angles applied to GT slicks, inconsistent, incomplete tire temperature generation and management)
- ridiculously low inertias (in some cases, 54% lower than it should)
- badly calibrated springs (no attention whatsoever to natural frequencies), most cars having improper ratios front to back
- badly calibrated ARB's, with also unrealistic ratios front to back
Cars with as many errors can't be, and aren't, realistic. But they do appeal to different types of simulation gamers (and they sell the impression of some realism, which is a neat trick).
IMO, that's sad. If you model them properly, you'll have a different learning curve but people will have fun and have intense races against either the AI or human opponents.
Ultimately, the decision to dumb down the physics to appeal to more gamers ends up hurting SIMBIN when new competitors appear.