Physics right or wrong?

[Frederic Schornstein]

Disclaimer:
First of all please don't make that a fanboy discussion. I always try to be objective and leave my personal preferences out of the way. I am always willing to accept, if something I don't like on emotional basis, is better than what I like on emotional basis.

Ok I hope I covered that part and this won't get into a "You are a fanboy of this and that thread".

Prequal:
Like most people I eagerly awaited the release of Assetto Corsa. I read about all the licensed content, loved the screenshots and everything. I didn't drive the tech preview, because I didn't want to get a false impression, because it was all still WIP. The day AC was released on Steam I bought it.
I started really testing it after the first update were the FFB was fixed.

I do really like the game and wanted it to be good and so far my only issue are the physics. Most people praise them and they get a lot of love and I do confess, that in external videos they look great.
The car dives in on the braking, you see all the weight transfer and everything. No other sim offers that!

Example:
But as soon as I drive it, it feels just so wrong to me. Just one example: I tested the BMW Z4 GT3 at Monza. I know the track very well and usually drive GT cars, so a perfect combination for me.
Despite all the massive understeer you get everywhere in AC even with setup tweaks, I wanted to point out something you can judge on a much more objective level. So I will talk about the braking distance.

Every racer knows how hard the first braking zone in Monza is. You have a low downforce car and arrive at 260+ kph and have to break down to 60-80kph. So if you look at a lot of GT3 onboards on youtube even with cars, that do have ABS and are a bit restricted due to BOP. They all break before the 200meter board.
That said, I can brake at the 300meter (270kph) board and have the car at a total stand still at 150meters. If I brake for the corner I can brake at or after the 150 meter board.
So we already have a 25% shorter braking zone compared to a real life car with equal or less power and ABS, which I didn't use.

Test conditions:
So now people would start arguing, that I maybe run more downforce and stuff and that is the weirdest thing. I tried to figure out the "worst" braking performance. I used hard tyres and removed all the downforce from the car for this test.

I don't want to get to much into the details of the cornering behaviour and the understeer and that you can just pull on tons of lock and don't get any turn-in oversteer.

Is my opinion qualified?!:
A lot of simracers don't have a lot of reallife experience and I didn't race a GT3 car in my life, but just a quick background:

I drove Race07, rFactor1 and now rFactor2 and I am a pretty good driver in rF2 especially in rear wheel drive touring or GT cars. Even in the new Civic I was racing for wins after 30mins on an unkonw track, so I can quickly adapt to new cars and tracks etc.

In my free time I did some kart races with friends and even on an unkown track with for me unkonw more powerful karts than the average rental karts on a bit cold track I got within 1,9 seconds of the track record within 15min and reduced it to 1,5 seconds in a further 15min.
Keeping in mind that real professional Kart drivers practice their and I had maybe 2 or 3 hours track time in karts ever, I would say I am not a bad driver.

So when I jump out of rF2 into a kart it just feels like home. I apply nearly the same technique and everything. When I jump into AC it all feels wrong. It is so hard to get wheelspin. You can turn the wheel so much, that you would end up in a wall in real life.

I also spoke to some guys with actual racing experience and they got the same feeling.

The end:
I really wanted AC to be a very good sim and I do love everything about it, but these physics keep me from driving it.
In a sim I don't want it to be easy, I want it to be as realistic as possible, but in AC you can apply some really bad driving technique to get quicker laptimes.

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

I've never understood why everybody is recommending negative toe on front wheels for increased turn in. For me, both in LFS and now in AC it's the positive values on toe that help with turn in.
Not to derail this thread, if somebody would like to argue on the matter i's being discussed here:http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/about-bmw-z4-e89-step-1toe-in-out-setup.80590/

yes higher values is correct.. but the toe in is actually getting negative with higher values...

I was quite confused with the setup screen in AC at first coming from IR the last years.. because in AC... some options are real values like nm for springs... but also not on all cars... and also some options are just values like for the toe settings... so while you adjusting the toe for example.. you need to look at the "diagnostic screen" next to the adjustments.. and increasing the value of the toe options.. decreases the toe in (in other words adding negative toe in... or adding toe out but often toe is readed as toe in).. in the "diagnostic screen"


so when you increase the value.. you decrease the toe in... which let the cars react more "pointier/faster" at turn in.. at least in all cars I tried across all sims.. (but ofcourse like with everything in setup you need to find the right value.. so just setting it to the max won't help.. because either it could get too nervoes or be too hard for the tires or both) however I don't know if this value decreases the toe in in all cars.. or if it is reveresed in some cars I didn't drove or at least didn't do setup stuff with... I think to remember that in one version the was an inveresed reaction of the toe in a car which was quickly fixed afterwards... but don't know if I remember that correctly


I also think the setup screen could get a bit more streamlined for the final version...(maybe it is lend on how you setup the real cars .. so maybe you have at some cars only values and in other cars you set them up with nm or such stuff in mind.. and such stuff.. but from the outside without knowing how these cars are set up in reallife if the engineers use this or that and so on... it looks a bit random and a bit confusing)

also not all tool tips are working correctly yet.. but I am sure that will get fixed..


however I just trust the "diagnostic screen" for now... and look if an option increases or decreases the real values

 

[David Ignjatovic]

I'll have more time tomorrow, but for example, the Fabarth now drives like a real champ and has a greatly improved rear tyre model.
The new small BMW seems pretty decent as well.

 

[Rhys Gardiner]

The new small BMW seems pretty decent as well.

Agreed... a little box of fun, that 1M!

 

[Boby Kim]

For me there is no right or wrong. It is merely a preference. My preference goes towards rFactor 2. Not saying AC's physics are bad....maybe rF2 physics are bad...who will tell? Next to that i find it extremely hard to separate physics from FFB.

 

[Tim Meuris]

For me there is no right or wrong. It is merely a preference. My preference goes towards rFactor 2. Not saying AC's physics are bad....maybe rF2 physics are bad...who will tell? Next to that i find it extremely hard to separate physics from FFB.

yup, same here I find it difficult to judge them as two different things

 

[Bernd Graf]

OPINION UPDATE:

Before 0.5 update, I felt AC had justified their place in the sim world with their tyre model and other features. After this latest update, there is NO question AC is currently the top simulator on the market, perhaps bested in only one or two areas by rFactor 2. I doubt that these minor areas will stay underdeveloped though, with future updates and DLCs from Kunos.

The AI supplied with 0.5 really isn't the key feature...the new tyre improvements are. After days of bleary-eyed testing, I am even more impressed with the variability in the cars, and their responsiveness to proper technique. The cars really offer nearly endless nuance in the area of performance, and they are highly unpredictable with all aids off--mind, I use the word "unpredictable" in a positive sense here, as in one cannot "beat the game" and anticipate cheating the system in order to drive faster, better, etc. The cars change with every input, and this allows me to become ultra involved in the experience. That is immersion you aren't going to see again for a long time.

My favorite aspect of the new update is how it rewards proper technique. Really offers something special to those who know about professional driving, or who understand their driving style enough to properly critique a circuit and find the lines to drive and get good times.

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

1. Real life physics
2. Assetto Corsa
3. Richard Burns Rally


The rest are arcade games in one way or the other !

 

[Joco Gorenc]

Don't call rFactor, gtr2, race07, GSC and other sims arcade because they're not! Even Gran Turismo is a sim, or at least a semi-sim as some people like to say.

But indeed in most aspects AC is the best.

 

[Sebastian Wolff]

Yeah, was playing the whole day today and slowly realizing how good this sim is. It is brilliant, just how different each car behaves and how spot on the ffb is!
Just to add or as a tip for nvidia users: I manually set the "max number of prerendered frames" in the nvidia control center to "1". Reduced latency a lot and increased overall sense for the different cars (G27 here).

 

[Boby Kim]

AC is way too clean at the moment. It is very very obvious the devs are following the vast majority of people: dont make it too easy and not too difficult. And in the end...there is no simulation or arcade. While they are all games, everything we play and do on PC's is pure arcade vs the real world. Yep driving on the edge makes every game hard even if it is trackmania. A racesim needs way more than just graphics and easy gameplay.But this is pre alpha and we will see what happened in 2016 when AC is finished (if they make it in such short time).

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

Don't call rFactor, gtr2, race07, GSC and other sims arcade because they're not! Even Gran Turismo is a sim, or at least a semi-sim as some people like to say.

But indeed in most aspects AC is the best.

Assetto Corsa and Richard Burns Rally are the only true sims that realisticly mimic cars when they go sideways.

None of the other games you've mentioned does that, instead they spin off the track as soon as you've passed a certain degree of going sideways. It is as like it's scripted and there is no way in hell you can save the car from that point.

You can call them Sim-cade but certainly NOT TRUE SIM !

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

AC is way too clean at the moment. It is very very obvious the devs are following the vast majority of people: dont make it too easy and not too difficult. And in the end...there is no simulation or arcade. While they are all games, everything we play and do on PC's is pure arcade vs the real world. Yep driving on the edge makes every game hard even if it is trackmania. A racesim needs way more than just graphics and easy gameplay.But this is pre alpha and we will see what happened in 2016 when AC is finished (if they make it in such short time).

PLEASE STOP TROLLING OK

 

[Tim Meuris]

PLEASE STOP TROLLING OK

easy mate, each one his opinion
not that I agree with his statement but it's just his view on it...

 

[Mapu]

Assetto Corsa and Richard Burns Rally are the only true sims that realisticly mimic cars when they go sideways.

None of the other games you've mentioned does that, instead they spin off the track as soon as you've passed a certain degree of going sideways. It is as like it's scripted and there is no way in hell you can save the car from that point.

You can call them Sim-cade but certainly NOT TRUE SIM !

bold statement

Let me add a few simulators, Indianapolis 500, Indycar, Nascar, Grand Prix, rFactor, GTR, iRacing etc.

even RBR has it's faults!

But all of these games, some I have not mentioned included, have been part of the development process of what we call a simulator today. However this doesn't mean that the former games are no simulators in their own right.

More or less, without these games (simulators) you wouldn't be able to play Assetto Corsa today.

 

[Gijs van Elderen]

Assetto Corsa and Richard Burns Rally are the only true sims that realisticly mimic cars when they go sideways.

None of the other games you've mentioned does that, instead they spin off the track as soon as you've passed a certain degree of going sideways. It is as like it's scripted and there is no way in hell you can save the car from that point.

You can call them Sim-cade but certainly NOT TRUE SIM !

Race 07: drifting

rFactor: drifting

rFactor 2: drifting

Gsc: drifting

Gtr2: drifting

Edit: me drifting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-Oysl1Jw4

 

[Calum McLure]

Too be honest I watch a lot of motorsports and I rarely see cars doing big 45-90 degree slides and being caught. Usually if a car oversteers the driver reacts quick enough to catch it before it goes too far and if he doesn't the car goes round. Which is exactly what I've experienced with rF2 & GSC.

Edit: Although the video above maybe proves me wrong lol

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

bold statement

Let me add a few simulators, Indianapolis 500, Indycar, Nascar, Grand Prix, rFactor, GTR, iRacing etc.

even RBR has it's faults!

But all of these games, some I have not mentioned included, have been part of the development process of what we call a simulator today. However this doesn't mean that the former games are no simulators in their own right.

More or less, without these games (simulators) you wouldn't be able to play Assetto Corsa today.

You've added some dated sim-cade games -That's all

The only thing RBR lacks is realistic audio !
additional world stages would be nice of course

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

You've added some dated sim-cade games -That's all

The only thing RBR lacks is realistic audio !
additional world stages would be nice of course

Currently AC lacks dynamic road grip, day and night, changin weather conditions including rain, pit stops, penalty system, driver swaps etc.
Is it therefore Sim-cade. All sims have their flaws, but calling them all simcade would be stupid. ISI develops a lot of F1 simulators, which are used for car development. I guess you call that simcade as well

 

[Tobbe Bergman]

Currently AC lacks dynamic road grip, day and night, changin weather conditions including rain, pit stops, penalty system, driver swaps etc.
Is it therefore Sim-cade. All sims have their flaws, but calling them all simcade would be stupid. ISI develops a lot of F1 simulators, which are used for car development. I guess you call that simcade as well

That's what I call a stupid post

 

[Frederic Schornstein]

That's what I call a stupid post

Very mature making comments without an explenation. All games do have their flaws and maybe some games like Race07 don't have perfect physics, but why should they be called sim-cade?
Sim-cade is a game which provides you a typical arcade game style with careers, tuning, achievements, story and everything, but provides a bit better physics than most arcade games. Games like Race07 try to simulate a real world championship without a lot of extra and try to provide realistic physics.
You can call it a bad sim, but not simcade.

Or do you have a good explenation why rF1, rF2, GSC 2013 and Race07 should be call sim-cade?

Maybe you can add more to the discussion than just a that you like to post...