Shocking news! PP starting to work?

[azidahaka]

Now that i have your attention (lol) let me explain what i mean

Yesterday i was running around some test for fun, tuning and a "maybe in the future" racing serie based on the Superturismo championship.

i had room setted up at 1140kg/275hp and was using the cars meant to race in it, namely alfa 156 and accord '00.

Some guys entered in and setted their cars to 1140/275hp and we had a few races where i was easily left behind by miles. (didn't care because i was just tuning car around and doing it with someone racing along is less boring ) i think they were using some BMWs

a few other guys entered and after a bit i noticed How big of a difference in PP there was between same cars at the 1140/275 rule. There was like a 30pp difference!

I had an idea! Maybe those extra PPs are provided by extra "mechanical grip" or aero that you can't setup manually.

meanwhile a couple other guys joined and i asked all to stay in the 1140/275 rules and to match PP to my car.

we raced; and MAGIC! all cars were in a few tenths of a second, providing a surprisingly varied but balanced field.

so what i wonder is; do PP work if you tie them to a weight and power system? Anyone had similar experiences or tested it?

 

[crowhop]

Theoretically, matching PP, HP and KG would be exactly equal.
Question is, can you set all three within the online room settings? Seems like I remember only being able to set PP OR HP/KG, not all three.

 

[Voodoovaj]

I've held this belief for a while. People take the easy route and just set PP limits, but we all know there are some outlier cars at each PP limit. Adding weight and horsepower limits (mostly weight actually) makes a huge difference. The reason I say mostly weight rather than horsepower is because PP considers torque more than horsepower, but yes, for added compliance, putting a cap on horsepower will help keep everyone in check. I've done it and it's great to see the guys who only use the outlier cars whine and complain about how they have nothing that "suits their driving style".

 

[crowhop]

I've wanted to try out 600PP, 1350kg and around 600HP for a while to see if I could evenly match up a Viper, Corvette, 599, etc in a nice FR Supercar series.

 

[snowgt]

It doesn't work like that. Even if every single detail of a car would have an effect on the PP-figure, it would only be accurate on one track, and one track only. It's an approximation, and it has some flaws, because it uses only a small subset of all characteristics of every car.

PP-balancing will never work universally, not alone and not in connection with weight and power.

 

[azidahaka]

@crowhop you can set weight power AND pp

 

[Johnnypenso]

Now that i have your attention (lol) let me explain what i mean

Yesterday i was running around some test for fun, tuning and a "maybe in the future" racing serie based on the Superturismo championship.

i had room setted up at 1140kg/275hp and was using the cars meant to race in it, namely alfa 156 and accord '00.

Some guys entered in and setted their cars to 1140/275hp and we had a few races where i was easily left behind by miles. (didn't care because i was just tuning car around and doing it with someone racing along is less boring ) i think they were using some BMWs

a few other guys entered and after a bit i noticed How big of a difference in PP there was between same cars at the 1140/275 rule. There was like a 30pp difference!

I had an idea! Maybe those extra PPs are provided by extra "mechanical grip" or aero that you can't setup manually.

meanwhile a couple other guys joined and i asked all to stay in the 1140/275 rules and to match PP to my car.

we raced; and MAGIC! all cars were in a few tenths of a second, providing a surprisingly varied but balanced field.

so what i wonder is; do PP work if you tie them to a weight and power system? Anyone had similar experiences or tested it?

If it worked it was pure coincidence. Take the same regs and throw an RX8 or S2000 into the mix and it'll leave the Accord, Alfa and most other cars in the dust.

 

[Foxhound93]

Or compare GT3 cars with GT500 cars. GT500 will be much faster even with all bhp, kg and PP limits. I think.

 

[azidahaka]

If it worked it was pure coincidence. Take the same regs and throw an RX8 or S2000 into the mix and it'll leave the Accord, Alfa and most other cars in the dust.

there was an s2000 on track along the bmw...

might be a coicidence but worked wonders i'll test a bit more, but kg/hp/pp restriction is something to think about

 

[Jimmy_Pop]

there was an s2000 on track along the bmw...

might be a coicidence but worked wonders i'll test a bit more, but kg/hp/pp restriction is something to think about

You also have to take into consideration the skill of each driver. Same car same tune, my brother can be upto 8 seconds quicker than me around the ring. Im not a geeat driver, nor do I tote being one.

 

[crowhop]

there was an s2000 on track along the bmw...

might be a coicidence but worked wonders i'll test a bit more, but kg/hp/pp restriction is something to think about

Drivetrain layout is pivotal as well.

 

[VBR]

Maybe all the cars were still at different speeds, but it was the drivers who were also at different speeds that balanced them out. Used to happen frequently in Shuffle racing, faster driver in a slower car vs slower driver in a faster car.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

The best thing to do here is set your weight, bhp, & pp to a certain limit then let the individual driver make his own setups based within them.

So say I want to hit the 500 bhp mark, I might have to a make my car heavier because I went over the pp limit or vice versa, or sometimes I might want to hit the pp limit & then equally reduced bhp & add extra weight to do so.

There's so many little combinations you could do but I guess its still down to the car & track.

I tried tokyo r246 with GT300 cars, set bhp to 300, weight to 1175, & pp to 500. Surprisingly they were all within 1 second a lap.

 

[azidahaka]

Drivetrain layout is pivotal as well.

usually fr cars have bigger pp so to fit in regulations they usually have to take off power, reason i think all cars were balanced

The best thing to do here is set your weight, bhp, & pp to a certain limit then let the individual driver make his own setups based within them.

So say I want to hit the 500 bhp mark, I might have to a make my car heavier because I went over the pp limit or vice versa, or sometimes I might want to hit the pp limit & then equally reduced bhp & add extra weight to do so.

There's so many little combinations you could do but I guess its still down to the car & track.

I tried tokyo r246 with GT300 cars, set bhp to 300, weight to 1175, & pp to 500. Surprisingly they were all within 1 second a lap.

interesting but i was playing with lower pps. if it works on higher power cars it's promising

@all others, well drivers skills are difficult to determine so i can't speak about them

 

[Mr Grumpy]

I'd be happy to run some test races with you if your on later. You can pick all the rules, I'll just run the room. Just look for Mr Grumpy for all your happy racing needs ha ha.

 

[Griffith500]

I've held this belief for a while. People take the easy route and just set PP limits, but we all know there are some outlier cars at each PP limit. Adding weight and horsepower limits (mostly weight actually) makes a huge difference. The reason I say mostly weight rather than horsepower is because PP considers torque more than horsepower, but yes, for added compliance, putting a cap on horsepower will help keep everyone in check. I've done it and it's great to see the guys who only use the outlier cars whine and complain about how they have nothing that "suits their driving style".

Not to pick, but it's not that it considers torque "more", so much as it considers power over the whole rev-range, rather than just the peak value. That's only sensible, and it should be power rather than torque, since it's the power that determines how fast the car will accelerate. That follows directly from F=ma, as long as you remember that F is not constant over two crank rotations and that a is best measured in terms of time for our purposes, not crank rotations; torque, and hence energy, is delivered in bursts: more bursts per second, more power, more go.

Using only torque over the whole rev-range would disproportionately favour lower rpm torque in the PP calculation by a huge factor, meaning "torquey" engines would be significantly slower than "peaky" ones in a certain PP level. It started out the opposite way around with GT4 ("A-Spec points" back then), i.e. torquey cars could be faster, and it may have flip-flopped past a true parity a few times each way since then, but it's never been so obviously inaccurate as far as I know. I believe in GT6 peaky engines are still favoured, and as long as you've got the gearing to match, that's true in real life, too.


So what's not certain is whether PP should only consider the "useful" rev range, i.e. by factoring in gear ratios and their overlap, rather than just naively looking at the whole horsepower curve alone. Two identical cars with engines that perform identically in the usual "racing region", e.g. from 50% of peak torque rpm to the rev limiter, with one having much less horsepower below that threshold, will probably drive the same in most situations, but one will have a lower PP in the current system...

Naturally, such a "usefulness"-based metric will be track-dependent, whereas what we really need is a universal one.
And this might be partly why the tuning options are so... simplistic. With a more sophisticated system available for shaping the torque curve, it'd be very easy to game PP.

And that's probably all been said before

 

[Johnnypenso]

The best thing to do here is set your weight, bhp, & pp to a certain limit then let the individual driver make his own setups based within them.

So say I want to hit the 500 bhp mark, I might have to a make my car heavier because I went over the pp limit or vice versa, or sometimes I might want to hit the pp limit & then equally reduced bhp & add extra weight to do so.

There's so many little combinations you could do but I guess its still down to the car & track.

I tried tokyo r246 with GT300 cars, set bhp to 300, weight to 1175, & pp to 500. Surprisingly they were all within 1 second a lap.

The GT300 example works because in real life the cars arein the same series with the same specs. The same doesn't hold true when its econoboxes vs sports cars vs FR vs MR vs 4wd etc etc. The more similar the cars are in real life the better the PP system works

 

[Mr Grumpy]

I completely agree with you, but if your running these regs in your room then surely your half pushing people towards the type of cars you wish race with anyway, also you could restrict the drive train to go with the other restrictions.

I guess at the end of the day we're all just trying to create some sort of mixed but fair racing but its never going to be perfect.

 

[Azure Flare]

Or compare GT3 cars with GT500 cars. GT500 will be much faster even with all bhp, kg and PP limits. I think.

For example, if a GT3 GT-R and GT500 GT-R were limited to 500 PP, which one would win? The GT500 car every time.

It has far more downforce, less drag, and weighs less than the the GT3 car, so it would monster it every time.

 

[azidahaka]

For example, if a GT3 GT-R and GT500 GT-R were limited to 500 PP, which one would win? The GT500 car every time.

It has far more downforce, less drag, and weighs less than the the GT3 car, so it would monster it every time.

100% sure? the gt500 would probably have to run a big air restrictor to fit in

 

[Azure Flare]

Very.

Compare them back-to-back on stock settings (GT500 car can't be the Stealth model, and the GT3 car can't be the 15th anniversary edition if you have it.) and then come back.

 

[GTPorsche]

I don't think one instance of it working on one track is enough to say it's a fully functioning system.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

Ok, just done a test CR-Z a10 against ZZII both round R246, both fully tuned & RS tyres for max grip as this was to compare restrictions only.
All aids off except ABS 1.

Taking bets now lol.

So the CR-Z.
491pp, 311bhp, 945kg, FF.
1:46:xxx ok bench mark set.

Now the ZZII 4WD, Which I did remove all downforce to make it a bit more fair as the CR-Z don't have any.
1st test, 506pp, 311bhp, 945kg = 1:42:xxx
2nd test, 491pp, 279bhp, 945kg = 1:44:xxx
3rd test, 491pp, 311bhp, 1130kg = 1:47:xxx

So it seems that the weight handicap has more effect than the PP or BHP handicap regardless of type of vehicle or drive train.

This was a quick ruff test & im no way the best driver so dont hold me to it, I could probably do a little better if I took my time to perfect each lap.

 

[Smuttysy]

I tend to run 500pp/400bhp max/1100kg min and have had some seriously close races with some real oddballs. The M3's aren't as quick as most people believe them to be, and can be overpowered by Integras.
This is my own personal tests at the Red Bull Ring, RS tyres and ABS only.


Online race with my 497pp/354bhp/1100kg trolling Mini Cooper vs some ill prepared opposition.

 

[Man of Mister]

Very.

Compare them back-to-back on stock settings (GT500 car can't be the Stealth model, and the GT3 car can't be the 15th anniversary edition if you have it.) and then come back.

You're very much right.

 

[sepulturite81]

For example, if a GT3 GT-R and GT500 GT-R were limited to 500 PP, which one would win? The GT500 car every time.

It has far more downforce, less drag, and weighs less than the the GT3 car, so it would monster it every time.

It's also because gt3 cars are much much closer to their road car counterpart than the gt500 cars, you can see that from the interior view where most of them still have nearly a full road car dashboard in them. So the gt500s' are bound to be alot faster cos of that too.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

Yes but we're not just talking about PP restrictions alone, we're talking about all 3, PP, BHP & KG.

As with my little test above raising the weight of 1 car to match the heavier 1, or going above to meet the other two restrictions results in some sort of even racing.

I here what Azure is saying, but like I said there's loads of little combinations you could do & its never going to be perfect.

 

[GTP_Jonjig]

Online race with my 497pp/354bhp/1100kg trolling Mini Cooper vs some ill prepared opposition.

Got to ask, what relevance does the video have ? It just shows you cutting corners and ramming, only reason you won is because your competitors messed up and didn't take short cuts.. nothing to do with PP.

Edit: when I say "messed up and didn't take short cuts", I mean they "fell off the track and didn't take short cuts", not "they messed up by not taking short cuts"... just to clarify ..

 

[Voodoovaj]

Not to pick, but it's not that it considers torque "more", so much as it considers power over the whole rev-range, rather than just the peak value. That's only sensible, and it should be power rather than torque, since it's the power that determines how fast the car will accelerate. That follows directly from F=ma, as long as you remember that F is not constant over two crank rotations and that a is best measured in terms of time for our purposes, not crank rotations; torque, and hence energy, is delivered in bursts: more bursts per second, more power, more go.

Well, math aside, the result is still in favour of low torque engines. For instance, the Hondas or the LFA. They get to run far more horsepower than engines with more torque and that horsepower advantage is not equal to the torque advantage of high torque cars. That's what I am trying to say. The PP system should not penalise the torque to such a degree as it does. It should be refined a bit to make things more even.

Until then, this method of PP+weight+hp is the best solution.

 

[Griffith500]

Well, math aside, the result is still in favour of low torque engines. For instance, the Hondas or the LFA. They get to run far more horsepower than engines with more torque and that horsepower advantage is not equal to the torque advantage of high torque cars. That's what I am trying to say. The PP system should not penalise the torque to such a degree as it does. It should be refined a bit to make things more even.

Until then, this method of PP+weight+hp is the best solution.

Firstly, you have to remember the game only reports peak figures, but the PP value is certainly based on the entire rev range. Peak values alone are next-to-useless, as any race engine builder will tell you. In order to go fast, the engine needs to be in an operating condition where it is making good power all the time it is being used.

That's your starting point as an engine builder, then you work on shaping the torque curve to give you that power. Obviously, this is an iterative process combined with things like gear ratios etc.


You originally claimed that the PP system is calculated on torque, but that would mean "high torque" engines (by which I assume you mean engines that make peak torque lower in the rev range) would be slower for a given PP value, all else being equal.
We both agree that's not the case, so the PP system must be calculated on power - which is where the maths comes in; it cannot be cast aside when it is the only thing in question!

Remember: the game considers not just the peak value, but its value across the whole rev range. Where that method falls down is that an engine which performs excellently within the specific range it is used (on a certain circuit, in certain conditions, with certain gearing, by a certain driver, etc.) but really poorly elsewhere (i.e. where it isn't used) gets a lower PP value than one that is comparatively excellent everywhere in the rev range (even though that full range isn't put to use). Accounting for that is very difficult.


That is probably the reason some cars might seem disproportionately fast, aside from misunderstanding what power does. It's also why the power limiter can sometimes suck beyond a certain amount, because it brings more of the rev range up to the peak value - as soon as that peak value creeps below the minimum used engine speed, you're wasting PP. The way to game the power limiter is (I'd predict) to use a car that builds lots of power very rapidly / suddenly and limit it strongly so that it effectively forms a cliff / shelf in the power curve, with the "corner" at the minimum rpm required.


I don't dispute what you say about limiting all three factors; primarily because fast lap times aren't all about (engine) power.