Performance points worthless?

watermelon punch · Apr 23, 2011

Toronado
Second, GT5's physics engine has problems with really light cars like the Caterham, so it should be faster in the game than it is.[/color][/b][/font]

Ah HA! I've suspected this since day one playing gt5!
I thought I was crazy but maybe not, that it seemed like game environment unfairly favours heavier cars!

Mike Rotch
PP put an enormous proportion of the formulation on weight. Lightness bumps PP up a lot more than increasing HP does - so lightweight cars are heavily penalised.

I KNEW IT!!

NEVER take a lightweight car into mix & match pp restricted online race unless you're just THAT good. (Or a glutton for punishment!) Because it's never going to be as fast... and worse, it makes it more likely the heavier cars will bully you right off the track. (Even without hitting a light car, a heavier car will upset the air/balance of the lighter car even on a clean pass!)

SlyckTires
It's a little beyond me as to why PP doesn't take into account things like tyre choice (massive), gearbox type (not so) and suspension settings as these things obviously have a huge impact on performance. For instance, in any pp limited race, all the smart players are going to have fully adjustable suspension, gearboxes and racing softs, otherwise you're doomed. Which means that you either stick to the same couple of cars all the time or you have to make sure you have these items fitted to any car you're likely to want to use in a race. And since even I've got 500 now (and I said I wasn't going to collect), most of them will never get driven in anger.

What SlyckTires said.

I wish there was a pinned topic in the online section explaining this about pp restricted races for newbies.
That you might as well just go back to aspec if you don't have full suspension, full LSD, & full transmission on all cars you might expect to want to use in an online race.
There's no way to force restrict tuning parts out of a race. So unless you play in an organized race with ALL people being trustworthy for the honour system, you should just assume everyone's adding the best items... even if they SAY it's "street legal" or "road cars". This generally does NOT mean everyone's sticking to sports suspension & whatnot.

CMvan46
Do you think a beginner would ever EVER look at a caterham and think you know this car is fairly fast (should be faster)... well the answer is no.

I did!
Then my bf looked it up online and read to me something and warned me not to get my hopes up about the caterham! LOL

Toronto122
But in GT5 for some reason, I can have an Autozam at 420 and I can detune an RX-7 to 420, and kickthe Autozam's butt.

Exactly, it totally fails to take into account different classes of cars.

stadti
I don't think that suspension settings should be added to pps, because suspension supports the way a driver handles the car, which is different from player to player. So my suspension settings in a well tuned car fit my style of driving that one car, but maybe those are absolutely horrible for another persion with another driving style. How should someone thake this into account when calculating the pp for a car?

The point being that without the fully customizable suspension, NO ONE could tune the suspension to their driving style, they'd have to learn to maneuver the car as-is... So not having that option would put down the handle-quality of the car for ANYONE.

But the point is still moot because a M3 with ANY suspension set up (or none) is going to handle loads better than a hatch with no full suspension... even at the same pp.

DMoss84
The ultra lite cars automatically get overrated for some reason. Otherwise, the pp system is very accurate.

I think it's more of a sliding scale personally. It's not just the ultra light cars. It's that the lighter the car, the more severe the pp rating is off.

z06fun
Keep in mind that it actually uses area under the hp curve vs. weight and not simply hp/weight to calculate PP. What this means is you generally don't want to use cars that have high torque and a flat Hp curve in the PP system as they will be generally slower at a given pp, compared to a flat torque curve or (best) rising torque curve. The you adjust the Tranny to use the high hp area of the curve and that tends to be fastest in the PP system.

I said this in another thread and it was like speaking into a vacuum. LOL.
My bf told me that you want a HILL design in the graph, you don't want an X. And I've found this to be true. Sometimes I power-limit down to get rid of the X & make it into a hill design.

chuyler1
The key ingredient to close racing with performance points is running cars that would be closely matched in real life. Keicars vs supercars of equal PP is not a realistic comparison. Likewise, older cars vs newer cars, light cars vs heavy cars, and 4wd cars vs 2wd cars simply don't play out well. There are exceptions, but they are often track specific.

Furthermore, you need to match tire compounds and tuning options. A car with a custom 6-speed transmission with short gears will run circles around a car with a stock transmission at Tsukuba.

You're very clue-ful about this!! Thank you because I've felt like I'm in a vacuum with what I've noticed.
People just act like they're just a "better driver" when in fact, they just have a better car! I sometimes think they're being sneaky & know full well. But sometimes I really think they're clueless and really think they're JUST THAT GOOD. LOL

I found out in a k-car race online... The CERVO is unfairly advantaged against the other k-cars because of it's transmission. The servo lapped me (in a much older car) twice, and 2 other (newer model) cars once... When I think if that guy wasn't in a CERVO, the race would've been EXPONENTIALLY closer... because that advantage upset the entire dynamic of the race... because the other 2 people were driving with wildly risky behaviour in response to the CERVO being so out ahead on them.
Now I'm not saying the guy in the CERVO would not have won anyway in another car, or a 1-make race with the same opponents, he's pretty darn swift... but his edge was a tad ridiculous.

ChadSpeed
Really? So for example putting a 5sp racing transmission in a 70' Challenger, along with racing suspension. Lets say we don't adjust anything and put it against a stock 70' Challenger on any track. The Challenger with the trans and suspension will eat the stock one alive. It will have 1 extra gear and a much higher top speed, all while reducing nose dive under braking, and body roll in corners with the suspension. The suspension should at least make the car more balanced into and out of a corner, while the trans will simply put the car in a different category.

Oh exactly... Simply getting that LURCHING wallow out of an antique muscle car is enough to put it into a different category.
I upgraded my Mercury Cougar, and my bf was watching me drive it (not knowing what I was driving), and when I was done he said - "That was your Cougar?!!" Because you know, it wasn't lurching at every brake point & wallowing like an undercooked marshmallow out of every turn... and I had the ability to actually steer it.
(IMHO, steering an unmodified antique muscle car is something you really shouldn't do at all. LOL

)

Tornado · Apr 23, 2011

ChadSpeed
Really? So for example putting a 5sp racing transmission in a 70' Challenger, along with racing suspension. Lets say we don't adjust anything and put it against a stock 70' Challenger on any track. The Challenger with the trans and suspension will eat the stock one alive. It will have 1 extra gear and a much higher top speed, all while reducing nose dive under braking, and body roll in corners with the suspension. The suspension should at least make the car more balanced into and out of a corner, while the trans will simply put the car in a different category. When you perform a modification to a car that increases top speed by 50 mph the PP should be adjusted.

Spoken like someone who doesn't know what happens when you install a racing transmission without adjusting anything on it, because for the overwhelming majority of the cars it doesn't do any of the things you seem to think that it does.

Maybe the Challenger is the exception, but I know for a fact that every car I've ever equipped a racing tranny to has nearly identical top speed to the stock transmission when initially equipped, with the only difference being that the ratios are more evenly spaced (and many cars get an extra gear as well). In regards to the Challenger, this means that the only practical difference in performance is going to be that the one with the racing tranny is going to spin the tires that much more.
The only time I've ever seen notable changes is for the handful of cars where it actually lowers the top speed compared to the original transmission. And for the 5 or so automatic transmission cars that actually drive like they have an automatic, it actually makes them accelerate slower without increasing the top speed at all.

This is completely ignoring, of course, that performing "a modification to a car that increases top speed by 50 mph" may not actually make the car any faster in practice.

And in regards to the bit you mentioned about equipping the racing suspension, it should be painfully obvious why that is irrelevant. For starters, suspension changes are subjective.

watermelon punch · Apr 23, 2011

Toronado
nearly identical top speed to the stock transmission when initially equipped

Why on earth would you bother to get a fully customizable transmission and then leave it how it is when "initially equipped"??
:confused:

Equipping it necessarily assumes you are now going tinker! 💡

And anyway, who cares about top speed when you're talking about making a poor handling car into a manageable car... ???

You can take 2 cars with the same exact top speed, and put them on a tight track with hinky corners, and watch the one well handling car lap the poor handling car.

Suspension can and does do that.

It is far from irrelevant and subjective in my experience. Just equipping the fully customizable suspension would be a clue that you're now going to tinker with the car to make it suit you - instead of you learning to deal with the car AS IS, & putting up with its shortcomings.

Toronado
And in regards to the bit you mentioned about equipping the racing suspension, it should be painfully obvious why that is irrelevant. For starters, suspension changes are subjective.[/font][/color][/b]

IMHO - better handling = FASTER.

How is faster irrelevant in a race?

(Seriously, I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm seriously confused. And yes, I want to know if other people just slap on a top level transmission & leave it as-is without even looking at it.)

alx-ndr · Apr 23, 2011

Limit horsepower and PP... simple. That solves the problem of having high powered heavy cars against lower powered lighter cars.

T-Unit95 · Apr 23, 2011

I think Performance Points are based on the power, weight and areodynamics of the car. It dosen't take suspension setup, Gear ratios and Tyre type into account because theres no perfect setup for the said parts.

Example: A 33hp 85kg Go Kart with 120km/h top speed has 512pp. This is because it's intended to be a race ready vehicle.

Tornado · Apr 23, 2011

watermelonpunch
Why on earth would you bother to get a fully customizable transmission and then leave it how it is when "initially equipped"??

Equipping it necessarily assumes you are now going tinker! 💡

Read the whole conversation. The original point that I was debating was that simply equipping a racing transmission should increase PP.

watermelonpunch
You can take 2 cars with the same exact top speed, and put them on a tight track with hinky corners, and watch the one well handling car lap the poor handling car.

Suspension can and does do that.

That is not, and never was, the point of contention.

watermelonpunch
It is far from irrelevant and subjective in my experience. Just equipping the fully customizable suspension would be a clue that you're now going to tinker with the car to make it suit you - instead of you learning to deal with the car AS IS, & putting up with its shortcomings.

You can not objectively put value on suspension settings, because suspension tuning is inherently subjective. I may go faster with a suspension setup I put together than one that you put together, and vice versa.
PP works off of objective measurements (downforce, weight, horsepower, torque) because that is the only way that it can work.

watermelonpunch
How is faster irrelevant in a race?

Because we are talking about why PP are not taken into account for suspension, LSD, and transmission settings. Because there is no way to take them into account.
I can take any car in this game and make it drive absolutely awful by screwing with the LSD and suspension. How would the PP system be able to measure a car like that? The game would have no way of knowing how the car will drive, so it has no idea whether the changes I made to the car are better or worse.

watermelon punch · Apr 23, 2011

Toronado
Read the whole conversation. The original point that I was debating was that simply equipping a racing transmission should increase PP.

And my point is, once you DO equip those, you have the opportunity to make the handling better.

If you don't equip, you have no chance to!

So again, why on earth assume people are equipping fully customizable options and then not customizing them???

And why on earth could you assume that people are equipping them and then making the car harder to handle? LOL That's ridiculous.

alx-ndr
Limit horsepower and PP... simple. That solves the problem of having high powered heavy cars against lower powered lighter cars.

Is there a way to restrict for BOTH PP and HP??
If there is, I haven't seen it.

I wish you could!
It would be nice if you could also restrict "racing mods" as opposed to sports mods. It would be nice if you could restrict to no mods.

Tornado · Apr 23, 2011

watermelonpunch
And my point is, once you DO equip those, you have the opportunity to make the handling better.

Which just brings us back to the whole "subjective" thing. Because "opportunity" is not "definite improvement," and the only way that PP values can be measured is when dealing with "definite improvement."

watermelonpunch
If you don't equip, you have no chance to!

So again, why on earth assume people are equipping fully customizable options and then not customizing them???

I don't know. How about you ask the person who brought up the topic in the first place.

ChadSpeed · Apr 23, 2011

I was just making the point that simply having them, even if you didn't adjust for some reason increases the performance of any given car. FM3 knows this and its calculated in the PI of the car. Of course tuning can then increase performance even further, wich the PI or PP would not go up after tuning.

So my point still is installing Racing Transmission and FC Suspension will make you car perform better, which in a non PD world means the Performance Points should increase after install. Thats common sense.

Along with the flywheel and clutch upgrades also adding to the PP of car, increasing the speed of your shifts and causing faster acceleration.

Also with some very basic trans tuning for a Muscle car the trans will never cause more wheel spin, I learned way back in FM2 that stretching out 1,2,3 gears a bit gives much better acceleration, because the Muscle cars have gobs of torque in all RPM, so even a longer gear will still pull hard, and more evenly put down the power, making throttle adjustments easier.

If you still don't agree Toranodo, we just won't, oh well and its been fun debate.

watermelon punch · Apr 23, 2011

Toronado
Which just brings us back to the whole "subjective" thing. Because "opportunity" is not "definite improvement," and the only way that PP values can be measured is when dealing with "definite improvement."

Well, okay, I see your point, if that's the way you see it. I guess I just see it as, okay, if you've equipped the full-customize, I assume you're going to use it to make the car better.
So to me it would be helpful if pp took that into account.

Though obviously in regard to online gaming, I think just having a setting where you can restrict out certain mods would be better. But perhaps that's too heavy a selection aspect to put in the game, I don't know.

Toronado
I don't know. How about you ask the person who brought up the topic in the first place.

Well, as far as I saw, you were the only one suggesting that people would equip a full customize item, and then not customize it. That's why I was asking you. But if you don't know, then I think that proves my point... most people wouldn't equip the full customize item and then not customize it!

ChadSpeed
I was just making the point that simply having them, even if you didn't adjust for some reason increases the performance of any given car.

Does it really?
And if so how? Can you explain this to me, because I'm really interested in tuning the full customizable, even though I don't necessarily understand WHY things work all the time. Just equipping it making the car better... I'm lost?
(I had suspected this - but I figured it was my imagination & the fact I don't really fully understand how cars work.)

ChadSpeed
If you still don't agree Toranodo, we just won't, oh well and its been fun debate.

Yeah, I think I'm starting to see where Toranado is going with his line of thinking... He'd want some tangible number or effect if it's going to effect the PP rating.
I don't agree. But that's, frankly, the least of the flaws with the pp system anyway! LOL

ChadSpeed · Apr 23, 2011

watermelonpunch
Does it really?
And if so how? Can you explain this to me, because I'm really interested in tuning the full customizable, even though I don't necessarily understand WHY things work all the time. Just equipping it making the car better... I'm lost?
(I had suspected this - but I figured it was my imagination & the fact I don't really fully understand how cars work.)

Okay here we go. Lets say for example you are using a Mazda 3. It comes with a 4 speed auto, or 5 speed manual. In GT5 its the 5 speed manual. The stock gearing is set for fuel economy, not performance. The gears are spaced a good distance apart. Equip the FC trans and you gain a 6th gear. Even if the top speed is kept the same the addition of that extra gear allows the motor to stay in its power range for long, and get there quicker. As I understand it also the FC trans completes shifts faster than a stck trans.

As for why the FC suspension should up the PP number, refer back to your post agreeing with me about the muscle car with and without the suspension.

I'm sure someone could test out the exact time gained per lap with these mods, but I know they improve your cars performance so I have no need.

Exorcet · Apr 23, 2011

Toronado
simply equipping a racing transmission should increase PP.

alx-ndr
Limit horsepower and PP

With these two things, and the removal of downforce value effecting PP, PP would be complete.

Whether or not a race transmission is set to make the car faster does not matter. It has the potential to make the car better, and that is what should be taken into account.

Downforce is as "subjective" as suspension settings. However, PD needs to fix the aerodynamics and make high downforce create large drag in order for downforce tuning to work properly.

watermelon punch · Apr 23, 2011

ChadSpeed
Okay here we go. Lets say for example you are using a Mazda 3. It comes with a 4 speed auto, or 5 speed manual. In GT5 its the 5 speed manual. The stock gearing is set for fuel economy, not performance. The gears are spaced a good distance apart. Equip the FC trans and you gain a 6th gear. Even if the top speed is kept the same the addition of that extra gear allows the motor to stay in its power range for long, and get there quicker. As I understand it also the FC trans completes shifts faster than a stck trans.

Okay got that... So the full customizable transmission does all that (what you said) better than that middle transmission you can upgrade to?

Because my bf says if you just want another gear, some cars just that middle upgrade will get you where you want to go. He kind of looks at me weird when I just totally skip that middle one & go straight for the top, fully customizable... He'll say, "what do you need that for, this car's fine you just need another gear"
But my thinking being - I don't want to waste the credits buying the middle one, when I might want to tinker after all & then I'd have to buy the full-custom one anyway... so just go straight for full-custom to begin with and save the trouble. You get your extra gear, and it's customizable. And then I can go out test it and adjust it to be what I think is good (for me or whatever track I'm going to put it on at the moment).

I'll admit to having an "overkill" problem.

But the bottom line... am I getting a BETTER transmission out of the full-custom trans at DEFAULT settings, than I would be with the middle upgrade trans that just adds another gear?

Or are you just saying that ANY upgrade is just better than stock... which I would've assumed was sure, obvious?

ChadSpeed
As for why the FC suspension should up the PP number, refer back to your post agreeing with me about the muscle car with and without the suspension.

I'm sure someone could test out the exact time gained per lap with these mods, but I know they improve your cars performance so I have no need.

Totally agree with you there. And I agree I would be happy if that was included in the PP.

But I can't honestly say that just adding the full-custom suspension on my Cougar would've done the trick in making it not a lurching wallowing thing you're best not to steer at all.

It took me a bit of tinkering to get it to the point where I could get it to brake & steer almost like what I would call a "normal" car.
I don't know if it was significantly better (or better at all) with the default full-custom suspension settings.

Now my bf says that I'm doing myself a disservice by trying to customize all my cars to suit MY driving, instead of learning how to drive any car the way it comes as is...
I believe that's true!
BUT, again, the fact that you CAN customize a car to suit your driving means that you can improve your performance in the car, without improving your driving skills... which to my mind means - BETTER PERFORMING CAR.

Anyway, that's my thinking.

SlyckTires · Apr 24, 2011

stadti
I don't think that suspension settings should be added to pps, because suspension supports the way a driver handles the car, which is different from player to player. So my suspension settings in a well tuned car fit my style of driving that one car, but maybe those are absolutely horrible for another persion with another driving style. How should someone thake this into account when calculating the pp for a car?

I don't think that it is lame if the PP would be linked to lap speed, I think this is an impossible task to do, because maybe one person knows a way to take a corner better than another one, so the laptimes will differ even when using the same car with the same tuning.

However I do think that PD should change the PP system in a way that if the cars have the same PP value those cars should be fairly competitive to each other, which means 0,5-1 second difference if the same player drives them around the same track.

Maybe not the settings themselves then, but the fact you have an adjustable gearbox at all should be reflected as this gives an advantage over a car that doesn't (else why fit one?)

eran0004 · Apr 24, 2011

Equal performance points does not say that the cars are equal in every aspect, but that their strengths and weaknesses should balance out evenly. An example could be that you have one car that is really fast on the straights but slower through the corners, and one car that is the exact opposite of that. They may have the same performance points, but if you have a track with long straights then the first car will win, and if you have a track with a lot of corners the other car will win. In a balanced track it should be a close race.

Performance points are not useless in my opinion, I think it's a good way to make sure that the cars are fairly close to each other. But performance points doesn't chose the car for you, you still have to make an educated choise based on what driving style you prefer and the type of track you're racing at.

rjcobra · Apr 24, 2011

Exorcet
The problem is your test. You have one data point. Not statistically significant.

PP is a great addition, and has made online much better. I recommend it over HP/weight.

One thing to know about it though, is that it does not make cars equal in performance, but equivalent. Basically, two cars with 600 PP should be a good match for each other, but one may have a top speed of 150 mph, while the other goes 200. Obviously, on certain tracks, one will slaughter the other despite being equal PP. You need to judge how to distribute your PP for certain tracks, because PP doesn't take the track into account.

Exactly

Johnnypenso · Apr 25, 2011

There are exceptions to the PP system but in my experience, it's cars that are overrated, not underrated meaning you can find cars that aren't as fast at a given PP but rarely one that is consistently faster than the rest. In the beginning I didn't like PP online racing either, but after trying it out the last couple of weeks, I've won races with literally dozens of cars at all PP levels and some cars you'd never think would normally have a chance. Some of the heavy Jags, Mercedes, Bimmers, Aston Martins etc. do quite well on the bigger tracks because they still handle well in spite of their weight being higher than a Ferrari for example, and they get compensated in the PP system for all that extra weight with lots of ponies, meaning they do very well on the straights.

watermelon punch · Apr 25, 2011

Johnnypenso
There are exceptions to the PP system but in my experience, it's cars that are overrated, not underrated meaning you can find cars that aren't as fast at a given PP but rarely one that is consistently faster than the rest. In the beginning I didn't like PP online racing either, but after trying it out the last couple of weeks, I've won races with literally dozens of cars at all PP levels and some cars you'd never think would normally have a chance. Some of the heavy Jags, Mercedes, Bimmers, Aston Martins etc. do quite well on the bigger tracks because they still handle well in spite of their weight being higher than a Ferrari for example, and they get compensated in the PP system for all that extra weight with lots of ponies, meaning they do very well on the straights.

Relevant point here being that you're comparing cars in ballpark classes.
I think if you stick to same class, same pp, same drivetrain, similar car quality... similar tuning rules... or carefully choose competitor cars... the PP system could make a whole lot of sense.

But as a whole, it's not indicative of a whole lot simply because you can jack a kei car up to 450pp, doesn't mean it can compete at all with a sports car @ 450pp.

Or you know, taking a lesser kind of car & pitting it against a high end car... Or an antique car against a modern car... the fairness is not so much.
(Say a modern muscle car against an antique muscle car. Or a Mitsubishi against a BMW. Just as an example.)

Performance points worthless?

watermelon punch

Tornado

watermelon punch

alx-ndr

T-Unit95

Tornado

watermelon punch

Tornado

ChadSpeed

watermelon punch

ChadSpeed

Exorcet

watermelon punch

SlyckTires

eran0004

rjcobra

Johnnypenso

Well known double poster

watermelon punch

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