Brake Balance

Sorry if this has been covered alreade but I could not find a post...

I drive with all assists off on my cars, with a G27 wheel. Now im not much of a tuner as i like to drive the cars for what they are and not make them into some silly horsepowered monster. My problem is this, when braking before a turn on almost all cars, FF FR or all wheel, I get terrible oversteer with just the slightest twitch of the wheel. I believe this is the brake bias and have adjusted some cars to make them feel better. But what is the correct way to tune this? My understanding is less rear brake and slighty more front will help with the oversteer problem but has anyone really come up with a good all round ratio. I know different cars will need more, but if i crank the front up to 6/7 they usually lock up too quick and is having the rear down to 2 going to sacrafice braking power or just how much pressure I can put on the pedal before locking up? Any input is valued!

Changing it to 7 front / 2 rear cleared up my Lotus wanting to impersonate a spinning top while going into corners. Now i'm playing round with values in this region (7/2 7/3 6/2 8/3 sort of thing) to see if any of them give an improvement. Scaff's guide up the top had some good pics in it that helped my understanding of how to set it.

Brake bias should depend on car layout and weight distribution. This is covered by Scaff in his tuning guide. Just to reiterate, an FF car with a heavier front, say 60% of curb mass should have considerably more front bias.

You also have to consider that braking is dynamic, meaning there's weight transfer towards the front thus increasing load on the front axle.

I've driven Nurburgring Nordschleife, for around thirty to forty hours since GT5 launched, and I've been looking for any and every way to improve my lap times.

So, after reading something here, I decided to try lowering the brake balance n my car from a traditional 8/4 configuration to a new and lower 5/3 setup.

At first it took me a while to adjust to the different braking zones, but now I have, I've found to my amazement (and pleasure), that newer and faster racing lines are being revealed on a daily basis!

Has anyone noticed this happening to them? 👍

What car are you driving and can you also post lap times for the pre and post brake adjustment laps?

I'm driving the Subaru Impreza Super Touring Car (527bhp/1030kg/RS-RS), with ABS=1 and no other aids, manual transmission, and a steering wheel.

Before I changed my brake balance, I was struggling to get below 6.40.xxx.

My new Personal best since changing the brake balance is 6.33.575.

I am inches away from breaking the 6.2x.xxx mark, as my current personal best includes one crash, and a couple of offs. If I can run a prefect lap (which I am trying to improve with the new lines I've discovered), I am confident that I will break the 6.2x.xxx mark sometime soon.

When I first started driving the Subie, I was happy enough to get a time below 7 minutes. As I got better at driving, 6.5x.xxx didn't seem so far away, then 6.4x.xxx etc. I'm sure the Subie has a theoretical fastest lap lower than 6.2x.xxx, but for now that is some way off. 👍

I need to spend some more time on the Ring. I think I'd enjoy racing garbage trucks on that course it's such a great experience. Good luck on finding the better lines. Sounds like you're on the right path.

Nice work on the time reductions. I need a little pet project like that.

Dude, you must be some kind of a legend!
I need a Nissan R92CP to achieve that sort of a lap time!

Nice mag, do you happen to autocross or anything? Tuning does make quite a difference in this game and in real life driving. Keep up the great work on your time reductions.

Been saying since the beginning. Also, no one setting works for everything; Brake bias need to be dailed in for the car, the tires you are using and the track to get the most out of your brakes.

Have fun.

Thanks for the great replies guys. I didn't realise those times were so good, since the car I am using is not the fastest.

I recently brought a Lexus IS-F concept (640bhp/1350kg/RS-RS), and fully tuned, it is of compatible speed and performance to the Subaru Super Touring Car, so I am going to see if I can replicate these times with that car.

I also have a couple of GT300 cars that I plan to try as well. I think the mid-engined Wedsport Lexus (~497bhp/1150kg/RS-RS) has a good chance, and I really want to try with the Cusco Dunlop Impreza (~374bhp/1100kg/RS-RS) even though it is seriously under powered. I'm sure I can get it below 7.xx.xxx ... 👍

Tagger

I need to spend some more time on the Ring. I think I'd enjoy racing garbage trucks on that course it's such a great experience.

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I agree with you, the Nurburgring is magical!

freedomweasel

Nice work on the time reductions. I need a little pet project like that.

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That's it. I first started out just trying to improve my lap times at the 'ring because I sucked big time. As time moved on, I gained more and more confidence, to the point where I could challenge the course rather than the course challenge me (if you get me). It's been fun trying to get an average car to do above average things. 👍

PedanticNerd

Dude, you must be some kind of a legend!
I need a Nissan R92CP to achieve that sort of a lap time!

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Thanks for the compliment, but I'm not a legend, in fact, I'm just an average racer. The reason I can race so fast at the 'ring, is that I have raced the track to exhaustion over the last few weeks, and I have a great car. Race me on any other track though, and you will see that I am NOT a legend! 👍

Shigegaki

Nice mag, do you happen to autocross or anything?

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No, not at all! I've only been driving in R/L for three years, this last weekend gone. 👍

Rocket Punch

Been saying since the beginning. Also, no one setting works for everything; Brake bias need to be dailed in for the car, the tires you are using and the track to get the most out of your brakes.

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I couldn't agree with you more. I've tried my Subie setup on other tracks and it is no where near as effective as it is on the 'ring. 👍

Hey! First of all, excuse for this Tarzan english (powered by Google translate).

Well... i found this two informations on the internet:


a) "If you feel the car understeering into the corner, try increasing the front brake pressure." (gt5mania.com).

and

b) "increasing brake bias to the front will put more braking force into the front tires. This will stabilize the car in braking zones and increase understeer at corner entry" (iracing.wikidot.com)


They look contraditory, no?

I tought the second was right, but in iRacing we adjust the percentage of Brake Bias, and in GT5 we adjust the power of brake in Front and Rear.

Now I am lost and dont know what information to take seriously. Could someone explain me a little theory of Brake Balance??

Thanks.👍👍👍👍👍👍

I know it has been discussed before among other things, but could not trace a dedicated thread for it, so here I go:

This thing should be available as an upgrade ONLY. It's not something stock cars have it IRL.

Now PD has left us guessing what is each car's stock brake settings to simulate the real thing.

How the hell should we know?? It's like giving to all cars fully adjustable suspension and leaving the default settings on it.

The least they could do is to tune each car brake settings as IRL and not just give us the 5/5 default setting.

For those complaining about brake upgrades, that's not the problem. You can have stronger brakes if you set it to 10.
So older cars should be 0-3, modern cars 4-7, race cars 8-10?? Still we have to do all the guesswork.

I don't mind tweaking and experimenting.
I just need first to have the completely stock car as a reference and not the 5/5 setting before I start tweaking.

I think this depends on whether the default 5/5 is an absolute value or a relative value. I have no idea, but it could be that 5/5 is relative to the car, so that the stock value for every car is normalised at 5/5 and any adjustment is relative to that. In which case, your point isn't really valid. But as I say, I've no knowledge on this, just throwing out this possibility.

I don't think setting it to 10 makes the brakes "stronger" certainly not in the sense that it would decrease stopping distances. If that was the case then you'd have no choice but to use 10/10 when doing time trials, and people aren't doing that.

I was under the impression that this setting (aside from allowing you to adjust the brake bias) basically dictated how far you had to push the pedal in order to reach 100% brake saturation.

I think brake strength is absolute and not relative. A guy who did some search with braking (can't remember the thread) found out braking distances being the same with same settings or something.

Even if it's relative the "stock" balance cannot be 5/5 for all cars.

DrTrouserPlank

I don't think setting it to 10 makes the brakes "stronger" certainly not in the sense that it would decrease stopping distances. If that was the case then you'd have no choice but to use 10/10 when doing time trials, and people aren't doing that.

I was under the impression that this setting (aside from allowing you to adjust the brake bias) basically dictated how far you had to push the pedal in order to reach 100% brake saturation.

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Pretty certain that's not it because the pedal indicator (when braking) is linear irrelevantly of the brake settings.

That would be under steering wheel / pedal settings. Unfortunately we do not have those either.

Bluez_Freak

Even if it's relative the "stock" balance cannot be 5/5 for all cars.

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Yeah, it could if both values were relative. Imagine the "real" value of a car's brake was actually 2/4 but this is then normalised to 5/5. So if you changed default setting to 7/7 then this would actually equate to 4/6 or if you changed it to 8/6 then this would equate to 5/5. OK, it's unlikely this is how it works, but it would be possible.

DanDiplo

Yeah, it could if both values were relative. Imagine the "real" value of a car's brake was actually 2/4 but this is then normalised to 5/5. So if you changed default setting to 7/7 then this would actually equate to 4/6 or if you changed it to 8/6 then this would equate to 5/5. OK, it's unlikely this is how it works, but it would be possible.

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I believe you are right. Every car will have a 5/5 setting, regardless of what its real setting is. Most cars are already front-biased, despite having 5/5 and some are more front-biased than others, yet they all have 5/5 to start.

That's why you can get away with a 4/8 setting on some cars and still be front-biased (especially with cars that have a lot of rear downforce).

Lot of guesswork - that's why we did not need that controller thing in the first place!!

Make it an upgrade only PD!!!

Where's that guy Scaff - he should know...

I was always under the assumption that a 10/10 would mean that the brakes were more powerful however would be more likely to lock up. Ive always noticed that a 8/7 or a 8/6 ratio on my ferrari 458 seems to decrease the breaking distance whilst preventing the back end strpping out (assuming i dont slam them on and have ABS on). With a 1/1 ratio Ive always felt that the car is kinder on its breaks hence longer break distance but less locking. although this may be in my head

Bluez_Freak

Lot of guesswork

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No, it's not. You can simply try for yourself. Just lower the front setting or raise the rear setting, take it to the track and see if it's still front-biased (the grip indicator will show which tyres loose grip first). It's how I have been tuning brakes since GT5P (which works exactly the same).

Bluez_Freak

Pretty certain that's not it because the pedal indicator (when braking) is linear irrelevantly of the brake settings.

That would be under steering wheel / pedal settings. Unfortunately we do not have those either.

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I think he means that once the indicator goes past a certain value along the linear pedal indicator then you will not get any extra braking force by pushing the pedal down further. For greater control you would want 100% brake saturation at the bottom of the pedal.

The brake bias settings in game are a bit vague.

I posted this in the GT5 main forum, but maybe I should have posted it here better.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=162136

Perhaps people here can enlighten more on how does this thing actually work??

Thanks.

Basically you can set the amount of brake force applied to the front and rear tyres.
Eg. 6:4 is 60%/40% to the front and rear. Naturally 10/10 is never the answer as the wheels will just lock up and as I said before the best braking happens when the wheel are on the edge of locking up.

The object of changing is to ensure that all tyres are doing the same "amount" of braking, as you get the most stopping force when the tyres are on the edge of grip. But, this would depend on the weight distribution of the car itself, this weight distribution does change under braking as it transfers forward under braking.

Generally, a little more brake bias towards the front is the answer as the load under braking will be higher on the front so to ensure all brakes are doing the same amount of "work" thats the answer.

So to sum up, more bias on the front is usually the answer, so that all wheels will be doing maximum amount of braking they can before locking up. However you will need to fiddle with this as the front wheels will usually be the first to lock up and you will loose steering. More bias to the back will lock the rear wheels and the back end will move out.

Try not to use brake bias for inducing oversteer though, there are far better ways of doing that and it usually increases your braking distances on the whole.

Thanks for that.

Do you know if stock 5/5 setting is actually an absolute setting for all cars or a relative setting for each car.

Check out NLxAROSA arguments in that post.

Need to do some tests on that.

One more thing: Isn't 10/10 setting with ABS "on" the best possible braking?? max power to the brakes but no lockups?

Gohon

The brake bias settings in game are a bit vague.

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Brake bias settings in the game are vague because the ABS driving assist messes with them. If you disable it, then they start making sense (braking behavior becomes consistent and coherent with them), and to have a balanced braking you need on a street car usually about 70-80% of the braking power on the front axle (something like 4/1 or 5/2. This will lock front tires on the Sport-hard compound at about 70-75% of total applied force on the brake pedal).

It's unfortunate that PD came up with such an inadequate brake modeling.
The default brake balancement setting (5/5) is completely wrong as it doesn't take into account the weight transfer occurring during braking and kind of works only because of the unrealistic ABS which works also as some kind of ultra-efficient dynamic electronic brake distribution controller.

It's very strange that this is not an upgrade you need to buy indeed.

If the standard 5/5 means the braking force is evenly distributed that would be even weirder. I'm pretty sure some of the older cars (and most likely some of the newer cheap ones) in game have drum brakes in the back which simply won't have the same capacity as the disks in front. Also, most (all?) cars have larger disks in front then in back.

I've always felt it is a shame that GT doesn't accurately reflect what equipment a car has. In GT5 they seem to have gone backwards though

Id doubt that, maximum braking could possibly be achieved with a 2:1 setting, if the brakes are at the point just before they lock up.

10:10 would certainly lock the brakes (definetely the back as it has less of a load on the rear than the front under braking).


Ill use some random numbers to illustrate my point.
A ratio of 3:1 could provide maximum braking under 100% brake pedal depression, which is good, occasionally you'll want this. So that gives you the full movement of the pedal to choose the right amount of braking, alot more room for different levels of braking.

However, a ratio of 9:3 might only give maximum braking with 33% brake pedal depression, which means you have much less movement of the pedal to control differing brake levels.

Im not sure that a 9 is 3 times stronger than a 3 on the "strength" of the brakes. I don't think the difference is that big, but I hope you get what im trying to say.