ABS - better on or off

[shirakawaa]

There is no calibration for the DFGT. Just push the pedal to the floor once and its good to go.

That's the calibration I'm talking about. Some people fail to do that, resulting in very twitchy controls until they are pressed all the way down.

But yeah, on CS tires if you so much as touch the pedal while turning with BB at 5/5 the rear end will step out. Not very realistic. I really don't understand why cars in stock form (including 5/5 BB) are undrivable with all aids off.

That's because, as you say, the stock BB is incorrect. It should have been as a good starting point for most cars 5/0 or 5/1.

Occasionally I race in spec lobbies with cars from the recommended garage. I have to adjust the BB on the starting grid or down the front straight. I feel bad for the drivers that don't. They usually end up in the grass on turn 1 and exit out before the end of the first lap.

Yes, an inconvenience of the default BB is that on shuffle races or races involving recomended cars one has to set them up each time (once during practice, once as soon as the race starts). People who don't and try to disable the ABS end up with an unnatural and illogical (not to mention inconvenient) car response when braking.

 

[Morgoth_666]

Morgoth, I'm assuming you have a nice wheel/pedal setup. With the DFGT, the feedback is so poor that I basically tune so I have to use 90-100% of the brake travel for every corner of a track. It's just too difficult to feather the 0-15% travel required for safe stopping if the BB settings are high.

Warning: Novel-length post incoming!

I started GT5 with an old Driving Force (DFperiod) that I'd been using since GT3. Classic spring-and-pot mechanism. It was very difficult but I did become comfortable with it eventually. It is harder to find the 10-15% pressure that you need to use to brake while cornering than it is to get used to 60-80% for straight-line stopping, but it can be done. I set them low at first but kept getting frustrated by how long my stopping distances were, so I forced myself to find a way to make my foot co-operate.

Then my wheel lost power beyond my repair ability so I did replace it with a Fanatec with CSPs. Loved them right away but it took another couple of months to get used to both 900 degree steering and a completely different brake feeling. I'd say is it definitely easier than the old pedals, but still takes a lot of learning how it works - pressure of foot vs angle of foot. It's a lot easier to drive without the telemetry with the load-cell brake.

I didn't actually change how I set up the brakes in-game though. In fact when I'm using the DS3 for whatever reason I will leave them the same way, maybe drop it by one. I go to about 50% and "feel" how much more I can push it, and find where that 10-20% that I'll ease off to when starting to turn. I basically just rest my foot on the pedal for that with the wheel, GT5 brakes are incredibly sensitive. I'm not sure why, but I always seem to get better results keeping the lock-point at 70-90% than when I try to make full brake possible.

I could swear that they have changed the maximum speed at which the brake pedal pressure increases in a recent patch, you can't instantly go to full brake, which makes it a lot more forgiving than it used to be. Building pressure relatively slowly has always been the best way for me to get maximum braking in GT5.

Of course, I'm also a lot slower than a lot of people.

I'd say ABS 1 is clearly faster overall, just because you can get away with slight braking mistakes, but it's just so damned boring. I find balancing the car the most fun part of driving so I can't stand taking the feel away.


@CarBastard: There are actually two noises that the tires make, one is when they are approaching the limit but not locked, and then they quickly get much louder when they do lock. By keeping it just at or just below the point where they start to make noise, you will still have enough grip to control the car. This will of course wear the tires faster than keeping them completely silent. I can't quite name which F1 driver I remember being quoted as saying "if your tires aren't making any noise at all, you're not pushing hard enough."

 

[CarBastard]

Newer cars should be driven with ABS on and some even with traction control.

This is something I've thought about as well. Some cars are absurdely unrealistic in relation to the way they use TCS & ASM. Take for instance, the Ferrari 599 GTB. Last night I was reading an old issue I have of TG magazine and they said the chassis was actually built having in mind the use and calibration of the electronic aids. Also, that Marc Gene, the test driver for the 599XX, admitted that the car was as fast or even faster with the aids on. Apparently, everybody in the motoring press hails the 599 GTB as an amazing car with a great, forgiving handling and awesome electronic controls.

Now take the 599 GTB from GT5. Go on, switch all aids bar ABS off and jump to any track with the stock tyres. Suddenly, you realize that the car is near to undriveable and it's very under/oversteery and mercyless. Hmm...not the car that TG magazine described. So turn TCS to 1 and ASM to ON. Still, a bit better but not as glorious...hmmm...

Thing is that everything related to car electronics is wrong in GT5. Launch controls? Well, the Nissan GT-R 2012 MY Black Edition has been tested to do 0-100KpH in 2.8 seconds, but on GT5 it's something around 3.4. Traction controls? Estability management systems? Anti-lock brakes? I fear they are the same. Just a generic setting to all cars that neglects the fact that they all come from their factory with a system specially designed for the car.

 

[tomisnic]

This is something I've thought about as well. Some cars are absurdely unrealistic in relation to the way they use TCS & ASM. Take for instance, the Ferrari 599 GTB. Last night I was reading an old issue I have of TG magazine and they said the chassis was actually built having in mind the use and calibration of the electronic aids. Also, that Marc Gene, the test driver for the 599XX, admitted that the car was as fast or even faster with the aids on. Apparently, everybody in the motoring press hails the 599 GTB as an amazing car with a great, forgiving handling and awesome electronic controls.

Now take the 599 GTB from GT5. Go on, switch all aids bar ABS off and jump to any track with the stock tyres. Suddenly, you realize that the car is near to undriveable and it's very under/oversteery and mercyless. Hmm...not the car that TG magazine described. So turn TCS to 1 and ASM to ON. Still, a bit better but not as glorious...hmmm...

Thing is that everything related to car electronics is wrong in GT5. Launch controls? Well, the Nissan GT-R 2012 MY Black Edition has been tested to do 0-100KpH in 2.8 seconds, but on GT5 it's something around 3.4. Traction controls? Estability management systems? Anti-lock brakes? I fear they are the same. Just a generic setting to all cars that neglects the fact that they all come from their factory with a system specially designed for the car.

In real racing, electronic aids like traction control tend to make you faster; in GT5 they make you slower.

I found this on wikipedia:

In race cars: Traction control is used as a performance enhancement, allowing maximum traction under acceleration without wheel spin. When accelerating out of turn, it keeps the tires at optimal slip ratio.

This is not how traction control works in GT5. At least it doesn't feel that way.

 

[shirakawaa]

newer cars should be driven with ABS on and some even with traction control.

I missed this. The problem is that GT5 doesn't simulate ABS properly. It doesn't work at all like real systems. PD have opted for a super-efficient (digital-like) smooth brake power cut-off at the exact threshold of tire lockup, no matter what the road conditions and wheel loads are in any given moment. This encourages bad driving practice and suspension tunes.

ABS 1 in principle is more "realistic" on newer cars, but it isn't in practice.

 

[JDMKING13]

I missed this. The problem is that GT5 doesn't simulate ABS properly. It doesn't work at all like real systems. PD have opted for a super-efficient (digital-like) smooth brake power cut-off at the exact threshold of tire lockup, no matter what the road conditions and wheel loads are in any given moment. This encourages bad driving practice and suspension tunes.

ABS 1 in principle is more "realistic" on newer cars, but it isn't in practice.

That's all folks! Again if you want a realistic driving experience drive with ABS off and tune the brake balance. 👍

 

[chuyler1]

I'm pretty sure ABS does operate properly in the game...and its the reason most real life race car drivers, stunt drivers, and even cops don't use it. It prevents oversteer and rotation of the car under braking. The 5/5 default setting is incorrect for most cars in the game, but with ABS on it doesn't really matter because ABS will quickly redirect brake pressure to the correct tires. One could argue BB is irrelevant with ABS on.

ABS will decrease real life stopping distances, but I doubt it will decrease real life lap times because most of the distance shed is during the final stages of a 60-0 stop, you know the last 20 mph that you would never use on a track.

TCS in a typical road car will increase 0-60 times by preventing the car from achieving adequate wheel slip. Ever driven your car in a snow parking lot? With TCS on you'll barely get up to speed for drifting in the snow banks.

Launch control is another topic, something not modeled by GT5.

The TCS exception is highly computerized systems like the one on the modern GT-R. These systems are like autopilot. Mash the pedal to the floor (just like in GT5) and the computer will drive you around the track. Is it faster? For the typical GT-R owner, yes. For the typical F1 driver, probably not.

 

[Morgoth_666]

That's all folks! Again if you want a realistic driving experience drive with ABS off and tune the brake balance. 👍

Just wait, someone will be in here soon enough to claim that adjusting the brake pressure is "exactly the same thing" as using ABS. There always is.

 

[shirakawaa]

I'm pretty sure ABS does operate properly in the game...

Real ABS systems aren't able to hold up brakes at the threshold of tire lockup. They approximate that (which is what happens in GT) by quickly locking up and releasing brakes several times per second. This can actually cause "dashed" skid marks in real life (mainly on earlier systems, though).

It is one of the main reasons why they're bad for circuit driving. These quick lock-unlock cycles unsettle the car unpredictably when approaching corners, although not enough to cause problems in emergency stops.

Unpredictability of real ABS systems is another problem. They are not perfect, sometimes they can't prevent tires from locking (for example quick transitions between low and high grip surfaces).

Third problem: in many cases ABS systems are tuned conservatively so they activate before tires actually lock, causing an increase of stopping distance especially if suspensions or tire modifications have been performed.

As you say, real ABS systems don't decrease lap times. They are emergency/safety systems, meant to allow drivers a certain amount of steering control during emergency stops or when braking hard on uneven surfaces.

 

[szejok666]

At first, sorry for my English
I've done a lot of testing today and I must admit, that I was wrong with the brake balance. The standard 5/5 setting is wrong, makes cars completely unstable. Also I read probably all posts on this forum about brake balance in this game. Then I started tweaking the brakes. Almost all of cars I drive in GT are stock, all aids are off, manual transmission, but I use sensivity +1 on my DS3.

Since 5/5 setting does not reflects 50%/50% brake balance IRL, I think trying to match 10 in both, front/rear isn't a solution. I tried 6/4, 7/3 in many cars and it doesn't work. Front wheels locks up too quickly and brakes are just too sensitive.

So I changed my approach to this issue. Imagine, that there are 2 different brake systems in the car, each of them is independent. The problem in my opinion wasn't with front brakes. They're working fine in standard "5" setting. All of cars I've driven today (all types - FR, MR, FF, RR, 4WD, heavier, lighter etc.) didn't have problem with front brakes, let's say "front independent brake system" was working fine. I could feel when to brake hard, when I'm losing traction at front and how to drive without losing control of them.
The real pain in the *** was the "rear independent brake system", which is as sharp and powerful as front one (5/5 - think it means equal). And because during braking rear of the car is - let's simplify - lighter; such powerful brakes causes tail sliding. So - front one works good, rear one - doesn't.

The best solution is just to weaken rear brakes. From setting 1-5, the best one I think is 3. It simply matches the behaviour of front brakes - tail doesn't slide, and front doesn't plow. The overall brake system "feels as one", car is stable, not to mention control and maintaining a line. Also mathematically it matches. If front brakes, like I said before, with setting 5 are correct, we can assume that 5 - 100%, so 3 in the rear is 60%. Trying to make 100% of these both will give us 5 - 62,5%, 3 - 37,5% overall brake balance, which is quite close to real cars brake balance.
This setting worked on every single car I've driven today, and there were about 30 of them.

Summarizing, in my opinion the problem in GT5 isn't with brake balance, but only with the strenght of rear brakes, which are too powerful.
Also I think this problem can be easily solved.
Try this setting for yourself and share your thoughts please

 

[shirakawaa]

A problem in your calculations is that a setting of "0" still corresponds to a certain (non-zero) amount of brake strength.

 

[Greycap]

If I had one of those fancy fanatec pedals with a load cell and a vibration motor that rumbles when you're nearing threshold and when you lock up, then I might consider it 👍.

Only that it definitely doesn't go like that in real world, the first signs of locked brakes are indeed hearing the screech (on snow and gravel not even that) and feeling the steering going light.

One could argue BB is irrelevant with ABS on.

Err, no. Even the difference between 6/5 and 5/5 can decide if the car understeers hopelessly or tries to break loose when turning in. While the tyres won't lock completely they can exceed their total grip (lateral + longitudinal) with excessive balance values.

ABS will decrease real life stopping distances, but I doubt it will decrease real life lap times because most of the distance shed is during the final stages of a 60-0 stop, you know the last 20 mph that you would never use on a track.

Again, no. ABS actually makes braking distances longer, especially on slippery surfaces where one would expect it to give the most benefit but in practice it keeps the wheel turning while locking up would cause it to dig in the surface and stop the car faster. I've been on a driving technique course which demostrated a full braking on an icy road from 60 km/h with ABS on and off, the difference was several car lengths.

On a dry tarmac road then, ABS is even more unnecessary as it takes some serious braking power to lock the wheels - my car has four pot front calipers, no ABS and during four years of driving it I haven't managed to lock the wheels once despite having had to do my fair share of emergency brakings.

 

[szejok666]

I know, but I've taken front brakes as a reference point. In "5" setting I assume that's they're 100% power - strange theory, but it seems to work. Rear - 60% power of front. I don't say that 0 - is no brakes at all.
Or maybe I'm wrong...

 

[blah blah blah]

I still use it, but I don't find it "n00bish" because many cars in real life have this feature.

 

[o9lifted]

ABS Off. My settings are 4 in the front and 3 in the rear or sometimes 3 -2. Im driving with a DS3 and mistakes happens, but its like Im feeling the cars movement much more durings braking and yes, its much faster at cornering with ABS OFF.. When driving with ABS set to 1 or higher gives me problem focusing like im falling asleep :S :/

 

[THEPUNISHER]

What do you think is better with the G27/G25? with or without ABS?

its better without abs somehow the brakes is more powerfull , i didnt adjust anything yet brakes balancer is the key for abs off .

 

[BLACK86]

ive been off from day 1, just find it so boring with it on, kind of like when i drive 4wd, dont really have to worry but with it off you are always on edge, actually with 2.02 update not so much on edge.

 

[avens]

so for calibrating you only need to step on the gas and brake pedals while in-game, without having to leave the event and re-join?

 

[Morgoth_666]

so for calibrating you only need to step on the gas and brake pedals while in-game, without having to leave the event and re-join?

Yes just step on the brake fully while watching the cars prepare to start the first time you race. You usually floor it once the race starts so don't worry about the gas.

 

[zevehcj]

Playing with ABS off is the best way to play in my honest opinion. Like I've mentioned before in other ABS threads, ABS on 1 felt very easy/forgiving. I don't know how to explain it but braking with it off, feels much more responsive/better (to me it feels like you have 100% control of the brakes/car) compared with it on.

 

[terminator363]

Playing with ABS off is the best way to play in my honest opinion. Like I've mentioned before in other ABS threads, ABS on 1 felt very easy/forgiving. I don't know how to explain it but braking with it off, feels much more responsive/better (to me it feels like you have 100% control of the brakes/car) compared with it on.

By control you mean locking up, running off track, and crashing into a wall?

 

[zqxwjv]

I'm using a Fanatec GT3 RS wheel and Clubsport pedals and am lot faster with ABS off and brake balance at 2/1 (front/rear) than with ABS on and 5/5. And the additional control from light application of brakes on entry to turns makes it a heck of a lot more fun.

I have the all the stiffer pedal springs from the tuning kit installed and have the ABS vibration (wheel and pedals) set to 80%.

Fanatec GT3 RS with Clubsport Pedals: $329 (Fanatec)
Logitech G27 package: $235 (Amazon)

 

[Mister Slow]

Abs off is more challenging & takes time to perfect for each car, but that's what makes it more interesting.

Certainly makes Aspec & arcade mode AI more competitive when all aids are off.

There should be a pure sim mode for each car. Some cars have abs that can't be turned off, others with no driving aids & some with varying modes for aids.