"Become an Alien", a video series aimed to polish your driving

Just wanted to log in and say thank you, and also to tell you how much I appreciate you going out of your way to help the community.
Watching the videos have really taught me where I have been making mistakes and how to correct them.
I would love to follow you around a track or have you follow me if possible. Thanks again

 

Love the videos!!

 

Thanks for the video series, look forward to more; subscribed. Great quality presentation and awesome info.

I've studied driving since reading 'The Art of Driving' about Stirling Moss as a child. 35 years later you taught me new skills, or a better approach to the techniques.

Watched the whole series yesterday, it highlighted some of my faults. I was dropping the brake and not releasing progressively, causing instability mid corner. Learnt to respect the brake more and setup better.

Tried to watch the setup series but needs a text for a better understanding.

Cheers

 

Are you talking about how there is no text in the first two setup videos?

I had the same problem when I tried to watch them on my phone, but they had no text. I watched them on my PS4, and they had text. The second half of the series, at or after Ep 3, has text that worked on my phone.

If you can't see text in the videos, maybe try watching the videos on a different device? Worked for me.

 

Thanks, Will give it a go on PS4 today. Sent it phone to TV, like the alien series which worked.

 

The Alien series all worked on my phone. Just some of the older videos don't work.

 

Yeah sorry about that, I used to work with YT annotations and they don´t work in every dispositive. The text is there, it just won´t display in a phone or smart TV.

 

Soon there will be:



Anyone here going to take part in the NCS and/or LGS?

 

Why do they insist in TT events? People want to race

This whole eSports thing won´t get anywhere until they get serious and organize proper events with decent lenght races and proper weekend structure.

 

They do have the ESL Go4 Cup.

 

1v1 instead of proper race, no tuning, no tyre wear, no fuel usage, assist available, always slow classes... doesn´t look like any fun.

Imagine if they organized proper leagues with pre-qualifying to decide who makes it to the grid. It would kick ass, and could bring lots of attention.

 

I'm personally interested in stock time trials which NCS might make it a first for pCARS? Never raced online on pCARS, is it a good experience?

 

I race every week in an online league and the racing is incredible.
I've tried a few public lobbies and they were abysmal.

 

I didn´t know where to include this as it´s not exactly about driving tips, but I thought it´s worth watching...



The video explains how track evolution works in the game. It might look something silly and insignificant but it can prevent you from making mistakes mixing up practice in different game modes -or sessions- and jumping to wrong conclusions about the latest setup change you´ve made.

 

It's 12 grid now, I had a go last Sunday no practice just jumped in was ok really, practice is needed tho as there are some fast guy's do it. Can get a bit messy at times tho but you should have a try and slow cars can be fun if you want league racing try Apex online racing, it's an official pCARS league now some quick guys there if you want a challenge and very clean too

edit: still haven't seen any aliens even tho there so common nowadays lol

 

I guess you have a point about slow cars being fun... even if there aren´t all that exciting to drive they produce good racing! I haven´t raced for a while and I´m really itching to get back on it...

BTW, keep on with your effort mate, I enjoy your stuff on YT

 

Not quite part of the series, but this video explains in 10 minutes all the "setup implications" parts that I used to include in the videos after the driving tips.

If you want to see graphically what are the most important setup items in every moment and how they change as you drive the car, this video will help.

 

This is a brilliant video. I can't even fathom the amount of hours I would have saved if I would have had something like this to guide me a few years back. A guide like this should come with every racing game.

After years of research, trial and error, and now your brilliant series, I feel I have a pretty good idea on how to manipulate various setting to change the ballance of a car. However, one area I feel I still struggle with, or where I lack overall confidence in my understanding, is where certain setting should be overall.

How do I say this.

Like, I get that if you have understeer, you soften the front or stiffen the rear. If you have oversteer, you stiffen the front and soften the rear. I get what effects of changing the settings in relation to one another do, but when do I know I've settled on the best overall setting?

Let's say I find that a car handles well with 50 units difference between the front and rear springs. Ok, that's fine. But how do I know when I should make the overall setting softer or stiffer?

I also get that it changes from track to track, and obviously a track like the Nordschlief is going to require softer springs than Hockenheim....but how do I know that I've settled on the best values? How do I know if both the front and rear should be one click stiffer, or two clicks softer?

Is it basically that as long as the car is not bottoming out causing loss of control, it's whatever feels best to me personally?

 

I for one don´t like to work with front-rear differences for the springs, I ignore that difference and only move both on the same direction when a car is way off in terms of overall stiffness. Why? Because if you soften both springs what you´ll get most times is more oversteer in entry and more understeer in exit. If you stiffen both ends what you´ll get most times is more understeer on entry and more oversteer on exit.

That´s why I avoid working with springs like that unless the car is way off: if you move them together in the same direction you rarely keep the same balance.

Normally I just adjust the front to get the car doing what I want into corners, and the rear springs to get the car doing what I want out of them, so I treat them as different items and ignore the diffences between them. In most cases, in the end, the front is stiffer, but not for all cars (if you don´t use mega stiff rear end for the Formula Gulf in this game it won´t turn once you are on the power).

For the sway bars I do work as you say: keeping the difference between both ends and trying softer and stiffer values for both ends. The balance remains pretty similar in this case if you move both ends along with each other.

About overall stiffness, it´s hard to find adjectives but I´d say a car too stiff feels erratic: you can´t see the slides coming, you´re constantly going over the grip limits and correcting, the transition from grip to no grip is mega fast and there´s a lot of skiding.

A car too soft feels lazy and boat-like, this one is easy to spot. It´s extremely predictable but not agile at all, it´s mega easy to feel slides coming and to correct them on time.

As you can see I constantly use the word feel because I like to go by that. I drive and then see what happens.

I´m sure there are many things that are wrong in the sense that they wouldn´t be done like this in motorsport but with the limited telemetry tools we have in the game I found working like this takes me where I want pretty fast.

 

@dyr_gl : I know I've thanked you for your setup tutorials, now I'd like to thank you for the "Becoming an Alien" tutorials. I really enjoy learning from your videos. Especially the tips on how to correct undesirable vehicle traits. I've been racing in leagues for a couple years and basically hit a self-taught plateau. I'm improving though thanks to some tips you've highlighted. Mostly, I need to smooth my transition from braking to acceleration. And stop pedaling the throttle on corner exits. Great job, and I'll keep checking in for future updates, tunes, etc. Thank you so much! =

 

I´m starting something different that sort of fits here, and I´ll take the chance to stick it in this thread as I don´t want to take the front page with many different video threads, that would be spammy.

It´s a racecraft guide, and it will have many different chapters. The idea is to explain what to do and what to avoid in many different situations during wheel to wheel fights. The first part is defensive driving down the straights, and I´ll try to stick the others in this post as I complete them. Hope you enjoy it!

 

before I played gt5 few year back casually and was no good. Got ps4 with projects cars December time. Seeing fast guys fingering a car around the track was disheartening. Eventually I stumbled upon your videos of alien driving and watched them all in one go. Next day I was setting PB Of 1-2 seconds on every track. I have continued to set PB since then. Gain is harder now but slowly coming.
In 6 months I hope to have near alien speed and become competent. So work still to be done.

What I want to say is your a top bloke for doing all that editing and uploading for public benifit.

A quick question, how long have you been sim racing, and were you quick from the get go ??

If you were not quick how long did it take to become quicker then 99% of people??

 

Glad to see I´m helping mate. As for the questions, I´ve been sim racing for exactly 1 year, but I had played less serious racing games for long.

I wasn´t quick from the get go, I got a wheel as I got the game so adapting to the new hardware took a while. It didn´t take long to get fast, when I begun to understand the feedback from the wheel it all fell into place very quick.

Still, when I watch old videos I realize even in the last 3-4 months I still keep making progress all the time I always see little things I don´t like in old footage if I go back in time far enough.

 

Added another piece on the racecraft guide, they´ll all go on page 2, post 51, here is the link to that post:

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...lish-your-driving.343918/page-2#post-11401271

 

Become an alien I sincerely doubt, but that my driving will improve I am absolutely sure. Thanks for the good work.

 

I had a go on Logitech challenger TT and was getting 1.28 then remembered seeing some setups on your page.... Since you sorted out Audi R18 proper, I'm currently a touch away from dipping in to the honey pot that is 1.22's..... But the top guys are running 1.19.5 what is wrong with them....


The top guys are in a team and they have optimised the setup and that played to about half a second over my setup

What I'm shocked about is the difference setup makes, I've been racing 6 months gt3 on stock and getting rolled by people... Now with this stuff it is a good possiblity I'm looking to gain some real time from setups

There are some quick people, they Dance through each section of the corner and they are measured in the inputs to a quite scary degree.i

 

I want to test the waters for a new idea. After all the theory I explained here, I want to try a different approach. I would like footage from a specific driver interested in recieving individual tips and tutoring, the goal is to create videos in which I explain areas where people can improve by using footage of other drivers, pointing out unconventional or negative habits and explaining how to correct them.

Of course, doing it with footage found on the internet it´s possible but I don´t want to be that idiot critizicing other´s driving for no reason. I look for drivers willing to improve but stuck in a certain level and unable to make progress.

So anyone interested, please leave here footage of your driving. All I need is the ability to see your pedal and wheel inputs, and a fairly decent sample in terms of lenght. A full stint on a combo you want to improve at with telemetry HUD activated and virtual wheel visible would be ideal.

Thanks in advance to anyone interested!

 

Added one more piece of the racecraft guide on post 51. Hope you enjoy it!

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...lish-your-driving.343918/page-2#post-11401271

 

I can´t add more videos on the OP, so this last one will have to go here:

 

The year is 2016. A new God has emerged to unite humanity, The God of Racing. A prophet walks amongst us, dyr_gl