Camber & Toe settings?

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*bump*

Okay, I know this is a really really old thread, but it's better than making a new one on a similar topic.

My question is, how do you determine the amount of camber needed in a particular car to compensate for the body roll? I know that the ideal amount would be equal to the degree of body roll, so that in the corners when the car rolls the wheel will return to a 90 degree position (relative to the ground), but how do you measure the amount of roll accurately?

Of course I can get the ideal value by testing again and again, I just wanted to know whether there is a faster way.

Thanks in advance 👍.
 
I'll try to send a message to Scaff. He's one of the experts on the mathematical part of figuring this stuff out.

Personally, i just adjust camber till it feels comfortable. Depending on the car, my settings vary wildly. I never use toe unless drastic measures call for it. I only use it alot if i'm rallying.

FWD: I tend to use anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 degrees of front camber, depending on how often i'll be needing to apply power in corners. Rear camber doesn't matter so much. Sometimes, i'll use virtually none, but sometimes i'll use alot (5 degrees!) if i'm trying to get the back-end loose for a twistier track.

Front Engine/ RWD: Depends on the car, again. I like anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees of front-end camber. I would use up to 7 degrees in GT1 on my Viper!
Cars with alot of ground clearance demand more camber in my opinion (to counteract leaning). For the rear, i'll use no camber at all if the real-life car had a live solid rear axle. For cars with an independent rear suspension, i like to add anywhere from .05 to 2.0 degrees of camber, but i usually don't use too much unless the car is like a BMW and can tolerate lots of rear-end flexibility.

Mid Engine / RWD: I dont' use too much camber on MR cars...mostly because they are 2-seater sports cars (generally) and are lowish to the ground. But for an oddball like the Stratos, i tend to experiment more.

Front Engine / AWD: Depends on the track. At a track with heavy, long periods of turning, i like using more front-end camber (2.0 to 4.0 degrees) with less rear-camber (1.0 to 2.0). But at a super-technical track like Autumn Ring, i prefer less front camber but more rear camber...anywhere from 2.0 to 3.5 degrees offset at the rear! This depends on the car, of course...my aim here is to make the back-end get a bit loose and swing around with feint motion.
 
I usually use the default value (2.0 front 1.0 rear), because it works fine most of the time. If I use an MR/RR car I'll swap the numbers around (1.0 front 2.0 rear) because I know the rear end will roll out more. That's for road cars. For ready-race cars (LMs, Special Models,etc) I usually use 0 front & rear since most of them already have super stiff springs and low ride heights (hence minimal body roll), this way, I could maximise the braking force of the tires with minimal loss in cornering grip. My settings are very generalised, and they work fine for me, but I want to improve my lap times even further, and it would only happen with fine-tuning.

I also never use toe, it slows down the car on the straights.
 
I usually use the default value (2.0 front 1.0 rear), because it works fine most of the time. If I use an MR/RR car I'll swap the numbers around (1.0 front 2.0 rear) because I know the rear end will roll out more. That's for road cars. For ready-race cars (LMs, Special Models,etc) I usually use 0 front & rear since most of them already have super stiff springs and low ride heights (hence minimal body roll), this way, I could maximise the braking force of the tires with minimal loss in cornering grip. My settings are very generalised, and they work fine for me, but I want to improve my lap times even further, and it would only happen with fine-tuning.

I also never use toe, it slows down the car on the straights.

Yeah it took me a long time to finally figure out that toe just slows us down (on pavement, anyways). 3 years ago, MacRoadster & I were having a setup versus setup competition. We were driving Lotus Europas, and the aim was to use the same tires & power, but vary the settings of each driver for maximum usefulness & comfort.

Long story short, we choose Deep Forest as the track. And i remember doing many laps (like 80 laps or something) and i just couldn't beat his record! I kept falling short by a half-second or so. :banghead:

And then i came up with a theory: well, what about the toe? Doesn't the fact that my tires are offset interfere with straight speed? I removed the toe and instantely gained almost an entire second over my previous record! :cool:
 
With the extremely limited data we get in the GT series we are pretty much left with feel alone for most set-up options. Particularly for camber and toe.

Camber is certainly the most straightforward one to get to grips, with and most cars will benefit from some toe, in fact zero camber will actually reduce corner grip. I would also be very wary of using body roll as a primary factor in setting camber, as while it is a useful indicator, it can be misleading. Looking at why camber is needed, it keeps our tyres as flat on the ground while cornering as possible,as such it is always a compromise. Body roll is the visiable effect of weight transfer, but is does not indicate how much load is being transferred. If you took a car and replaced the suspension with metal bars it would not show any visible body roll at all, however the exact same amount of weight would still be transferred.

As load/weight transfer is also a factor in setting camber (as the load on a tyre will effect its deflection from true and effect the amount of camber required to get it back to true) using body roll alone can be misleading. Think of a real world example, race spec cars are very stiffly sprung and have very little in the way of body roll, however they all run significant levels of camber.

Now in the real world camber is set by lapping and then measuring tyre temperature at the edge, middle and inside. Camber is adjusted and this is repeated until the temp is as close to equal at all three points for a tyre, which would indicate all parts of the tyre are being used equally, giving you the best grip across the tyre face. Unfortunately we can't do this is GT, so trial and error is about our only option, combined with consistent lapping. It does get a bit better in later games in the series as we can use the g-level meter to see how much grip we get on any given corner.


Toe is a much more difficult one to use well, and as you have both mentioned a great deal of care needs to be taken with it. It will reduce straight line speed if used incorrectly, but can help to tame cars with a tendency to oversteer, and help produce lift off oversteer in FWD cars (which can help massively with cornering).

Predictably I would recommend downloading my GT4 tuning guides (link in my sig) as they are just as applicable to all the other games in the GT series (and any other racing sim for that matter).

If you do have any further questions, feel free to ask and I will try and keep an eye on this thread.

Regards

Scaff
 
With the extremely limited data we get in the GT series we are pretty much left with feel alone for most set-up options. Particularly for camber and toe.

Camber is certainly the most straightforward one to get to grips, with and most cars will benefit from some toe, in fact zero camber will actually reduce corner grip. I would also be very wary of using body roll as a primary factor in setting camber, as while it is a useful indicator, it can be misleading. Looking at why camber is needed, it keeps our tyres as flat on the ground while cornering as possible,as such it is always a compromise. Body roll is the visiable effect of weight transfer, but is does not indicate how much load is being transferred. If you took a car and replaced the suspension with metal bars it would not show any visible body roll at all, however the exact same amount of weight would still be transferred.

As load/weight transfer is also a factor in setting camber (as the load on a tyre will effect its deflection from true and effect the amount of camber required to get it back to true) using body roll alone can be misleading. Think of a real world example, race spec cars are very stiffly sprung and have very little in the way of body roll, however they all run significant levels of camber.

Now in the real world camber is set by lapping and then measuring tyre temperature at the edge, middle and inside. Camber is adjusted and this is repeated until the temp is as close to equal at all three points for a tyre, which would indicate all parts of the tyre are being used equally, giving you the best grip across the tyre face. Unfortunately we can't do this is GT, so trial and error is about our only option, combined with consistent lapping. It does get a bit better in later games in the series as we can use the g-level meter to see how much grip we get on any given corner.

Thanks, we appreciate it. 👍

So that g-level meter actually does have some use?

Toe is a much more difficult one to use well, and as you have both mentioned a great deal of care needs to be taken with it. It will reduce straight line speed if used incorrectly, but can help to tame cars with a tendency to oversteer, and help produce lift off oversteer in FWD cars (which can help massively with cornering).

Predictably I would recommend downloading my GT4 tuning guides (link in my sig) as they are just as applicable to all the other games in the GT series (and any other racing sim for that matter).

If you do have any further questions, feel free to ask and I will try and keep an eye on this thread.

Regards

Scaff

Thanks again.
 
Thanks heaps Scaff 👍 So there's no other way to find out the optimum camber other than testing? If that's the case then I guess I'll have to make do. Problem is, it's very hard to lap consistently and get a fair comparison. Sometimes your time improved because you drive a better line, not because of the change in settings. Other times you feel the new setup is faster and more comfortable, but your time ends up slower!

For toe, the values in GT2 are reversed (compared to real life) aren't they? Negative is \ / and positive is / \ right?

I downloaded your tuning guide, but haven't read it due to lack of time. It looks great though. Thanks again 👍
 
Thanks heaps Scaff 👍 So there's no other way to find out the optimum camber other than testing? If that's the case then I guess I'll have to make do. Problem is, it's very hard to lap consistently and get a fair comparison. Sometimes your time improved because you drive a better line, not because of the change in settings. Other times you feel the new setup is faster and more comfortable, but your time ends up slower!

For toe, the values in GT2 are reversed (compared to real life) aren't they? Negative is \ / and positive is / \ right?

Yah, Sucahyo proved this is true when he added massive amounts of toe via his emulator (both positive and negative) to the point that you could actually see the wheels pointing inwards or outwards. Turns out they wound up pointing in the direction opposite to what they're supposed to be.

Some people disagree, but i think Suc proved the point. 👍

Here's the link.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=73639
 
Yep for GT2 toe settings are backwards (this doesn't appear to be the case for the other GTs).

However don't fall for Sucahyo's 'damper settings are reversed on GT2 and GT4, they are not; higher values = firmer dampers (always have been and at last in GT5P the specifically say that).


Regards

Scaff
 
Alright, thanks again for clearing that up 👍 :).

BTW I just read the whole of your tuning guide (yes, both parts), and I must say, it's very well written. I especially found the "when to shift" and "rating corners according to their importance" parts interesting, as I've never heard of them before. All in all, good work 👍.
 
Yep for GT2 toe settings are backwards (this doesn't appear to be the case for the other GTs).

However don't fall for Sucahyo's 'damper settings are reversed on GT2 and GT4, they are not; higher values = firmer dampers (always have been and at last in GT5P the specifically say that).


Regards

Scaff

No, I don't believe damper settings are backwards in GT2. I think that's a huge misconception.

That all started a few years back and it's my fault, honestly. I was posting at Racing-Line.org in fall of 2004. This website had recently changed hands at the time. The old owner of racing-line was very mellow apparently (kinda hands-0ff like Jordan) but the new owner was very abrasive. It was either his way or the highway! When I showed up at that site, I had no idea it was in turmoil. Racing-line (at the time) had a very strong reputation as a good source to keep your best lap times in competition with many hundreds of other members all over the world; apparently, the new owner wanted to change certain things so mutiny was abounding.

Anyways, long story longer, 95% of the members were officially quitting the site or being thrown off by the new owner (can't remember his name). He was a real prick. But I didn't know that yet. As soon as I met him online, I started telling him about my website and he wanted to start up a thread just for me in which I would review different racing car games. 👍

But within a week, I decided not to do it. Some of the members were calling me a traitor for "siding" with the new owner (even tho I had literally just shown up at the site) so I stopped going there. :guilty:

And one of the new owner's theories was: damper settings in GT2 are reversed. He was adamant about it. I disagreed, but I never forgot what he said, so when I met Sucahyo (with his emulator thingy) I asked him to test it. Even tho he came to the same conclusion as the Racing-Line owner, I just couldn't agree. It would mean a year's worth of tuning results were invalid. 👎 :(
 
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