- 2,747
- Morgoth_666
Playing on PC here. Long post, but I don't want to leave out details and possibly have to answer questions later when I don't remember.
A while ago I was doing a bit of learning in the Mustang GT at the Nordschleife. I remember being very perplexed by why my laps and the AI's I was racing seemed to be over a minute faster in the winter than in other seasons despite having extreme trouble getting any grip out of my too-cold tires. Eventually I let it slide because trying to confirm was difficult, long track, fairly new to the game, too many variables, etc.
Fast forward to today. Starting Ginetta Jrs in career, so I went to private testing at the first track - Oulton Park Fosters - to get used to the car/track a bit(summer, light cloud). Drove a while, got comfortable, posted several 1:14 laps. Then I did a quick Time Trial run of 4-5 laps, similar track conditions, got a mid 1:14 on a lap that didn't feel at all special.
Then I wanted to get a look at how the bots drove, so set up a custom race in similar conditions for a practice session, 19 AI. I made one setup change, dropped the engine brake map to 0 to see if it helped with turn-in. Immediately the FFB on my wheel was different, was bumping and kicking all over the place like I'm driving on rough stones even driving out of pit lane. Otherwise, everything felt pretty much the same, could push just as hard at the same cornering speeds, etc.
After 15 minutes my best lap was a high 1:27, and I was about a second faster than them at 80%. Well that seems a bit odd. I even got out a stopwatch while driving to confirm the timing was accurate and my result was very close to what the game said(only about a tenth off).
Back to private testing(exact same day/weather as custom race now). Bumpy FFB gone. Car appeared to drive exactly the same. Just did 2 or 3 laps, a not terribly good one was a mid :16, and stopwatch confirmed this.
Back to Custom race. Bumpy FFB came back. Laps immediately jumped back up to nearly 1:30 again.
So I checked out the career race. The race is earlier in the year so both air and track are cooler. Earlier in the day as well. There's only 11 bots. The very bumpy FFB was still there, the car drove as I'd expect, but the lap times I was setting were :15s and :16s now. That's within a believable margin of small driver error and track conditions, although what felt like really solid laps were not getting close to the :14s I was doing earlier without much trouble. This time the best bot after 15 minutes was 1.7 seconds behind me, at slightly higher 85%.
So why is the custom race so much different than the others? If it was a Live Track condition thing you would expect there would be a lot less grip slowing me down, instead of being able to push just as hard at the same corner speeds, shifting at all the same places and be 12 seconds a lap slower. I left my setup the same all along except that one brake map change which I left at zero. It's not exactly a complicated track where it's tough to tell how well you really did.
I know I'm not the most consistent or fastest driver, but I can tell things that would make that much difference. A couple seconds here and there because of my driving or track conditions, sure. But this is very strange. It's like the game just plain ran slower than in the other modes. Makes trying to record your times along with the AI's times at different difficulty levels that much more complicated. I have the Steam overlay running(no V-sync), I got 60-70 FPS by myself and 40-45 with the AI in both custom and career -- which seems to rule framerate out, not that it should affect this. I've read that lots of bots can affect the physics themselves but I thought that was just on XBox and haven't heard of the times changing.
After writing this up I went back to time trial, nice smooth FFB and a 1:15 no problem. Then back to custom race, bumpy FFB returned. It's rather annoying, hopefully can be fixed with FFB adjustments. I haven't changed it much, it's on Immersive, 80 gain is the only change aside from the menu spring. My first flyer was a 1:26.9(it didn't seem as good as my 1:27s earlier but not going to worry about that). I've noticed in the karts that it felt a bit different in the race than in testing but not this noticeable, and the times were about the same(but this was career where it isn't as bad). I should check if running less AI in custom lessens the effect but haven't yet.
A while ago I was doing a bit of learning in the Mustang GT at the Nordschleife. I remember being very perplexed by why my laps and the AI's I was racing seemed to be over a minute faster in the winter than in other seasons despite having extreme trouble getting any grip out of my too-cold tires. Eventually I let it slide because trying to confirm was difficult, long track, fairly new to the game, too many variables, etc.
Fast forward to today. Starting Ginetta Jrs in career, so I went to private testing at the first track - Oulton Park Fosters - to get used to the car/track a bit(summer, light cloud). Drove a while, got comfortable, posted several 1:14 laps. Then I did a quick Time Trial run of 4-5 laps, similar track conditions, got a mid 1:14 on a lap that didn't feel at all special.
Then I wanted to get a look at how the bots drove, so set up a custom race in similar conditions for a practice session, 19 AI. I made one setup change, dropped the engine brake map to 0 to see if it helped with turn-in. Immediately the FFB on my wheel was different, was bumping and kicking all over the place like I'm driving on rough stones even driving out of pit lane. Otherwise, everything felt pretty much the same, could push just as hard at the same cornering speeds, etc.
After 15 minutes my best lap was a high 1:27, and I was about a second faster than them at 80%. Well that seems a bit odd. I even got out a stopwatch while driving to confirm the timing was accurate and my result was very close to what the game said(only about a tenth off).
Back to private testing(exact same day/weather as custom race now). Bumpy FFB gone. Car appeared to drive exactly the same. Just did 2 or 3 laps, a not terribly good one was a mid :16, and stopwatch confirmed this.
Back to Custom race. Bumpy FFB came back. Laps immediately jumped back up to nearly 1:30 again.
So I checked out the career race. The race is earlier in the year so both air and track are cooler. Earlier in the day as well. There's only 11 bots. The very bumpy FFB was still there, the car drove as I'd expect, but the lap times I was setting were :15s and :16s now. That's within a believable margin of small driver error and track conditions, although what felt like really solid laps were not getting close to the :14s I was doing earlier without much trouble. This time the best bot after 15 minutes was 1.7 seconds behind me, at slightly higher 85%.
So why is the custom race so much different than the others? If it was a Live Track condition thing you would expect there would be a lot less grip slowing me down, instead of being able to push just as hard at the same corner speeds, shifting at all the same places and be 12 seconds a lap slower. I left my setup the same all along except that one brake map change which I left at zero. It's not exactly a complicated track where it's tough to tell how well you really did.
I know I'm not the most consistent or fastest driver, but I can tell things that would make that much difference. A couple seconds here and there because of my driving or track conditions, sure. But this is very strange. It's like the game just plain ran slower than in the other modes. Makes trying to record your times along with the AI's times at different difficulty levels that much more complicated. I have the Steam overlay running(no V-sync), I got 60-70 FPS by myself and 40-45 with the AI in both custom and career -- which seems to rule framerate out, not that it should affect this. I've read that lots of bots can affect the physics themselves but I thought that was just on XBox and haven't heard of the times changing.
After writing this up I went back to time trial, nice smooth FFB and a 1:15 no problem. Then back to custom race, bumpy FFB returned. It's rather annoying, hopefully can be fixed with FFB adjustments. I haven't changed it much, it's on Immersive, 80 gain is the only change aside from the menu spring. My first flyer was a 1:26.9(it didn't seem as good as my 1:27s earlier but not going to worry about that). I've noticed in the karts that it felt a bit different in the race than in testing but not this noticeable, and the times were about the same(but this was career where it isn't as bad). I should check if running less AI in custom lessens the effect but haven't yet.
