Different car in different sessions - feature or bug?

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mattikake

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So I had my first Gavra league race last night against some proven high quality veterans. I did well in quali but come the race my car was a bag a turd. Madmansam1 had the same issue. I believe he was 3 seconds slower in the race compared to free practice, although I don't know what conditions he set.

In free practice - same conditions - I could consistently lap in the mid-low 1:44s with 100L of fuel, as would my team mate Hio_91. As you will see my first practice time reflected that - 100L of fuel and a conservative 1:44.4 lap. And low fuel Quali of a 1:43 was about right. Come the race and I really struggled to even get in the 1:45s and spun several times. There was a small handling issue. This is about the 7th time now I've counted that this has happened.

Is the car supposed to be randomly different like this as a simulation feature or is it a bug? It's hugely frustrating and pretty unfair if only some are affected when it comes to competitive racing.

edit: In fact it seems come half way through the race most were starting to struggle for grip. Tyres were not even 1/4 worn. Track temp was the same. It's like the rubbering-in effect was reversed. Weird.

 
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So no-one has come across this yet then? I would've expected that with track evolution the track should get faster not slower, providing not weather affected.

I was also thinking maybe all the spins and troubles we all had was due to debris or dirt on the track, maybe marbles? But to have a chance you kind of need to be able to see these changing track conditions, because you would, rather than it seemingly randomly affect your car.

Having looked closer at the lap times nearly everyone was slower in the latter half of the race as well as having more spins.
 
I've definitely experienced the handling to be different from quali to the race. Can't put my finger on it but on every occasion grip levels were far less in the race than in qualifying
 
The most noticable moment I exerienced it was at spa when race starts you just mis soooo much grip to properly take aeu rouge/la radillion.

That beeing said I didn't notice it that bad after that first lap. This leads me to believe the track isn't rubbered in lap 1. (Which I think would be a bug rather then a design descision)

I havent done descent research so I can be completely wrong.
 
It's hard to put your finger on. I'd expect the inexperienced, even some pad players to not notice this. It a small grip or balance change. It's not a major problem in a one off public lobby race but when you start competitive championships doing hours of free practice and setup tweaks, it's really frustrating (yes, as some of the comments from league guys last night, game-breakingly so. Remember competing us all that matters to these people)

When you can do 35 laps of Algarve all in the 1:44s in practice, but can't get close to it on another instance of the game, you know something isn't right.

What I don't get is how my teammate in and identical car with almost identical setup (we were sharing and testing setup data, as you would) had n o issues as you can plainly see from his pace.

If it's deliberate that cars are slightly different session to session, well that's kind of fine as a simulation, but really unfair as a competitive gaming experience. I don't think SMS would've deliberately done this as it's not how you create a sound platform for competition (or they'd surely of bragged about this realism feature, as they do).
 
I suspect part of it has to do with the fact tire warmers are used for the race and race only. If you do any tire pressure setup during practice or qualifying and get them dialed in just right then once you start the race your pressures are going to be way too high and it will be like driving on rock hard rubber. Really bizarre decision to not only have tire warmers only available for the race but to force them on for every car in every race. Every time I start a race my car feels different than it did in practice, sometimes it's a slight difference and sometimes it's a huge difference, pretty maddening.
 
It happens to me too ... and I'm also confused, I don't if it's a LiveTrack bug, or some conditions that are random as wind ...
 
Yeah wind. But if it was wind, you'd expect other people to succumb to it. So either randomly throughout the laps or the same spot every time every lap for everyone. This doesn't appear to happen in my experience - some people are affected all the time and others not affected ever.
 
Except we know that different people can experience totally different weather than others in the same server so there's no guarantee that everyone is experiencing the same wind.
 
R9NALD9
I've definitely experienced the handling to be different from quali to the race. Can't put my finger on it but on every occasion grip levels were far less in the race than in qualifying
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Yes, I feel the same thing. I thought I would be the one to feel, but after all I've seen enough players to say the same.
 
It nearly always seems to be the race that is affected. That's why I think it's something to do with the processing power involved or different people are getting different live track parameters for the race.

We had a host on Friday setup weather in a lobby to be rain then overcast, but everyone else was getting rain then rain at their view on the lobby. At least we knew that one in advance though.
 
mattikake
Yeah wind. But if it was wind, you'd expect other people to succumb to it. So either randomly throughout the laps or the same spot every time every lap for everyone. This doesn't appear to happen in my experience - some people are affected all the time and others not affected ever.
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Yes there seems to be a lot of wind in some of the numerous posts about PCars 2. My suggestion. Put it down until it's patched. Because you never no when ya might get hit by the wind,oversteer,tire pressure,dirt,grass, suspension,weather bug. If the game is so bad why would you continue to play it?
 
I'm not aware it is a known issue. I thought it was deliberately representing something that I couldn't see by other means. I.e. dirt/dust/marbles on the track is a great idea but useless if you can't see it. You'd be able to see a dirty track and be prepared for its effects in advance, if it were accurately simulating these effects.

I'm persevering and playing it because I paid for it.
 
If you guys are using softs and experiencing this then your tires are overheating. I’ve been chasing this issue since release and I too thought there was some mysterious bug. It comes down to the tires being cold in practice and hot during the race start. In the case of softs they are preheated to about 192F where the maximum temperature you want to see is about 180F at the upper limit. So already the tires are overheating on the grid. Naturally they will get hotter when the race starts if you are using them in conditions that you should be using hards. If someone gets bored you can sit on the grid and let your tires cool down to however low they will go then see if your times are comparable to your practice times. Take note though that your pressures will increase a lot as you sit still from the brakes being pre heated and radiating heat to the tires with no airflow around brakes. I suspect you’ll still be off pace though. This can happen with hards as well, but to a much lesser degree and you need a very high load track.

My league also had a race at Algarve with a 82F track temperature and the ones on softs during the race said they were slower in the race than in practice. Our last race was at Monza with a 64F track temperature. Here the softs only got into the high 170F’s during practice and wallah in the race the times were nearly identical to practice. Nearly identical because you never really push 100% in a race. Even in the Monza example the first few laps were touch and go as the tires were still overheating at the race start from being preheated and took a few laps to cool down to their final temperature. I have some more info I’ve found that I can post later.
 
Further to this I've since been able to prove/discover/recreate with 100% consistency that this issue NEVER happens for the host of an online race. It's only the peers that experience this problem.
 
So has there been any updates on the issue? Running a league with a larger race coming up and I'm really hoping that the session is not plagued with this issue... would suck to have all this preparation done and the race is ruined due to a massive pileup T1 due to the car feeling completely different. I have had the issue where it feels like my back tires are non-existent and the rear comes loose at ridiculously slow speeds (like 60 kph in a GTE car corner the kink at Daytona road course)...
 
mattikake
Further to this I've since been able to prove/discover/recreate with 100% consistency that this issue NEVER happens for the host of an online race. It's only the peers that experience this problem.
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Prove it ! Let's see this in action !
 
Jack Dulmage
So has there been any updates on the issue? Running a league with a larger race coming up and I'm really hoping that the session is not plagued with this issue... would suck to have all this preparation done and the race is ruined due to a massive pileup T1 due to the car feeling completely different. I have had the issue where it feels like my back tires are non-existent and the rear comes loose at ridiculously slow speeds (like 60 kph in a GTE car corner the kink at Daytona road course)...
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With the league's I'm in i have discovered these issues seem to be rarer if you keep the session simple - no fancy weather to sync with other players, a track temperature that the tyres have a good working range on, make sure everyone has a good connection speed, fewer sessions (less to go wrong if you have only quali and race) Etc.

If there is a problem with players in the session quit and change host. Oddly host connection speed seems to have little effect on this. In one of the leagues we have a host on a very fast connection and can cause this issue but if I take over it's been fine and my connection speed is a moderate 30mbs down 10mbs up (fastest I can get tho!). Other things I have noticed recently is if you get people struggling to get "session data" their licence info will be blank in the lobby screen and they will be screwed in the race.

GT3 cars are badly affected especially since the tyre model change. In fact I've stopped playing GT3 cars altogether.
 
mattikake
With the league's I'm in i have discovered these issues seem to be rarer if you keep the session simple - no fancy weather to sync with other players, a track temperature that the tyres have a good working range on, make sure everyone has a good connection speed, fewer sessions (less to go wrong if you have only quali and race) Etc.

If there is a problem with players in the session quit and change host. Oddly host connection speed seems to have little effect on this. In one of the leagues we have a host on a very fast connection and can cause this issue but if I take over it's been fine and my connection speed is a moderate 30mbs down 10mbs up (fastest I can get tho!). Other things I have noticed recently is if you get people struggling to get "session data" their licence info will be blank in the lobby screen and they will be screwed in the race.

GT3 cars are badly affected especially since the tyre model change. In fact I've stopped playing GT3 cars altogether.
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I will try this thanks
 
mattikake
With the league's I'm in i have discovered these issues seem to be rarer if you keep the session simple - no fancy weather to sync with other players, a track temperature that the tyres have a good working range on, make sure everyone has a good connection speed, fewer sessions (less to go wrong if you have only quali and race) Etc.

If there is a problem with players in the session quit and change host. Oddly host connection speed seems to have little effect on this. In one of the leagues we have a host on a very fast connection and can cause this issue but if I take over it's been fine and my connection speed is a moderate 30mbs down 10mbs up (fastest I can get tho!). Other things I have noticed recently is if you get people struggling to get "session data" their licence info will be blank in the lobby screen and they will be screwed in the race.

GT3 cars are badly affected especially since the tyre model change. In fact I've stopped playing GT3 cars altogether.
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Are you describing a bug that affects the cars performance? I haven’t come across that if that’s what you are saying. Every time I’ve had a car perform differently in the race it’s because the tires are a different temperature from what they were in practice.
 
ozwheels
Are you describing a bug that affects the cars performance? I haven’t come across that if that’s what you are saying. Every time I’ve had a car perform differently in the race it’s because the tires are a different temperature from what they were in practice.
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Nah different tyre temperatures are fine to deal with. This can affect you in fp or quali too when your tyres start cold. Some cars do start with tyres too hot like the lotus 25 but you can race and cool them in a couple of laps. The oversteeriness is much worse and less controllable than tyres that are a bit too hot.
 
I went into a race session last night where I had the "oversteer issue" and decided to test the temperature idea. So I waited in the track till my temps went down to practice and qually temps, but I still had an unrealistic amount of oversteer even at low speeds... tires were all the same...
 
mattikake
Nah different tyre temperatures are fine to deal with. This can affect you in fp or quali too when your tyres start cold. Some cars do start with tyres too hot like the lotus 25 but you can race and cool them in a couple of laps. The oversteeriness is much worse and less controllable than tyres that are a bit too hot.
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My question is, is that oversteeriness a bug in your opinion? I’ve had unexpected oversteer in races, but it’s always from the tire temps since they are preheated.
 
ozwheels
My question is, is that oversteeriness a bug in your opinion? I’ve had unexpected oversteer in races, but it’s always from the tire temps since they are preheated.
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It *feels* like it. If you get overheated tyres the car just feels slippery and generally difficult to drive and this is always rectified if you cool the tyres to the correct operating temps. You can always catch the slides too.

But with this issue cars seem to have even less grip and when it starts to slide no amount of correction does anything. Tyre temps seem to be irrelevant as it will happen on cold, correct temp or overheated tyres to what seems like to exact same behavior. It seems like an input delay like you're not acting fast enough by 2 or more seconds - way slower than human reaction time.

Very hard to explain to those who have never had it but those who have will know exactly what I mean.
 
I know exactly what you mean, I have the same feeling since pcars1. I already did everything, delete the settings file and started from scratch several times, tests, tests, tests, tests and more tests and always end up in the same place. I have already concluded that I am a poor player. I really lost the sense of trust here.
 

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