Division 2 January 2023

  • Thread starter JamCar0ne
  • 66 comments
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I had it shipped to my work so the porch pirates couldn't steal it. I got home around 5:30 last night, and I was driving by 7:00 after getting everything mounted and the software updated.

The load cell brake pedal is stiffer than a two peckered billy goat and will take some getting used to - my left leg is going to rival the Incredible Hulk's before long. The stiffness is not what I expected in that I thought that it would emulate a car's brake pedal - easy at first, then stiffer as you apply more pressure. It takes 132lbs to depress the pedal, and none of the reviews that I watched mentioned that the stiffness is there immediately when you apply the brake and stays throughout the entire pedal travel.

Another thing that surprised me was how heavy the wheel is by itself. Some reviewers dinged the wheel for feeling or looking "toy like", but that is not the impression that I have. I was running a Thrustmaster T150 prior to this, and the DD Pro wheel alone probably weighs at least a third or more of what the T150 wheel & base combined weighs.

So far, the FFB of the DD Pro impresses me. I know some DD Pro users have complained about Poliphony specifically reducing the DD Pro FFB for safety reasons, but it's definitely an improvement over what the T150 offered. Several times last night, the car would oversteer, and I could actually feel the tires chattering across the pavement through the wheel. That was something that I never got from the T150.

Overall, I'm impressed with the quality of DD Pro, and I expect I will become even more impressed as I spend more time with it.
Which pedal set did you get? Have you tried adjusting the Brake Force setting? Don't know what it is called on the DD Pro but on the CSL it is called BrF and adjusts the 'scale' of force on the pedal, not the range. So, lets say a setting of 100 equals 100 lbs per mm and a setting of 50 equals 50 lbs per mm. The range of braking remains the same (0-100%) but the amount of force needed to hit 100% changes.
 
The load cell brake pedal is stiffer than a two peckered billy goat and will take some getting used to - my left leg is going to rival the Incredible Hulk's before long. The stiffness is not what I expected in that I thought that it would emulate a car's brake pedal - easy at first, then stiffer as you apply more pressure.
I have a load cell on my CSL Elite set to the max and have learned to really enjoy it. A load cell reads how hard your are pressing and doesn't have very much travel. The feel is very different from a passenger car.
 
I have a load cell on my CSL Elite set to the max and have learned to really enjoy it. A load cell reads how hard your are pressing and doesn't have very much travel. The feel is very different from a passenger car.
If I recall correctly, you had the opportunity to drive a race car over the holidays, how did it's brake pedal compare?
 
GRID List 1.29.23

2JamCar0ne@JamCar0ne
2Dragonwhisky@Dragonwhisky (NEP)
2Flyingdisc315@Chiochansan
2Minigun_Jones@Minigunjones
2cesarr64@cesarr64
2Malizaghi@Malizaghi
2Track_King47@Track_King47
2Skills_19657@Skills
2AlabamaMayhem@AlabamaMayhem (NEP)
2Tex_Hill@TexHill
2Smhintzane@Smhintzane
2EvoSpec10@EvoSpecX
2jlbowler@JLBowler (HON)
2TCR_DrPoz@TCR_DrPoz (NEP)
2STKSWANN@STKSWANN (NEP)
2Gurney_67@Gurney67 (NEP)
2Tyro_2004_2004@Tyro (NEP)
2Cdn_Sweet_Tee@CdnSweetTee (NEP)
2x_tecra_x@Tecra
2RizlaTML@FCB-Rizla-TML
2OMG_Raw@Raw10_2u
2turkey_pepp3roni@beefbacon
2McTrucker000@McTrucker
 
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Last night was not fun for me, and I quit out of frustration as a result. In every race I've been in so far I've been more of a detriment to myself and others than anything else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to control the car like other drivers. As a result, I either end up spinning off the track, into other drivers, or both. None of which add to the fun or the experience for myself or others.

Then, I noticed that when I do have a clean lap that I am significantly off the lap time of the leaders. So much so, that I am in no way competitive and halfway through the race I'm like, "what's the use? I can't possibly catch up."

Last night, during the first race at Leguna Seca, I was being lapped by the leaders, and for some reason unknown to me I spun out well into the straight away after turn six and into the path of another driver. I apologize to whomever that was. It was not intentional, and I hope that I did not keep you from an opportunity to win.
 
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Last night was not fun for me, and I quit out of frustration as a result. In every race I've been in so far I've been more of a detriment to myself and others than anything else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to control the car like other drivers. As a result, I either end up spinning off the track, into other drivers, or both. None of which add to the fun or the experience for myself or others.

Then, I noticed that when I do have a clean lap that I am significantly off the lap time of the leaders. So much so, that I am in no way competitive and halfway through the race I'm like, "what's the use? I can't possibly catch up."

Last night, during the first race at Leguna Seca, I was being lapped by the leaders, and for some reason unknown me I spun out well into the straight away after turn six and into the path of another driver. I apologize to whomever that was. It was not intentional, and I hope that I did not keep you from an opportunity to win.
The last two combos last night are not very friendly when it comes to racing. Both seemed to require more effort to keep the car pointed the right direction than anything else.

As far as lap times go, I would suggest having a look at the replays and seeing what the faster guys are doing. Watch their brake points, shift points, gear selection, throttle inputs, and how much of the track they are using in places.
 
Last night was not fun for me, and I quit out of frustration as a result. In every race I've been in so far I've been more of a detriment to myself and others than anything else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to control the car like other drivers. As a result, I either end up spinning off the track, into other drivers, or both. None of which add to the fun or the experience for myself or others.

Then, I noticed that when I do have a clean lap that I am significantly off the lap time of the leaders. So much so, that I am in no way competitive and halfway through the race I'm like, "what's the use? I can't possibly catch up."

Last night, during the first race at Leguna Seca, I was being lapped by the leaders, and for some reason unknown me I spun out well into the straight away after turn six and into the path of another driver. I apologize to whomever that was. It was not intentional, and I hope that I did not keep you from an opportunity to win.
I feel the same way sometimes, but I also realize that I’m getting better every time I race. I have laps where I’m only a few seconds behind the leader and then have a lap where I’m 15 seconds off. I save replays and watch guys like jamcarone, jlbowler and dragonwhisky to see where they brake and how they take the turns. I either take turns too deep and lose too much speed or try to cut the corner off and end up sliding or spinning out. It’s definitely frustrating though but I know it’s 99% me and 1% my wheel setup. Go and try to do some time trials at the races we ran last night where there isn’t any pressure to see what you can work on without being in the spotlight. You can even load ghosts up of a time you’re trying to achieve and try to follow their line. You can only get better.
 
Last night was not fun for me, and I quit out of frustration as a result. In every race I've been in so far I've been more of a detriment to myself and others than anything else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to control the car like other drivers. As a result, I either end up spinning off the track, into other drivers, or both. None of which add to the fun or the experience for myself or others.

Then, I noticed that when I do have a clean lap that I am significantly off the lap time of the leaders. So much so, that I am in no way competitive and halfway through the race I'm like, "what's the use? I can't possibly catch up."

Last night, during the first race at Leguna Seca, I was being lapped by the leaders, and for some reason unknown to me I spun out well into the straight away after turn six and into the path of another driver. I apologize to whomever that was. It was not intentional, and I hope that I did not keep you from an opportunity to win.
Is it due to the load cell and just getting acclimated to a wheel that wants to tear your arms off?
 
How would everyone rate the lobby connection and stability last night?
What can I do differently to keep us on schedule?
A few slight wiggles here and there but nothing too bad.

For staying on schedule, the time between races has to be kept to a minimum.
 
How would everyone rate the lobby connection and stability last night?
What can I do differently to keep us on schedule?
I was connected just fine all night. Not sure how to improve the schedule... seemed like things moved right along to me. Just enough time to stand and stretch for a minute between races and only one 5min break.
 
How would everyone rate the lobby connection and stability last night?
What can I do differently to keep us on schedule?
I was pleasantly surprised how stable it was. Aside from the 5 min break you called, which I am much a fan of these days, I'm not sure where you would save time, excepting in between races, still kinda gotta wait for replays and scores to be confirmed before you reset. That was the earliest finish time I think we had all month.

On another note;

First off, I feel the need to apologize to D2. I thought I was running all my cars without TCS but it appears I haven’t set that in the correct place. I’ll have to watch all the replays and see if it was on for the entire night.

@Chiochansan I have no idea how to join the “chat” you said was set up last night.

Time for a patented Dragonwhisky philosophical meander.

TLDR skip to bottom of post.

@TexHill ’s comments are the catalyst for the below WoT but it can apply to anyone. I will expand a little on what @JLBowler and @AlabamaMayhem touched on.

The general, axiomatic rule is, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Using a standard 40hr work week, that’s about 5 years. I’ll say that again, 5 years. That’s just to become an “expert”. Not GOAT, expert.

Natural, inborn talent can shorten that up considerably and pigheadedness can extend it just as considerably.

Pigheadedness equates to refusing to accept the nut behind the wheel needs adjusting. While better equipment can certainly be advantageous to success in any competition, it’s the smallest factor. That aforementioned nut must decide to adapt to that “stiffer than a 2 peckered billy goat” brake pedal. Been wanting to find a place to plagiarize you TexHill. That’s some funny stuff there. The nut must also decide to commit to spending the time it takes to “watch tape” and start executing what they see. If you spend as much time watching tape as you do actually driving, you’ve got the ratio about right. And that counts, as least as far as I’m concerned, in those hours to get to expert.

If you have a look at the best folks in any sport/endeavor you’ll find they have much more than 10Khrs. The likes of Jordan, Woods and Verstappen didn’t get to the tops of their respective sports by loafing through the week and coming in cold on game/race day. They lived, breathed, slept and crapped their sports, when they were likely still in diapers. They probably had those 10Khrs before they were teenagers.

Some folks may be under the impression the JLBowler came in last night “cold” and wonder how he managed to keep the car on the track at all. I’ll tell you. He probably has somewhere upwards of +-50,000hrs, driving in various games, “watching tape” and otherwise living and breathing racing. I may be exaggerating by 1 or 2 hours there, but you get the idea. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years. His racing skillset is always, always just below “simmer”. Whether he wants to say so or not, he hasn’t come into a race “cold” since I’ve known him. If he spent just the time I have getting ready for last night’s races, since I don’t have 50Khrs under my belt, which includes golding the circuit experiences at the new tracks, time trial laps with both car and track to equal race laps, and at least 2 online sessions with all 3 combos, one of those sessions was with a D1 driver, @Xradkins, and I saved the replays and learned a thing or 2, he would’ve utterly owned all of us in all 6 races. Hell, he could probably do 5 laps practice at each and destroy D2. It takes him about 2 laps to get “on the boil” with any combo. He can poo poo it all he wants but, I’ve watched him do it on more than one occasion. If he actually gave an hour practice a week and showed up for an entire season he’d get promoted to D1. You know it's true J. The only reason he did have any offs was because he loafed through the week. Well, maybe not the only reason.

I could tell some OG story about me own self learning to play Gran Turismo 5 back in early 2012 and how horrible I was then, but I’ll save that for another day.

TLDR - Spend the time, do the work. It’s the only way to improve. There’s no go fast magic in equipment.
 
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As far as the chat goes.
You should see a division 2, under messages, in the game base menu, after hitting PS button. select it, D pad down to headset , join party. We had the wrong DW added to the group so you didn't have access last night. Sorry.
 
That order dragon spelled whisky correctly also. What are the chances?

Thank you all for the feedback.
 
As far as the chat goes.
You should see a division 2, under messages, in the game base menu, after hitting PS button. select it, D pad down to headset , join party. We had the wrong DW added to the group so you didn't have access last night. Sorry.
Got it now. Noticed my actual name showed up and had to go fix that.
That order dragon spelled whisky correctly also. What are the chances?

Thank you all for the feedback.
Bad whiskey is spelled with the e. Good whisky is spelled without the e. ;)😁
 
I feel the same way sometimes, but I also realize that I’m getting better every time I race. I have laps where I’m only a few seconds behind the leader and then have a lap where I’m 15 seconds off. I save replays and watch guys like jamcarone, jlbowler and dragonwhisky to see where they brake and how they take the turns. I either take turns too deep and lose too much speed or try to cut the corner off and end up sliding or spinning out. It’s definitely frustrating though but I know it’s 99% me and 1% my wheel setup. Go and try to do some time trials at the races we ran last night where there isn’t any pressure to see what you can work on without being in the spotlight. You can even load ghosts up of a time you’re trying to achieve and try to follow their line. You can only get better.
What happened to you last night?
 
My wheel disconnected somehow and I had no control so I went to the PlayStation dashboard to try and see why I had zero controls on my wheel and when I came back in y’all were already racing. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep waiting on round 2 at dragontail. I had very high hopes of rejoining round 3, I just didn’t capitalize very well.
 
I thought I watched someone plow straight into a wall. I couldn’t tell if it was you or @TexHill.
 
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It was me, apparently there isn’t a way to reconnect the dd pro without backing out to the dashboard. I thought it would keep me in the lobby but it didn’t.
 
Last night was not fun for me, and I quit out of frustration as a result. In every race I've been in so far I've been more of a detriment to myself and others than anything else. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to control the car like other drivers. As a result, I either end up spinning off the track, into other drivers, or both. None of which add to the fun or the experience for myself or others.

Then, I noticed that when I do have a clean lap that I am significantly off the lap time of the leaders. So much so, that I am in no way competitive and halfway through the race I'm like, "what's the use? I can't possibly catch up."

Last night, during the first race at Leguna Seca, I was being lapped by the leaders, and for some reason unknown to me I spun out well into the straight away after turn six and into the path of another driver. I apologize to whomever that was. It was not intentional, and I hope that I did not keep you from an opportunity to win.
If I didn't know better I would say you have plagiarized one of my texts from Jan 2020. At that point I was struggling with driving without the driving line aids. Your post sparked my interest so I watched a replay of r1r1 and broke out laughing as you pretty much followed my exact line through corner 1 on lap 1, with the exact same result. Too funny. The only difference is I was able to hang onto it for an extra 100 metres and slammed into the armco on the other side of the track. 🤣😂🤣

I am in agreement with the replay watching. It can be eye opening often. I watched more of the r1r1 replay and would like to respectfully make a couple of comments. I guess you can't really say 'No'. :) I think your driving lines are pretty good, you clip apexes often. Your corner entries and exits are wide, but that is always something to work on maximizing

What I did notice was you were not applying full brakes in high braking areas. As @Skills suggested: New load cell? My load cell for the CSL Elite set at 100 requires some pretty impressive effort to get it up to 100%. When I first got it up to 100 from 30 my office chair/A-frame-stand rig flexed so much I couldn't apply 100% brakes. Ergo the new rig. You then tried to increase braking by down shifting excessively causing instability due to the increased braking effort exerted on the rear wheels. Not to mention the effect on appropriate braking points, not the usual ones anyway.

One of the most valuable points I've picked up from replays is how to increase corner speed, especially in higher gear corners. And the proper gear for the corner has a major impact. Hammering out of a corner in 4th may not be as fast feathering the throttle in 5th. For most of the corners after the tunnel you were one gear lower that the consensus on the track. Through the twisties near and beyond the tunnels the gear of choice was 3rd, I even toyed with 4th in a couple of corners.

I mentioned that initially I was struggling with the loss of driving aids, but I truly believe the loss of them made me be more sensitive to the controlling of them with a resultant lowering of lap times. TCS is allowed, but if you're using it I would turn it off. Now when my lap times are worse than usual it is actually sometimes caused by TCS defaulting to 3, but mostly it's just me.

It's not a game, it's a simulation. And driving a race car at speed is difficult to do, and an art form to master. I? I am proof that driving a race car at a moderate pace is dead easy. I do it regularly. 😆😆
 
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If I didn't know better I would say you have plagiarized one of my texts from Jan 2020. At that point I was struggling with driving without the driving line aids. Your post sparked my interest so I watched a replay of r1r1 and broke out laughing as you pretty much followed my exact line through corner 1 on lap 1, with the exact same result. Too funny. The only difference is I was able to hang onto it for an extra 100 metres and slammed into the armco on the other side of the track. 🤣😂🤣

I am in agreement with the replay watching. It can be eye opening often. I watched more of the r1r1 replay and would like to respectfully make a couple of comments. I guess you can't really say 'No'. :) I think your driving lines are pretty good, you clip apexes often. Your corner entries and exits are wide, but that is always something to work on maximizing

What I did notice was you were not applying full brakes in high braking areas. As @Skills suggested: New load cell? My load cell for the CSL Elite set at 100 requires some pretty impressive effort to get it up to 100%. When I first got it up to 100 from 30 my office chair/A-frame-stand rig flexed so much I couldn't apply 100% brakes. Ergo the new rig. You then tried to increase braking by down shifting excessively causing instability due to the increased braking effort exerted on the rear wheels. Not to mention the effect on appropriate braking points, not the usual ones anyway.

One of the most valuable points I've picked up from replays is how to increase corner speed, especially in higher gear corners. And the proper gear for the corner has a major impact. Hammering out of a corner in 4th may not be as fast feathering the throttle in 5th. For most of the corners after the tunnel you were one gear lower that the consensus on the track. Through the twisties near and beyond the tunnels the gear of choice was 3rd, I even toyed with 4th in a couple of corners.

I mentioned that initially I was struggling with the loss of driving aids, but I truly believe the loss of them made me be more sensitive to the controlling of them with a resultant lowering of lap times. TCS is allowed, but if you're using it I would turn it off. Now when my lap times are worse than usual it is actually sometimes caused by TCS defaulting to 3, but mostly it's just me.

It's not a game, it's a simulation. And driving a race car at speed is difficult to do, and an art form to master. I? I am proof that driving a race car at a moderate pace is dead easy. I do it regularly. 😆😆
Thank you for the insight. Any assessment is appreciated. I know I struggle with consistency, especially with braking - something that pre-dates getting the load cell. I thought that moving to a load cell brake pedal would help with consistency, but that hasn't proven to be the case so far.

I find that there are times when I feel like I'm applying the brakes, but I look over at the brake indicator, and it's not registering. I've gone into the Fanatec software and calibrated the pedal, so I know that it's not the pedal, so that means that I'm not consistently feeling the pressure needed to apply the brakes.

As far as driving aids go, the only time that I use TCS is at the start of the race so I don't spin my tires, and I turn it off as soon as I shift into 3rd. I wish I could blame my piss poor driving on the aids, but unfortunately I can't.

Thanks!
 
The biggest thing I’m trying to learn is Sport Tires. It changes each track a little differently. I noticed once they got just a little worn it was like driving on ice for me. Haha

TexHill, just keep practicing man. Try using more throttle control on the sport tires than having to touch the brakes as much. I hope that helps man. Even if you are in last use that time to try some different approaches to turns and stuff.

If you want to practice, shoot me a msg on here, we can do some time trails with the cars and tracks for Sunday. I know I can use the practice. Haha
 
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