Do you have to run ABS-1 to compete online?

[czerka]

I'm just getting back into online play and honestly cannot recall.

 

[Oshawa-Joe]

No, you don't have to run ABS if you don't want to.

 

[NinjaDesignz]

Its more of a driver aid. I think you would be faster with it off but I'd never run without ABS on.

 

[jimantonic]

To be fair it probably does cost you a small amount of time not using ABS, simply down to the fact that you need to be much more precise with your braking points. Tyres are also an issue, the club I race with have a qualifier before each season to determin which division you'll be racing in, this season it was the stock Mito on comfort softs, and any brake application over 75% would lock the wheels, where as on racing tyres you can mash the pedal almost as much as using ABS. A heads up for you, if you use low grip tyres avoid the racing brake upgrade, you'll be locking up to easily if you use them.

 

[MatskiMonk]

Depends on the room I would have thought. There are ABS:0 rooms out there. I actually won my first online race in GT6 in an ABS:0 room a week or so back...first time I'd raced with the ABS off

 

[SnakeOfBacon]

I've never actually played with ABS on any setting other than 1 or occasionally 0, what are the other 9 options even there for? Same with traction control, it's either 0 (usually) or 1 (some LMP cars) for me, but TCS=1 is too strong to be the lowest setting above "off".

 

[TexRex]

I've never actually played with ABS on any setting other than 1 or occasionally 0, what are the other 9 options even there for?

There appears to be some additional lock prevention, but it seems the difference between 1 and 0 is greater than the difference between 10 and 1.

 

[Mini Stiggy]

ABS 1 is what most people run. Generally your going to be faster with it at 1 than 0. Don't run anything higher than 1 though.

 

[ColouredBadger]

I rarely run with ABS on whilst in lobbies or offline, and never suffer for it and in some cases I'm faster because I'm more precise with braking points. I'm very competitive in lobbies too, even ones in my casual racing group (CCR). But it has to be set up to the car through the brake balance and if it's a racing car or not.

For example.

Street Cars run with 1 ABS as they are street cars and have it anyway.

Race Cars set to 0 ABS but the brake balance has to be adjusted depending on weight balance. So, for a Corvette racing car you'd use 3 : 2 on the balance and you can stamp on the brakes all day long and never lock up, as long as you don't steer and brake. That is where you make up your time, by learning to effectively brake and how to trail brake correctly into corners.

So the answer is no. You don't need to run any ABS or ABS 1 to be competitive, you just need to run what you're comfortable with. But, I advise that you only use 0 ABS if you have a wheel and pedals as again, it's more precise.

 

[CTznOfTime]

I only drive with either Abs 1 or 0 for older cars when the technology didnt exist yet...

I never use anything higher than 1.

But then i am practically never online, so i dont know.

I think there should even be a restriction of ABS =0 for anyone to drive online with historic cars...

 

[DSkywalker01]

Brakes are too unrealistic in GT, they lock way to easy. ABS 1 is best for lobbies.

I ran my NASCAR roadcourse lobby with ABS off for the challenge of it.

 

[BrandonW77]

To be fair it probably does cost you a small amount of time not using ABS, simply down to the fact that you need to be much more precise with your braking points. Tyres are also an issue, the club I race with have a qualifier before each season to determin which division you'll be racing in, this season it was the stock Mito on comfort softs, and any brake application over 75% would lock the wheels, where as on racing tyres you can mash the pedal almost as much as using ABS. A heads up for you, if you use low grip tyres avoid the racing brake upgrade, you'll be locking up to easily if you use them.

This isn't really true. Generally cars behave better with ABS off and seem to be a bit more precise. And once you get used to it you can be more precise with your braking which ultimately makes you faster. You do have to pay a bit more attention to your braking zones, but that's a good habit to learn anyway.

It's thought that ABS puts some kind of phantom TC on the car that helps keep the rear planted. I don't have any documentation of this, but most cars feel a bit more twitch with ABS off.

This applies to street cars with regular brakes. Racing brakes behave differently without ABS and are harder to master.

 

[Robbks]

OK, question on ABS in game.

Does the ABS activation actually affect braking on the wheels that are not locking up?
i.e Similar to a proper smart ABS system with EBD fitted.
Or is ABS activation (due to a rear inside wheel locking) going to cause an increase in braking distances as it removes braking power from wheels that have sufficient grip.

 

[BrandonW77]

OK, question on ABS in game.

Does the ABS activation actually affect braking on the wheels that are not locking up?
i.e Similar to a proper smart ABS system with EBD fitted.
Or is ABS activation (due to a rear inside wheel locking) going to cause an increase in braking distances as it removes braking power from wheels that have sufficient grip.

More like the second option, kinda. If you have ABS on and give 100% braking it will take longer to stop than if you give it 80-90% brake.

 

[Robbks]

That's what I seem to be finding, but wasn't sure
The braking model is pretty terrible though as pointed out above.
you take a reasonable handfling car (M3, BRZ) lighten it and tune the suspension to give better grip, put on SM or SS tyres but leave the brakes stock
But you still cant bury the pedal over 60% and not lock it up.... total BS

for a real life comparison, I took part in a track day and defensive driving training recently, using a 2006 Subaru Legacy 3.0R SPecB. my own road car.
Factory fitted brakes are great (316mm front discs) good tyres.
Factory upgrade STi Suspension (4/6kg springs)
Part of the day was a braking test from 60, 80, 100 and 120km/h on wet and dry race-track.
No matter how hard I buried the brakes in the dry at any speed did the ABS activate. Or at any time during the no-limits sessions (speeds up to 160km/h)
Obviously there was activation in the wet tests.

Do it with the same car in game..

 

[BrandonW77]

That's what I seem to be finding, but wasn't sure
The braking model is pretty terrible though as pointed out above.
you take a reasonable handfling car (M3, BRZ) lighten it and tune the suspension to give better grip, put on SM or SS tyres but leave the brakes stock
But you still cant bury the pedal over 60% and not lock it up.... total BS

for a real life comparison, I took part in a track day and defensive driving training recently, using a 2006 Subaru Legacy 3.0R SPecB. my own road car.
Factory fitted brakes are great (316mm front discs) good tyres.
Factory upgrade STi Suspension (4/6kg springs)
Part of the day was a braking test from 60, 80, 100 and 120km/h on wet and dry race-track.
No matter how hard I buried the brakes in the dry at any speed did the ABS activate. Or at any time during the no-limits sessions (speeds up to 160km/h)
Obviously there was activation in the wet tests.

Do it with the same car in game..

Depends on the brake bias setting, the default 5/5 doesn't accurately represent all cars. When I run without ABS I adjust the brake bias so that I only get lock up at high speeds under heavy braking. At more moderate speeds I can give it 100% and rarely, if ever, lock them.

 

[Robbks]

This promotes another question
Lockup AT high speed,
or Lockup FROM high-speed.

Burying the pedal at 200km/h should not result in an instant lockup AT 200km/h, there's just far too much kinetic energy at play.
it "should" give you more chance of a lockup at say 130-100km/h as you've now got the pad warmed up to it's ideal temp and highest CoF.

why do stock brakes in GT6 greatly overpower even upgraded tyres?

hmmm, Back to the brake testing

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

why do stock brakes in GT6 greatly overpower even upgraded tyres?

Simple, brake balance, default 5/5 might be too strong for most older street cars. Try lower it to 2/2 o 3/3, old muscle cars might need 1/1 or even 0/0 to simulate drum brakes And same value front and back will usually still have front bias brake, GT6 is different than GT5, where 5/5 means equal force applied. Not the case in GT6, I often have to run higher rear like 5/7 to get more balanced bias ( not too much at the front )- I don't use ABS since GT5 release day.

I only drive with either Abs 1 or 0 for older cars when the technology didnt exist yet...

I never use anything higher than 1.

But then i am practically never online, so i dont know.

I think there should even be a restriction of ABS =0 for anyone to drive online with historic cars...

And this :

ABS in GT games is not simulation of the real-life ABS system, nor it ever was. It is a braking assist, named "ABS".

For instance, in GT2, both ABS and TCS assists were not available on cars as default, but they were part of the Tuning Shop offer.

Also, TCS is not representative (simulation) of real-life traction control.

In short, all assits in GT - ABS, TCS, ASM - are exactly that, assists. They are not intentded to "simulate" the functionality of similar assits in real-life but to serve as an assist for their field of assistance in virtual driving.

Using ABS on some car in GT games because "that car have ABS in real life" does not mean you are suddenly using that car under "factotry spec". It means you are overshadowing the proper handling and dynamics of the car with the exessive assist.

Of course, such assist allows for the much faster driving in TT, but it is logical. In the perfect world we would have separated leaderboards, one with assists available and other with assists disabled (ABS included). However, it would ask for change in defualt setups for all cars since the difference in ways brake bias is represented with the same values on different devices is vast - values I use for CSPV2 pedals are unusable on G25 and viceversa.

 

[PsuPepperoni]

The few times I've raced online without ABS, I didn't find it to be much of a handicap once I got used to it, though I can't say it was an advantage.

As far as Seasonal Time Trials go, I've never seen anyone low in the rankings without ABS 1.

 

[Robbks]

They really are trying to make things hard for people that don't have an hour to set up every new car they buy.

GT4 seemed to run well enough that you could plug in a basic tune that was >80% right as long as you had a little experience with how spring rates transferred back to the weight of the car.
FR, MR, AWD were all a little different in their own way.

but when you can't even drop a completely stock car on the track and have the brakes operate properly without tweaking something..... PD have seriously lost the plot.

People will say "it's only moving two sliders a few clicks."
True, but you need to do half a lap to a lap, back out again, move the sliders, drive again, repeat until you can stop the car confidently.

then you have to ask does every other setting have any real relevance to anything real world related, or are the numbers just arbitrary and may aswell not even be there.

 

[super_gt]

This promotes another question
Lockup AT high speed,
or Lockup FROM high-speed.

Burying the pedal at 200km/h should not result in an instant lockup AT 200km/h, there's just far too much kinetic energy at play.
it "should" give you more chance of a lockup at say 130-100km/h as you've now got the pad warmed up to it's ideal temp and highest CoF.

hmmm, Back to the brake testing

 

[TexRex]

I only drive with either Abs 1 or 0 for older cars when the technology didnt exist yet...

I never use anything higher than 1.

But then i am practically never online, so i dont know.

I think there should even be a restriction of ABS =0 for anyone to drive online with historic cars...

TVR still doesn't build cars with it. I shudder at the thought of the Speed 12 not being equipped with it in real life.

I'll also note that ABS as it's represented in the game differs braking intensity laterally (in a way that validates those who say it's like another form of stability control) and may do so because of the varying lock intensity depending on cornering load and surface modeling. It's because of this unpredictable (for the most part--the exception being those who are especially skilled and can determine how much the game will compensate) variable that I generally prefer to do without. Which, of course, isn't to say that I look down on those who choose to use it.