Ok, I’m not a driving dynamics expert, and I haven’t once played the last 3 games on a wheel more than maybe 20 minutes, and I primarily fiddle with slow road cars. BUT, here’s what I’ve noticed in the first 45 minutes I’ve spent with the changes:
- I feel like I have a bit more traction with FWD cars in most situations. In fact, throttle in general feels more smooth, but I also haven’t driven anything over 240hp yet.
- I’m barely ever locking my brakes. I’ve tried a ‘97 BMW M3 and S2000 (both of which I’d never driven prior, so bad testing data on my part), a Demio, recently tuned Porsche-swapped beetle, and an N24 Twingo replica. The Demio, Beetle, and my Twingo all had fairly notable differences all previously being tuned. It seems like there’s a general higher resistance to rotation under both power and braking, and a somewhat increased rotational force while lifting, and more detail and nuance in the braking effects based on how much input you put in (trail braking).
- The Beetle was a pretty dramatic change. I was mid-tune before the update, on sports medium tires, and was previously trying to get rid of lift off and braking oversteer. Driving it after the update it was fully understeering under braking, actually extremely stable and shockingly close to the kind of dynamics I was hoping to have in a later stage of the tune - but I hadn’t touched a thing. It again resisted rotation on acceleration and braking like I mention in the last note, but it had enough power and stiffness in the rear to break traction and power slide and rotate under power. I have a feeling it’s ratted to dampers, which I’ll outline later.
- The “wiggle” people are talking about is very much real, the controller analogue steering dampening algorithm is dramatically different. I’m struggling to parse what’s different on “press” (turn in, basically), but on “release” (lifting the stick go back to the center on its own), the return to center is WAY snappier, and even possibly over compensates. You can watch the steering input applied by the game with the red dot and see for yourself how it moves compared to your controller input.
- I’ve ran max sensitivity since Sport and 7 both dramatically slowed steering input to an annoying degree compared to 5 & 6. Previously it had a similar effect to a door damper, where it initially shoots towards center when you release the stick, but decelerates and incrementally crawls back to the center by fractions of a degree for a couple seconds, smoothening your input. Now it’s a much quicker jump, and the dampening is less. It appears to even overcompensate, and apply an opposing force, which overcorrects to briefly steering the opposite direction. It basically pendulums, I think 3 times (I’m fully turned to the right at speed, release the stick, the dot swings all the way into the left side, swings back in to the right, and then slightly brushes over the left again before sticking to the center).
I’m not sure how I feel about the “pendulum” effect in the controller steering now, but it’s better than the slower less reactive steering previously. We really should have an option for no dampening, because it’s been an ongoing issue for catching slides and drifting, and hides some of the steering feedback from your direct inputs. This change is at least faster, so you can more quickly feel your consequences and react, but the “pendulum” is now an issue in the opposite direction where the car wiggles as other users described, and will now briefly go the opposite direction of intended input. I’ll need to see how bad this is on more twitchy cars to see if it’s a more dramatic problem, ore even a problem at all.
BIG changes to default suspension values, particularly dampers and spring rate: stock suspension on basically every car was previously at 40 compression/20 rebound, with the custom suspension defaulting at 45/25. New stock default is 45/60, and custom suspension defaults at 30/45. You can’t even bring the compression back to its stock value, it’s capped at 40, and the rebound cap is the default. Spring rate roughly doubled, ARB default customized went from 4 to 5. I think dampers are the biggest change here.
