International A License

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No problem, happy to help! :)

My ps2 is showing its age too, I may have to upgrade to the ps3 sooner than planned. May be difficult to find one that will play ps2-games though..đź‘Ž
 
Can anyone tell me for sure about the tires, ASM, TCS, & LSD of this car? The defaults for a new car and for the car unlocked in the Arcade are not the same, and neither seem to quite match the behavior of the car in the test. The transmission even seems slightly different but that may be my imagination or due to the ASM not being the same.

Any help much appreciated!
 
Sorry, a newbie's very first post on this site. (Which, btw, I've been using for 2 months and this is the first time I haven't been able to find the info without asking- though I still shouldn't be surprised if it was here somewhere.) I thought I'd put in in "Title:"

It is the Mercedes-Benz 190 E 2.5 - 16 Evolution II `91 in IA15. And thank you so much for asking, or I should have been waiting forever for a reply.
 
Don't worry about it. I doubt some of the information you're curious about is available anywhere, let alone here. The tires and driving aids (as well as the horsepower) are easily seen: When you watch your replay, or indeed the demo run, in the middle of the screen it will say the name of the car, its power (231HP), and the tires (Comfort, also called N2). And you can see whether the driving aids are on or off by looking at the indicator on the bottom left, which flashes blue when they are working but is black when all aids are off, as they are here. Unfortunately, things like LSD and suspension settings are impossible to know for certain, and the game's developers did seem to mess with those kinds of settings in a couple tests and missions. It seems likely in Mission 34, for example, that they changed something on the car to make it handle differently, and that may be the case in this test, but nobody can definitively say exactly what, since all of those settings are "hidden."

Out of curiosity, are you aiming for gold, silver, or bronze?
 
Thank you so much. I had tried every combination I could think of to make a car to practice with but nothing would make it behave as mulishly as it did in the IA15 test. Naturally it never occurred to this idiot to simply examine the screen. And with all the complex tech at their disposal, who'd 'a' thunk they'd want to torture you by the simple expedient of giving the thing lousy tires.

I'm afraid I must admit that all this effort is expended over just a bronze license. I plead age and a bit of arthritis and I just don't pick things up as quickly as I once did. I'm a retired musician. But perseverence and time on hand are effective counters. It is a tribute to this game that it can be as addictive as it is to one who is so ill-suited to it. Besides being the best racing game, it's a better strategy/RPG than most strategy/RPGs are.
 
Recently, I've been refining my license test times, and some have made it near the top of the leaderboards at GTRP. Since I know that there are still a few people trying to pass or gold licenses, even with GT5 being released in a few months, I thought I'd share the runs of mine for each license that have made it into the top 15 at GTRP. I apologize for the low quality.
















(This one ranks fourth at GTRP)








(This one ranks fourth at GTRP)


(This one ranks second at GTRP)
 
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Apparantly i've just failed IA-15 yet i have no idea why, i did it in a gold time easy, do you fail for going ahead of the safety car ? If thats so then what the hell, its hard not to slipstream it on the straight.

really confused
 
Apparantly i've just failed IA-15 yet i have no idea why, i did it in a gold time easy, do you fail for going ahead of the safety car ? If thats so then what the hell, its hard not to slipstream it on the straight.

really confused

Yes you do, you'll also fail if you hit the pace car too hard. A gentle accidental bump you can get away with, but if you get your braking points wrong, and don't manage to avoid the pace car, it's fail.
 
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Part of the test is making sure you show restraint. Therefore, you'll find yourself overpowering the pace car, and it's tempting to just pass it. :rolleyes:

My theory is: PD wanted to include a few tests which make the driver show restraint. Racing is not always about passing everyone, it's also waiting for the right moment to pass cleanly. đź’ˇ Kinda ridiculous, but that's my theory. Sometimes, real-life drivers wait a very long time till they finally make their pass, even if they clearly have an advantageous situation & car.
 
On this test I always found when it comes to a braking point at the end of a fast straight to move to the side of the pace car's line to keep away from it, it's a really easy test to do once you realise the margin of error is actually pretty big and you don't have to go hell for leather to complete it for gold.
 
Parnelli, you may well be right, and that really is something that applies to real life that GT4's developers could want to teach. I think it's also possible, though, that they just assumed that since the Pace Car is more powerful and has better tires, it will go faster around the track and the 190E will never be able to overtake it. The problem is that AI cars (including the pace car) not only takes corners slowly, but at the Nurburgring, also takes full throttle sections slowly, as if the ASM were activated every time the wheel is turned. So you have to use partial throttle when behind it on straights, and when you approach a corner, it's best to slow down a few mph significantly before you would normally brake so that the AI doesn't surprise you.
 
Ahh thanks for the speedy response..

not many ps2 games can boast this kind of response :)

I think one of the reasons GT4 has such a huge following after 5+ years on the market is so many people are bored with GT5P, and/or frustrated as they wait for the final product (GT5) to finally hit the market. So many of us have "gone back" to GT4, where there's tons more cars & scenarios. đź’ˇ

I remember a few years back when GT2 & GT3 actually had a pretty strong following as people waited for 4. Then when 4 came out, all a sudden those lower forums were dead as hell! :lol:

Parnelli, you may well be right, and that really is something that applies to real life that GT4's developers could want to teach. I think it's also possible, though, that they just assumed that since the Pace Car is more powerful and has better tires, it will go faster around the track and the 190E will never be able to overtake it. The problem is that AI cars (including the pace car) not only takes corners slowly, but at the Nurburgring, also takes full throttle sections slowly, as if the ASM were activated every time the wheel is turned. So you have to use partial throttle when behind it on straights, and when you approach a corner, it's best to slow down a few mph significantly before you would normally brake so that the AI doesn't surprise you.

Very true. đź‘Ť
 
After many weeks playing no PlayStation at all, I decided to see how rusty my [size=+1]GT4[/size] skills were.

IA-15 is ideal for that. The pace car helps jog your memory. Took a few tries to complete the lap, and bronzed it by 20 seconds. I hadn't really any idea whether I was on pace or not--just drove mostly conservatively. Next day I got silver. (Then bronzed S-16 by fraction of a second, then by about 10 seconds). I'm not a good video game player, so I was glad to have retained some memory after many weeks without playing.

IA-5! IA-5! (El Capitan pace lap). That silly pace car. It's not just slow. It's pathetic. You pass it coming out of the tunnel without trying at all. Too bad it doesn't get the failure. I got to within a second of gold on that test--better than my saved records, but stopped for the evening.

I bumped the pace car gently, and had to slow down sometimes, in IA-15 too. But my inferior skills make it generally less of a problem for me to avoid that.

There's no Sarthe pace lap test, is there?
 
Yeah. Last night, a second night of trying, I did a lot more bumping and passing in my IA-15 attempts, and failed because of it a few times. But I did later manage to gold IA-5.

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I found that in IA-5 I sort of had to accommodate the pace car as I came out of the tunnel; incorporating deliberate slowing down to get properly tucked in behind it again into the rhythm of that section of the course. A key to a good time seems to be right down where you turn to start home. Just after the bridge, and after you turn left, when you get to the double right handers, you want to come out of the first somewhat slow, so you can line up nicely for the second, and get maximum acceleration through the curvy straight section which follows.

The El Capitan course layout and topography are a little bit like Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant. Normal direction is opposite, though.
 
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The first time I did that test, I got all the way up until the turn at the end of the long straightaway and flew off the track. After that, it took me about a good hour or so just to get back up to that point without going off the track because I was pushing the car too hard.

That is the same place that I went off....Did you brake at the exact same point as the pace car? Do you, like me, find that the Merc you're given for that test has bad oversteer?
 
I've improved substantially in several IA license tests.




(This one is third at GTRP. It's barely clean, but I do stay in contact with the rumble strip entering the chicane.)


(This one is fourth at GTRP.)






(This one is third at GTRP.)




(This one is second at GTRP.)


(This one is tied for third at GTRP and is .003 behind second.)


(This one is fifth at GTRP.)


(This one is second at GTRP.)




(This one is second at GTRP.)



And, saving the best for last :D:

A world record time in IA-15


You can imagine that I'm elated to have defeated holl01 on his home turf, the licenses. I'm sure that you can also imagine how much my hands were shaking near the finish! In all honesty, though, the result was possible only because of the interfering pace car, which really throws a wrench into the natural GT4 order. There's no doubt that he drove better than I did, but a mostly frustrating two- or three-hour effort that preceded this miraculous run taught me how to encourage the pace car to go faster. I never touched it, but a far better time is clearly possible if you push it along rather than feathering the throttle in its slipstream.
 
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but a far better time is clearly possible if you push it along rather than feathering the throttle in its slipstream.

Yeah I have figured this as well. This is my first time going through GT4 after completing GT5P and GT PSP. Last night I completed IA15 on my 3rd pass. What a ripper of a track.

But IA-16 is hard to gold. My wrists were hurting at the end of the night so at the moment I have settled for silver. Is anyone else struggling with their fitness using the G25?
 
I keep getting better at IA-16, but it's absurdly difficult to piece together all of your best corners into one lap. I'd be very close to holl01 if I could.

 
Well, I've made it up to this point, going through all the license tests through Inter-A.

For now, I'm finished with the tests. I'll do the super licenses later.

So. I didn't really have trouble with much on these tests. I only went for silver through the tests, but there was still consistent difficulty for me. On Inter-A, oddly enough, the most trouble I had was... On the coffee break. I spent about half an hour on that, trying to get past all of those damn cones. Finally got a silver on it. Anyway.

IA-15. This was what I was really worried about. I've never made it around the Nurburgring without going off, so I seriously had doubts as to my ability of getting a silver this time. After about another half hour of whizzing around this track (I actually really like the 190E, I'm saving up to buy one) sliding off onto the grass on some tries, crashing into the pace car on others, when I finally completed the lap, I got a comfortable time of about 9:09. I know I can cut out a lot of time and get a gold, but I know that this test is a time sink, so I'll leave that for another day.

IA:16. Not much trouble here. Since I was still only going for a silver, the only thing I had to really work on was throttle control. That car has so much power, those last few corners are a pain. I had to switch to the right analog stick to get the amount of throttle control I needed, even though I'm pretty good with the button. This is another thing I'll wait on to gold for now.

But at this point, I'd like to talk a little about all the license tests. I have a simple thing to say: They did what they were meant to do. It was slow progress, but I've become a better driver after getting all my licenses. I was never going to force myself to a gold, but I also would never just settle for a bronze. This little bit of challenge was what I needed, I tightened up my line, became smoother, and progressed leaps and bounds in car control; I'm no longer completely murdered by GT4's snap-back. Around Tsukuba, I've taken three or four cars around that I've lapped before, and I cut around one or two seconds on each one. I hated most of those tests, (mainly due to aids) but I will be the first to admit that they did their job admirably.

Soon, I will see if my new-found abilities will show themselves in other games.
 
^+100; Congrats on the Silvers!! Push yourself to go for the gold. It will take some time, but will be WELL worth it in the long run. The license tests are the real learning aid in the GT series. To achieve all gold (I did but minus the coffee breaks, maybe I'll return to those) will show you the proper apex, brake and throttle points. They will MAKE you patient and truely immerse you into improving your driving skill. Those gold tests made me not only learn the track, but also help me harness the concentration needed to pass them. Plus you get a model T for your trouble. đź‘Ť
 
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Model T for my efforts? That's like saving the world and sacrificing everyone you love, and in exchange, you get a $100 Baskin Robbins gift card.

But, yeah. I'll finish up most of the races, I say most, but I'll get to the "ending" credits, then I'll go back and get the golds. My main problem is in those guided runs, I could cut about a second off my lap times without that stupid Skyline alone.
 


I can shave another 1.5 secs off the time but I don´t know where to get the remaining 4 secs.

Can someone help me?


raVer
 
To be frank, I don't know what else I can say other than "drive with more precision." The biggest thing that I notice about your driving is the amount of time you spend with no throttle or brake applied, which can be very effective in front-wheel drive cars, but in this car is little more than a means by which to lose piles of time. It also looks to me like you might be doing too much of your braking in a straight line, when it's really better to manhandle the car into the corner with both full brakes and full steering lock (on the pad). Finally, you're costing yourself a lot of time by shifting where the redline starts (are you using an automatic transmission?), since the ideal shift point is near to or at the limiter; you also lose a ton of time at the launch. Those aspects can probably be seen by comparison with my lap in post 80, or with holl01's now-record lap with the wheel:

 
IA-15 is so frustrating. Our 190E is sitting on those grip free N(o) tires, which leads to handling problems. There is understeer. Okay, it's light enough, but there's more. Ive found that the car can oversteer if you don't drive carefully, and it gets unstable if you drive aggressively over rumble strips and stuff like that. I got it done though, with a silver too. And once I failed near the line!
 
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