My beef with Performance Points

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Let me start off by saying I love the PP system. It makes things a whole lot easier when deciding which cars are better, when choosing which car to use in obscure races, etc. But the whole system has a major flaw that is really annoying. You would think they would base it on the normal stuff HP, weight, torque blah blah blah, which sounds great, until you start looking at the problems it creates.

Main problem is the system takes torque into account, when it shouldn't be. Looking at it, it seems like something that should be considered, but it really messes up the system. For example, the Lamborghini Murcielago SV has 672 hp, and weighs like 1560 somthing kg. Somehow, the McLaren SLR, which has 628 hp and 1760 something kg has MORE performance points. This really confused me, and I thought it was some kind of bug, until I realized that the reason is the Lambo has 478 ft-lbs of torque, while the SLR has 586.

This definitly doesn't accurately represent their performance, because if you've driven the two, the Lambo runs circles around the SLR.

This really needs to be fixed as the PP system is really great but now it's pretty much useless because I have to check the power and weight anyways on each car to make sure that the torque thing isn't screwing up it's PP rating.
 
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PP is rubish, you also need to watch your date of acquisition.

i have a few cars that i have in more than 1 exemplary with 0 mile/switch like the merc Sauber, peugeot 905, shelby 350, they have never been touch and came from tickets.
there's 30 to 60 point difference in between the exact same car. The only numbers on the spec that are different are the date of acquisition, probably because adjustments haven't been implemented from 1.06 to 1.07
 
Let me start off by saying I love the PP system. It makes things a whole lot easier when deciding which cars are better, when choosing which car to use in obscure races, etc. But the whole system has a major flaw that is really annoying. You would think they would base it on the normal stuff HP, weight, torque blah blah blah, which sounds great, until you start looking at the problems it creates.

Main problem is the system takes torque into account, when it shouldn't be. Looking at it, it seems like something that should be considered, but it really messes up the system. For example, the Lamborghini Murcielago SV has 672 hp, and weighs like 1560 somthing kg. Somehow, the McLaren SLR, which has 628 hp and 1760 something kg has MORE performance points. This really confused me, and I thought it was some kind of bug, until I realized that the reason is the Lambo has 478 ft-lbs of torque, while the SLR has 586.

This definitly doesn't accurately represent their performance, because if you've driven the two, the Lambo runs circles around the SLR.

This really needs to be fixed as the PP system is really great but now it's pretty much useless because I have to check the power and weight anyways on each car to make sure that the torque thing isn't screwing up it's PP rating.

I'm not sure about this but torque is very much necessary in order to get you car moving. High torque mean you get moving in a hurry, believe you me high torque cars pull away from you quickly especially when exiting a corner. I'm not sure what things might be missing in the PP calculation that actually makes up the actual numbers. Maybe PD should give us the equation that they use or just tell us out right. If that is your only beef, then um, not sure what to say. PP do make it quite easy to get into races and have a car that is comparable. The old HP and weight limits don't really help as everyone will choose the lightest possible car with the most power, with PP people choose all types of cars to bring into a race, from medium heavy weights to heavy weights, even light weights. Hp and weight limits can't get those kinds of results.
 
"This definitly doesn't accurately represent their performance, because if you've driven the two, the Lambo runs circles around the SLR. "

Yet I was quicker around the ring in my SLR than in my LP670-4 SV.

"i have a few cars that i have in more than 1 exemplary with 0 mile/switch like the merc Sauber, peugeot 905, shelby 350, they have never been touch and came from tickets.
there's 30 to 60 point difference in between the exact same car. The only numbers on the spec that are different are the date of acquisition, probably because adjustments haven't been implemented from 1.06 to 1.07 "


Take the earlier car, go to settings and it updates the PP to the new system.
 
PP is rubish, you also need to watch your date of acquisition.

i have a few cars that i have in more than 1 exemplary with 0 mile/switch like the merc Sauber, peugeot 905, shelby 350, they have never been touch and came from tickets.
there's 30 to 60 point difference in between the exact same car. The only numbers on the spec that are different are the date of acquisition, probably because adjustments haven't been implemented from 1.06 to 1.07

Thats just from the update, while it is really annoying it doesnt effect performance. To fix it select the car in your garage and go to the tuning menu and then exit and it will update the pp's.
 
It isn't so much the torque so much as the power curve that PP takes into account. What PP does is calculates the area underneath the power curve. IE 5000rpm at 500hp, plus 5100rpm at 510hp, etc.

It's biggest defect is that it doesn't take the drag coeficient into it's equation. This best example is the Suzuki Hill Climb car has the highest PP of the non F1 or X1 cars, but it has such a high drag that it can barely it 200mph.
 
It isn't so much the torque so much as the power curve that PP takes into account. What PP does is calculates the area underneath the power curve. IE 5000rpm at 500hp, plus 5100rpm at 510hp, etc.

It's biggest defect is that it doesn't take the drag coeficient into it's equation. This best example is the Suzuki Hill Climb car has the highest PP of the non F1 or X1 cars, but it has such a high drag that it can barely it 200mph.

Exactly what i was going to say. More aerodynamic designs allow for higher topspeed and better cornering compared to a car with the exact same performance but with a high drag coefficient
 
It doesn't, afaik, take drivetrain layout into account, or wheel size. It's basically all on power/weight ratio, and with the less sticky tyres, you can have huge gaps in potential laptimes between (e.g) a 70s FR and a modern 4WD car, yet they'll have the same pp rating..
 
It doesn't, afaik, take drivetrain layout into account, or wheel size. It's basically all on power/weight ratio, and with the less sticky tyres, you can have huge gaps in potential laptimes between (e.g) a 70s FR and a modern 4WD car, yet they'll have the same pp rating..

Stupid, useless system.

Yet they seem to bring close races, at least online, with similarly skilled drivers.

I was racing 450pp - 500pp in a private lounge yesterday and over the night the grids (and podiums) contained such diverse road cars as the Range Stormer Concept, R34 Skylines, Evos, Scoobs, old school 'vettes, FF hot hatchs, a CL600, a Lotus Carlton, a few NSXs, the usual Elises and even a Countach!

In most cases where driver skills where ~equal there was some seriously close door to door racing. There was also some nice 'race strategy', some cars were better on the straights, some were great in the low speed corners, some excelled under braking, some were just huge and easy to drive defensively in(!). Interesting stuff. 👍
 
When comparing similar cars (similar size, drivetrain type and year), it's helpful, but it's impossible to balance factors such as outdated suspensions and aerodynamics into the PP.

It's quite fun trying to balance horsepower and torque via the PP equation... as different tracks will favor different engine set-ups. Some tracks will like a torquey engine with a lower top end... while tracks with longer straights and faster turns (say, Suzuka) will want more top end.
 
I was racing 450pp - 500pp in a private lounge yesterday and over the night the grids (and podiums) contained such diverse road cars as the Range Stormer Concept, R34 Skylines, Evos, Scoobs, old school 'vettes, FF hot hatchs, a CL600, a Lotus Carlton, a few NSXs, the usual Elises and even a Countach!

Use realistic road tyres, like comfort soft, and those EVOs, Subarus and Skylines are untouchable, with similarly skilled drivers. I've tested it for myself. An ae86 at 450pp is more than 4 seconds slower around Autumn Ring than a WRX at 450pp on Comfort Softs.

PP should be different, depending on the tyre enforced by the host.

It would not be so hard to factor in a couple of other things to make it work better.
 
Use realistic road tyres, like comfort soft, and those EVOs, Subarus and Skylines are untouchable, with similarly skilled drivers. I've tested it for myself. An ae86 at 450pp is more than 4 seconds slower around Autumn Ring than a WRX at 450pp on Comfort Softs.

We were on Sports Hard I believe.

I'm not sure ae86 vs WRX is a fair example, stock the ae86 is less than 400pp, the WRX stock is ~450. To get them at the same 450pp (for example) the ae86 has had to be upgraded considerably to match the WRX so the chassis setup itself could be the week point. FT-86 vs WRX would be a closer base line.

That said I agree in terms of raw lap times but the way I see it is there is more to a grid started race than raw lap times.

Equally, I think it depends on the skill level (and this isn't a dig!), at my skill level yes, I am definately a touch faster in a 'safe' AWD drive car but deep down I know this is often because the car makes up for some of my missing talent! [Offtopic - This is why I would hate to see engine swaps and drivetrain swaps in GT5]

It would not be so hard to factor in a couple of other things to make it work better.

I agree here (but I actually preferred it when tyre choice was calculated into the PP total).
 
We were on Sports Hard I believe.

I'm not sure ae86 vs WRX is a fair example, stock the ae86 is less than 400pp, the WRX stock is ~450. To get them at the same 450pp (for example) the ae86 has had to be upgraded considerably to match the WRX so the chassis setup itself could be the week point. FT-86 vs WRX would be a closer base line.

That said I agree in terms of raw lap times but the way I see it is there is more to a grid started race than raw lap times.

Equally, I think it depends on the skill level (and this isn't a dig!), at my skill level yes, I am definately a touch faster in a 'safe' AWD drive car but deep down I know this is often because the car makes up for some of my missing talent! [Offtopic - This is why I would hate to see engine swaps and drivetrain swaps in GT5]


I agree here (but I actually preferred it when tyre choice was calculated into the PP total).

Fair comment, but surely if pp doesn't actually let you compare any 2 random cars' performance, then its function is completely useless. Naturally over a standing start lap the ae86 is at even more of a performance deficit as it spins its skinny tyres whilst the 4wd cars drive away :)

For pp to be of any use at all, there should be no exceptions, every car should be more or less comparable across a broad spectrum of tracks. The fact is that the ae86 in question is actually rated at 50 or more pp higher than it should be if you compare it with a random 10 other cars of various drivetrain layouts.

I also don't think it would hurt if you could set it to adjust to each track, either, should you wish.

The objective is simply to bring a wider range of cars onto a level playing field. There's no sense in it only working properly on an oval, or at Cote d'Azure.
 
I think it over exaggerates weight. The Lancia Stratos Rally car with it's 270ish hp and 800ish kg get's similar PP to cars in way different league than it. I love racing lighter and less powerful cars against more powerful heavy beasts but the PP system makes it much harder since it isn't balanced that way.
 
No performance balancing system is perfect. That's just the way it is. There will always be cars that are above or below the curve... some because they're more stable... some because they're "pointier."

PP is pretty good because it serves as a good general guideline, and naturally "good" cars will tend to fall within the same range of laptimes given properly balanced PPs.

There will always be cars that won't be able to make it... but there's little you can do to make a five-door wagon completely competitive with a mid-engined sportscar on a twisty track.

PP gives you a fighting chance, though.
 
No performance balancing system is perfect. That's just the way it is. There will always be cars that are above or below the curve... some because they're more stable... some because they're "pointier."

PP is pretty good because it serves as a good general guideline, and naturally "good" cars will tend to fall within the same range of laptimes given properly balanced PPs.

There will always be cars that won't be able to make it... but there's little you can do to make a five-door wagon completely competitive with a mid-engined sportscar on a twisty track.

PP gives you a fighting chance, though.

I don't get that. You're speaking as if cars' performance capabilities are not measurable, which they obviously are.

If that saloon car is capable of the same lap time as the sports car (which is not at all unreasonable) then those 2 cars should have the same PP rating. If the sports car is faster, it should have a higher rating.

The question is not "Can cars of different types be made to do similar lap times?" because of course they can. I could detune the WRX I wrote about earlier to the same lap times as the ae86 quite easily. If PP doesn't help me do that, it's completely useless though, right?

I disagree that it serves as a good general guideline any more than a simple power-weight ratio figure would, actually. The simple fact is that it does not take enough variables into consideration. On comfort softs with 200+ bhp drive train layout and tyre sizes are massive variables.
 
The fact that a viper (not the acr) cost more than a scuderia or GT-R speak for itself. Or watch the R5 turbo or yellowbird, both 80s cars that are a handful to drive and watch the modern cars with similar PP. The Toms supra cost lees than many supercars, just a fea examples
 
The fact that a viper (not the acr) cost more than a scuderia or GT-R speak for itself. Or watch the R5 turbo or yellowbird, both 80s cars that are a handful to drive and watch the modern cars with similar PP. The Toms supra cost lees than many supercars, just a fea examples

What does cost have to do with performance points?
 
Philosophically, I am aligned with niky on this. It is a good general guideline. Sinbad is also correct that the system does not take into account enough variables. That said, I still treat GT5 as a game, a game I very much l want to be successful at.

So given that the PP system is decent but not perfect, where can I get an advantage? If a set of cars are at the same PP level, I want the fastest one for the track (and my driving style).

I think being on GTPlanet is one of my advantages over the average online GT5 driver. Besides the overall knowledge base here which helps me improve my driving and identify the best cars, there's a good chance my Scuderia is tuned better than the next guy's thanks to the top notch tuners here.

The best advantage I have found is for FF cars under 500 PP. My RKM tuned Kusabi has been pretty dominant so far.
 
It seems that many of you don't realize that horsepower is a function of torque and RPM.

In the real world,

Horsepower = (Torque * RPM) / 5252

This is why when you look at a graph of a car's horespower and torque, they always intersect at 5252 RPMs.

...and as the saying goes, "Horespower sells cars. Torque wins races."
 
I've actually been working on an application to get the actual PP of the cars. As in, cars with similar PP should get similar lap times. My formula is basically hp/weight ratio with bonuses for aerodynamics, tires, and drivetrain and penalties for really heavy cars and FF drivetrains. I also added a modifier to hp otherwise the Fireblade would be owning racecars.

It's been pretty interesting so far. Basically, after a car hits 1800kg, it's performance begins dramatically decreasing regardless of it's ratio. Also, once a car gets over 1000 HP, it seems to perform better than cars with similar ratios. As much as everyone hates the Veyron, that thing actually puts up very competitive lap times. I basically split the aero into five categories and assigned a bonus value to them: Stock, tuner, GT/Rally/Touring/RM, LMP, F1. That part of my formula is still pretty rough. The tire values were interesting, too. I'm sure most of you have noticed this, but going from S1 to S2 isn't much of a difference, but going from S3 to R1 is huge.

The testing has been fun. When a modded Cappachino RM had a nearly identical PP to the Countach 25th Anniversary, I figured I had made a mistake. Sure enough, very close lap times between the two. There are some oddities though. I can't figure out why the 2010 Camaro performs as well as it does and a lot of the very lightweight cars are hard to place. Most of the exotics and race cars are right where they should be though.
 
The PP system is only a very rough guideline when comparing similar cars. If you use the PP or power/weight system alone when selecting cars and have no other educated guesses of which cars would be good or not you afoul let GT teach you a little more about cars and also learn a little more in the real world.


In itself the PP system is very flawed.
For example... A PD Kart has a PP as high as most supercars!
 
my only problem is that if I take out similar PP'd cars around the same track for the same amount of laps some cars perform awful and woefully slow compared to others thus making the balancing system useless try to to find balanced cars for close racing, but the PP system is a good one and understand why its in GT5 just needs 1 or 2 tweaks thats all :)
 
I've actually been working on an application to get the actual PP of the cars. As in, cars with similar PP should get similar lap times. My formula is basically hp/weight ratio with bonuses for aerodynamics, tires, and drivetrain and penalties for really heavy cars and FF drivetrains. I also added a modifier to hp otherwise the Fireblade would be owning racecars.

It's been pretty interesting so far. Basically, after a car hits 1800kg, it's performance begins dramatically decreasing regardless of it's ratio. Also, once a car gets over 1000 HP, it seems to perform better than cars with similar ratios. As much as everyone hates the Veyron, that thing actually puts up very competitive lap times. I basically split the aero into five categories and assigned a bonus value to them: Stock, tuner, GT/Rally/Touring/RM, LMP, F1. That part of my formula is still pretty rough. The tire values were interesting, too. I'm sure most of you have noticed this, but going from S1 to S2 isn't much of a difference, but going from S3 to R1 is huge.

The testing has been fun. When a modded Cappachino RM had a nearly identical PP to the Countach 25th Anniversary, I figured I had made a mistake. Sure enough, very close lap times between the two. There are some oddities though. I can't figure out why the 2010 Camaro performs as well as it does and a lot of the very lightweight cars are hard to place. Most of the exotics and race cars are right where they should be though.

That sounds very interesting. How far along are you with it?
 
The SS Trueno is definitely one of the odd cars with the PP measures. at 460pp vs any other car with 460pp it's significantly slower. Roughly between 1-3 seconds. (and really, I'm far more experienced with the SS Trueno than I am with any other car in the game, so it's not from lack of practice.) I really think it has something to do with the weight being accounted for in GT5 being given too much consideration under the PP system.
 
Let me start off by saying I love the PP system. It makes things a whole lot easier when deciding which cars are better, when choosing which car to use in obscure races, etc. But the whole system has a major flaw that is really annoying. You would think they would base it on the normal stuff HP, weight, torque blah blah blah, which sounds great, until you start looking at the problems it creates.

Main problem is the system takes torque into account, when it shouldn't be. Looking at it, it seems like something that should be considered, but it really messes up the system. For example, the Lamborghini Murcielago SV has 672 hp, and weighs like 1560 somthing kg. Somehow, the McLaren SLR, which has 628 hp and 1760 something kg has MORE performance points. This really confused me, and I thought it was some kind of bug, until I realized that the reason is the Lambo has 478 ft-lbs of torque, while the SLR has 586.

This definitly doesn't accurately represent their performance, because if you've driven the two, the Lambo runs circles around the SLR.

This really needs to be fixed as the PP system is really great but now it's pretty much useless because I have to check the power and weight anyways on each car to make sure that the torque thing isn't screwing up it's PP rating.

The Reason the SLR has more PP Is because it is a BETTER car and goes a nice amount faster.
 
There is no way in hell that the SLR is a faster car. It weighs entirely too much. I love the car, but doesn't even compete with an SV.
 
Are you high? It runs faster times around Nordschlieife and DEFINATELY has a higher top speed then the SV.
255 MPH and <6:30 at nurb.

It also only weighs 1328 KG at 943 HP.

870 Lb Ft at 3900 RPM FTW
 
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