ORCA Silvia Spec Cup - SEASON COMPLETE, CARRACERPTP SUPREME ORCA CHAMP

[BrandonW77]

Sorry, my liver made other plans...

Need to put a leash on that thing!!

 

[Naptown25rs]

Need to put a leash on that thing!!

It just spent 48 consecutive hours at work, it's rather unruly at the moment...

 

[BrandonW77]

It just spent 48 consecutive hours at work, it's rather unruly at the moment...

Well, I suppose it would be hard to argue with it after that

Small crowd tonight but in the testing we did the theory seems to hold up. Set a PP and drivetrain limitation and all the cars we drove seemed to be fairly evenly matched........except the old Merc. At the very least it seemed that if a certain car stands out it would likely be slower than the majority, not faster, which could limit the "cheater" cars.

I also learned that even though Marcus is a nice guy, he's a terrible guinea pig. Hard to see how cars stack up against each other when one guy is always 1-2 seconds faster no matter what car he's in.

 

[BrandonW77]

I know a lot of you run with other groups on here....have they been seeing a decline in attendance as well or is it mostly this group? Right now I have doubts that we could even round up enough people to do any kind of a series or club.

 

[Naptown25rs]

Seems like attendance is dwindling across the board just from what I observe in the forums...

EDIT-

My lack of participation is mainly due to work conflicts, however there seems to be a growing lack of interest in the game with the majority of the population... Not sure if its related to all of the recent changes, or just the game is becoming stale with age...

 

[cnd01]

Seems like attendance is dwindling across the board just from what I observe in the forums...

It really is. I do think we have enough people to have a little club. We usually had 7 or so on Tuesdays. That's plenty for me.

 

[Marcus Garvey]

Haha thanks for the compliment Brandon. I found the cars I tested to be competitive, with exception to the '02 Viper, which was round a half second slower.

While I don't drive much other than here, it does seem that more and more folks are having trouble filling the grids. I'm sure there are a lot of factors affecting this, including burn-out, other games pulling interest, and the compounding effect of these losses. When there are fewer people in grid, a race appears less attractive, further turning off others that may have considered.

I will likely always be around in my usual inconsistency. GT5 is the only game I have, and I still turn it on almost daily, even if just to collect the bonus credits and run B spec.

 

[carracerptp]

Even most of the big series/groups are having trouble filling more than 12 grid spaces.

 

[Torzilla]

I basically only play the game for ORCA races at this point because the online lobbies are full of schlubs. Its so hard to get a decent race outside of a racing series, I only jump on if I feel like smashing cars around, and If I want to do that Ill play GTA4.

I also love the idea of a pp limited series with open car choice. That would cut down on testing for a specific car and everyone knows what tracks work and what doesnt by this point.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I look in on various series from time to time and in most of them attendance is down, both in sign-ups and people actually making the events. Most of them continue on and the racing is still good most of the time. Majority of the clowns have been weeded out at this point so what's left usually knows the in's and out's of racing, although there are always exceptions.

I have an :idea:idea:idea: for your new format Brandon that I think might help you along. Rather than you having to do all the testing and homologating of cars yourself, we could have a number of people, voluntarily of course, driving cars in their stock form to determine their acceptance or ranking within the group of acceptable cars. Within each class, all we need is the standard bearer car and a track to test drive on. Anyone can do this and homologate cars so long as they can run consistent laps, regardless of their skill level, because in homologating cars, you are measuring them against the standard bearer, not any absolute lap time.

Just pulling numbers out of the air here. Say you determine that at 420 PP SH the standard bearer is the BMW 135i Coupe 07' from the NCD and the test track is Deep Forest Reverse. Lots of grip, neutral to slight understeer, easy to drive. I take the car out and run a number of laps, say 5, and come up with a target time, say 1:30. So for me, I now know that any car I measure against the BMW, that is the target time, and all I have to do is record my lap times and differentials and report them to you for sorting or homologation. If RD is still hanging around maybe he can put together a simple spreadsheet for this.💡

Now anyone can do this, since they'll have their own laptime target in this car. Say Marcus wants to qualify some cars. He runs the same car, the Beemer and does a 1:25 (dream on) and now every other car he drives, is measured against that standard. What we keep track of is the difference in lap times between the standard car and the BMW. If Marcus is a half second faster in one car, and second slower in another car, that's what matters, not the absolute lap time.

Say Brandon wants to qualify some cars and takes the Beemer to Deep Forest Reverse and he runs a consistent 1:35 (about right). Again, any car he drives after that is measured against the standard bearer lap time, the absolute lap time is irrelevant.

Only key is, you have to be able to be consistent. If your lap times are up and down by a second here or there, then it won't work, but I think by this point, regardless of our skill level, most of us can run consistent laps within our skill set.

Under this type of set up, 3 guys in one hour of test driving each can homologate 18 cars and tell with precision whether they fit into the mix or not and where.

If you take it a step further, you could sort the cars into groups and have drivers choose cars by group, faster drivers choose out of one group, middle drivers out of another, slowest out of another.

Alternately you could just have everyone show up and run any car that fits the regs and see what happens..lol..

 

[BrandonW77]

How do you determine the standard bearer? I think I follow the rest but it would for sure need a fancy spreadsheet. It did get my creative juices flowing though, I might have a variation on that principle. Let me marinade on it for a bit.

 

[OwensRacing]

Well if we're going to test. Let's do some extensive work and have some good shareable info for all of GTP.

I'd be willing to e assigned a car for the week and run it to the best of my ability.

If we track each driver in each car. We can get a damn good amount of info that would work in determining car groupings.

Popular PP???

420

500

550

Just guessing.

edit
Dang my new avatar looks sweet. First post since changing. Had forgot i did it earlier. As well I hadn't seen anyone do smaller pics into in in an avatar. lol dork alert

 

[carracerptp]

Words...

I like that idea.
*goes off to try and run a 1:24 in a BMW*

 

[Johnnypenso]

How do you determine the standard bearer? I think I follow the rest but it would for sure need a fancy spreadsheet. It did get my creative juices flowing though, I might have a variation on that principle. Let me marinade on it for a bit.

The only purpose of the standard bearer is to establish a base lap time to measure the other cars against so any car will do because all you are looking for is a lap time to compare to. I happen to have driven the Premium S2000 and the Beemer recently in this PP range on SH tires and they were very close in lap times but the Beemer was easier to drive. All you're doing with the standard bearer car is setting up a base to compare to and by using the same car for everyone they all compare their own laptimes to that particular car so for comparison purposes, they'll produce either a + or - spread in laptimes and everyone's data, regardless of how fast they are, will be directly comparable. The spreadsheet isn't anything fancy, I could do it offline easily, just don't know how to do it so it looks cool on here. A spreadsheet could look something like this for me:

1:30.0 Beemer Lap Time
-0.50 Honda S2000 06' - Premium
-0.10 BMW Z4 03' - Premium
+0.80 Infinity G35 Coupe 06 - Premium

For Brandon it might look like this:

1:31.0 Beemer Lap Time
-0.40 Honda S2000 06' - Premium
-0.20 BMW Z4 03' - Premium
+0.70 Infinity G35 Coupe 06 - Premium

So even though Brandon is a second slower than me, we can still directly compare different cars or the same cars because we are measuring the gaps relative to the exact same car on the exact same track. You don't need to be that accurate if you don't want to either. You could sort the cars into 0.50 second slots, as in 1:29.51-1:30.0, 1:30.01-1:30.5 etc.

By removing the absolute lap time from the equation and focusing only on our gaps relative to that same car at the same track, I can compare my info directly with Brandon's or anyone elses. If you want to be more certain about how the cars fit into the grid, you have more than one person test the cars and average out the gaps. But my feeling is, if I am .50 seconds slower in the Premium Silvia compared to the Beemer, Brandon or anyone else probably will be too, so long as I've thoroughly tested the car.

With a large enough database, you could have groupings of 5-10 cars sorted by laptime gaps and slot drivers into cars based on their ability. You could use the testing data to slot the drivers as well, if enough participate. This is similar to what we do in the Parity League, except that in Parity you qualify your cars to a certain lap standard and you can pick any car you want and tune it how you like. In this format, you'd be pre-qualifying all the cars and then have the opportunity to sort drivers into their appropriate slots.

 

[Johnnypenso]

Well if we're going to test. Let's do some extensive work and have some good shareable info for all of GTP.

I'd be willing to e assigned a car for the week and run it to the best of my ability.

If we track each driver in each car. We can get a damn good amount of info that would work in determining car groupings.

A week!!! I don't think the testing needs to be that thorough...lol. If you want to extract every tenth yeah, but I think most of the guys in this group are consistent enough to realize the potential of a car in 5-7 laps at most tracks, 10 laps at the most. When I get to the point where I'm nailing the first sector and shaving a tenth I know I'm done...lol. And if one needs more than 7-10 laps to find the 99.9% limit of a car they probably shouldn't be testing. Remember we're not looking for that all out Q lap, shaving every possible 1/100th of a second, just a consistent, repeatable, race paced lap.

I think it would be a useful database, but not many people race street cars in their spec form and when they do, it's usually a one-make type of deal. This is one of those things that had it been done early on in GT5 you might have had to beat people away with a stick. No tuning, skills relatively equalized by having homologated cars, all the sorting/testing hard work all done for you and a large variety of cars to choose from. Had this type of thing been available, I think we would have kept many more of the average skilled, more casual GT5ers interested in racing much longer.

 

[OwensRacing]

I see what your saying. He can decide to try say five cars and we go out and run say five laps and chart our fastest two laps. Average them and call that the number.

Liking the idea. as well cars slower or fast could be allowed some or remove some to level them more.

I also think two tracks should be used. Add in HSR. That will answer the high speed track question. The DF should answer all other styles tracks.

More data better results.

 

[Johnnypenso]

I see what your saying. He can decide to try say five cars and we go out and run say five laps and chart our fastest two laps. Average them and call that the number.

Liking the idea. as well cars slower or fast could be allowed some or remove some to level them more.

I also think two tracks should be used. Add in HSR. That will answer the high speed track question. The DF should answer all other styles tracks.

More data better results.

Quite right:tup: I'd just take the fastest lap but 2 could work just as well. HSR could be the high speed track but at 420PP there isn't much hard cornering or braking, it's almost all engine and high end speed, so I'd probably go with Monza or Road Course Indy or something like that, where there is at least some heavy braking and a couple of 2nd or 3rd gear corners. I figured the high speed track idea might come into play later on in the formula, and at first just go with the one track. Race testing might show that high speed track is not needed, have to see how it shakes out. If you used GP/D or Trial Mountain as the test bed, tracks with a fairly long straight, that might accomplish the same thing and only using one track.

I know my posts are long winded to say the least but really all it boils down to is this for anyone testing.

Load Track online
Drive any car for a few laps at proper specs until you're sure you've reached your race pace.
Record lap time
Submit

Your base car laptime will already be on file for comparison. Theoretically given enough time, you could homologate every single car in the game that will fit the specs. That would be a heckuva database...lol.

 

[BrandonW77]

I know my posts are long winded to say the least but really all it boils down to is this for anyone testing.

Load Track online
Drive any car for a few laps at proper specs until you're sure you've reached your race pace.
Record lap time
Submit

That covers phase one of the concept. Creating a spreadsheet for it, entering the data and analyzing the data could be quite daunting though.

 

[Johnnypenso]

That covers phase one of the concept. Creating a spreadsheet for it, entering the data and analyzing the data could be quite daunting though.

I'm a total hack and only get the basics of spreadsheets. Never worked with Google Docs either, but 15-20 minutes of work produced this. All one would have to do is continue to input the data in a raw spreadsheet and then do a quick sort each time new data is entered. Like this:

http://docs.google.com/demo/edit?id=scADF7xSnSqXvQ9d07jUayZ8o&hl=en&dt=spreadsheet#spreadsheet

That's done in demo mode because I have never used it before, but it's free I only have to register to get the whole thing.

 

[RDAardvark]

That covers phase one of the concept. Creating a spreadsheet for it, entering the data and analyzing the data could be quite daunting though.

Is that you saying "Steve, can you...."?

 

[Naptown25rs]

Is that you saying "Steve, can you...."?

Hey Mr. Vark, spreadsheet genius... I'm not saying, I'm just saying...

 

[Johnnypenso]

Is that you saying "Steve, can you...."?

Whew, just in time I thought I might have to reinvent the wheel here.. I can hear you laughing at my spreadsheet all the way from here..

 

[BrandonW77]

Hey Mr. Vark, spreadsheet genius... I'm not saying, I'm just saying...

That's putting words in my mouth, literally!!

Mr. Vark (aka Irish Steve) has been too kind in the behind the scenes work he's done for us over the past few seasons. I don't want to burden him with anymore unless it's going to be something he can participate in, so whatever we do there will at least be a Saturday slot for it. 👍

I'm a total hack and only get the basics of spreadsheets. Never worked with Google Docs either, but 15-20 minutes of work produced this. All one would have to do is continue to input the data in a raw spreadsheet and then do a quick sort each time new data is entered. Like this:

http://docs.google.com/demo/edit?id=scADF7xSnSqXvQ9d07jUayZ8o&hl=en&dt=spreadsheet#spreadsheet

That's done in demo mode because I have never used it before, but it's free I only have to register to get the whole thing.

What is the desired end goal of all of this? Classifying every car in the game, every car in a certain PP range, or find a certain number of cars that race well together? I'm not nitpicking, just trying to further the discussion as this is the best brainstorming we've had so far.

 

[Johnnypenso]

That's putting words in my mouth, literally!!

Mr. Vark (aka Irish Steve) has been too kind in the behind the scenes work he's done for us over the past few seasons. I don't want to burden him with anymore unless it's going to be something he can participate in, so whatever we do there will at least be a Saturday slot for it. 👍

What is the desired end goal of all of this? Classifying every car in the game, every car in a certain PP range, or find a certain number of cars that race well together? I'm not nitpicking, just trying to further the discussion as this is the best brainstorming we've had so far.

Good question. The end goal is to find ways to facilitate the kind of racing that YOU want to organize. I'm the line cook chopping garlic for the stew, you're the chef with the funny hat. I brainstorm, that's what I do.💡 I throw 20 ideas out hoping one will stick. I'm just trying to get a feel for where you are open to going, and throwing out ideas as to how to get there. Whatever ideas you use or don't use is up to you. If you go back to a single make, spec series, then the ideas are still out there if you or anyone else wants to use them in the future. That said:

If you want just 5 very good cars at 2 or 3 different PP levels we can do that, no problem. Given a little direction as to the cars you'd prefer, 2 or 3 of us could probably do that for 2 different PP levels by next Tuesday and certainly by the following Tuesday.

If you want 5 very good cars, 5 good and 5 average cars at each PP so you have the possibility of a "handicap" system, shouldn't be a problem at most popular PP levels from 350-mid 500's. The higher you get the more limited the options are.

If you want to homologate every car in the game, again, no problem, given the manpower and enough time.

Test driving and finding the limits of low to mid-PP cars is relatively easy for me. I'm well aware of my own limitations in driving and can reach my limit fairly quickly as I'm sure most of us are by now. Usually 3 laps to get the tires warmed up while figuring out how PD has programmed that particular car to handle, then 3-5 hotlaps and I find my limit within a couple of tenths. Each car/track/tire combination only has so much grip and once you figure out how the car wants to be driven it's fairly easy to find my "race pace" limit.

The potential for this is enormous, it's just too bad that 99% of GT5'ers are gone or burned out at this point. Over a period of months you could homologate literally hundreds of cars and sort them in dozens of different ways. By PP obviously, drivetrain, country, age etc. Or you can keep it small and neat if you prefer...up to you...as always... It's actually such a good idea, I'm seriously considering buidling a database on my own and sharing it with the world:idea:, but it would be much easier with a group doing the testing!!💡

Chuck Norris EDIT: 2.09 physics have really screwed up tuning to the point where I'm not even sure that suspension adjustments really make much difference anymore but it would be an interesting experiment to take a few cars and sort them out by their spec laptimes, then upgrade them all to a specific PP level, bump up the tires one grade and retest them in their tuned versions and see if any of them make any substantial gains through tuning in relation to their original spec performance.

 

[BrandonW77]

Why you gotta make fun of my hat man??

 

[MikaelK]

Mr. Vark (aka Irish Steve) has been too kind in the behind the scenes work he's done for us over the past few seasons. I don't want to burden him with anymore unless it's going to be something he can participate in, so whatever we do there will at least be a Saturday slot for it. 👍

And with a Saturday slot, yet another long time missing EU-driver will be able to join back into the action, among the most fun and gentleman-ish group yet experienced...

(Yes, I have been following you all the time, envying you all the racing, that by the sound of it in here must have been fun)

 

[BrandonW77]

And with a Saturday slot, yet another long time missing EU-driver will be able to join back into the action, among the most fun and gentleman-ish group yet experienced...

I/we look forward to racing with you all again. I hope I can come up with something that attracts some drivers and provides fun racing week in and week out. 👍

 

[RDAardvark]

Whew, just in time I thought I might have to reinvent the wheel here.. I can hear you laughing at my spreadsheet all the way from here..

Never! I'm amazed you stuck with that horrible demo of GoogleDocs and came up with what you did. Keeping with the kitchen-based analogies, I'll count this as doing the washing up or sharpening Brandon's knives.

I'll have a look and see what I can come up with. really looking forward to being able to drive with you guys again, and that dodgy stalker Mikael!

 

[BrandonW77]

.

I'll have a look and see what I can come up with. really looking forward to being able to drive with you guys again, and that dodgy stalker Mikael!

Don't put too much effort into it yet, I'm not exactly sure what the parameters will be yet, or what the end goal will be. I think there might be a simpler way to achieve the desired results but I need to create some goals and think about the details first.

Really looking forward to racing with you guys again too. It's been too long and we need some fresh accents on the mic.

 

[OwensRacing]

I'm really excited about Saturday afternoons with our Euro racing friends.

I feel terrible knowing they wasn't able to join in.