Oversteer vs Understeer: Which One Do You Prefer?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ferrari_1996
  • 374 comments
  • 33,194 views

Oversteer vs Understeer

  • Oversteer

    Votes: 388 85.3%

  • Understeer

    Votes: 67 14.7%
  • Total voters
    455
Ferrari_1996
You're contradicting yourself. You said on huge tracks you like oversteer but the Nürburgring is the biggest track and you like understeer in the Nürburgring.
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I meant huge tracks as in extremely wide road. The Nurburgring has the thinnest roads in the game. That is what I meant.
 
counter345
I meant huge tracks as in extremely wide road. The Nurburgring has the thinnest roads in the game. That is what I meant.
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Oh. Ok. If the road is wide isn't understeer better because if you are understeering you need a wide track otherwise you will go off the track. Can you please explain why you prefer oversteer in wide tracks?
 
Ferrari_1996
I guess people don't believe what others say in Chicago? What if that guy was actually telling the truth. Seems unlikely, but for some odd reason, his Yellowbird might be understeering.

And I guess people in Chicago have time to make off-topic posts in threads?
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Gosh are you that dull? Of course I was being sarcastic....Was hoping you would catch on, but nope.
 
Bobalob
lol @ 13% of you
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!?

I don't see how this is funny.

Under-steer is a stable condition. With under-steer you turning radius is increased, which will only cause you to crash if you didn't expect it.

Whereas over-steer is unstable.

And, to the people who said they like over-steer on corner entry. That is a load of crock. If your car is over-steering on corner entry, ie under heavy braking, you are going to be losing time. I have never seen a car do so in real life on the track, without something being majorly wrong with it.
 
Cauchy
!?

I don't see how this is funny.

Under-steer is a stable condition. With under-steer you turning radius is increased, which will only cause you to crash if you didn't expect it.

Whereas over-steer is unstable.

And, to the people who said they like over-steer on corner entry. That is a load of crock. If your car is over-steering on corner entry, ie under heavy braking, you are going to be losing time. I have never seen a car do so in real life on the track, without something being majorly wrong with it.
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But understeer is annoying. You turn- but the car doesn't. I prefer oversteer because I can actually do something about it.

And here's a little bit of physics: if an object is completely stable, it won't turn. The less stability you have, the greater your ability to turn is, but too little stability is impossible to control. That's why jet aircraft have the engines at the back- if they were at the front, the plane couldn't maneuver.

Also, trail-braking. Look it up. Hardly think it's a term used endearingly if it were bad.

Like understeer.
 
Cauchy
!?

I don't see how this is funny.

Under-steer is a stable condition. With under-steer you turning radius is increased, which will only cause you to crash if you didn't expect it.

Whereas over-steer is unstable.

And, to the people who said they like over-steer on corner entry. That is a load of crock. If your car is over-steering on corner entry, ie under heavy braking, you are going to be losing time. I have never seen a car do so in real life on the track, without something being majorly wrong with it.
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Oversteer on corner entry is driver error. A car that can turn in sharply can oversteer by turning the wheels to sharply and/or improper throttle and brake usage.
Understeer on corner entry is generally a bad car that is compounded by driver error. A car that has poor turn in on corners and understeers will generally see even worse understeer with those same sorts of driver errors, or else will snap over into an oversteer situation leaving the driver as a mostly helpless passenger.
 
Rykon Zero
And here's a little bit of physics: if an object is completely stable, it won't turn.
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This is completely false and shows you really don't know much physics. Stability in a physical sense means that if the object is perturbed slightly that the resultant path would be close to the original, unperturbed path, ie it doesn't run away. There are varying degree of stability and instability, ie something can be asymptotically stable, or asymptotically unstable. Mathematically simply looking at the eigenvalues will tell you if the system is stable or not.

Trail braking also works for an under-steering car also.
 
I perhaps worded that wrong, but I think you're nit-picking. If the car is too stable, it's difficult to turn, and that results in understeer, if it's too unstable, it's too easy to turn, and that results in oversteer.

I wasn't saying that trail braking only works on oversteering cars, I was saying it's a thing that exists where the car is rotating while braking, and it's called trail braking.
 
Rykon Zero
And here's a little bit of physics: if an object is completely stable, it won't turn.
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Agreed, hence the terms "tight" and "loose".

Correct me if I'm wrong but,

Tight is a car that is basically stuck to the track and is extremely hard to turn, it often results in understeer or a "push" which happens when the rear is tighter than the front, therefore the front slides up the corner and possibly into the wall, often at high speeds.

Loose is obviously the opposite of tight, and the car is too free and creates a four wheel drift. Loose is also considered when the rear has less grip than the front resulting in oversteer. Now according to the physics mentioned above the car is now too unstable and wants to turn too much.

Both of these effects can be achieved and balanced through changing the crossweight of the car (which you cannot see in GT5) the weight on the leftside (for oval tracks, left turns) the tighter the car is resulting in more grip. The whole crossweight thing is the amount of weight being placed on the LF/RR vs. the LR/RF tires the less the pecentage is for the LF/RR, the "free-er" or "looser" the car will be and vice-versa. 50/50 is pretty tight and sometimes results in a tight-loose condition (which I described in an earlier post I think) but basically the driver turns too much to correct understeer and the car snaps loose and spins out.

Take the x2010 out for a spin at indy, the fan emphasizes the crossweight, look at your tires and you will see that there is a greater percentage of crossweight on the LF/RR because those 2 tires heat up to red before the other 2. Please note though your typical car shouldn't do that because they dont have fans, instead on entry the RF tire should heat up, and on exit the RR tire should heat up because there is more weight on the rightside when you make a left turn and more weight on the front when you brake and more weight in the rear when you accelerate.

Hope this explains a little bit better, or just maybe irrelevant
 
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I'd go for both but both slightly oversteer and slight understeer as I use a wheel.

I'd setup all my cars to have slight oversteer while braking to help set the car up on the corners, esp races on the Nur. This harks back to old skool real steel rally driving of doing the Scandinavian Flick to setup the car pointing into the corner apex but just makes it easier to initiate with a brake pedal as using a digital hand brake is not accurate enuf.

Then, I have slight understeer once I hit the apex, power myself out in a understeering 4 wheel drift, that's regardless whether the car is FF, 4WD, FR, MR and you can tell if you're doing it right when you're drifting in-out of a corner without or minimal steering input and the car just naturally gravitating to the outside line. =)
 
PHNTQM
Then, I have slight understeer once I hit the apex, power myself out in a understeering 4 wheel drift, that's regardless whether the car is FF, 4WD, FR, MR and you can tell if you're doing it right when you're drifting in-out of a corner without or minimal steering input and the car just naturally gravitating to the outside line. =)
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That's not understeer since the rear is sliding with the front out of the corner, anyways, having the car rotate at the apex then slide up out of the corner is textbook driving if you can maintain that in GT5, you are doing great
 
I voted for understeer, but if really depends on the drivetrain. RWD vehicles I'd rather understeer slightly. FWD vehicles I'd rather oversteer. I'm talking very small amounts of either...

{Cy}
 
CyKosis1973
I voted for understeer, but if really depends on the drivetrain. RWD vehicles I'd rather understeer slightly. FWD vehicles I'd rather oversteer. I'm talking very small amounts of either...

{Cy}
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Why did you vote for understeer? I don't understand because you prefer oversteer in FWD cars.

EDIT: You prefer oversteer for one drivetrain and understeer for another drivetrain so what caused you to vote for understeer? There is a reason, and I would like to know.
 
Roush_fan_99
Agreed, hence the terms "tight" and "loose".

Correct me if I'm wrong but,

Tight is a car that is basically stuck to the track and is extremely hard to turn, it often results in understeer or a "push" which happens when the rear is tighter than the front, therefore the front slides up the corner and possibly into the wall, often at high speeds.

Loose is obviously the opposite of tight, and the car is too free and creates a four wheel drift. Loose is also considered when the rear has less grip than the front resulting in oversteer. Now according to the physics mentioned above the car is now too unstable and wants to turn too much.

Both of these effects can be achieved and balanced through changing the crossweight of the car (which you cannot see in GT5) the weight on the leftside (for oval tracks, left turns) the tighter the car is resulting in more grip. The whole crossweight thing is the amount of weight being placed on the LF/RR vs. the LR/RF tires the less the pecentage is for the LF/RR, the "free-er" or "looser" the car will be and vice-versa. 50/50 is pretty tight and sometimes results in a tight-loose condition (which I described in an earlier post I think) but basically the driver turns too much to correct understeer and the car snaps loose and spins out.

Take the x2010 out for a spin at indy, the fan emphasizes the crossweight, look at your tires and you will see that there is a greater percentage of crossweight on the LF/RR because those 2 tires heat up to red before the other 2. Please note though your typical car shouldn't do that because they dont have fans, instead on entry the RF tire should heat up, and on exit the RR tire should heat up because there is more weight on the rightside when you make a left turn and more weight on the front when you brake and more weight in the rear when you accelerate.

Hope this explains a little bit better, or just maybe irrelevant
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Loose cars FTW!!!!

"It was bound to happen lol"

Oh well, atleast this thread has become educational.
 
I'm not a gearhead so my terminology might be wrong, but I prefer neutral handling to oversteer and understeer. In my opinion both oversteer and understeer means you have exceeded the grip levels of the front or rear tires and generally once you exceed the grip levels you are slower and wear the tires faster. If you can corner using the maximum available grip on all 4 tires, then that is the fastest you can take that corner.

Having said that, both oversteer and understeer can have their uses on certain corners at certain tracks or for correcting mistakes made from entry to exit of a corner. For example, if you mistakenly enter a corner too fast, you would like to have the ability to induce some oversteer, to get the front end pointed in the right direction, as opposed to continued oversteer which could drive you into the gravel. This can be done through LSD settings and throttle modulation or with the brakes and steering, but doesn't need to be something that is tuned into the car for every corner.

The fastest cars in the world, F1, Indy, LeMans etc. don't set their cars up for oversteer or understeer, but are always looking for fast, predictable, neutral handling for many reasons, including tire wear and outright speed and predictability.
 
How about neutral?

with oversteer i have to lift off and/or correct steering and lose time.

with understeer i have to lift off and/or correct steering and lose time.

The ideal car would just drive where i point it to. Unfortunatly there is no such thing.

In GT5 I prefer oversteer because it's fun.
 
Well I thought it is pretty obvious that neutral would be prefered which is why I never put neutral in the poll. I wanted a oversteer vs understeer discussion but feel free to say why you prefer neutral (if that's the case) but it's pretty obvious neutral will be prefered because it means the car will be predictable when cornering... If you like I can add neutral to the poll? Shall I do that? Give me your views. I didn't put it in the poll because like I said I thought neutral would probably win and it's obvious why it's prefered (unless you are drifting). You don't normally want understeer or oversteer. So I wanted to see which one GTPlanet members hated more. And like I said oversteer will probably be prefered if you are drifting but otherwise understeer and oversteer are not prefered (if they are prefered, please tell me why). Shall I add neutral to the poll? Is it even possible to edit the poll?
 
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Ferrari_1996
Why did you vote for understeer? I don't understand because you prefer oversteer in FWD cars.

EDIT: You prefer oversteer for one drivetrain and understeer for another drivetrain so what caused you to vote for understeer? There is a reason, and I would like to know.
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I voted for understeer as most people prefer to drive RWD or 4WD cars, there aren't many of us that enjoy FWD. For the former two drivetrains, I prefer to have a touch of understeer as it makes me focus on what I'm doing, going into a corner. Generally speaking a car setup this way will be less likely to spin. Suits my driving style, I like to do everything as early as I can into and out of a corner.

FWD by its very nature will already understeer more than I'd like and frankly, you need the oversteer to help with the drivetrain. Now, just to clarify, with FWD cars, the sort of oversteer I like is lift-off. I appreciate and understand the physics of trying to steer and power through one set of wheels. I like a FWD car to really tuck its nose in when I'm off the gas. This type of behaviour can be induced by having the front ride height between 5-15mm higher than the rear, assuming the rest of your suspension is setup properly. Have a look at Praiano's Integra in Wallbanger's FF Summer Shootout for an example of what I mean. His setup is a touch too much for me, but that's how I like my FWD to drive...

{Cy}
 

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