Patch 4.0 is released

This was probably already addressed but I CBA to read the whole thread at the moment. But, you actually described exactly why fixed setups are a true test of driver skill. A truly skilled and well-rounded driver can jump into any car with any setup and be quick with just a bit of practice. Adapting your driving style to a particular car is much more of a challenge than adapting a car's settings to your driving style. So in the scenario you describe with the ROC, the best driver is the one who is able to adapt to a variety of different cars quickly and be fast in all of them, which is exactly the point of the ROC. It's not about seeing how is fastest with their preferred setup, it's about who's able to adapt the quickest to any random car with any random setup. A driver who can be the fastest in all three of the ROC cars deserves to be the champion, but a driver who can only be fast in those cars when it has a preferred setup does not deserve to be the champion.

When I hosted GT5/6 clubs/races I always used the "no tuning" option, for a variety of reasons. For one, it made it easier for someone to just grab the car and jump in at the last minute without having to worry about other people being way faster because they had spent a dozen hours testing and tuning the car. I wanted it to be about who was the best driver, not who had the most time during the week to perfect their tune. Another reason was that it made us more versatile drivers. After racing several cars with their default setups I learned to be able to feel the nuances of each car and adapt to them, and before long I could jump in any car and adapt to it within a few laps and be quick. I firmly believe that time spent behind the wheel makes you a better and more well-rounded driver than spending time in the tuning garage. You can often make a greater improvement on your lap time by adjusting your driving technique or your corner entry than you can by adjusting a suspension setting. And you can apply that technique to a just about any car on just about any track, without ever touching a spanner.

But we all have our own likes and desires, forced default setups happen to be my preference but that doesn't mean it has to be everyone's preference. As long as they allow us the option to enforce a default setup or allow full tuning, then everyone is happy.

 

With the forced default setups... does it also force the car's FFB setups to default? I am curious how this works.. on the official forum they said "forced default setups" only works if you just do a race (no practice, qualy, or warmup).

I am curious how this is working if at all. I am generally not into tuning, but I did use the 0 Camber speed boost

 

Since the patch (PS4) I can't get any of the photo mode filters to work when taking pictures in the career mode. I took the same picture with 8 filters applied and 1 more without and ended up with 9 identical photos sans filters in my driver profile. I also can't seem to delete my pictures anymore... Not the biggest issue, mind.

 

I'm wondering this as well. It would be smart to come out with a small patch fixing the force default setups and a few other things and then the patch after that they can continue to add features.

 

Being able to adjust your driving to suit a car's characteristics isn't anything special, it's just called being able to drive. Road cars aren't set up to each driver's preferences, so to learn to drive, you learn to feel what the car is doing, and adapt accordingly. Any race driver can adapt their style to a car that doesn't suit their preferences, but you'll always be quicker if the car is adjusted to suit how you drive, otherwise there would be no point in having adjustable suspension or diffs or anything in a race car.

If elite drivers could just drive any set up as quickly as any other, they wouldn't bother setting the car up at all would they? Spec series' like NASCAR and GP2/3 wouldn't allow set up changes if it made things equal, as it's be cheaper, and the point of a spec series is low costs and equal racing.

The reason RoC doesn't allow set up changes has nothing to do with leveling the playing field. The reason they don't allow it is because each driver would have to have significant practice time to find their set up, and having every driver practice and set up the car before each run would take forever.

Romain Grosjean won RoC on his first attempt, beating Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel to the crown, but in F1 that year he was beaten by Kimi Raikkonen in the same car. Now this year Kimi can hardly get within a second of Vettel in the same car. Going by your theory, Grosjean should be the best driver of the three having won RoC, but he isn't anywhere near as quick as Vettel in F1, considering he is at best close to Raikkonen. If winning in a car you can't set up makes you better, he should be heaps better once he's able to set the car up.

The fact is, anyone can adapt their driving to suit cars and set ups that don't suit them, but they will always be faster when the car and/or set up does suit them. That's why having one set up for everyone can favour some drivers better than others, meaning it's not a perfectly level playing field like you're claiming. One driver may find it suits them fine, while another has to adapt to it, and while the one adapting might be able to get used to it, they won't be as quick as if they didn't have to adapt.

The best race drivers in the world would all prefer a car set up to their driving style than having to adapt to a car that feels foreign to them. You only have to watch any top tier motorsport to see this, so I don't see why it's even being debated.

Again, I'm not against having the option in game, as it is good for people that don't want to spend tons of time setting the car up, as you rightly point out, some people will have more time to spend on set ups than others, and some will have more knowledge of setting cars up than others. In this scenario, having free set ups can be unfair to the people who don't have the time and/or knowledge to set their car up. However, if you have a series where everyone is serious about winning and have the time to spend on set ups, it would be unfair to prevent them from adjusting the car to suit them.

Learning how to set up a car will teach you how to feel what the car is doing underneath you. You'll learn what changing suspension settings does to the feel of the car, as well as diff, alignment, aero, etc. Learning how to set up a car will definitely give you a better feel for the car.

Anyway, I'm not arguing about this anymore as it's off topic. If you want to discuss it feel free to pm me. Nothing I've said here is anything new, it's common knowledge in racing circles, and the reason I'm saving up for new adjustable coilovers for my car, since I don't have my track car anymore to play around with.

 

Has anyone else experienced any issues with patch v4.0 on PS4?

I had a 100% crash last night when racing on Race 1 of Formula B at Spa in Career Mode. 50% distance. The crashes all occurred whilst AI cars were in the pit lane. I had to retire in the end just to get to the next race. Because of that I had to suffer the misery of starting at the back of the grid trying to survive the chaos caused by the crazy AI on the first couple of laps.

The weather forecasting seems to have taken a step back over v3.0 as well. The following race was the Formula B at Donington. A thunderstorm started just after I crossed the line at the end of lap 3, despite the current weather showing as "Medium cloud" and the forecast weather displaying as "Medium cloud". The track also got wet incredibly quickly, so by the start of sector 3 on the same lap I had next to no grip at all on my slicks.

This game really does frustrate the hell out of me on occasions, but when it does all come together it's absolutely fantastic. The endurance events in particular.

 

Seems like it's two steps forward, one step back with pCARS patches

 

i've had 2 crashes this past week, since 4.0. Can't even remember the last crash I had before that. Not cool.

 

Please report this in the official forum.

Hint: You can delete your pics in the playstation menu, in the recording/screenshot gallery (not sure whats the non-german word for that ).

 

Wasn't trying to argue at all mate, no worries. Of course a driver will be faster with his/her preferred setup, that's a no brainer and that's not the point I was trying to make. But the most talented driver is one who can be fast with a good setup and also with whatever random setup (or no setup) is thrown at them. A driver that can only be fast with a certain setup is not the most well rounded driver. For me, it's far more impressive when a driver jumps into an unknown car with virtually no practice/tuning and still goes out to dominate the field, than watching a driver who has spent hours and hours practicing and fine tuning his setup dominate. That's why I like the ROC, it shows who is fastest not just in a perfectly dialed in car that he's very familiar with, but with a variety of very different cars with no setup and with little-to-no practice. As for the RoGro analogy, I doubt even Senna could beat anybody in the turd that is the Lotus car.

We're all entitled to our own opinions and I wasn't trying to say yours is wrong or mine is right. I was just trying to explain the reasoning behind, and the value of, "no tuning" racing. It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it can be very fun, educational, and produce fantastic racing.

 

Yeah my original point, which was addressed to someone else, and you quoted one of my posts on this, was that it's not a level playing field if everyone is stuck with one set up. Of course any half decent driver would be able to adapt to a set up that doesn't suit them, but as I said, and you also did, they will always be faster when they set up does suit them. My original point being that the default set up might suit someone well, and others less.

Also with RoC, my point with Grosjean wasn't that he isn't as fast as the other two in this year's Lotus, it was that he was at best close to equal with Kimi when they were both at Lotus with a very good car in 2013, and this year Kimi is being destroyed by Vettel when they share the same car at Ferrari. All of this, despite the fact Grosjean beat Vettel in RoC in 2013.

I do understand the point of no tuning, as I stated in my previous post. I only disagreed with the people who were claiming no tuning = level playing field. It simply doesn't.

 

I would say that it produces more of a level playing field than one where one person has a good engineer who can setup a car really well and another person has a crap engineer who can't setup a car up worth a hoot. Or, as is the case in F1 right now, one team has a trick engine that completely blows away the rest of the field. That is not a level playing field, it's a field where he with the best equipment wins. I'd say HAM has the skill and speed to be at the front, but I don't believe ROS does yet he is consistently positioned ahead of very talented drivers like VET and RAI due solely to his superior equipment/setup. Not a level playing field. The only way to have a level playing field in racing is where everyone is in the same equipment and it's up to the driver's raw skill and ability to adapt. If a driver can excel in that scenario then it stands to reason that he would be even faster than the others if he had a car with his preferred setup.

I do think I see the point you're trying to make though. The reality of a fixed setup field is that there will likely be a larger gap between the front and back of the field. This was my experience when I ran tuning prohibited races, the faster guys were even faster than the slower guys. So it didn't "even the field" in the sense that all the cars/drivers were all bunched up and running the same lap times. What it did was take out most of the variables so that what mattered most was driver skill/ability, and in most cases it widens the gap between the fast drivers and the slow drivers because the most skilled drivers rise to the top. So no, it doesn't make all the drivers equal in speed, but what it does is provide a "level playing field" where the only real variable that counts is a driver's skill and ability to adapt quickly, and that's exactly the point of a level playing field, to make it about skill and only skill.

And just to be clear, I'm in no way trying to argue with you or say you're wrong. In my mind we're just a couple of petrolheads having a friendly discussion about various aspects of motorsports over a pint or five. (None of my real friends are into cars or motorsports so I have to have these discussions with Internetz people. )

 

Does everyone have the new "version 4.0" (bottom left) on their home page in Pcars ? Mine still says "welcome back" i have read other people having the same problem . Not a big deal but i just dont want to have a corrupt patch.

I'm on the PS4 buy the way digital version. I dont think i can 'just delete 4.0' with deleting the hole game.

 

Fixed setups - in all my real racing I can count on one hand the times my car was setup perfectly and gave me the confidence to "over drive" the car. Point being, ideal setups are the luxury of pro's and frequently we need to compensate and accept that it's part of racing.

Not to mention, most non pro racers are relying on a mechanic friend to adjust the car, far from a race engineer.

I've learned to accept, and in some ways enjoy the challenge of making a car "as is" perform, in the real world.

Voodoo - frequently from one day to the next a car can feel diffrent also, combined with weather and it's a lot of guess work. Once I had a great setup, the next day my group was first to grid at 8:30 am and it was a freakish 32 degrees (f)... Heating up the brakes and tires was near impossible... The pucker factor was so high for the whole field we complained about our assholes more than anything at the end of the race... A few of us asked the winners girlfriend if he was "playing on the same team"... She laughed and said "hmm, that might explain a few other things..."

 

After years of organising casual lobbies since GT5 first came out, I have spent most of my time in Tuning Prohibited rooms. Force Default Setups is a welcome addition to Project CARS, as there's already an established audience for it who've migrated from Gran Turismo. Most of my rooms would fill up quickly & stay full for 5 to 6 hours. The "Stock/Spec" community in GT (as we liked to call it) was jam packed with clean & honourable gentleman racers, with only the occasional idiot to ruin the odd race here & there. From the reports I've heard, the Project CARS online community seems to be the exact opposite! And no, I'm not interested in joining a club or going league racing, I only do casual sprint racing in open lobbies. It's just a shame that SMS are relectant to provide the rest of the tools needed for policing behaviour, namely; ability for host to kick player, PSN Block list players banned from all your lobbies, text chat, room namning, ban mics. I fear the next time I race online again will be in GT7.

 

I think you've not read most of my posts mate. I specifically said I was referring to a scenario where you didn't have massive differences in driver skill. A serious series where many of the competitors are pretty evenly matched. In this scenario, the differences in the drivers skills will not be as great as the differences in their preferences. Forcing one set up for all in this scenario will potentially give one person a set up they're fine with, and another a set up they need to adjust their driving to. If a car is behaving as you like it, you'll always be faster than if you have to drive around problems in it's characteristics.

Forcing one set up is fine if you have many different skill levels, and people who don't understand how cars work that can't set the cars up.

As far as F1 goes, the engineers are all good enough to interpret driver's feedback. It's up to the driver to give accurate feedback, and the best drivers have an understanding of how and why the car behaves the way it does. As I said, any half decent driver can adapt to a car that doesn't suit them, but even the best drivers will still be quicker with a car that does suit them. Learning how a car works and how changing different settings affects different aspects of a car's behaviour is important if you're a serious racer, virtual or not.

As far as Mercedes dominance in F1, I agree it's painful seeing Rosberg at the pointy end all the time, but that's down to the engine being better and the chassis being built so well, not the set up. An interesting point to make would be that Mercedes couldn't find a set up to make their drivers comfortable in Singapore, and Ferrari brought an update to the SF15T that strengthened the downforce of the floor, and gave the car a stronger rear end. This gave Vettel more confidence on the throttle, and combined with him finding a set up that suited him, he qualified 1.5 seconds ahead of the Mercs. The dominant car was pummelled because they couldn't work out how to set it up to behave.

Vettel also destroyed Kimi, because he worked with his engineer to perfect his set up, and Kimi has always been the type to just go with it if it's 'good enough' (the reason he never bothers to do track walks to research the layout and surface). This led to kimi complaining about the car's balance, while Seb was confident. Identical cars. Difference is Seb has an insane work ethic and a love of engineering (he said he wants to become an engineer when his career is over), and spends a lot of time with his engineer working out the perfect set up. Kimi doesn't do any more work than the minimum required, he's always been like that. Even Ron Dennis said of Kimi at Mclaren that it was very hard to make him comfortable in the car, as he had very specific needs from the car, but didn't give great feedback for his engineer to work with.

Anyway, I think we should probably move this conversation to pm if we are to continue it, as we're taking the thread further and further off topic. Like I said, feel free to pm me though. Cars and motorsport is my life, and I love talking about it with anyone.

 

Done and Thanks!, used to be able to do it in game is all that made me question

 

And now whenever I pit in the BAC it puts me on prime tyres each and every time. I have no way of selecting the supersofts anymore. New glitch and a crappy one at that as I'll have to change the AI level to suit the slower more difficult to control tyres

 

That sucks. Did you try making a dedicated pit strategy for the Mono with the supersofts? Like make the pit strategy in a QRW and then load it during the actual race instead of tweaking the pit strategy on the spot?

 

The below aspect of the patch is not present. There is a wheel that has been on the track for an entire qualifying session, right in the middle of the road (PS4).

"Tracks - Movable trackside objects and broken-off car parts will now be removed from the track after impacts."

Also, the game has just crashed as i was fast-forwarding qualifying...i had pole. These two things have annoyed as they were supposed to be addressed.

 

Doesn't matter how I try to set/save the pit strategy, both the soft and hard tyre option when saved puts the prime tyres on.

 

Is this random or track specific by chance? Because I had a race in FA that started raining half way through, and when I tried to put inters on it gave me full wets. Would have been ok if the rain was getting heavy, but it wasn't, and the wets lasted only about 5 laps before I needed to replace them. I selected inters again, and got wets again. Three times I attempted to get inters and ended up with wets that just weren't lasting at all, and had little grip.

Didn't matter in the end as I was taken out by a crazy AI who decided I didn't need both front wheels.


Edit: I only ask because if it's car specific I won't be looking forward to the next time I need inters in FA. Dry compounds seem to select fine for that car at least.

 

I've only been trying it on the Bathurst 25hr race, I was running the full distance/time then the update came and it cocked my race up, I then tried it again only to have the problem with the tyre selection

 

I think you all are referring to the issue that "automatic by weather" tire selection overriding whatever you pick in the pit strategy for the entire duration of the race. You have manually pick a tire before the race if you want control over tire selection the rest of the race.

 

Yeah, i think you are right there. It's such an annoying glitch because unless you read the forum, it would be very hard to figure that out yourself, or at least for most users. This game infuriates me sometimes but I still like it a lot.

 

Frustrating that the AI are still able to do unrealistic lap times when using fast forward in qualifying; had it happen in the BMW touring event and a LMP2 race in career today; comfortably on pole, pit, whack it to x60 and all of a sudden I'm tenth as half the pack have somehow found 7 seconds a lap!

Also had an AI car not pit in the touring car race when the rain was super heavy over the last 3 laps; there's just no way he would've stayed on the track, I was forced into the pit as I was aquaplaning with two laps to go!

This game can be so frustrating, but as others have said, it can also be sublime. Really hoping they sort these issues out soon.

 

I can't find a reliable workaround for that issue. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's broken. The massively incorrect times seem to have gone away though. I remember back when the game first came out, using accelerate time on Monaco in the LMP3 class would give AI times of ~40 seconds.