Performance points worthless?

[leexr2i]

How do they work the points out? Power to weight ratios? Downforce? I wonderd this today when lapping tsukuba in an amuse gt1 turbo and a tuned caterham..
Both have 625pp.. Both on sport softs yet the amuse laps 55sec and the caterham laps 1.00 min! So what are the performance points telling me?? Are the performance points a worthless part of the game? I think they are..

 

[freight48]

I don't think they are. Based on power and weight alone, it would be hard to get a close race.

 

[leexr2i]

I fail to see the point of them if 2 cars with same pp are 5 sec apart on a short track.. Them mean nothing!

 

[Tornado]

How do they work the points out? Power to weight ratios? Downforce? I wonderd this today when lapping tsukuba in an amuse gt1 turbo and a tuned caterham..
Both have 625pp.. Both on sport softs yet the amuse laps 55sec and the caterham laps 1.00 min! So what are the performance points telling me?? Are the performance points a worthless part of the game? I think they are..

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=196351

But, as a tl;dr, there are a couple of reasons that that specific test turned out the way it did.
First, downforce has a greater effect on most cars than the Performance Points actually take into account (basically, adding downforce doesn't increase PP as much as it should), so the Amuse being faster than any equivalent PP car with no downforce would be a par for the course course.
Second, GT5's physics engine has problems with really light cars like the Caterham, so it should be faster in the game than it is.

 

[SlyckTires]

It's a little beyond me as to why PP doesn't take into account things like tyre choice (massive), gearbox type (not so) and suspension settings as these things obviously have a huge impact on performance. For instance, in any pp limited race, all the smart players are going to have fully adjustable suspension, gearboxes and racing softs, otherwise you're doomed. Which means that you either stick to the same couple of cars all the time or you have to make sure you have these items fitted to any car you're likely to want to use in a race. And since even I've got 500 now (and I said I wasn't going to collect), most of them will never get driven in anger.

 

[GYMKHANA_RYAN4]

How do they work the points out? Power to weight ratios? Downforce? I wonderd this today when lapping tsukuba in an amuse gt1 turbo and a tuned caterham..
Both have 625pp.. Both on sport softs yet the amuse laps 55sec and the caterham laps 1.00 min! So what are the performance points telling me?? Are the performance points a worthless part of the game? I think they are..

If you tune the caterham right and run both cars on racing softs you may find the caterham will be significantly closer

 

[CMvan46]

Yeah they aren't totally worthless I don't think. Nice general guideline as to where cars stack up. Do you think a beginner would ever EVER look at a caterham and think you know this car is fairly fast (should be faster)... well the answer is no. Sure it has some shortfalls but as a general indicator of a car's performance I don't think they are worthless at all.

 

[DCP]

I think if you dropped the pp to say 500pp, the caterham would win.

 

[Toronto122]

I agree...PP isn't as effective as I'd hoped.

It works MUCH better in Forza 3. If you're running a bunch of cars that are S998 in Forza, the races are all VERY close. But in GT5 for some reason, I can have an Autozam at 420 and I can detune an RX-7 to 420, and kickthe Autozam's butt.

There's something amiss with the PP setup.

 

[Mike Rotch]

PP put an enormous proportion of the formulation on weight. Lightness bumps PP up a lot more than increasing HP does - so lightweight cars are heavily penalised. I think my RM '96 Lotus is like 600+pp when only packing 260hp.

This is annoying as you cant remove weight reduction once its applied, so i have ruined a few cars PP wise by doing Stage 3 reductions before PP got introduced.

And this is why a caterham gets penalised over the amuse - its basically half the weight so gets punitive PP applied which makes it uncompetitive in a direct race.

 

[alx-ndr]

How do they work the points out? Power to weight ratios? Downforce? I wonderd this today when lapping tsukuba in an amuse gt1 turbo and a tuned caterham..
Both have 625pp.. Both on sport softs yet the amuse laps 55sec and the caterham laps 1.00 min! So what are the performance points telling me?? Are the performance points a worthless part of the game? I think they are..

The caterham can do that faster... tune out the oversteer.

 

[leexr2i]

it was just a quick test.. the amuse would also do it faster..

 

[Jimmie]

PP put an enormous proportion of the formulation on weight. Lightness bumps PP up a lot more than increasing HP does - so lightweight cars are heavily penalised. I think my RM '96 Lotus is like 600+pp when only packing 260hp.

This is annoying as you cant remove weight reduction once its applied, so i have ruined a few cars PP wise by doing Stage 3 reductions before PP got introduced.

And this is why a caterham gets penalised over the amuse - its basically half the weight so gets punitive PP applied which makes it uncompetitive in a direct race.

I thought that, but bought two NSX Type-Rs for 500pp, one was lightened and brough to 500pp, the other just increased HP to bring it up.

The lightened one was faster and more consistent for me, and better on tyre wear. Tried them both with a wing and without, with a wing at 500pp was better than without at 500pp.

 

[wrx'02]

Also keep in mind that sometimes the PP value for a car seems to be different depending on where your reading the info. (i.e. the garage vs. the tuning screen)
I think the points do help, and it would be sort of lame if the PP value was directly linked to lap speed because then every car with, say, 400PP would be the exact same speed.

 

[guyr1]

PP put an enormous proportion of the formulation on weight. Lightness bumps PP up a lot more than increasing HP does - so lightweight cars are heavily penalised. I think my RM '96 Lotus is like 600+pp when only packing 260hp.

This is annoying as you cant remove weight reduction once its applied, so i have ruined a few cars PP wise by doing Stage 3 reductions before PP got introduced.

And this is why a caterham gets penalised over the amuse - its basically half the weight so gets punitive PP applied which makes it uncompetitive in a direct race.

Try applying ballast.

 

[stadti]

It's a little beyond me as to why PP doesn't take into account things like tyre choice (massive), gearbox type (not so) and suspension settings as these things obviously have a huge impact on performance. For instance, in any pp limited race, all the smart players are going to have fully adjustable suspension, gearboxes and racing softs, otherwise you're doomed. Which means that you either stick to the same couple of cars all the time or you have to make sure you have these items fitted to any car you're likely to want to use in a race. And since even I've got 500 now (and I said I wasn't going to collect), most of them will never get driven in anger.

I don't think that suspension settings should be added to pps, because suspension supports the way a driver handles the car, which is different from player to player. So my suspension settings in a well tuned car fit my style of driving that one car, but maybe those are absolutely horrible for another persion with another driving style. How should someone thake this into account when calculating the pp for a car?

Also keep in mind that sometimes the PP value for a car seems to be different depending on where your reading the info. (i.e. the garage vs. the tuning screen)
I think the points do help, and it would be sort of lame if the PP value was directly linked to lap speed because then every car with, say, 400PP would be the exact same speed.

I don't think that it is lame if the PP would be linked to lap speed, I think this is an impossible task to do, because maybe one person knows a way to take a corner better than another one, so the laptimes will differ even when using the same car with the same tuning.

However I do think that PD should change the PP system in a way that if the cars have the same PP value those cars should be fairly competitive to each other, which means 0,5-1 second difference if the same player drives them around the same track.

 

[DMoss84]

The ultra lite cars automatically get overrated for some reason. Otherwise, the pp system is very accurate.

 

[N99GT]

i find the PP system to be a complete farce! for me i dont think they work very well. i dont like it

 

[z06fun]

The problem with the PP system is it doesn't take into account shear hp. It focus on power to weight, which is not so useful on high speed tracks if you have a low weight car.

Keep in mind that it actually uses area under the hp curve vs. weight and not simply hp/weight to calculate PP. What this means is you generally don't want to use cars that have high torque and a flat Hp curve in the PP system as they will be generally slower at a given pp, compared to a flat torque curve or (best) rising torque curve. The you adjust the Tranny to use the high hp area of the curve and that tends to be fastest in the PP system. This is all carried over from prologue.

Also, initially and in prologue, tires were part of PP calc, but one of the GT5 updates added tires as a separate restriction so that you didn't have some people on very sticky tires against some on very crappy tires. That tended to create poor racing conditions at times

 

[chuyler1]

The key ingredient to close racing with performance points is running cars that would be closely matched in real life. Keicars vs supercars of equal PP is not a realistic comparison. Likewise, older cars vs newer cars, light cars vs heavy cars, and 4wd cars vs 2wd cars simply don't play out well. There are exceptions, but they are often track specific.

Furthermore, you need to match tire compounds and tuning options. A car with a custom 6-speed transmission with short gears will run circles around a car with a stock transmission at Tsukuba. Downforce can make or break a car too. If you use more downforce than what is required for a car given a certain PP level you will be handicapped when it comes to acceleration. For example, don't add downforce to cars with less than 300hp.

You simply cannot be competitive in performance point racing if you don't know how to match the car to the track and tune the car to get the best lap times. Everything from brake balance to camber will add or remove times from your laps so it becomes a real challenge for a fast driver to keep up with a better tuner.

If you don't want to worry about tuning, stick to shuffle and same-make racing.

 

[Exorcet]

How do they work the points out? Power to weight ratios? Downforce? I wonderd this today when lapping tsukuba in an amuse gt1 turbo and a tuned caterham..
Both have 625pp.. Both on sport softs yet the amuse laps 55sec and the caterham laps 1.00 min! So what are the performance points telling me?? Are the performance points a worthless part of the game? I think they are..

The problem is your test. You have one data point. Not statistically significant.

PP is a great addition, and has made online much better. I recommend it over HP/weight.

One thing to know about it though, is that it does not make cars equal in performance, but equivalent. Basically, two cars with 600 PP should be a good match for each other, but one may have a top speed of 150 mph, while the other goes 200. Obviously, on certain tracks, one will slaughter the other despite being equal PP. You need to judge how to distribute your PP for certain tracks, because PP doesn't take the track into account.

 

[Tornado]

It's a little beyond me as to why PP doesn't take into account things like tyre choice (massive), gearbox type (not so) and suspension settings as these things obviously have a huge impact on performance.

Transmission and suspension settings couldn't be taken into account by the PP system, because they are both subjective adjustments.

 

[ChadSpeed]

Transmission and suspension settings couldn't be taken into account by the PP system, because they are both subjective adjustments.

But just by having them installed on your car, giving your car more handling ability and gearing ability, should add PP. I only race PP with Tire restrictions and can still be competitive with HA suspension and stock trans in most cars on larger tracks like the ring and Grand Valley. I liked when the tires were a factor, because on some tracks a fast car with crap tires will beat a balanced car, but still be exciting and scary.

 

[iamjajo]

I think the PP system is pretty fair. It certainly beats using just HP and weight to handicap cars.

I don't know why people compare apples to oranges when comparing times for cars at the same PP. Some cars are naturally going to be faster around certain tracks.

I also think people end up preferring a certain car type, such as F/R. Because they use that car regularly, they would get faster lap times with an F/R than an M/R or AWD car. That result would have nothing to do with PP.

When PP was first released, tires were included in the calculation. But, there were complaints. So, PD removed the tires from the PP calculation and let people set tire restrictions in online play.

 

[Tornado]

But just by having them installed on your car, giving your car more handling ability and gearing ability, should add PP.

No it shouldn't, because simply having a racing transmission or adjustable suspension doesn't mean that a car would be faster. The same thing holds true for the clutch and flywheel upgrades.

 

[ChadSpeed]

No it shouldn't, because simply having a racing transmission or adjustable suspension doesn't mean that a car would be faster. The same thing holds true for the clutch and flywheel upgrades.

Really? So for example putting a 5sp racing transmission in a 70' Challenger, along with racing suspension. Lets say we don't adjust anything and put it against a stock 70' Challenger on any track. The Challenger with the trans and suspension will eat the stock one alive. It will have 1 extra gear and a much higher top speed, all while reducing nose dive under braking, and body roll in corners with the suspension. The suspension should at least make the car more balanced into and out of a corner, while the trans will simply put the car in a different category. When you perform a modification to a car that increases top speed by 50 mph the PP should be adjusted. This is PD's second go at PP, I don't expect perfection, but a little common sense goes a long way. PD seems to be not using much common sense lately.

 

[boredgunner]

All PP is good for is online restrictions.

 

[MetalJet]

In adjusting for PP, Power limiter is better than adding ballast.

In a normal power band, the HP increases to a certain rev point, then decreases. With the power limiter, the HP increases to the new max hp at the same rev point as it originally had, then remains constant until it hits the end of the power band. In other words, you get (and keep) your horsepower for a longer period of time than a light car with the same HP.

This is could be the reason that the RX-7 beats the Caterham by 5 seconds.

I think the power limiter should adjust the power band, so it will peak at a certain number of revs rather than level off like it does. It gives an unfair advantage to powerful cars who tune down over light cars that have to add weight.

 

[ChadSpeed]

In adjusting for PP, Power limiter is better than adding ballast.

In a normal power band, the HP increases to a certain rev point, then decreases. With the power limiter, the HP increases to the new max hp at the same rev point as it originally had, then remains constant until it hits the end of the power band. In other words, you get (and keep) your horsepower for a longer period of time than a light car with the same HP.

This is could be the reason that the RX-7 beats the Caterham by 5 seconds.

I think the power limiter should adjust the power band, so it will peak at a certain number of revs rather than level off like it does. It gives an unfair advantage to powerful cars who tune down over light cars that have to add weight.

I agree with you a bit on this. Not sure if it is the case all the time, but I had some great races on Tuscana with my Challenger SRT8 at 480pp with Sport Softs. I reduced power to come down to 480 from 500, and felt like I had more power on the straights and out of the corners than the evo that was keeping up with me, and easily won a few races at different PP doing that.

 

[[InsertGr8Name]]

1. Does pp actually DO anything instead of allowing online people a way of restricting cars?
2. To me it's just a way of determining close cars. the actual stats are better for close comparison. Maybe if the game started with this, it would be useful, but this late, no way