Re think my whole set up experience?

Well, I started project cars with very high hopes. I have been playing racing games for approx 20 years now. I grew my track knowledge endlessly driving around the gp tracks in the f1 series. Later, moving on to better simulation in gran turismo.

I found my all time favourite track was the nurburgring gp. The amount of laps I've put into it must run into the hundreds of thousands,if not more. So, I start off in the Mercedes gt3. I know the track so well,I'm literally going round like a machine with no thought.

I know every corner,and how far to push it. However, I seem to be having trouble with my set ups. And not just on this track. I joined an online race, and the best I could put in was leaving me at the back of the pack. Am I missing something here? Have previous games been a lie to realism and settings?

I do not think it's humanly possible for me to drive any faster round a track, without wheel spinning or facing a 360. Does anyone else have this problem? I'm seeing some ridiculously good times on this game. And im talking 5 seconds plus on what I can give. Where are these people finding the times? Would you say concentrate on corner exit speed? Entry speeds? straight line speed?

Any thoughts or hints on car set ups would be great, thank you.

 

I won't be much help but I'll try.
PCars relies a lot more on tuning, it is not really a pick up and play.
I personally am rubbish at tuning and finding a set up, so I find Pcars difficult.
Each car is different, so you have to tune to your driving style plus the characteristics of the car which you want to improve or iron out depending on your style.
I'm sure people here will be more helpful than me, I do try to tune but it is mostly pot luck with me.
There are tunes posted you could try as well.

 

it's mostly about exit speed, if you learned how to set-up on GT games, some of the things you learned may be wrong in real life. But it's not only about setups, it's really much more a matter of experience, finding the right trajectory and knowing where and how you can open up the throttle. I notice it a lot when i try to help my friends driving faster while driving in multiplayer: i start following them and tell them when to brake/accelerate and how, but i always find out that while they're telling me "i can't push throttle anymore without wheelspin" i can easily pass them just using more throttle (and no wheelspin).

 

I always put cornering speed over straight line speed. The only tuning I mess with is air pressure and adding as much front downforce as I can (so far). I feel like a good entry speed leads to a good exit (the most important). If I come in too hot, then it takes longer to get the nose of the car pointed toward the exit. More importantly, when that happens I'm slower to get back on the throttle.
That seems to yield ME with the best results.

 

Thank you everyone. Very valid points. I should look more into entry and exit speeds of corners above straight line speed. And I would agree,I too am not good at set ups, even though I did think I was ok before this game. Will just stick to tyre pressures,down force and sway bars and see where that gets me. It's a little unsettling though when you get your corners spot on and someone just sails past you on the straight. maybe I'm over thinking things. definitely not a pick up and play.

 

Based on your comments, your corner exit speed (the most important thing you need to focus on) may be not as good as you think. Personally I sometimes think I perfected the track but still way off the better times. Then I look at the ghost and find other ways to approach the corner. Sometimes that is not possible without the setup adjustments, so then I have to concede usually, since I'm bad at that. Don't get discouraged.

 

Everyone above is right, but are missing a key element It is about exit speed as it is on every game and indeed real life racing. But in this game, like other sims, it's also about tire temperatures and being in the optimum temperature zone. If you are running around on 70C tires and I'm running on 95C tires, and we are running the exact same lines and inputs, I'll be significantly faster than you. You must learn to tune for and manage tire temperatures first and foremost, as all tuning depends on it. In my garage I have some videos posted. The Clio at Donington video comes with some pop-up instructions for maintaining speed and shows you the kind of racing lines you need to take to be quick at that track.

The Clio was difficult to tune as the front tires kept overheating so I'd usually only get one hot lap in. I could fix it with higher front pressures but for a hot lap, I only need one lap. FR's and MR's are more consistent with tire temperatures. Camber, brake duct openings, tire pressure and even sway bar settings can affect tire temperatures, along with track conditions and how you drive. If you are swining the back end out quite often you will heat up the rears. Plowing the front end or over rotating the wheel will heat up the fronts.

Another trait of this game is that breaking traction at the rear costs you time. It's fun, it looks great on replays to carry huge slip angles, but it's slow. There is an optimum slip angle for all car/tire combinations and you can feel it when it's right, but when you go beyond that, you lose forward momentum. If it's happening consistently on the track, you have too much oversteer and have to adapt your driving style and/or the tune to avoid it as much as possible.

 

If you have the PC version, you should take a look at some of the telemetry applications, I use pcars profiler by Tom Shane, others are available.

Record the telemetry while driving a load of laps & then you can look in detail at your line, speed, brakes, throttle, temperatures etc... and compare different laps. I have improved my lines & techniques at many corners by looking at the numbers.

For me, most of the time I enter the corners too hot, end up braking too much and have low corner & exit speeds. When I brake a bit earlier I actually finder it easier to carry higher corner speed on a better line & get a better exit.

 

I will preface my comments here with: I am a PS4 and T300 user, I have nearly 120hrs up on this game and am in season 9 of career and can easily beat the AI at 100% (in the dry)

You sound a lot like me. I too am a huge fan of Nurburg GP and have also put in a huge number of laps there over many years and several games.

The biggest thing I have found with this game is that people cut corners and exceed the track limits all the time. I just cannot do this (deliberately) and am penalised for it with the times. I bet you are the same.

This game rewards bad behaviour and bad driving :-( Unless I know the people I no longer go online. All of my friends and casual acquaintances that have the game have stopped playing it, I am the last. If I was not chasing my Platinum trophy I too would have stopped

I saw a comment in another thread the other day that I liked very much and it went something like this "Somewhere in here is buried a very good game".

The biggest issue I have with the driving is feeling the grip and quite frankly it just does not seem quite right on most cars. My quickest times are when I set the car up to slide and drive like an arcade game :-( Which is not how I want to experience a driving sim :-(

I probably have not answered your question here but I hopefully I have passed on the thought you are not the only one with issues with this game.

BTW I am seriously considering going back to GT6 and shelving PCARS until it is sorted.

 

The fastest way around in GT6 is sliding your car in an unrealistic manner, gotta back it in like Marc Marquez.

 

'drifting' is not the answer. If that's the key to fast times,you are in the wrong game. I've been working on set ups this week and have managed to cut 1.5 seconds off so far.

 

Sliding like its GT6 is most certainly not the fastest way around in pCars. Tuning sway bars and tire pressures are only fine tuning adjustments by the way. Try messing around with springs and ride height. Also you can't add a bunch of front downforce and not add any rear downforce and expect to go faster. The car has to be aerodynamically balanced just like it's mechanically balanced. Try setting your rear downforce to control your top speed then adjusting the front downforce so the car is balanced.

 

Decrease your fov, it is a good staring point. Lets you better judge the degrees of the turns(how sharp they are) and you will notice that you dont need to turn the wheel as far as before, the track will look wider buuut the speeed sensation will decrease a bit. That is a good start if you are new to sims.


I have been a big sceptic about running with lower fov, thinking that the only thing it does is make you see more of the track. But after always finishing last or "over driving" I would often be totally finished after a race. But decreasing the fov sure fixed this for me, i can drive more relaxed, can judge more accurately how sharp the turns are and instantly feel if I have turned the wheel to much/fast. shame that so much of the cockpit and the view of side mirrors go missing

 

Well the obvious answer that you may not want to hear. Maybe your just not as good as you think you are. Sorry to be blunt.

 

That may be the fastest way for you due to your skill and/or equipment limitation, but it's most definitely not the ultimate fastest way around any track in any car I have driven in this game. In fact, maintaining larger than real or natural slip angles has always been the slower way around, although it is possible to utilize them to save a corner or a shunt and ultimately complete a lap. I'd like to see one of these slidey replays and see where you finish on a busy leaderboard with that replay.

 

I agree entirely with what you have said but you have missed my point. My comment was prefaced with "the game rewards bad behaviour". Both in career and online all of the AI and nearly all of the online I have seen, corner cut, dive bomb into corners and generally exceed the track limits and have a total disregard for racing etiquette. Therefore, the fastest way around is to avoid being hit and basically take liberties with the track limits.

All of my friends have stopped playing this game and have shelved it. I am the last. I have just joined a local racing league and hopefully will find a better class of player.

 

I am glad you have managed to join a league. If it's anything like the gentlemen's club i'm sure you will find hardcore simmers out there. Please don't let poor play affect your enjoyment and drop an amazing game. In every racer,there is always a few idiots at the back. I guess it's the penalty for being online. not every player is going to be set up with a wheel, ready to treat like an actual realistic race. Some are going to be children,it's a given fact.

There is only so far you can push a track. even when taking liberties. I believe there's a smooth realistic way to do it and beat others. not everyone,but i'd like to put my best in and finish in the top 5. If I make a mistake it's my fault and i'll take the rap! its a shame I'm a full time shift worker. If this came out when I was younger, I would be in a league and be on it every damn day ha! If you can find the time to do that, well done and enjoy!

someone said in another thread,in time all the idiots will phase out and the true fans and racers will be left. I hope for that.

 

I didn't miss that and the AI behaviour is sometimes atrocious but for me, physics is number 1 and by far and if car behaviour was such that you could just slide around every corner with unrealistic slip angles and achieve outright fast laps, I wouldn't even play the game because it would never be fixed. AI can be fixed, so I'd wait for that, although I'm still not much interested in career mode to begin with.

 

Im with you on that one. I'd rather be online, or spend a whole day on one race weekend in solo.

 

Tell that to GT academy.

 

I hope for that too but it didn't happen in GT5/6. What happens is the idiots think they are good and actually have talent and it is all about winning no matter how you drive. And in the GT series *IF* you touch one of them then you are instantly kicked. It does save the effort of leaving though ;-)

 

I'm not much interested in online lobbies until they get fixed either. Especially regarding the track limits.

 

Sliding and drifting are very different, what Jonny is saying about slip angles is spot on. On a race track your not actually setting up a turn as much as your setting up a controlled slide with a predictable exit. That's what slip angle is.

This is what car balance is all about, ridding the edge of a slip angle. Something rather hard to translate to a sim player because it's 1000% feel.

But you also can't discount setup tricks in computational physics based games. The only game that has removed these tricks is AC. I had a fantastic breakfast with these guys at E3 because we were all in the same hotel and they are very open about all topics, heck it was a highlight of this years E3 to me.

 

Completely true! In fact, i had a race before, and just the slightest touch by me onto the right rear of a competitor caused him to hound me all around hockenheim and spoil my race. highly annoying. I didnt even take him out, i just genuinely late braked by accident and we both took a wider line. Anything you do online seems to be 'on purpose'. Im too composed and experienced to do that to others.

 

I am in agreement. However, i will point out, in 20 years of racing games and watching nascar indy f1 etc, i've never once heard the term slip angle. I thought you just took the apex as perfect as possible. is that a term for accelerating through the corner on the apex with your car at a certain favourable angle to your exit?

 

In basic terms, slip angle is the difference between the direction a vehicle is travelling (known as heading or course over ground) and the direction that the body of the vehicle is pointing (true heading).

It's something real racers must know about, it's the difference between fast and fastest. When you "ride the slip angle" it feels like a slide as you feel the tires friction fight for grip. It's also an envelop so the "angle" can very. If you exceed it then you loose all grip.

Here is a video I just found that explains the science of it, not so much in context of racing though.

 

Another gentleman racer :-) Always a pleasure to meet one.

BTW rubbing is racing. This can also cause a 'racing incident' which is completely different from mindlessly dive bombing a corner and ricocheting off the car(s) in front to achieve the change in direction for that corner.

Edit: Also after a "racing incident" the offending car will give that position back if an advantage was gained regardless of the loss of overall position to that car.

 

Wow thank you. i found that video very helpful. I understood those basics and will try to implement it on the track. Maybe that is what i've always thought being in the zone is. A sensation i get through the corner, can't explain it well but, you know there is no faster and you got it spot on. the car just feels right and set, and you can comfortably exit on full throttle.

 

Ah fantastic, good day to you sir, hats off haha! yes, i've been dive bombed. There is no worse feeling as you get stuck in the gravel and see the offender driving away into the sunset in your well earned position. I have caused a racing incident myself, and duly gave the position back to him on the next available straight. wow, i must be a gentleman racer!

 

Chassis slip angle =/= tyre slip angle

Also, how much grip (lateral force) you lose after exceeding the optimal slip angle (which is dependent on the tyre compound, pressure, temperature, normal load, etc...) is not necessarily as drastic as you implied. For some tyres you may see next to no difference on either side of the curve (within a small fixed range), but for others having too little slip could be worse than having too much (for the same percentage off from the "optimal" slip).

The best thing I'd recommend to do would be to find a steady state corner and keep practicing increasing steering wheel angle until you find what is fastest (actually measure it). After learning what the car should feel like on the limit, then it can be taken on to the rest of the track.