The appeal of low grip driving

PhillGuy
Shuffle Racing. Best races I have ever had... some of the worst too but still.

Stock cars on stock tires.
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Stock tires in GT5 are almost always a step better than what they should be. Sports tires especially, are intended to be semi-slick tires. In-game they behave very poorly on wet surfaces compared to comfort tires. No street car intended to be used mostly on public roads would have them equipped by factory.
 
I enjoy the variety of tires available in GT5. Sticking with only RS tires or even CS tires is silly IMO. I enjoy trying to be competitive under a variety of conditions.

But that's just me.
 
I love low grip driving, pretty much all of my cars have a set of comfort hard tyres. It also makes you appreciate sports hard and soft tyres a lot more, it's too easy to get caught up in the whole racing soft or nothing mentality. Racing softs have their place but I don't look down on people who do use them, however as the OP said, it is disappointing when you're in a low PP lobby but everyone is using racing soft tyres. Then again I have come to expect nothing else from public lobbies, that's just how it is and that's fine by me. That's why I tend to frequent raceless drift lobbies so much.

The other night I drove an F40 around the 'ring at night on sports hards... As I said nearer the time somewhere here, that is as close as I've come to a zen-like experience on GT5. Hot lapping Tsukuba in a CT230R on sports softs is close, you do get totally lost in the pursuit of the perfect lap, but even a bad lap in the F40 is exhilarating.
 
couldn't agree more 👍 So much more fun for me.
 
imo, low grip racing must be great if you are using a decent wheel
For us DS3 users, i think sports hards is as good as it gets.
A car on comforts is more difficult to control on the DS3.
But yea,shuffle racing all the way :D
 
I disagree with the DS3 making low grip tires too hard, there are plenty of really fast DS3 users on the time trial leaderboards and in online races. I find C/S fun personally (up to around 425pp or so.)

What I find hardest is constantly switching from racing softs to sports/comfort tires. It's way easier to find R/S games online, so rather than not playing, I'll join one of those rooms (and they're still fun, no doubt!)

But then switch to a sports tires room and you've got to re-adjust your playing style completely. And vice versa - jump into a R/S room from a S/H room and everyone will be honking at your overly cautious corner entries, lol.
 
I've been missing out on realism, I'm going to host 'Comfort Soft / Sport Hard' Nur races for a good while now, and will limit to 490pp for kicks. I keep reading around about how it is effective to tune a car on such tires, then they can be ready for Racing tires immediately after, offering a better experience, should everyone wish to try a lap for quicker times.

I'll be a fan of low grip driving, as long as it responds to my inputs, for stability control thereon after.
 
smrtb0mb
I disagree with the DS3 making low grip tires too hard, there are plenty of really fast DS3 users on the time trial leaderboards and in online races. I find C/S fun personally (up to around 425pp or so.)

What I find hardest is constantly switching from racing softs to sports/comfort tires. It's way easier to find R/S games online, so rather than not playing, I'll join one of those rooms (and they're still fun, no doubt!)

But then switch to a sports tires room and you've got to re-adjust your playing style completely. And vice versa - jump into a R/S room from a S/H room and everyone will be honking at your overly cautious corner entries, lol.
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I think 3rd in the recent Comfort Hard GT86 seasonal was a DS3 user, with no ABS. So it can be done indeed.

I totally understand the switching tires thing. I never use RS tires unless online so I never know how hard I can push them. I'm always either too cautious or over the edge. Then I switch to a restricted room and do it again.
 
Nothing annoys me more than people using Racing Softs on EVRYTHING online!!! I keep them for high end racecars and fully tuned road monsters such as the 1030bhp+ Viper ACR but for anything less CM-SS provide all the grip I need, and its so much more fun! :D
 
I'm also a low pp low grip enthusiast.

Just to show my preference for other tires I set my welcome message to
"Just Say No To Race Tires"

I try to run an open room titled "GT legends" most nights around 9:00 PST, If anybody comes across it check it out, we run comfort tires and sport tires only.
 
This unrealistically high grip expectation has been a part of "racing" games for so long, most don't want to believe how much grip cars actually have (or don’t have) in high performance situations. I have guys I've done track days with that tell me I'm dumb to drive on comfort mediums or softs on GT5. "That's unrealistic!" they say.

It comes down to years of arcade video game conditioning and a lack of tactile feel. We must rely on vision and audio alone to get a sense of speed. FFB through the wheel alone is not enough. Watch a few raw interior, forward facing videos of road car on a track. It usually looks and sounds like the car is tip-toeing around, even if the guy behind the wheel is giving it the beans. Compound this with the expectation of Hollywood-chase-scene action all to create a false sense of what tearing around a track should “feel” like.

Comforts for road cars (in general)

Racing Med or Soft to win “unwinnable” races :)

Everything in between for highly modified cars/racecars
 
Sooo, is that you in the video? The twitter name kind of matches your username.

I tried this kind of racing just recently. Took some getting used to but def. enjoyed it. 👍
 
Yep, low grip is more fun.
 
Check my sig. We do 450 PP on SS. Sometimes we'll move down to SH through CM, it depends on the cars we are doing. We never doing any racing tires unless we are doing actual race cars. We keep it street legal.
 
mu22stang
This unrealistically high grip expectation has been a part of "racing" games for so long, most don't want to believe how much grip cars actually have (or don’t have) in high performance situations. I have guys I've done track days with that tell me I'm dumb to drive on comfort mediums or softs on GT5. "That's unrealistic!" they say.

It comes down to years of arcade video game conditioning and a lack of tactile feel. We must rely on vision and audio alone to get a sense of speed. FFB through the wheel alone is not enough. Watch a few raw interior, forward facing videos of road car on a track. It usually looks and sounds like the car is tip-toeing around, even if the guy behind the wheel is giving it the beans. Compound this with the expectation of Hollywood-chase-scene action all to create a false sense of what tearing around a track should “feel” like.

Comforts for road cars (in general)

Racing Med or Soft to win “unwinnable” races :)

Everything in between for highly modified cars/racecars
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Yes, well said.


Sort of related: if anyone saw last years Goodwood Revival on TV, there was a great race of priceless Ferraris, Cobras and such like. They were using period style tyres and the guy in the Le Mans Cobra was really sawing at wheel, even before it rained.

All the drivers commented how little grip there was compared with modern tyres. Made me ditch the Racing Hards on the 60s race cars (unless required to win a race). I still can't handle the Cobra with less than SH though:dunce:
 
Woodski_427
Sort of related: if anyone saw last years Goodwood Revival on TV, there was a great race of priceless Ferraris, Cobras and such like. They were using period style tyres and the guy in the Le Mans Cobra was really sawing at wheel, even before it rained.

All the drivers commented how little grip there was compared with modern tyres. Made me ditch the Racing Hards on the 60s race cars (unless required to win a race). I still can't handle the Cobra with less than SH though:dunce:
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After doing some testing with various classics running the CS and SH's, the Dunlop CR65 tyres they use are probably best replicated with the Comfort Softs. 👍
 
TheCracker
After doing some testing with various classics running the CS and SH's, the Dunlop CR65 tyres they use are probably best replicated with the Comfort Softs. 👍
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I've been using SH and they're they're a real handful! Might try taking it down a notch, only when I'm using the wheel though!👍

Again, kind of related, there's a great vid on You Tube an old Japanese racing driver doing a lap in a KPGC10 race car (looks like he's having a great time), at the end he comments how the modern tyres take away some of the character from the car. May be a lesson for gamers there!

I'll try get a link when I have a chance.
 
Woodski_427
I've been using SH and they're they're a real handful! Might try taking it down a notch, only when I'm using the wheel though!👍

Again, kind of related, there's a great vid on You Tube an old Japanese racing driver doing a lap in a KPGC10 race car (looks like he's having a great time), at the end he comments how the modern tyres take away some of the character from the car. May be a lesson for gamers there!

I'll try get a link when I have a chance.
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We used to run on Yokohama A008R's - which i'd guess are similar to SM's or maybe SS's. When the series switched tyres to the Dunlop CR65's we were immediately 5 or so seconds a lap slower. It wasn't just the lap times that changed, the cars handled completely differently than before. Instead of turn in, grip, grip, grip, sudden loss of grip. It became turn in, grip, less grip, even less grip, almost no grip, nice balanced 4 wheel slide. So much more fun if not ultimately as fast.
 
This has been the first year I've used my elise in the winter. Real car, not GT5 one!

With it's summer sports tyres it's been a hoot, all at less then 40mph! Speed/grip is not the same as fun.
 
tezster
IF you are a good driver, then you enjoy the realism and challenge.
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That's ridiculous. A great driver could hate dealing with any car that's less than perfect, while a bad driver could do the opposite. It's independent of skill. It's only preference, and neither preference is better than the other. Also, realism doesn't really enter in to it as any car could have ultra sticky racing tires equipped.

As far the as the topic question goes, any car, any tire, it's still racing. Though I prefer certain combinations to others. I avoid RS most of the time, and like to use comforts on road cars.
 
TheCracker
We used to run on Yokohama A008R's - which i'd guess are similar to SM's or maybe SS's. When the series switched tyres to the Dunlop CR65's we were immediately 5 or so seconds a lap slower. It wasn't just the lap times that changed, the cars handled completely differently than before. Instead of turn in, grip, grip, grip, sudden loss of grip. It became turn in, grip, less grip, even less grip, almost no grip, nice balanced 4 wheel slide. So much more fun if not ultimately as fast.
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I remember you mentioning this before; didn't it also put less stress on the chassis and suspension, leading to fewer failures? Poor cars. :(
Here's a version of that video Woodski_427 mentioned about the old GTR, with"Gan-san" (Motoharu Kurosawa) driving it around Fuji.

It's that balance, that gradual progression, that is so important to the fun aspect; the C63 video is in accord with this idea, too. In that sense, the Comfort tyres cannot be beaten, since they generally enjoy larger slip angles at peak grip; moreover, you can "feel" that angle coming on through the wheel, and have a larger range of adjustment to play with (a.k.a. "sawing"), which feels more involving.
The trouble is, cars like the 599 are just insane on anything less than Sports tyres: it's too heavy and too powerful, so it might be the case that there is a power limit for this particular breed of fun.
 
Woodski_427
Again, kind of related, there's a great vid on You Tube an old Japanese racing driver doing a lap in a KPGC10 race car (looks like he's having a great time), at the end he comments how the modern tyres take away some of the character from the car. May be a lesson for gamers there!

I'll try get a link when I have a chance.
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That's Gan-san, otherwise known as Motoharu Kurosawa, and he's practically a legend so if he says it, it must be true. Well, more or less. I saw that video on YouTube in low quality ages ago, forgot about it, then got a load of Best Motoring DVDs... I happened to watch that one the other night, it's probably one of my favourite bits. Goosebumps. I love that car probably more than any other car in the world (I'm not religious but I pray every morning and evening that PD add a premium Group A KPGC10 in future DLC) and that programme (or 'show' in American English), and yeah, I totally agree that everyone should watch it and learn.

Edit: Here you go, it's quite loud so make sure you turn your speakers all the way up and make it extremely loud:

Also I disagree that the DS3 makes comfort hards too difficult, unless you're trying to use something that would come with racing hards on them, of course. The other night I was drifting the Blitz D1 car with my DS3 on comfort hards with no problem (well, not much problem, my technique isn't great...!) and it's not too difficult to actually race on them. That said I have yet to even try to race another human on comfort hards, but I don't think it's difficult to handle comfort hards with a pad. I may, however, have developed some sensitive pad acceleration and braking from my days of playing GT4 with a pad, analogue pedal control with the X and square buttons was not easy! The DS3's triggers are far easier to modulate.
 
I had a hard time trying to tell my friends that they should stop using Racing Slicks... Then they finally discovered the sports tires, wich are the ones we currently use...

I use sports hard and medium for anything up to 420pp, over that I go sports soft in most cases... when it's a car for fun moments, I use sports hard and for small cars, comfort soft.

Comfort medium and below start to get annoying when racing online... I'm a DS3 user and I think I'm not bad at all Comfort Medium its the lowest I can go.

So, my opinion is: YES, low grip racing is fun :)
 
I just really started to play online and at first it was a blast racing rs, that is in till I read this thread. Just wanted to say thanks guys for opening my eyes. I'm not the best driver but I just like to have a good time.

In a side note, I have a room open now that reads "450pp cs or less" five people have now joined, asked me to change either tire or pp restrictions.
 
I like using CM up to 400pp,CS up to 500pp,SH up to 550pp,SM up to 600pp and SS up to 650pp, about the only time i use race is in a-spec.
 
I'd pay $10 for that KPGC10 GT-R all by itself in a DLC as a premium car so long as they don't wreck the sound. That would be incredible!!!
 
Stock Supercars (Aventador, 458, SLS AMG, Vantage, etc) + Comfort Soft + Nordschleife = Helluva time.
 
I enjoy racing on all sorts of tires, but that being said, I don't go out of my way to challenge myself by putting comfort tires on a 600hp car. I prefer to use the stock tires on said vehicle.

I do cringe at tire restriction-less rooms, though. Especially the ones that say "Street Cars Only". I kinda wanna join and ask them when they last time they saw a street car with racing slicks.

Also, Shuffle Racing is your friend here, gentleman.
 
Woodski_427
Yes, well said.


Sort of related: if anyone saw last years Goodwood Revival on TV, there was a great race of priceless Ferraris, Cobras and such like. They were using period style tyres and the guy in the Le Mans Cobra was really sawing at wheel, even before it rained.

All the drivers commented how little grip there was compared with modern tyres. Made me ditch the Racing Hards on the 60s race cars (unless required to win a race). I still can't handle the Cobra with less than SH though:dunce:
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I watched this and have it on my DVR still. I LOVED it. they were racing hard and DRIVING!!!!!!! Those mini's were oversteering like crazy coming hot into the corners.....and the Ford Galaxies were awesome to see too. Great racing.
 
Thanks Griffith500 and neema_t for posting links to the Skyline video, and for the education on Gan-san:tup:
 
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