Worst Pcars race ever (for me anyway)

So as some of you will be aware, I've been pretty lucky with Pcars compared with some other people. I've experienced only a small number of the bugs people are reporting, and the ones I have experienced, I haven't experienced often.

So I fear my luck ran out tonight.

I was up to the Nurburgring GP in my Formula A career, and quite a few odd things happened all in one race.

I had read somewhere, someone believed the camber in Pcars was broken just like GT6, in that all it did was reduce grip. I decided to give this a try in practice. With the standard camber settings, I set up the car as good as I could, and felt happy with it (it was good enough, and I only had 30 mins in practice so I wasn't going to be too obsessive), so I made sure I got a really good lap out of it, and then went into the pits. I put the camber, front and rear, down to 0, and went back out to see how it would feel. Instantly it felt like I had more front end grip, and I was able to brake later and harder without locking up, and get the throttle down earlier without wheelspin. I thought "surely this is just a placebo. I'm expecting it to be better, so it feels like it is". My first timed lap was over 8 tenths faster than my fastest lap with the stock camber settings...

I tried going back into the pits and putting the camber back on. Thinking maybe it was track evolution or I was just getting more comfortable with the track. I was grasping at straws to explain it any other way than the camber was broken. I did 6 runs total. 3 with camber, 3 without. and I found that I was, on average, 7 tenths slower with the stock camber. Bugger...

So I went into quali, and got pole with ease. 90%AI could barely get within 2 seconds of my first flying lap.

I started the race well enough, kept my position and went about settling into a rhythm. I had pulled a decent gap within a few laps, and continued on, with the plan to run my first stint as long as the tyres would allow.

Lap 9 - 11 was where I saw the AI cars all pitting. This surprised me, as my tyres were only half worn, so obviously the no camber improves tyre wear too. I also noticed in practice in the telemetry HUD, with stock camber the inside of the tyre would overheat first, while no camber kept the tyre temp even across the tread, even if I was pushing hard as I could in the corners. In real life the outside shoulder would have badly overheated without camber the way I was driving it, and yet the temp stayed uniform across the tread width.

I finally pitted at the end of lap 20, and noticed an AI car sitting in it's pit box, doing a massive burnout.... Ok whatever, I'll just ignore that. I got my tyres and went.

It was during this stint I had a lot of traffic to lap. Every time I'd pass a lapped car, they would divebomb me next corner. Even if I covered the inside, they would just dive clean over the kerb and into my car. I was infuriated when 5 laps into this stint an AI car I had lapped went for a dive so huge that I don't think he even attempted to brake at all, and slammed into my car, bending the steering severely.

I pitted again, because despite only being 25 laps into the race, I had a 50 second lead.
When I got to the end of the lap to pit, there was an AI car swerving violently all over the road at a really low speed. He had sparks flying off his car, and as I got closer I saw he was missing at least one wheel. I tried to give him a wide berth, but he swerved into me anyway, which made it lucky it was right before the pit entry, as he broke my front suspension. (he was swerving massively left to right, and not in a predictable pattern either, just randomly).

As I got into pit lane, I noticed my old mate the burnout king still in his pit box, but by now his rear tyres had popped and instead of smoke coming off them he was showering the place with sparks. Still, at least he was committed to that burnout!

I came out of the pits, with the intention to drive as safely as I could. I had tons of pace in hand, and knew the race was going to be an easy win. All I had to do was lap AI cars safely, and try to give them room when they inevitably attempted to divebomb me, and I'd get to the end in one piece.

...2 laps later the game froze, my wheel spun full force to the left, and the game crashed back to the PS4 home screen.

I was tempted to write a nasty note in the report description. But I decided against it lol.

 

Patch 4.0 is definitely not making the game better o contrary .

 

Welcome to the club. No one is invited in, no one wants to be in, but sooner or later all end up here.

 

Nope. Definitely not safe to buy PCars yet.

 

What ! ...... You don't like BUGSY BOEGIE BOEGIE BUGSY GAME

 

Alot of people are starting to lose faith in SMSs ability to fix PCars, I know that I am.

 

Don't get me wrong. I love the game, and there's no way I'd return it for my money back. I don't regret buying it at all.

I do think SMS are getting on top of the bugs, it's just that they have quite a mountain of them to conquer. It's going to take quite a while I'd say. Maybe as long as a year, to get rid of the majority of them.

Also my biggest problem with the game has nothing to do with bugs, but with the absolutely suicidal AI. They really need to tone that **** down. Codies have served up some bloody good AI in F1 2015, and I think SMS could definitely match it with their AI, they just need to get their aggression under control, and get them to actually obey blue flags.

 

I honestly dont think the game can be fixed, Every single patch brings more and more issues. Qualifying is completely knackered now unless you practice before hand. I just do not have any faith that they can fix it...

 

Zero camber is fastest in pcars, is this really confirmed now @Mike_grpA ?

 

Ive also put this theory to the test and i can confirm, YES it is faster with 0 camber. Ive shaved seconds off my time with this Info.

 

you do not have forza 6 do you,..... that ai
only thing positive about that ai is that it makes mistakes,...

 

I only tried Formula A in that one career race so far with 0 camber, but as I said, I switched back and forth between stock camber (front 2.4 rear 1.6) and 0 front and rear, and I was consistently 7 or 8 tenths per lap faster. The grip also felt much higher, especially at the front, which would make sense if it's broken as the front camber is much higher stock. The temps also stayed much more consistent with 0 camber, and wear was significantly reduced.

I play with a wheel, and I can lap consistently, so I feel the only variable that was causing such a major swing was the camber. (8 tenths is years in FA when you're putting in good consistent laps).

No I'm on PS4. Wouldn't have a clue about Forza's AI, but I can compare Pcars to F1 2015, and F1's AI is miles better to race against.

 

Have you tried to go higher camber ? Is there any benefit for such car ? 7 to 8 tenths is not really bad, compared to GT6

 

No I haven't tried, but the feeling of the car, and the improvements in not just grip, but temp and wear also, suggest that the higher it is the worse it'll be.

8 tenths per lap can make a big difference over the course of a 60 lap race. The most important thing though, is that with the extra grip and tyre life, the car is much easier to drive, which makes it easier to drive consistently, very useful for a long race.


UPDATE:

I tested on Imola last night with the Formula A, and tried a few things out. I haven't come to any concrete conclusions yet, as it took me a while to come to grips with the car around Imola. The stock set up was just so bad for that track, and initially I went in the wrong direction with the set up, but in the process I found something very interesting. More on that in a sec.

Once I had the car set up so I could lap comfortably (and so hopefully consistently), I set a few good laps with the stock camber, then went to 0 camber. Same as before, I was faster with 0 camber, and the only things I'd kept stock were the alignment settings, as this time the stock tyre pressures were way too high for the track, and after my out lap, my temps had dropped almost 15 degrees C.

I tried then to get rid of as much caster as possible. I couldn't go to 0 but I think it was 2.something was the minimum (4.5 stock caster in FA). The car didn't handle well with the caster turned down. It was only a small change, but I did notice I felt less grip mid corner, and the front felt weak. I also tried 0 toe, but that made very little difference, as the FA runs little toe stock anyway. The main difference with 0 toe was a small drop in the tyres ability to hold it's temp.

I didn't have time to do any more testing, so I put the caster and toe back on and left camber at 0, and went back out, and immediately the car felt strong. This leads me to believe that, as we thought, camber isn't completely broken, it's just not having as strong an affect as it should. The high caster the FA runs stock give it enough camber gain in the corners for it to not need the static camber it runs stock. Next time I've got time, I'll test with low levels of camber, as I believe it will be beneficial, I just have to find out how much.

Back to the interesting discovery I spoke about. While I was chasing front end grip, as I like a very strong front end in my set ups, I was changing a lot of settings, and one of them was ride height. I gave the car a very aggressive rake, to try and A: give it more front end bite and B: see just how well the floor aero is modeled.

As soon as I went out on track the car felt weird. It was like all of a sudden it had lost all of it's high speed stability, and felt very twitchy and unpredictable.

I changed a couple of settings I had adjusted when I adjusted the rake, back to what I previously had them at, and went back out, and it was no better. If anything it was slightly worse. At this point I realised those set up changes were fine, so it must have been the rake.

It hadn't made it greatly oversteery though, it had made it feel like it'd lost all over grip in a big way, and especially at high speed. Thinking about this it dawned on me. Could it be that the rake was so much that I was stalling the diffuser at high speeds?... I know this is how it works in real life, but is the aero model really that good?

I thought about how impressed I had been at other aspects of the aero model. How when running close to another car, the wake coming off their car destabilises your own car. It's not just understeer, it's affecting all of the aero of your car, and the car can feel very unstable in high speed turns, sometimes going from understeer to snap oversteer.

I put the rear ride height down 5mm to see how it'd react. I took it out on track and immediately noticed the car was planted, and had much more grip than before I made the rake changes. I was still running quite aggressive rake, but by dropping it just 5mm back down at the back, I stopped the diffuser stalling, and it was working in high speed turns again. This made the car significantly faster. I am quite impressed that the aero model is so good! I just can't wait until they adjust the alignment so that camber works properly and they fix the whole toe gain the cars all have over time that leads to the landmines.

/rant

 

Ok so a new chapter I want to add to this, tonight I had the best Pcars race ever.

I was up to Donington GP in Formula A, which is a massive 76 laps! I spent plenty of time in practice, trying things out, and I found the camber was very beneficial on this track. I ended up with no rear camber, but my fastest times were set with 3.0 front camber.

I set the car up with 0 camber all round, and once I was getting comfortable with the setup, I tried stock camber, and was faster, though the back end grip felt less, and I was struggling with traction a bit. I tried 0 rear camber and 2.4 (stock) front camber, and was faster again. So I tried to really nail a good lap, and then went back to 0 front camber, and really tried to nail a good lap with that, and found my best lap was 0.25 slower. I thought I may as well see how far I can go since the front camber seems to be working well here, so I set it to 3.0 and went another half a second faster, all up about 8 tenths faster on 3.0 front camber than with no front camber. So perhaps I was a little hasty with my conclusion earlier. Although the rear camber at 0 still seems to be fastest for me, it may just be that it only needs small tweaks, as clearly large front camber levels was affecting my front end grip in a big way at donington.

Anyway, I took pole in quali, and went into the race. Got an average getaway, losing first off the line, and then losing second in the first corner, due to me trying to keep out of trouble, and the AI dude "doing a Senna" and throwing his car up the inside as if to say "yield or we crash". I reeled second place back in and quickly disposed of him before the end of lap one, but the dude in first was bloody quick on a full tank, and my car felt quite cumbersome on the full tank, so I had to drive very carefully, and just let the car come to me.

5 or 6 laps later I was on the back of first, but it was very hard to pass here, as I lost so much downforce in the dirty air that I just couldn't get a run to get alongside him. Most of the corners at Donington require good downforce, so running in dirty air was forcing me to alter my lines through the corners to combat the added understeer, as well as be careful of oversteer on the exit of fast corners. I eventually got him on the run into the hairpin, but he pitted at the end of that lap anyway. So I set out to forge a lead.

I was instantly 8 tenths quicker in free air, showing myself just how much I was being held back in the AI dude's dirty air. I ran a 15 lap stint and came in for tyres well before the first set were finished, due to a lapped car divebombing into me right after I lapped him, and breaking my front suspension (I was lucky not to lose a wheel really). I came out with a 5 second lead, and went about building on it.

I built my lead up pretty quickly to 13 seconds, but from there on, progress was slow, due to having to lap cars. The lapped cars as usual paying no attention to blue flags, were slowing me down dramatically, as even they were hard to get by due to the huge dirty air effect at this track. Once in free air again I was a full 1.6 seconds per lap faster than I had been when fighting through that small pack.

I ran a decent 21 lap stint for my second stint, planning to make it an even 40 laps to the finish so I could do two 20 lap stints to the end. My car developed a timely mechanical fault on the 36th lap of the race, which didn't bother me too much, as I was coming in that lap anyway. I just short shifted and babied the car for that lap, as my engineer was silent, perhaps sleeping, and didn't bother to inform me of exactly what this fault was lol.

My next stint, which was supposed to be 20 laps, was cut short to only 10 laps, when yet another stupid move by an AI driver left me with damage, this time rear end damage which forced me to slowly crab my car back to the pits for repairs and another set of boots. This out of sequence stop had me leave the pit lane in third, 10 seconds behind second place.

I reeled in second very quickly, as I had no cars between me and him to lap. I got by him pretty easily, and set about reeling in first, who was a massive 18 seconds ahead, due to me losing most of my lead when I was crabbing to the pits with busted rear suspension. I considered doing the 30 laps it would have taken to get to the end on this set of tyres, but in the end I pitted with 16 laps to go, as I had noticed the guy in first hadn't pitted since before my last stop, so clearly he was going more than 30 laps to the end! All the other AI cars were doing 13 - 16 laps on a set of tyres, so this surprised me to see this guy going for such a gamble.

I pitted when I was only 4 seconds behind him, and came out again in third, but the very next lap second place pitted too, obviously deciding against the gamble that first was taking. At this point I had 15 laps to go, and was 31 seconds off the lead. Hammer time.

In the next nine laps, I had reduced the lead to ten seconds, despite having to lap a couple of cars on the way. When I was in clear air I was more than 3 seconds per lap faster than first, so I knew I had the pace, if I could keep it consistent, and clear any traffic quickly, I could win!

I got to 4 laps to go, and was getting close to first, but a few cars had pitted and came out between us, which slowed me down. Thankfully, they, being on brand new tyres, absolutely flew past the guy in first, as his tyres must have been completely ruined by this point, and with 3 laps to go I took the lead!

I was so happy, what a race, I was basically in cruise control thinking about all the ups and downs of that great race, and then BAM! As I was passing a lapped car up the inside, into the hairpin, he turned in on me and spun me around! ****!!! I planted it and spun the car back around, but second place had already caught back up, and was passing me as I was getting going again. I thought I could catch him again, with one lap to go, but on the very next corner I locked up, and another lapped car went up the inside of me, forcing me to yield or crash. I had to yield, and it took most of the lap to get back past him.

I lost by 1 second in the end all due to my stupid mistake of passing the AI car a bit late into the hairpin, and not being careful enough. I could have easily avoided the incident had I not have let my guard down thinking I had it in the bag. I blew it, but that's racing. I took my second place, and at the next race at Zolder, I'll get my revenge.

Edit: I got my revenge and then some at Zolder. Turns out the AI isn't so fast there, so I ended up winning by over two laps lol.

 

Great read man, keep it up its quite entertaining XD
BTW I suppose you're running the AI at 100% right?

 

Nah 90% now. I had it at 100% before Monaco, but I've had it at 90% ever since to take the edge off their aggression lol. It sux because in quali at 90% it's too easy to get pole, but in the race the AI is too aggressive at 100%, and tries to ram you off the track like Maldonado on crack.

 

So is it me or the suspension changes have no visual effect, I remember in GT when the camber was tuned or ride height and the change was visible but in pC I didn't, so is it me or what?

 

All I know is that when I tuned the McLaren F1 a few months ago I had some crazy setup where the front end was much higher than the rear and every time I entered a heavy braking zone you could see the front of the car being forced down to the floor, so I think it can be seen to some degree.

I haven't seen any visual side effects of camber though.

 

I haven't paid attention to be honest. I'll check it out sometime, but I know it'll be harder to spot the camber differences in a lot of cars vs GT6 as Pcars doesn't allow the insane amount of camber that GT6 does on all cars. I'll check with the Formula A as you can put a lot of camber on that one.

 

It caught my attention while fiddling around with a FA first II set it to max camber (front tires) nothing so I thought maybe 2 degrees wont be much visible, so then I set it to 0 and the tires were still leaning

 

That's weird. Perhaps it's a bug, because I'd expect there to be a visual representation of what's going on with the set up. There's a visual representation of the tyre flex, so I'd assume set up changes would be much easier to represent visually too.

 

Glad I passed on getting this game. The OP is another example proving it's a joke and an atrocious disaster. I'll wait and buy it at a garage sale for a dollar.

 

Well...i got the ps4 project C.A.R.S, and i was thinking about it just like you till i finally buy it.
And I just got to say that it is a great game and i don't get crashes or big issues with it.

So I'm really enjoying this great game.
So,really, give it a try!

 

Not everyone gets the same problems. I mentioned in the OP how lucky I had been for avoiding almost all the problems people complain about, but in saying that, there is still a lot that needs fixing. I would still highly recommend it, as it's getting there, and the actual game beneath the bugs is amazing. It really feels like it was released a year before it should have been, so while it's finished from a content point of view, it's not at all from a bug fixing and testing point of view.

It's neither a joke, nor a disaster, and once the crashing on PS4 is fixed, I'll only have the AI to complain about, there aren't any other bugs that really get to me. I haven't even experienced most of the ones I've seen people reporting.

SMS have been adjusting the AI slowly in different circumstances, so I believe it will get better as time goes by. They will no doubt get on top of the PS4 crashing, as it's a massive problem, on the highest selling platform the game is available for, so they'd be retarded not to be putting a lot of effort into it. They're also working on the camber atm, as currently it does work, it's just off, so it's not working as well as it should. They've also managed to find what's causing the infamous landmines, so there will be a fix for that soon too.

One thing coming to PS4 that is a big deal, is the addition of third party apps. The second screen/telemetry/dashboard apps currently PC only, will soon work on PS4 too, which will be a huge addition to the game, and something no other console racing game has ever done.

Also, you read my first post, which was my worst experience ever with Pcars by a long way, but read my other post too, #15, of my best race in Pcars, to get an idea of how great the game is when you don't experience the bugs.

If you don't want to buy it, that's your choice, but you'll be missing out on a great sim.

 

Nice, balanced view, Mike and pretty much echoing my sentiments. I dont think this ccranna guy is even willing to give the game a chance from the way he is writing though.

By the way, to take this post a bit more in the direction of the topic: Virtually all my worst races involved real human opponents. The worst of them all was a GT3 race at Spa where one guy in a Z4 just kept destroying everyones race by flying through the chicane at the end of the long straight without braking and ramming others off on the way. Add some other rather ruthless drivers and my race being ended by a guy who decided to put us both in the wall despite me leaving him enough room to overtake and yeah, that race sucked big time.

 

The landmines should be nr 1
Online stuttering nr 2
A positive note have had no crash anymore to ps4 sins update 3.0 ps4 .
Nr 3 , stuck in the garage if I want to leave it happens yesterday at Silverstone 4 times .
Nr 4 , wheel has sometimes a crack while turning the wheel , trustmaster T300 RS .
Nr 5 ,sound issues.

 

What do you mean by a 'crack' in the wheel?

 

Normally when you turn the wheel to the left or right it got a smooth feeling , when the crack happens it is in little step crack crack crack
Have had it 3 times now after patch 4.0 , 2 times offline and 1 time online .

 

Hmm I've actually noticed that myself whilst driving the Procar, only when moving the wheel to the right. Assumed it was FFB up too high but I haven't managed to get rid of it. Very odd.