Calling all drifters: tips needed + is it possible to drift with a dfgt?

Quick question for any seasoned drifters + DFGT users, I only have a Driving Force GT, but I've been attempting to drift with it for the past week, and want to know if anyone has drifted with one @ 900 degrees successfully? Maybe even someone that has had a DFGT in the past and switched to something that rotates faster? Is the rotation speed of it a limiting factor?

I made this video of my progress after a week of practice (details of all my settings included if you have a DFGT), and I think I'm 80% of the way there, but maybe that extra 20% is down to the wheel and not practice?

Any thoughts from seasoned drifters?!?!? HELP!



***UPDATE****

I ended up purchasing a used G27 and it's rotation speed is so much quicker than then DFGT that I can basically drift without even trying. So answering my original question, it's possible to drift with a DFGT but it's a lot easier with the G27.

 

I was the same. By no means I am good but it is practice rather than the wheel. I would recommend learning to drift with the E30 drift variant though.

 

You can learn to drift with a DFGT of course, but no, it won't spin as fast as a real car's steering wheel on its own, you have to anticipate where the wheel should be and help it along.

 

I started drifting with a G25 and the E30 drift.
I think the E30 drift really helps you understand what's going on when the car rotate, and how throttle control can be the key drifting a corner "correct" or spinning out.

Even tho i consider myself a decent drifter, i am constantly learning something new drifting around the different tracks in the game.
So my advice is to jump into the E30 drift, find a setup that fits your drifting style and get a feel for the car. And most of all have some patience, if you keep getting pissed off every 5 minutes you won't learn anything.

Try to understand what you did wrong when you were spinning out, you can even try to spin out on purpose and feel what is going while doing so.
That way you will learn to feel what the car is doing most of the time, and remember, pro's in games as well as real life spin out sometimes.

Give it a few weeks and you should be drifting just fine.
Hope it helps you a bit.

 

You could try lock camera to horizon option for drifting to help with that motion sickness. Some people swear against it but i use it all the time and it feels less tiering for the eyes for both racing and drifting.

As for deciding on the amount of steering angles on the wheel. First make sure your FFB is high enough, often drifting takes place on low grip tyres and/or lower grip track, this significantly reduces FFB and it lags, so use the +/- on numpad to get to a point where you are hitting red line on FFB bar often. Also it may be useful to increase the front tyre pressure if you ever want to drift at low temperatures (or even in general) - it makes the response of the tyres a bit faster, helping our clumsy hardware as well as giveign better FFB feeling.
Secondly, min force (set in launcher) is your friend. Make sure you crank it up to a level just below having self inducing oscillations on straights. This gives quick FFB buildup and helps the wheel chase what the car wants.
And lastly, i don't have DFGT, but for G27 drifting with full 900 does produce these uncomfortable moments where the wheel is too slow, so i run 800 degrees always atm (used 740 in earlier patches when we did not had the minimum force slider). Try to run the highest value you can, with the above tweaks at optimum, that allows for lag free fast flicks.

As for technique, quite nice drifting already after only 3h of practice . When you would want to practice more i'd focus on having a bit more control of steering wheel. Get to know how the wheels want to be pointed at all times and actively steer there. You can release the wheel on entry, but try to actively hold it with one (or two!) hands. Barely holding the wheel is a habit that is very hard to get rid off and it impairs getting a good feeling from the wheel and giving it precise control back.


Hope any of this rambling could be of use

ps: Oh idk if you tried it, but one useful drifting technique that helps car control for both drifting and actual racing is to get good at corner entry with just the brakes. Try doing it fluently, with no flicks, just calm turn-in while being hard on brakes, and only add throttle when you are already near max lock. (the key being smooth and controlled countersteer with the right amount of braking, just like in trailbraking only sideways haha)

 

It's definitely all about practice and more practice.
First of all, ditch any pre-V5 cars. The KS drift offerings have finally came of age. The E30 was always a good choice, but now the E92 is also worth giving a spin (pun not intended )
900° with G27 is the way to go, and I saw guys doing wonders with DFGTs too.
Put on the street rubbers, give it the full negative camber in the front, the least negative camber in the rear, and you are good to go. But before trying anything else, try to find your realistic field of view and set AC view up accordingly. Yes, it will most likely be very restrictive about what you can see, but your judgement of distances will improve. And most importantly, your yaw rate sensitivity will be much higher, in turn making you better at countering any excessive spinning.
After you done everything right, you'll wish for more wheel rotation, not less
Edit: Make sure you are not trying to drift using a TV set. They are known to introduce copious amounts of steering lag into the control chain. It's certainly something you need the least.

@Nao, hi

 

Pretty much all the mod cars feel crap compared to the Kunos cars atm, even with a T500rs the steering isn't fast enough, you can really see this when you drift down the straights and are going full lock to full lock, turning down the rotation helps but there are other issues with them that even lower rotation won't fix.

 

I'd say there's no point in keeping any mods that don't feature the new tyre model anyway...

 

Oh.... This makes me really discouraged.
You're asking for help but watching your video i realize that i am not able to do even an half of what you do in the video.
I definitely need a lot of practice to get at least something close to your level .
Anyway this could be very useful for a noob like me also.
Thanks for this thread!

 

Use the stability control. You dont need to countersteering so fast.

 

Why are you feeling at all discouraged? I started learning drifting around version 0.22... Now THAT was really discouraging But I persevered and it paid off. You just need to remember that contrary to RL, you won't be able to go strictly by feel, you'll need to also analyse what's going on while you are making different control inputs.
Also, one of the most important skills for drifting is to know where your front wheels are pointing at. And how you should turn the steering wheel to make them follow the trajectory of the car.
Another thing you should keep in mind is that generally, if your are not flooring it (or almost flooring), it's not drifting. Well, apart from inertial drifting, but that's a bit of an advanced subject you can skip on for the time being. So, when you drift, the weight of your car is mostly on the rear wheels. If it's on the fronts, you are just saving the skid, not drifting. It's a very common mistake by new drifters to take one for another. No. If it's not sustained, it's not drifting. Keep that in mind. You can't skid from a standstill (unless there is enough road gradient and a slippery surface are involved), but you can certainly start drifting like that (provided, the car has enough torque at the rear wheels).

Also, in a drift you can actually control where the car is going not just with your pedals, but with the wheel too. At least, to a certain amount

No way in hell SC isn't needed. It wasn't needed even in v0.22, it certainly isn't after the version 1.0. If anything, it will interfere with drifting. The proper setup for drifting is to just go "Pro" and then switch off all the factory settings as well.

 

I guess just talking about it doesn't really cut it. So, here's a little demonstration from me:

Not on a DFGT though, but mechanically G27 should be close enough

 

From what I've seen, the DFGT's rotation speed isn't as fast as the G27, take a look at their start up calibration speeds, the G27 seems a lot faster!

 

And who said that's the maximum attainable rotational velocity for the wheel in question? Either way, at least my G27 is nowhere close enough to let it go by itself into the correct opposite lock. I do it by myself and in advance. That means, you can drift even without any FFB. You just need to get a feel for where your car's wheels are pointing at a particular steering angle, that's all. If anything, G27 has real advantage in its H-shifter and the clutch pedal. But you still can drift without these (the Z4 drift car has the maximum lock, as far as I can remember).

Imagine having to drift a real car with a near zero (under -0.2°) front wheels caster setting. I'm sure you won't be able to just let the wheel go and correct it when you have a high enough sideways angle.

Just practice more. Analyse what's happening during practising, what's your mistakes are. And eventually you'll be there. It certainly shouldn't take you as much time as it took me to get a hold of drifting, since the most recent AC is by far the easiest drift sim. Try the Camaro SS in GSCXe for a comparison, and you'll see what I mean After you realized how to drift in AC, however, you'll be able to drift anywhere else (with less success, probably).

Edit: By the way, I run my G27 at around 50% FFB strength to give it a more linear response. So, it's more optimized for driving, not drifting. You would probably have to get a direct drive wheel to have the speeds and the response times of a real life steering wheel. And that would set you back by thousands of dollars/euros.

Edit:
I wonder if my G27 is failing... Because it has about the same calibration speed to the DFGT in the video.

 

***UPDATE****

I ended up purchasing a used G27 and it's rotation speed is so much quicker than then DFGT that I can basically drift without even trying. So answering my original question, it's possible to drift with a DFGT but it's a lot easier with the G27.

 

You say the G27 is quicker to rotate, but judging from the side to side comparison it looks more like the other way around Also, I really think your DFGT rotates faster than my G27 as well during the self-calibration. Maybe it's just the rotation itself is slightly inhibited during the procedure...