Help understanding AC car tuning values please?

I'm stuck trying to decipher the way AC handles car setups in the tuning menu. Should I be using the red bar, or should I be using the numeric value? I'm trying to tune the Kunos Drift Supra and the nominal values for the front and rear ARB settings are different to each other; the front can go to 4 but the rear can only go to 2. In the attached example, the numeric value of the Anti-Roll Bars is at 3 for the front, but 2 for the rear, yet the red bar is higher at the rear than it is at the front. Does this mean that the rear ARB is stiffer than the front because the red bar is higher, or does it mean the front ARB is stiffer than the rear because the numeric value is higher? I'm confused.

 

The number is just a number. It means nothing it's just a value showing where you are on a unknown "scale" of adjustment. Red bar is just a slider showing you where you are on that scale, nothing related to the actual stiffness of the ARB.

ARB will always be much stiffer at the front, that's just how real cars are made. Usually the front ARB on the minimum setting is still at least 3x stiffer than the rear one at maximum setting.

 

No disrespect to the AC devs, but that's a bit crap. I'm used to the tuning layout of Forza where you have free reign of the tuning capability of your car and everything is logical. On Forza if your front ARB is at 29/40 and your rear ARB is at 34.5/40 then your rear ARB will be stiffer than the front and you can see exactly how much by and see how much headroom you have left until max stiffness. Why can't AC be the same?

If there's no scale to go by, how can you correctly tune your cars? Changing the rear ARB from 1 to 2 definitely made it stiffer, but by how much is anyone's guess. I'm trying to follow a RL drift setup guide by Mike Kojima who says:

"Typically, you want to run a set of bars that’s about 20 to 50 percent stiffer in the front than the rear; adjustments typically make a 10 to 30 percent difference in overall roll stiffness, so you can really change the car’s feel through bar adjustments. With most reasonably sized bars, about 30 to 60 percent of the total overall roll resistance also comes from the bars. This is one reason why drifting a car with sway bars is so much easier: the car responds faster and is more predictable."

How can I follow that if I don't have a proper scale for the ARB in AC?

 

Errr...lol?

Good luck, you know, overall.

 

Well bar thickness isn't the only thing that affects the at-the-wheel stiffness of an ARB, so having a setup screen like Forza isn't actually telling you any more than AC is (30mm front 30mm rear is very rarely the same stiffness). And since car manufacturers don't want their data on full display, you won't be getting any more than either of these representations.

 

Some cars in AC do show spring rates for the ARBs. On the Supra the numbers are probably just different bolt holes in the ARB.

So that's hole 2 1 and 0. Doesn't come with specific numbers because they generally don't in the real world either, you just switch depending on if you want more front grip or rear.

Most of the tuner cars in AC have limited setup options because they follow a real world component, eg. if a car has 2 way coilovers, you will get fast bump/rebound settings at each corner and nothing else. The race cars are more likely to have interchangeable parts or just higher quality ones that offer more setup options.

 

I'm not asking for Kunos to provide the real car data, I'm just asking for a proper scale. Say for example a scale of 0-10 with 10 being the max stiffness so that when the setup guide says things like the front ARB stiffness should be 20-50% stiffer, I'm able to calculate that properly. So if the rear ARB was at 4/10 I know my front ARB should be no more than 8/10 since that's 50% stiffer than the rear. At the moment you have no way of telling how stiff each one is relative to the other, whereas with Forza the data may not be accurate but at least you have a consistent scale to work from and it does it visually too.

It's all well and good trying to be as realistic as possible, but when you haven't got access to the tools and measurements like you do in real life to correctly measure and tune your car, there needs to be a different way. It took me awhile to figure out the alignment settings too because in Forza when you set your rear camber to a numerical figure of zero that does actually mean your rear camber is at zero. In AC, when you set the rear camber to the numerical figure of zero, the telemetry data tells you it's not actually at zero. But I'm not complaining about that because you can see the telemetry data which shows your static wheel alignment and ride height allowing you to fine tune accordingly. But you haven't got that for ARB and damping, so how are you supposed to accurately tune your car with those settings?

 

Don't people usually tune it - test it - tune it - test it until it they're able to go fast while feeling comfy with their car? That's how I (try to) do it.

 

With some luck, the modding-knowledgeable people here might tell you a way to check the applied ARB rates using dev tools if there's any.

 

To my knowledge you can't...

That would mean the scale would be the same for every car (0-max in % of max increments), which it isn't in any way (Formula and LMP cars can have 2+ million N/m of stiffness on the front axle while your average road car will have less than 100k, the adjustability for both will be wildly different as well.) So if you want any accuracy, the only acceptable method is the current one.

Regardless, ARB adjustment is almost entirely limited to a driver's preferred "feel", which doesn't need to be numerically quantified.

 

That would actually be 100% stiffer. These proper scales seem to be really helping you make good setup decisions.

 

Slightly off topic however I have small issue with the UI setup behaviour. For example the McLaren F1 GTR's default rear wheel rate is 73 N/mm. When a change is made it is either +/- 10 N/mm therefore we see values such as 73, 63, 53... When the min or max is reached we now see see either 50 or 130. Once this is done there is no way going back to 73 and the changes made from now on are 50, 60, 70, 80... I also see this behaviour on differential values however most of the cars will allow you to go back to its original default value as either the min or max will have a value of x5 and not x0...

 

It's because AC rounds the wheel rate values ingame to the nearest 1000 N/m, and only lets you adjust them per N/mm (1k N/m), so if you have increments of 5500 N/m IRL and you input the min/max for that data set, in AC you'll have to adjust it by 5 or 6k, which will throw off the min/max numbers.....to be honest I'm 1. not sure why the wheel rates are rounded in the first place (I mean not that it really matters a ton, but it causes the aforementioned issue and I can't imagine that it helps performance all that much....rod length values are also rounded to the nearest mm), and 2. not sure why the adjustment values aren't more detailed than 1,000 N/m per click.

 

The screen to the left of the sliders tells you the actual camber angle value of the tire on a static car (provided your car is on level ground in the pit while you are doing setup-nords pits are notoriuosly uneven for example and are bad for exact camber setting).

I'm not one of those people who will say go play forza if you like forza so much, but I will say this: this is not Forza, and it will not change to be like Forza any time soon because then it would BE Forza and nobody wants that. You're doing a drift setup and having trouble because you can't come within 99% of what a guide tells you. Others have been league racing AC without issue for several seasons and have found the setup aspect to work well once you get cosy with it. Most actual values you can read off the right side screen and suspension stiffness Nm you can read off the sliders usually so you need to utilize both sliders and screen data to see what exactly happens with a static car. If that is to your liking, you start driving and then you get into the telemetry apps that show you downforce and suspension work which will mess up your entire setup again because nothing works on the move like you hoped it will when setting a stationary car. Pay attention, use logic and be patient because at the end of the day it's not numbers but trial and error that will tell you what works and what doesn't.

 

on real sports cars, anything short of high budget teams, you wouldn't be able to find the exact ARB spring rate either. You would just know approximately how much % stiffer it is than the oem bar, and you have several adjusting positions.

If this is a mod car, you can show the actually wheel rate value by setting setup.ini "SHOW_CLICKS=0" for the ARB section =)

 

On my car I've got two clicks (holes) on the front, three in the rear. They do stuff.

 

Your wisdom knows no bounds

 

@Ro-Tang Clan
Proper scale for setup values was asked for years ago, hasn't come to fruition yet. Not high on the devs priority list.

 

And even so, strangely accurate

Heck, picture this: You can even connect the links to a different hole on each side to get an "in-between" !

 

No half-click in AC = sim_value down the drain.