How many seconds can a good setup save you?

So it's because he's a simracer, he doesn't belong in that row you think?
well, than you didn't get my point at all
it's about being fast, not about being real racing drivers/champions

 

I don't think anyone disagrees that practise is key but it will be the case that a good setup will give an edge (even if its not enough to make up for the skill gap a player has) and historically RF1, LFS, GTRE,RF2, i racing have all had set-ups where you will gain a good deal of time right off the bat even if you are not close to the best time with that set.

So fundamentally you have set-ups that give people an edge which then causes on-line racing to be more spread out than it need be especially in the context of public racing unless you have the same set-up or a comparable one.

Now I'm sure most people enjoy close side by side racing and the tactics that come from that rather than just hot lapping or simply just winning a race.
I'm also sure not everyone has the interest or time to spend developing a good set-up or finding one on forums.

Personally I found in LFS , RF1 , RF2 and GTRE and even NKP when I was given a good set-up by a fast driver I would then end up with far more enjoyable racing because miraculously I would be on pace with the fast people.

I think the key is to make sure there are default set-ups that are at least competitive ( maybe they are in AC ) or to make good set-ups easily accessible.

Another good example would be in LFS I and my friends would just give out set-ups to the grid and again it would result in far more enjoyable closer racing.

I have to say though the cars in AC seem far more dynamic to other simulators in that there seems to be more room to lose time so maybe AC is different in some regards in that set-up might have less of an impact. In RF1 to me the limit always felt very defined you would ether be very much on it or not AC seems far more subtle to me but maybe that's just subjective.

I was replying directly to a guy that was setting laps in a different car, not sure what you are talking about ?
You Just took what I said out of context to then accuse me of not making sense ?
If you have a point to make just say it directly If you just want to insult me than at least do it more creatively!

 

This, a million times. Whether it's hotlapping or wheel-to-wheel battling, I do it for the thrill of the chase, and if you cheat then you're cheating yourself out of the best part of racing.

 

Well its crazy I don't know what's wrong with some people it makes no logical sense , you see it in CSGO people pay for hacks cheets and ranking !

Its weird to do it in CSGO or non prized sim-racing given that there is no finical or status reward.

The main rewards for these types of games is simply having a good close game with other people , unexpected outcomes or improving yourself and seeing a direct reflection of the improvement.

You don't get money , prestige , social status or any obvious reward for cheating with these things and if you then play with friends they will instantly see your skill level.

Its utterly bizarre and would make an interesting study, maybe the perception of being better for some people despite cheating at it and getting no obvious extrinsic reward still gives them a degree of enjoyment.

Be interesting to see if people that cheat like this tend to be more of a sociopath or are the type of person to not suffer from cognitive dissonance or maybe they are simple normal people !

I guess they could be getting enjoyment from trolling but I don't really see who they are trolling other than themselves other people often wont know they are cheating so its not going to be annoying anyone.

 

Anwer honestly, did you ever did a good setup by yourself? A setup that gave you an advantage against people the same level as you?

I doubt it, as you are so bitter about it. Setup is just one variable of many. Sometimes you gain an advantage, sometimes you lose, in the end it cancels out. Its pointless to compare against WR´s if you´re not in that level.

There is no win that tastes better when you share your setup with your teammates, then all of them choose the "fast in one lap" and you beat them with your "fast over a stint"

As Lemmy says, "you win some, you lose some, its all the same to me".



And there is one very common misconception, not just in simracing, but racing fans in general. Racing its not about fighting for position, its about finising the race before the opposition. If i start a race in 3rd, run as fast as i can, and finish 3rd, it was an awesome race. If i start 3rd, drop to 30th and finish 4th, its is an absolutlely crappy race. As a general rule, if you are fighting for position then 1) your qualy was crap; 2) your race was crap 3) someones qualy or race is crappy.

 

How many seconds can you gain?

Let's see, if you take a stock MP4 GT3 to Nordschleife and try to use it at race speed, the answer is:

ALL OF THEM.

(Since I can't do a clean quick lap with the default setup, way too stiff for Nordschleife)

I have been creating my own setups for years now, and especially at Nordschleife I have a good feeling for what the car is supposed to do, compared to what it is doing with the current setup. If I can't drive a certain corner like I'm used to in other cars, I start investigating. Oversteer/understeer balance when turning in is the most important thing for me, I like to find a balance that makes the car want to turn in, but not to the extent of real oversteer. Ideally, it just "falls around the corner", so to say.

Setup and practice go hand in hand. Both help you to develop a feeling for what's going to happen next, and the safer you feel about that, the faster you can go. In the end, it's about trusting the car blindly when you have no choice.

Some pointers for Nordschleife:

- Raise suspension
- Soften wheel rate
- Soften ARB just enough for the car to be stable over diagonal bumps and kerbs
- Damping and Rebound almost identical, slightly more rebound. Overall damping as soft as you can get it without bouncing. FST damping should be rather soft.
- Try to use as little toe as possible, toe will mess with your line over diagonal bumps. I usually do around -0.05 / +0.10.
- Full front downforce, adjust rear for balance
- Decel setting as low as you can get it

I believe that practice combined with setup work will give you the best learning curve, because you find out about the subtle to drastic differences when changing something. It will get very rewarding when you can drive a car, feel what's wrong, and come up with the fix all by yourself. Start with the big ones like ARB, wheel rate and damping, then go for the more subtle nuances like tire pressure, LSD and aero. Once the car "works", meaning the basic suspension is in tune with the road surface, then you can try to see if any of the other things can add grip, or address tire heat problems and stuff like that.

Example: Take a stock Ferrari 458 around vallelunga club for 5 laps, then only change the front toe to -0.05. It's a different car!

 

Tell me this, the first thing I do with most cars is to adjust the toe to be more positive on the front and rear. Is this the idea with rear wheel drives? More positive toe assists with turning but will create higher tyre temps and wear???

 

I thought it might be more productive to try and isolate things as individual points that people can agree or disagree with. I have answered the points below with what I feel to be the case. If people disagree they can explain why and then everyone might learn something. I'm sure there are more key points that I missed could add them to the list to better the conversation.

1) Is there such a thing as a set-up that regardless of driver skill will make people faster - Yes (typically by between 1-3 seconds over a "bad" set-up )

2) will a set-up make a bad driver good - NO

3) can a good driver drive faster with a "slow" set-up than a bad driver with a "fast setup" - YES

4) Is racing more enjoyable when racing close to other people - Yes

5) In the context of a race is winning alone as fun as having a good fight for a win - No (maybe winning is what its all about for some but not for me (unless there is a prize !) )

6) Dose having a solid default set-up or allowing / making it easer to have comparable set-ups result in closer racing than if you have some people with setups they spent ages developing or got from forums/team friends - YES

7) Will a good set-up help a bad driver gain some time - YES

8) Do we often see bad drivers spend ages on set-up when they have yet to gain the basic fundamental skills and execute them consistently - YES

9) Is it human nature to always blame other things rather than ourself - YES

Not sure if you or anyone disagrees with those above points , but to come to any sort of conclusion then I think its better for people to argue specific points.

I'm bitter because I think racing on-line is more fun when grids are closer ?

Or Bitter because people new to a game or simulator not only are disadvantaged because they lack experience and skill but also often lose a good deal of time due to them not having a good baseline set-up. ?

That's true but historically with LFS RF1 RF2 GTRE and NKP if you don't have, or make a good baseline setup then you are at a large disadvantage to the point that you could be a good solid racer but you would always be 1.5-3 seconds off the pace in a race.

As said before AC seems to have more depth in some regards and somehow setup seems to make less of a difference but I'd be suprized if we dont see some of the same trends from other games.

Again rather than writing personal attacks why don't you keep the conversation on topic and to the points, the moment people start accusing people of being emotional it just degrades the quality of the conversation.

The conversation was not necessarily about WR's but simply how much impact set-ups can have on racing how it affects people across the board , and ways that things could maybe improved if they need or need not to be.

As said in a previous post I think just having a transparent set-up system or good competitive baseline set-ups go a long way to accommodate the many different play types and experience levels that will play the game making things more conducive for enjoyable racing for everyone.

To answer your specific question yes I have made set-ups, but most the time I found that so long as I had a good baseline set-up or one passed down from someone that had set a good lap It would be faster to change driving style than it would be to spend ages making small changes.

 

Problem solved if you could create a server with a 'fixed setup'. IRacing has this as well. Works pretty good, and would solve all your issues, right?

For peope who don't care about setups, it seems a perfect solution. All who are interested in setupping can still race on regular servers. Case closed, everybody happy, end of discussion.

 

can't complain here for having good baseline setup, i've found them very good in most of the cars, though GT3 cars after trying some setups from here and there, you could be cut almost 2 seconds by driving the same way, that's for sure. because some times you don't know how to setup the car to fix the troubles you are having and you try another setup and the car responds like "it should". the key is, after achieving that, try to analize that setup and learn from it.
Until the setup page doesn't include all the info missing from netkar pro (all the stuff in parenthesis) which i hope they add as soon as possible because that info really helps when doing setups, %critical, %front roll, etc

 

There are settings that will make the car objectively faster on a given circuit. Downforce,gearing, brake balance. Hitting the rev limiter in the middle of the straight won't give you any good lap time, regardless of your driving skill and how well you execute the rest of the circuit. Same with downforce. Too high and you're losing a bucket load of time on the straights.

There are other things that will make the car SUBJECTIVELY faster. Meaning, a fast driver might find it good, while another might not be able to push at all. Suspension comes to mind.

For me baseline setup means a good aero balance and a good gearing plus some tyre pressures for tyre temp management. That's it. Give me only this and I'll be faster than 95% of the chaps online. I don't need to spend 3 days to tailor a setup. It's all between the ears if you know what you're doing.

 

This is absolutely 100% spot on, and the exact point Gamermuscle was trying to make. All this rhetoric about how its driving style, bla bla bla - yes, when it comes to those final few tenths of an alien lap time, I'm sure driving style does come into play - but ultimately there are setups which when bolted on, are objectively better all round - good drivers in sims adapt to them and find they can gain time, because the setup ultimately provides better balance/more grip.

I disagree a bit about exceptions you mentioned like Suspension - it did have a huge affect in rfactor especially around high speed and how much speed you could carry through.

There was a time in simracing when setups were the be all and end all - but with Assetto Corsa, fortunately, this is not so much the case, unless you're just into hotlapping and going for ultimate laptime - theres so much depth to the cars, and so much ways of approaching the driving, that, like reality, yes, driving style can end up being a factor - but - just like reality - a better setup is a better setup, regardless.
Even in F1, you hear of drivers copying their teammates setups, simply because it yielded more time.

According to Eddie Irvine in his sky interview, (it'll be on youtube or dailymotion somewhere), he said that Schumacher was terrible at making setups, simply because he would adapt to different setups and not know what to do with the car - this was apparent at Mercedes. That's why Ferrari brought Barichello in, because he was a good test driver/setup maker.
Now I don't know how true this all is....but....as much as people hate Eddie Irvine, he was there, driving alongside Schumi, and was a fairly good driver...so....

I jumped in online 2 days ago, 22 car grid multiplayer, M3 GT2 at Imola, 100% default setup with 20L of fuel, immediately doing mid 2.43's - everyone else was miles off the pace on the server. In total I've only done something like 20 laps with that car/track combo.

When I raced in FSR we'd buy setups, and simply adapt to them because if driven properly would be categorically faster.

Most people simply cannot drive to a basic level anyway, they should just forget about setups. Which is why I'm saying......forget about the setups. Forget about practice. EVeryone can practice in qualifying and race. Lets all just have fun racing.

Okay, setups make you faster and in most cases make the car easier to drive, so share them out with everyone so we're all on a level playing field, and have fun racing each other.
But if your enjoyment from simracing comes from making a better setup than everyone else and being out front on your own in a multiplayer environment - so be it.

 

Exactly right and that's exactly what I want in a baseline set-up !

That is also what I think all players should have access to in game by default

 

People new to it all should try to get a stable setup before anything else. No point trying to learn how fast you can go if you are spinning each time you hit the curb.

 

I think just having better default setups with a consistent standard would be great. As of now, some default setups are pretty decent, like the E30 GrA at Mugello while others are horrible (MP4 GT3 Silverstone full - can it be any more unstable?; Huayra at Nürburgring GP - understeer city, needs a lot more negative camber).
With street cars there is the problem of them having default setups in the real world that are not track-oriented. I can see why Pagani would make the Huayra an understeering shopping cart. It probably saves lives. But at least the race cars should have proper track setups. There is really no excuse for the MP4 GT3 Silverstone full default setup. It is almost impossible to drive it anywhere near race pace.
You know what would be cool? A community contest for setups! Everyone can upload and vote and the winner in a category is the new default. I can see that being fun and only requiring reasonable effort from the devs.

 

lol then what about 2.5?
Edit: NVM I'm only 1.something at Magione in the Zonda.....and I did that lap a while ago.

 

Must have been a pretty slow server, I would think your time was miles off the pace or at least a minute off.

And buying a setup lol never would do that, some people winning virtual races seems too over the top I think. If someone is willing to pay for a setup I think they arent too far away from also getting into in game hacks and cheats, if they are desperate enough to buy a setup I think they would do just about anything to try and gain an advantage on everyone else.

I have to say the most boring online races for me have been wins from the front and I normally let a guy pass me into t1 to make the race more fun If I am on pole. I dont count virtual wins or even care if I have any or not as long as I have some good battles along the way with other fast clean drivers.

 

whoops, i meant 1.43....lol.

 

thats implying that the default base setups for all the cars are inherently unstable and awful for new people.

its not true though - yes, some of the setups just seem like understeer city, but none of them are undriveable. With the absolute default setups in a hotlapping mode, anyone new should work towards lapping within 5 or so seconds of the top time, before even thinking about setup work.

if they can't, its got nothing to do with setup - its their driving. None of the cars I have driven in AC suddenly spin each time I hit a curb....... there is a mental bouncing issue with the game, which I hope Kunos are looking at, but you can hit most of the kerbs in Imola with No issue at all.

 

Try the MP4 GT3 at Silverstone default. It is unstable in the faster turns to the point of being undrivable. Absolutely frustrating, especially for less experienced drivers. I am one of these and I am off the pace with this combo and a decent setup that I downloaded at RD made me a full second quicker ON MY FIRST HOT LAP after the outlap, so nothing to do with practice. It brought me from 2:05 to 2:04 immediately after I had run the default for almost an hour. I can go high 2:02s now after more practice.
You are right in that setup work should only be on schedule after you got comfortable with the car-track combo and can go a decent pace comfortably and reliably. But some of the default setups are so crappy they force you to change them ASAP. The really confusing thing as a noob is the varying quality of the defaults because some are pretty decent (most actually, like the E30 GrA at Mugello) while others are so bad they are not worth wasting your time on even as a noob.