Optimal breaking: Do you hear the tyres slip/skid very much or not at all? (no ABS)

Hi,

when I break hard without ABS I always hear my tyres slipping/skidding alot. This can't be the optimal break power! But when I break so smooth and soft that I don't hear the tyres then the breaking zone is too long. How do you break? How strong do you hear your tyres skidding/slipping?

THX
Oli

 

Ah! You mean when not on an open servers, as I understand it to be totally against the rules to brake and only full speed t-boning is allowed - please do not get that confused with T-Bagging!

On a serious note, if the car has ABS then use it. You do not need to have it at max strength and it gives you far more control of the car and I'm sure you will find that all professional drivers that have ABS driving aids as an option will not turn it off. If you have expensive control systems then you could get away with turning ABS off, but what are you trying to prove by doing so, that you are better than a system that really does aid in braking stability and control. I know there will now be a few saying turn the lot off! I would say do what you will, most cars have a varying degree of ABS/TC so set it up to the point where it is most helpful to you, your control devices and you will not be going far wrong.

P.S. I hear skipping with ABS on 11 or 12, I leave TC off. (Remember the lower the number the more ABS/TC used)

*I should not have picked on ABS but driving aids. As ABS is not allowed in most Motorsports.

 

So I always drive without assists. I just find it more fun and challenging.
concerning not having ABS, when I miss the braking point and the tires lock up, i pump the brake pedal to imitate what the ABS would do in such a situation.
Try to brake as hard as you can when u start braking and the continiously loosen up the brake pedal, then the tires shouldnt lock up.
that doesnt work on all cars though, so you may not brake fully.
the technique stays the same.

 

Don't bother too much about the sounds. Keep an eye on the tire wear in game (there are many apps that display it) and at the end of a session always have a look at the tire "grain" percentage info as it gives you an idea of the degradation related to the loss of grip (not necessarily at braking, it can alwo be a tire spinning on acceleration).

 

There is actually a slider for the sounds in audio options (tyre skid volume onset), and by default it is set pretty conservatively, try moving it to something like 150%. It will move the hard screeching sound above slip level ABS is using, so you should be able to threshold brake based on sounds alone.


Also learning to trailbrake is imho one of the best ways to learn proper braking forces, even without sounds. What you do is to turn in early, but not hard, (while reducing pressure on the brakes) and watch what the car is doing, if after good initial turn in it >suddenly< starts to understeer, you are hard locking front inside and should let go of the brakes more (you can unwind the steering a little bit to help the wheel start moving again). On the other hand, if the car is oversteering into the turn, then you are not braking hard enough.
The thing to find here is the right braking force to get the transition to understeer (usually accompanied with screeching sound) to occur slowly and modulating the pedal so that there is only some understeer but not enough to cause wandering (wheel underrotation) or total wheel lockup. It's also good to review the braking in the replay and compare rotation speed of front inside to rear inside to see if you are too much under or over the limit.

After you get comfortable with trailbraking, it's much easier to notice when you get over the limit in straight line threshold braking. If you are only just above threshold, one wheel will start to underrotate and pull the car to the side (similar to trailbraking). If the braking zone is super smooth (both wheels will lock at the same time) or you don't have enough fidelity in brake pedal (you go over the limit by a lot, or not at all), you can try moving just a little bit left/right on the straight and modulate the brake pedal to make get one wheel to underrotate and >snap< remember that spot on the brake pedal, so that next time you brake on straight you can apply the same force and be near perfect threshold braking even without any sound/FFB clues.

 

Technically that's vocabulary police, not grammar police, but yes.

Having driven cars IRL that have no abs (my 944) I have to say it's hopeless trying to match that experience in a video game. If you don't have a crazy pedal setup you're just forcing needless hardship on yourself. Threshold braking in a real car is one of the simplest and most intuitive processes in the car. In video games it's nigh impossible, depending on your hardware.

 

I think the difference between a sim and real life is not the pedal but how you feel the deceleration. In real life you adjust your braking mostly by feeling the g-firces pushing you forwards from your seat. In sim you brake mostly by sound and visuals. But going in straight line it is hard to see from the monitor how hard you are braking so it is mostly down to sound. Try turning off your speakers and try braking. You will have bad time no matter what kind of magic pedals you have. I'd say you will brake better with monitor turned off than sound turned off.

Same thing with clutch. In real life clutch just like brake pedal is mostly a complete dead pedal. There is nothing except the deceleration or acceleration of the car itself that you can feel through the pedal. Sure, the clutch has its own motion and brake pedals get stiffer the harder you push but the pedal itself doesn't tell you anything about how hard you are braking or close to the clutch bite point. So with clutch you just put the pedal to the floor, shift it in first gear and lift the pedal until you start feeling the car moving. That's the bite point and that's how you feel it.

That being said I don't think the pedals are irrelevant in sim racing. Typical racing wheels are much better quality than typical pedals so upgrading the latter makes bigger difference. Going from dfgt to t300 wheel is smaller jump than going from dfgt pedals to fanatec pedals for example. With money you can get pedals that feel "more realistic" and physically work similarly as the real brake pedals in real cars. Pot brakes are not horrible and it is fine and working input system but needs different kind of input than load based system. In the end though when braking or clutching your brain wants g-forces and not pedal feel for modulation. Without g-forces in sims the only thing the brain has to work with is sound and visuals from the monitor. Unless you want to feel abs pulsing or brake failures there is nothing to feel in the brake pedal imho.

 

Dauntless. YOU are AWWWWESOMMEEE! I know I have never read something so spot on, you are really the first person that has made quite a believable and understandable difference between real world racing/driving and game racing. Wonderful post, thank you for taking the time.


P.S. No *** kissing, his Jaaaaaag smells of cheese!

 

One thing to note. The sounds in AC seem to be a pretty poor indicator for locked up tyres when braking.

Get the braking help app that shows when you lock the wheels. it is way after you hear screeching.

 

Like Nao said, make sure you change the default settings. At default they screech just from looking at them. I'm using tyre sound @ 0.5 and skid @ 160% and it's much better.

 

Will give it a shot.

 

Wait...Is this timing sound settings or just volumes you speak of?

 

I haven't seen this app and just did a search for it, but can't find it. What's the name of the app? Thanks

 

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/brake-indicator.26073/

 

In audio options you should have "tyre skid volume onset" which controls how early the tyres start to screech (at what slip ratio/slip angle) in percentage - it's neither timing nor volume.

 

Thank you all for your helpfull postings. So the thing is I am not too bad but I have to to turn on ABS? If so do you all set it to "factory" or to "on"? Do you use different settings between streetcars and GT cars? Do most online servers allow ABS?

Very interesting!

 

Ahh sounds like you're using game aids and/or in car (factory) aids

There's two types of assists in game - "factory" and "game". Factory means if the real car has it you can turn abs and traction control on or through its various modes (higher the number = the less intrusive) and this tries to replicate how it works in the real car. Game assists are TC, ABS, stability control, damage, fuel consumption, auto box, auto throttle blip and auto clutch

 

I never did like it when they introduced tyre skid onset. I mean all I want for it is to be useful at a fixed setting, now I have to go manually look for what might work best...?

Anyway I use something around 140% and in GT3 cars with ABS set to 4 out of 8 it always makes a lotta noise and can hear the ABS kick in easily. But even when steering it seems that all 4 tyres are screeching.

Why is there no optimized default setting for that? Who in their right mind would want it on 100% !?!?!?

 

Just wanted to say, while turning on factory aids will help in many situations, it does not answer your question or fix your problem completely as not every car will run with ABS, or you may not want to run every car with ABS, like with some road cars and whatnot.

But in general, hearing long duration tire skidding without ABS is *usually* not good. You ideally want to be right on the cusp of it, but not overdoing it. In reality, a bit of skid noise during some phase of braking isn't all that bad, though. It's just a warning sign that you've crossed the limit and to back down the pressure a bit. It's sometimes good to really get acknowledgement of how fine a line you are treading. The trick is to not overcompensate when it happens. Dont let off the brake completely, just inch off slightly.

Without g-forces, it's hard to get a great feel for how hard you're braking, so this is always a difficult aspect of sim racing. It's also why many are very particular about what sort of pedals they use and why brake pedal mods are popular. Getting a nice firm and progressive brake pedal can help a ton with controlling braking modulation at the limits. I'm not sure what sort of pedals you have(or if you're using pedals at all), but generally, if a brake pedal is on the flimsy side, it makes it far too easy to make exaggerated motions, over or under-doing the required correction to get yourself back right at the limits again. A good brake pedal also makes it easier for things to become something you can grow better at through mere muscle memory, particularly if you're using a load cell brake.

Braking is definitely one of the more challenging aspects of improving laptimes and battling with other drivers. Practice practice.