Actually while we are on the topic, there is a very valid question about the parameters of the tuning exemplified by the fact that the WRT Turbo cars have their front sway bar set to “0”.
What do the values actually correspond to? I was also surprised that the times kept actually falling and seemed like they would continue to fall as I kept lowering the front sway bar stiffness, and since 0 was the minimum value I left it at that. In other circumstances, usually past a certain tolerance that is well above “0”, the car’s turning performance would indeed drop due to excessive lateral transfer.
I’m not a tuner in real life, so I’m not that familiar with the exact values… all I’ve ever had to go on are many computer game simulations, in which quite frequently the value “0” only denotes a minimum of the parameter, as opposed to 0, because yes, it’s ridiculous for a car to have literally zero stiffness to a sway bar. It’s because of this I had no trouble accepting that since the car seemed to go fastest at “0”, that’s what I would set it to.
0 for the sway bar means there is none. It’s possible and okay to use that.
Regarding the most recent bug exploit insults: This one is quite a bit different that the aero bug. It’s not obvious for the less experienced suspension tuner. So please don’t insult anyone for actually “using” that bug for his advantage, I’m 100% sure no one knew that there was a problem. I’d even not really call it “bug” but a “imbalance”.
What happens: At very low ride heights, one or more axles can bottom out in corners if soft springs and no sway bars are used. See WRT: soft front axle, hard rear axle. Usually this suspension setup would mean hell of a lot of oversteer. But because the front axle is bottoming out, it loses grip first. So at low ride heights it can happen that the understeer/oversteer characteristics are turned around. So far I don’t see a problem in that simulation. If anyone does, please tell us.
Why is that faster? The problem lies in the simple test track simulation itself. The sportiness/tameness ratio drops and punishes the not very driveable car less. Here is the imbalance. Bottoming out must be punished more in the tameness statistics (the body bump test is only measured over a 2 cm bump, thus the effect is currently barely noticeable). In the tycoon game, the cars would be shit because they already lose lots of comfort because of bottoming out a bit, but the effect on tameness is not big enough. We had a talk about it in a dev-meeting some weeks ago but nothing has been changed yet as far as I know.
Thanks for that explanation Der Bayer, that answers not one, but actually three of my questions! (The bottoming out question was one floating around in the back of my mind from the weeks where the main activity was the AT track time attacks, and while I was scrutinising the bump test I wondered how big the bump was as the variance in time to rebound wasn’t particularly high given the values were already small to begin with!). I look forward to seeing how that is addressed, though, as you say, one wouldn’t dream of attempting to market this kind of car in the tycoon mode LOL.
[size=75]I better go take another look at the Nightfury’s suspension setup and see if that front sway bar isn’t too soft…[/size]
p.s. how, given the current simulation, can I tell if my car would bottom out?
It’s a soft transition between not bottoming out and bottoming out (rubber buffers). With the suspension slider at the lowest setting, there is only a tiny amount of free wheel travel left, but I don’t know how much from memory. After that, the suspension becomes progressively harder.
I don’t know if automation’s suspension simulation is capable of this, but a temporary fix could be to have the corner test be on slightly bumpy ground. I imagine that if the car is riding on its bump stops the cornering figure that it would spit out would be much lower. I know this wouldn’t be the most realistic way of fixing the problem because there are cars like the Mazda MX5 that are designed to ride on the bump stops during heavy cornering, but it would certainly fix more cases than it would break if you could do this.
I’m quite happy with the results of the brc, I stayed a almost consistent 9 seconds off the fastest time on every stage, solid reliable performance. Nice job everyone and much thanks to der bayer for hosting this.
Thought it wouldn’t be but i wasn’t quite sure. Is there some way you can detect if the car is riding on its bump stops during the corner tests at various speeds? If you can do that then you could penalise the grip of that tyre based on how fast the car is going and the minimum speed that the car can hit its bump stops. Again, not realistic, but fixes the problem of these setups
Considering the circumstances of how my Super 1000 car was tossed together, I’m very happy with the result there. As for the 1100 class, meh. Was hoping to get a top 15, but I barely missed out on that.
It could be detected, yes. But I do think that the basic over- and understeer calculations is somewhat correct. You just don’t see the effect of the bump stops in the track simulation because the bumpiness is only parametrized and not really simulated. I would rather go for the approach of a second, more severe bump test (5 cm?), which causes more penalties for comfort and tameness if you choose a low ride height and soft springs. In reality, you have to choose hard springs when using a low ride height, too. So this would also be good for the tycoon aspect (which should be the focus), not only the track sim.
But then you would have to drive slowly over the bump and it would have to have the right profile. Driving slow would mean that the body has time to move upwards, too. It’s about finding the right balance of speed and height of the obstacle. Finding that compromise is not easy, because 500 kg cars and 3000 kg cars have to drive with the same speed if you want results you can compare. But if you drive too fast with a light car, it just bounces all over the place.
Just for info: The currently used 2 cm bump is a short (0.05 seconds -> 0.5 meters long at 10 m/s) rectangular profile.
Top 5%, perfectly according to my goal.
Thanks Der Bayer for organizing this whole event!
As to WRT’s suspension setup, good find, can’t deny that, but I think that we can agree that in the real world the outcome could’ve been very different indeed.
It was great “racing” amongst you guys, one blast of a week.
I’ lucky with 74th position an will try to get better next time.