Like any good sports car should. 
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Did you really think suspension setting is that simple as pick a âbetterâ part and go with it?
Keep trying. Youâll find the sweet spot eventually that you can use as knowledge to make better cars. Beats us telling you outright.
Could someone explain me those two graphs on the pictures I posted, what do they mean and how to tune cambers/springs/dampers/sway bars because there is no tutorial video in game for this part
Fair question. I think what we havenât told you is that simply how the wheel versus body behaves when hitting an isolated bump will not necessarily tell you how it behaves on a certain track. And there are a number of qualifiers when attempting to derive a simulation time, that need to be mentioned.
- Different tracks have different degrees of âsportinessâ, youâll see this value imposed on every segment of track in the track file. This âsportinessâ value represents how uneven, bumpy or slippery that part of the track happens to be. Itâs an amalgamated measure that penalises cars that are less drivable.
- Note that this doesnât perfectly interact with the drivability measure you get from the car, because that drivability measure is also an amalgamation of the torque curve, the weight of the car, and the suspension setup etc. so you could just as easily lose time going over a bumpy section because the rear springs are too stiff and caused the wheels to break contact with the ground, as you are unable to effectively power out of the apex because the turbo kicked in and the throttle response makes it hard to control.
- Also note that the way the simulation works, the car achieves a âtheoretical maximumâ best time which is 100% replicated, which is clearly not how driving works in real life. This somewhat ignores the minutiae of the behaviour of the wheels and body (left graph) and simply corners at the maximum allowed speed considering traction and steering behaviour (see right graph). This means that they approach every single corner with the same behaviour. Real drivers wonât be able to do this, and sometimes will use different methods of approaching different kinds of corners.
- Also note that when cars behave differently they may have to take different lines around corners to achieve the best result. This simulation imposes the same driving line on all cars.
Short story: you wonât get a direct translation from the left graph and the right graph to a track time, and it will not inform you as to the driving experience, nor how easy it would be for a human driver to achieve such a time.
p.s. âbottom outâ here doesnât mean the bumper bottoming out on the kerb/road. This is a misconception that I too had once upon a time. It actually means the suspension reached the end of its travel and the frame is directly hitting the bump stops (which your car hopefully has if you do have a greater than 0 bottom out value). This will obviously alter the cornering behaviour of the car because suddenly the suspension behaves as if the springs are of near-infinite stiffness (depending on the material of the bump-stop). That sudden transition from suspension travel to suspension no-travel is what robs the car of drivability.
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Just wondering what the term for when the bumper or frame hits the ground? Is that also called bottoming out and does the game take that into consideration.
thatâs just plain olâ scraping. The game would then have to take into consideration every single location in the world to determine where it will scrape and where it wonât. Simply impossible to tell. Over a speedbump, a sharply angled entry/exit ramp⌠low ride height causes scrape. And this can happen anywhere. It is very possible that a car may scrape when it bottoms out but that will just be because of really low ride height + soft springs
So when you get bottoming out in automation that means that even on a perfectly flat surface youâd be able to reach the limits of the springs from braking or turning? so does that mean that having less grippy tires would allow for softer springs without bottoming out?
What even?
This is almost correct. You would reach the limit of spring travel.
Iâm not sure I understand your thinking behind this line of thought at all. Tyre compound doesnât affect suspension travel. Please elaborate.
Yes, spring travel is what I mean(not really sure what other ways you could reach the limit of springs in a way that would be considered bottoming out). Well if as I said the bottoming out in automation is normally caused by braking or turning then with less grip the car would be able to handle less Gs which basically means that at its limit of braking or turning there will be less force put on the springs, like going around a somewhat sharp corner at 30 MPH you would get a lot less body roll than you would if you took the same corner at say 20 MPH, and by decreasing the grip available your tires might start sliding before the suspension reaches its limit.
Because if the tires donât have enough grip to prevent the vehicle from hooking up well enough to lean, it will prevent bottoming out.
To answer your question Luke, while yes, this is technically true, it is a poor way to manage suspension. Slipping should be the very last thing you want to have happen, everything else should be perfected first. And that includes spring rate and amount of travel. If the tire is breaking loose as a âsafetyâ for the suspension, the vehicle is pointlessly giving up performance and comfort.
The bottom out calculation is only determined by a bump test. It has no relevance to weight transfer due to braking or turning. I suppose that could happen on the real world, but itâs not related to the value given in-game.
Yup, a car that would bottom out due to weight transfers would already get a horrible bottom out penality since the tiniest of bumps would cause the car to bottom out.
General summary protips:
- Bottoming out is bad
- Cars with low ride height and stiff springs are more responsive on flat roads, but more jittery on bumpy roads
- Cars with high ride height and saggy springs transfer forces poorly on flat roads so are unresponsive but maintain road contact better on bumpy roads.
This is currently not precisely simulated in Automation track times, though the bump tests and cornering graphs are very good. Those tests show a single set of conditions.
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