Car porn (Forza 2)

[Arclight]

I am really enjoying the single player of this game, but multiplayer has been real hit or miss.  I have tried tuning my car but usually end up just making it worse.  So while my car is a C550 just like the rest of the pack, my car has no chance against most others. 

Is there any way in Multi to limit the race to "stock" vehicles?
Thats the kind of racing I would be most interested in. For the main reason I haven't a clue about tuning virtual-cars.

By stock I mean no upgrades other than paint-jobs. I dunno, maybe I'm just sucking gas and have no Idea what i'm talking about.

[Arkon]

I am really enjoying the single player of this game, but multiplayer has been real hit or miss.  I have tried tuning my car but usually end up just making it worse.  So while my car is a C550 just like the rest of the pack, my car has no chance against most others. 

Is there any way in Multi to limit the race to "stock" vehicles?
Thats the kind of racing I would be most interested in. For the main reason I haven't a clue about tuning virtual-cars.

By stock I mean no upgrades other than paint-jobs. I dunno, maybe I'm just sucking gas and have no Idea what i'm talking about.

I am not sure to be honest. I know there is a ton of options when setting up a game so it may be possible.

[wonderpug]

Chaz is right on the money, but I don't think racing mostly untuned stock cars is the best solution.

A number of people have indicated that they are interested in learning more about tuning.  If we're all racing the same untuned stock car, all we're going to be able to help each other learn is how to adjust tire pressure.  I find tire pressure as thrilling as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but it's kind of limiting.

By getting everyone in the same car chassis with at least some standard tuning options, we not only gain a lot more ability for beginners to get help with their setup, the game will let us do this in between races.  People can look at the myriad of tuning options and have people answer their questions and give advice right over their headset.

In addition to beginner tuners, we've also got beginner drivers.  Allowing tuning will help them as well.  Besides making the cars easier to handle right off the bat (upgrading your springs lowers your car and helps you turn even if you don't touch the tuning adjustment), by getting help on how to adjust the tuning the beginner drivers will find their cars much easier to keep on the road.

For these pre-planned car races, we could even institute a sort of handicap system, like have it so beginner tuners and drivers can tune their Fairlady up 75 PI, but more experienced drivers and tuners only get an extra 50 PI to work with.

edit: and yes, the host can automagically set it so that everyone's car will be stock parts and tuning, no matter what they had on their car when they chose it from their garage.

[Chaz]

It might acutally not be a bad idea to have everyone get in the same car, with the parts to allow basic tuning (brakes, suspension, etc), and run a race without adjusting anything.  Then, have everyone go in and make identical tuning adjustments, with someone explaining why we're changing what, and then run the race again, and everyone can see the results immediately, kind of a before/after thing.

[IkeVandergraaf]

I like Chaz's idea!

[Thin_J]

If anyone wants an upgraded car I'm sitting on over 2 million credits and I've run out of things I really want to spend them on.

[wonderpug]

If anyone wants an upgraded car I'm sitting on over 2 million credits and I've run out of things I really want to spend them on.

If you happen to be Euro region, I'd really love a Lancia Stratos.

Never mind!  Took my first venture into the auction house and got one for pretty cheap, despite a minor bidding war.

Lancia Alitalia, here I come!

[Eduardo X]

I like Chaz's idea!

Yeah, that's a great idea.

[Brendan]

Starshifter's next purchase:  two more xboxes, a couple additional monitors, etc...

http://forzamotorsport.net/news/tuningguides/triplescreen.htm

I would like in on this triple-screen action please.  Anyone have lucky lottery numbers to share?

[Harkonis]

Money is an issue for some of us who don't consistently place 1st or 2nd in multiplayer races.  The Elan which Hark says is cheap cost me about 70k to upgrade to D400 and I had saved about 120k at that point.  I'm not really keen on buying a PT Cruiser.

I did get an idea though last night when I ran an endurance race with a hired driver.  I made about 60k profit.  I think I should be able to run this a couple of times especially when I can't actively play to get a steady flow of cash.  Is there any penalty (cash wise) for repeating already completed races?

I posted about the hired driver thing above, I think I ramble so much nobody reads all of my posts   I was trying to give us something else fun to do that would be even enough to keep the 'your car is better' people happy but people just don't seem to like it. I don't have fun with the pure stock races because anytime I start in the middle or back I get rammed into oblivion on a straight and can't possibly catch up.  That doesn't take skill, it's the opposite.  It's pure luck and it's not fun for me.  I can understand it isn't fun to someone who sees the leader take off and dissappear in the first 30 seconds too.  The solution to that one is to customize a car to your own style to compete or even to copy their setup.  Part of the problem isn't even really a car performance difference but a player skill difference and I don't know how to even that up.  We have 4-5 people who are quite a bit quicker than the average of the group and unless we make them use 'weaker' cars I don't see that it will be any different.

[Harkonis]

It might acutally not be a bad idea to have everyone get in the same car, with the parts to allow basic tuning (brakes, suspension, etc), and run a race without adjusting anything.  Then, have everyone go in and make identical tuning adjustments, with someone explaining why we're changing what, and then run the race again, and everyone can see the results immediately, kind of a before/after thing.

This is part of what I was hoping would happen.  I'm far from a genius on tuning or upgrading and was hoping to get to see what you guys would do to your own cars when given a choice.  Then we'd see what works and what doesn't, but it looks like everyone is too afraid to go for it and experiment.  Unfortunately if everyone waits until told how it's 'best' to upgrade (which there really isn't any one best way) then we will miss out on possibly creative and unthought of ways that 'noobs' would do that could end up working wonderfully.  I have my own misconceptions that probably cause me to upgrade in a less than efficient manner and if someone else doesn't have those misconceptions they could blow my performance out pretty much by accident.  I was hoping to milk this for the experience then we could discuss it and all get better.

[Chaz]

I don't think most people are looking for the "best" way to tune, but rather more information on what the different tuning options actually do.  For example, I know I can change my tire pressure.  However, why do I want to make the front tires a higher pressure than the rear?  What happens if the opposite occurs? How does that effect camber, and why should I care about my camber settings anyway? Why does the telemetry screen display tire temperature at three different points on the tire, why would I want those to all be the same or different, and how do I make it so?

And I don't think it's a matter of people wanting to have things handed to them.  I think it's more that people enjoy racing with the crowd here, and want that to continue, but anticipate the fun level decreasing if they continue to be unable to compete.  Plus, don't forget that, as I said, some folks have an intrinsicly better understanding of tuning a car, through real-world or prior game experience, than others, and a lot of us are playing catch-up wrt tuning.  At some point, everyone will be at a point where they are able to tune a car to their tastes.  In the mean time, I think a lot of us are using blind trial and error, and wouldn't mind some simple "this is what this setting does" help.

I know this is rambling, but when you learn to play music, the teacher doesn't hand you a guitar, sit down at the piano, and say now we're going to play a song.  Instead, the teacher shows you chords, shows you how the chords fit into a key, and then different ways you might put them together.  Once you have an idea of how chords fit together, you can start improvising.  I think a lot of us feel like we just got handed our guitar, and are trying to figure out how to play.

[Booner]

Just some quick thoughts on tuning.

First off....what difference it can make!

I've been building up a nice little Lotus Exige with all types of performance goodies. It starts out as a decent little ride stock, especially in handling...which is great for the low level driver courses. I kept boosting the horsepower up and only making minor adjustments to the final gearing to try and keep the acceleration low enough to keep it under control when I get on the throttle hard, yet the thing turned into a death trap with the slightest mistake,

I'd driven the thing enough to realize what was happening as I drove, where my faults and habits were. So I decided earlier tonight to mess with tire, brake, and suspension tuning. I just read through the descriptions of each setting and adjusted them in a fashion that I thought would alleviate some of my problems with under/oversteer in my driving. I stayed away from messing with toe-in, camber, and the like...yet messed with spring stiffness, spring/shock travel, front/rear brake bias, ride height, etc.

Well, I ended up with one screaming little machine. It's under 350 HP, doesn't have great top end (maybe 160), but it accelerates like mad and can hug the hell out of a turn. I'm really happy with the way it tuned out.

I think for those wanting to get into tuning their rides....drive laps and laps to figure out what is happening as you go. Are you swinging your ass end around during a turn, or is the front end sliding out? Are you front tires locking up too early during hard braking? Just figure out what's actually going on...the in game descriptions of the tuning options are quite helpful once you know.

 

[KePoW]

It might acutally not be a bad idea to have everyone get in the same car, with the parts to allow basic tuning (brakes, suspension, etc), and run a race without adjusting anything.  Then, have everyone go in and make identical tuning adjustments, with someone explaining why we're changing what, and then run the race again, and everyone can see the results immediately, kind of a before/after thing.

This is part of what I was hoping would happen.  I'm far from a genius on tuning or upgrading and was hoping to get to see what you guys would do to your own cars when given a choice.  Then we'd see what works and what doesn't, but it looks like everyone is too afraid to go for it and experiment.  Unfortunately if everyone waits until told how it's 'best' to upgrade (which there really isn't any one best way) then we will miss out on possibly creative and unthought of ways that 'noobs' would do that could end up working wonderfully.  I have my own misconceptions that probably cause me to upgrade in a less than efficient manner and if someone else doesn't have those misconceptions they could blow my performance out pretty much by accident.  I was hoping to milk this for the experience then we could discuss it and all get better.

I can only speak for myself, but I think you're missing the point that a lot of people just don't want to mess with that stuff

personally, I don't know jack shit about cars...like literally almost nothing.  I drive a SUV in real life and pretty much never go over 75mph.  all that parts/upgrades stuff, and especially the tunings sections, is completely greek to me.  and no, I'm not really willing to study huge in-depth articles going over all that...even skimming over them, my eyes start to glaze over cause I have no idea wtf they're talking about.  even the in-game Forza 2 help section blurbs are still pretty complicated sounding to me.  just as a small example, one of my driving problems in any sim racing game is that I always seem to fishtail like crazy.  well...I have absolutely no idea what I need to do to fix that, and I don't really want to try 20+ different combinations of parts/upgrades and tuning setups.  gellar told me to stick a big rear wing on my cars, but that doesn't really seem to help lol

I mean like for your suggestion of everyone getting a D400 Elan, I don't even know how to do that.  are you talking about buying one of those base Elans that start at like 100-something and then just buying random parts/upgrades to make the rating add up to 400?

anyway, just sharing thoughts from a total car noob, and I know some of my friends feel the same way

[Booner]

just as a small example, one of my driving problems in any sim racing game is that I always seem to fishtail like crazy.  well...I have absolutely no idea what I need to do to fix that, and I don't really want to try 20+ different combinations of parts/upgrades and tuning setups.

If you fishtail, you could be getting on the throttle too early...try to never use more throttle in a turn until you are through the apex (imagine the 1/2 way point), same with brakes on the back half of the turn. Try and set up the speed you can maintain through the turn, before the turn. Once you are through the Apex, you can start smoothly adding throttle till that puppy is to the floor...at least until the next turn. 

If you grasp that, and you still spin....I have a quick question regarding your fishtails. Let's say you are going around a corner. When you start into the turn, are you finding that you have to keep increasing the 'tightness' of the turn until it snaps, or are you find that you're turning immediately too much for the back end to keep traction?

[wonderpug]

For example, I know I can change my tire pressure.  However, why do I want to make the front tires a higher pressure than the rear?  What happens if the opposite occurs? How does that effect camber, and why should I care about my camber settings anyway? Why does the telemetry screen display tire temperature at three different points on the tire, why would I want those to all be the same or different, and how do I make it so?

I know you just meant these as examples, but I think I'll take a stab at answering them anyway.

Tire pressure: Lower tire pressure makes more of the tire hit the pavement (imagine a half deflated basketball) giving you more grip but also more friction.  The increased friction causes more wear and also hinders your top speed.  By having your front tires higher pressure than the rear, you make your car grip a bit better in the rear than the front, making your rear end less likely to slip out (increased understeer).  If you do the reverse, you'll instead be increasing oversteer.  You don't want to change this too extremely, or you'll end up riding mostly on the middle of your tire (overinflated) or on the outside edges (underinflated.)

Camber:  Tire pressure won't really affect camber.  Camber is the amount that your tires are tilted to the left or right, or in other words the top point of your left and right tires will be closer or further apart.  When you take a turn, your car will lean towards the outside edge of the turn.  If your outside tires were perfectly perpendicular to the ground before the turn, they will be leaning towards the outside of the curve when you make your turn.  This is bad, less grip.  That's why some negative camber is usually good, it makes it so that your outside tires end up (ideally) perfectly flat in a turn to maximize your grip.

Tire temperature: Knowing your tire temperature at three different points helps you tune the pressure and camber mentioned above.  If it's much hotter in the middle than the outside edges, your tire might be overinflated.  Hotter on the outside edges might mean underinflation.  If the inside edge is hotter than the outside edge, you might have too much negative camber.  Outside edge hotter, camber might be too positive.

[Arclight]

No porn, but I do have a question. Do you guys basically stick with one or two cars in single play? Souping them up and just progressing with them? Or do you use the cars as they become un-locked?
Not sure what I should be spending my cash on.....Play it by ear I guess.....

[Farscry]

Hey, awesome, thanks for the info on those settings, Pug!

Haven't been on for racing the last few days, but really looking forward to more racing with you guys! And also to different kinds of racing; I like the stock car races, the "pick whatever fits in this class that you've got" races, and the tuning races sound fun too. I know I'm not going to be winning races regularly anytime soon. Or, really anytime at all. But I enjoy that we're getting enough people typically when I've been on that there's usually 2-3 packs of racers in a given race, keeping it exciting to be fighting for whatever position is within your grasp.

However, guys like me have to play a lot of single player to make up for how little money we earn in multiplayer. To the point where I'm sure many of us (me included) aren't high enough rank to even have the endurance races available as an option yet, so while your idea of hiring a driver to do it is fine, Hark, it's only feasible if you've played and earned enough to level your driver up to 20. Mine is only level 15, and I've already put in over 20 hours on the game since launch, quite a high number of hours for me to quickly put into any game. Most of that time is in multiplayer, which is probably why I've earned so little money overall.

So please keep in mind that you're significantly above the average skill and dedication of the guys you're racing with. I think that's where some of them (myself at times too) are being a little overestimated on what they should be able to "easily" acquire in the game. I was dumbfounded earlier this week (Tuesday night) when I checked your stats and saw that you'd already raced 150 online races. Holy crap; it'll be a month or two before I have that many under my belt. I think my stat was around 30-40 at the time.

I do dig that you're making the effort to pick cars for our tuning races that are inexpensive (though you gotta keep in mind that the price is affected by the undoubtedly heavy discounts you've earned for the regions by now).

[wonderpug]

No porn, but I do have a question. Do you guys basically stick with one or two cars in single play? Souping them up and just progressing with them? Or do you use the cars as they become un-locked?
Not sure what I should be spending my cash on.....Play it by ear I guess.....

I have a handful of favorite cars which I prefer to drive.  They're cars that I like in real life, so I spend more time souping them up, getting them handling just right, all that jazz.  Every race that they can participate in, I use them, even if it means adding or subtracting upgrades to make them fit a certain race restriction.

But the nature of the game is to have all sorts of different themed races, so to win those I'll pick whatever prize car I happen to have that fits the category.  I'll try the race with the car stock, sometimes I can get the gold as-is so I don't have to put any money into the car.  If I'm having trouble, I'll try buying just enough upgrades to be competitive, but if that's still not enough I'll end up buying a new car.

In some cases I have no choice but to buy a new car.  Since I've mostly been purchasing light Japanese cars, I had nothing for the 3850 lb so I bought a heavy car just for that race, figuring I'd continue to use it for any other heavy category races down the line.

[wonderpug]

Hey, awesome, thanks for the info on those settings, Pug!

Sure thing, keep the questions coming.  I'll admit I'm not an expert on these things, though, so if I get something wrong I hope gellar or Geezer or someone will chime in with a correction.

And as for making money, holy cow is there money to be had in the auction house.  On a whim I bought a few more Lancia Stratos last night and slapped my new Alitalia paintjob on and put it up for 20,000 with a 100,000 buyout.  Sure enough I logged on this morning and had 100,000 waiting for me in my mailbox.

[KePoW]

If you grasp that, and you still spin....I have a quick question regarding your fishtails. Let's say you are going around a corner. When you start into the turn, are you finding that you have to keep increasing the 'tightness' of the turn until it snaps, or are you find that you're turning immediately too much for the back end to keep traction?

depends on the car...but it's usually the latter, lol

[Farscry]

Alright, I've got a PT Cruiser tricked out to the 550 spec with the beginning of a new custom paintjob ready to roll. Picked up the Elise, but man, it was pricier than I would've thought; haven't upgrade it at all yet.

[Geezer]

If you grasp that, and you still spin....I have a quick question regarding your fishtails. Let's say you are going around a corner. When you start into the turn, are you finding that you have to keep increasing the 'tightness' of the turn until it snaps, or are you find that you're turning immediately too much for the back end to keep traction?

depends on the car...but it's usually the latter, lol

This is going to sound counterintuitive, but in a rwd car, if the back end is sliding, quite often the remedy is MORE throttle.  When you are turning at a steady state and the back end starts to go, by letting off you unload the back end causing it to snap around.  This is more pronounced in a mid-engine car.  In a FWD car,. you can actually use this to your advantage to tighten your line (as you can in a rwd car, but it's nasty hard to do in the game and not so easy even in real life if the car is already balanced right on the edge.

If the back starts to go, then you apply power an the front starts to go, you have a choice - you can pray and hope you drift through the turn balanced by alternating (very quickly) on/off throttle, or you can enter the corner slower next time.

If you enter fine, then break the back out under throttle, you are applying too much power too fast.

[Harkonis]

I've had good luck using the diff tuning to fix this type of rear end swap in turns, but I'll be buggered if I know how to explain what I did

[Booner]

If you grasp that, and you still spin....I have a quick question regarding your fishtails. Let's say you are going around a corner. When you start into the turn, are you finding that you have to keep increasing the 'tightness' of the turn until it snaps, or are you find that you're turning immediately too much for the back end to keep traction?

depends on the car...but it's usually the latter, lol

Hehe...You're suffering from oversteer. You turn until a point that the car wants to go all the way to the inside of the turn, and that you're fighting to keep it from turning that hard. Understeer is where the car wants to drift to the outside and you have to turn in even harder to maintain the line you want. I can't give you a detailed explanation on the physics behind it, but I can give you a couple possible remedies.

Try tuning the differential for lower acceleration...this isn't a real correction to oversteer, but it will help ya if you have a heavy foot coming out of the turns. You wont swap ends nearly as frequently. Note Harkonis.

Lower your ride height if you have adjustable shocks/spings. The lower your center of gravity, the better....just don't bottom it out on tracks with bunches of little dips and rises.

If you have install adjustable sway bars, tune down your front and increase the rear stiffness. This one has had the greatest impact on my ride handling. Small increments make a fairly big difference...especially if you are moving both the front and rear in opposite directions. I'll take a quick test drive to see if I'm close to being in balance with under/oversteer. You'll have to fool with it a bit to find it, but you'll know when you've gone to far with it as the handling will stop feeling better and start getting worse.

This is just my laymans knowledge of what happens...so someone might have a better answer for ya.

[gellar]

I'll admit I'm not an expert on these things, though, so if I get something wrong I hope gellar or Geezer or someone will chime in with a correction.

Yeah here's the thing with me... I love to drive, but I absolutely hate setting up the car.  I'm the type of guy who basically says "give me the car and I will learn how to drive it."  For my personal car, all the suspension settings were dialed in by my suspension guy after he spent 30 mins talking to me about how I liked the car to handle.  I have all of the settings written down and saved, but I don't have a deep understanding of what they mean.  I just don't want to bother.

The best I can do is tire pressure stuff.

gellar

[Chaz]

Two hours or so worth of work produces a fairly decent-looking (I think) Watchmen car.  I've got a version featuring a "Watchmen" title stripe going down the side of the hood, but the fonts aren't thick enough to really do it justice, and there's no way to scale up the thickness.  I wonder if I should auction it off and hopefully make a proft.

[EngineNo9]

I'm in the category that doesn't really know enough to be good at tuning my cars.  It's easy enough to upgrade and throw on some new sway bars or something, but tweaking the details it's hard for me to know what to do to correct my problems rather than making them worse.  

Plus, in the time that I get to play my games I want to actually play them, not spend hours going back and forth between tuning and test driving and trying to figure out if there were any noticeable changes or not.  That feels like a bit of a waste of my free time to me, although I know some people do like doing that.  

[Harkonis]

Don't forget that you can download other people's tuning setups if you don't know what you're doing. 

[Chaz]

Man, being the only one who sucks in a field of good drivers can be really demoralizing.  We ran an eight lap race on a semi-long track tonight.  I got into last place by lap 2 (only held on that long because I started in front, and someone wiped out), and then never saw anyone again.  Kept watching the gap between me and the person in front get wider and wider until I was about 30 secs. back.

Of course, this is completely not the fault of the people who were ahead of me, kudos to them for being able to drive.  However, I simply don't know what I'm doing, and I'm having a hard time getting better.  I always start in front (due to my lack of skillz), which is a bad place to be because I can't take corners as fast as the people behind me, so I usually spend the first corner trying to stay out of their way so I don't cause a massive accident, which results in me being in the back.  Of course, this isn't so bad when there's other incompetents hanging out back there with me.

And of course, I'm never sure if I just can't drive, if I need to tune, or if my efforts at tuning have made things even worse than they would otherwise be.  I suppose at some point I'll learn, but some nights, I wonder.

[Harkonis]

Just remember that the best way to get better at anything is to surround yourself with people better at it than you and to push yourself.  Also make sure you ask questions and pick our brains.  I'll try to see any replays I might have that have you in them and see if I can see what's holding you back in case it's driving style related.

[Harkonis]

The 24 hour race at nurburginringhoweveryouspellit just resumed and OMFG!  They went 5 wide into that first turn off the straight on the restart.  Then, just like our races there was an accident between the 33% and 50% point on the lap

http://adac.24h-rennen.de/live/streaming.html

with english audio available from radio le mans

[Harkonis]

Late night posting binge continues...

I wish the leaderboards had a sort by car so you could see who has the fastest times per model per track.

edit:  My console is now hard locking anytime I try to access the friends leaderboards.  The other leaderboards work fine.

[Booner]

I always start in front (due to my lack of skillz), which is a bad place to be because I can't take corners as fast as the people behind me, so I usually spend the first corner trying to stay out of their way so I don't cause a massive accident, which results in me being in the back.

I wouldn't worry about that first corner too much. If there are better drivers behind ya, they should know better than to ram ya outta the way...it's not your fault they forgot to brake. They can get around ya at some other point. Take the turn the best you can.

And of course, I'm never sure if I just can't drive, if I need to tune, or if my efforts at tuning have made things even worse than they would otherwise be.  I suppose at some point I'll learn, but some nights, I wonder.

If you are worried that your tuning has made things worse, save your current settings, then load the default ones.

I've gotten to the point that I'll have a few saved setups for the same car. One for twisty tracks, one for top end speed, and one balanced between the two.

[Geezer]

If you grasp that, and you still spin....I have a quick question regarding your fishtails. Let's say you are going around a corner. When you start into the turn, are you finding that you have to keep increasing the 'tightness' of the turn until it snaps, or are you find that you're turning immediately too much for the back end to keep traction?

depends on the car...but it's usually the latter, lol

Hehe...You're suffering from oversteer. You turn until a point that the car wants to go all the way to the inside of the turn, and that you're fighting to keep it from turning that hard. Understeer is where the car wants to drift to the outside and you have to turn in even harder to maintain the line you want. I can't give you a detailed explanation on the physics behind it, but I can give you a couple possible remedies.

Try tuning the differential for lower acceleration...this isn't a real correction to oversteer, but it will help ya if you have a heavy foot coming out of the turns. You wont swap ends nearly as frequently. Note Harkonis.

Lower your ride height if you have adjustable shocks/spings. The lower your center of gravity, the better....just don't bottom it out on tracks with bunches of little dips and rises.

If you have install adjustable sway bars, tune down your front and increase the rear stiffness. This one has had the greatest impact on my ride handling. Small increments make a fairly big difference...especially if you are moving both the front and rear in opposite directions. I'll take a quick test drive to see if I'm close to being in balance with under/oversteer. You'll have to fool with it a bit to find it, but you'll know when you've gone to far with it as the handling will stop feeling better and start getting worse.

This is just my laymans knowledge of what happens...so someone might have a better answer for ya.

well... specially in an understeer situation, cranking the wheel in won't do much good

Stiffening the rear swaybar makes the back looser.  Stiffening the front makes the front looser.  In an oversteer situation (in which the back tires loose grip first), *decreasing* the rear stiffness is one remedy (so is more negative camber).  In an understeer situation (where the front tires break first) decreasing the front stiffness is one remedy. as is more negative camber.  Note that increasing front stiffness has the samem *relative* effect as decreasing rear stiffness (i.e. it changes the balance of the car, but the two approaches will change the absolute grip of the effected end).

Other ways to effect car stability are toe-in (more gives more stability but fuzzier turn-in) and tire pressure (the default 30/30 in the game is too high IMHO - but I have yet to play a car in the game that I have extensive real life experience with.  However, for those of you that have the elise/exige, my actual starting pressures are 24F/26R in fact, I can try and dig out my actual suspension settings if anyone wants, and maybe Gellar could pull his Sti settings - that would be very interesting...)

[Booner]

Good stuff Geezer.

I don't understand how softening the rear decreases oversteer, yet increasing the front reduces understeer....at least to a point. Wouldn't you want both rears to have as fairly even/level contact with the road surface...or does it get so stiff that the inside wheel loses contact with the body roll?

With an understeer situation, where you keep turning in harder, the fronts would eventually start to catch...and the rear would retain momentum....still resulting in swapping ends. Right or wrong?

I also wonder how much your driving habits actually affect balance, and what would determine the manufacturers starting point off the factory line.

Anyways...which do you drive...Elise or Exige? And is really as much fun as they say? 

And yeah....I'd like to see your actual settings if you get the chance. 

[Chaz]

I think I figured out that part of my problem was that I was driving a RWD for the first time.  Forgot about that, and boy is it a different beast to handle.  I spent some time this morning learning to handle it and playing with some tuning adjustments.  Not sure if I want to keep working with a RWD, or just keep on with F- and AWDs.

[wonderpug]

I think I figured out that part of my problem was that I was driving a RWD for the first time.  Forgot about that, and boy is it a different beast to handle.  I spent some time this morning learning to handle it and playing with some tuning adjustments.  Not sure if I want to keep working with a RWD, or just keep on with F- and AWDs.

Some time when we're all multiplayering, let's both pick the same stock FR car and I'll follow behind you and try and give you pointers on how to improve your driving.  Or even better, we should pick some quintessential FR race car in the D or C class to use as a tutoring car.  We (and whoever else might want some lessons) would buy the same car and buy all the platform and handling upgrades.  That way, in between races I can give give some recommendations on how to change the tuning to help compensate for the problems you're having in the turns or whatever.

[gellar]

My real life settings for an STi... not sure if these work in game:

My car has the imported Japanese suspension, which should be identical to the stock ones in the game (in theory).  However, they are also not adjustable, so I don't have any ride height/spring settings.  Same with struts.

Camber: Rear -2 degrees. Front -3.25 degrees
Toe: Rear 0mm. Front 2mm.
Sways: Rear 3/3.  Front 1/3. (I think this correlates to 27mm rear, 23mm front in game.)
Track Tire Pressure: Rear 28 psi, Front 25 psi.

What this *should* do:
In it's default form, the STi likes to understeer a lot.  You have to be pretty aggressive with it to induce any sort of oversteer.  This setup should push it *slightly* to the oversteer side of neutral.  Turn in should be greatly improved, and mild oversteer should be easily induced with either a mash of the throttle or a violent lift of the throttle during the turn.  Whether this setting actually translates to the game... I dunno.

gellar

[gellar]

Oh also in real life this setup eats tires.

gellar