New PC racing sim - Assetto Corsa

[Hoofy]

Good point!

[Northbloke]

Newbie here, just got a VR setup with seat and Thrustmaster wheel and pedals. Firstly, what flipping great fun! Best thing you can do with your clothes on...might try it naked.

Secondly...it's a lot harder than it looks, ain't it. Just doing solo timed laps at the moment and find it hard to do a whole lap without ferking up at least one corner. Great to watch the lap times come down though.

So what's the deal with the cars, how realistic are they, who is in charge of the settings? I saw a real life Merc AMG GT (love it) so prompted me to take one for a spin in AC. Feck me, terrible. Sounded good but no brakes and I couldn't keep it on the track. Similar trouble with the Zonda. No such problems with other cars, the SCG003 is awesome.

Now granted I'm near the rubbish end of the scale but the difference in car performance I find huge (and not price related). If you were from a rival company you could really put people off a brand by fiddling with the settings on here I reckon (how many people play AC?). So what's the control on that? What's to stop Audi guys upping the brake and handling settings on the R8 for example and making the Merc like a 2CV?

[skinny]

I find most road cars disappointing in games. However if you're just starting out, i don't want to state the obvious but you can't drive road cars like race cars. The grip is much lower from the tyres so in particular you need to brake much earlier. Its very easy to over drive in a game as you don't have that sense of speed - tho I'm sure VR helps - (or maybe it's the lack of fear!!) that you would in real life

Edited by skinny on Wednesday 17th January 09:19

[Hoofy]

Have you taken a road car on any trackdays? You'll notice how you just can't drive it like a race car in a game. Understeer everywhere if you go too fast into corners. So it's not that road cars in games are bad; it's that we don't really know how our commuter cars behave on the limit.

[GrumpyTwig]

Hoofy said:

Have you taken a road car on any trackdays? You'll notice how you just can't drive it like a race car in a game. Understeer everywhere if you go too fast into corners. So it's not that road cars in games are bad; it's that we don't really know how our commuter cars behave on the limit.

I have, to be honest I've never driven a well setup fwd car in a game that feels anything like a sell setup fwd car in real life. In AC it's no different, there's little feeling of balance or pivot around the front end you'd get from a really good car, road or otherwise. Not to say everything feels like a bag of garbage but there's a finesse of control missing on the limit particularly for the fwd cars.

[RobM77]

GrumpyTwig said:

Hoofy said:

Have you taken a road car on any trackdays? You'll notice how you just can't drive it like a race car in a game. Understeer everywhere if you go too fast into corners. So it's not that road cars in games are bad; it's that we don't really know how our commuter cars behave on the limit.

I have, to be honest I've never driven a well setup fwd car in a game that feels anything like a sell setup fwd car in real life. In AC it's no different, there's little feeling of balance or pivot around the front end you'd get from a really good car, road or otherwise. Not to say everything feels like a bag of garbage but there's a finesse of control missing on the limit particularly for the fwd cars.

I've driven and owned a number of the cars in AC in real life and I completely agree with Hoofy. I also agree with GrumpyTwig, but I think the reason you can do that in a road car is because you get a feel of where the grip is and can drive up to and around that point. Imagine having no feeling in a road car and entering a bend 10mph too fast... you'd just understeer into the scenery. That would feel as wrong as accidentally sawing your fingers off with a handsaw when cutting a piece of wood, but actually it's the same thing - with no feeling and feedback you're surprisingly close to disaster in a road car, it's just experience and hand eye co-ordination that keeps you on track. With time in sims (about 15-20 years, depending where you define the 'starting point' of accurate sims) I've duplicated a lot of that feeling to the virtual world, but it's still a revelation when I get in my real life racing car (very similar to the Formula Abarth in AC) and can feel the grip as clear as day - in comparison AC is like playing the guitar with earplugs in and woolly gloves on - difficult, but it can be done. I'm about a second a lap faster in real life due to these issues, as I'm sure most people are. I also crash more in AC (I've never crashed in real life in 20 years of racing, but on the sim I spin about once every hour if pushing hard and crash about once every 10-20 hours). Edited to add: I've had some coaching sessions in a professional sim and it's the same story, just with a better tyre model and a proper cockpit - the lack of feeling is still an issue and you have to drive from other senses and theory.

[Hoofy]

Quick blast on AC with the M3 GT2, everything off. On a gamepad. It feels easier!?

[RobM77]

Hoofy said:

Quick blast on AC with the M3 GT2, everything off. On a gamepad. It feels easier!?

I asked Kunos directly whether they'd made the console version easier and/or less realistic to make playing with your thumbs on rubber mushrooms possible, and they claimed they hadn't. I'm not sure whether to believe that though. I've not tried the console version, so can't comment any further.

[Hoofy]

RobM77 said:

Hoofy said:

Quick blast on AC with the M3 GT2, everything off. On a gamepad. It feels easier!?

I asked Kunos directly whether they'd made the console version easier and/or less realistic to make playing with your thumbs on rubber mushrooms possible, and they claimed they hadn't. I'm not sure whether to believe that though. I've not tried the console version, so can't comment any further.

I only have the PC version!

[SturdyHSV]

Hoofy said:

I only have the PC version!

Is it perhaps easier to catch oversteer as you can so quickly apply a lot of lock?

That's about all I can imagine making the difference? Or maybe you're just odd

[Hoofy]

SturdyHSV said:

Hoofy said:

I only have the PC version!

Is it perhaps easier to catch oversteer as you can so quickly apply a lot of lock?

That's about all I can imagine making the difference? Or maybe you're just odd

Probably both!

I thought it was possibly being able to turn the wheel more quickly. Maybe I should reduce the lock-to-lock setting on my wheel?

[Rawwr]

SturdyHSV said:

Is it perhaps easier to catch oversteer as you can so quickly apply a lot of lock?

That's about all I can imagine making the difference? Or maybe you're just odd

A lot of the people who do drifting in AC will adjust the rotational scaling on the wheel, so 10° physical input will result in 100° in the game. That's certainly one way of doing it, although it does feel a bit like cheating

[Hoofy]

Rawwr said:

SturdyHSV said:

Is it perhaps easier to catch oversteer as you can so quickly apply a lot of lock?

That's about all I can imagine making the difference? Or maybe you're just odd

A lot of the people who do drifting in AC will adjust the rotational scaling on the wheel, so 10° physical input will result in 100° in the game. That's certainly one way of doing it, although it does feel a bit like cheating

Does that mean rather than 900 degrees, it's 90 degrees lock to lock?

When I first connected the wheel before messing about with the profiler, it set it to 200 degrees. Perhaps I should go back to that despite wasting a couple of hours trying to get the perfect setting.

Hm. In any case, I've got fed up bolting the wheel to my desk every time I fancy playing. I've now attached it to my stand that I can slide about in my living room and have decided to connect it to my old PS2.

[Rawwr]

Easiest way to check is to enable hands and wheel in the graphics settings and then check that your input matches identically to what's happening on screen.

But yes, I've had it setup with lock-to-lock being 180°

[Hoofy]

Rawwr said:

Easiest way to check is to enable hands and wheel in the graphics settings and then check that your input matches identically to what's happening on screen.

But yes, I've had it setup with lock-to-lock being 180°

Oh. So all this boasting of 900 degrees and 1080 degrees L2L... and people prefer lower L2L!?

[Rawwr]

It just makes drifting incredibly easy. I don't think there's any value in it for normal, track driving.

[Hoofy]

Rawwr said:

It just makes drifting incredibly easy. I don't think there's any value in it for normal, track driving.

Oh right.

My main issue with a gamepad is that for race circuits it's hard to hold a longer corner and follow it round smoothly (you end up constantly wiggling and adjusting for many of the corners). As per my own thread, I figured that even a st wheel was better than a gamepad. My old wheel probably only has 160 degree L2L but it was easier to drive round corners.

I've tried a virtual wheel using my phone but it gets tiring when you're holding it in the air for an hour or more.

[garyjpaterson]

Just released this pretty unique car (for free!). Made it quite some time ago in conjunction with the team who built it, and they finally gave me permission to release it publicly. I spent the last week adding some final touched to make it look and perform better (in terms of fps), so is ideal for racing on some small circuit (smaller the better, kart tracks are ideal!).

Enjoy

http://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/formula-st...

Oh, and a quick video showing it thrashing some more expensive machinery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZiof21crtU

Edited by garyjpaterson on Monday 22 January 14:23

[Hoofy]

Cool. Will give it a go in a mo!

[Shiv_P]

Just bought the Ferrari pack on PC after long last. Not particularly impressed with the 812 - feels worse to drive than 458 and 488, less grip and the downshifts sound odd as well