Reflections on real life and RT

[Roger]

I was not sure whether to post this in the Editing section or Off Topic.

Over the last few weeks I have been very fortunate, having done the following:

1 day at a rally school in a 2 litre Escort Mk2

A track day in my A110 (yesterday)

Any comments I make have to be quite general as: in the case of the rally school, the cars were in rally spec, but running on worn out tyres on wet gravel stages; as for the A110 track day, it was wet and greasy.

But, I have had a chance to drive both cars beyond their limits on low grip surfaces.

The first thing that struck me is that in both cases, if the car is not driven aggressively on the throttle and kept "loose", terminal understeer is the most likely result. A pendulum is necessary in both cases to make quick direction changes. Now, this will probably sound like a familiar RT complaint :D - it happens in real life too.

The Escort is more likely to plough the front end, it is easier to hold a drift at extreme angles, but takes a real bootfull of throttle to get it out there. It does lack the ability to get the power to the ground that the Alp' has (still pretty impressive 'though) I would say that the TireTeam productions have captured the basic traits of driving one of these very well indeed.

The Alpine - of course mine has less weight over the rear wheels than the car we have tried to reproduce in RT. The technique that seemed to work best was to let the back start to come around on the brakes BEFORE arriving at the apex :D :D (that was fun), then very carefully let brakes off allowing the weight swing the nose into the apex, after that SOMETIMES you could bury the throttle and drive out really hard and sideways SOMETIMES the pendulum got the better of you meaning loss of momentum (and very very sideways) or a spin (spun three times) SOMETIMES it was really hard to kill the understeer. However, when (which was most of the time) the A110's (there were 4 of us) got it together they were making 160mph supercars look very slow and clumsy indeed :wave:

This probably sounds familiar to people in RT who have struggled with the A110 and the Stratos. When they are quick, they are very quick; when you don't quite get your head around driving the car they are bitches. I feel that, again, the TireTeam have captured the essentials of the driving required (not the very latest version of the Alp' 'though ;) )

I also got a lift around the track in a Renault 5 Turbo - the driver was not confident, but it was obvious that one of these will be a devastating RT car (just don't expect an easy ride :twisted: ). It was a snappy little bugger, but in standard trim (I think 160bhp and 970kg) the little turbo engine was giving a good wallop in the neck and the traction was brilliant. As you may expect, cautious driving caused bad understeer, followed by snap oversteer.

Finally, apart from a pat on the back for the TireTeam, it's worth noting that BugBear must of got things pretty well sorted in the first place.

[Ollo]

To me this is invaluable info, and I thank you dearly for the input Roger! I have not had any time lately for PC racing, but I will fire up RT RealityPatch (tm) when I get home tonight and have a go at the Alpine.

Must have been a great week for you :)

[Ralph_B]

Very interesting comment, Roger! Have to say, I never drove one of these cars in reality, never drove any real car in rally-trimm. So the physics we made, was more by feel and the result of intens watching of videos and reading discriptions of real rally-drivers (and of course the outcome of using real basic data of the cars like wheelbase, trackwidth, weightdistributions .... ). As some of you will know, I have some experience in cupraces on asphalttracks, but those cars are set up completely different from rallycars. So good to hear, we haven't missed the point, even some people have complained about things, you've mentioned above.
Meanwhile most of the FTC-cars are more the less ready and the final version of the TT-realmod slowly but shurely is coming to it's finishing-stage.

Must have been some great days, Roger. Wished, I've been on your place.

Cheers,
Ralph.B (member of TheTireTeam)

[CDK]

The reason I first came to RT was that thru the hard work of one of the NG site members the game offered an Austin Healey. I have an Austin Healey and this gave me a chance to game race my car and do things with it that I may not get a chance to do for real. After driving the game car for awhile and developing an understanding of the editing of the physics, I knew I could get the game car to respond very much like the real car. I contacted the builder of the game car to ask for permission to work on the handeling, to which he agreed.
Another great aspect of RT and No-Grip is that from that first contact we have ended up working on many projects and best of all have become friends.
It was very interesting to research car history and design, to attend shows to inspect the vehicals and to drive and tune my own car and then apply all of it to the game and have it work. I have managed to achiev getting a real car and a virtual one to be almost identical. This says alot for the origional game physics and the patches that have been created by the endless work of our dedicated members.
I have gone on for a bit here but it has been in an atempt to completely agree with Rogers findings.
By the way Roger I have missed our projects and disscussions.
For those who remember my login name I have been away for awhile but have been able to start viewing the site again and do some editing. I hope to be able to participate at a more involved level over the winter.
You may be also wondering about the game Healey I wrote about. there is a chance it may be driving by in time for the Holidays. :)

Great to be posting again, :wave:
CDK

[Ollo]

You may be also wondering about the game Healey I wrote about. there is a chance it may be driving by in time for the Holidays. :)


It's on the first line of my letter to Santa Claus :)

[Roger]

So good to hear, we haven't missed the point, even some people have complained about things, you've mentioned above. (member of TheTireTeam)

That was the reason my post was aimed as it was and I tried to be specific about some elements of the handling that I know there have been complaints about. One thing to add, is that both the Escort and my car, the tyres felt more direct than some of the TireTeam stuff, but the latest ones are much closer and I know you have been trying to deal with that without losing other traits :up:

Must have been some great days, Roger. Wished, I've been on your place.(member of TheTireTeam)

Believe me driving the Alp' in anger on a closed circuit was a total eye-opener. I am not being biased because I love the thing, but the performance of the A110's was totally brilliant. The handling once you had lost grip was devastating - you could place/point the damn thing just about wherever you wanted to. Compared to bigger, more powerfull cars (there was even a road going Suburu there ;) ) the time was being made between turn-in and corner apex, with no momentum being wasted - and of course the power could be put on very early (so, too with some of the other cars). I can really see just how fast these cars must have been on Alpine passes - I am amazed :cool: I'm sure that given a dry circuit some of the advantage would have been lost, but as someone on the day pointed out - a trip in a works 1800cc is shockingly fast (all the A110's were less than 1500cc on the day - mine being the smallest @ 1296cc)

Dave! Great to see you posting again :wave: - I have not forgotten the project, it has stalled through lack of time. As soon as I can I will revive it and send updates!

[richard]

lts great to see that that the TT mod and real life are both the same. :up:

A big thanks to all the TT members and the people who gave feed back.

[Roger]

lts great to see that that the TT mod and real life are both the same. :up:

A big thanks to all the TT members and the people who gave feed back.

Maybe not the "same" ;) , but I think it confirms that the RT physics is pretty good. I found it easy to do ridiculous stuff in the car, partly because it is easy to handle - but if I'm being honest I strongly suspect that my "muscle memory/visual inputs" learned from driving RT helped. I was doing stuff in very much the same way as I would expect to in RT. Even the inertia of the "Alpine Shuffle" felt quite familiar - perhaps easier to sense, although IRL, you do feel lots though a snug bucket seat and tight 4-point harness.

Something I forgot to mention - driving the Escort, the instructor said that gravel spec tyres would have given more grip than many novices could have used (so would have learned nothing about throttle control). The worn out tyres felt quite similar to the TireTeam gravel tyre (which, I think had lots to do with effect of gravel build-up giving more grip than you expect). So, it is possible that the TireTeam could consider upping the friction values a bit without becoming un-realistic.

I wonder; has anyone rationalised quite why RBR is better? Are the physics actually better, or is it that the cars - being AWD with a proper centre diff are just better sorted? Or even (as mentioned) that the tracks are better?

[Pero_Grozni]

About time I joined in.

RBR-tracks. The physis engine itself has benifits from the wear and heating up components and has the active midd diff, but otherwise it is pretty much simmilar. For now RBR has RT beat on stages and lacks by a long shot on moddability(hopefully that will change). If some day we could convert the stages into RT that would be great.

Anyhow-nice to hear that you got your alpine to the track for a bit of fun :wave:
If I understand correctly it understeers badly or oversteers madly. Seems like the front is rather on the stiff side compared to the rear end.

Oh yes the R5 turbo-I want it in RT and not the late model-the 81 would be the right one ;) (Monte Carlo winner).

Basicly the results in RT resemble the real cars quite well. What is missing is fresh tracks-they dont need to be completly new, just fresh(like mirrored, reverse, scaled...)
Necesary would be that the stages would be narrower as now they just are much too wide and the trees are much too far away to really feel the speed you are traveling at.

RBR does that much better and the grip also feels low in it ;)
One thing also might be that RBR simulates state of the art machinery that should feel perfect, in RT however we have older cars with faults in setups.... so sometimes people think that something is a bug(like cronical understeer....), but acctually is what the car really does do.

[Teq]

RT has a very simplified tire model and although TT mod squeezes all the best from it, it stands way behind from those in any recent sims incuding RBR fcourse. And this is the most important part. Besides we have quite many bugs in RT which make cars behave unnatural (changing moi thing, camber bug, bounce bug, maybe some related).
Because of this and probably overall more advanced RBR physics engine it gives me much more believable experience. And even that those 4x4 active dif things dont compare to rwd blasters I wont go back to RT now and ever. :(
Sweet memories but now its new RBR era for me. :)

[Roger]

:D I will try and take the hint about fresh tracks. Maybe I should attempt some more reverse/mirror/shrink efforts like Finland 1.

Your comments about the Alpine setup are probably pretty close to true - very perceptive! I think, in the case of the track time I had - the understeer/oversteer were mainly due to the very slippery surface. If the car was not rotated enough, it would understeer as soon as the power went down - if rotated too much it would spin. Actually, that description over-simplifies what went on, as you could induce understeer/oversteer almost at will, so it was very much driver input. I suspect if I was more "passive" - the car would have initially understeered, then IF the driver got enough corner force and some power down, it would have been corner exit oversteer (caused by more power than grip). This is borne out from watching less adenturous drivers having trouble getting turned, then snapping into messy oversteer on the exit.

In the dry it is quite different, probably because the weight transfers more due to the higher grip.

[Ralph_B]

Besides we have quite many bugs in RT which make cars behave unnatural (changing moi thing, camber bug, bounce bug, maybe some related).


Maybe RBR has the more accurate physics for modern cars physics so far, but talking about the possible RT-bugs - completely rubbish! There is no MOI-bug! With the right values the car.ini the odd behavior depending from direction is completely gone and you can make perfect circles. Sorry to say, BB made some big mess with the values, but it is NO BUG in the game-engine. Chambers? As far we have found chambervalues of the original cars we used them in our ini's and haven't any problem. The so called bouncing bug .... wrong spring and dampercalculations and solved in our new cars (Toni has eliminated this as well in his "lumbering physics" nearly two years ago). The only thing not compareable and much worse as in other sims is the missing mid-diff. But who the hell needs this for 2wd's! :D Ok, we will never get the 4wd completely right in RT, but why should we at all? RT was developed for RWD's and FWD's of the old times and for that kind of cars I don't see any other sim so far, that can reach the present level of developement in RT. I personally dislike the modern WRC-cars and everything else with more than 2driven wheels, so RT will stay my favourite for the next time!
And what about other resent sims apart from RBR? CMR? Hahaha, really had a good laughter! Sorry, those so called sims perhaps are ways better and up to date in grafics or general gameplay, but related to the physics they are a real joke in my eyes and far away from any real experience.
However, everyone should drive, what he prefers. That's the good thing of having a lot of different sims to choose.

Cheers,
Ralph.B (member of TheTireTeam) :wave:

[Roger]

Well said Ralph, you guys have proved that the RT engine is pretty good. I, for one really enjoy driving the latest cars - I would call it a sim for sure.

Also, RT graphics is pretty good.

The little problems, like too wide tracks, we all know about and imrpovements will come along.

OK, it's not as sophisticated as RBR (the way they model the physics seems amazing), but it works pretty well indeed.

[Rallyfan]

The little problems, like too wide tracks...


This problem is already fixed wth add-on tracks :)

[Teq]

There is no MOI-bug! With the right values the car.ini the odd behavior depending from direction is completely gone and you can make perfect circles. Sorry to say, BB made some big mess with the values, but it is NO BUG in the game-engine. Chambers? As far we have found chambervalues of the original cars we used them in our ini's and haven't any problem. The so called bouncing bug .... wrong spring and dampercalculations and solved in our new cars (Toni has eliminated this as well in his "lumbering physics" nearly two years ago).

Ok good to hear that. Will have to try your newest creations.

[Ralph_B]

Ok, didn't want to post anything before it is ready, but after this discussion I couldn't resist! So get something to test! This is the latest evolution of the Escort Mk1 and the Alpine A110 1600S. So you have the direct comparison between the real thing and the interpretation of TheTireTeam. It installes over the Escort FTC and Alpine FTC. Additionally the latest GlobalTireModel is included. I think, I shouldn't have to mention, that the current TT-mod has to be installed first of course.
I am very curios about your feedback, specially from you, Roger!

Cheers,
Ralph :wave:

[Roger]

Thanks Ralph, downloaded, but Max is still hung doing Swiss SS1, so maybe tomorrow... ;)

[Pero_Grozni]

Roger-what are you making ;)
Will it be Finn1 style or are you combining two stages?

And did you have any chance to test out the Escort I sent you a while ago?

[Roger]

Finn 1 style, but for some reason Swiss SS1 seems to be a problem. I think that different people made the BB stages ;) So far, they have all had little "personalities".

[Ralph_B]

Don't say, 3dMax is still working on Swiss1! :P I'm still waiting and ask myself, how good or bad the two new TT-cars reflect reality. ;)

Cheers,
Ralph :wave:

[Roger]

Hi, Ralph :wave:

Yes, I am still working on Swiss1. Having driven it, I would say it's probably the worst place to assess a car :twisted: . I hardly dared blink while driving it, let alone think about car handling - especially the downhill section :OMG: