In reply to dean1484 :
Dean, my condolences. I wish you and your family the best, and look forward to having you back when you're ready.
In reply to dean1484 :
Dean, my condolences. I wish you and your family the best, and look forward to having you back when you're ready.
I will be back. Maybe tonight. He would be really pissed off if I was using him as an excuse to be moping. Greaving is ok but moping would piss him off
Very sorry to hear that Dean. We look forward to having you back.
Very sad to hear Dean. Come on back when you can.
That was fun last night. The Pig of a car I was driving seemed to do nothing great but did everything well enough to keep me in the hunt. If anyone recorded it there was a great battle for 2nd and 3rd that I was following.
I liked the Aston for the most part, although I ended up looping it around on two occasions at the hairpin and had another off. I think I maybe didn't adapt well to the tires getting too hot or something. First spin took me from 4th to way back. Then I ended up spinning again in the same corner a few laps later. Felt lucky to finish 8th in the end.
So, I suspect having damage turned on helps get cleaner public rooms. I ended up with 3 or 4 damage from a coming together with Brad but I couldn't really notice any effect from it. Air ended up having to pit. Not sure what happened, but I saw him take a hard left at the T1 braking zone and fly into the wall at high speed. So, there is also a downside.
On that track the track limits being on really changes things as there are several places where I would otherwise run wide.
Did you guys run a second race? I had to go. I wonder if we can get some of those guys to join us for our series.
I was pleasantly surprised by the Corvette. It was controllable in a slide. One of the few cars that I could run the "Loose" setup and not have to work to tone it down. I don't know Dubai that well, so I was fighting for consistency and losing time trying to remember where the track went, but generally not a bad outing. I found I could hang with other drivers, but couldn't quite get the Corvette in a good passing position without knowing the track well. Tried to over/under a few times, but couldn't get a good enough exit to pull off the pass.
So, the questions that remain for our next series:
That loop you did TJ was with a little help from a yellow Ford GT, from what I saw.
As noted, these cars seem to be pretty equal lap time wise. With tuning that might change (e.g. the GT was similar speed to the others, but felt a bit held back by its suspension tune). I can say the Corvette was clearly not faster in a straight line than any of the cars. I did (as typical) loosen the rear up a bit to make it faster, but that (as typical) resulted in a nice loop in the same spot that TJ did his.
My damage was the result of overcooking a corner then the rear end getting greasy (which was hard to recover from) and getting in a tank slapper that put my rear end into the wall. That damage made the car almost uncontrollable above 100 mph, that was the T1 head into the wall TJ saw.
The pit to fix the damage that added a FULL tank of gas I didn't need and tires I didn't need, set to 40 PSI !! for some reason, didn't help my finish position. Clearly I didn't not set up a damage fix pit strategy as suggested before the start.
I did appear the participants seemed to favor the Corvette, for whatever that is worth. It might be considered the hot car in that class. As Brad noted, it might be the easiest to drive fast on the stock tune.
I don't mind the AI that much. I know how to "deal" with them. (You deal with them like you would Dean, but you don't have to hear all the wining about "you hit me" afterwords)
LMP cars? Well, you know how I love mayhem....
Public rooms? Interesting option to AI. The primary issue with last night seemed to be connection issues, the drivers seemed to be fine. Maybe keep the maximum cars number a bit lower?
Damage... well, not bad on an un-walled track, but I do love mayhem. I think we will need to have slightly lower expectation about finishing if we do this (embrace the mayhem).
Tracks: Hey now. I see people driving in hurricane weather ALL THE TIME on the news!!! So, no jumps then?
A quick scan of the leaderboards has the Ford, Ferrari and Corvette very close on times (tenths). The BMW and Aston take turns being the slower cars (half second), but which and by what amount varies depending on the track. Seems the Aston on high speed tracks is the worst combination, but other than that they are close enough that the driver will make the biggest difference.
In reply to BradLTL :
I found during testing that the LMP2 AIs are fine on some tracks and terrible at other tracks. They do not corner as well as the GTE cars, so if a track doesn't have long enough straights it is easy to catch them and get caught up in a pack of them and then they wreck you. I found them to not work at Mugello (long version) for example. Hockenhiem is iffy. Silverstone, Spa, Dubai all are ok.
Based on last night, I would vote for limiting the room to 12 (just a guess) drivers with no AI's and use a public room.
One option on the open room is to limit by safety rating and keep it high. If the host sends a direct invite it ignores the license limit so we can all get in, though I don't know if you can set the safety rating higher than your own rating.
Safety rating can only be as high as the host. If only we had someone in our group with a good rating.......
I think I set it at D1000 last night FWIW, so not too high.
The Aston benefits greatly from getting the gearing right. I messed with that almost exclusively in practice. Once sorted it can hang with the corvette. I had a base line tune in the car that I did not change. I did a bit of tweaking of the tire pressures to bring the rears up soo was at 28psi at all four corners. I also opened the grill up to 35 from 20 to prevent it from causing motor damage. In practice I was getting up to 268 water temp. Opening up the grill solved that problem.
That was it. I just made sure to drive a clean race and not fight for track position in the start. I stayed as far to the right at the start as possible and watch my mirrors.
It also helped that I actually knew the track. We ran this before.
Btw I really like the first sector of that track. You can sail the car in to it and then drive it with the throttle all the way to the hard right.
I felt that the Carrera was competitive last night. It was faster than the driver. Segment times were near the top even if I didn't get a full good lap without some screw up. Regardless, I will probably run the Carrera. Brand loyalty, you know.
I had a completely different "human AI" experience last night. I got hit in the rear and spun off on lap one. This dropped me way back so I set off after the car ahead of me. Caught them only to get driven off the track as I was passing. Some damage from that off meant that the car wouldn't pull 6th gear on the straights anymore. Set off after the 12th place car. Caught and passed them. Right as my spotter was saying "clear" I got pit maneuvered into the wall. That left the car too damaged to continue.
God, I sound like Dean. The problem with human AI grid fillers verses the computer, is that they get more aggressive and defensive when passed. Maybe minimum license settings for the room would help. Damage wasn't my friend in this race. If we decide to go with open room fillers, I would suggest a few more practice races to find out the most effective room settings.
I am fine with whatever the group decides.
Yesterday I went back to Dubai and did some more laps there. I was trying to figure out where the fast guys were finding three seconds (or more) on my best lap times. I revised my setup on the Aston, but that only gained me very little to nothing. I eventually got a few laps in the high 56's, but most good laps were still in the 57's. I then changed to the Ford and after about three laps, I took 1.5 seconds off my best time. I could stay flat from T1 exit through the left, right, right complex. In the Aston I had to lift slightly between the two rights to get the car to turn. I went back and played with my Aston setup a bit today trying to get it so I could do that and so far have been unable to get it there. I have it where I just barely let off the throttle, maybe to 75% for a second or less, but can't quite make it flat out.
I don't think that is where the time is though. I think there are three places on that track that I lose time. One is the hard right at the end of the first flowy section. If you nail that it makes a big difference. I sometimes get it, but not consistently. Then there is the long left before the back straight. That one seems easy, but if you get it just right you end up with more exit speed going onto the long straight. Finally, the final turn. I never feel like I get that one right on this track and I think I am not getting the best exit speed out of it for the long front straight.
My plan is to keep messing with the Aston for now and see if I can get it to match the times I can get in the Ford. If we go with free car selection at this point, I think I would choose the Ford, but if I get assigned the Aston, I want to be ready.
The Vette is also fine. The Ferrari doesn't speak to me. I can get decent lap times, but somehow it just doesn't feel right to me. Haven't driven the Porsche much to really comment on that one.
In reply to Argo1 :
Perhaps we set the room with a high safety rating and limit it to maybe 10-12 cars total with no AIs. That way there won't be all that many 'others' and hopefully the ones that are there are clean.
I'm with you in I'll be happy with whatever we decide on. I'd like to do a series with damage and maybe even track limit penalties just to mix it up a bit, but if we don't want that, then ok. If there will be AIs, then track limit penalties become a worse idea.
One more thing. Air, if you haven't tried the Aston, give it a go. It drives a bit like the Vette but more oversteery. I think you would really like it.
I hear you about Human drivers in the games. I don't have Project Cars, but racing with Forza online or even rFactor in the open rooms, there are alot of people who are crashers. By that I mean they get upset or angry when not running with the leaders and decide it is more fun to just take out the competition. I don't claim to be a great driver, but when online I tend to drive the way I drive on the track in real life. Run the line as best I can, give room when passing or being passed. But there are always some out there that don't.
Maybe I need to pick up Project Cars and give it a run with you guys. What days do you race?
In reply to Mike924 :
Wednesday nights are our race nights, but we are on PS4, not PC. If you have a PS4, we'd love to have you join.
T.J. said:In reply to Mike924 :
Wednesday nights are our race nights, but we are on PS4, not PC. If you have a PS4, we'd love to have you join.
That is my rFactor race night. Grrr. Plus I am a PC guy.
It would have been fun though.
PS4s are about the price of a video card these days. We’d love to have another vict... umm... driver in the group.
Sounds like we are going to test again next week. I want to test with prototype AI cars on track. We can tweak public rooms throughout the series to try and keep out the riff raff. So, let’s run with AI and then pick our poison. I would recommend running a different car as well.
I want to play around with the GT and the Porsche. That is if TJ doesn't trick me into being locked into a car by making me host the room...
One consideration for AI / Human, might be the track. Walls = AI, open track = Human.
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