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Yeah, I don't buy that.

I categorically believe the controller IS the better option, but I believe that because of that fact that you can turn the steering axle back and forth so much more quickly with the controller than a wheel.  With a wheel, even if you rip it all the way one way quite quickly, it's still not as fast as the controller from one side to the other... Then what if you have to go immediately BACK all the way again (immediately) to compensate for something?  With a steering wheel setup, it's just not going to happen as quick.

Does this mean that race car drivers should simply be strapped in with an Xbox 360 controller instead of a steering wheel?  Probably not :-)  

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Obnoxious Tuning - In the Pipeline - B700, #41 Nurb.

Personally, when I switched to the wheel, I was only a second or two off of my controller times.  Now, three or four days later, I have cracked the top 10% on the hot laps of the tracks that I have tried on.  I actually beat my best controller R1 time by .500 the day after I bought the wheel.  Maybe this just means that I was slow with the controller lol.

The way I read this is that a controller would be easier to master, but the wheel may have greater potential for control - not that the controller is inherently faster. It takes a lot of effort and careful alignment tuning to balance slip angles using a wheel, but the experience is much more rewarding in my opinion.

I was a bit intrigued by the statement that tire responsiveness and optimal slip angles are related... is there any research behind this, and would I be reading this the right way if I conclude that - for a wheel user like myself - Yokohamas might be better for high-grip, tight cars but Bridgestones should perform better in looser cars? That Bridgestones would need more aggressive cornering to get the most out of them while Yokohamas would be the better option for tip-toeing around corners?

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GT: PzR Ske

Interesting comment ske,

we got to test that out!!

Hellisan:

Yeah, I don't buy that.

I categorically believe the controller IS the better option, but I believe that because of that fact that you can turn the steering axle back and forth so much more quickly with the controller than a wheel.  With a wheel, even if you rip it all the way one way quite quickly, it's still not as fast as the controller from one side to the other... Then what if you have to go immediately BACK all the way again (immediately) to compensate for something?  With a steering wheel setup, it's just not going to happen as quick.

Does this mean that race car drivers should simply be strapped in with an Xbox 360 controller instead of a steering wheel?  Probably not :-)  

actually when you flick the joystick back and forth your wheels dont turn that fast. do a free run and flick the stick...watch the replay and i guarantee you the wheels wont turn as fast as you can flick it. they programmed it not to because with all the big changes you make with the stick youd never be able to hold the car on the road. the steering is intentionally slowed to counteract a twitchy finger.

you dont have this problem with the wheel...the wheels turn as fast as you can turn the wheel, but you dont have to make big movements anyways and since you can be more precise you dont have to worry about overcompensating like you do with the stick. thats why if you go around Sunset you can tell who has a wheel and who has a controller...most of the time the wheel driver holds one steady line on the banking. controller driver constantly has to adjust his line because of the lack of precision.

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My Band Lucian Scott
http://www.myspace.com/lucianscott *new song posted!*
http://www.lucianscott.com
GT : SocMonki

Hellisan:

I categorically believe the controller IS the better option, but I believe that because of that fact that you can turn the steering axle back and forth so much more quickly with the controller than a wheel.  With a wheel, even if you rip it all the way one way quite quickly, it's still not as fast as the controller from one side to the other... Then what if you have to go immediately BACK all the way again (immediately) to compensate for something?  With a steering wheel setup, it's just not going to happen as quick.

I may not be the fastest racer out there... but if it's one thing I learned I'd say that key to become a great racers is to become smooth... I don't see how tossing around a car like you described would be an advantage... ?!?

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R.I.P PaleRider

Ske:

The way I read this is that a controller would be easier to master, but the wheel may have greater potential for control - not that the controller is inherently faster. It takes a lot of effort and careful alignment tuning to balance slip angles using a wheel, but the experience is much more rewarding in my opinion.

I was a bit intrigued by the statement that tire responsiveness and optimal slip angles are related... is there any research behind this, and would I be reading this the right way if I conclude that - for a wheel user like myself - Yokohamas might be better for high-grip, tight cars but Bridgestones should perform better in looser cars? That Bridgestones would need more aggressive cornering to get the most out of them while Yokohamas would be the better option for tip-toeing around corners?

"To spare you from charts and charts, the ideal amount of slip angle for race tires is between 5 and 9 degrees. So, in English, it means that you have to slide the car to get the best of the tires, if you are pointing in one direction and the car goes in exactly that direction: you are not driving fast enough.

 Remember that in the game, when your buying race tires, there’s a GRIP rating and then a RESPOSIVENESS rating? Well, if a tire has a lower responsiveness rating than grip, that tire needs a high slip angle to get the job done."

 

With regard to front tires: To translate...please correct me if I am wrong, which is a pretty good bet...if the tire has high grip and lower responsiveness, you need to drive it harder (faster) in the corners in order to get the best performance. That is, lots of grip means you also have a bit of room to push it. Taking this one step further, lots of grip (steering grip) means you could be contributing to over steer, or alleviating under steer for that matter, not related to balance.

So, a tire can contribute to OS or US, and we could struggle with tuning balance, when the solution might be as simple as getting baby a new pair of shoes. Hmmm, makes one ponder.

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"Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance."

Here's a nascent thread in the TM that might add to this discussion. It is pretty interesting that some folks found a difference in their cars, not just their controller inputs after switching to the wheel.

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Tango Tuners Catalog

TT Seller

thats right barumba... ever wondered why your car seemed to have more grip with toyos than with lets say, bridgestones?

All aspects of the suspention have to be working around the tires, and tuned in accordingly.

soc_monki:

Hellisan:

Yeah, I don't buy that.

I categorically believe the controller IS the better option, but I believe that because of that fact that you can turn the steering axle back and forth so much more quickly with the controller than a wheel.  With a wheel, even if you rip it all the way one way quite quickly, it's still not as fast as the controller from one side to the other... Then what if you have to go immediately BACK all the way again (immediately) to compensate for something?  With a steering wheel setup, it's just not going to happen as quick.

Does this mean that race car drivers should simply be strapped in with an Xbox 360 controller instead of a steering wheel?  Probably not :-)  

actually when you flick the joystick back and forth your wheels dont turn that fast. do a free run and flick the stick...watch the replay and i guarantee you the wheels wont turn as fast as you can flick it. they programmed it not to because with all the big changes you make with the stick youd never be able to hold the car on the road. the steering is intentionally slowed to counteract a twitchy finger. you dont have this problem with the wheel...the wheels turn as fast as you can turn the wheel, but you dont have to make big movements anyways and since you can be more precise you dont have to worry about overcompensating like you do with the stick. thats why if you go around Sunset you can tell who has a wheel and who has a controller...most of the time the wheel driver holds one steady line on the banking. controller driver constantly has to adjust his line because of the lack of precision.

 

 

Nice post. I still feel that overall, there's less movement that is needed for the player with the stick and that it it can be accomplished more easily.  That's just my opinion from having used both, at various times.  And you probably wouldn't be able to tell I was using a stick on Sunset Infield from watching the replay, you'd have to do some serious telemetry stuff... Although I've seen the guys you're talking about.

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Obnoxious Tuning - In the Pipeline - B700, #41 Nurb.

Just to follow up on the responsiveness vs. slip angle discussion -

If you youtube some old videos of racecars from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, you will see a progression of tire sizes and vehicle yaw angles that can help visualize the relationship hinted at above.

In the 60s, you commonly saw skinny bias-ply tires and massive yaw angles - the quick way around the track was definitely to have the tail hanging out and the car just floating around the corners in one massive slide.  While yaw angles and slip angles are certainly not the same, for the purpose of envisioning the progression of tires you can pretend they are similar.  Gradually, tire widths got wider and wider - there are some good contact patch shape reasons for this - and in order to control the bigger contact patches, the tire construction had to get stiffer.  Here is a good place to digress:

In general, a stiffer tire is a more responsive tire.  There are 2 major ways tires can be made "stiffer" - the first is due to their construction (reinforcement material and cord angles being the biggest contributors), or they can be made stiffer by inflating them more (like a balloon - not much air in it and it is mushy, but lots of air and the balloon becomes more rigid).  However you make the tire stiffer, the effect on responsiveness is similar to putting stiffer springs in your car - forces are transmitted more efficiently (you feel this as responding more quickly) from the tires through the suspension to the chassis.

By the '80s, racing tires were becoming radials instead of bias-ply, which creates a much stiffer and thus more responsive feeling tire.  Yaw angles were also reducing - and what is harder to see from the grandstands is that the slip angles that the tires operated best at were also reducing as well.  Tire width was also starting to decrease by the end of the decade after the massively wide slicks of the late 70s and early 80s as tire stiffness brought on better control of the contact patch.

For the most part, a stiffer tire will build up more lateral force for a given slip angle.  It will also have a smaller sweet spot - the range of slip angles in which the tire operates the best.  Stiffer tires also tend to lose grip/lateral force quicker once you are outside of the sweet spot... to the driver, this means that if you start to slide too much, the stiffer (more responsive) your tires, the harder it is to correct the slide and the quicker you find yourself in the weeds!

That's a lot of crap to read - what does it mean to our tire selection in Forza?

As pointed out by other posters, different drivers will likely prefer the feel of (and be faster with) different tires.  We know that the "Grip" rating of the tire allows us to compare what the maximum cornering ability is between two tires - a higher rating should mean that the tire can generate higher lateral forces and corner faster.  This usually comes at a premium to the "Life" rating - for our Forza purposes, we pretty much have to give up tire life for grippier tires.  That leaves the "Responsiveness" rating - arguably, the best value for this is dependant on the driver.  If you are very precise with your driving inputs and like your car to be extremely sensitive to your steering inputs, then you may want higher responsiveness.  If you prefer your car to have gentler transitions into corners, you might want lower responsiveness.  You may end up wanting different compound tires on different cars, or for different tracks, or for different setups (see below).

It is also important to note that the responsiveness of the tire can somewhat be worked around with some car setup tweaks.  Firstly, you can add air pressure to your tires to add some responsiveness (or take away responsiveness by reducing air pressure).  Additionally, you can tweak the suspension to add or subtract the feeling of responsiveness your car gives you with primarily spring rates, ARBs, and damping (you can do some with other settings, but the effects are more subtle).

Personally, I am not the most precise driver in the world, and I do a lot of endurance races on Live - so I tend to gravitate (when I have a choice!) to tires that are a little less responsive, as they tend to have a little wider sweet spot for slip angle (or reach the sweet spot in what I feel is a more controllable manner).  If I am running with the wheel, I find that I need less responsiveness than with a controller or I lose the rear-end of the car at turn-in no matter how much understeer I try to dial in - so with the wheel I tend to run pretty soft spring rates, and as low of tire pressure as I can get away with, and I then build up my turn-in responsiveness with ARBs and damping.  I follow a similar approach when using the controller, but I find that overall my suspension settings end up stiffer than when tuning for the wheel.

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Real racing. Real clean. Real fast. SimRacers.

http://simracers.myfreeforum.org/

Hellisan:

Nice post. I still feel that overall, there's less movement that is needed for the player with the stick and that it it can be accomplished more easily.  That's just my opinion from having used both, at various times.  And you probably wouldn't be able to tell I was using a stick on Sunset Infield from watching the replay, you'd have to do some serious telemetry stuff... Although I've seen the guys you're talking about.

it really all boils down to what you prefer honestly. its been proven that people can be just as fast with the wheel as with the controller, so its just up to personal preference.
i prefer the wheel simply because, to me, its more fun! and im just as fast with the wheel or controller, but i like to stick with one for consistancy. if i set up my cars with the controller theyre not well suited to the wheel, and vice versa.

i have no predjudice against anyone using one or the other...as long as the racing is clean and fun it doesnt really matter! :)

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My Band Lucian Scott
http://www.myspace.com/lucianscott *new song posted!*
http://www.lucianscott.com
GT : SocMonki

great read , interesting info so far guys .. im taggin this one .. 

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When I got the game back at release I used the wheel all the way up to the end of the year. I discovered the slip angles required for most of the corners. However I then got a racing seat setup, G25, GTR2 and Rfactor... so the MS wheel went out the window due to the poor quality all round.

I was AWFUL with the sticks, and it actually took a while for me to get used to it. Eventually I got faster than the wheel, but this was down to knowledge of the track more an anything.

If I could use my G25 with Forza I would, but I can't. :(

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case33:

You might be correct about the controller, but for me its more fun with the wheel.

+1

I've been racing sims very seriously since 2001 and I had a rather decent wheel setup for my PC with a nice set of pedals that includes a progressive spring in the brake to  better simulate the feel of a real brake.  On the PC the wheel was the only way to be fast.  Despite all my hard work there was always a couple guys in every race that were a good 2-3 seconds faster than I.  I just learned to deal with it as I was just not able to practice as much as them and apparently just couldn't feel it like they could.

It's no surprise that the controls for the gamepad had to be dumbed down to make the game playable for the masses.  I personally couldn't drive the cars well at all with the controller so for me it was buy a wheel or shelve the game.  I was immediately faster with the wheel because it's all I've ever used.  The MS wheel is decent, not anywhere near as nice as my PC setup, but it gets the job done.  The pedals are the only major disappointment as I can't get them to stay still on my carpet.  I plan to build a wheel and pedal holding table this weekend so it will all stay in place.

I don't race online as I have a internet connection for the Xbox that's only on part of the time.  Plus I'm not convinced I need it bad enough to pay for the gold service.  The career mode is plenty fun for me.  Using no assists and AI on hard I find the game to be just about right for me.  It's not too hard yet remains a decent challenge that doesn't get frustrating.  If my wheel ever breaks I'll cease playing until it's fixed as I can stand the thought of piloting a car with a gamepad. 

 

Just a technical note, your interpretation of slip angle is incorrect. Slip angle is a measure of tire deformation during cornering. It doesn't actually mean you're slipping. As the tires deform laterally, even though you may be at a constant radius, the actual radius will be slightly larger because as new patches on the tires come onto the asphalt, they come into contact inline with the tires, rather than to the inside of the turn, where the current patch is in contact. Because all four tires experience this, the car will actually drift sideways up to 1 degree (even though individual tires may drift more), but it's important to note that the tires never lose traction. Even with the most minor of turns and ridiculous speeds, there is always slip angle, it's just too small or unimportant to matter on anything but the highest lateral-g turns.

In short, slip angle isn't a legitimate technical reason for this. It may be that forza is mis-programmed for it, but slip angle doesn't imply a sliding in any sense. There's actually a mention of it in this month's Road and Track worth looking at.

 

Mark

-Automotive Engineer

Re: F1reSnake

Either you or I must have misread something in this thread (or I could have missed a post), but I never read anything about actually losing grip here.

What I tried to get confirmed in my original question was if "low response" compounds flex more, or allow greater slip angles at the cost of initial response.

The idea was that wheel users will have to use feedback to find optimal slip angles "manually", while the controller "assist" automatically compensates and finds it for you - this could mean that low response tires could actually be a benefit for wheel users as they will tolerate a bit of slack before breaking traction. It certainly seems to be the (for me) case in FWD cars, using Bridgestones instead of Avons does seem to make it easier to avoid snap loss of grip.

If the OP theory holds, it would mean that controller users can reap the benefits of a high response compound with none of the drawbacks, while wheel users would have to select tires a bit more carefully - as well as "reading" feedback properly.

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GT: PzR Ske

factory:

Top guy in Time Trials, V12 BackOneABS uses the wheel ( so do most of his team mates).  Top guy in hotlap, R2P Kimimatt, uses the wheel.  So how is the controller faster again?

Still the fastest, still using the wheel.  Please answer my question, or admit that your assement is wrong.

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My article is based on 3 bases: It is empirical, it is based on my personal skill (top 400 in time trails at all times) and real life knowledge.

  - For me, and the big majority of the people I race with, it's a lot easier to play with the controller than with the wheel (this is basically the whole point, the controller makes your life a lot easier) The fact is: THERE IS A STEERING ASSISTANT FEATURE that helps you (some would say "make it possible to" ) drive the car with the joystick.
- For me, it takes a lot more time to be able to learn a track with the wheel than with the controller, since the you have to be a lot more focused to get your lines right, apply the braking force right, and turn the wheel in the right angle and speed.  And the controller is also a lot more reliable. (the Wheel shifts on its own from time to time, pauses the game and provides "wrong" feedback randomly) The final problem is the lack of  "mechanical resistance/feel" from the pedals that make it a lot more difficult to race with no assists (that's the way we do it), I'd like to know who in the top 100 hlc uses the wheel with no ABS.
- If you want to know a little bit more about how racing tires work I'd recommend "Speed Secrets; Professional race driving techniques" and "More Speed Secrets" from  Ross Blentley,  available in most Bookstores

Also, the advantage of having the software taking some of your workload makes a lot easier to race with the controller. As you can be much more consistent with the later

The most skilled drivers will be faster than the average skill drivers, the "interface" makes no difference in that fact.

I'm positive that given the same level of skill the driver with the controller will have the upper hand in any  circuit

simply mac:

My article is based on 3 bases: It is empirical, it is based on my personal skill (top 400 in time trails at all times) and real life knowledge.

  - For me, and the big majority of the people I race with, it's a lot easier to play with the controller than with the wheel (this is basically the whole point, the controller makes your life a lot easier) The fact is: THERE IS A STEERING ASSISTANT FEATURE that helps you (some would say "make it possible to" ) drive the car with the joystick.
- For me, it takes a lot more time to be able to learn a track with the wheel than with the controller, since the you have to be a lot more focused to get your lines right, apply the braking force right, and turn the wheel in the right angle and speed.  And the controller is also a lot more reliable. (the Wheel shifts on its own from time to time, pauses the game and provides "wrong" feedback randomly) The final problem is the lack of  "mechanical resistance/feel" from the pedals that make it a lot more difficult to race with no assists (that's the way we do it), I'd like to know who in the top 100 hlc uses the wheel with no ABS.
- If you want to know a little bit more about how racing tires work I'd recommend "Speed Secrets; Professional race driving techniques" and "More Speed Secrets" from  Ross Blentley,  available in most Bookstores

Also, the advantage of having the software taking some of your workload makes a lot easier to race with the controller. As you can be much more consistent with the later

The most skilled drivers will be faster than the average skill drivers, the "interface" makes no difference in that fact.

I'm positive that given the same level of skill the driver with the controller will have the upper hand in any  circuit

Both people I have cited switched from the controller to the wheel, and got faster.  Your personal experience does not equal empirical data.  It is simply your experience.  Every one of my friends, except one, got faster once they switched to the wheel, and some drive with ABS, some drive without it. 

It may make learning the game easier, but controllers do not make you faster.  My intent here is not to start an argument.  I just think it is irresponsible for you to make a post claiming that you have proven the controller to be faster when it is clearly not the case.   Some people are faster with the wheel, some are faster with the controller.  Just because your experience led you to believe that there is some conspiracy behind the use of the controller, does not make it fact.

You article was well written and intelligent, but it made false assumptions.

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