This a little article Originally posted in our etccracing forum, pay us a visit to discuss more!
There's is
nothing more disappointing than finding out that you're not as great as you
thought.
More than a year ago, I bought the wireless MS wheel, even before the FM 2 was
released, at the time I thought it was a good investment, when i tried out with
the PGR 3 I was in awe, force feedback was something I'd wished for ages.
I went on and waited till Forza was released, and spent 6 months driving with
my wheel set happily. till I enrolled in the ETCC. the first two races were ok,
in my second race I made it into the A final so, everything looked great...
not! along came a gentleman by the name R2P JED... 2 seconds faster than anyone
else!!!
There was something wrong, somewhere... "that guy has to be cheating or
doing something totally different I thought" and set forth in a
quest to improve. I'm sure I found the "Mojo" (the tuning secret stuff) or at least a good portion of it, though, as
any black art worth reckoning there are finer secrets buried deeper and deeper,
you can spend hours and hours and you'll find out more and more ( I'm quite
amazed at this depth, the guys in turn 10 did do an incredible job!!)
One of those finer details have tremendous consecuences in gameplay: by the
third race of the season 2 I unplugged the wheel and practiced with the
controler, suddenly I was a second faster.
What?! Why did I buy that damn thing in the first place? I asked myself but
then I started looking for answers. The process of discovering them was long,
because i was not really looking in the right place and because i did not
have the technical knowledge i have now.
First hypothesys: "I'm slower with the wheel because the pedals are plain
terrible"
Theory and testing: As discussed previously if you want to drive fast enough to
keep the pace of the top guys around you would need skill, techniques and learn
to steer with the "feet" (braking and throttle)
To be able to do so you've got to have some feedback from the controls, in a
real car such feedback is obvious, we have trained our feet to feel the pedal
characteristics and subtleties for years now, but the pedals in the Game wheels
are simply "inert" the springs that keep them in place are flimsy and
offer no resistance, after 20 years of driving real cars you don't expect this
to happen. To get to use them properly need hours upon hours of game time, plus
lots of creativity to set them adequately in your house. (compare this effort
to grabing your controller and... go racing!)
Once you have trained your feet to do the job and/or find ways to adapt the
pedals to your liking you start comparing your laptimes, the best way is racing
your ghost, then you will discover where you go faster and slower, the
controler guy brakes later and accelerates earlier? Yes... there's another
issue: left foot braking.
My american friends will like to know that, in the rest of the world, we use
the left foot to activate a third pedal, indeed, there's a third pedal in the
cars outside the "freeways", it's called: the clutch. ( just joking
bros! I love those smooth, featureless, flawless concrete highways of yours
) Anyhow, most of us have to brake with the right foot, that little
innocent extra movement of shifting pedals cost time, anything from .2 to .5
per lap depending on the circuit. You can train your left foot to brake, It'll
take about 15 hrs of driving to get to use it correctly.
ok, you have spent like 100 usd, a few bucks in assorted materials to set the
pedals, 15 - 20 hrs of extra practice to use them adequately and... your still
not matching your times with the controller. What? the controller guy seemed to
carry more speed in the corners and went around the track with apparent higher
responsiveness!
I wanted to cry!
Verdict: The pedals require time and effort but they're not the cause for
slower times when using the wheel.
So? "bla, bla, bla; when do you get to the cheating part?" Well,
the answer was a lot subtler and requires more theory...
Well, are
you ready?
I’m going
to explain just how turn 10 did a hell of a job.
I remember I
read an interview from one of the project leaders at the game studios stating
they had been going through a dead end in terms of game physics till they
received actual data from one tire manufacturer. From that day the game changed
radically.
Well, they
in the beginning must have thought, as many of us did, that tires worked in a
totally different manner. Race tires have higher grip but also a feature that
we don’t experience much in street driving: Slip angle.
Slip angle
is easy to explain, the tires point in one direction but the car travels in a
different direction, in fact its not only a usual thing to “overwind” the wheel
at each corner… it is mandatory that you make the tires slip to get the 100% of
the traction capabilities.
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.
This also
means that you have to learn to slide the car, then learn the limits of the car
when slipping and then learning to drive the car at exactly the limit… This is
getting close to an art.
In terms of
driving it means that your job as a jockey gets terribly more complicated, you
have to turn in at the right time, then at the right speed, then at the right slippage
angle, then unwind the wheel at the right speed again. Imagine that! Now
imagine that in the esses section at Suzuka (no wonder I had so many problems
there with the wheel)
Just to
compare this effect in the controller I grabbed it immediately after testing
this effect. And Eureka!
WITH THE
CONTROLLER YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SLIP ANGLES THE CONTROLLER DOES IT FOR
YOU! NEITHER YOU HAVE TO WORRY FOR OVERDRIVING THE CAR, THE SOFTWARE WON’T
ALLOW YOU TO EXCEED THE MAXIMUM SLIPPAGE ANGLE ( THAT YOU WOULD EXCEED EASILY
WITH THE WHEEL)
THE CONTROLLER
GETS AN UNDISCUSSED HELP “STEERING ASSISTANCE”
So, this is
cheating! With the controller you only have to move the stick to the direction
you want to travel, you don’t need to measure how much. In most corners you
just smoothly move the stick to the right, hit the limit of it, pass the apex
unwind the stick (not even carefully) and you’re out! Hell, there are
unconfirmed rumors that one of the top drivers in VVV uses the D-pad to steer!
To get this
clear, the software doesn’t tell you when to turn in nor gives you the ideal
speed to move the stick but helps you with 50% of the steering job, at least.
To be
honest, if the game designers were to remove this assisted steering from the
game, it would be nearly impossible to drive with the stick. So I can almost
imagine the scene at the “weekly gd meeting” and suddenly someone inside should
have told them “Boss, we have a problem, the game is too difficult to play with
the controller.” – “Hell yes, it should be” – “no Boss you don’t get it, with
this new model the japs gave us you can’t play unless you have the wheel, it’s
too much!” - That would have put a good chunk
of the market out. So? They decided to give the controller a assistant akin to
the Fly-by-wire systems in the new generation jets (those like the F-16 and
Typhoon that are dynamically unstable and can’t be flown without a computer)
Verdict:
The real advantage of the controller is that removes the need to master the
slippage angle concept of the race tires and basically steers to perfection at
every corner, with out the guy at the controls knowing it. There should be a
feature in the game that allow the lobby host to turn off the assistance as we
can do with ABS, TCS and STM. In fact this is the greatest help possible.
Note: Why
is that the top drivers use the wheel?
Well, most
of them use ABS too! So it removes one of the main difficulties for mastering
the game with the wheel. But they can beat the computer in one thing: they are
artists, and are precise, smooth and incredibly sensitive to traction limits.
The
software is not that precise, especially at the turn in and at getting the
right steering speed. (how fast you wind the wheel) if you practice everyday, your brain is
better than any computer, you can beat it… You just have to be a genius to do
so!
My wish for
Forza 3, include the choice to get rid of the steering assistance and reward
the guys that have paid 100 extra bucks, don’t pamper the teenage kids that
would brag they’re fast with a controller. In a real race car, They wouldn’t
make past the first corner.
See you in
the next.