Am sort of in a weird place with sim right now, no idea what I want to do. Been finding it hard to maintain momentum without actual racing.
I am thinking it’s time to go way out of the comfort zone again and try something new that doesn’t seem to be my cup of tea:
Big ovals in fast pickups.
I am totally not ready for 180mph bumper to bumper. Time to learn.
That seems like a pretty good result considering the PC issues and the fact that it’s your “first” sim race.
My experience with getting less than optimal FPS is that it results in being slower. I think as we miss frames our timing gets slightly off.
I ran some tests in KK and I was about .2-.5 slower with less than 90fps in vr in multiplayer:
Richard Burns Rally - you won’t regret Rallysimfans.hu - rallysimfans.hu plugin
Says here “it was praised for its realistic physics and is often regarded as one of the most demanding racing games on the market.”
Sounds like it’s worth a try, thanks!
a community has taken it over so you to go to Rallysimfans.hu - rallysimfans.hu plugin and figure out how to install it because they’ve updated it.
Still one of my favourite sims of all time. When you get in a groove nothing really beats it.
I limited my fps to 60 to get it to run lol.
I didn’t even bother trying VR.
These are amazingly specific and complex installations notes. They do warn you that the Readme is mandatory. Game seems really cool.
SitRep? Did it arrive?
It’s has been delivered to my work, unfortunately I am currently in New Mexico driving back with my wife’s new car and am at least 2 days out.
So I’m racing a truck
And it’s a fascinating experience. I have done two races so far, one resulting in punt/DNF and another resulting in p12, which was a good result (I think about 25-30 cars).
This is completely different from road racing and completely different from the shorter tracks I am used to in oval USF 2000.
To begin with, the line is variable. Some folks will run a high line, some will go down to the “apex”. It’s taken me a while to wrap my head around this and is a work in progress. I reflexively want to get down to the white line and power off of it.
Corner entry is different. It’s a gentler, faster, roll into the turn. I guess what we are shooting for is momentum but not so much that your fronts scrub as you go down (or come up).
The other thing that’s different is tire. The tire wears pretty quickly and your line must evolve along with it. Tire management becomes very important.
The racing is also different. You must be patient and battling requires the long view. You make progress corner by corner, just a little bit. It’s very mellow, if you let it be.
My approach has been driving to finish. If someone is faster, let them go and try to get some draft. So far, this has worked and my first full race was incident free and p12.
I am decidedly slow, but that’s to be expected. I am new at this and these big long turns are challenging. If you are trying to keep your minimum speed high, you do run the risk of pushing the throttle down a hair too much mid corner. This compromises your exit. Patience is coming, slowly, through trial and error.
I think I’ll stick with this for now because it’s teaching me things I wouldn’t learn in road racing. It is also very popular, so races are easy to find at any hour of the day or night.
It’s fun in a different way. It’s intense but not, if that makes any sense. Yes it’s busy but you get into a groove and it feels pretty good.
One last thought, yellow flags are different too. It basically means a rolling restart with the option to get fresh tires if you want. This changes things strategically (and is confusing at first).
Big oval racing like this is such a different mindset to road racing, and you’re right, the big long banked turns really changes how you drive them compared to your normal thinking with regards to turn-in, apex, and exit.
Plus the viability of alternate lines etc. There’s a reason that real-life road racers take time getting up to speed on ovals (or never do) if they try them.
Whenever I do NASCAR stuff, I always struggle with tire wear. I drove the '87 NASCARs for about a season when they first came out and those were an absolute blast, and I managed to do fairly well. Needed a lot of practice though. The beauty of practicing ovals is you can crank out 100 laps in a short span of time. I also dabbled in the ARCA car and enjoyed that too. Just don’t really have a desire to try the big stock cars so I stick to my lane and haven’t done a lot of paved ovals lately.
It’s a different thing in every way. I think its a good idea to do this as it broadens ones racing perspective. I don’t particularly like the big ovals as compared to the little ones, but that’s sorta the point.
The groove factor is strong here. Much more so than sprint.
Agree. Once you hit a rhythm it’s very satisfying and easy to blow through tons of laps without noticing.
I was actually watching this stream on YT live the other evening. I need to get on this week and get my fix in. Too busy building 3 karts for the season…
High steering ratio’s and positive offsets help a ton conserving tires. The tire model for the NASCAR side of things is pretty accurate. When I ran at Chicagoland a few weeks ago the truck was super fast early on the low line, but as the tire fell off, being right against the wall was the way to go. California is similar in that fact, but you have to be very precise and have a lot of patience on corner entry against the wall.
Some guys suggest using the brakes lightly getting in the turn using this method (at any oval for that matter) and some suggest just coasting. The problem with coasting is that you are using the grip of the tire to 1) Slow the car/truck down 2) Turn. A worn out tire can only do so many things. So I use the brake to get it slowed down, rotated/turned, and apply throttle as necessary.
It’s a very tough thing to manage tires especially if the race is 30 laps or so at a big track. It depends on the SOF you race against. If you are in the lower split you can generally push really hard at the beginning, as there will be a caution within 10 laps or so. The higher splits, you will see the top guys lay back real early and run about .3 off the pace, because they know the drivers in the split will not wreck and the last 15 laps they have the tires to run .7-.9 faster than anyone else at the end.
I was wondering about this as the vrs alien was talking about steering ratios. But, what confuses me is that this is a fixed setup. I assume you can’t change that so I just run what it gives you when you register.
“Some guys suggest using the brakes lightly getting in the turn using this method (at any oval for that matter) and some suggest just coasting. The problem with coasting is that you are using the grip of the tire to 1) Slow the car/truck down 2) Turn.”
I wasn’t sure about this either. I can see the benefit of slight braking for rotational purposes. I also was amusing myself with lift off rotation more aggressively and almost coincidental with the turn in.
What I was observing more was folks sorta not braking and cruising into the turns so I was trying to emulate that. The issue is that is quite hard on the fronts, unless you back the turn up a touch with throttle reduction.
It all changes as we go along though. Fresh tires might be able to plow through the turn with less lift/no lift. Older tires might require a full lift.
The race I did was 60 laps and I changed tires once. Technically we had 3 sets but that seems nutty for 60 laps.
I kinda followed this approach and it works nicely. Cars that passed me early on would get passed by me as their tires fell off. In my case I just want to have the tires feel happy and efficient. If I can do that the position will take care of itself, assuming I don’t crash. So, I would avoid battle unless absolutely necessary (last two laps I had to defend).
Just watched a top split race and learned much.
Seeing the faster guys do the lines was helpful in that I think I can feel it better, now. I think I can see how the car is rotated and kept more neutral, more balanced in the slip. From what I saw, my modulation instincts are correct but my trajectory, how I engage the mid corner, needs some work.
Also, the racing is much closer and much more forceful. Watching these guys race was instructional. I don’t think the field I was in would have responded well to these moves. Im not ready for them, but I guess once seen, cannot un-see. On these tracks you press your advantage, however small.
The race was fascinating as the narrator drove wisely and well. He moved up from let’s say 20th to within the top ten. Thoughtful driving, tactical, smart.
However, the narrator spoke of having been in a bad frame of mind since Daytona and was having some sort of slump. So, his progress through the race was good to see. Then, with only 10laps to go, a yellow restart occurs. Everyone goes and pits.
Our narrator has a great restart, and he’s in 9th I think. The racing is tight and fierce. A car gets loose and he makes a mistake, goes high and slaps the wall.
He then announces, “Well, that probably ends my race” and then sorta gave up.
At this point he’s still in 9th and his momentum isn’t totally dead. Yes he’s likely to get passed but what comes next was bizarre. The car behind him is in his bumper and can’t pass. To his inside is another car. They enter the turn side by side.
As the car below him edges ahead, our driver maintains a trajectory that is no longer viable, given the looser car below. They are gonna rub, and in fact do so.
And, oddly, the narrator seems to see all this coming, continues holding his angle until the rub is a krash, sending our driver into the wall, and then chaos and DNF.
It wasn’t intentional but it felt terribly self inflicted in the way I think we have all experienced. When he said “well I think there goes my race” he somehow primed himself for failure, intentionally. And yet, he was magnificent until one thing went wrong that he was not able to fully avoid. It’s like all of the effort to that point was unworthy, only that one mistake mattered.
He coulda finished in the top 15 I bet, but I am new to this. He woulda finished ahead of his start, probably. Whatever he’s punishing himself for, I don’t know. It was hard to watch, but it was a very instructive video.
Fixed setup your allow to adjust steering ratio, offset and brake bias…But note that it changes back to default from practice, to qualifying to race.
I have always adjusted my brake bias to 55-57% as the stock settings tighten the car up on entry under braking thus burning your fronts up faster…
Thanks! I will check the vrs guy to see what he says about steering ratio before I start lapping tonight!
