Need for Speed Racing Games

cem_ea_id.teeheeaid wrote:I think he said something like "we're pretty clean on a wheel" which is slightly more ambiguous.

Different question? He said "pretty pure" on the wheel v joypad, as part of mentioning that the control paths were different.

But, in a different question that asked "once aids are switched off have there been any deliberate deviations from simulated reality for the sake of ease of playability?"

His answer was "No, we don't do any deviation in the physics once the aids are turned off"

That seems clear to me that there are no hidden assists.

I think we're just stumbling over terms -

in terms of input? - "pretty pure on a wheel"

in terms of physics - "no hidden deviations"

but!

deviations from the math or deviations from what the race drivers liked? These are not always going to be the same thing. If we were parsing it harshly we could also question whether hidden means hidden as in "hidden in code", hidden as in "not in the ui" or "not hidden in data"

Needaxeo, I'll answer your longer post to me on page 1 in more detail tomorrow as I just read it but have to sleep now. Suffice to say, there's some excellent stuff in your post that I totally concur with, and yes, I have been slowing down as you suggested, just enough to be able to take corners more carefully and calmly but not so slow that it becomes the 'drive to tesco' It's working though, it takes the panic and haste out of it, gives my brain that millisecond or two more time to react, and so it's improving my lap times. I'm only 200ths of a second from being in the 1:33's now on this track.

Oh also, another one for the list is

<prop name="Low Speed RPM_Range Scale (Novice/Norm/XP/Pro)" data="2;1.67;1.33;1" />

how much rpm>torque>power for launch?

xbox.Needaxeo wrote:
It's like playing a piece of music, you don't play bar 1, then bar 2, then bar 3. You play the piece smoothly from bar to bar. When you're learning the track you might think of it as corner 1 "brake here, turn here, power here, straighten here", corner 2 "break here...", but make sure you don't make it disjoint like that, you want to switch from each activity as smoothly as you can...and that will mean you unsettle the car less and can be faster.

Further to your reply, I totally agree with everything you say, particularly what you said above. When I watch someone making a circuit in the fastest time, it's always very fluid, ebbing and flowing with no rough edges, always moving forward and not skidding around trying to hang on to the road while losing precious time, and that's something I've been trying to do with laguna seca. I got it to a point where it was pretty much 98% smooth, but just didn't quite get to that point of what should be perfection to get the fastest time.

I do study other peoples videos and try to figure out what they're doing, when and where, what gears they're in and what sort of risks they're prepared to make to get around a corner the fastest but smoothest, ie, perhaps without braking where I might have braked and in so doing, slowed my laptime. Last weeks competition is over now on laguna with the nissan 200 SX works converted. In the end I got 1:33.770 which is good for me considering I started off not being able to get below 1:40. I added just low traction back, that seemed to help. I was in 6th place out of 11 but in the last hour of the contest some of the others beat me into 9th, bah! Thing is, it's all about 100ths of a second and I'm still quite pleased with my performance which I'd been improving over the course of the week. This was the final result;

Pos Lap--time Split-Tm Pts Driver
01. 01:30.680 +00.000 25 NIKAZ
02. 01:31.280 +00.600 20 inam22
03. 01:31.970 +01.290 16 danswan
04. 01:32.950 +02.270 13 CK61938
05. 01:33.160 +02.480 11 Nem
06. 01:33.520 +02.840 10 Marine Iguana
07. 01:33.580 +02.900 09 mercyless
08. 01:33.610 +02.930 08 Dureth
09. 01:33.770 +03.090 07 Merlin5 << ME
10. 01:33.940 +03.260 06 Lt Goody
11. 01:33.980 +03.300 05 grs_link


So now this week, the car chosen is the lambo gallardo and Spa GP. I've hardly tried it yet but it looks REALLY difficult! Not driven the gallardo before, feels and sounds good though. I've got to try and beat or get remotely close to 2:10, which is the fastest lap done so far by one of the guys. Wish me luck

Btw, I find it hard not to hold my breath when trying to hold the car steady in difficult sections.

Gallardo at Spa. The good news is the Gallardo is easy to drive. You won't have to use tricks like downshifting before braking, it's best to downshift while braking in this car. The bad news is that part of getting a good lap at Spa is getting through Eau Rouge + Radillion valley at high speed without the car bouncing off track (about 10 seconds into the video below). You need to try to time your steering so you steer a bit more while under compression from the dip, then ease off the steering before the suspension unloads. Since you can't feel the forces, it's mostly memorizing and getting a bit lucky.

This is also one track where braking late helps. There are only a few long turns, so most of the time you want to be either on the brakes or on the throttle going through the turns. There's a hidden traction contol assist that's a bit more evident on the 560, so you can go full throttle early on in turns. The hidden assists also mask the fact that you can take some turns in a taller gear with no loss in speed because the hidden assist will just end up limiting engine power in a lower gear. You can induces a bit of oversteer with full throttle in 3rd gear to help with turning, but in 4th or taller gear, the effect is gone. On the high speed section just before the bus stop chicane, you want to get the outer tires just onto the grass to setup the left turn. I made an example video, 2:11.608. I had downforce maxed out, but low downforce may produce better lap times if the top speed increases enough.

http://rcgldr.net/nfss/nssf560.wmv

In the 560-4's case the thing has so much electronics (emission control, front e-diff, rear LSD, e-gearbox, drive by wire throttle) that even with ESP/TCS/ABS off the thing should still drive like an F-16

MAIN.rcgldr wrote:

slow in, fast out

Depends on the car. Fast in, get the car sideways, and drift through turns is what works with the Zonda R in NFS Shift. Possibly because of the hiddent traction control assist, for a fast lap, you're at full throttle from turn 1 exit all through way through and past turn 2 at Willow Springs, with just steering inputs to control how the Zonda R drifts through the turn

talking about hidden assists and sim-factor, you seriously believe this kind of driving would be possible/faster IRL ?

What, you mean, a real car where we deliberately decrease the COG and grip, and give tyres that can never go cold, overheat, wear out or blowout?

If you turn these on you get about 2 corners where you can do that (the same as if you have cooked the tyres to perfection with 0 wear and equal IMO temps in a real sim) and the third corner tends not to go so well

MAIN.rcgldr wrote:

slow in, fast out

Depends on the car. Fast in, get the car sideways, and drift through turns is what works with the Zonda R in NFS Shift.

cem_ea_id.nico1965_nico wrote:talking about hidden assists and sim-factor, you seriously believe this kind of driving would be possible/faster IRL ?

It's a game, not real life. Even in iRacing, considered the current best consumer hard core simulation oriented game, the setups and driving styles used by the top players of the game would not work in real life. Almost all sims are driven with more oversteer than what is used in real life since these games generally reward using more oversteer with faster cornering speed. "Drifting" through turns in sims is often brought up at various forums.

At best, these games will give you a sense of a real world track, where it turns left and right, but not even a sense of where braking points are because the visuals and car performance will be different in a game than it its in real life.

The point of this thread was how to get good lap times with NFS Shift, not in real life.

MAIN.rcgldr wrote:Gallardo at Spa. The good news is the Gallardo is easy to drive. You won't have to use tricks like downshifting before braking, it's best to downshift while braking in this car. The bad news is that part of getting a good lap at Spa is getting through Eau Rouge + Radillion valley at high speed without the car bouncing off track (about 10 seconds into the video below). You need to try to time your steering so you steer a bit more while under compression from the dip, then ease off the steering before the suspension unloads. Since you can't feel the forces, it's mostly memorizing and getting a bit lucky.

This is also one track where braking late helps. There are only a few long turns, so most of the time you want to be either on the brakes or on the throttle going through the turns. There's a hidden traction contol assist that's a bit more evident on the 560, so you can go full throttle early on in turns. The hidden assists also mask the fact that you can take some turns in a taller gear with no loss in speed because the hidden assist will just end up limiting engine power in a lower gear. You can induces a bit of oversteer with full throttle in 3rd gear to help with turning, but in 4th or taller gear, the effect is gone. On the high speed section just before the bus stop chicane, you want to get the outer tires just onto the grass to setup the left turn. I made an example video, 2:11.608. I had downforce maxed out, but low downforce may produce better lap times if the top speed increases enough.

http://rcgldr.net/nfss/nssf560.wmv

Excellent driving, 2:11.608 is a brilliant time! Thanks for the info. Best I've managed so far is just over 2:18. (edit: 2:17.230 now)
That bit at 1:43 of your video, the high speed section before the bus stop chicane, I always end up coming off the track to the right, so I've only barely managed to keep it on the track going down to 5th, but that's not ideal.
"outer tires just onto the grass to setup the left turn" Thank you! I'll give that a try.


Your gearing is completely different to mine, you're in much higher gears much sooner than me way before mine can get into those gears. Is there any chance you could possibly give me your advanced tuning settings? Should I be hitting over 170mph before braking at the end of the first fast stretch of the course, ie, at about 0:27 seconds of your video? I usually hit around 169 to 170.

edit: just did a conversion. Your 280kph is 173mph so I need to get faster sooner just after eau rouge.

http://rcgldr.net/nfss/nssf560.wmv

cem_ea_id.bandola54 wrote:Your gearing is completely different to mine, you're in much higher gears much sooner than me way before mine can get into those gears. Is there any chance you could possibly give me your advanced tuning settings?

Note that I'm shifting into 4th gear sooner or staying in 4th gear in a few turns and only dropping to 5th gear at Pouhon, even though I could go down another gear in those turns.

I didn't save my settings, but redoing the gearing, I think it was:
tires: 30.00 31.30 58.00 alignment: 25.00 2.00 -0.10 -0.30 -2.00 -1.50 65 75 suspension: 399.73 199.86 differential: 60 50 gears: 6.20 3.50 2.54 1.80 1.42 1.17 0.97 aero: 18 18
For suspension, springs and stops all the way left, dampers set to middle. Lower aero setting might be better for this track. I started with a generic setup for used all tracks with 13.99 LP560 I use for online racing.

Thanks a lot, I've input those settings now and will see how it goes.

cem_ea_id.teeheeaid wrote:deviations from the math or deviations from what the race drivers liked?

When I read the question, it says something like "deviations from simulated reality to ease playability"...see earlier post for exact quote.

So I believe when he answers he uses the same word, because, well, he's answering that question

Therefore he's saying "deviations from simulated reality to ease playability" don't exist.

Since hidden assists would ease playability, it seems perfectly clear he's said they don't exist. But not only that, whatever else you pedantically want to change "hidden" to mean. If it eases playability and it isn't the assists that are in the menus, then he said it didn't exist

But it seems moot. The impression I get, from what they (i.e Doug A, Ian Bell et al) have said, is that the stuff to make the game easier, is right there explicitly stated in the menu options, and the only guy saying "There are hidden assists", has the game on one of those easier modes.

The Americans would say "go figure"

But it doesn't really matter. One thing is for sure, if you want to get a fast time somewhere on a list, you need to use normal mode, because everyone else trying to get a fast time will be (or else they won't be fast)

OK, for one example, there's an anti flip aid in Shift, which is specifically called an aid by the game data:

<prop name="Enable Anti Flip Aid" data="false" />
<prop name="Anti Flip Minimum Angle" data="45" />
<prop name="Anti Flip Maximum Angle" data="60" />
<prop name="Anti Flip Torque Fixing Force" data="5" />
<prop name="Anti Flip Orientation Fixing Force" data="2" />


It isn't in the UI, and doesn't appear to go away when you kill it in data (notice it defaults to 'false', but it's still on). You can make the car as prone to flip as you like by modifying its physics files, and it still won't roll past about 40 degrees on 2 wheels no matter what. I remember Goffik mentioned that he played with this and couldn't kill it either. Does that count as a hidden aid by you ?