F1 racing game question

[Via]

My back tires are getting hot while my front tires stay cool, which predictably leads to all sorts of handling issues.

I've tried messing with some settings, but nothing I change seems to solve the problem. What setting do I need to play with?

I don't remember this issue when I first started playing the game, and I don't know what I changed to cause it.

 

[CuriousMike]

I played the entire careers in F1 2010 and 2011 and never fussed with car settings...

Might be weight bias or wing.

 

[Via]

The game I'm playing has 4 simple settings, and a ton of really complicated settings if you go advanced.

In the simple setting sliders there's an understeer/oversteer bar, a grip bar, a gear setting for either accel/top speed, and a soft/firm ride setting. The advanced is way over my head as of now. There's literally dozens of settings to tweak.

Maybe I accidentally pressed something, but it's gotten so bad now that I spin out practically every corner if I don't come to an almost complete stop.

I noticed that in the LCD display the back tires quickly go from purple to red to yellow/orange while the front tires stay purple the entire race.

I guess I could just re-install and start over, but that would suck. I should try to learn something.

 

[thilanliyan]

Change to understeer if you are spinning out all the time.

Also, you can soften the rear suspension to get some rear grip back.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Borrowing from how real cars behave I'd agree with thilan, if you're spinning out because you're turning too sharply (or the back is swinging out) you're oversteering pretty heavily, so tuning it more to understeer would be wise.

Also bear in mind that all those tweaks affect the rear tires, power delivery is handled by the rear wheels, typically the most downforce is present at the rear end so again the rear tires.

If you haven't messed with any of the advance settings, I'd say tune the car to lean more towards understeering, soften up on acceleration a bit, and adjust for a firmer ride setting. Also if you're able to adjust the grip setting (whatever the hell that is) then lighten up a bit on that as well.

All the changes together might be a bit much but if it alleviates the overheating rear tire issue you have a point to work from. From there just tune it tighter and tighter to what you have now/want until it starts popping up again. Do bear in mind with all those changes, if significant enough will cause you to slide a bit more around corners.

 

[Via]

I'll mess with oversteer/understeer some more. It didn't seem to fix the issue when I tried it before.

Do you know what exactly is causing my front tires to stay cool while my back tires get hot? Is it some sort of chassis set-up issue?

edit - thank for the reply krnmastergt; I posted this in response to thilanliyan before I saw your post.

 

[thilanliyan]

I think fixing the lack of grip at the rear may help with the front issue. See how it goes.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Out of curiosity did this end up fixing your spinning out issue?

 

[Via]

I haven't had a chance to dig yet.

I'm going to mess with the "Tire Pressure and Camber" setup page tonight if I have time; I don't know what the hell a camber is but it might hold the key.

It displays adjustable settings for each tire.

This is the front:

Camber
-2.5 degrees (default)
Tire pressue
135 kPA

and this is the back:

-1.0 degrees (default)
170 kPA

Then it lists this next to each tire on the car diagram:

87 C
87 C
87 C

And, finally, it says "symetrical" at the bottom with a slider to change something. I'm going to run some practice laps and mess with the values.

I think it's pretty cool learning about this stuff. Games nowadays are mostly so shallow that they don't hold my interest very long. I needed something a little more in depth.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Camber is basically how the wheel is tilted. As most racing cars will typically do a lot of cornering they're angled just slightly to provide better grip when doing so, it also lessens the stress and wear on the tire as opposed to a perfectly level alignment. Too much camber will give you less grip and in real cars would stress parts of the tires more than the rest leading to unnatural wear and tear.

As to the point of the symmetrical slider, if its just to disable it then its probably meant for when you're fine tuning for certain tracks that say, have a lot more left handed turns than right, therefore you want to adjust camber to allow for better grip in left handed turns but want to maximize your left tires' grip as well which results in asymmetrical camber angles.

Edit: Wikipedia is useful for some general knowledge tidbits from time to time, this article on camber angles tells you the rough gist of it.
Cliffs: Negative camber improves cornering grip, 0 camber is best for straight line performance, positive camber is non-existent for racing vehicles.

 

[iCyborg]

I haven't had a chance to dig yet.

I'm going to mess with the "Tire Pressure and Camber" setup page tonight if I have time; I don't know what the hell a camber is but it might hold the key.

It displays adjustable settings for each tire.

This is the front:

Camber
-2.5 degrees (default)
Tire pressue
135 kPA

and this is the back:

-1.0 degrees (default)
170 kPA

Then it lists this next to each tire on the car diagram:

87 C
87 C
87 C

And, finally, it says "symetrical" at the bottom with a slider to change something. I'm going to run some practice laps and mess with the values.

I think it's pretty cool learning about this stuff. Games nowadays are mostly so shallow that they don't hold my interest very long. I needed something a little more in depth.

I haven't tried F1, but I've played other racing simulations, for a while pretty seriously, so my 2 cents.

You're probably slipping too much and overheating rear tires while not going fast enough on average to tax the front ones. You can try reducing oversteer (in other simulations there's no "oversteer/understeer setting, one usually adjusts real car parts, mainly suspension). Also, increasing downforce will give more grip, though only at higher speeds. Lowering tire pressures also provides more grip, but comes with more heating. If there's a setting for toe-in/toe-out you want to increase toe-in / decrease toe-out - results in more stability at the expense of turn-in capabilities.

So, about the best thing you can do to increase front tire temps assuming your driving is at least semi-decent: decrease tire pressure. In some other games, you can also select softer tire compounds.

Adjusting camber will help if your tires are heating up unevenly like the outer part more than the inner part, and will provide more grip in turns. When I say uneven, I'm talking about different parts of one tire here. When you're cornering, your tire will get angled, so to get optimal contact patch during cornering, you "pre-angle" it in the opposite direction (negative camber). Racing cars always use negative camber unless it's oval, in that case you want the inside two tires to have positive camber. In other simulations, I usually had to increase negative camber (i.e. make it more negative) from default settings.

Btw, while knowing this stuff is useful, and I've read lots of guides and docs, I've usually been tinkering to adapt other people's car setups to my preference, or for a different race course, never doing one from scratch or game's default sets. I'm pretty sure you should be able to find some decent setups online somewhere.

 

[_Rick_]

Re positive camber: I think it may actually be of interest if you're going rallying on tarmac stages where the road is essentially single lane and heavily cambered itself. This should give better grip in these conditions.
On track/wide roads though, negative camber is the way to go.

Also, use the warm-up lap to get some starting temperature into the tires (high-speed weaving) - starting on cold tires means you will have to work much harder to get them switched on again. Especially in fast turns, the front tires should heat up by themselves. If the car is tail-happy, stay off the pedals during steering input, until you've reached the apex. Make sure you're going fast enough in fast corners, so that you'll have enough down force to make your move. Going too slowly (while spinning the rears) will give the results you describe.
Try to avoid using binary controls - without a wheel and pedals or two analog sticks at the least, controlling the car under realistic conditions will not be possible.
Also look at your telemetry if the game supports it. It should show you what preceded the rear stepping out. Possibly you're overheating the rears too quickly, they fall apart, and you're left with no grip.

 

[PlasmaBomb]

What game are you playing?

 

[Dankk]

What game are you playing?

Looks like either F1 2010 or F1 2011.

I started playing F1 2011, and then immediately quit because it was too hardcore for me. Good luck on finding an answer, OP. You might find some better help on the Codemasters forums or something.

 

[Via]

It's actually a game called F1 Challenge '99-'02.

I remember I was coming off of console F1 games when I bought it, and it was way over my head at the time so it got tossed in a box for years. But now I've rediscovered it, and it's probably the best F1 simulation I've ever played. The graphics are definitely "from that era", but they don't distract at all. The driver AI is incredibly well done; you can set their aggression level and intelligence, and they really behave like humans in good and bad ways. I feel like I'm racing against average skill human drivers so far, not robots (I haven't tried the higher levels yet).

A driving game is only as good as the driving itself, no matter how many bells and whistles it has. F1 2010 (which I have for PS3) looks current but feels very artificial and stilted when compared to this game. Now that I'm getting under the hood of these simulations I might give it another try eventually though.

Rick is right - without proper controls ultra-realistic settings are impossible. You'll spin out every time you hit the gas.

And no - I haven't had time to correct my problem; I got swamped at work. I'm really looking forward to a free day so I can explore some more.



A funny thing - this game in no way supports multi-monitor, but when you pull up the telemetry charts they span across three monitors automatically. I still have to learn to read the charts, but it looks cool.

 

[Dankk]

It's actually a game called F1 Challenge '99-'02.

Ah... would it have been hard to put "F1 Challenge '99-'02" in the thread title? "F1 racing game" could refer to a number of things. There's more than one F1 racing game.

 

[Via]

I didn't want any bias towards an older game, or any game for that matter.

I was having a problem with simulated F1 racing in general, not a game-specific issue.

 

[Dankk]

I didn't want any bias towards an older game, or any game for that matter.

I was having a problem with simulated F1 racing in general, not a game-specific issue.

If someone makes fun of you for playing older stuff, then they're lame. Your questions are still valid. :thumbsup:

 

[thilanliyan]

I started playing F1 2011, and then immediately quit because it was too hardcore for me.

Too hardcore??!! I have the exact opposite complaint...it's too arcadey.

rFactor with F1 mods is nice. F1 Challenge 99-02 is actually not bad either.