My intent is for this thread to used for reasonable adult discussion of Need for Speed Shift and/or GT5P/GT4. Drawing comparisons is going to be inevitable, but please don't use this thread for fanboyism. Keep it nice, level and polite.
I think a number of us are enjoying NFSS quite a bit. At the least it seems to be enjoyable enough to fill the time until GT5 comes out. The physics/feedback model of NFSS is similar to GT4 (there are a lot of other similarities in the tuning features). With the inclusion of Nurburgring and Laguna Seca, it has an overall feeling a lot like an updated GT4.
There are a few handling differences that bothered me. (For reference I run using the Logitech G25 wheel and generally turn off all drivers aids except ABS. I run "pro" driving physics. If you are using a controller or run with different levels of driver assists, then these settings might be completely wrong for you). I wanted the cars to handle just a bit more like GT4 than they did. I've used Nurburgring and Laguna Seca for my testing since I know those tracks so well from GT4.
Most specifically the RR and MR cars in NFSS don't get loose enough for my taste when you come off-throttle. One thing the Gran Turismo series does very well is describe the weight balance of the car through the wheel, NFSS doesn't do this nearly as well, although it does do a great job of feedback overall. At any rate, off-throttle the RR and MR cars in NFSS don't have the turn-in I expect and like. You can't feel the engine back there in the wheel as much, and the rear of the car doesn't start to step out enough. This turned out the be largely solvable using the LSD setting in NFSS. Once you have the proper upgrades in place, you can change the Deceleration LSD and the Preload LSD settings, just like you can in GT4. Set the Preload to as little as possible, and set the Deceleration setting to 0. Your MR/RR car will now feel a lot more like it would in real-life and a lot more like they do in Gran Turismo. If those settings take it too far for you, just slowly tweak them back up a bit.
I also found that the input from the G25 wheel was reduced quite a bit compared GT4/5p once I had my wheel set to 900 degrees lock (the default is 360, which feels really strange to me). So I set the wheel lock to 900 but then set the wheel sensitivity to 100% instead of the default 50%. Feels pretty good to me at that setting (reasonably close the GT4/5P).
Also included are some very nice pedal dead-zone and sensitivity settings. Everyone will like something different here, but one nice thing is that you can make the pedals feel more like they do in a real car. You'll probably want a little dead-zone on both the clutch and the brake.
There is also a Speed Steering setting which is supposed to make your car less twitchy at high speeds (sounds a bit like "active steering"). So far I've left this at the default setting but will hopefully have time to play with it later today.
Edit: OK, I've played with the Speed Steering now and it does more or less function like "Active Steering" except it only comes into play at higher speeds and it is a slider from 0-100. 0 makes the steering incredibly twitchy at high-speeds. 100 makes the car respond sluggishly at higher speeds. Currently I'm running it at 30, which again feels reasonably close to GT4 (with active steering off).
Here are my settings at this point:
Game Settings:
Handling Model: Professional
Steering Deadzone: 0
Accelerator Deadzone: 0
Brake Deadzone: 5
Clutch Deadzone: 5
Steering Sensitivity: 90 (see notes later in this post)
Accelerator Sensitivity: 0
Braking Sensitivity: 0
Clutch Sensitivity: 0
Speed Steering Sensitivity: 30 (see notes later in this post)
Wheel Lock: 720 (see notes later in this post)
FFB Strength: 10
Traction Control: Off
Stability Control (whatever they call it): Off
ABS: On (was off for a while, but like every other racing sim I've played, I can't master them without the g-forces of a real car to tell me what's going on)
Car tuning settings:
LSD Acceleration: (Whatever you prefer)
LSD Deceleration: 0 - 10 depending on car
LSD Pre-load: As low as it will go (slider to left)
Feels pretty GT4 like to me. For example I have the Porsche 911 GT3 RS feeling a LOT like the RUF RGT in GT4 (but a little looser, maybe somewhere between the RGT and the Yellowbird).
Note: My pedal sensitivity setup is not an attempt to emulate GT4, but rather an attempt to get the pedals to feel more like a real car. Still isn't great, but what racing sim is? The darn pedals are always too sensitive.
Note 2: I'm concentrating only on getting the MR and RR cars feeling like they should. I'm very much an RR guy in real life, and in sims I vastly prefer RR and MR layouts. If anyone else wants to work on settings for the FR and AWD cars, that would be a nice addition to this thread.
Note 3: I'll be editing the above settings if I discover something I think works better, and will make notes to that here at the bottom of the first post.
Note 4: I really wanted to nail the steering setups down to something concrete. I went back and drove the Yellowbird, the RGT, and the Elise around the Ring a number of times in GT4. Then went back into NFSS and took similar (in the case of the Elise identical) cars around the Ring. I ended up modifying my settings as seen above. But in the end there are a LOT of combinations which feel similar to GT4, and a lot which feel completely unlike GT4. As mentioned in a later post, the Steering Sensitivity, and Steering Lock work together, while Speed Steering essentially stabilizes the car at the expense of less responsive steering. One thing you can easily do, if you play with these settings much, is make the cars too easy to catch via. counter-steering. While it is tempting to do this, my advice is to avoid that temptation.
(same goes to some other guys too, who I know drives like Aliens in GT5P with DS)
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