Simple steps for more realistic performance and challenging AI-races

Hi all!

Much of the following has already been posted elsewhere on this marvelous forum, especially by NCRthree in this great thread: https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showthread.php?t=251378
To make it easier here's a sum-up including my thoughts.


Facts First

This is my 7-step-quick-setup-guide for simulating IRL-performance and improving arcade races a lot:

1. buy a wheel
2. turn ALL driving-aids off
3. set brake-bias (front-rear) to 2-0 for street(-legal) cars and 3-1 for race-cars
4. change tires one grade down from gt5 standard
5. add your weight: 70kg of ballast are fine
6. no tuning, stock engine-power, no oil-change on new cars
7. drive!

supplement:
2. It's totally worth getting used to it!!
3. depending on cars (e.g. wheels on lightweight MR cars lock up earlier) and driver preference
6. engine-power can vary quite much: Take a premium car from the dealer, drive it to 300km and make an oil-change and you are 8% above stock-power. If you did so, use power-restriction to get back to stock-power. I drive at 97% and make oil-changes every 5000km (when the oil-light comes on). details on power-variations: http://www.mygranturismo.net/article.php?id=15


Results

A. For most cars you will get laptimes closer to IRL (depending on driver-skill).
B. One-Make races will become more challenging.
still too easy?
- let the opponents pass at the start and begin to chase them after 1 lap / about 2 minutes (till the opponents tires are completely warmed-up)
- maybe another 3% power restriction or ballast
- for cracks: one more tire grade lower
C. Arcade races on professional with AI aggressivity at 7 (in options menu) seem to result in a good balance and will get you chances that one opponent uses the same car as you. You'll never get a full field of super-gt or rally cars, but 9 to 12 opponents should be of your class. More on this below.


Additional Thoughts

Speaking of ARCADE ...
- all opponent cars are always stock with stock tires!
- GT5 divides cars into two groups: street (sports) cars, and all others (tuning cars, rally, all race cars), GT5 chooses according to your car
- the opponents are chosen according to your cars estimated performance as you enter the race
- using the settings presented above (hopefully) give best results
- full field of one class (super-GT, rally, ...) can only be achieved by using one of the cars from the "arcade garage". buy the specific car from the dealer and set it up like explained above, favorite and choose after entering arcade mode. these cars always result in the same field of opponents, no matter which tires or PP you choose.

Driving AIDS ...
GT5 offers many driving aids, and some are not recogniseable as such.
Many aids are implemented right from the start: Default value for TCS is at 5, ABS 1, the stock tires have too much grip compared to real performance versions and with oil-change and drive-in you have a more powerful car than the real life counterpart. So without installing one single tuning part there are already many changeable parameters to consider when trying to turn gt5 into a racing simulation game (which it isn't, at least not without the changes presented in this thread).

Concerning tire GRIP ...
GT5 offers 9 grip-levels. As of my experience, if you change one grade down you drive about 1.5 secs slower per minute of racetime. that makes 2,5 secs when you drive 1:40 min per lap. Therefore the difference between a F2007 on RH and one on RS is about 5 secs per lap, which is way too much for formula1-cars. The steps between compounds are exaggerated so that average players feel the difference better. Anyways, RS tires feel completely unrealistic and with the suggestion to "go one grade down" they fall apart. There is more than one indication that "one grade down" is the right way. Even low power oldtimers like volkswagen beetle come with CM stock, karts have slicks equipped that are tagged as SS, and the opponents in arcade (professional) are closer to your PP when you enter with "one grade down".

This is how I treat tires in GT5:
CH all-season tires
CM modern (sports) tires
CS high-performance tires (like RX-7, GT-R, Ferraris)
SH hard semi-slicks
SM soft semi-slicks
SS hard slicks
RH soft slicks
(RM maybe super-soft qualifying compound)

Additionally it has been mentioned that the relation between acceleration-grip and cornering-grip is not balanced. cornering seems too easy while during acceleration wheels begin to loose grip too fast. You get a possible explanation when considering the fact, that TCS is set to 5 as default, except on drift-trials. With TCS 5 it should be more balanced, but cornering grip is too high anyways. That's probably because higher turning-speeds mean more fun for most players and that is what PD aims at.

I hope many of you will benefit from this thread and the hours of thinking I spent, which kept my fro driving!

Any corrections, additions and opinions are welcome!

PSN:
Pranayama_23
or
Wind-23

Interesting thread, nice work. The F2007 doesn't lose that much time though, depending on skill level with people who drive them fairly regularly it's probably between 0.1 and 0.5 seconds in a minute of driving per tyre grade. Higher performance cars have more consistent grip between compounds.

Nevermind, didn't read good enough

I'm not buying 2, 4, and 6.

Aids are real. SRF is the only thing that's completely out there.

One tire grade down is too simple, though it is an OK approximation for road cars. Works less well for race cars.

Avoiding tuning does nothing for realism, in fact you'd probably never see completely stock cars racing.

mistersafeway

Interesting thread, nice work. The F2007 doesn't lose that much time though, depending on skill level with people who drive them fairly regularly it's probably between 0.1 and 0.5 seconds in a minute of driving per tyre grade. Higher performance cars have more consistent grip between compounds.

Click to expand...

thanks! didn't know that. I mainly tested sports cars and time differences there where all quite the same. maybe this is due to the additional aerodynamic grip of race cars? the higher the aerodynamic settings, the less important tire grip will become. what do you think?

@Exorcet
Better AI-races where a precondition when I started testing.
When you tune your car or drive with stock tires, then one-make races won't be a challenge and Arcade-opponents drive with better cars. Using tuning and aids is realistic, of course, but it mostly won't give you the same AI-racing experience as with untuned cars without driving-aids. And ABS in GT5 doesn't work like in real life, so I turn it off, even on cars that have it.

Nice write up Pranayama!

Your car's tires will change up the field too when you set up your race. It doesn't matter what the opponents are on anyway too. I've run 380PP street cars on CH's and the AI was on CS's for example.

What Exorcet mentioned about aids and tuning is true in that they are real life variables especially in Race Cars but the point here is to make for a more challenging virtual driving experience. Once you start tweaking and using aids it puts the driver at more of an advantage over the stock AI cars. Then it becomes too easy to outbrake them especially using ABS.

NCRthree

Your car's tires will change up the field too when you set up your race. It doesn't matter what the opponents are on anyway too. I've run 380PP street cars on CH's and the AI was on CS's for example.

Click to expand...

The fact that opponents only use one tire-compound for a certain car (the stock one) limits your freedom of setting up arcade races. When you use better tires, then - instead of simply adjusting the opponents tires - GT5 uses PP to compensate your grip-advantage.

Giving opponents always the same tires as your car has on it when entering a race would keep things balanced. Later on pre-race screen you could change tires one grade down, which is necessary to give you a good challenge, because opponents don't seem to drive their tires to the grip-limit. That way choosing higher grip tires on race cars would become possible: enter with RS (opponents will have RS), step back to RM and race.