Camber Theory

[Ridox2JZGTE]

You may be right and this may all end up being a waste of time. On the other hand, we'll never know for sure unless we try. But having the data logger is certainly going to help find out exactly what is going on.
About your point about the wheels gaining negative camber under compression! Have you noticed if the opposite is true at all? The wheels

gaining positive camber if the spring extends any more than if it was at it,s standing ride height? Like for instance if you go over a crest and the springs unload on the front wheels?


@Ridox2JZGTE, I look forward to trying out that McLaren. I've got a nice fresh one sitting waiting. I'll let you know how I get on, should be fun



Thanks @LS Chiou, this is pretty interesting regarding the tyre wear. So with the camber settings you tried, the car felt better to drive and had small benifits to your tyre wear?

You will find the McLaren very quick , be sure to try the 3rd suspension setup ( high camber ), @danbojte have a great experience racing it on high camber setup.

If you look on the replay, cars do gain positive camber when unloaded / spring extended, and vice versa. Try rally car at Toscana jumps Watch when it's on the air and lands.

Extension is a bit odd, it doesn't really extend that far and I can't say I've noticed any camber change. I will have a look though, been busy with an urgent work project so I've not really had time for driving.
I did a little bit of testing the other day on my FITT Imprezza and noticed that you do get increased lateral G tolerance with a bit of camber but it only really shows up in the highest load corners. To get a noticeable gain you have to be subjecting the car to massive lateral load (1g+) before it starts doing anything positive.
This makes me wonder if it might be more effective on cars with significant downforce because of the constantly increased load and intentional utilisation of larger cornering forces.

I find the same thing on my McLaren MP4-12C GT3 replica, the high camber actually benefited from the high grip tire and rear aero ( 100 ). It gives certain feel when pushed around corners, feels like there's flex on the tire/suspension But, sadly the cornering speed limit is still lower than with lower/zero camber, lap time also slightly reduced.

 

[DolHaus]

You will find the McLaren very quick , be sure to try the 3rd suspension setup ( high camber ), @danbojte have a great experience racing it on high camber setup.

If you look on the replay, cars do gain positive camber when unloaded / spring extended, and vice versa. Try rally car at Toscana jumps Watch when it's on the air and lands.



I find the same thing on my McLaren MP4-12C GT3 replica, the high camber actually benefited from the high grip tire and rear aero ( 100 ). It gives certain feel when pushed around corners, feels like there's flex on the tire/suspension But, sadly the cornering speed limit is still lower than with lower/zero camber, lap time also slightly reduced.

My thought was that it might work better on a race car where real downforce is utilised front and rear. With a road car using a rear spoiler the effect is concentrated on the rear axle, adding camber to the rear would potentially make it more stable during cornering but also harder to rotate because the front wheels can't reach the same grip limit and therefore understeer. If there was front downforce pushing the front tyres into the ground as well then potentially they could handle the same higher load and be balanced with the rear resulting in higher potential cornering speeds.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

My thought was that it might work better on a race car where real downforce is utilised front and rear. With a road car using a rear spoiler the effect is concentrated on the rear axle, adding camber to the rear would potentially make it more stable during cornering but also harder to rotate because the front wheels can't reach the same grip limit and therefore understeer. If there was front downforce pushing the front tyres into the ground as well then potentially they could handle the same higher load and be balanced with the rear resulting in higher potential cornering speeds.

Using aero to counter added camber, interesting indeed. Aero works from medium speed and above, low speed will depend on the mechanical grip, then the chassis grip also has important part. The Mclaren MP4-12C if you look at my replica tune, high camber has 3.0 rear camber, and 2.2 front camber, this give less grip at the rear and somewhat increased rotation/rear slip, and I found that the car has tremendous chassis grip coded in, the Ford GT GT3 replica that I'm currently build, has less weight and more rear aero at 200+, but it couldn't grip like the Mclaren even with less camber ( low speed corner mainly )

I have been using camber to alter rotation on FF cars since 1.0, there's a point of camber value at the rear, where increasing it more will cause the rear to drag and slide - made the car slower in corners.

I have been testing high camber use on street cars and race cars since 1.04, high value can be used, but needs well tuned suspension + LSD. There's always slight decrease in grip limit and lap time

 

[Thorin Cain]

The high downforce situation totally makes sense. Look at the GT3s, all run a pretty good amount of camber,(2.5-4 degrees) and those things are heavily laden with downforce, usually upto another 1000 Kgs on top of the car's original weight. And on road cars, I know the front aero can sometimes add upto 50 units of downforce to the front on some cars, but for the ones that don't, surely a little bit of ballast(20-30 KG say) could do the same job? Only problem I can see with that is that the ballast will affect the front even in the low speed corners ( and obviously changing the weight distribution slightly), whereas the rear wing shouldn't be effective until the car reaches around 80 Mph (well, unless the aero physics are broke too)

You will find the McLaren very quick , be sure to try the 3rd suspension setup ( high camber ), @danbojte have a great experience racing it on high camber setup.

If you look on the replay, cars do gain positive camber when unloaded / spring extended, and vice versa. Try rally car at Toscana jumps Watch when it's on the air and lands.



I find the same thing on my McLaren MP4-12C GT3 replica, the high camber actually benefited from the high grip tire and rear aero ( 100 ). It gives certain feel when pushed around corners, feels like there's flex on the tire/suspension But, sadly the cornering speed limit is still lower than with lower/zero camber, lap time also slightly reduced.

Thanks for the info Ridox,👍 Just going to go try that McLaren now, finally got some time

 

[DolHaus]

To explain my thoughts a little bit more in depth

Imagine you have a race car going round a high load corner, with down force you can maintain a speed of 100mph and hold your line, any faster and you start to experience slip. I've noticed that camber seems to come into effect during high load so if you had the right camber angle to match the suspension you increase the maximum load the tyre can take before slipping. With this camber in effect you would be able to hold 110mph under the same circumstances before losing grip.

I'm convinced that just like the real world, camber isn't always useful. There are certain tracks with certain demands where you would see improvements. I'm almost certain that it won't be a set it and leave it type of thing.

Has anyone tried using the flat floor option? Its known that the flat floor improves traction but not really enough to counter its straight line speed disadvantage. Maybe if used in conjunction with camber the grip could be increased further and swing the balance back into the positive?

 

[Thorin Cain]

Not tried the flat floor option, but now you've suggested it, I'll do it now.

Just finished having a nice few test drives of @Ridox2JZGTE 's McLaren. It was interesting to feel the difference between the 3 alignment settings, I tried them all out on the SS tyre first and got on really well with the car, the middle-camber version just seemed the most responsive of the three until I put the grippier tyres on and the high camber version came to life/ and unlike most of the other cars I've driven it seemed to be able brake better whilst turning and really could decelerate right down to the apex allowing a little more room in the braking zone.

Your right @DolHaus, I think that we have seen that camber can be useful and I think you are also on the money when you say it won't be a "set it and leave it" kind of deal. Like the real world, it would suggest that it will be very much a tailored to the track kind of deal, like I find the brake balance is quite often. It's not too hard to conceive that if this is a more realistic physics engine, which it is! That we would have to use the realistic approach of using all of the settings in the right balance to achieve the car's maximum potential on each track, taking in to account the tracks characteristics That is after all how the real life pro's do it!

 

[donpost]

Give us some kind of camber telemetry PD!

 

[LS Chiou]

.... Thanks @LS Chiou, this is pretty interesting regarding the tyre wear. So with the camber settings you tried, the car felt better to drive and had small benifits to your tyre wear?

I'm afraid so, for the time being.

With SH and 0.4/0.4 on Yellowbird, or 0.3/0.3 on Blackbird, the front/rear balance is still kind of unacceptable after 3 laps in Ascari.

I think it's also very much on the car itself - limitation on the platform and available rubber. Look what I mentioned in post #268. Diablo GT with 1.0/0.3 camber is very successful in maintaining f/r tire wear balance with 40:60 distribution.

So I guess there's still room to improve on Yellow/Black-bird. Just need more time.

 

[PsuPepperoni]

So you don't know where to exit, so you don't know that it means on throttle out of a corner?

Watch at 0:40. He goes all the way into the left-hander at full throttle, then lets off when he passes the apex and exits the corner. You can't assume that every corner exit means on-throttle.

 

[praiano63]

Watch at 0:40. He goes all the way into the left-hander at full throttle, then lets off when he passes the apex and exits the corner. You can't assume that every corner exit means on-throttle.

Really nice video... The guy is very fast all the time in the traffic, close to the limit. I think this show that in GT the tires when begin to drift are loosing and recovering their grip too quickly. If this was happening more progresivellyand with less lost of grip, sure it could be possible to drive a yellow bird close to this video , having much more fun. Just like the real thing.

 

[Ronald6]

Doesn't the tire compound have alot to do with how quickly the tyre goes from grip to no grip? I'm not sure it's that PD got it wrong, but as usual they don't give us enough options. If we had a wider range of compounds then the "slip zone" should feel much better.

 

[LS Chiou]

In reality, the relation of available grip and slip angle is a curve. Different tires (on certain surface) have different curves, of course.

And there're other variables like camber and tire pressure which affect the exact dimensions and shapes of contact patch dynamically. And there're many others.

Not sure how much computing resource is needed for all these. Nevertheless, it must be a tough compromise among other factors.

-------

Back to current GT6, if you find the transition between grip and slip is too abrupt, try adding some camber. It can make it smoother.

 

[praiano63]

I´m just a virtual GT driver. I don´t have any idea about how grip come and go away on a real race car. I just say that looking at the video, what happen on this RR Porsche 911 is not what happen in the game. The transition between grip and no grip is much more soft and predictable, even with the lack of G force to feel this limit in GT.
Camber is suppose to add more dynamic grip in a curve, not to make smoother the transition between grip and slip.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

More info needed on the video, tires used, power of the 911, weight and alignment setup used, did it use high camber ? Some track used 911 have camber above 3.0 at the rear and over 4.0 at the front ... usually with high grip tire like Toyo R888

 

[DolHaus]

I'm not sure what the video illustrates?

The car seems to have an Inertia drift on the exit of Au Rouge, this is possible on comfort tyres and potentially on SH if you got the line/weight transfer perfect. I use a similar line and frequently exit with a smooth drift, far easier in an FR or MR than a RR admittedly. Rear heavy cars are easy to get sideways but hard to control once there as the weight wants to continue the rotation and the front wheels can't give enough angle to match.
Old Porsches are notoriously tricky when sliding, you have to counter steer way earlier to even stand a chance of catching the slide and even then a small mistake or change in road conditions would leave you facing the wrong way.

Comfort tyres are very natural when sliding, they give progressive traction loss and gain with careful throttle management. Sports tyres require a lot more power and way more force to stay lit, they want to grip constantly so you have to force them to break traction and stay loose, this is similar to what I would expect in real life. Semi slick sports tyres are ridiculously grippy, you really have to force them to make them slip and they're not happy once traction is lost, they just want to grip again and will bite and snatch unless you have monster torque to keep them spinning.

 

[Thorin Cain]

Not to put my head in the lions mouth. But ever since update 1.07 was implemented and @DolHaus had mentioned the differences he found with the different wheel sizes I have been experimenting quite a bit with the use of camber and the main things that I have found is that is does help maintain higher corner speeds, helps the stability of the car whilst going over kerbs and undulating track surfaces and gives more grip on corner exit, leading to a better launch on to the straights. Until then I had been more than happy to go along with the consensus of those who know far better than I how this should work.

But now I'm not so sure that I agree. I mean, if using camber gives less grip, how can a car which I tuned previously to slide about a bit now stay planted in the corners with camber added to 1.2/1.5, and run lap-times just that little bit quicker than before?

I am in no way disputing the fact that 0/0 camber settings give the most grip. But it is my understanding that tyres have a sweet spot in terms of grip and slip, and that too much grip is just as detrimental to lap-times than too little. Not to mention, the in-game description states...

The higher the camber angle, the more of the tyre will be in contact with the road when cornering, but make it too high, and your brakes will be less effective. Camber angles can also be adjusted in order to alter the grip balance between front and rear tyres when cornering.

...only one mention of the word grip there and it is nowhere near other words such as give and more.

A little quote from a piece of reading material I was shown recently pretty much sums it all up for me.

"For every change we make, at least 5 other will be affected."

In short I guess my point is, with the correct balance of all of the available adjustable setting at our disposal there is no reason that camber can not be used to gain the advantages it is supposed to give in the corners. If it is balanced with the other settings to overcome that little problem of lost grip in the braking zone. There are just too many advantages to using it for me to say it does not work, and I can see only one downside to using it at all. But can that not be overcome with a couple of other minor changes?

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

One thing for sure, higher grip tires like SM / SS and Racing tires in GT6 can use camber rather effectively without too much loss of grip. Similar to real life, track day cars that has soft compound semi slick can use higher camber than stock street alignment due to more grip possible when cornering, thus more load and camber do help to maintain contact patch sadly in GT6 this is possible due to the abundant grip from sports and racing tire, so the effect of grip loss can somewhat be minimized.

 

[Johnnypenso]

One thing for sure, higher grip tires like SM / SS and Racing tires in GT6 can use camber rather effectively without too much loss of grip

Aren't those two things diametrically opposed? Effective camber and loss of grip It's a bit like saying punching myself in the face hurts but when I punch twice as hard it doesn't hurt twice as much

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Aren't those two things diametrically opposed? Effective camber and loss of grip It's a bit like saying punching myself in the face hurts but when I punch twice as hard it doesn't hurt twice as much

What I meant by effective is camber does give the feel of such car with camber but the grip is lost instead of added So, I can use high camber and still be closely quick in lap time compared with zero camber - a well tuned LSD and suspension is a must, and usually only works on SM tire and above

I think you will understand when you drive my Mclaren MP4-12C GT3 replica, try the high camber, it has less grip of course, but the feeling when driving it doesn't lie, the camber effect on driving dynamics is there minus the proper grip effect Now, if PD fix the grip part, then cars with properly tuned suspension and LSD + camber will drive fantastic

On cars with Racing tires, camber also gives distinct progression in grip loss, I can feel it better even on a stick Somehow it felt like the suspension/chassis has some play on it like a spring that acts from side to side I must be mad now ...

 

[DolHaus]

On cars with Racing tires, camber also gives distinct progression in grip loss, I can feel it better even on a stick Somehow it felt like the suspension/chassis has some play on it like a spring that acts from side to side I must be mad now ...

Unrelated to camber but I've definitely noticed an amount of chassis spring on some cars, feels like the chassis is twisting under load and then resetting once the load is lessened. Noticed it more on older cars, the American muscle cars in particular. Maybe cars with a ladder frame chassis or other similar archaic frames are programmed to have some twist?

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Unrelated to camber but I've definitely noticed an amount of chassis spring on some cars, feels like the chassis is twisting under load and then resetting once the load is lessened. Noticed it more on older cars, the American muscle cars in particular. Maybe cars with a ladder frame chassis or other similar archaic frames are programmed to have some twist?

I also felt it on the Mclaren MP4-12C GT3 replica It has body rigidity installed like on all cars that I built and fitted with racing tires. You can try it for yourself, drive the GT3 replica at Silverstone GP, use the high camber setup ( SS or RH tire ) The Matech Ford GT GT3 replica should be similar too, the car is insanely quick, able to lap in less than 2 minutes at Suzuka with only 500HP and camber setup

 

[praiano63]

I´ll not enter in this feelings and thoughts about camber, i have my opinion about this, but it seems that the car is an historic car racing with others oldies. Can be a 911 E or S 69 or 70 , it have 150 BHP for 1020 kg.
I´ve put this weight power ratio + comfort medium tires on a RR car (alpine A310) and i ´ve made the same lap time , also matching with several splits times i´ve take on the video.

 

[Ridox2JZGTE]

Some of my replay from test laps - Ferrari F40 replicas on comfort soft, I think all of them are EU market F40 replica ( 471HP ) running some camber - higher at the rear, but still can be driven hard on CS tire and beat real life lap time Tsukuba F40 real life lap time 1:03.73 and Suzuka 2:25.27.

 

[PsuPepperoni]

I'm not sure what the video illustrates?

The video wasn't supposed to say anything about camber, it was just a response to the implication that you always power out of a corner.

 

[MrGrado]

Yeah, when your going through a combination of corners and coming up fast on slower traffic while sliding, you might not.

 

[r2nyGT5]

I haven't played gt6 in a while, and got a mass of updates. Is camber still not behaving the way its supposed to? IE more grip during turns?

 

[DolHaus]

I haven't played gt6 in a while, and got a mass of updates. Is camber still not behaving the way its supposed to? IE more grip during turns?

There has been no noticeable change since 1.0

 

[DolHaus]

I think I've come to a conclusion regarding camber:

It works perfectly for changing the balance of a car, using camber you can make a car feel more balanced and completely change the way it responds to inputs. No other tuning option has such a pronounced effect on the feeling of a car and changing the way the front and rear wheels behave.
Unfortunately, this comes with a guaranteed grip reduction. No matter how great a car feels to drive, it will not be able to sustain the same cornering speed as a car set to 0.0 and therefore will be slower. There is no grip improvement to be had using camber, alterations in grip levels between front and rear wheels during various phases of cornering are completely possible but the total potential grip level will always be lower than at 0.0

 

[LS Chiou]

I'm not so sure about that. I mean, 0 camber gives the highest cornering speed.

My favorite test site is in Apricot Hill, that left-hander big arc in the middle of the track. I found it's often faster with a little camber here. Or it might be the larger operating margin giving me more confidence to get closer to the ultimate limit of grip.

Besides, it's smoother with some camber at the transition of direction change, also smoother when stepping up and down the curbs, so overall speaking it's beneficial in a full lap of running. In addition, the camber can be used to tune the tire wear balance between front and rear. This is very useful in full races which need pit stop(s).

All benefits mentioned above need proper setting, of course, which takes time.

 

[DolHaus]

I'm not so sure about that. I mean, 0 camber gives the highest cornering speed.

My favorite test site is in Apricot Hill, that left-hander big arc in the middle of the track. I found it's often faster with a little camber here. Or it might be the larger operating margin giving me more confidence to get closer to the ultimate limit of grip.

Besides, it's smoother with some camber at the transition of direction change, also smoother when stepping up and down the curbs, so overall speaking it's beneficial in a full lap of running. In addition, the camber can be used to tune the tire wear balance between front and rear. This is very useful in full races which need pit stop(s).

All benefits mentioned above need proper setting, of course, which takes time.

You might see benefits with camber on corner entry if a car suffers with balance issues but you will never be able to match the mid/late corner grip/speed of 0.0. It just doesn't add up in a useful way on anything but rally/drift cars where maximum grip is not desirable or possible.
Camber works really smoothly and nicely for changing the feel of a car but the overall grip reduction is just too high at any setting to ever be worthwhile. Perhaps there is some broken coding/programming that is preventing any grip gains?
I wanted it to work and to some extent it does, but the losses are always greater than the gains. Its a shame because you can feel what its trying to do and it does it very well in terms of altering the feel between and front and rear wheels, unfortunately something is not adding up and it just isn't effective in its current form for anything but driving pleasure as opposed to actual performance.