Camber Theory

Camber is neither better nor worse, it works on some cars and some tracks but not others. To be fully utilized the car has to be set up to make the camber work in the same way that you have to change certain settings to suit different tyres. If you are expecting camber to do something magical and just create extra grip all by itself as it did in GT5 then you will be disappointed.
Watch any racing series and you will see that they use different amounts of camber depending on the type of car and the track they are driving, sometimes the wheels will be close to 0.0 sometimes they will be running a lot of negative camber. This doesn't mean that camber is any better or worse, it just means that in certain situations it can be an advantage whilst in others it would make you slower.
Its sort of like trying to quantify which is better - Stiff springs or soft springs. Neither is a conclusive truth, sometimes you want it one way, other times it will work better with the other.
 
I have yet to find a track where camber is not faster than 0 camber, let alone the same times. You have to start changing your lines when using camber. That's when it becomes advantageous. You also need to bit the racing groove at the apex of your turn to take advantage of it. You can pick up a lot of grip by matching toe, camber and body roll/weight transfer. The key point is that you can modify the way the car turns in and exits corners, which is where time is lost. If you can enter and exit a turn with more speed, you're going to up your average pace in general and hit the next braking zone at higher speeds. Obviously, correct camber levels also net some mid corner grip as well.

If you look at any modern race cars...idk of any left that do not use camber. Can't think of any modern race cars that use 0 camber either. Not even the most controlled in terms of body roll and stiffestest of chassis. Look at f1. Best aero in terms of race cars on the planet, very little body roll, incredibly stiff suspension and up until two weeks ago, they were using hydraulic, interconnected suspension systems to control dive and roll - still used camber in the front and rear. Not much in the rear, but easily noticable to the human eye. They run quite a bit up front, however...and that would be due to less downforce up front, requiring more dependence on mechanical grip. Thus, they run more camber and allow more body roll up front.

Unless you have zero body roll, 0 camber is not wise. It's pretty straight forward. With 0 camber, you get positive camber as the strut unloads and reduces the inside tires' contact patches...or which corner/end of the car has reduce load. Under braking for example - don't want positive camber. The second the suspension is not loaded with full chassis weight, you're getting positive camber. People complained of understeer a lot from the beginning...that is inevitable, if you use any amount of throttle within a turn that loads the rear (and it will) with 0 cam up front. If the rear loads, the front unloads a bit. Every time you touch the throttle and the rear absorbs energy, the front tires go positive until the load settles.

0 camber would only work best in a perfect world, where everything operates on a flat plain. Flat track, zero roll, zero dive, etc.
 
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332i
I have yet to find a track where camber is not faster than 0 camber, let alone the same times. You have to start changing your lines when using camber. That's when it becomes advantageous. You also need to bit the racing groove at the apex of your turn to take advantage of it. You can pick up a lot of grip by matching toe, camber and body roll/weight transfer. The key point is that you can modify the way the car turns in and exits corners, which is where time is lost. If you can enter and exit a turn with more speed, you're going to up your average pace in general and hit the next braking zone at higher speeds. Obviously, correct camber levels also net some mid corner grip as well.

If you look at any modern race cars...idk of any left that do not use camber. Can't think of any modern race cars that use 0 camber either. Not even the most controlled in terms of body roll and stiffestest of chassis. Look at f1. Best aero in terms of race cars on the planet, very little body roll, incredibky stiff suspension and up until two weeks ago, they were using hydraulic, interconnected suspension system to control dive and roll - still use camber in the front and rear. Not much in the rear, but easily noticable to the human eye. They run quite a bit up front, however...and that would be due to less downforce up front, requiring more dependence on mechanical grip. Thus, they run more camber and allow more body roll up front.

Unless you have zero body roll, 0 camber is not wise. It's pretty straight forward. With 0 camber, you get positive camber as the strut unloads and reduces the inside tires' contact patches...or which corner/end of the car has reduce load. Under braking for example - don't want positive camber. The second the suspension is not loaded with full chassis weight, you're getting positive camber. People complained of understeer a lot from the beginning...that is inevitable, if you use any amount of throttle within a turn that loads the rear (and it will) with 0 cam up front. If the rear loads, the front unloads a bit. Every time you touch the throttle and the rear absorbs energy, the front tires go positive until the load settles.

0 camber would only work best in a perfect world, where everything operates on a flat plain. Flat track, zero roll, zero dive, etc.
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I was agreeing with you but you took the illustrative point far too seriously.
0.0 can definitely be faster in some instances, camber is not the solution for everyone and every situation so please try not to be so sweeping in your assumptions.
 
DolHaus
I was agreeing with you but you took the illustrative point far too seriously.
0.0 can definitely be faster in some instances, camber is not the solution for everyone and every situation so please try not to be so sweeping in your assumptions.
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What assumptions have I made and how can it physically be faster around a circuit that isn't banked to the moon like Daytona or SSrtX? If your car has body roll, camber will benefit it. There are odd situations where 0 can help, but they are far and few between. I've been racing karts and cars for 20 years. Karts since I was six. I would choke on my spit if someone told me they were running 0 camber at any circuit that I have ever been to, other than rear axle assemblies on karts. And no one ever has and I've never seen it. Even karts use a little camber up front and the suspension on a kart is the chassis itself flexing. And you're leaning to and fro with the kart to get weight down on the cambered tire. People don't lean around on karts when they are racing to stretch. They're creating mechanical grip by forcing the chassis to respond and flex given the current grip, thrust angle, etc.

And not to nitpick, but you weren't agreeing with me, considering I claim zero is not a quick as a cambered setup. Even if it is just -0.1. I also mentioned that you can pickup grip or rather acquire grip that you should be getting anyways with the correct setup, but you stated you feel otherwise, that it will not pick up grip. You use GT5 as an example. There is a difference between simply adding grip with a crappy old physics engine and adding camber with the current one, which just nets you grip where you were losing it before.
 
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332i
What assumptions have I made and how can it physically be faster around a circuit that isn't banked to the moon like Daytona or SSrtX? If your car has body roll, camber will benefit it. There are odd situations where 0 can help, but they are far and few between. I've been racing karts and cars for 20 years. Karts since I was six. I would choke on my spit if someone told me they were running 0 camber at any circuit that I have ever been to, other than rear axle assemblies on karts. And no one ever has and I've never seen it. Even karts use a little camber up front and the suspension on a kart is the chassis itself flexing. And you're leaning to and fro with the kart to get weight down on the cambered tire. People don't lean around on karts when they are racing to stretch. They're creating mechanical grip by forcing the chassis to respond and flex given the current grip, thrust angle, etc.

And not to nitpick, but you weren't agreeing with me, considering I claim zero is not a quick as a cambered setup. Even if it is just -0.1. I also mentioned that you can pickup grip or rather acquire grip that you should be getting anyways with the correct setup, but you stated you feel otherwise, that it will not pick up grip. You use GT5 as an example. There is a difference between simply adding grip with a crappy old physics engine and adding camber with the current one, which just nets you grip where you were losing it before.
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I was agreeing with you in the sense that it is subjective. I am not disagreeing with your real world camber theory, I am simply disagreeing with the statement that all cars are faster with camber in the game.
You present no evidence or comparison point, I doubt you have tuned every car in the game to its fullest so how could you know for certain? The subjective nature of your own evidence is the thing I am questioning.
 
DolHaus
I was agreeing with you in the sense that it is subjective. I am not disagreeing with your real world camber theory, I am simply disagreeing with the statement that all cars are faster with camber in the game.
You present no evidence or comparison point, I doubt you have tuned every car in the game to its fullest so how could you know for certain? The subjective nature of your own evidence is the thing I am questioning.
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I'm not here to prove anything...just sharing my experience and of those I race with. You don't have to agree. I don't have the time or patience to go collecting and posting data. All it takes is plowing through a heavy bend like the first and last turns as SSrt5 to figure out that the correct toe angles, front and rear, along with camber nets more grip. Depending on how you want to enter and exit, more camber needs more toe. The camber gains are pretty noticeable with a little toe out front and rear. Racing tires I stay below .5 neg cam and sports tires I don't go above neg 1. Depending on street to track cars with down force, I keep the toe increments between 0 and neg .12. These are the parameters in which I found max grip. The springs rates I input via a simple equation that I wrote and am still fine tuning. It seems to work/at least get me in the ballpark.

Your welcome to come race with us some night or afternoon and see for yourself. My psn is yadeegson and most of the people I race with are on here. Idk ridox's screen name, but I believe he has raced with us and has mentioned that my setup seemed to be doing me justice. That was an old setup that was much slower, too. We race the 97T a lot and I've already been into LMP and GT3. There has been an obvious shift in who is getting quicker. It was a game of catch-up for a while. Anyone that suddenly got quicker had switched tone camber setup and I know of one person that I race with daily, who still sticks with 0 camber. We had no choice but to go with cambered setups if we wanted to stay competitive.

Like I said, you don't have to agree, but these are my personal experiences from racing online every day since the camber update. I've spent enough time on several cars from f1 to 500pp to see that they have all been quicker, that's all. You're welcome to ignore or dismiss all of this.
 
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Here are my thoughts on camber,toe etc,etc. If you are tuning your car for offline,you will not get the same effect as online. AI is not the same as the guys I race with, who will try to outbreak you, or run you hard through a corner. Whole different kettle of fish.I run 0/0 camber at Daytona with Nascar. I run 0/0 camber on my Astin Martin V 12 replica GT3 car. Gave the setup to a bunch of guys last night and we messed with camber. 0/0 was the fastest at Nurb, Madrid Mini,Daytona Road, and Suzuka. I only won 1 race and well all ran same setup.
I guess it comes down to driving styles and online vs offline.
If anyone is interested in trying the tune,I will be online in 1 hour. Going to kill a cow and have a T Bone. LOL.
 
killerjimbag
Here are my thoughts on camber,toe etc,etc. If you are tuning your car for offline,you will not get the same effect as online. AI is not the same as the guys I race with, who will try to outbreak you, or run you hard through a corner. Whole different kettle of fish.I run 0/0 camber at Daytona with Nascar. I run 0/0 camber on my Astin Martin V 12 replica GT3 car. Gave the setup to a bunch of guys last night and we messed with camber. 0/0 was the fastest at Nurb, Madrid Mini,Daytona Road, and Suzuka. I only won 1 race and well all ran same setup.
I guess it comes down to driving styles and online vs offline.
If anyone is interested in trying the tune,I will be online in 1 hour. Going to kill a cow and have a T Bone. LOL.
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What setup and lap times were you running? What was the best time out of everyone you gave it to?

The difference between on and offline are the physics. Especially tire wear and fuel consumption. Any offline tune will understeer online with tire wear. Also, just adding camber usually doesn't get the desired effect. You have to start with a clean slate. This is why I only tune online with tire wear now. The cars are far better offline, when tuned online with tire wear, too.

Taking an hour or two to see if adding camber works won't yield much.

It can take a week or more to put together a very, very solid, competition tune and then tweaks are indefinite, like developing a race car in the midst of a season. It takes much less time to do a 0/0 tune. Tuning the cars has become much more complicated after 1.09 to bring the true potential out of cars and I think that it is taking quite a while for people to understand this. If we keep tuning at 0/0, we're not going to learn very much about the new physics in regards to a total setup. "Tried camber, didn't like it. Back to 0 camber." I hear and read this a lot. It doesn't make sense. It is also requires far less technical driving with 0/0 camber. You can turn in anyway you want, you burn through tires compared to a solid camber setup, you dont have to follow racing grooves to bang out a smoking lap and it is more forgiving in regards to braking. You don't get punished for running wide slightly. But, you're rewarded when running a very good camber setup, whilst hit your line around the track perfectly. 0 is clearly no faster and to me, 0/0 camber tunes are quick compromises at this point. It is just like the ride height exploit. Oh, it is under steering, so I'm going to set the nose ten mm higher in the front (lol) and so on. It's just one less thing to worry about when you don't tune with camber to me.

I'll post some tunes eventually. The only ones that are 100% rock solid are tunes I am using in a couple series at the moment. But, I will soon and there won't be a single 0/0 tune. Guess we'll just have to see how they're accepted in here.
 
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Yes certain tunes will run great for whomevers driving style.No 2 people drive the same. It all comes down to braking points, turn in, turn out and a general knowledge of the track. Most of my friends hate Nurb. Oh well,learn the f ing track. Pretty simple.
 
I'm in the top twenty at the moment for the 97T seasonal. So, something is working. I've done four laps thus far. I even went back to 0 camber, my own and Weider's tuner's setups...couldn't best my cambered time. I am in no way gloating, I have no ego when it comes to my driving. Just using myself and my own setup as an example, in case this comes off as otherwise to anyone.
 
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@332i I agree with you on the tire consumption. I set up a R10 recently to tackle the S-licences races and with camber it has been fantastic on tires with out compromising the grip. I'm still tweaking it to get turning like a swallow.

The only way we are going to find if camber is fastest is if we go and test every car in the game with highly skilled tuners and highly consistant drivers to put lap after lap at every track in the game.
What I'm wondering is if they have made the physics so close to real there is no true universal tunes anymore.
But in the same breath we can get a good tune that will work on all tracks. A perfect tune will always be track specific.
 
Otaliema
@332i
The only way we are going to find if camber is fastest is if we go and test every car in the game with highly skilled tuners and highly consistant drivers to put lap after lap at every track in the game.
What I'm wondering is if they have made the physics so close to real there is no true universal tunes anymore.
But in the same breath we can get a good tune that will work on all tracks. A perfect tune will always be track specific.
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Agreed 👍
 
I just realized the default camber for each car becomes F:0.5, R:1.5? Previously it was 0.0 and 0.0 respectively...

When did they change it? I think that's not nornal for each road car right? weird to see 1.5 as standard camber on normal car...
 
Race cars suck stock now! Tuning prohibited league is changed a lot!

And it was implemented in 1.09! Good catch though.
 
It's basically backwards of what it's supposed to be, just like ride height.

Setting camber to 0.0/0.0 will give you more mechanical grip.
 
Azure Flare
The change in camber came with v1.09, but has been found that wasn't really fixed.

Race cars have 1.5 degrees in the front, and 3.5 degrees in the rear as default. :crazy:
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Really?, because from all of my testing and in the opinions of the majority, camber has indeed been fixed. Granted, its not true to real life settings, but by using camber now, grip has been improved and in some cases, lap times can also be improved. I agree that the default camber settings are a joke, but to say that, that update did not fix camber is wrong when in fact, at the very least, it did improve things. I myself have no problem in using camber now and making it beneficial to my tunes. Sure, there are those few that say it hasn't been fixed, but I really don't think they are going about implementing it into their tunes correctly. You can't just slap camber on an existing pre v1.09 tune and expect it to work. You have to re-do the tune with camber implemented in to properly see the effects and benefits.

EDIT: "It's basically backwards of what it's supposed to be, just like ride height."

"Setting camber to 0.0/0.0 will give you more mechanical grip."

Again, you are wrong here.
 
I believe that camber doesn't always guarantee better lap times. It just helps you feel better the steering of the car & gives you much grip for the corners. Since V1.09, camber behaves as good as the camber in reality. That's enough for me.
 
GTP_CargoRatt
Really?, because from all of my testing and in the opinions of the majority, camber has indeed been fixed. Granted, its not true to real life settings, but by using camber now, grip has been improved and in some cases, lap times can also be improved. I agree that the default camber settings are a joke, but to say that, that update did not fix camber is wrong when in fact, at the very least, it did improve things. I myself have no problem in using camber now and making it beneficial to my tunes. Sure, there are those few that say it hasn't been fixed, but I really don't think they are going about implementing it into their tunes correctly. You can't just slap camber on an existing pre v1.09 tune and expect it to work. You have to re-do the tune with camber implemented in to properly see the effects and benefits.
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Who are the 'majority'?

I don't see any of the faster driver in the Seasonal TT's posting tunes that use camber, nor do I see @Motor City Hami or @praiano63 (the 2 most respected tuners in the tuning forum) using camber on their tunes.

If you believe it's fixed, post some testing results.
 
A lot of camber AND toe default values are ridiculous now. 0.60 on the back wheels, even if the car is an understeering one by default? Really??
 
Stotty
Who are the 'majority'?

I don't see any of the faster driver in the Seasonal TT's posting tunes that use camber, nor do I see @Motor City Hami or @praiano63 (the 2 most respected tuners in the tuning forum) using camber on their tunes.

If you believe it's fixed, post some testing results.
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Maybe you should look again.

Praiano has presented some tunes with camber after 1.09, mostly on street cars.

Some cars could be better with no camber, but that is personal choice, nothing compared to the way it was before.

Camber is indeed "working", in PD's mysterious way, but is is.

Did you not had positive results using camber?
 
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I just checked the last 2 pages of his thread... >10 tunes, and just 2 cars with camber on the rear. No cars with camber on the front.

And you think Camber is working? :lol:
 
Stotty
I just checked the last 2 pages of his thread... >10 tunes, and just 2 cars with camber on the rear. No cars with camber on the front.

And you think Camber is working? :lol:
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So why there is camber on the rear? Shouldn't it be faster with 0?

And i didn't said it was working as it should.
 
It's having an effect - just as it did before 1.09.

But it isn't working as it should.
 
The problem is a poor tire model, pd has been compensating for that since gt5 with these silly preset values that make zero sense.
 

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