Thank you for the level headed responses guys. They are appreciated. And I didn't get a single, "yup you suck quit" so thanks for that!
You know that you can bring up the full HUD when watching a replay?
It is less about copying somebody and more about understanding where they are finding the time. If you see that you can run a little wider out of 1 corner and carry and extra 5km/h on to a straight, that'll find you half a second.
If somebody is carrying a lot more speed through a corner, you can see how and when they used the brakes and try that out.
I race in a Sunday league who has quite a few aliens. If I don't know how they are doing said lap time, I'll ask them and then jump on their bonnet and find out what they are doing different to me.
Once you start a replay if you press the circle button on your DS4 a menu will pop up on screen where you can change driving view, turn on HUD, fast forward, pause, rewind, etc. That will help you a lot when viewing replays. Also remember that at a track like Autopolis that has connecting corners sometimes you have to give up one corner to be faster in another corner which could shave massive time for you. I have not spent a lot of time there yet so I dont know if that holds true there. Lastly dont forget that being fast on a video game is far different than being fast in a real car. We lose so much input on a video game, we only have vision (2D at that), some computer generated steering feedback, and sound to help us "feel" what the car is telling us which is vastly limited to what a car can "say to us" in real life when driven in anger. The thing that really helped me get up to speed was spending a lot of time qualifying for one of the " daily" races. I often would drive 60-100 laps per day just qualifying and not even bothering to race for a week at a time. When you drive that many laps in one day you quickly learn that you didnt know the track as well as you thought you did. When you get back to it the next day you will most likely find our your lap times improve the next day after you have had time to sleep on that experience and brain has processed all of the info. I can usually get in the top 100, often the top 50 in our region if I work hard on a race which is all I can expect with my advancing age and far less than perfect vision. If you keep at it the speed will come. Also remember if you are racing AI you spend too much time dodging the AI to put in fast laps.
AHA!! I had no idea the HUD was there! I knew you could change cameras, but I've found the replay useless because I've been unable to see the inputs. I did not know it was there because it was hidden by the replay controls until I hit "O", as you suggested thank you!, and lo and behold the angels sang upon me and the replay controls disappeared revealing the holy script of race data! I had no freaken idea. Grrrrr I'll own some of that as my stupidity, but also blame PD for poor usability, layering controls is a no-no. Probably in a manual somewhere, I'm of the belief if I have to use a manual for usability in a video game like this it ain't intuitive. I also have an issue where hitting square on the wheel changes the camera, but it does not when I do so on the DS4. Button seems to work elsewhere. Shrug. So yeah. Anyway. Minor epiphany there. This provides me with a pile of info I didn't know I had all along and I can now see very specific things that I can try and replicate, or train myself to do.
It's not copying, it's learning. When you learn skiing, you watch how the instructor/friend instructor transfer his weight on the skis in the turns, how much pressure on the shins ou should put, what angle the legs should make with the slope etc. If you learn by youself you will ski terribly, back seat, wrong weight transfer etc...
Driving is a bit the same as skiing. There is a theory behing everything and every technique (when to brake, how to brake, when to accelerate, how to negociate off camber turns etc), and if you try to find how to be faster by yourself, you are essentially gonna have to redemonstrate/re experiment over 100 years of driving/racing history, or (in that case) many years of racing game theory on "how to be faster".
I like this analogy. As someone who is learning to ice skate at a certain age what I have found is someone telling me what I need to do does not work as well as someone watching me and telling me what I'm doing wrong. These somewhat complex physical movements and reactions are an interesting study in transitioning knowledge from implicit to explicit, or as a lifelong skating friend said to me "my god, I have no idea what to tell you about how to skate backwards". So, I think to put eyes on myself I will need to save my replays and compare them to the faster ones. Especially now since I can see the bloody race info properly! And sharing them here has helped too.
If you're matching the leaderboard's replay, you should be hanging by a thread on every single exit, being thrown to the outer edge of the track. I usually only learn a few corners at that level and that's enough to keep me within 5 seconds of the regional leaderboard time. Pulling an optimum exit out of a corner usually feels like some kind of physics trick when I'm able to pull it off.
I know how you feel, that the experience from real life racing would somehow affect how good you are in this game.
Like you, I have background in motorsports, karting, trackdays and even competed in pro level drifting for 4 seasons.
I was quite fast in this game when started, but had played these since GT1 (became even faster when got wheel that was not broken)
I suggest that you throw everything that you remember how to drive karts etc to trash bin. Only the racecraft you learnt from those days is useful in this game.
Then learn how to play this game, from scratch. Just remember it's a game, had to remind me often about that. If it becomes too serious, take a break.
I take long time to qualify, to get good as possible place in grid. higher you are, cleaner it is. (usually anyways)
Also it takes some driving for me to get on speed, cant just jump on race and find the best pace.
Time takes its toll, I'm 42y old so warm up is needed
Interesting, a friend I used to kart with found that the real world experience translated well for him, and as I said at the beginning of this he thought it would for me and that has puzzled us both. The problem is my butt! I don't get to use my butt in the simulation and my ass has incredible car feel. It's what would have made me F1 champ.
If I'm honest with myself I think I'm trying to use the benefits of real world experience when they don't apply and not taking advantage of the simulation/game and it's part of my lack of speed. That doesn't make a lot of sense, maybe this example will help. I watched deafsun's video a few times last night, with race data!, and discovered in the group 2 car he is downshifting at or very close to the apex on a lot of the corners at Autopolis. It's giving him grip through the turn and or forward bite for coming out of the corner. Of course for the most part, we do not shift at the apex for real life (how my kid asks if something is for real). Maybe in this type of car we would? Sports cars generally no. You're just gonna upset it. Maybe with these fancy hyperfast transmissions it's not as much of an issue if the revs are close enough? Dunno, regardless if it's for real life or video game voodoo that is working for him on this circuit.
Since my previous problem has been braking and trail braking(getting better) my behaviour has been to slam down through the gears while braking in an engine destroying pattern, not matching the timing to anything except a rod shattering panic stop. Recently
Kie had a video about a race where Igor was chasing him and he noted how Igor was using the lower gear to maintain/create that forward bite. I tried it a bit and it did work well for me. I watched a couple other videos,
@daan's one of doing Dragon Trail Premium Lounge race at n200 has been a learning experience, and it's not just what gear to be in for each corner but WHEN to select that gear that seems to buy time. I've been downshifting inappropriately. It's a new technique so I'm still sloppy/having to untrain my muscle memory, but ultimately it has revealed to me I'm not using my transmission effectively. I did the endurance race at Autopolis last night and the first 15 laps I was a ragged mess in last trying some of approaches from deafsuns video then as I started to come to grips with the downshift timing I went on to win by considerably more than I have previously.
Did you use Medium tyres in campaign mode? Even if you did, the car might be slower there than in Sport Mode qualifying mode, e.g. due to BoP, or it's known that the latter simulates the car's weight as if the tank was empty.
That said, Gr. 2 cars do require pushing very hard to go as fast as possible. It can be surprising how much time one can lose in corners, while feeling like it's about to go flying off. It takes a while to get a feeling for what's possible.
For improving, I can highly recommend participating in WRS time trial events:
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/board/gtp-weekly-race-series-time-trials.117/ Some very fast people there, and one can learn a lot from them, either directly in the event discussion threads or watching their replays. I started just over a year ago, was originally placed in division 2 silver, have been promoted to division 1 silver, and it looks like I have a shot at getting to division 1 gold:
http://wrs.gtplanet.net/driver/MrCooper77/ =>
http://wrs.gtplanet.net/registry/ =>
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/official-gtsport-wrs-registry.372848/ . I was DR B when I started, now I'm at ~45K points and might have a shot at becoming A+ at some point. I spend about an hour each day participating in WRS events or practising otherwise.
Another recommendation is participating in FIA Nations/Manufacturers Cup races. Usually good racing with closely matched drivers, much more so than daily races.
No, my settings were different, but I was aware of that. regardless of settings nine seconds was just too much time to blame on anything except being slow.
And yeah, unfortunately I think you and the others who mentioned it are right in that I should probably be participating in a community to learn, communities create knowledge faster than individuals after all, but if it weren't obvious there's a small pride issue here. My ego is probably gonna get butt hurt by racing publicly until I get myself to some arbitrary baseline like I dunno, crushing Kie's times consistently.
At this point, I now have a few tangibles to work on AND race data in replays. Literally a game changer. I changed a part of the game and it's different now. Game changer. Now that I can see the inputs/data in the replays I gave the Gr 2 race a go again trying some of the same things. Not the exact same parameters as what is in the video, but close enough that I should be able to find some of that nine seconds. What I have found in trying to match deafsun's corner speeds is that I am understeering off the track pretty quickly. So, I'm not doing something right, whether that's the gear choice, angle of approach or a bit of braking for stability I do not know. It's also quite possible the Group 2 is beyond my skill to drive near its limits right now. And this has made me realize I am applying the same driving style to each class of cars. I don't adapt to them, or take advantage of their abilities. This is having a pile of implications that I need to sort through. But I think I need to spend some time in slower cars and reaching their limits as spending time in the faster cars is just covering up what I'm not doing well with their better grip/acceleration/braking, you know, race car stuff. Too bad there isn't some sort of driving school that moves through levels and helps people improve with activities specific to their skill level....
