GT5 Ballast and Weight Distribution Calculator

[sanmusa]

With the latest updates allowing ballast placement on GT5 there's a lot of arguing about where to place ballast on any car.

I made this handy Ballast and Weight Distribution Calculator, use it and let me know what you think.

The calculator assumes that position -50 is over the front axle, and 50 is over the rear axle.

Use this calculator to figure out the proper amount and position of ballast necessary to get your car close to a 50:50 weight distribution.

Get the GT5 Ballast and Weight Distribution Calculator here.

Use online sources to find out real world weight distribution for your car, like this:

Skyline r34 weight distribution

Ferrari 458 Italia Weight Distribution

You get the idea...

Please give constructive criticism on the calculator.

 

[budious]

First off, I'm not sure why everyone assumes GT5 mirrors real world weight distribution, then figure in possible upgrades moving it anyways...

Weight of the car in game is questionable itself, that may be the manufacturer's unloaded weight specification, but obviously if you drive the car in endurance mode the car becomes lighter as fuel is used, the fuel appears to have a 50/50 weight distribution as far as I can determine. The fuel cell holds 100L which is 100KG, if we want to consider Bob and his safety equipment, let's add another 100KG in. A car listed as 1150KG on the game menu may be driving on the track as if it is at 1250 or 1350KG...

I'm kind of starting to look at weight distribution in the physics engine for GT in terms of initial ballasts; consider, Front Ballast of 550KG at -40 and Rear Ballast of 600KG at +45 as the way the game may assign and calculate weight distribution to a car to give each unique handling properties. Adding a third ballast just becomes an user defined extension of this weight distribution modeling.

Anyways, the calculator you provided was the same as my basic assumptions and should work in theory if implied conjecture is to be assumed...

 

[sanmusa]

Sure, but we can only go by what is given to us by PD (car weight and arbitrary ballast positions), and use real world data (published weight distribution figures), and extrapolate that PD used similar data to make their cars. It is frustrating that while GT5 wants to be the ultimate driving simulator it has this huge disconnect with the real world.

I am now testing my calculator on a few GT5 cars, but I am not that good of a driver and would like others to give it a try too and tell me what they think.

This calculator is not an end all be all for ballast and weight distribution, but just a tool to be used with the game, hopefully it will prove some good results. It's all basic math anyway, I just got the paper and pencil out of the equation.

 

[daveyules]

cool

 

[Poppins]

or ill just leave my ballast at nothing and leave my speed 12 at 65% front 35% rear.

 

[sanmusa]

I was playing with this yesterday and found out that even the cars with the gnarliest handling issues (Ruf CTR...) won't benefit from throwing too much ballast too far forward. My CTR was handling horrible with a lot of ballast on its nose. While I am still working on the CTR, I am almost finished with a Ruf RGT tune, using a bit of ballast correction, for which I used my tool above.

For the RGT I attempted achieving a 41% weight distribution (extrapolating from a real world weight distribution of 37% on front axle), while at the same time not adding too much weight, nor putting the new weight too far forward... a balancing act. The RGT as it is right now handles very well (IMHO), and even with 515 hp it i totally controllable. I am in the final stages of fine tuning the setup, will be posting it to Moose Knuckle Tuning when I am done later today.

 

[daveyules]

Keep in mind the RUFs have offset tire sizes front and rear specifically due to the weight distribution of the car. I feel as though ballast would be better used on a front-engined car to encourage oversteer.

 

[Endless-Wilso]

so am i correct in asuming -negitive is towreds the front and positive is towred the rear ?

 

[Poppins]

I wouldnt put ballast on ANY car unless it is to meet weight restrictions.

 

[TT3AZ]

I will do anything just so my Supra can beat all cars.

 

[tuga703]

I have encountered a problem with your calculator where the New total vehicle weight is changing depending on where i add the ballast, i also get weird results if the position added in 0 .

 

[Speed Drifter]

I'm having the exact same problem. To me it looks like your tool calculates the new weight only for front or rear after I have input the ballast position. Been trying to figure out what the calculator is doing but it's beyond my math skills.. It would be really wonderful if you can fix it

 

[sanmusa]

Very weird, it was working for me before, but I just downloaded the version I uploaded and the math seems to be all weird... I'll look into it and repost... The math is flawed as it is only working properly for negative values... positive values (including zero) are wielding some crap results.

 

[Speed Drifter]

Any idea yet how to fix the bug?

 

[AlphaGnomeo]

Sometime ago, I started trying to use ballast to acheive a more neutral weight distribution. To test it out, I would remove any differences between front and rear settings, add ballast and take the car to Indy. In theory at least, netural weight distribution should yield neutral cornering with no understeer or oversteer - kind of like the way the '09 Corvette takes the corners. It seemed to work pretty well. I was able to get the RUF to behave much better. Perhaps you can use the same observation process to estimate where the ballast is really located.

 

[Speed Drifter]

Well, it looks like the new update patch has eliminated the need for this spreadsheet calculator. The game actually shows the weight balance after you've adjusted the ballast! thank you PD

 

[No_OBsT33R]

Awesome addition however the 3.60 eboot has me back on 1.09 has anybody check if this was accurot?