Have you ever thought that tuning was useless? And changed your mind later?

[Lucas]

Two years ago I got Gran Turismo 4. I really enjoyed the game, and I still enjoy it today. Can't get enough of it. But the past months, in my summer vacations, I came up with the following: GT4 tuning. Now, I know the existence of the "search" button. I typed to following word: "tuning". Basically, around 80 threads popped up. No one discussed what I was looking for. I am not the usual person that post threads. I have only made four threads: my race report/story, which I'm very proud of, a poll which was not succesfull at all, and a discussion about FF's. None of them got locked.


That was sort of an introduction, and I apologize before-hand if a thread like this already existed. Please point me out where, and I will be happy to dig it out. I did not created this thread in the sub-forum of settings and tuning, since I wasn't requesting settings, nor posting them. If moderators believe this thread is worth the space, yet is in the wrong location, I would be glad if you moved it. Now to the point: One year ago, tuning was basically a formula to me. Where every car had the same tuning, no matter what drivetrain. I also used R5 tires. Fast-forward to this year. Tuning is now a different thing today. I have a Honda S2000 Type-V, bought from the dealers. For months, this was my favourite car. Today, I slapped S3 tires on it and went for a spin in Costa Di Amalfi. I got around 2'09.xxx. The car had 293hp, and every modification. I thought this was really slow, and I was right. With my new knowledge of tuning, and went in, and changed camber angle, shocks, stabilizers and downforce. The result was a whole different car, pulling out 2'04.8xx. I know there may be tuners with better skills than myself, so the car could be improved.

The question I want to do to you, fellow members, is: "Have you ever thought (at the beginning), that tuning was boring, useless, and have you changed your thoughts about it?" I have. And I'm damn glad that I did, seeing today's results.

 

[Skv012a]

I NEVER thought it was useless, just at first (in all such games) I didn't quite understand how each settings affected the performance. I'm about halfway done learning all this mess and can defenetly say that it makes two worlds of difference- not just tuning vs not-tuning, but tuning vs better/best tuning.

 

[Parnelli Bone]

I never thought tuning was useless. My first racing sim on the Ps1 was actually Ford Racing, in which the tuning is very limited. You can set the suspension from "soft" to "hard" for instance. And that's it!

So when I got GT1, and got the ability to try out all the stuff I had read about in Road & Track magazine (camber angles, ground clearance, different tire grades, etc) I was like a kid in a candy store!

My only problem nowadays is sometimes I'll get lazy, and won't extensively try to tune out a problem that I'm having. Not like in the old days when I used to literally sit there for hours trying different combinations and such. 💡

 

[Skv012a]

I'll defenetly have to read up one of the tuning guides here to get all my cars to the shape I want and especially drifting.

 

[in.s@ne]

Yes, I thought tuning was useless, and it's worth noting that I did around 25% of the game on completely stock settings... it wasn't until a friend dragged me here (aka CamryFan) that I took notice of the settings and noticed what a hell of a difference it made.

 

[panjandrum]

Interestingly, I have kind of the opposite reaction. When I first started playing GT4 I read-up on tuning and became fairly good at it. I also went through a stage where I tried for about a month obsessively to get the bloody Ford GT road car to "behave" (some of the tunes I tried on that car were totally whacked, and some of them worked fairly well, but in the end nothing worked as well as simply learning how to drive it properly).

BUT, what I discovered is that all I was really doing was reducing the "unique essence" of the various cars. Sure, I could then drive some of them more easily, and even faster, but they no longer felt anywhere near as unique. I finally started running almost everything close to stock and concentrated on learning the cars. For me this was much MUCH more fun.

Even now in GT5P I most often race with suspension-tuning is as close to stock as possible. When I do change the suspension setup at all, I will do so as little as possible, and I will try to retain the overall unique feel of the car.

 

[Watchman]

I never thought tuning was useless.. Yes, I'm not a tuner, but I use setups from garages in order to get all out of a car.. But also I try to leave cars stock, in order to make races more interesting.. I like challenges and because of that I usually don't tune cars and try to win without changing anything.. 👍..

Best wishes,

S-Line Audi Fan

 

[Lucas]

I mainly tune to race against myself, so to speak. I find it fun how some cars improve little from tuning, while others change drastically.

 

[Mazda Mazda]

I tune minimally, I find it confusing.

 

[Supra_addict]

Well at first i thought o maximum horsepower duh!!!!! Bust as i played i matured into tuning everything

 

[zed300]

I have never thought tuning was useless.It is a method of tailoring a car to do what you feel it needs to do, to go faster.Everybody drives slightly differently, so therefore the car needs to be setup slightly differently for each of us to get the best from ourselves.

Some drivers can't relate to the specifics of tuning, some tuners can't push the car as far as the car is capable. They linked but not directly.
Tuning is a skill of trial and error, separate to driving which is also trial and error.

I tune my own cars and do not decide on what needs to be done on a general basis.
I put a few things into perspective first.
Run the car in Time Trial,this way you can use the ghost car to judge the improvement.

 

[Lucas]

A huge problem I found with tuning is that, you can't find a perfect setup. When I mean perfect, I mean a setup that is the quickest of them all, providing that the driver can pull off the fastests time, each and every time. This sounds stupid, so let me put it this way:

Imagine a computer. 2+2=4, right? Everytime you do that sum, it will come out 4, no matter what. Now put it this way: Imagine a driver. Imagine that it's not a person, but a computer, programmed to pull off the fastest time with any given setup, and there's no way to improve it, and obviously no human could pull the fastest time not even once, since it would require it to be perfect in any way possible. Now, imagine you could enter a "setup" in a program, so the AI would pull off the fastest time with that setup. Assume it pulls off a 2'10.330 in Grand Valley Speedway, I don't know. Now, let's say you change the front rebound from 6 to 7. Imagine that the car now pulls 2'10.250. See? That would be awesome, and I believe many would think it is absurd, because of course it is, since it takes away the tuning experience. My point is that tuning may seem a bit useless sometimes, because the driver can't pull off the same times every time he drives. Thus, sometimes he may drive faster, but the car is actually worse. It's a matter of luck. I must say that the idea of the program came to my mind the other day. I would definitely like to see a car running at its fastest potential, with the fastest driver. Comparing tuning and skills, AND time would be definitely something that I hope someone does someday.

 

[Parnelli Bone]

Interestingly, I have kind of the opposite reaction. When I first started playing GT4 I read-up on tuning and became fairly good at it. I also went through a stage where I tried for about a month obsessively to get the bloody Ford GT road car to "behave" (some of the tunes I tried on that car were totally whacked, and some of them worked fairly well, but in the end nothing worked as well as simply learning how to drive it properly).

BUT, what I discovered is that all I was really doing was reducing the "unique essence" of the various cars. Sure, I could then drive some of them more easily, and even faster, but they no longer felt anywhere near as unique. I finally started running almost everything close to stock and concentrated on learning the cars. For me this was much MUCH more fun.

Thank you! Geez, I've been saying this for years now. There's nothing wrong with tuning, but there often is a downside....

Even now in GT5P I most often race with suspension-tuning is as close to stock as possible. When I do change the suspension setup at all, I will do so as little as possible, and I will try to retain the overall unique feel of the car.

Yup. the more settings and parts that are used, the less each car's true personality & feeling is left behind.

 

[Vince247]

Thank you! Geez, i've been saying this for years now. There's nothing wrong with tuning, but there often is a downside....

Yup. the more settings and parts that are used, the less each car's true personality & feeling is left behind.

I agree with you panjandrum. Why would one drive a car when he/she erases it's personality eventually through tuning and makes it drive like lots of other cars he already has.

Now, wouldn't it be a good idea to sell all the cars you have in your GT4 garage, only to keep the cars you really want to get to know? For me this would be impossible, because I am a collector. Almost every car in my garage has a story to it, and I don't think I would have the guts to sell them.

But really, sometimes I just don't like some part of the cars personality. If this limits the cars potential, I don't mind to change it. Yeah I know I'm a bad driver, but by 'tailoring' the suspension to my needs can make the difference in some races.

edit: almost forgot to answer the question.

To summarize my history with GT4.

I got to know racing with these arcade games like NFS etc... A friend of mine introduced me to GT4, I really enjoyed the simulated racing, it was something completely different to what I was used to.
Normally, I would just do my best until I got as many cars as possible with rallying, License tests and others. Then I got rich and lazy, so I'd 'tune' the car with all parts available, adjust nothing and then be depressed when I lost.
Nowadays, I buy/win a car that I like. I take it for a couple of spins at different locations, look what it needs to fit my needs(wordjoke) and then tune it so it handles in the way I like it to. Most of them end up in RVV, the tuner shop in my signature. This all is done for one purpose: enjoy the ride.

 

[I-ROC]

At first, I though suspension tuning was useless and power was all I needed. I relized after I started, that its quite the opposite.