Is GT7's overall understeering tendency just "wrong"?

[Greycap]

Ok, so as the user I have the choice between understeering because of still braking, or understeering because of releasing the brakes thus being too fast - great options...

The third option is getting the braking point right instead of overshooting it, slowing down enough, and turning in normally. Braking too late is guaranteed to put you in the wall, as it does in real life.

 

[newmedia_dev]

Ok, so as the user I have the choice between understeering because of still braking, or understeering because of releasing the brakes thus being too fast - great options...

As a user, you can get to the right speed for the turn (grip you are asking) the game has its envelope for this and no amount of real world is going to change that.

As a user you have the choice between optimising:

Braking
Turning
Acceleration

You cannot have all 3 or even 2 at the same time mostly in the game or real life (ignoring weather, budget tires etc etc))

The fastest guys in the world and the subsequent many thousands that get within the 3% threshold aren't understeering off the track and are setting massively impressive times in the game using the game physics.

So really your choice as a user is to understand the game a bit more, analyse your own driving/inputs a bit more and leave reality at the door when you start a game.

 

[Meltac]

The third option is getting the braking point right instead of overshooting it, slowing down enough, and turning in normally. Braking too late is guaranteed to put you in the wall, as it does in real life.

As a user, you can get to the right speed for the turn [...]

So really your choice as a user is to understand the game a bit more, analyse your own driving/inputs a bit more and leave reality at the door when you start a game.

Or: Optimize tuning to get slight yet controllable oversteering instead of massive understeering - the way I use to do it right now.

Because from that point I still can and will optimize my driving style, but without the frustration of the car not turning "correctly" (in my noob sense). Instead the car turns at least half-way "correctly" and I notice the oversteering happening as an optimization point, which feels much better for me than the opposite.

Since, as many of you said IT'S A GAME - so it's supposed to give mainly fun, not frustration. And since apparently many of you don't consider GT7 a real / pure sim, it's not supposed to behave close to real life (which it still doesn't in my opinion).

 

[Tommy_D]

Ok, so as the user I have the choice between understeering because of still braking, or understeering because of releasing the brakes thus being too fast - great options...

One thing that contributes to the rather frustrating feeling that comes with GT7's steering behaviour is that, unlike in real life, you won't realize understeering apart from not reaching the intended corner angle. In real life you often feel, sometimes even hear, the front tires loosing traction and instinctively release the brakes or the throttle (depending on whether braking or accelerating at this time) immediately. In GT7 there's no sign of front tires loosing grip, only the cornering does not happen the way you intended. My real life experiences comes exclusively from road / sports cars, though, no idea how different behaviour in race cars is.

Uhhh... What???? Thats not true for me. My wheel transmits the front end feel just fine. It's likely that your wheel settings are not quite setup correctly. Try taking out some '60's cars to Big Willow and go around that big carousel. You should feel the front end struggling for grip the faster you go. Go too fast and the wheels slide out on you. You should feel the wheel lose its grip.

The previous physics change had absolutely no feel, even with the settings up all the way you could barely feel the front end of car. It wasnt even worth playing the game.

 

[newmedia_dev]

Or: Optimize tuning to get slight yet controllable oversteering instead of massive understeering - the way I use to do it right now.

Just saying dude other peeps seem to be able to do it with tuning or without.

The problem is not the game, it has finite parameters and is consistent. Real world is not and real world doesn't always cross over well to a console game. We are not talking F1/FIA grade simulation models bud.

Because from that point I still can and will optimize my driving style, but without the frustration of the car not turning "correctly" (in my noob sense). Instead the car turns at least half-way "correctly" and I notice the oversteering happening as an optimization point, which feels much better for me than the opposite

The game could do with better modelling but may I ask what controller type and setup are you using?

Since, as many of you said IT'S A GAME - so it's supposed to give mainly fun, not frustration. And since apparently many of you don't consider GT7 a real / pure sim, it's not supposed to behave close to real life (which it still doesn't in my opinion).

It does behave closely to real life, enough close to span the car classes and tuning ranges in the game.

Just look a few of the top times in the dailies or TT or CE ghosts, these cars are not handling bad and setting world level times, so either they are wrong or more than likely the skill gap is a bit bigger than you think it is.

Regardless if it's a sim or arcade or simcade you gotta play to what you have in front of you and no beating down on its physics is helping you drive better for the game in the way the game wants. It's not going to bend to you so you might as well adjust to it.

 

[Meltac]

My wheel transmits the front end feel just fine. It's likely that your wheel settings are not quite setup correctly. Try taking out some '60's cars to Big Willow and go around that big carousel. You should feel the front end struggling for grip the faster you go. Go too fast and the wheels slide out on you. You should feel the wheel lose its grip.

Aha! Now we are finally getting closer! I seem to not have mentioned that I'm on controller, not wheel. My apologies. So might it be that wheels give you feedback where controllers don't?

The game could do with better modelling but may I ask what controller type and setup are you using?

Original Dualshock on PS4. Not sure what you mean by controller setup? I don't use motion steering, that's assigned to the left stick. Key assignments shouldn't matter, do they? Sensivity I've tried all, currently I'm on 7 I think.

EDIT: More precisely:

DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller - PS4 Controller​

 

[newmedia_dev]

Aha! Now we are finally getting closer! I seem to not have mentioned that I'm on controller, not wheel. My apologies. So might it be that wheels give you feedback where controllers don't?


Original Dualshock on PS4. Not sure what you mean by controller setup? I don't use motion steering, that's assigned to the left stick. Key assignments shouldn't matter, do they? Sensivity I've tried all, currently I'm on 7 I think.

EDIT: More precisely:

DUALSHOCK 4 wireless controller - PS4 Controller​

Ok that makes a bit more sense.

When you talk about understeer in the game we aren't talking about the same thing my friend.

I use a wheel and pedals and VR now so my experience is very very different to yours.

Here are two videos one is me in racing this weeks daily in a competitive lobby, you will see there is loads of oversteer and not a lot of understeer, and the other video is using a tuned road car and putting it in the Porsche 911 and the 3rd meta choice 300th in the world and I'm not that good to be honest.

I am playing the EXACT same game as you.

These are not flexes or anything like that just the yang to the point you are trying to make. Understeer is not overly exaggerated in the game and that driving style needs more work than the physics.

Porsche top 300 time



This weeks daily in VR in an all A/S lobby

 

[Meltac]

Ok that makes a bit more sense.

When you talk about understeer in the game we aren't talking about the same thing my friend.

I use a wheel and pedals and VR now so my experience is very very different to yours.

Here are two videos [...]

Thank you for the reply and the videos. But sorry I don't really understand why it makes more sense now. Are you telling me that I got things wrong because I use a controller instead of a wheel / pedals / VR?

if so I still accuse the game of delivering **** but not because of understeering itself but because of having a bad controller implementation.

 

[Meltac]

Just saying dude other peeps seem to be able to do it with tuning or without.

Or put it the other way round: There are peeps (like me) that are able to do it without spending hours of optimizing their driving style because they tune their cars to behave the way they want them to

 

[newmedia_dev]

Thank you for the reply and the videos. But sorry I don't really understand why it makes more sense now. Are you telling me that I got things wrong because I use a controller instead of a wheel / pedals / VR?

if so I still accuse the game of delivering **** but not because of understeering itself but because of having a bad controller implementation.

I'm was trying to be very polite, some practice might go a long way rather than blaming the physics.

I can literally post a dozen Tidgney videos with him getting top 10 times in the world on a controller and wheel, he does them both.

If the game was that rubbish then how can others drive round it with all different setups and controller types.

You are free to question the game and its physics but I'm not sure to what end you want if you to enjoy the game and go faster in it?

Edit:

"Or put it the other way round: There are peeps (like me) that are able to do it without spending hours of optimizing their driving style because they tune their cars to behave the way they want them to "

Brute force it you mean? Sure it's your game abuse the AI and mechanics how you want. But it's your driving style that requires that not the physics in this instance.

 

[PirovacBoy]

I'm conscious of the thread title being a little provocative... but as I said here before, I've never played a racing / driving game on any platform with so heavy tendency to understeer like GT7.

I'm not a race pro or car physics pro, so I've asked a few people (plus ChatGPT ). The result is pretty clear: In real life, normal road cars tend to understeering because it's much better to control than oversteering and thus safer, whereas sports and especially race cars (touring, formula 1 etc.) tend - if neutrality could not be reached - much more often to oversteering than understeering because it's often just "faster" (and pro drivers can control it).

In GT7 however one is forced to tune almost every sports or race car to not understeer when coming from stock. Why? Before the last update oversteering often was difficult to control, so the inaccurate game physics might have been a reason to add understeering tendency, but now it's much better controllable so IMHO there's no reason anymore to have so much understeering.

Thoughts?

No I wouldn't say that GT 7 has a tendency to amplify understeer hence it doesn't do anything wrong.
Of course this is just my personal, opinion, but as someone who drives quite a lot as well as all sorts of cars across all available tire compounds, I have to disagree on your observation.

To put everything even more in some sort of comprehensive relation.
As I'm just answering your question, I just noticed that I've driven over 5000!!! Hours in GT7.
To be precise, 5028 hours 😁

So take my answer for what it is granted but I think I can and have the knowledge to judge the game.

Anyway feel free to disagree.
Cheers 🙂

 

[Nakano219]

I don't know many of you read the post-GTWS interviews this year, Kaz went into this topic a bit (sorry if there's a GTPlanet version of this interview, I couldn't find it).

Gran Turismo’s Kazunori Yamauchi on 30 years of PlayStation and why sim racing shouldn't be difficult

When the opportunity to speak to Gran Turismo lead Kazunori Yamauchi presented itself, it was clear talk about the future was off-limits. Nevertheless, the visionary still had some fascinating points to make about PlayStation’s genesis and sim racing ‘realism’.

traxion.gg

“When we’re talking about physics, we’ve never made the physics focus on entertainment or make the car easier to drive than it is in real life,” the deified developer explained.

“Even still today, the physics simulation in Gran Turismo is the cutting edge in driving simulation. The set-up of the car is made so that anyone can drive it fairly easily, especially racing cars. [It’s designed to] have slight understeer because, for a beginner driver, the most difficult thing to control is when the rear starts sliding out.

“The suspension set-up and the brake balance are all set up initially so that it’s easier for the beginner driver. We also have a lot of different driving assists such as traction control, stability control and steering assist. It’s made so that if you turn those features on, it’s easier to drive.

“For a more professional level driver that wants to have a high-level experience, they can turn all those assists off and then change the [car] settings so that if it’s a driver that prefers a car that oversteers a little bit more, then, we have the freedom to be able to set the car up to what you prefer.”

“I think in the sim racing world there’s a big misunderstanding over the last 20 or more years, where racing cars, real racing cars, are actually really easy to drive.

“[They are] actually much easier to drive than a production model car because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to race at those speeds on the track.

“Somewhere down the line it became this thing where it being difficult to drive is realistic, and that’s not true at all.”

 

[newmedia_dev]

As I'm just answering your question, I just noticed that I've driven over 5000!!! Hours in GT7.
To be precise, 5028 hours 😁

I have 6000 played (driving) and 8500 in the game

We should talk.

To the OP rip the bandaid off, the game has a handling model. Adjust or don't but it's not real physics so you have 2 choices.

 

[Pigems]

.

Ok, so as the user I have the choice between understeering because of still braking, or understeering because of releasing the brakes thus being too fast - great options...

One thing that contributes to the rather frustrating feeling that comes with GT7's steering behaviour is that, unlike in real life, you won't realize understeering apart from not reaching the intended corner angle. In real life you often feel, sometimes even hear, the front tires loosing traction and instinctively release the brakes or the throttle (depending on whether braking or accelerating at this time) immediately. In GT7 there's no sign of front tires loosing grip, only the cornering does not happen the way you intended. My real life experiences comes exclusively from road / sports cars, though, no idea how different behaviour in race cars is.

There are many states of throttle/brake input in between 0% and 100%. They aren’t on/off switches. Learn trail brake, use partial inputs and overlap the brake and throttle, just like you would in a real car, it works very much the same way in game.

 

[Tommy_D]

.


There are many states of throttle/brake input in between 0% and 100%. They aren’t on/off switches. Learn trail brake, use partial inputs and overlap the brake and throttle, just like you would in a real car, it works very much the same way in game.

He said he plays with a controller. I learned Gran Tourismo on GT1 way back in the ‘90’s. I didn’t know I could use the joysticks to control steering and accelerate/braking. So I used the left/right bottons on the d-pad and the square and circle for accelerate and brake. So everything was full 100% inputs.

I don’t know how the OP has his controller inputs sorted out, but it could be full on/full off settings like I had with GT1 and GT2.

 

[Pigems]

He said he plays with a controller. I learned Gran Tourismo on GT1 way back in the ‘90’s. I didn’t know I could use the joysticks to control steering and accelerate/braking. So I used the left/right bottons on the d-pad and the square and circle for accelerate and brake. So everything was full 100% inputs.

I don’t know how the OP has his controller inputs sorted out, but it could be full on/full off settings like I had with GT1 and GT2.

Same here. Even back then, using Square and X for gas and brake, it wasn’t all that hard to understand tapping the button progressively faster or slower until you could hold it down. Using a trigger would only make that easier to gradually ease onto/off of the throttle or the brakes. No it’s not as easy as with pedals, but it can be done.

 

[Tommy_D]

Same here. Even back then, using Square and X for gas and brake, it wasn’t all that hard to understand tapping the button progressively faster or slower until you could hold it down. Using a trigger would only make that easier to gradually ease onto/off of the throttle or the brakes. No it’s not as easy as with pedals, but it can be done.

Of course, but every time you tapped the throttle it was full throttle, then no throttle, then full, then none. It’s nothing like having an actual pedal setup.

I actually pulled out my old PS1 and popped in GT 1 and 2 to try the game again. Holy crap is it terrible. The controls are so delayed. I don’t know how I golded all the license tests (excluding the damn Apricot Hill test with the NSX).

 

[PirovacBoy]

I have 6000 played (driving) and 8500 in the game

We should talk.

How on earth did you manage to put in even more time into the game than me 😮 😅 👍
Amazing.
Send me a friend request so we can enjoy and drive together.
Always a pleasure meeting similar minded people.

 

[Meltac]

Many thanks guys for your posts. It's an interesting discussion, and I appreciate all the recommendations.
Let me comment on a couple of your quotes:

I'm was trying to be very polite, some practice might go a long way rather than blaming the physics.

[...]

Sure it's your game abuse the AI and mechanics how you want. But it's your driving style that requires that not the physics in this instance.

Thank you for being polite and not calling me an unskilled ignoramus (or even worse)

But I don't "abuse" anything. The tuning setups are part of the physics, as they directly affect the car's driving behavior. You can't say gt7's physics model is half-way realistic but changing some car settings is abuse.

No I wouldn't say that GT 7 has a tendency to amplify understeer.

Ok you have much more driving experience in this game than me, so I would like to believe me. But then please tell me, why in almost every movie with car racing / persuit scenes they drift / slide through corners when going fast, thus oversteer. If understeering was "standard" they all should just crash into the next building instead of cornering. Just movie special FX?

There are many states of throttle/brake input in between 0% and 100%. They aren’t on/off switches. Learn trail brake, use partial inputs and overlap the brake and throttle, just like you would in a real car, it works very much the same way in game.

I get what you mean. However, in real life there's no "overlap" between brake and throttle. You use the same foot (right one, normally) for throttling and braking, and that's for a reason. Only in some go-carts you use the left foot for braking.

I only don't understand why most of you wheel-pedal-people always do it the "wrong" way, braking with the left foot. It's just not the way you do it in a real car. That's also why I assigned the brake to R1 instead of L2 - I wan't to use the same finger for throttling and braking. Everything else is just the wrong wy in my opinion.

He said he plays with a controller. I learned Gran Tourismo on GT1 way back in the ‘90’s. I didn’t know I could use the joysticks to control steering and accelerate/braking. So I used the left/right bottons on the d-pad and the square and circle for accelerate and brake. So everything was full 100% inputs.

I don’t know how the OP has his controller inputs sorted out, but it could be full on/full off settings like I had with GT1 and GT2.

R2 = throttle, R1 = brake. These two are not on/off but provide gradual input, but of course it's much more difficult to control partial input than with pedals. Especially R1 feels like on/off.

As a user, you can get to the right speed for the turn (grip you are asking) the game has its envelope for this and no amount of real world is going to change that.

As a user you have the choice between optimising:

Braking
Turning
Acceleration

You cannot have all 3 or even 2 at the same time mostly in the game or real life (ignoring weather, budget tires etc etc))

I'm using the braking zone indicators as an assist (those fat red horizontal stripes). They usually start very early and stop a little before the apex. I even sometimes use auto-drive braking which respects those indicators. That way I almost never release the brake very late, and I start the full turn only after releasing the brakes, and I throttle gradually. I've also been practicing trail braking for a while. So I honestly don't think I'm doing anything completely wrong. Not perfect, most probably. But not fully wrong. And still I feel that most cars tend to understeer, at least with stock settings.

And for all those saying that the physics are realistic and there's no amplified understeering in the game: Have you every driven the Jaguar VGT SV? In that car, steering as almost impossible at all unless you're very, very slow. I could push the stick full left or right, and almost nothing happens (and I'm not braking at all). Now tell me that this is real behaviour!

 

[Nebuc72]

I get what you mean. However, in real life there's no "overlap" between brake and throttle. You use the same foot (right one, normally) for throttling and braking, and that's for a reason. Only in some go-carts you use the left foot for braking.

I only don't understand why most of you wheel-pedal-people always do it the "wrong" way, braking with the left foot. It's just not the way you do it in a real car. That's also why I assigned the brake to R1 instead of L2 - I wan't to use the same finger for throttling and braking. Everything else is just the wrong wy in my opinion.

It is very much the way you do it in a race car - for the obvious reason, you get the ability to control both throttle and brake.

The clutch doesn't matter as much whilst you're racing. You don't need immediate control over it.

Most race cars won't even have a clutch pedal and will have an automatic clutch, shifted by paddles on the back of the wheel. That's how pretty much any modern GT car is done. Here's a interior shot of the 296 GT3. No clutch pedal.

 

[Scaff]

I get what you mean. However, in real life there's no "overlap" between brake and throttle. You use the same foot (right one, normally) for throttling and braking, and that's for a reason. Only in some go-carts you use the left foot for braking.

I only don't understand why most of you wheel-pedal-people always do it the "wrong" way, braking with the left foot. It's just not the way you do it in a real car.

So confidently wrong it's astonishing.

Not only is left foot braking a technique that can be used on road cars, but it's pretty much the norm in the vast majority of race cars. That's without talking about how trail braking is overlapping your braking and throttle application.

 

[newmedia_dev]

I think the grasp of the actual mechanics/basics is missing let alone more advanced techniques like heel and toe or left foot braking.....

 

[eran0004]

Thanks. Hmm, so it's less "difficult" if your car runs straight out of a corner and crashes into the wall than if its tail would break out a little while you still can catch the corner in a "drifting" manner? No offense or anything, I just couldn't figure out while most games consider it better / easier having cars drifting through corners (oversteer) while only GT7 obviously likes players crashing into walls. (I haven't played yet ACC or PC2, though, no idea how these behave here).

It's about stability. Understeer is a stable configuration while oversteer is an unstable configuration. In a stable configuration it's harder to change direction, but you're less likely to lose control. In an unstable configuration it's easier to change direction but also harder to stay in control.

If you keep crashing into walls it's a pretty good sign that you're going too fast.

 

[Meltac]

It is very much the way you do it in a race car - for the obvious reason, you get the ability to control both throttle and brake.

The clutch doesn't matter as much whilst you're racing. You don't need immediate control over it.

Most race cars won't even have a clutch pedal and will have an automatic clutch, shifted by paddles on the back of the wheel. That's how pretty much any modern GT car is done. Here's a interior shot of the 296 GT3. No clutch pedal.

Not only is left foot braking a technique that can be used on road cars, but it's pretty much the norm in the vast majority of race cars.

I must confess I have never been driving a race car. My apologies for not knowing what techniques are being applied there.

I had been under the impression that touring cars where basically heavily pimped / tuned road cars. At least most of them look like that. So I thought the mechanisms would also be basically the same as in road cars. I have not been talking about F1 / super formula and that sort of racing categories - these are not focus in GT7. I knew that those cars work differently.

Also, the majority of cars in GT7 are road cars, not race cars, agreed? So, it would be obvious in my opinion to focus on road cars when it comes to physics and driving techniques. Sure, you CAN use left foot braking on a road car - but would you? I do not know the rules in your country, but where I live it's prohibited under penalty. Everybody is tought to use right foot exclusively for both throttling and braking. LEFT FOOT NEVER EVER TOUCHES THE BRAKES is the motto - regardless of whether you run with manual or automatic transmission.

Also, everybody's just upset about me not knowing how race cars work - but nobody's commenting on my "real" points !?? :

Ok you have much more driving experience in this game than me, so I would like to believe me. But then please tell me, why in almost every movie with car racing / persuit scenes they drift / slide through corners when going fast, thus oversteer. If understeering was "standard" they all should just crash into the next building instead of cornering. Just movie special FX?

I'm using the braking zone indicators as an assist (those fat red horizontal stripes). They usually start very early and stop a little before the apex. I even sometimes use auto-drive braking which respects those indicators. That way I almost never release the brake very late, and I start the full turn only after releasing the brakes, and I throttle gradually. I've also been practicing trail braking for a while. So I honestly don't think I'm doing anything completely wrong. Not perfect, most probably. But not fully wrong. And still I feel that most cars tend to understeer, at least with stock settings.

And for all those saying that the physics are realistic and there's no amplified understeering in the game: Have you every driven the Jaguar VGT SV? In that car, steering as almost impossible at all unless you're very, very slow. I could push the stick full left or right, and almost nothing happens (and I'm not braking at all). Now tell me that this is real behaviour!

 

[newmedia_dev]

 

[Talon16]

No.
The AI still drives to the same rules the game puts down on the player.

Then how do you explain a two identical car race (Gr3 Viper in this case), with BoP on and rubber banding off, where I am on RMs and the AI is on RH, and the AI puts in a lap time four seconds faster than I can?

Doesn't matter the conditions, the AI cheats big time. And it's easy to tell where, too... on the straights (or oval bits in this case). Going thru the infield I am .750" purple; once I hit the bus stop, back in blue/red; by the finish line, four seconds off. It magically gets a ridiculous amount of speed in the WoT areas.

It goes the other way, too. When I come out of the pits I am ~12 seconds behind the AI. I'll catch and pass it in less than two laps. Then all of the sudden it can "keep up" (if you consider putting five seconds on it immediately then it keeping that delta regardless of me being on new RMs and it being on old RHs).

If you put the AI on hard, even if it's slow as can be, it cheats in an attempt to make the race "close." This happens all the time when I set up a 1P GTWS simulation. It's lame.

 

[Meltac]

View attachment 1428438

My question was not why there is an understeering tendency of (road) cars in real life, but if or why GT7 amplifies it.

 

[newmedia_dev]

My question was not why there is an understeering tendency of (road) cars in real life, but if or why GT7 amplifies it.

I don't think it does, if anything I'd say that it's the lack of feeling the actual speed in a game it's easy to drive the car faster than in real life.

It's just the nature of it being a game and not appreciating just how fast you are travelling, stopping distances, steering angles are easy to over exaggerate in the game and especially with a controller.

 

[bliprunner]

I don't know many of you read the post-GTWS interviews this year, Kaz went into this topic a bit (sorry if there's a GTPlanet version of this interview, I couldn't find it).

Gran Turismo’s Kazunori Yamauchi on 30 years of PlayStation and why sim racing shouldn't be difficult

When the opportunity to speak to Gran Turismo lead Kazunori Yamauchi presented itself, it was clear talk about the future was off-limits. Nevertheless, the visionary still had some fascinating points to make about PlayStation’s genesis and sim racing ‘realism’.

traxion.gg

Thanks for posting this, it basically confirms what many people assumed.

Kaz:

The set-up of the car is made so that anyone can drive it fairly easily, especially racing cars. [It’s designed to] have slight understeer because, for a beginner driver, the most difficult thing to control is when the rear starts sliding out.

PD have changed the physics a few times, I don't hate the latest change but stock cars generally still understeer. As Kaz also says, experienced drivers can adjust the setup to remove the understeer, which is fine but changing setting for every car is pretty time consuming.

 

[benjoi84]

In all fairness, the tendency to understeer under throttle (especially road cars) has really taught me a few lessons on my left-hand brake modulation, in order to get the turn-in required to compensate. Get it pointed, man!