Physics thread

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I have found it useful myself. I only have an old DF Pro.

I found the settings very daunting at first and also felt there were too many options. So I did a lot of reading & worrying that I would be unable to find the "right" settings. In the end I felt the only way I was going to achieve anything was by testing myself.

I took one car, drove it hundreds of miles on it's default settings to acclimatise to the default feel, it was very rough and at about the maximum force. It was really hard work. Then I remembered I had been trying to fake some wheel resistance in an old driving game. So I turned off the logitech profilers centre spring and other settings, and did another 200 miles :dunce:

Then I turned on the telemetry and watch the clipping graph. I used that to initially dial down the global tyre force. Then I played with each of the in car settings 1 by 1, driving between each etc...

With just the Fx,Fy,Fz, Mz and master scale I was able to get a fabulous amount of detail from my ageing wheel. I saved that across all setups.

Now when I go into a new car I always do some laps watching the clipping graph and have found multiple times were I have to adjust the individual vehicle to eliminate clipping.

Now I think nothing of getting into a new car and fiddling with the FFB a little.

Yes, these settings are great. But they shouldn't be per car! They should be global settings. For the reasons I have stated time and again in the last few hours.
 
Man, you really aren't understanding what force feedback is are you?

Force feedback translates the games physical properties. If you change the force feedback in the way Project CARS allows you to, you change that translation. Therefore, every single person will be playing a different translation of the physical properties to everyone else... so essentially, we're all playing a different physical rulebook.

We have enough problems with time differences between the different steering wheels people have. We've now got the situation where you can find x amount of time, by solely changing how the car handles through force feedback. We haven't even got onto car setups yet.
I do understand it very well, and i don't care for your tone neither.
Read what mr_serious said, and good luck if you want to encounter that out of the box sim where the FFB will be perfect for everyone on every wheel :rolleyes:
 
So basically you are telling me that it was on feel alone. And you see I’m not convinced that is the case. I urge to try it for yourself and even then I don’t think you will agree with me, seeing how quick you are to defend the game.
It must be as I'm sure there is nothing stopping you going faster with default settings apart from confidence you get personally in the force feedback. I will give changing a FFB a go one day but I doubt it will have much impact in my ultimate speed.
 
@mister dog If you understand it, then you would understand that by allowing us to wildly change settings per car isn't realistic

Every other racing simulator has global feedback properties, that work!
 
It must be as I'm sure there is nothing stopping you going faster with default settings apart from confidence you get personally in the force feedback. I will give changing a FFB a go one day but I doubt it will have much impact in my ultimate speed.
So you are just dismissing all I said because you believe blindly that this is not the case. OK…
 
It must be as I'm sure there is nothing stopping you going faster with default settings apart from confidence you get personally in the force feedback. I will give changing a FFB a go one day but I doubt it will have much impact in my ultimate speed.

If you change the feedback settings, you'll find you've got far more feel on what the car is doing. The more you understand what the car is doing, the quicker you'll get up to speed.
 
Dude, how can it not feel correct?

Look. Force Feedback should tell you what the cars are doing. It's supposed to be general for all cars. Each car will then feel different naturally, due to the physics engine. What is so difficult to understand about that?!

You shouldn't need to tell the force feedback for one car to be lighter on turn in, and on another car be heavier. It should do that regardless of your settings. A lighter turn in should be physics based, not force feedback setting based.

Put simply, Force Feedback should be the games way of translating to you what the physics are doing. Nothing more. If you start fiddling with each car individually in a force feedback sense, you are directly changing how the physics translate to yourself. How in any way can this be a 'realistic' interpretation of the physics if you're essentially changing its translation on every car?

Why should you need to manage car traits on a force feedback basis? Surely that's what the cars physical setup settings should be used for...

Actually I think FFB reflexive. It is two way communication, because whilst it does indeed provide you with feedback of what the car is doing it is also your primary means of telling the car what to do next.

Also don't forget FFB signals are orders of magnitude simpler than the reality they are attempting to recreate and then have to be presented to a variety of different hardware, simulating those forces using a range of different methods.

The error margins must be huge.

I found the hours I spent de-mystifying the FFB settings through testing very enjoyable and like that I can easily tweak the feel of each car if necessary.
 
So you are just dismissing all I said because you believe blindly that this is not the case. OK…
Yep, if I can challenge for top positions on default FFB, imagine if I gain that much from FFB change like yourself, I would be seriously fast then so I think that will not be the case on that presumption. It will be great for me if it was the case though.
If you change the feedback settings, you'll find you've got far more feel on what the car is doing. The more you understand what the car is doing, the quicker you'll get up to speed.
I understand that but find default more than good enough to get up to speed really quickly. Every little helps though so will definitely look into it when I have more time but think it is better to understand setup more at the moment as it seems likely to help the most regarding lap times.
 
Honest question, do you guys care more about how the game translate/simulate correctly ( regardless of what wheel used ) how the specific real car steering wheel behave/react to input and road condition or prefer whatever that you think is realistic to the real car it represent/best for you ?

Take the Lancer Evo X FQ400 for example, if the real car has unique steering feel ( weight, play, lock to lock range, etc ) and feedback, would it be ideal that SMS tried to simulate that across all wheel setup then allow some tweaks that would not tarnish the unique character of the car ?

If I were to have Pcars and a wheel, I guess wheel setting will be paramount to give the overall finish of a replica/corrections :sly:
 
Actually I think FFB reflexive. It is two way communication, because whilst it does indeed provide you with feedback of what the car is doing it is also your primary means of telling the car what to do next.

What?! It's called Force Feedback. You tell the car what to do by the steering, braking and throttle inputs. The steering then reacts to what you're telling the game to do. Yes, the whole experience is a two way communication, but the force feedback certainly isn't.

What's so difficult to understand here? I mean really? It's so simple... clearly this game has clouded brains to believe it's more complicated than it actually should be.
 
Yes, these settings are great. But they shouldn't be per car! They should be global settings. For the reasons I have stated time and again in the last few hours.
Why not given that you can change how feel and feedback occur in cars in reality?

I've already pointed out that I can change very dramatically the feel and feedback I get via the steering on my road car simply by moving a switch, in the All weather setting you get almost no feel and the steering is stupidly light, you simply could not 'press-on' with any confidence on a B-road. Switch it over to Dynamic and the degree of feel, feedback and steering weight all increase and the change in confidence you get when pressing on is night and day.

Can I ask have you ever done something as simple as changing the bushes on a car? Again this seemingly simple action (which I have done on a number of cars) utterly changes the way in which the steering reacts to feedback from the road and imperfections, the play (deadzone) you have in the steering and how much feel you have.

Add in that you can tune all of these factors on any car with mechanical or electric power assistance and its not unrealistic to have the ability to tune feedback, feel and deadzones per car at all.
 
Honest question, do you guys care more about how the game translate/simulate correctly ( regardless of what wheel used ) how the specific real car steering wheel behave/react to input and road condition or prefer whatever that you think is realistic to the real car it represent/best for you ?

Nailed it.
I want the game to translate in a realistic manner for the car.
It's very clear some people want cars to handle in the way they want them to.
 
Yep, if I can challenge for top positions on default FFB, imagine if I gain that much from FFB change like yourself, I would be seriously fast then so I think that will not be the case on that presumption. It will be great for me if it was the case though.

I understand that but find default more than good enough to get up to speed really quickly. Every little helps though so will definitely look into it when I have more time but think it is better to understand setup more at the moment as it seems likely to help the most regarding lap times.

In Shift 2, I initially found it incredibly difficult to drive, I Was all over the place. The internet was full of people saying it was terrible, there was input lag, the wheel settings were awful etc... etc...

I spent ages and ages driving and tweaking my FFB settings, until I got to the point where I had some control and could interpret the wheel response.

I played happily for ages after that. Sometimes friends would come round & would maybe put on some assists if they were rookies etc..

One day I went to turn on automatic gear for a friend and while there noticed that either a bug or my drunken alter -ego had reset all the settings and I had driving on default FFB, possibly for weeks and hadn't noticed, nor did it affect my ability to drive.
 
Honest question, do you guys care more about how the game translate/simulate correctly ( regardless of what wheel used ) how the specific real car steering wheel behave/react to input and road condition or prefer whatever that you think is realistic to the real car it represent/best for you ?

Take the Lancer Evo X FQ400 for example, if the real car has unique steering feel ( weight, play, lock to lock range, etc ) and feedback, would it be ideal that SMS tried to simulate that across all wheel setup then allow some tweaks that would not tarnish the unique character of the car ?

If I were to have Pcars and a wheel, I guess wheel setting will be paramount to give the overall finish of a replica/corrections :sly:
I prefer realism but how would I know how it will feel unless I have actual experience and if my steering wheel is good enough to replicate it to know for sure? That is why I keep at defaults and also hard for SMS to deliver given variety of cars and steering wheels available and systems. Also you get used to the kind of FFB the game delivers and as a game I imagine it is more useful to give more feedback to player as you might miss out a lot as that is your only real feeling you get from car apart from visuals and sound while in real life, it will be more physical.

In Shift 2, I initially found it incredibly difficult to drive, I Was all over the place. The internet was full of people saying it was terrible, there was input lag, the wheel settings were awful etc... etc...

I spent ages and ages driving and tweaking my FFB settings, until I got to the point where I had some control and could interpret the wheel response.

I played happily for ages after that. Sometimes friends would come round & would maybe put on some assists if they were rookies etc..

One day I went to turn on automatic gear for a friend and while there noticed that either a bug or my drunken alter -ego had reset all the settings and I had driving on default FFB, possibly for weeks and hadn't noticed, nor did it affect my ability to drive.
I found Shift 2 drivable quite well also with default FFB. I usually get used to different physics and feeling quite quickly.
 
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Why not given that you can change how feel and feedback occur in cars in reality?

I've already pointed out that I can change very dramatically the feel and feedback I get via the steering on my road car simply by moving a switch, in the All weather setting you get almost no feel and the steering is stupidly light, you simply could not 'press-on' with any confidence on a B-road. Switch it over to Dynamic and the degree of feel, feedback and steering weight all increase and the change in confidence you get when pressing on is night and day.

Can I ask have you ever done something as simple as changing the bushes on a car? Again this seemingly simple action (which I have done on a number of cars) utterly changes the way in which the steering reacts to feedback from the road and imperfections, the play (deadzone) you have in the steering and how much feel you have.

Add in that you can tune all of these factors on any car with mechanical or electric power assistance and its not unrealistic to have the ability to tune feedback, feel and deadzones per car at all.

Oh come on man. These are all real tuning abilities.

Being able to take out ALL feeling from a steering wheel through the rotational/yaw axis (Mz) isn't possible in the real world. But it is in Project CARS. I know this is the games way of allowing us to change how a car feels when you knit all the properties together, but it's so over complicated it's silly.

I'll say it again, all of these force feedback settings should be global settings. Then the car can react to them through the physics engine. Afterward, realistic changes can be made to affect each car, things like steering weight etc. But that's not what Project CARS does.
 
This is why I choose to play with a controller. *remembers spending a week dialing in controller settings* :ouch: Oh, never mind.

Quite a thrill to find that sweet spot. But it should not have taken that much effort and time.
 
What?! It's called Force Feedback. You tell the car what to do by the steering, braking and throttle inputs. The steering then reacts to what you're telling the game to do. Yes, the whole experience is a two way communication, but the force feedback certainly isn't.

What's so difficult to understand here? I mean really? It's so simple... clearly this game has clouded brains to believe it's more complicated than it actually should be.

It's a bit early in the morning to be frothing at the mouth. Calm down mate!

It is also important to realise this is a simulation. That explicitly means it is not reality but is attempting to simulate it. There are inherent problems with that and the steering system is one of the biggest.

It is silly enough to think any single game controller wheel is actually capable of matching reality for a vast range of cars with different mechanical steering systems/geometry. It is frankly impossible to then expect a wide range of hardware to be able to achieve that from an identical set of inputs.

I agree what we want is a 1:1 fit with reality, but until then we have to settle for less fidelity.

In order to accurately calculate the forces for a wide range of vehicles from the numb Audi, wallowing vintages and hard as nails sports cars. That entire range of output forces have to fit into the available range of the particular game controller you have.

The cheaper your wheel the smaller range of forces it is capable of representing, so whilst it might be fine in the centre of the graph at the outliers it will be terrible.

This was my point about clipping.

It is not possible for global settings to be applied and have my wheel represent the FFB because at the outliers it is either too subtle for my wheel to respond or the strength drowns out the details.
 
Oh come on man. These are all real tuning abilities.

Being able to take out ALL feeling from a steering wheel through the rotational/yaw axis (Mz) isn't possible in the real world. But it is in Project CARS. I know this is the games way of allowing us to change how a car feels when you knit all the properties together, but it's so over complicated it's silly.

I'll say it again, all of these force feedback settings should be global settings. Then the car can react to them through the physics engine. Afterward, realistic changes can be made to affect each car, things like steering weight etc. But that's not what Project CARS does.

If the real car has separate steering mode, add that as switchable mode specific for the car :) and if a car has no power steering, Pcars should do it without user making lots of effort to get it correct.

How many variety of wheels currently in the market ? Fanatec, Thrustmaster, Logitech, and any other major brands ? A baseline wheel settings specific for each car ( realistic feedback ) for major wheel brand/model would take long ? I think this could have been done as Pcars is unique ( WMD ), where thousands of wheel users can help fine tune the FFB for realism, working with the devs. The best possible setting for each wheel within the limit of hardware capability would lessen a lot of time spent by users fiddling with wheel settings.
 
Oh come on man. These are all real tuning abilities.

Being able to take out ALL feeling from a steering wheel through the rotational/yaw axis (Mz) isn't possible in the real world. But it is in Project CARS. I know this is the games way of allowing us to change how a car feels when you knit all the properties together, but it's so over complicated it's silly.

I'll say it again, all of these force feedback settings should be global settings. Then the car can react to them through the physics engine. Afterward, realistic changes can be made to affect each car, things like steering weight etc. But that's not what Project CARS does.
And all I am saying is that is what SMS appear to be aiming to do with these settings, allow you to reflect what you can do in reality to a car, after all while its far from desirable its also perfectly possible to remove all steering feel from a car. I know I've driven one that had managed just that. Fords first gen electric assistance managed it quite stunningly and it was bloody horrible.

Keep in mind that you did say "allowing us to wildly change settings per car isn't realistic", yet I have a switch in my car that allows me to do that. Does that mean my car isn't realistic?
 
If the real car has separate steering mode, add that as switchable mode specific for the car :) and if a car has no power steering, Pcars should do it without user making lots of effort to get it correct.

How many variety of wheels currently in the market ? Fanatec, Thrustmaster, Logitech, and any other major brands ? A baseline wheel settings specific for each car ( realistic feedback ) for major wheel brand/model would take long ? I think this could have been done as Pcars is unique ( WMD ), where thousands of wheel users can help fine tune the FFB for realism, working with the devs.
I doubt many would have access to most of the cars in the game in real life to test and fine tune with all wheels supported to make it feel realistic out the box. Also likely the FFB settings / physics are not enough to do that even and/or wheel might not be good enough to achieve the same feeling.
 
I doubt many would have access to most of the cars in the game in real life to test and fine tune with all wheels supported to make it feel realistic out the box. Also likely the FFB settings / physics are not enough to do that even and/or wheel might not be good enough to achieve the same feeling.

I added some stuff on my post, closest possible is good enough :) and;
Scratch what I said about SMS working on each wheel, get Ben Collins and Nicolas Hamilton wheel FFB settings and use them as default 1 and default 2, they after all shaped ( FFB, physics, tire ) the cars in PCars to what they are today. Different wheels than what they have used might perform differently, so SMS should still allow some tuning to get close.


We are basically driving cars built by SMS and both consultant ( Collins and Hamilton ), the unique feel, the feedback, the tire model/grip are all made with their input and direction.
 
Ok. Ok.

Yes, Project CARS has done very good things in terms of feedback... and it really is great that players that can't afford or don't want to spend big money can achieve a feel they can't get without these settings.

I believe that the way it's been implemented is far too complicated. I believe that by having the Fx/y/z settings etc all in global settings would be a more realistic way of doing things, and a simpler way too. I would say I've near confirmed that theory, because I've put exactly the same settings on all of the cars, and every one I've driven so far feels fine. I can feel what's going on, and they react in their own distinct ways to those settings. All I need to do for each car now, is raise or lower the master scale, to give a lighter or heavier feel to the car. That could have easily be implemented as "FFB strength" for each car.

All of these settings per car is only going to alienate most people. Surely that's not what SMS want to do, especially on the console versions, where people have bought the consoles for the sole purpose of jumping on and driving?

I apologise for forcing my opinions on yourselves. At the end of the day, it's only an opinion.
 
You comment earlier about the Focus RS is interesting however as we are currently in an age when manufacturers are doing all they can to minimise lift off oversteer in pretty much everything that isn't a hot hatch, to the point that in a recent Evo group tests they even asked if the engineered in lift off oversteer in FF hot hatches had got to the point of too much?

I think your right that we will have to wait for the Yellowbird to know for sure (or the Clio V6 - now that would be a nice addition).

Many of the hot hatches (including the focus) are engineered for lift-off oversteer, but it's a very different sensation (I find FF oversteer both ungainly and difficult to catch in RL, but that's just because I'm incredibly comfortable in the RR layout). It's a bit hard to understand unless you actually had RL experience "at the limit" in a number of chassis configurations. Then you can make at least some generalities, based on weight distribution, wheelbase, etc. But I can say that in pcars they honestly just "feel" incredibly wrong. Again, I don't have a nearly-exact-equivalent to try, but as a general rule, the further back you go the more the MR and RR cars exhibit lift-off oversteer (there are exceptions of course, the Elise is notorious for snap-oversteer (i.e. sudden and extreme lift-off oversteer) and being very difficult to catch once it happens, and that's a reasonably modern platform). We see a lot of those spin at very, very low speeds. But subjectively, the "feel" in pcars MR/RR cars of any era is simply all wrong, and I mean both the feel through the wheel, and the way the respond off-throttle.

Looking forward to the YB release. That's really the only way to tell; Sim vs. RL. We can make all the sim vs. sim comparisons and "similar but different" RL comparisons, and they stand a good chance of being useless. I can say that every other sim I've ever played models lift-off oversteer even in modern chassis. Take the Alfa 5C in AC for example. Drive that one around the ring with a FFB wheel and you'll see what I mean. It just seems to "feel" like a modern MR car should feel. It oversteers off-throttle, but doesn't get wacky about it like an older (i.e. Stratos) does. The only racing sims/games I've ever played that don't model lift-off-oversteer are basically the ones that are just games, not sims. Come to think of it, do I remember that both Shift 1 & 2 also did not model lift-off-oversteer? I think those may have also required the same brake-tap or flick to initiate, but I'm not going to get them out and try them again.
 
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Many of the hot hatches (including the focus) are engineered for lift-off oversteer, but it's a very different sensation (I find FF oversteer both ungainly and difficult to catch in RL, but that's just because I'm incredibly comfortable in the RR layout). It's a bit hard to understand unless you actually had RL experience "at the limit" in a number of chassis configurations. Then you can make at least some generalities, based on weight distribution, wheelbase, etc. But I can say that in pcars they honestly just "feel" incredibly wrong. Again, I don't have a nearly-exact-equivalent to try, but as a general rule, the further back you go the more the MR and RR cars exhibit lift-off oversteer (there are exceptions of course, the Elise is notorious for snap-oversteer (i.e. sudden and extreme lift-off oversteer) and being very difficult to catch once it happens, and that's a reasonably modern platform). We see a lot of those spin at very, very low speeds. But subjectively, the "feel" in pcars MR/RR cars of any era is simply all wrong, and I mean both the feel through the wheel, and the way the respond off-throttle.

Looking forward to the YB release. That's really the only way to tell; Sim vs. RL. We can make all the sim vs. sim comparisons and "similar but different" RL comparisons, and they stand a good chance of being useless. I can say that every other sim I've ever played models lift-off oversteer even in modern chassis. Take the Alfa 5C in AC for example. Drive that one around the ring with a FFB wheel and you'll see what I mean. It just seems to "feel" like a modern MR car should feel. It oversteers off-throttle, but doesn't get wacky about it like an older (i.e. Stratos) does. The only racing sims/games I've ever played that don't model lift-off-oversteer are basically the ones that are just games, not sims. Come to think of it, do I remember that both Shift 1 & 2 also did not model lift-off-oversteer? I think those may have also required the same brake-tap or flick to initiate, but I'm not going to get them out and try them again.
Maybe you could post a video of what your experiencing as no lift off oversteer? I experience this as when the car hugs the apex, like it's never going to see it again, when I let off the brakes and turn in or lift and turn in.
 
Many of the hot hatches (including the focus) are engineered for lift-off oversteer, but it's a very different sensation (I find FF oversteer both ungainly and difficult to catch in RL, but that's just because I'm incredibly comfortable in the RR layout). It's a bit hard to understand unless you actually had RL experience "at the limit" in a number of chassis configurations. Then you can make at least some generalities, based on weight distribution, wheelbase, etc. But I can say that in pcars they honestly just "feel" incredibly wrong. Again, I don't have a nearly-exact-equivalent to try, but as a general rule, the further back you go the more the MR and RR cars exhibit lift-off oversteer (there are exceptions of course, the Elise is notorious for snap-oversteer (i.e. sudden and extreme lift-off oversteer) and being very difficult to catch once it happens, and that's a reasonably modern platform). We see a lot of those spin at very, very low speeds. But subjectively, the "feel" in pcars MR/RR cars of any era is simply all wrong, and I mean both the feel through the wheel, and the way the respond off-throttle.
The Elise should be for a modern car (the first gen far more so), but again we don't have one to compare.


Looking forward to the YB release. That's really the only way to tell; Sim vs. RL. We can make all the sim vs. sim comparisons and "similar but different" RL comparisons, and they stand a good chance of being useless. I can say that every other sim I've ever played models lift-off oversteer even in modern chassis. Take the Alfa 5C in AC for example. Drive that one around the ring with a FFB wheel and you'll see what I mean. It just seems to "feel" like a modern MR car should feel. It oversteers off-throttle, but doesn't get wacky about it like an older (i.e. Stratos) does. The only racing sims/games I've ever played that don't model lift-off-oversteer are basically the ones that are just games, not sims. Come to think of it, do I remember that both Shift 1 & 2 also did not model lift-off-oversteer? I think those may have also required the same brake-tap or flick to initiate, but I'm not going to get them out and try them again.
I take it you mean the 4C?

If that's the case then quite honestly that's not right at all, the 4C should just trim the nose on a lift off, on this one I do speak from personal experience. Something that Evo and Chris Harris back up....

http://www.evo.co.uk/alfa-romeo/4c


...power on oversteer yes. Lift off oversteer, no, it should trim the front not get the back stepping out even with quite sudden lifts.
 
This FFB discussion is so dumb.
I am also playing on default settings and i can compete for top positions. The sim racing guys are so far off sometimes when i comes to realism. A strong force feedback is often not realistc. It is there to give you information you wont get unless you are sitting in the car.
In Reality the forces at the wheel are very minor most of the slides i felt in reallife in a racecar i do not even notice if i watch the gopro footage from the drive but they feel huge in the car. A lot of sims try to compansate that feeling with massive FFB effects and as someone with a bit of real life racing experience i hate it because it feels unatural if the wheel is heavy and does strange things.
I like the FFB from pcars for not beeing so overdone
 
This FFB discussion is so dumb.
I am also playing on default settings and i can compete for top positions. The sim racing guys are so far off sometimes when i comes to realism. A strong force feedback is often not realistc. It is there to give you information you wont get unless you are sitting in the car.
In Reality the forces at the wheel are very minor most of the slides i felt in reallife in a racecar i do not even notice if i watch the gopro footage from the drive but they feel huge in the car. A lot of sims try to compansate that feeling with massive FFB effects and as someone with a bit of real life racing experience i hate it because it feels unatural if the wheel is heavy and does strange things.
I like the FFB from pcars for not beeing so overdone
For gods sake, did I say somewhere better FFB makes you faster? Point i have been trying to make about 10 times already is that it's nice we have the options to dial it in, just because it gives you a better feeling.

If you like how it is out of the box, and are fast with it fine for you, but i like to setup my FFB so it feels right to me personally as it feels off sometimes on default settings.

Does everyone get my point now?
 
I am not complaing about you but there were a lot of people on the last pages talking about speed and consistency problems and i also just giving you my opinion everyone should make their FFB as they want to. But what i want to say is dont talk bad about the FFB if you dont understand they way it works and why it is soo light etc. I dont want to offend you just the guys talking about unrealistic FFB and FFB which makes them slower it is just fine as it is. If it doenst fit you you have millions of options which is great
 
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