Setups make no difference?

[mattikake]

Ok so I've got a league race coming up where setup is allowed. This is my first go at it (but not my first go at car setups in sim racing. I have several years under my belt). I set up my own private lobby where setup is allowed in the race conditions we're going to have. And try as I might with the setup options but no changes apart from gear ratios make any noticeable difference to the car WHATSOEVER.

I just finished a test where I literally set everything to one end essentially extreme oversteer. Best lap 1m38.8

I then setup up everything to extreme understeer. Best lap 1m38.9

Then I went back to default and did a 1m38.85.

0.1s is easily just slight variation on my version of perfect laps.

I could not feel more turn or less turn, in, round or out of corners. No more or less grip. My turn-in, apex and power-on points were not malleable at all and I could hit them all in the exact same way. The only slight difference I could tell was the rear being a bit more twitchy under acceleration in low speed traction zones when I set the acceleration lsd to 60 (max), but that was it. That could've easily been me trying to push for more laptime and getting fatigued.

It's as if car setup is somehow disabled. How can there be an entire board dedicated to car setups? What am I missing?

 

[mattikake]

Bugger. I was hoping someone was going to say I was missing something obvious like setups don't work in public lobby practice or I have to unlock a driving licence feature first or maybe some cars are locked to default setup as a garage setting.

This was the Aston dbr9 gr3 at sardenga a on soft tyres btw. A car I noticed on my very first go a couple of weeks ago that it understeers like a bus.

 

[Spirit]

I can testify that setups can and do make a difference when it comes to the vehicle's balance, aerodynamic performance, and what the driver can do with it. I would advise that you take your vehicle to Special Stage Route X, mess with the aerodynamic settings, ride height settings, and spring stiffness settings individually so you may observe how even in the absence of driver input (straight line/WOT), the setup has an effect on how the vehicle performs in a straight line.

Additionally, if you want to investigate cornering w/ driver input, and how the balance is altered, go to your favorite road course and try the following:
Run #1: Default settings (control)
Run #2: Minimize front ride height, maximize rear ride height, all other settings default
Run #3: Maximize front ride height, minimize rear ride height, all other settings default
Run #4: Repeat Run #2 but also minimize your front spring natural frequency and maximize the rear
Run #5: Repeat Run #3 but also maximize your front spring natural frequency and minimize the rear

Be sure to take notes about the balance of the car and how it feels to drive, particularly at braking, corner entry, mid-corner, and exit. You may also play around with the damper settings if you wish. Dampers can be a little more complicated so I'd advise leaving them alone at first.

 

[mattikake]

Perhaps inshould point out I've come from pc1/pc2 and in several communities I was an authority on car setup, getting several requests a week to do this for people, even setting cars up for people who drive nothing like me.

Thanks for the input but why on earth would you EVER set the ride height on a racing car with the front several inches higher than the rear from base tune? Unless you want to completely balls the car up? Lol that's madness.

There is also no way I should be able to drive a diametrically opposed setup in the exact same way and produce the exact same laptime. It should require a completely different technique to do that at the very least.

As far as I can see, changing the setup does absolutely nothing. Nothing.

There must be something I'm missing. Is there an override or something? Something you have to unlock to make a setup active?

Edit: oh btw I was trying different setups with the sheet settings. I think I'm loading them in correctly - the text becomes blue on the left-most one. Is there anything else I need to do with these to activate them?

 

[Spirit]

Thanks for the input but why on earth would you EVER set the ride height on a racing car with the front several inches higher than the rear from base tune? Unless you want to completely balls the car up? Lol that's madness.

To demonstrate to you that altering the setup most definitely will influence the behavior of the vehicle. Running the nose high like that is most definitely not a good way to run the car in an actual race, but doing that and then following it up with the polar opposite should make it quite clear that the two configurations make the car drive differently.

Edit: oh btw I was trying different setups with the sheet settings. I think I'm loading them in correctly - the text becomes blue on the left-most one. Is there anything else I need to do with these to activate them?

The setup sheet that is highlighted and on the far left is active.

 

[mattikake]

Ok good point about making a wrong setup. I'm sure gear ratios adjusted noticeably but I'll give that a go today.

I'm used to feeling the difference with a few degrees of diff torque bind or 10Nm of arb stiffness so the big changes I was putting in should've done something. I think I'm doing something noob with the gts interface.

 

[eDirtyTati]

@GT_Alex74 Have you noticed any change in the effectiveness of setups lately?

 

[GT_Alex74]

Haven't tested setups since last update. I kinda want to check if camber is back to not being completely broken again, might do that when I'm bored but I also have no use for that currently.

To OP, we need more details about the conditions you tested that in - car, type of changes made and size of increments, tyre... especially tyres : don't expect to feel anything on softs / supersofts with any remotely realistic approach. Also, if you're seconds away from top times, then you just shouldn't touch setups for now.

 

[mattikake]

I was in the new gr3 AM dbr9 gt1 in fine late afternoon conditions iirc. This is a car that seems to understeer on power and on the limit of lateral grip, no matter what I tried. But I get the feeling this is a gts physics thing.

There's no database for record laps and I refuse to do daily races until the penalty system and race format (damage on) is fixed but I know I'm no slouch. I qualified 3rd on a grid of A/A+ drivers who also do not do daily races so we're probably all S DR realistically.

Is there an issue with the tyres then? The races had a choice of supersoft and softs so I didn't test on anything else. Camber seems to make no difference and I tried everything including extreme settings there.

However, I'm at Spa now on softs which is a track i know, at 12:00 time of day (fine I think). I found the most noticeable difference to turn in low/med/high speed corners when I set the rear toe to neutral - 0 and raised the rear ride height quite a bit. (Although I noticed the supposed reduced scrub had no effect at all on staightline speed) Wing settings, camber, suspension, lsd changes seem to make little difference and they should be significant. I'm into the low 2m16s but I figure I need to get into the 2m15s.

That was a few laps late last night so I need another go at it.

So setup does appear to do something, just not in the way I'd expect. Wing settings to high font/low rear made little difference to high speed cornering balance. Camber higher front than rear makes no noticeable difference with more-turn handling even coupled with arb and suspension to match the camber to expected roll angle etc.

 

[mattikake]

Did it. 2m15.5. Happy with that. 15 dead on a perfect lap probably. This is with circuit bop on. I guess a WR involves knowingq where all the track limits are and is a 2m13?

The setup feel differences are mild compared to what I'm used to given how aggressively it's set up. But I can carry more speed in and out with just enough turn in all corners.

Front ride height 55, rear 100. Wtf? That's some rake!

Arb front 7, rear 8. That's mad.

Front suspension 3, rear 2.8. Front camber 3.5 rear 2.5. Ok that's normal-ish.

Front down force 375 (300-400 range), rear 700 (700-800 range). Really?

Lsd 5, 10, 5. Very aggressive yet oddly driveable.

Still has a tendency to wash out a bit in high speed corners, but given the options you have to work with, this is silly aggressive.

 

[mattikake]

It's like this is becoming a diary...

So I found out that the only reason the setups made a small difference was because I was using the tt as a test session, but apparently this uses an old physics engine where setup does something. Come the private lobby race and the car was barely affected by the setup. Nowhere near as much turn and nowhere near as fast.

It seems gts wants you to drive a car their way and there is nothing you can do about that, even when dramatically altering the setup of a car.

 

[Racerx_34]

It's like this is becoming a diary...

So I found out that the only reason the setups made a small difference was because I was using the tt as a test session, but apparently this uses an old physics engine where setup does something. Come the private lobby race and the car was barely affected by the setup. Nowhere near as much turn and nowhere near as fast.

It seems gts wants you to drive a car their way and there is nothing you can do about that, even when dramatically altering the setup of a car.

Setup makes a difference unless you are in a lobby or Daily where tuning is turned off.

 

[DrifterJoe]

Time trial has fuel use and tyre wear turned off, so the car will be lighter and faster than a lobby that has them enabled.

Setups do make a huge difference in pace.

 

[Kermit_2142]

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/praianos-gt-sport-garage.380262/

Check out these tunes, they’ve tuned basically every car, and are useful to at least point you in the right direction. There’s also info on how to tune in gtsport and what has the most effect.
After a couple hours initially learning from this thread, I can now expect 1-2s a lap on any car over the stock tune within an hour or so of setup and time trails. You’ll find some settings have a “zone” they work in.
Good luck 👍