So, let's talk about rain...

  • Thread starter TumeK5
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Must admit, when I first drove in heavy rain in GT7, it caught me off guard because even though it was pouring, the track surface hadn't soaked up much moisture and I was flying round corners no problem on sports tyres.
Then, suddenly I couldn't stay on the track lol. I love how it progressively worsens the more the rain comes down. As someone mentioned, forget driving adequately in heavy rain with comfort, sport or racing tyres. Only intermediates or heavy wets will do.
 
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TumeK5


While I understand the race is time accelerated, this is ridiculous. Dropping an ocean like that out of nowhere and the clouds then departing is just absurd, it's like the game is forcing you to look at the rain radar. What if you don't want the HUD to cover like one third of your screen? You're screwed.
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They added a radar that isn't real, but works as primitive indicator. You are doing a 24 hour race in 1 hour so don't expect everything to be in sync :)

Most of us would have consider ourselves lucky to be just a the Pit entrance as the first drops fall, and would have made a decision if we were to pit or take a chance, based on the weather radar.
 
You people who say "Oh, the weather can be just like in GT7" must live in a pretty strange universe. I've never gone from fair weather to completely dark overcast in a few seconds.

The time is so hypercompressed - even this ridiculous day / night cycle of what, 40 minutes? - that radar and pit strategy is pretty much useless. You have to hope and pray you guess right because most of these weather races have weather erupt on you without warning far from the pits. I'm afraid they took a cue from Project Cars 1 with its drastic rain starting and stopping, but at least then it was a rain race and you knew it would be raining off and on. You also had pit crew warnings from what I remember. Gee, wouldn't that be convenient...

It also doesn't help that my worst wreck a few years ago was in the rain. I even got the willies just driving in moderate rain that year. While I had the same angst in GT7 for a while, I'm adjusting to it, but I still don't like it. Not this silly off / on / off thing we have, at least.
 
If the map is set to 100 miles out and it takes the rain to travel across the radar in 30 seconds from the outer edge to the center, that means the speed it's traveling is 6000 mph (50 miles x120 =6000mph),
(120 being how many times 30 seconds goes into 60 minutes. If a storm was traveling at that speed, rain would be the least of your problems, the wind pushing it would be. A typical storm may travel 15-20 mph
some times faster, sometimes slower, at 50 mile it would take roughly two and a half hours to reach you.


As far as I can tell, the rain is always traveling at this high rate of speed, whether your doing a short race or long race.


I would prefer in the custom races, the option to time the weather to the race length or real time.
 
Not to sound patronizing or anything, but learning to read the radar is important.

Understanding the cloud patterns and predicting how the track could evolve in the next few laps is crucial to knowing whether to switch to Inters, Wets, or even dry weather tires.

Sparse light blue clouds usually mean you can stay on slicks. A large, light blue mass indicates moderate rain, which Inters can deal with. A large, light blue mass with several darker blots indicates heavy rain, which is a situation for Wets (or Inters if you're brave and know the race line like the back of your hand).

The wind can blow the clouds away or make them stay over the track.
 
UnkaD
If you want to race in cockpit view without the HUD on screen then I would suggest keeping to casual driving sessions or not worrying about race results and just enjoying it. I mean, it's not like we have a pit crew constantly feeding us information like we would in real life, so the HUD makes up for that.
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.. and that's what's great with the engineer, in PC2.
I am surprised with all the texting/subtitles/warnings in this game, there's no warning that advises rain should be expected in the next couple minutes.
 
The problem with rain in a hyper accelerated "endurance" race like the one at Spa is that one lap at 24x time passage corresponds to almost an entire stint of regular driving, but the pit stop time loss is not accelerated. Having to take an extra pit stop over 24 hours is next to nothing, over a single hour it means you lose.
 
Nebuc72
I've had days go from sunny to snowing to sunny to thunderstorms within a couple hours, if that.
It's really not unheard of here.
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"A couple of hours"

"Less than a minute"

One of these things is not like the other. ;)

By the way, I live in the midwest of USA, If we don't like the weather, we just wait a bit. Though that's not less than a minute, and we can see it coming way easy...
 
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Talon16
I think we should have at least a lap's notice... especially on long tracks like LeMans and Nord.

I've been meaning to do the math but keep forgetting... you can zoom out 93 miles and sometimes the rain comes though in a matter of a few seconds. Like, that's gale-force winds at that point and I'd be running for a ditch as there's a tornado coming.
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I clocked the clouds on the radar moving at 1,800 kph / 1,100 mph in a 1 hour race. They slow down the longer the race is yet even in a 12 hour endurance race they're still moving faster than possible on Earth. You have about 20 minutes heads up with the 150km radar in a 12 hour race. The clouds still moving at 450 kph. In a 1 hour race you only have 5 minutes look ahead, 30 minute races not even long enough for a lap on Sarthe.

No clue why the clouds speed up according to race length, not according to time acceleration, while track drying speed doesn't seem to be affected by either. It's just PD, consistent in being inconsistent.
 
Just to add, i absolutely love the wet racing in GT7, i would like the radar to be a bit more predictable and being able to swap tires at the right time. At the same time i understand, and i guess to a certain extent accept that the way it currently works adds to the randomness of rain. A bit like real racing where it is very hard to predict with certainty how much and when it will rain. With the GT7 rader, we KNOW that rain is coming and we have a pretty good idea of how much it will rain.
 
Talon16
I think we should have at least a lap's notice... especially on long tracks like LeMans and Nord.

I've been meaning to do the math but keep forgetting... you can zoom out 93 miles and sometimes the rain comes though in a matter of a few seconds. Like, that's gale-force winds at that point and I'd be running for a ditch as there's a tornado coming.
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Imagine tornados in GT, the cars would be flown off the track! That would not be a good sight!
 
Very brief info on how it can sometimes work....

I have 3 kilometers to go to work or home. I live in Germany, near Bielefeld in the Teuteburg Forest (a well-known "weather divide") and I ride my bike. So yesterday after work, the sky was dark, but it was still dry.. after about 500 meters, it starts to drip.. after about 1 kilometer a downpour, I was literally wet to the bone.. Arrived home.. there was NOTHING there, so later I even had to water the lawn. So much for unrealistic weather conditions. ;P

And as others have already written, such weather changes are completely normal, especially at the Nürburgring and in Spa.
 
And always use tires with the setting, "Heavy wet". Otherwise the car you drive will always spin out and lose traction/control.
 
I think the issue is more how fast the clouds move. There's literally no way to prepare for this at times, even with the radar zoomed out as much as possible.

If they want accelerated weather, that's fine, but use smaller clouds instead of faster. This way it's still possible to prepare for upcoming weather, while the different weather types are shorter. And if it's going to dump so much water, the radar definitely needs to reflect this.

If such a huge downpour is coming, any race team would be well aware and prepared far in advance. It would not be a last second reaction to clouds that appeared 100 miles away and will approach in a minute or less. If clouds are moving that fast, the race is already over. There isn't even enough time to get to safety. The wind will sweep through and destroy everything.
 
I'm afraid a 30 minute or 1 hour race at Nurburgring 24h is coming and will be ruined by this. Half way around the GP circuit and rain appears on the radar and your sol.
 
meekrab
The problem with rain in a hyper accelerated "endurance" race like the one at Spa is that one lap at 24x time passage corresponds to almost an entire stint of regular driving, but the pit stop time loss is not accelerated. Having to take an extra pit stop over 24 hours is next to nothing, over a single hour it means you lose.
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Actually, this is a great point. I find the pit stops INCREDIBLY long. Is my pit garage ALWAYS at the end of the pitlane?

I like an accelerated cycle, but not the acceleration this game has. And yes, we never know what we are going to get. It's not like this hasn't been handled in other games over the last many decades. Tell me "dry" or "rain" or "changeable" and the weather needs to be on a different timer than the day cycle.
 
They need to increase the radar distance or reduce the speed of the incoming weather. With the weather as it is now traveling approx. 6000mph,
that's about 200x the speed of a fast traveling storm at 30mph, if they could reduce the speed to 10x the normal rate, that would have the storm traveling a distance a 5 miles per minute,
which would have the storm still traveling fast, but give better advanced warning.
 
AutumnalGlow
I think the issue is more how fast the clouds move. There's literally no way to prepare for this at times, even with the radar zoomed out as much as possible.

If they want accelerated weather, that's fine, but use smaller clouds instead of faster. This way it's still possible to prepare for upcoming weather, while the different weather types are shorter. And if it's going to dump so much water, the radar definitely needs to reflect this.

If such a huge downpour is coming, any race team would be well aware and prepared far in advance. It would not be a last second reaction to clouds that appeared 100 miles away and will approach in a minute or less. If clouds are moving that fast, the race is already over. There isn't even enough time to get to safety. The wind will sweep through and destroy everything.
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Yet, like in a real race, everybody is on the same boat. It might not be the more realistic weather model (less so if time is warped), but I think you're overestimating the weather forecast capabilities of even professional race teams.
 
Sn1per666
I'm afraid a 30 minute or 1 hour race at Nurburgring 24h is coming and will be ruined by this. Half way around the GP circuit and rain appears on the radar and your sol.
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It's very real, any custom endurance race on N24 that's less than 2H (clouds slow down the longer the race) doesn't leave you with a lap to prepare. 1H race you have about 5 minutes look ahead. In a 2H race you better be watching the edge of the radar and drive fast enough car not to be caught out. Having to crawl down the straight in the rain on slicks costs a ton of time.

Before I realized the clouds slow down based on race length I changed my tires immediately when I saw rain coming in an 8 hour race, then had them pretty much burned up on the dry road when the rain actually arrived doh. When a freak storm happened at a fair here, the organization could warn everyone to take shelter down to the minute... Why is it pure guess work in a 'realistic' driving game... The weather radar on the weather network is accurate enough to say within 10 minutes when rain will start, and of course a computer game knows it down to the second. So why the obfuscation...
 
We've all encountered rain in real life, while racing or while driving on track. It happens. But it happening in the game, for certain races at some tracks ALL THE TIME, is complete crap. Don't act like it's not. It's unrealistic and at that point they're just being dicks, lol. And every time it's happened to me IRL on track, it was obvious it was coming. If they want to leave the frequency of rain events alone, oh well. But at least give us a pre-race weather forecast and a more useful radar screen. Seeing 90 miles out is meaningless when the storm can move through at a few hundred miles an hour.
 
WolfpackS2k
But it happening in the game, for certain races at some tracks ALL THE TIME, is complete crap. Don't act like it's not.
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Yep - 24 minutes of LeMans. Pit for full wets at the end of lap 2, because the rain comes just after lap 3 begins. 100% predictable.
 
Voodoovaj
Yep - 24 minutes of LeMans. Pit for full wets at the end of lap 2, because the rain comes just after lap 3 begins. 100% predictable.
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Ooops, I was thinking of the 30 minutes race. Editted and removed comment.
 
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