The Cossie.

FWD Fiestas beating these monsters? Wow.

I may have been wrong about the FWD, at least judging by the wheel spin in this picture:

You can't see him, but Matti Alamäki is in a ditch behind the smoke in his RWD Porsche.
It also helped the Fiestas quite a bit that they had BDA engines with 280 horses and a dry weight of 600kg...

Back to the Cossie, here's a video showing the amount of steering wheel work needed in a Group A RS500. Tiff also says that it undeersteers into corners. I'm guessing that's an intentional choice in the race car setup, since the road car had almost too good turn-in.


I'm working on the wheels and interior at the moment.

C14ru5 wrote:... Tiff also says that it undeersteers into corners. I'm guessing that's an intentional choice in the race car setup, since the road car had almost too good turn-in.

That doesn't necessarily means that the road car has less understeer than the group A. I would say this is measured on different scales.

But 500 hp? That's an awful lot! I can't imagine a DTM spec 190 or M3 being competitive against that.

Tomte wrote:500 hp? That's an awful lot! I can't imagine a DTM spec 190 or M3 being competitive against that.

Those cars were competitive, for two reasons: Grip was mostly the same for all cars due to narrow tyres and not very much downforce, and the Sierra was notorious for breaking down (the M3 was on the opposite side of the reliability scale). In the events where the Sierras lasted all the way to the finish line, they were very hard to beat. That's why they almost got a monopoly in the end before the formula was killed. If the horsepower difference turns out to be too unfair inside Redline, I'll do like the FIA: Add weight.

I solved the problem where the car snaps in to oversteer and then needs to settle into each corner. Your guess about raising the Z inertia wasn't so far off. It was actually the sway bars that were too stiff. Lesson learned: A CoG height closer to the pivot point and lower inertia means that the sway bars can be loosened without compromising corner grip.

They weren't necessarily hard to beat if they managed to finish
Look at ATCC 1990-1992 620 bhp Skyline R32 Gr. A (4 wheel drive and steering) anyone?

Code:

massCenter {-0.015,0.47,0.13}  ;Y = 0.14 below body center  ;Z = 55% front

Today we tried your new beauty.

During the races, I was wondering why the car turn to right while accelerating (the street one) and why do the same while braking.

I checking all numbers in suspensions and wheels, but here the problem.

You moved the CoG on x axis. Perhaps to compensate the driver? I think yes, but its like the game engine can't handle this choice. It's just impossible to brake long, cause the car start to turn.

Very troublesome she is in a couple of situations....
I haven't seen (and had !) that many crashes in an 8 car MP race at Monaco for a long time. (Grid was mixed up of all kinds of RS500's and it seemed like everyone had the same problems). I think almost everyone had at least 1 brake'n'spin off crash in the brakezone after the tunnel.
Somehow I got over that issue after a few laps, but only by pressing, releasing and repressing the brake very quickly... and I don't think that this is very practical. (running Beta 1)

Nevertheless, I love this thing ! (and most of all the Group A because it keeps one busy keeping control all the time, just like the Cheetah)

DonaemouS wrote:You moved the CoG on x axis

What are you talking about? No, in beta 1 the x value for all cars is 0, I just checked! The instability much be caused by something else. Which car was it? The numbers you quote were from the old developer preview of the road car. That car also had locking brakes: 1020/510. Now that's ABS: 4000/2000.

C14ru5 wrote:

DonaemouS wrote:You moved the CoG on x axis

What are you talking about? No, in beta 1 the x value for all cars is 0, I just checked!
...
The numbers you quote were from the old developer preview of the road car.

... no words mate... if you release a new build, pls update the lol forum too.

Oops, I didn't split the beta 1 I was using, assuming Don already had b1.
But she also has some behaviour problems while braking, most problematic in Monaco after the tunnel as mentioned above.

OK, the post with old version has now been edited.

Valentin K wrote:But she also has some behaviour problems while braking, most problematic in Monaco after the tunnel as mentioned above

Which car? The road car? If so, that has to be because the rear wheels lift either from stiff suspension or wrong x inertia. Man, that high CoG is revealing every flaw that the suspension has, maybe I need to go back to using unrealistic low CoG height just to make this drivable in multiplayer

Braking instability isn't my worst concern. The big problem with both race versions at the moment is too much torque and too little grip. In real life, that torque would only be available after a significant turbo lag (2 bar takes a while to build up, approx. 1-1.5 seconds). Redline gives us all that torque at once. I have several options to kill this behavior: Either reducing torque (giving a flatter torque curve and more torque at the bottom RPMs), or killing the torque through a low maxClutchTorqueTransfer, or by putting a ridiculous wheels.inertia on the rear wheels (like 10 or 20).

Another concern that I have, is that the dump valve sounds may cause "horn honk mayhem" when people forget that they're driving another car after having driven the Cossie. If people don't see the value of having dump valve sounds in there, I'll take them out.

indeed, C14ru5. the problem was in the dev. I now have tried the beta1.

In first, I like suspensions work for the street one. But in all the 3 cars, I suppose the braking factor is too much low. Leave the accelerator key, and look how the speed is reduced, now press brake key. There is a liiitle bit difference in favor of second.

If for the street car, this braking factor should be raised a bit, for the racing versions, must be way higher.

The RS500 on mountain is just killing with her drifting behavior...

C14ru5 wrote:

Valentin K wrote:But she also has some behaviour problems while braking, most problematic in Monaco after the tunnel as mentioned above

Which car? The road car? If so, that has to be because the rear wheels lift either from stiff suspension or wrong x inertia. Man, that high CoG is revealing every flaw that the suspension has, maybe I need to go back to using unrealistic low CoG height just to make this drivable in multiplayer

Nope, I had that braking issue in the Group A version (you come into the slightly uneven braking zone very fast if you push full throttle until then and have to throw the anchor very hard.

C14ru5 wrote:
Braking instability isn't my worst concern. The big problem with both race versions at the moment is too much torque and too little grip.

Hey, that's one of the things I like most of all about this car!
Love the "at the limit" feeling when accelerating out of a slow turn in 2nd gear and then hitting full throttle, feeling the power and that the rear is short from losing grip.

C14ru5 wrote:
Another concern that I have, is that the dump valve sounds may cause "horn honk mayhem" when people forget that they're driving another car after having driven the Cossie.

Exactly that happened to me this afternoon.
I had the dump valve horn on the shiftup key and forgot to take it out when we did a race in the road spec RS500. "beep, vrrooaar, beep, vrooaar....."

Valentin K wrote:I had that braking issue in the Group A version (you come into the slightly uneven braking zone very fast if you push full throttle until then and have to throw the anchor very hard.

Pheew! That's a good thing, because the Group A car is the only one that I know how to fix. I tried to reduce that behavior in Beta 1 by lengthening the rear springs, but for Beta 2 I think this car deserves ABS brakes, just like the two other cars.

Now that's a nice update you made there there with beta 2, she's looking better and better! Makes one have great expectations for 1.0

For the handling:
The braking behaviour became a little better but it seems like both Group A (and stock spec now that I tried it once more) still get a tad too unstable on the brakes (or the rear loses too much load ). Either way, I still have trouble braking it safely.
Besides, I think the Group A Sierra generally needs to be a bit faster on track.

I took her out for a test drive 'round Bathurst Take 2 earlier and compared mine with real laptimes. I scored a laptime around 15 seconds above the fastest Group A racing laps at Mt Panorama (Dick Johnson's 1992 Bathurst 1000 qualifying lap: 2:12 something (qualifiers don't get counted as official lap records, yet the best race lap of a Group A was 2:14'50)) while I got something around 2:27 with the Sierra Gr. A b2.
I also drove one of the GT3's and got a laptime within 3 seconds of the real best laptime of a GT3 car (Australian GT 2007, Round 1, 2:12) at Bathurst

Hope I could (and can) help

Val

I wonder if the instability under braking comes from the suspension reaching the stops. Certainly all three cars are quite soft, so it could well be that the rear cannot stick to the ground because quite some load gets transferred to the front.

Very clever thinking! You can often hear a crash sound when hitting curbs, etc. so soft suspension is probably an issue. I'll stiffen the damper strength for my next release, which is coming soon.

EDIT: Download beta 3 (24.5MB)

Just some minor details left now. Is the handling of Beta 3 acceptable?

Unless there are some immediate issues that need fixing, I'm going to leave this beta version like it is until the final release. If anyone feels inspired to make their own additional skin(s) for this, then now is the proper time to notify me (I have lotsa images of different liveries on my hard drive). Any contributions will be mentioned in the final release.

Okay, here's a first feedback from my side: road and Group A (all I tested so far) still spin out too easily while braking (although it seemingly took longer than on b2), and the rear is a tad too loose as well in elevated parts of the track.

The sway bars maybe?

Thanks for the feedback, it's good to know that I'm moving in the right direction, even if I'm not quite there yet.

I'd say the damperStrength and especially the swaybars could be way stiffer/harder/whatever (onlt referring to the road car here, I have no idea about rally or rally cross).
I mostly start with 20000 on all of them and work my war up or down from there. Might sound high, but works for me.