Assetto Corsa on PC

Oh. . .   Well if you all are going to be on I may try and free up some time and join in. What time?

Re Monday.  I don't know of any but I can easily open a server for you if you want to start one.  :-)

For no reason whatsoever I am going to leave this here:

GHOST™ 212cc Kart Racing Engine:    https://www.harborfreight.com/merchandising-promotions/new/212cc-ghost-ohv-horizontal-shaft-kart-racing-engine-57531.html

GHOST™ 212cc Kart Racing Engine Accessory Kit:   https://www.harborfreight.com/merchandising-promotions/new/212cc-ghost-kart-racing-engine-accessory-kit-58057.html

Ran some laps last night with Brick, and then Pro and Drillin showed up later so we had a couple of races. Verdict: fun cars but most if not all are going to require some tuning to extract the potential or just make them decent to drive. This is absolutely going to be a tuner series and not an arrive and drive. 

In light of that I think we really need to get into the cars before the handicaps because we're not going to get good data. As people learn the cars and fix issues with the setups as they go the change can be significant. The other thing is that the cars make their speeds in different ways, so performance can be heavily track dependent and doing the HC testing on a single track may skew the results. I understand that this is more of a proof of concept rather that "this is what the HC will be" but when a setup or driving style change can net you 1s+ there is the opportunity for a ton of non-HC related variance. 

Yeah, I think we will need a bit more of a neutral car for testing tomorrow.  It will need to have enough power to allow the HC's though (i.e. the MX5 is likely not a good choice)

Could the 944's work?  I think those were reasonably easy to drive.

What Matt said is definitely correct, the cars are all great to drive, but drive and make their speed differently.  If we want to keep the racing closer across the series we could do single make/model races and progress through the car pack week by week.  That would eliminate a lot of the tuning though, which is part of the fun for the people that are good at it.

What do you guys think?

aircooled said:

Yeah, I think we will need a bit more of a neutral car for testing tomorrow.  It will need to have enough power to allow the HC's though (i.e. the MX5 is likely not a good choice)

Could the 944's work?  I think those were reasonably easy to drive.

I am wondering if one of the GTE cars or a GT3 cars would be a good test car.  We don't have to test tonight we can just run a series of 3-5 short races with the new car pack to allow people to jump between cars to get a feel for them.  We can also narrow down the field as I only have about half of the car pack up on the server at the moment so we can play around with just sorting out the cars we actually want to use.  What ever you all want to do I am good with.

For those who still havent come out for TDT fun:

https://streamable.com/quy0da

Actually, I was thinking we could do one test.  I can HC the entire field of cars and see if they are still balanced with each other.  That may be the first step.  If the baseline HC puts them too far out of balance we will have to re-think things.

We may find that the proposed new HC system only works on single-make series.

ProDarwin said:

For those who still havent come out for TDT fun:

https://streamable.com/quy0da

Let me guess. . . .. Wendle?

dean1484 said:

We may find that the proposed new HC system only works on single-make series.

I think really tight racing is only going to happen in either A) a single-make series or B) a series where the development team has gone through *extensive* effort to balance the cars, and even then they are probably balanced with a series in mind, not for all tracks.

ProDarwin said:

For those who still havent come out for TDT fun:

https://streamable.com/quy0da

That looks like it's the same FB model I found.  It's a weeee bit loose.

Regarding the streetcars:  We can also break the group into a more defined class.  There are a number of FWD, RWD and 4WD cars in there.

ProDarwin said:

For those who still havent come out for TDT fun:

https://streamable.com/quy0da

That was pretty hilarious

It seems with this Street Car Pack, most of the RWD cars all seem to be setup for drift.  I need to look, but I am suspicious the reason a lot have Steering Assist settings is because of massive Caster settings (good for drifting).  I am not sure what the FWD cars are setup for (plowing?), but don't seem to be like some of the FWD setups we have encountered before (which are generally super loose, but very drivable that way).

The 4WD are interesting, and varied (the Subie seems to have issues) but I don't think we have tried any of the Skylines.  I did drive the oldest RWD version, and it was not bad (loose of course).

We might want to play with the Skylines a bit this week to help narrow down the good and bad.

I am curious how much work it would be to "civilize" these cars a bit more.   They have LOTS of adjustments, I am just not sure where most of the "driftiness" is coming from.  Maybe the dampner settings?

Yes, all of that street car track will require significant tuning.  There is nothing that seems to work great out of the box.

Some of them seem to be hilariously imbalanced.  Terrible camber, wacky brake bias, nearly-locked diff settings.  Some have more preload under coast than on throttle.  They are just wacky.

I would not make an effort to "balance" these for a mixed field.  That effort is going to be gigantic.

How about the 4WD Street Cars (maybe with a few others we have not tried thrown in) on that track that was near Chicago.  I don't remember the name, but it had that nice dip jump at the start.  It seems like it would be a fun track with the 4WDs.

Found it:

BTW, in looking for an image, there looks to be an interesting book out there. Is that a Chaparral running around Bridgehampton?, (looks like the corner where Deans courage exceeded his skill  )

I may run a little bit late I have to go to Costco 

I'm probably out for tonight, work's been hell this week and I'm a bit behind on a couple of things that have a deadline of tomorrow. If I surprise myself and things move quickly I might jump on but I'm not holding my breath. 

Had a good time tonight!!!  Thanks everyone!!!!  

I am a bit more encouraged by the car set than I was last week.  It seems like getting reasonable tunes out of the cars might be a bit easier (just reducing rear spring and checking the toe settings make big improvements on the RWD cars).  Also the fact that Sauce got some very good lap times out of the Honda was very encouraging.

Anyone want to take on the Subi? (its such an iconic Gran Tourismo car) I wonder if there is some penitential there?  If it's slow, maybe it can be made to handle (which is what is was known for in GT)?

The FC feels like a rocket at road atlanta, but as soon as I got to mid ohio I feel like I am a second off MR2 times right away.  Interesting.

Yeah, like I say I think we definitely want to have a good mix of tracks. There seems to be some pretty clear speed / handling / braking differences with these cars.  I think Mid-Ohio is a lot bumpier than Road Atlanta so that may be some of what you are experiencing.

At some point this weekend I am going to set up a server with one of every car in it and start testing them. This usually means 3-5 laps with each car with the best lap being recorded. From this we can get an average of the cars.  From there I can see just how much (if any) they need  additional balancing.  
 

I tried the Civic. The 86?  That were were running Wednesday. That thing is a great car!!!  That can be very fast.  

Dean, try this mod, it should make you work a lot faster (don't forget to write down the times).

Unfortunately it only works in Practice and Track Day modes.  I would be fun to carjack Sauce at the start of the race! 

Going to be on tonight and test the cars on the server plus a couple others I want to mess with. All testing will be stock unless they are set up for drift. If they are drift rockets I will try nd calm them down.