Wow, Uhhh sorry, but this all seems a bit retarded. Just sounds a little counter intuitive for me..

I believe in grip, and when my tail comes out, I tend to just do an exaggerated countersteer to bring the nose into the tail's line.

When I do wipe out, I do a "reverse" countersteer where I steer into the direction where I came from and try to get the front wheels to grip and "whip" the car back on track.

But after seeing the video, I do see how it can help me recover faster then a "reverse" countersteer if I do wipe out. I will be trying that out the next time I am online.

But that would be only for emergencies when I am facing the way I came ect. As for scrubbing off speed.. I don't use the tire's lateral traction to slow down, too wasteful.

This is all correction stuff, and never meant to be intentional. I don't like how people try to justify it and say that they use it to scrub off speed, reminds me of people who try to justify drifting as a competitive driving style. How they try to use offroad rallying as an example as an example where drifting would get you a faster time. Though.. No, not really, not at all.

When I hang the tail out, I do it because it is cool, and it is fun to do, it is rowdy. I don't try to justify it, I just say I am having fun.

SSM, my first impression when I read this topic was the same that you.
After somedays I get myself doing a thing almost like.

What I do sometimes:

- The car starts to lose the rear
- I know that I will not be able to countersteer, or I know that the car will not respond this action as expect
- I know that it will be necessary to reduce the speed, and I know that if I reduce the speed countersteering, the rear will lose for sure.
(all this "I know, I know" thing is an instant thought, it is a very fast reaction, aquired after some years playing in simulators).
-So, I decide that it is time to reduce the speed, and I brake hard without countersteer, just a hard touch and release, with the front tyres aimed to the inner side or to the curve, but never to the outter side. The car stop trying to spin, than I start countersteering, with some corrections over steering wheel.

It is very fast, and it is a bit hard to reproduce when I'm paying attetion to the action. It is easier to do when I don't think

I have no sure if I could explain the right way. Sorry for my bad English.

I did tech myself this tecnique some years ago (after seeing some vid) but its is a bit counter intuitive so I don't use it. The benefit is that the transisions from oversteer to fourwheel drift to grip is smoother with less risk of "over compensation crash" (i.e where all four grips while you are using full oposite lock, sending you into the armco).
It also upsets the suspension less than turning the tyres over the center line (often resulting in the same type of crash than above)
I've dared to try it in RL, well I have but was going to slow for it to work, and now I drive a fwd so I just mash the throttle to counteract the oversteer by understeer.

Regarding locking the fronts to catch a slide:

Quote from RevengeR :

That would require a brake balance pushed more to the front. Even if not, the rear would also lock up. You don't want to lock your wheels too often in the LX, nor in any cars.

You need to counter with the throttle to avoid locking the rears. I did alot of this style of driving in nr2003-transam mod, but its very hard to do in a more complete sim. Its s sweet feeling when you get it working, you're instantly in the zone (until you crash it).

Quote from heson :

I did tech myself this tecnique some years ago (after seeing some vid) but its is a bit counter intuitive so I don't use it. The benefit is that the transisions from oversteer to fourwheel drift to grip is smoother with less risk of "over compensation crash" (i.e where all four grips while you are using full oposite lock, sending you into the armco).
It also upsets the suspension less than turning the tyres over the center line (often resulting in the same type of crash than above)
I've dared to try it in RL, well I have but was going to slow for it to work, and now I drive a fwd so I just mash the throttle to counteract the oversteer by understeer.

Regarding locking the fronts to catch a slide:

You need to counter with the throttle to avoid locking the rears. I did alot of this style of driving in nr2003-transam mod, but its very hard to do in a more complete sim. Its s sweet feeling when you get it working, you're instantly in the zone (until you crash it).

Thats ok, but still, it's not the best if you have to stay on the throttle on every braking zone. I don't miss that technique, and I think I'm fast enough without it, so no need to use it.

Quote from RevengeR :

Thats ok, but still, it's not the best if you have to stay on the throttle on every braking zone. I don't miss that technique, and I think I'm fast enough without it, so no need to use it.

agree

I've tried this technique in real life in an empty parking lot. Knowing it was a technique that only worked when at the limits (part of the reason it's not intuitive is that you can't test it unless at the limits), I started off with a circular skid test pattern, holding a near constant radius and increasing speed unti the car was drifting. Then I tried combinations of power induced or engine braking induced understeer, combined with oversteer and induced understeer. The induced understeer works, even under throttle, but it would be self defeating in the case of power induced oversteer (opposing acceleration). I then tried it with a figure 8 pattern, typically used for this kind of learning process.

As mentioned, I corresponded with a club racer, and he stated that induced understeer helped a great deal on his "evil Clio Sport track car", but not with any of his other track cars. The mid-engine Clio had a tendency to be nervous when setup for fastest lap times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPCGnkApnDU

Poss unrelated. But still epic.

i see induced understeer all over the place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1jCU4xRDW8

on a lap thats ~3 secs off pace... very meaningful example aint it?

It may be a gross example, but.. He`s clearly using it to control oversteer.. prevent it i mean.

true but maybe were seeing this in different ways
the example in the opening post clearly shows how it can be used to save your arse but for me the discussion has been about whether or not this weird technique which works great in kaemmer games to achieve good laptimes really physically sound for that application

If i`m not mistaken, Vincper used this for his FBM @ BL1 ex-WR. If you watch closely T1 and T3 you`ll see what i mean.
I originally thought he wanted to warm up the front left for the next lap..

I actualy tried using this on the RAC, it works pretty well. But I've only realy used it so far to prevent the car from spinning out on the oval.

Ususaly if you loose the rear end completely on the oval its lap over for you, but if you wash out the front wheels by steering all the way in, it actual causes the rear end to fall back into place.

A simple explination for this is that once the fronts wash out, the rears will regain grip and the braking effort caused by the engine alone will pull the rear back.

I can't see using this agressively in a race though, it would probably be too risky on a wheel with more than 300° lock. I've done it with 720 but you have to realy wrench the wheel around and its probably not a good idea.

Small amounts to scrub off speed and heat up the tires might be useful though.

Interesting. People did it and will keep doing it in sims. In real life there might be problems. First, theoretically it will work. However, in oversteer, the forces on the steering wheel would make it 'auto opposite lock'. Often you have to react pretty fast and you wouldn't believe how hard it physically is to turn a real non power assisted wheel very fast against its will.

Also, lots of simmers tend to either use too little steering lock on their wheels, or too much in the car setup. With our FFB being much weaker than real life in most cars, we can almost instantly apply full lock in less time and with less effort than real life.

One thing is for sure, if you do this too slowly in real life, you might well make the oversteer worse. Also you'd be physically exhausted if you had to do it a few times. Applying opposite lock is far more natural, physically easier, less hard on the front tires, and likely to cost less time..

Its a silly exploit showing just how people don't care about realism even in iRacing; they're just finding ways to go fast, just like it has always been.. If you have a grain of racing talent and want simracing instead of gaming, you'd avoid doing this pretty much!

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Its a silly exploit showing just how people don't care about realism even in iRacing; they're just finding ways to go fast, just like it has always been.. If you have a grain of racing talent and want simracing instead of gaming, you'd avoid doing this pretty much!

If it's based on sound physics and the only reason it can't be done in real life is because of certain physical limitations (like you said, not being able to turn the wheel fast enough or powerful enough), I don't really see the problem. I find the ability to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a sim-car far more impressive (and satisfying) than pretending to operate under real-life limitations that don't exist in sim-racing.

Either way, I still can't see any instance where this has been used by top drivers in iRacing, not one.

Quote :

induced understeer ... done in real life

As mentioned earlier it is done in real life. I recall corresponding with a guy named Warren that stated that induced understeer was needed on his "evil mid engine Clio V6 Renault Sport". This Clio is interesting, in that the engine is moved to where the rear seat used to be, and the car is rear wheel drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Clio_V6_Renault_Sport

Also, you don't need to peg the steering (don't need a lot of lock) to induce understeer for spin prevention, just steer a bit beyond "critical slip angle" at the fronts, and an otherwise oversteery car will settle down.

Very interesting discussion! I used this a LOT back when I used to play GPL, but mostly when I was losing the back end. In a lot of situations where opposite lock would not have recovered the rear end, I would use induced understeer and bring the back into line again. I didn't ever use as a regular part of my driving technique, just when I was losing control of the back end. I have used it a bit for the same reason in LFS too. Never really considered whether it was a realistic technique to use in real life, but I think I always assumed it was not realistic. Interesting to get some feedback on this though Thinking about it more now (making the slip angle of the front tires greater than the rear tires), it does make sense to me that it could work in real life!

I played around with the car for a few hours this evening, had some free time, and find the car very interesting and challenging. I've decided I flat out don't like it. A good car should be well designed, so the driver can focus on less things, making him less likely to make a mistake. The RAC is a handful no matter the setup, it's just too easy to make a simple mistake, it requires incredible patience and focus, and memorization. The chassis is just, bizzare, there's no other way to describe it. Letting off the throttle only slightly, say 10%, on uneven pavement will send the car out of control, and I mean the kind you cannot recover from. I even tried a very very friendly setup and ran at about 85% pace, and all the problems were always present, they never go away. All you can do is add a bunch of rear toe, but it doesn't fix the problem, only covers it up. Making the car completely useless IMO, except for qualifying or a sprint.

Some cars are rough, and tough to drive, and the challenge is what makes them great. IMHO the RAC just isn't one of these, for me, it's more like a disabled car, and when you're driving, you're simply doing your best to nurse the car around without wrecking. It has terrible turbo lag, a short wheel base, the only positive things I an say about it is it can be fun to rag race at times, and it looks okay. But is just too small, as light as it is, the weight gets thrown around so easily. Who knows maybe someone else can figure this car out, I doubt it, it just feels broken.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Its a silly exploit showing just how people don't care about realism even in iRacing;

You have a good point about FFB Niels, but some people will always try to find the shortcut even if it's simracing and not a matter of life or death.

It's up to the developers to set up things in a way simdrivers have benefits from racing in the most realistic way, that's the only solution, and it should be particularly important for iRacing if they insist saying theirs is a training tool rather than just a game.

Quote from NightShift :

You have a good point about FFB Niels, but some people will always try to find the shortcut even if it's simracing and not a matter of life or death.

It's up to the developers to set up things in a way simdrivers have benefits from racing in the most realistic way, that's the only solution, and it should be particularly important for iRacing if they insist saying theirs is a training tool rather than just a game.

Not really. If developers compromise the physics in a sim specifically to seem real, as opposed to actually being accurate representations of real-life, then the sim has failed. Whether or not people choose to race the sim as a sim is up to them. If I used iRacing as a training tool, then I would not flatshift, or 'induce understeer' or whatever (not that it is a viable way to improve laptimes in the Skip Barber car...)

The role of the developer should be to make a sim that is as accurate as it can be, and not to make a sim that is as close to real-life times as possible, or a sim that looks as realistic on the onboards as possible. If an alien driver is 1 second per lap faster than the lap record in real life, it simply means that the alien is 1 second faster than real-life, regardless of the consequences that this has for the integrity of the sim. This difference is in the thousands of seconds per turn, and the differences are due to impossibly loose setups, impossibly huge amounts of track-time or impossibly big balls.

There simply is no such thing as simracing in the "most realistic" way. For the absolute fastest of the world, there is only driving in the fastest way.

Edit: Consequently, this is where LFS is truly wonderful - there are no real times or cars to compare to, so the developers have no pressure to downtune certain physics or parameters to come across as an accurate representation of real-life. The developers simply have to focus on re-creating the world and its forces as accurately as possible. It makes the sim very pure, and this is what drew me to LFS in the first place.

There is no such thing as snap oversteer.

Quote from Jertje :

Not really. If developers compromise the physics in a sim specifically to seem real,

I never said that.

Quote from Jertje :

There simply is no such thing as simracing in the "most realistic" way.

There is. You seem to assume I was talking in absolute terms which would obviously be foolish. No amount of money will make driving the BF1 in LFS the same thing as driving the real thing, there's no question about that.

However, any driver can choose how realistic he/she wants his/her experience to be. I read e.g. many other sims offer a lot of driving aids that make driving some beasts (like an F1) a trivial task. LFS has chosen to cut on aids, but still it has several and many other features that are effectively used to make driving easier. Competitiveness will do the rest and push players to use all the tricks because 'everybody else do' and nobody wants to play a game which is unfair only to him/her.

LFS, and all the other sims that strive to be as realistic as they could possibly be, should do everything to prevent use of those tricks, just as they try to make impossible for drivers to take shortcuts in a race.

E.g. make sure the driver can't reduce the lock or turn off FFB, use chase view, resort to macro clutch, or use sequential instead of a H-shifter+clutch, altering brake force, whatever... without incurring in some well-thought out penalty.

Of course nobody should prevent the players from using the settings they like the most, we also have to accomodate for different controllers and control methods - but whoever chooses the easy way, at the same time loses the right to play on a level field with those who don't - because by using those very same aids/tricks/shortcuts etc, the player effectively shifts the odds in his/her favor, and the penalties are needed to make the field level again.

If a sim doesn't fight the exploitation of driving aids, tricks, shortcuts etc, most players will bend instead of break, effectively turning the sim into a joke, far less fun, meaningful and honest than an arcade.

If you look at it this way, it's very understandable that some people refuse to buy or use a wheel. Why pretend it's realistic when everybody else play it like it was the snob version of NFS?

Quote from Michel 4AGE :

There is no such thing as snap oversteer.

Technically it's not the equivalent of "snap" as used in reference to a snap roll on an aircraft that's induced from simply too much elevator input, causing one wing to stall a bit before the other resulting in a very fast roll, without any aileron input.

However it is appropriate term in the case of a high downforce car, like a Formula 1 race car. If the car oversteers, the angle of flow over the rear wing is yawed, reducing the downforce resulting in less grip, resulting in more oversteer, reducing the downforce, ... a vicous cycle that happens very quickly. The result of an oversteer at high speed (high downforce) in a Formula 1 car pulling over 3 g's of lateral acceleration, is a very fast spin, called snap oversteer. To prevent this, most high downforce cars have a rearwards bias in the downforce.

I just ordered new tires for my GTI VR6, so I went ahead and tried this. I admit I've never tried this, certainly not to the extent explained here.

I got it to work just fine after a few tries, but IMO it's too hard on the tires, even tho mine were nearly bald (which is why I didn't mind doing this). I did actually get a bit of the snap effect, into the corner, and although I kinda liked that, I don't like the severity of it, and I really honestly believe if I did this on any track with any of my cars it would get me rear ended, when battling. I can only imagine in a real race.

I'm happy I was able to do it, and liked the high G snap effect (this is hard to explain, at the end of the maneuver the car pulls extremely hard into the apex, and IMO caused inaccurate online driving, aka off center corner entry, and washed off far too much speed every time, and my tires weren't even good) But in the end, I would never do it, I don't like it at all, and I don't find it any faster, in fact, I found it to be slow; but I admit this could be a result of my limited experience doing this, still IMO I don't believe I could ever be any faster doing this, and I generally keep an open mind, I especially love learning and absorbing.

My GTI has a pretty damn aggressive setup, but doesn't handle quite as good as the Saab, I'll try this with the Saab, and compare it to the GTI, that way I've tested two very different FWD cars, both setup pretty well for the track.

I REALLY want to try this with the Cobra, but no way, somehow I just know it's going to be sloppy as hell, and I'm gonna slide off the road, and even tho it's a closed road, I still don't want to destroy my car. Besides, IMO this won't do any good in my particular RWD car, maybe in a racecar, but I'm certain this would be an absolute mess in my Cobra. (Besides I admit I use the power to be lazy and smoke ppl no matter how perfect I corner, but I'm trying to get better) I want to drive like Jeremy Clarkson, but to this day, I have not ONCE tried to power oversteer my car at the speeds he does, I just don't have the guts, nor do I trust myself. Maybe I'll rent a RWD car and try it... hehe.

Quote from DHRammstein :

I just ordered new tires for my GTI VR6, so I went ahead and tried this.

The problem is that this is a method that only works when at the limits, which can't be sanely done on a road. I did it in a very large but closed parking lot, one that is used for a few pro solo type races during the winter time (the parking lot is used for a water theme park during the summer season).