Yeah, I've been reading that discussion but I kinda get the feeling that it should be much stiffer than it is, what's the point of eliminating springs and just riding on rubber block of rubber?

Edit: Well, technically it doesn't eliminate spring, but you know :P

Quote from tristancliffe :

Download everything. Install everything. Update everything. And then the "Member Site" is down or something. Meh

It's usually not down for very long. They said they had to update the code for the Fast-track licence system. So I'd assume that's what this is for.

Quote from Crommi :

Yeah, I've been reading that discussion but I kinda get the feeling that it should be much stiffer than it is, what's the point of eliminating springs and just riding on rubber block of rubber?

Edit: Well, technically it doesn't eliminate spring, but you know :P

Yeah I agree. I'd prefer a much more "solid" bumpstop which only worked over a smaller amount of suspension travel, say 1 or 2 cm, then it could be put to better use with lower rideheights.

Edit: 1 or 2 mm rather.

Just been playing the Mazda thingy at Silverstone. Not very impressed yet, but maybe that's just getting used to it and somehow tweaking the FFB to feel like a car. So far it feels very much rFactor (without RealFeel).

Gonna try a different circuit/config soon, but it's down again. I'll go and buy some dinner while I wait. Maybe do my second jog of the evening to go and get it...

Oh, and the sound is shit. Unless Mazda created a special version of the rotary that sounds even worse than LFS S1 0.3H or NetKar Pro 1.0. And the graphics are over exposed MASSIVELY (but that's already been discussed here recently - awaiting fix ).

Having said all that, I don't care that much about sound or graphics in the end. It just has to feel like a real car. I'll tinker, play and get used to it a bit more, as well as play with setups a bit - is iRacing reknowned for giving 'decent-ish' default setups, or complete junk? The numbers look okay compared to a real car, so I'd imagine it should be perfectly driveable albeit without an ideal balance.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Having said all that, I don't care that much about sound or graphics in the end. It just has to feel like a real car. I'll tinker, play and get used to it a bit more, as well as play with setups a bit - is iRacing reknowned for giving 'decent-ish' default setups, or complete junk? The numbers look okay compared to a real car, so I'd imagine it should be perfectly driveable albeit without an ideal balance.

Whether or not it's realistic to be such, the default setups for most of the cars, especially the Mazda and Dallara have crazy understeer. I found I had to really soften the front up, lower pressures, lower ARB, soften springs etc to get it to turn in properly (which then makes it impossible to drive on the limit due to the snappiness I've been speaking about).

Edit: Yeah the sound of the Mazda is indeed horrible. It's missing the rawness and sounds very synthetic (an achievement for sampled sounds). Thankfully the other cars sound better, especially the new Corvette and Dallara.

Don't want to spend toooooo much money on what is essentially a one month trial (unless I love it), so the 'vette and Indycar are out of the question. I'm concentrating on the lower levels of single seater formulae, where I at least have a vague point of reference (ish).

tris you may find the default sets for the mazda are pants as with the new tyres and wings the cars feel has changed completely. trouble is with the season just starting there aren't a lot of new setups. i got my road america setup to feel better by following volker's sugestion on tyre preasures and was pleased to find im in the 2.06 - 07s with race fuel which isn't too bad considering i didn't run more than a few laps in it last season. check the mazda subforum for ideas etc. one advantage you have is that once you can get into a session with other drivers in same car they can send setups like in LFS now which is far better than the old way of either downloading them or reading them through on chat (can you imagine how long a dallara read through would take) also check out the english club and western europe forums, no idea what the english ones like (i'm a celt ) but the western one is helpfull though a bit quiet

also i never found that silverstone suited the car, feels kind of lost, try it on laguna or lime rock (just watch out for the bumps there ).

pity you hadn't joined before the season ended as you could have walked the MPR and got a class D after a couple of days, still fast track will sort that out for you when it's enabled. something else to look for is the participation bonus, compete for 8 weeks in an official series and you get $10 credit end of season.

going back to the forums, don't be surprised at the amount of bitching on the general forum, there's a hardcore of users who seem to think it's their right to have everything the way they want it and right now, no matter how it affects everyone else and that every problem they have with a car is down to the programers rather than their driving

Mazda is one of those cars that have bit too much grip relative to the amount of horsepower it has; some like it, some don't.

Quote from tinvek :

tris you may find the default sets for the mazda are pants as with the new tyres and wings the cars feel has changed completely. trouble is with the season just starting there aren't a lot of new setups. i got my road america setup to feel better by following volker's sugestion on tyre preasures and was pleased to find im in the 2.06 - 07s with race fuel which isn't too bad considering i didn't run more than a few laps in it last season. check the mazda subforum for ideas etc. one advantage you have is that once you can get into a session with other drivers in same car they can send setups like in LFS now which is far better than the old way of either downloading them or reading them through on chat (can you imagine how long a dallara read through would take) also check out the english club and western europe forums, no idea what the english ones like (i'm a celt ) but the western one is helpfull though a bit quiet

also i never found that silverstone suited the car, feels kind of lost, try it on laguna or lime rock (just watch out for the bumps there ).

pity you hadn't joined before the season ended as you could have walked the MPR and got a class D after a couple of days, still fast track will sort that out for you when it's enabled. something else to look for is the participation bonus, compete for 8 weeks in an official series and you get $10 credit end of season.

going back to the forums, don't be surprised at the amount of bitching on the general forum, there's a hardcore of users who seem to think it's their right to have everything the way they want it and right now, no matter how it affects everyone else and that every problem they have with a car is down to the programers rather than their driving

Quote from Crommi :

Mazda is one of those cars that have bit too much grip relative to the amount of horsepower it has; some like it, some don't.

Lack of time will hinder actual online races. I might squeeze a couple in, but most of it will be 'tests'.

I have the advantage of knowing Silverstone. Hence why I wanted to play there. I also have Laguna from my previous go at iRacing, but haven't played it yet this time. I also (again) have the Radical from the last time.

The trouble so far seems to be a complete lack of feeling in the steering. Sure, there is the odd kickback (mainly from unrealistic 'bumps' presumably caused by poor mapping). If I could work out how to make it better that would help. Do I need spring and damper settings in the profiler? I'm using 450° lock (which makes the Radical seem like it's got a rack and pinion from a truck it's so insensitive), and maximum caster to try and get some feeling.

Sounds like I'm being overly critical too early, but I'm just trying to resolve issues quickly, as well as writing what I think. And what I think is very likely to change.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Lack of time will hinder actual online races. I might squeeze a couple in, but most of it will be 'tests'.

I have the advantage of knowing Silverstone. Hence why I wanted to play there. I also have Laguna from my previous go at iRacing, but haven't played it yet this time. I also (again) have the Radical from the last time.

The trouble so far seems to be a complete lack of feeling in the steering. Sure, there is the odd kickback (mainly from unrealistic 'bumps' presumably caused by poor mapping). If I could work out how to make it better that would help. Do I need spring and damper settings in the profiler? I'm using 450° lock (which makes the Radical seem like it's got a rack and pinion from a truck it's so insensitive), and maximum caster to try and get some feeling.

Sounds like I'm being overly critical too early, but I'm just trying to resolve issues quickly, as well as writing what I think. And what I think is very likely to change.

If you have a G25 (I think you do), you set it to 900 degrees in profiler and 900 in iRacing (when calibrating turn it till it reads 900). iRacing will give you the right rotation for each car. I think the Mazda has 450 anyway. If you set the rotation in iRacing to less than 900 degrees you end up with speed sensitive steering to compensate (lol).

As for FFB, I use 103% in profiler for all games, 0 damper and spring. In iRacing I use 8 or 9 in the Mazda I think with high caster.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Lack of time will hinder actual online races. I might squeeze a couple in, but most of it will be 'tests'.

I have the advantage of knowing Silverstone. Hence why I wanted to play there. I also have Laguna from my previous go at iRacing, but haven't played it yet this time. I also (again) have the Radical from the last time.

The trouble so far seems to be a complete lack of feeling in the steering. Sure, there is the odd kickback (mainly from unrealistic 'bumps' presumably caused by poor mapping). If I could work out how to make it better that would help. Do I need spring and damper settings in the profiler? I'm using 450° lock (which makes the Radical seem like it's got a rack and pinion from a truck it's so insensitive), and maximum caster to try and get some feeling.

Sounds like I'm being overly critical too early, but I'm just trying to resolve issues quickly, as well as writing what I think. And what I think is very likely to change.

What wheel do you have?

For the G25 I found through the forums that to get better feel you need to turn the FFB down in game(I'm at 8) and up in the profiler(Think I'm at like 110% there).

You can just use 900 degrees and once you calibrate it according to instructions ingame, it will automatically adjust the steering for each car. Radical is kind of odd car since it needs quite a lot of steering input to turn, other cars have much quicker steering. I have both spring and damper effects set to 0%, profiler FFB set to 100% and in-game at 12.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Also, any sim only take 3 numbers it not fully modelling inertia, as simultaneous pitch and roll should be different to pitch followed by roll.

how so? unless im getting something seriously wrong any real thing (ie any linear system) should be fully descibable with 3 orthogonal independent axis as per the superposition principle
ie the inertia tensor is always diagonal

ICH NO SPRECHEN DE DEUTSCH!

however
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M ... ncipal_moments_of_inertia
By the spectral theorem, since the moment of inertia tensor is real and symmetric, it is possible to find a Cartesian coordinate system in which it is diagonal
which i think should work with with the usual longitudinal lateral and vertical axes

funny how all the crap that ive been reading about anisotropic electrical materials lately more or less applies to mechanics too
dont make me start on rotational identities of point groups im sure that somehow applies to the principal axes of cars

hm true but that still doenst require any more than the 3 principal inertias to calculate it
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/T ... ng_des_Koordinatensystems

Quote from UncleBenny :

What wheel do you have?

For the G25 I found through the forums that to get better feel you need to turn the FFB down in game(I'm at 8) and up in the profiler(Think I'm at like 110% there).

Aha! Turning ON the "Centering Spring in FFB Games" but sliding it to zero helped a lot. Now I can feel something more than just the odd bang and zome vague 'I'm a car' forces. The rest of the car, however, is missing from the feeling still. If anything, it's now even more like rFactor - lots of steering feel, until it spins. Radical and Mazda are the same in this regard. The cars don't appear to have any progression, feel or mass. Hell, it's tricky enough just spinning the wheels in a straight line - and I'm normally fine with that in real life.

Result after an evenings playing (on and off, not a WHOLE evening) - Meh.

Tune in next time to see if I mellow!

if you want something that actually feels like a car like it has weight and like its been built for fun rather than for performing colonoscopies try the legend round lime rock

Quote from tristancliffe :

The cars don't appear to have any progression, feel or mass.

Good to know I'm not alone with my original opinion! Of course it is difficult to make a accurate judgement on something with such little experience, but it sounds like we are in agreement, and of course your opinion is pretty valuable given the cars you've raced in real life, and more importantly, the understanding of what's possible in different sims. Be sure to post again if you have another go.

Quote from Shotglass :

if you want something that actually feels like a car like it has weight and like its been built for fun rather than for performing colonoscopies try the legend round lime rock

But why don't the rest of the cars feel as convincing and driveable? Personally even the Legends feels much more responsive than I'd imagine the real counterpart would.

I suggest you watch Nikimere's video of the same car, it's around on the forum. The way he described it sounded like iR quite a bit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... Wv7rI&feature=related

anyone find it odd how similar this glitch is to the one in LFS?

Quote from Vendetta :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... Wv7rI&feature=related

anyone find it odd how similar this glitch is to the one in LFS?

Haha wow, must have looked great from the in-car.

Quote from Vendetta :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... Wv7rI&feature=related

anyone find it odd how similar this glitch is to the one in LFS?

Metal crunching sounds for a car that is probably a carbon fibre monocoque. Sorry, it has always bothered me. It's the same metal crunching stock clip they add in for tv shows like "World's Wildest Police Chases".

Quote from Mattesa :

Metal crunching sounds for a car that is probably a carbon fibre monocoque. Sorry, it has always bothered me. It's the same metal crunching stock clip they add in for tv shows like "World's Wildest Police Chases".

It amazes me that after all these years, every game and TV show uses that same set of sound effects! It totally ruins the already rubbish TV show!