I think this has been mentioned on discord and other topics alot but I didn't find a bug report. So lets make it offical. The GT3s don't have slipstream effects and also no dirty air... You can see an example of how races look without this effect Spoiler: boring boring example scene at 1:35:10 You can pick mostly any situation in this stream. As long as the car driving in front isn't doing a mistake overtaking isn't possible Please let us know when you will fix this or even if it's not possible for you to fix, let us also know. So we can decide by our own whether to use the GT3s any longer or not.
These all appear to have been adjusted during the last BOP update: https://www.studio-397.com/2021/02/release-gt3-balance-of-performance-february-2021/ So I think it's safe to say the effect was considered too extreme previously, hence the reduction. Is it now unrealistic? That's the question.
I'm not a real race driver but when I drive the GTE cars in a race I have an expected slipstream effect. But when I drive the GT3 at LeMans or on the Döttinger Höhe I can drive behind another GT3 without any slipstream effect. You can go for ages behind each other But when a GT3 is behind a GTE there is a slipstream effect. In the end a statement from the S397 guys is fine for me to if they plan to change this or not. So I can make my own decissions to go on with these cars or not.
They reacted relatively fast to the 'dirty air' issue... I guess (almost) disabling the effect as a quick fix is fine, probably would have done the same. Let's just hope this quick fix doesn't become permanent...
Last week, when I went along the back straight at Nordschleife with my setup in the Callaway I get stuck at 267KPH up the hill. Behind another GT3 I go 272KPH (near the limit you'll get on that car, with more engine overhead I'd be going a few KPH faster in slipstream). They have slipstream. No idea if it's too little or not but it's there.
And again... is it unrealistic? Jamie's experience above sounds pretty close to what a real life driver said regarding drafting (on discord). If it's wrong, by how much? Why don't people deal with details anymore?
I'd also add that you need the same car with the same tune (especially rear DF) and the same corner exit speed to get an accurate reading for what the draft is like in a car. A lot of variables and if I had a penny for every time someone's complained they don't get draft and others do, when it's all down to their corner exit speeds being slower As Lazza said - details matter. Also Nurburgring GP isn't the best track to demonstrate it - the straights are all relatively short. Oh and they do get dirty air. I drove 2 laps directly behind someone on Nords and the understeer was obvious. As I said, no real idea if it's realistic but my instinct says it's just a tiny bit too weak an effect atm. Like a really tiny bit.
Maybe my question to fix was wrong maybe I should have asked to change. What I can say so far is that I'm driving these cars since the 1st GT3 Pack and also with my lack of talent I got a draft. This behaviour changed since the mentioned february 2021 BOP update. It's nice and also part of a internet forum and a comunity that everybody has an opinion and shares this opinion. But what I sayed was that I notice this effect with the GTE cars, still. Also as a non pro driver which doesn't make always the perfect corner exit and so on. I also mentioned that we tested this at LeMans (I think the straits ar long enough). And we raced the Nurburgring GP in previous seasons of our league where we got a slipstream effect. So this behaviour changed noticable. Maybe it was wrong before maybe it's more realstic now maybe it's more realistic now but not 100% correct... So what I really want to know, and maybe my wording was not the best: Do you S397 Team plan to change this again or is this behaviour the final one you would like to achive? And if you plan to change more in a way like it's now or more in a way it was? And please don't get me wrong I don't ask to change the GTE behaviour to the GT3 behaviour. If I could get an answer to this I can make my own decision if these cars are still enough fun for me and my league to drive or not. Thanks.
@Felix Schendel while you wait for a response from S397, I'll paraphrase Jimmi from discord: he wanted to increase the (current) draft effect for esports purposes, but not for realism. To me this suggests the dev team is quite happy with the level. I wouldn't be anticipating any change soon, and all indications are any change would be small. They won't return to F1 drafting.
I like current drafting u can notice it but it not disturbing ur driving on the bumper which create much better wheel-to-wheel racing maybe it could be like 5% stronger but not much more than that in many games drafting feels like f1 car with drs which isn't good the biggest (and probably the only) problem with GT3 for me rn is that their BOP is different between pro series and normal game (I heard at least) and I really don't understand why it is like that
To be fair, one could argue that it is the job of s397 to deal with details, not people. Having said that, we are on the same camp... we want to improve in a realistic way. But sometimes you can wonder if you should not aim for gameplay since we are so far from the realistic data anyway...
Question to the devs @Studio-397: Is this "dirty-air-workaround-bugfix" by disabling the slipstream effect still a thing, which will be properly fixed somewhere in near future? It feels completely off to drive closely behind a GT3 car and get ....... well ..... nothing. Slipstream is not present at all.
Well ..... based on other sims. Maybe they all overdo it and rF2 is the only sim, which is right. Maybe yes, maybe not. Possibly there is a slipstream effect in rF2, but it is almost unnoticeable. If i closely follow a GT3 car in rF2, i can just about keep up, but i feel no speed advantage being directly in slipstream.
I think if you check GT3 onboards (real life) you'll see the draft effect is very weak in comparison to, say, F1. Games do tend to exaggerate it generally, it makes for more fun racing. I mentioned a real racing driver earlier, just found it again on discord. Dennis Lind said at Imola a 2kph gain would be typical, Spa 5-6, depending on wind. Earlier in this thread Jamie measured a 5kph difference, and likely gear limited (so actual slipstream is probably worth a bit more). Then you have people arguing it should be maybe 10-20% stronger, while someone on discord measured a 0.006 time gain while sitting maybe 20m back from the car in front and argued it was nowhere near enough (what's that, 0.15kph on a 10 second straight at 250kph?), with someone then posting a real GT onboard up Kemmel Straight (maybe 30-40m behind) with no apparent draft. So as usual, there are widely varying experiences suggesting very few are doing proper testing. On top of that, it's not easy to check how things should be by watching videos because you can probably find occasions when the car behind caught up or fell behind quite drastically and it's probably more down to subtle differences in car performance and actual corner exit (that one time) than the effect of slipstream. For that reason I think Dennis' statements are quite valuable.
It is because an issue where slipstream effects are additive. Get behind 1 car, you get 1x loss of down force, get behind 2 and it multiplies to 2x and so on. We have this issue in Stockcar and have reduced these effects to compensate. GT3 had major loss of downforce at SPA's Eau Rouge corner due to this, so dumbed down the effect.
They perhaps (probably?) adjusted the effects soon after it was apparent there was too much wash (they also changed the resulting balance, which was causing oversteer instead of understeer), but I don't think they massively dumbed it down relative to real life. As already discussed above.
Whether the draft effect is 'right' or not... that's a pretty interesting story... behind the way it was implemented... Feels like there is a huge difference... no matter the result... between: 1...S397 announcing new and even more accurate draft effect after months of research and collaboration with real life telemetry... 2... well... we had more and more complain about cars behaviors under draft in e-sport competitions, after recent car physics tweaking following gt3 BOP... looking into it, we were able to confirm an issue... and the fix involved to almost remove the slipstream effect... But that's fine since... Dennis say so... What a beautiful coincidence... that after so many years of doing it wrong... we randomly... finally... came up with less inaccurate slipstream... in such a convoluted... yet beautiful way. PS: sorry... again...
@Kahel welcome back. Still not worrying about details I see. Let's just speculate about what might have happened and possible motives, 'randomness', and whatever else. Does that make you feel better somehow? Sorry for picking on you guys, I should just let you put forward your wacky theories unheeded. Truth be told anyone who goes along won't listen to me anyway, so who cares. All the things still wrong with the game, here's something that appears to have actually been changed for the better, but it's all negativity. But I'm a fanboy, so what would I know.