Suspension setup guide.

Hello everyone, I was doing some damper testing and looking at lateral forces.
I'm not sure if my interpretation is right or not , so could any of you clear on following please
on right hand turn the negative the lateral force the better, yes or no ?

 

When measuring along an axis (be it force, velocity, displacement, ...) a larger number is "more".

One way will be positive, the other way will be negative. Which is which depends purely on the convention in use.

So if right turns produce generally negative lateral force, a bigger (negative) number means a higher force.

 

Thank you.

 

I think that data in some cars is encrypted.
...and sorry if this is not appropriate here but I would like to ask Lazza if Oreca can read aerodynamic forces.
Before I used an old Motec where I could see those forces in the front wing, rear wing, body and diffuser.
Since updating Motec and its DAM plugin, and making new templates/worksheets (the old ones don't work) those forces are not read. Has this data been encrypted now or am I missing something? The drag does not measure it either.

 

The plugin just uses what's provided by the game, so if a particular car starts blocking channels it's down to the car.

Fair call on the tyre loads, though we can probably fairly safely bet that if a car blocks those it would also block any theoretical "bump rubber contact/compression" channel, so it's a moot point.

 

Hello,
I need help with bumpstop plot. so here is my understanding, the bumpstop will hit at specific suspension travel for ex at 20mm. so if im not wrong the "kick" point in scatter plot should hit at same suspension travel even if I change spring stiffeness (while keeping RH off the ground).
I'm getting different kick point depending on spring stiffness
here is example (colored one is 40N/mm white one is 56N/mm for rear spring only rest of the setup is identical) >>

 

Checked it again, looks like something is off with fpro suspension. as rear spring go stiffer the bumpstop hits sooner and sooner.(same thing with front but not as bad as rear). Can someone check if they get similar results ? (if u intend to test, i did the runs on stiffer bumpstops in car customization).

edit : picture of more extreme difference >

 

It's how rF2 works. You're changing spring rate but not ride height. Changing only spring rate in a real car doesn't work that way.

 

Could u explain it bit more please ? because i was changing spring rate stiffer precisely so that i hit bumpstop alittle later.
RH is already at lowest too, does that mean i have to change it to higher with stiffer spring ?

 

He mean that in R/L if you change springs, and nothing else , ride height will change : stiffer springs--> car higher
/ softer springs--> car lower.
In RF2 as Ride Height is set as a parameter, when you change springs, the car retain the imposed ride height, and not the "natural" this mean that automatically RF2 put spacers or remove them to raise or lower the ride height. For this reason bump stop apparently move.

 

So if I would set my ride height to 80 mm for example, and I soften the springs, it would automatically raise the car up to 80 again? That would be quit e ahuge thing I got wrong before now haha

 

That's definitely not how it should work. From what I've understood, ride height in setup is the ride height at the axle, not at the undertray coordinates. It's neither resting ride height, so a softer vertical stiffness will create more compression when stationary.

 

Is this something that needs to be improved? because this is quite problematic since every single spring rate will have different bumpstop range/gap , for some cars that have 40+ spring settings i would have to plot 40+ scatter plots !
that is quite ridiculous.
atleast they should include live visual in-game telemetry to show amount of travel available before bumpstop hit.
Also i never saw such behaviour on other sims i tried.

 

I just remember things that have been said or explained in the course of many years, I don't have a knowledge of modding/telemetry/physics engine.
Off course the behaviour is a bit puzzling, because ride height in setup is not the consequence of suspension settings, but one of the input of suspension settings. I agree with you that there is no easy way to determine the suspension travel of each angle of the car, while in garage, but fortunately in driving this is noticeable more clearly.

 

yet another thing to whine about....this is even more problematic than roll aero sensitivity.
In the hopes of getting rid of this or help with this behaviour in some way, i could try and make a suggestion thread, hope u guys support it so S397 knows there is need for a fix.

 

In about 2017 a dev (I think Marcel) acknowledged this was a bit confusing and hinted at possible changes to make this process more transparent. I imagine that would mean making ride height output-only.

It's not an error though, it's just the approach rFactor has always taken.

*Oh, and please stop referencing roll aero sensitivity like that. This is even less problematic than that.

 

2017....that was long time ago, oh well atleast they can give a telemetry channel for bumpstop hit so no more guessing.

Aero reference i jokingly said that but i get the your point, noted.

 

Analysis Paralysis seems to be a necessary evil when discovering the depth of the data behind countless decisions.
Never allow the data to overcome "seat of the pants" feel. Experiment for sure.
MoTec Math Channels are Golden when one understand the math behind the dynamics.

Aerodynamics and HP can be determined from the S397 Cars even with some Channels turned off when you have a few pieces of added data like cD and RR. Bumpstops, Bottoming, Damper Velocity Markers and countless more Key Data Elements are available at a glance that way and takes the most of the guess work out of the way.

 

I always hear motec math channel are awesome for sure but someone who is fairly noob in this I can't think of good way to help me with determining maximum suspension travel before bumpstop is hit on different spring stiffness.
on fpro for example there are 158 different springs rates ! so plotting a scatter plot for each spring rate would take ages.

So my current method is to determine travel at softest springs and travel at stiffest springs and i'm taking average of these 2 values and calling it a day, seems like ok solution.
But if you have any better,precise way to determine this i would greatly appreciate the help.

 

DAMPlugin logs setup values, and you can use those in Maths functions. So you can define a bumpstop contact point (travel) for each corner based on spring and ride height values and some formula of your choosing.