Skip Barber Formula 2000 v1.54 Now Available!

Being the only ISI car in rF2 I have driven in real life, I would say it is pretty realistic, with the one exception that I find all rF2 vehicles have, which is too little rear grip. I hope this will evaporate when the new tire contact patch comes, because it feels more like a tire/grip issue than any fundamental physics problem.

These cars are extremely "tippy" and you can spin them 180 with little provocation, especially if it's damp or any slight reduction in track grip. Just like the real one, you better keep your foot on the throttle through turns unless you want to be frustrated and embarrassed. But the real one feels just a bit better planted and less twitchy when the rear wheels are being asked to dig in.

Have you driven an older 911 or Beetle? They didn't call the 911 the "doctor killer" for nothing. You have to drive differently than you do with a front-engine RWD or FWD car, but once you get the hang of it, it's quite thrilling to be able to power through corners...carefully!

 

1. Every-single car in the ISI engine does this, going back all the way to F1 2002 and possibly before. It's like the front-end just turns-in sharper and sharper with too much of the vehicle's original direction of travel changing to, and therefore following, the direction that the front-end is pointing towards. It's also very noticeable when watching from a 3rd person, or trackside/TV cam; the car hardly looks like it's drifting, but rather just following the nose, and at the end of a slide you'll find yourself halfway on the otherside of the track, or more, because too much of the vcehicle's original direction of travel was lost so you therefore find yourself just turning in sharply and driving towards to wall/side of the track nose-first.

More of the vehicle's momentum/intertia should continue forward in the original direction of travel while the rear-end swings out, rather than so much of the vehicle's direction travel changing so drastically as if you had a ton of grip and literally turned the car sharply left or right.

The other sims do this too, but I feel ISI's engine may do this the most. The sim that did this, by far, the best and closest to real-life was the alpha/beta of an AMAZING driving game called Driver's Republic which sadly never came to fruition (the driving dynamics potential of that engine was mind-blowing). LFS is probably 2nd best (in this very specific area), Netkar Pro maybe 3rd (I believe that NKP is actually better in this specific area than it's successor, AC).

I have a feeling the issue goes far deeper than just tyre physics since it seems to linger-on no matter the iteration of the engine. Obviously I could be wrong.


2. At very slow speeds, when you crank the steering wheel very hard left-and-right (I like to call this, Fernando Alonso-style warm-up driving, lol) the cars will start to loose too much rear-lateral grip and start sliding even if you are applying neutral-throttle, and only a little amount of throttle at that. Again, this seems to happen with way too many cars and may be more of a core-thing rather than specific car-modelling.


3. On many cars - even at just 25%, or so throttle - once the rears start slipping just the most minute amount, the slippage, almost instantly, becomes WAY over-exaggerated. What do I mean by "over-exaggerated"? Well, for eg. the split-second you get just a bit of rear-slip - even at, let's say, 25% throttle - the car's engine/tyres want to increase their RPMs/speed WAY too quickly as if the car just gained 6000 lb/ft of torque, or as if you suddenly smashed the throttle to 100%. The RPMs / tyre-rotational-speeds just spike up insanely quickly - WAY too much and WAY too suddenly.

This last issue isn't experienced so much with the Skippy - I guess, due to it's engine (motor) modeling behaving as if it has a heavier flywheel and just generally more intertia in the entire drivetrain - however, the seeming flaw exposes itself more and more the more "hardcore" the car is; for eg. the FR3.5 is absolutely atrocious in this specific area (actually, I feel the FR3.5 to be atrocious in many areas, and currently one of the worst cars in the history of any sim. I'm about to post a thread about this very subject [including a video] sometime in the next 30 mins, or so).


HOWEVER ...
I still feel that, overall, RF2 definitely has the best physics, it's the most alive and dynamic, and reminds me of real-life hard-racecar-track-driving more than any other physics engine, especially in terms of all the small throttle/brake/steering inputs that can make such large differences which make or break a driver. Not to mention, it's FFB is #1 in the industry. However, ISI really need to get to these 3 issues I noted above as I believe that those are the main areas that ISI-physics dislikers (yes, these people do exist) have issues with, especially point #1.

 

A good way to experience the rear grip issue(s) (whatever they may be) is to drive with the treaded tires. Yes, these are only street tires, but in such a light weight car, the grip in the real Skippy is pretty impressive. These ones sure seem to give-up way too easily.

However, despite Spinelli's analysis, I will await the new contact patch revision before concluding. I think the problem could just as easily be the contact patch being reduced more than it should be when the tire is under stress (i.e., cornering or cornering and braking or cornering and accelerating). It's almost like the tire is too hard and inflexible when it's not 100% flat on the surface/car going straight. We'll see...hopefully sooner than later

 

It could strictly just be tyre physics, I really hope so. It's sort of like the tyres, once they start to slip, become elevated and are floating almost above the ground and barely coming into contact with the road, rather than what, I believe, a real tyre does, which is literally just scrubbing/sliding against the road-surface and sort of "wanting" to grip. This may not have anything to do with issue #1 in my post (above), but may very-well be the reason (and therefore fixing it could be the cure) for issues #2 and #3.

 

Sorry for late reply, a bit bussy atm.

Marc, yes i did drove a 911 and not only one luickily, some of are very bad balanced for the street, where as the most tend to lift up the front under accel and convert to a throttle steering car with lots of understeer. They make fun to drive but where not very safe those days with the standard street config. Nowedays they sure more safe to controle in standard already, since it's long ago i ride any porsche i don't know. Howsoever, i don't know but the second point of Spinelli matches the behaviour of the car in cold phase i talked about, and the point one portrays partly how the dynamics feels odd when the front end turns in as if there was no tomorrow in some scenario. It felt wrong to me from the very first go as some other cars of which some are meanwhile nice to roll and letting very little to desire as the nice tracks popping up last, but this car feels broken to me in cold green.

 

Skippy is fine car and it offers close racing but it is too easy to drive to my liking and there is hardly visible tire wear or flatspotting after 1 hour race.

rFactor 2 Tire Wear and Flatspotting , Jul 29, 2011

 

This Skippy feels very different from previous version.

Much more balanced, I drove the car yesterday (with a previous version setup), as if I had stolen it, at Limerock, and I had a blast controlling it with accelerator in quasi drift style, for more than 10 laps witout ever spinning (and it was a long time since I had driven this car), it was not very good for lap times, but very funny.

I don't know if it is realistic or not, but it is now a very good learning school before driving powerful historic cars and a very funny car to drive.

Congratulations ISI.

@Spinelli.

Are you sure you don't have a problem with your steering wheel and pedals ? I assure you I am not an alien driver, far from it, but for me the skippy was very easy to drive in controlled oversteer (manual shifting, heel and toe) with my humble G27.

 

How much difference do you notice between the treaded vs. slick tire? It's like two different cars for me, though that's with an identical set-up.

 

It was with the regional, wich runs with treaded if my memory doesn't fail. I didn't try the national, I let you now. If the national run slicks it should feel quite different and less forgiving.

P.S.

Tried national, less forgiving and with more front end grip, needs a different setup (quick fix reduced rear ARB). The car is a lot of fun to, and AI is a tad faster. After a few laps I could really push it confidently.

 

Nice update (I was looking forward to this one), this car gives you great feeling driving around the track.
As pointed by others, AI use national by default even when you select regional. Also once you save and assign a setup it load it for the other configuration as well.

 

Does the AI also use national config if you first choose regional, and then force setup in the config/tuning menu?

 

In my opinion the front tires seem to have to much grip, front to much and rear to less. I don't think only the rear has to less grip, it is more because of the front has to much why the car overdrives the front in the cold phase already. On low speed without any downforce the grip level in the cold phase should be somewhat similar, depending on the mechanical setup and weight balance ofc, but it isn't ,and that is unbelievable. Ofc after some temp and wear the car aligns itself and the rotation center moves more to the rear, but it starts quite unbelievable high in the difference already what makes me put the balance in question.

Howsoever, i'm looking forward to the tire patch update. I'm almost sure some odds will be history from there on.

 

Thanks isi.

 

Yes it would.

 

This issue was fixed Friday AFAIK.

 

Nor should there be unless you're an awful driver.

That video info states the wear is accelerated by 100x. Every 0.5s lockup is almost 1 minute of solid lockup. So what does the video prove towards what you're saying?

 

I've been using force setup and it's been working.

 

It isn't even necessary to use "force setup", you can choose regional/national or both under "Race Settings->Filters".

 

Oh cool, I didn't realise that. I've been making a habit out of using force setup ever since it was introduced, because it really annoyed me that the Indy Car AI was using oval trim on many of the road courses.

 

When you use the filter, they still show-up as National in the racer list screen, even though they have the regional tires showing.

First, you shouldn't have to filter them or force a set-up--they should work like they are supposed to and automatically select like vehicles. They way they worked immediately prior to the update.

Tim: can you also confirm that there is no difference between the National and Regional besides the tires? That's what I thought. If so, the Regional AI seems to suddenly be much faster than it was before. If there is a difference, it may be caused by them actually using the slicks even though graphically they have the treads. Same problem, but reverse of the original Skippy.

Please get this fixed ASAP and don't leave them in this annoying state for 6 months or a year or more like last time.