Apex Modding GT3, Emery's base setups

Discussion in 'Vehicles' started by Emery, Jan 1, 2016.

  1. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Apex Modding GT3 v0.960 base setups
    updated: 22 Nov 2017

    Your feedback is appreciated! Please reply to this thread or send a PM.

    Bentley
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UiNRvyP9jdN8-ALZ7FpDjubFCOt_BWhH/view?usp=sharing

    Camaro GT3 2012

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HI-DiqotHYZ2JRem5ydlVXQlU/view?usp=sharing

    799R GT3
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HI-DiqotHYelFyTjQyMkpYR0E/view?usp=sharing

    854 GT3
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HI-DiqotHYOE1rT18wbkRuczQ/view?usp=sharing

    BMW Z4 GT3
    current https://drive.google.com/file/d/19jjey8hb2bZ1b-O4zdCsLmQM6acTaZeL/view?usp=sharing

    Corvette Z06-R
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HI-DiqotHYNFZya3RnWWFNdDQ/view?usp=sharing

    McLaren MP4-12C GT3
    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9HI-DiqotHYMUdRMzM0WEZVZ1U/view?usp=sharing

    Mercedes SLS AMG GT3
    current https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oiq8f-apmNekVcN3OEyrDbcmAcLoEGzG/view?usp=sharing

    Thanks to Apex Modding for sharing their very lively, entertaining, and growing collection of GT3 racecars! In the continued spirit of sharing and enjoying, I offer these setups as an alternative to the defaults. The neutral steering was derived from skidpad tests, adding aero downforce until aero push could not be tuned out, and then shock dynamics & brakes tuned by alternating between Portugal and Silverstone with a spot check at Sebring. Some tracks, like Mid-Ohio (cresting hills in the middle of turns), will likely need alterations to the setups or an adjustment in driving style.

    If you wish to further tune the setups:
    1) Make sure it's not a driving problem. Primarily, if you're having snap spins at turn-in after applying hard braking, I'd suggest braking a little earlier. Likewise, tire temps will tell you if you're overdriving.
    2) Increasing slow rebound will add "liveliness", decreasing slow rebound will remove "liveliness".
    3) If snap spins are still a problem for you, increase front slow rebound or add understeer by increasing front springs/swaybar.
    4) For more oversteer in medium & fast corners, decrease rear wing.
    5) My camber settings are conservative due to the skidpad and my driving style. By all means increase the camber if you prefer!
    6) After any spring/swaybar/wing/camber changes, recheck brake balance and maximum braking force.
    7) Explore what I didn't visit: adjust rear ride height to dial out aero push at speed due to the rear downforce pushing the rear ride height lower than front ride height. Motec or just watch high speed tire temperatures.


    Car Specific Notes

    Bentley
    First thing I noticed was how much acceleration is available and that you hit the rev limiter in top gear, so maxed out the rev limiter. Overall, tuning the Bentley is an exercise in making it more lively without letting all that weight take over. I dialed out understeer with the springs at both ends, removed a bit of front swaybar to increase grip, brought the slow rebound up & turned down the slow bump to liven up the chassis response, dialed out some camber, reduced air pressure until temps were more even, then balanced the braking bias. A trip to Portugal hinted that fast shocks were too hard, so lowered them to where the chassis rode more smoothly.

    Camaro GT3 2012

    The ISI car with some Apex mod-specific limits (locked gear ratios), it feels kind of silly to talk about setting it up. The chassis is very forgiving of tuning and changes produce only small effects on lap times once camber & tire pressure are set. Mainly, stay away from the differential as the coast side is so strong it just pushes on corner entry. I wish the maximum braking force was a tad higher because the tires have the capability. I tested a spread of wing values and present what was fastest for me; a touch more wing will inspire more confidence if needed.

    799R GT3
    Such a neutral car on the skidpad! You can dial in all the wing you want, but this is the maximum that I'd recommend as the drag affects acceleration. Tuning the slow rebound, you can feel the chassis demanding things of you, "more of this, less of that". I left plenty of curlicue skidmarks on Silverstone's Maggots & Becketts corners while trying to find the right balance. You definitely have to stop and ask yourself whether it was your fault or the setup's fault each time.

    854 GT3
    I started on the skidpad with full springs, no swaybars, to balance the chassis and find a camber setting. Add in rear wing and adjust the springs to remove aero push. Testing on the tracks quickly pointed out that the tire temperatures would rapidly spike, suggesting that the shocks couldn't control the maximum spring rates. I dropped the spring rates into the range they're currently at and the magic started happening. Did not take long to find good values for slow rebound. Fast rebound settings eventually revealed themselves while adjusting the brakes at the end of Portugal's bumpy straights.

    BMW Z4 GT3
    The BMW has lots of aero push, so you can't use much wing. I wasn't totally happy with my first release as it was too nervous and I was chasing my tail (literally!) adding front slow rebound to make the chassis settle after braking. Similar problem with the McLaren, at the opposite end, finally reminded me that I was asking the shocks to do the work of springs, so I threw away the front swaybar and increased the front spring rate to compensate. Tire pressures came down because it was too skittish in my first release. Finally, in an effort to find more front downforce, I first tried closing off the brake ducts, but that didn't show any effect, so instead I closed off the radiator which helped a bit; if you experience overheating with the current release, open the radiator one notch. *** see "15-Minute Exercise for the Reader" on page 2 of this thread***

    Corvette Z06-R
    Most inviting to toss through turns! But restrain yourself as tire wear will eat away at lap times if you let it slide. Like the McLaren, the Corvette has oversteer that can't be tuned out when you take away the wing on the skidpad. This setup came together surprisingly quickly because the Corvette exhibits little to no aero push, thus it can run as high of rear wing as you dare. The chassis balances between slow speed and high speed no matter how you tune. Quirks of the chassis that had to be worked around are a minimum front camber of -2.0 deg and rear spring maximum of only 971 lbs/in. An experiment worth trying on the Corvette is to find when wing angle produces too much drag.

    McLaren MP4-12C GT3
    The first wild discovery with the McLaren is that the chassis has massive oversteer that can't be dialed out until you increase wing to 4 or 5! At that point, you can start adding rear spring/swaybar as you add more wing. I made the mistake of trying to use the rear swaybar in an effort to help tire temperatures. The result was a car that didn't have as much aero push as the default setting, but it wasn't really faster because the dynamic handling was no better no matter how much slow rebound I added. The "aha" moment arrived, I minimized the rear swaybar (you can't remove it) and compensated with spring rate. A final tweak, in an effort to ease the outside front tire's burden, was to maximize the caster.

    Mercedes SLS AMG GT3
    Pigs really can fly! Learning from the BMW, closing off the radiator reduces aero push. Unlike the BMW, you can't use minimum cooling setting. Rear wing is one touch too far for optimum acceleration. However I found I could turn very consistent laptimes, so you might find it useful for tracks with shorter straights.
     
    Last edited: Nov 25, 2017
  2. Justy

    Justy Registered

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    Thankyou! I will try these out, when I finish recovering from last night. :eek:

    Cheers
     
  3. jimcarrel

    jimcarrel Registered

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    Thanks for your time invested Emery, will enjoy checking these out.
     
  4. Hazi

    Hazi Registered

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    Danke!
     
  5. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Added McLaren
    Updated BMW
     
  6. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Add Corvette.
     
  7. Lgel

    Lgel Registered

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    Hello Emery,

    I have downloaded your F858 setup, I have noticed that you have set damper compression (slow and fast) much stronger than rebound.

    It goes against generally accepted theories, I cite from the following paper "Generally the rebound forces are greater than the compressive forces".

    http://www.theoryinpracticeengineering.com/drift_mag/basic_damper.pdf

    But it works for you, nothing to object.

    Cheers.
     
  8. ucfquattroguy

    ucfquattroguy Registered

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    I haven't dissected the .hdv, but keep in mind that each damper setting is independent of one another. So, just because compression and rebound both have 15 "clicks", doesn't mean they're on the same scale.

    Just a thought.
     
  9. Lgel

    Lgel Registered

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    Sorry, setups are presented in my case as N/m not clicks (it is an option that you can activate in the player.json).

    "Damper Units":true,
    "Damper Units#":"Display dampers (shocks) in garage as: 0 = setting (e.g. 1-20), 1 = rate (e.g. 1000-9000 N\/m\/s)",
     
  10. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Paper also says, "An overly stiff shock in compression will not absorbs the bumps very well and can contribute to the well known bouncy ride." Do you find the ride in the F858 to be bouncy and not absorb bumps compared to the default setup that was provided?

    You'll find all my setups use similar high compression settings for the dampers as I'm seeking to control reaction to the driver's inputs and slow them to a range suitable for an old man's reactions.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2016
  11. ucfquattroguy

    ucfquattroguy Registered

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    What's below is using the Z3 as an example:

    Thanks for clarifying that. After swapping my display setting and seeing the actual units, I plugged some known chassis numbers into a suspension calculator I have. The rebound values seem a tad underdamped based on a 60% critically damped assumption I like to use for "real life" racing applications. Compression is obviously WAY above what *should* be acceptable.

    Just screwing around with a calculator plugging in some values from the HDV:
    Try 150 front spring/110 rear spring. 11000 front rebound/5200 front compression (low-speed). 11700 rear rebound/5200 rear compression (low-speed). I did have to lower the spring rate a bit to return damping values that were within the constraints as set in the HDV. You can always dial roll-stiffness back in with bars if needed.

    Not sure when I'll be able to get some seat-time myself, but really want to try both 'methods' to see what feels better. I've found many instances in rF1 where a setup that *should* work in real life just didn't feel any good in the sim.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jan 3, 2016
  12. Lgel

    Lgel Registered

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    You are right, remember that suspension springs are not your only springs.
    Tires are also a spring, in RF1, tires were so stiff that the softer springs were better for performance.
    Cheers.
     
  13. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Added Camaro.
    Added 799R.
     
  14. Emery

    Emery Registered

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    Dear Lgel and ucfquattroguy -

    Allow me to expand your horizons. Compression biased damping is a real-world technique for tuning race cars. It is not new--I learned the concepts over 20 years ago. Rest assured that rFactor 2 physics are not broken in this regard. The physics are nicely detailed in http://www.kaztechnologies.com/wp-c...rs-Chapter-from-FSAE-Book-by-Jim-Kasprzak.pdf (well worth saving a copy to your hard drive) and this paragraph from page 15 best summarizes compression biased damping:

    "However, the use of dampers in race cars is much different than in passenger vehicles where dampers are primarily used to damp the sprung and unsprung masses. In race cars dampers are a key component of suspension tuning. As mentioned above, dampers control the RATE of weight transfer in transient maneuvers. During these events we are making use of the unique characteristic of the damper, the fact that it develops force proportional to velocity, not displacement like springs. In this respect, the damper acts like a dynamic spring, developing force when in motion during transient maneuvers. Thus, you can think of the damping ratios as dynamic spring rates!"
     
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  15. Ernie

    Ernie Registered

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    Many thanks for the effort, Emery. I'll try out the setups later.
     
  16. Juergen-BY

    Juergen-BY Registered

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    Done... ;) Many thanks for sharing this very interesting informations.
     
  17. marmagas

    marmagas Registered

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    Very useful thread Emery,thanks and all you have a happy year!
    These setups,especially for 854,gave Apex mod a new life!
    Have a ride@palm springs with 854 and Emery setup!!!!!!Its heaven!!!
    Again thanks and keep up the great work!!!
     
  18. Lgel

    Lgel Registered

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    As I wrote:
    "But it works for you, nothing to object."
    I respect diversity, and enjoy it.
    Citing now Confucius, "If the cat catches the mice, who cares about his colour?"

    Cheers.
     
  19. Coanda

    Coanda Registered

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  20. Marc Collins

    Marc Collins Registered

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    Thanks for posting set-ups and explanations, Emery. It all helps us educate ourselves and learn various perspectives. And, of course, we can endlessly try out all alternatives for ourselves--a luxury almost no one in real life racing has.
     

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