Finding it hard to control oversteer

I know this has been discussed before but I'm finding it literally impossible to control oversteer in most cars. I'm not talking about catching slides (which isn't overly hard), or whether a slide should/shouldn't have occurred, I'm specifically talking about being more or less in control during oversteer (call it drifting if you want).

I realize the whole 'you can't feel it in the seat of your pants' argument so it's harder than in real life. In all honestly I can feel what the cars are doing pretty well, and most of the time I can sense when the rear tires are going to break loose before it happens. I'm not arguing that it's too hard to save or anticipate slides, once you get used to the feeling of weight transfer, it's actually fairly easy. I'm talking about controlling oversteer mid slide and finding the balance between throttle and steering to keep it going.

It seems almost impossible in the majority of cars. In the historic F1's, Panoz, NSX and BMW Z4 mod for example, it's hard but not impossible to find the balancing point and hold long countersteer moments. Yet in something like the Megane or ZR1 (and many others), it seems like no combination of throttle and countersteer can hold a slide with any kind of control, regardless of managing speed and weight transfer.

In fact what I've found is that if the rear of the car steps out, you're much better off countersteering slightly, but not going into opposite lock, because the more opposite lock you dial in, the faster the car rotates and spins. This is what frustrates me the most. If I countersteer left, the front of the car dives to the right. Even if I try to catch the slide the moment it happens, or If I wait a while and get into a four wheel drift and then try to go into opposite lock, no matter what I do, the more I countersteer the faster the car rotates.

If the front tires are scrubbing and you apply some counterseer, the fronts can regain grip and the rear can come around. I realize this can occur. But I've tried to slide the back out while being within the limits of the front tires, yet still the more I countersteer the more rotation I get. The more I let the self aligning torque take over, the worse it is. I can try to beat the self aligning torque forces and countersteer faster, but this doesn't work either.

I've tried many different setups etc and I realize that some cars are harder to drift than others, but if you soften a racing car up (i.e the Megane) it shouldn't be impossible imo. The ZR1 should be fairly easy, however it seems borderline impossible.

Has anyone else experienced this and figured out whats happening, or is it just me? Can anyone who has done drifting in real life comment on whether increasing countersteer input mid slide increases or decreases the angle of the slide?

Cheers

 

What controller do you use? I can tell you that changing from a cheap wheel and pedals to a better one (G27) change day and night what you can do in the Sim, not knowing your hardware makes hard to help.

 

Have you driven the Skippy much ? Forgive me if you have but it sounds a little like your lifting the gas either too suddenly or too much. The skip really teaches you how to feel through your butt without actually feeling it

 

I'm using a G27, which granted isn't the greatest wheel for sideways stuff, but it does the job.

bwana, yes I've driven the Skippy a fair bit. I can countersteer around the skid pad at LRP continuously without too much fuss. The Skippy is a good example of a car that feels quite unstable but is actually fairly easy to control over the limit. None of the open wheelers seem to suffer from the problems I mention in the OP, not as badly anyway. I've held some truly big slides in the Skip (not easy!), yet I have never been able to hold a controllable slide in Corvettes, Megane among others. Yes I have played around a lot with throttle input, you'd at least think I could fluke it at least once or twice, but I'm at the point were I'm questioning whether it's even possible.

 

Have you tried THIS Track?

It's useful to find out if other Settings of the Wheel or something else can improve the Carcontrol.

 

Thanks, I'll definitely check that out!

 

I have no problem controlling oversteer in most cars in rF2. There are some exceptions though, but I feel they're to be expected. Let me explain:

The Megane you mention is a fairly light car, mid-engined, quite high downforce and thus pretty stiff suspension. It can be a pain in the ass to control when oversteering, but to me that's no surprise looking at those specs. The Megane is due to an update though, so that might make it a little less extreme (newer tire model, chassisflex, etc).

The ZR1 is described as a pain in the ass due to several aspects, so again no surprise that it is.

http://rfactor.net/web/rf2/cars/chevrolet-corvette-road-cars/

The historic F1's and NSX are mid engined, once that weight gets going and you're not used to it it can be hard.

Once you know these characteristics of a car and figure out what it does to the handling it should all fall into place. At least it did for me.

Edit: Also, what bwana said might apply. It's usually not a good idea to lift the throttle too abrubtly or too much when the rear starts to go, as this can really upset the weight-/loadtransfer. Most of the times it's easier to keep the throttle in one place and just countersteer to keep the car pointed and heading in the right direction.

 

Other than this, modern racing tires appear to dislike to slide around, their surface temperature rise rapidly and with it their grip level decrease. So the slide condition change continuosly, making it harder to just sit the car in a slide and manage it with some throttle and wheel inputs to adjust your trajectory.

 

There are not many drift specific cars in rF2 atm, mostly just grippy racers, but there re some exceptions like cobra or Panoz, which are actually easier to drift than to drive in straight line.

 

For sure the majority of cars in rf2 are not suited to huge rear slip angles. The cars that seem to fair better are the ones you'd expect, panoz, C6 grand sport i.e road cars with road tires. I would think that the cars with slicks would definitely be edgier and much harder to control in a slide, especially mid engine, but what I'm finding is I can't control a slide because the more I correct one way, the more I rotate in the other direction. I can control a four wheel slide no problem, but as soon as it goes into opposite lock it increases the rate of the spin. I guess if that's true to life so be it, but it's counter intuitive, and doesn't seem right.

 

May I ask why on earth you want to hold a slide???

 

If the turn rate that you induce in the car to make it spin is too high, it will be very hard to control, slip angle turn extreme, and you have a lot of rotational energy in your car, having the car spin in the opposite direction is a common occurrence. Try to look at what happen (if I understood correctly your problem). First you induce a oversteer, then you countersteer to keep the turn ratio of the car under control. If the slip angle increase to much, the car start to slow down, at some point when lateral velocity of rear wheels is reduced, grip is regained, you are still applying throttle, but at this time your front tires are turned, this induce a oversteer in the opposite direction than before. The ideal would be to have the front wheel almost straight when the rear start to push again, so you have to be able to do this. If you look some video of people drifting their car, at some point often they leave the wheel turn freely, it spin like crazy, then they regain grip with their hands on it. I think the magic happen in this moment, when the car forward motion increase, the front tires want to straighten, if they can't (you still grip the wheel) probably you will snap in the opposite direction.

 

peterchen, It's not that I necessarily want to hold a slide. If I wanted to do that I'd just be content with the road cars. I much prefer racing to drifting, however oversteer is part of racing. I can recover from a slide without spinning without much of a problem, but I almost always find myself toward the inside of the track (because I can't counter steer as much as I want). In a perfect world, when I oversteer I want to keep the front tires more or less on the racing line, drifting toward the outside of the track and gather it up smoothly. If you can countersteer properly, the front tires should barely change their direction of travel regardless of what the back is doing, ideally staying on the racing line. But that's not the case for me at the moment, I always need to do four wheel power slides to save an oversteer situation, instead of opposite lock (or maybe very small amounts of O/L) and that usually puts me in a bad position on the track, not to mention scrubs of a tonne of speed. I'm trying to figure out if it's my skill level or if I'm missing something.

 

Comante, what I'm saying is that I induce a slide, I counter steer it, but it doesn't regain grip and go in the other direction ( ie tank slapper). As I'm countersteering, the more I countersteer into the slide, the bigger the slip angle gets.

The wheel turning freely and spinning like crazy that you mentioned is due to the self aligning torque of the front tires (following the path of least resistance). In real life, a car basically countersteers itself, and as you said you've just got to catch it and hold it at the right time, then quickly straiten up as the rear regains grip. The self aligning torque in rf2 is awesome, but it may be that the g27 is too slow to accurately point the tires in the exact right direction. If I let the SAT dictate which way the front tires point, the above mentioned problem is even worse. Might need to upgrade soon I'm thinking.

 

I'm with OP on this one.
I too think sometimes some 'spins' are just ridiculous.
Feels like the rear tyres just lose grip for far too long.

 

green serpent, I have a G27 too, just a month into it, but while it's not a strong wheel, it has enough torque to make the wheel spin fast enough in this scenario (if you don't touch it).
Have you tried with Howstons?

 

Hard to give advice when nobody can actually see what you're doing. If tank slappers are a constant problem I know that too small a steering ratio is a common issue. Like I said though, it's hard to say without seeing what you're doing. I've seen guys complain about something similar and when they posted some of their spins, they weren't even counter steering at all.

 

I think some of you gentlemen are so quick to defend you don't read what people are saying. He's talking about spinning out before even getting to that stage.

But it's true it could be various things.

The fact that it's mostly to do with the slicker tyre cars, possibly points to an old problem. As Niels Heusinkveld pointed out years ago on the LFS forum talking with Todd Wasson et al, if the tyre slip curve is too pointy and drops off too much after the peak, you get the classic sim behaviour where turning into the slide can actually help and countersteering makes it worse - because counter-steering takes the front tyres back towards the peak increasing the lateral force! This is one of the reasons people like AC physics because it seems to be cognisant of such tyre properties.

So if the wheel isn't fast enough and the self aligning torque can't keep up with the rotation of the car (yaw), your front tyres are already in deep doo doo before you start countersteering.

I think there's more to it than this however.

 

This is what i think is happening: back end of the car stars sliding, car rotates around front axle, then you apply oppossite lock, now car rotates around its center of mass. When car rotates around its center of mass its moment of inertia is smaller than when it rotates around front axle, but in both situations you have same rotational energy. So as car's moment of inertia decreases, car's rotating speed accelerates.

View attachment 19252

 

Shock settings affect dynamics of recovering oversteer.