Does 'wet=' actually do anything?

Discussion in 'Track Modding' started by Lazza, Nov 13, 2014.

  1. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    Hi,

    This is all a bit new to me so I might be missing something.

    Trying to balance dry/inter/wet tyres and different track surfaces, and in doing some basic checks seem to be hitting a problem. Can someone please confirm whether I've got something wrong or this is potentially something that isn't working?

    In the .tdf each definition includes dry= and wet= settings. This is for dry and wet grip coefficients. Changing the dry= absolutely makes a difference (0.01 resembles ice, as you'd expect). But changing the wet= to a very low value doesn't appear to do anything even after letting it rain heavily for 40 mins. I thought maybe it was a devmode oversight, so stumbled around and got a track into single player with wet=0.01 on the grass, let it rain heavily for an hour and a half (accelerated time, realroad 1x) and while the track is very slippery the grass is the same as it is in the dry.

    I'm guessing the track gets more slippery because of realroad, while the grass isn't part of realroad so isn't affected. I thought the wet= setting would reduce the wet grip, though I wasn't sure how the road wet= setting would interact with the tyre weteffects setting (in combination with RR) but right now it seems like the tyres aren't losing any grip on a 'wet' track for surfaces that aren't part of realroad. As far as I know only the track surface itself and kerbs are generally included in realroad, so if I'm what I'm seeing is correct there is a big potential for tarmac/concrete runoff areas to become the fastest way around a wet track.

    Can anyone confirm/check please?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 14, 2014
  2. WiZPER

    WiZPER Registered

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    Non RealRoad driveable surfaces just have "static" grip, as in only dependant on the weather - whereas RealRoad is also affected by the track evolution (Green/Rubbered), which is why the raceline dries up quicker - that's how I understand it atleast.
     
  3. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    The problem I'm having is the weather doesn't seem to be having an effect either :p
     
  4. WiZPER

    WiZPER Registered

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    Meaning on non-RealRoad surfaces ?

    But idealy you'd use RealRoad on ALL surfaces used for racing, including kerbs, concrete and runoffs - so don't see where to gain grip.
     
  5. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    Yeah, non-realroad surfaces... all the terrain definitions have wet and dry parameters but wet doesn't seem to work. Realroad itself obviously has a wetness value (as well as rubber) so that uses the tyre weteffects parameter to affect the grip accordingly.

    I suppose making all reasonably driveable surfaces 'racesurface' would do the trick, and checking now I can see that's what's been done with Sao Paulo at least. I was thinking it would be better to minimise the number of realroad polys and just use basic grip values where you wouldn't expect much rubber build up or drying lines... but I guess that's not what everyone's doing so this isn't an issue :eek:

    Thanks for the input, I'll mark this down mentally as an unimportant bug and move on.
     
  6. WiZPER

    WiZPER Registered

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    You need the RealRoad to dry up whatever surface the tyres interact with, it's not only about rubber. Have a good day... :)
     
  7. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    Yes, but a piece of runoff that will only have out of control cars on it (unless it magically provides more grip than the track on a wet day) doesn't really need rubber build up nor a drying line. I still call it a bug ;)
     
  8. WiZPER

    WiZPER Registered

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    If surfaces without RealRoad doesn't change grip according to the weather at all, then it is - have not confirmed it though.
     
  9. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    Ok, have been filled in a little by ISI so can see at least some of the mistakes I was making. To help anyone that might be thinking the same thing or comes across this issue/thread in the near future I'll paraphrase:

    • the .tdf 'wet' setting is obsolete. The surface part of the tyre/surface interaction is determined by the Roughness= parameters in the .tdf.
    • 'fully damp' happens at 50% water depth. Up to that point the tyre DampnessEffects settings act as intended as regards grip. More water than that is where aquaplaning should start to occur, but with that not yet implemented there is a crude grip reduction as the water depth increases to 100%.

    This second part explains some strange grip effects I was finding, primarily that you can get an increase in grip on a partially wet track that tapers off to a grip loss (or no change) on a fully wet track. The tyre dampnesseffects should be tuned for 'fully wet' at 50% water depth, with the expectation there will be further (hardcoded) grip loss from that point on.

    I was very confused by this previously, because trying to set a simple sanity check wasn't working. Getting tyres to have the same grip in the full wet as in the dry required dampnesseffects values of 0.60 or so (60% increase in grip!), but then a 20% water depth gave a massive grip increase. I can see now it was ramping towards that 60% grip increase at 50% water depth, at which point it would have dropped again until reaching my dry grip at fully wet. I was thinking it was a hardcoded wet= parameter playing havoc, but it all makes sense now.

    As for non-realroad surfaces, the roughness parameters should suffice for them to lose grip in the wet and avoid unwanted grip off the track without having to resort to making them all proper realroad surfaces with any associated performance hit.


    If this has been covered somewhere previously I obviously didn't see it. Fairly sure none of the dev corner stuff details it, anyway.


    As a final note, I don't think I'll be giving away any secrets if I reveal I was also told that weather improvements will happen, but not in the near future (months+).
     
  10. wgeuze

    wgeuze Registered

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    Thanks for the info Lazza :)
     
  11. WiZPER

    WiZPER Registered

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    Thanks alot for sharing, with this in mind it should make more sense when trying to tune in road surfaces and tyres :D

    - but WHY do they keep including obsolete parameters everywhere, surely not making guess work any easier for us :p
     
  12. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    I guess it's relevant to mention it here...

    The BT20 update included, if you look more carefully than I did at first, "New tyre parameters included for wet weather" according to the changelog. Only just grabbed the files, those parameters are:

    TemporaryGripLossForWetness
    WetConductance

    The first is a single figure, should be the fraction of grip loss at 100% wet. The second is a copy of the existing GroundConductance parameter, but again presumably the values for 100% wet.

    So now we can, for example, make wet/treaded tyres lose less grip on a 'wet' track in comparison to slicks, and also change the way heat is conducted between the track and the tyre in wet weather compared to dry. Wet tyres can now start to work properly :)
     
  13. Frenky

    Frenky Registered

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    What is the current state of rFactor2, regarding the players' wear of wet tires in wet conditions?
    With my own mod, F1RFT2013, I just found out that I don't lose grip (the wet tires don't wear) in wet conditions. At least at non-ISI tracks. After opening the TDF files of non-ISI tracks, I noticed that they lack the Roughness= parameter, compared to their ISI counterparts. Could that be the cause of the problem of no wear? If so, then at least ISI could implement a default value for tracks that are lacking this parameter.
     

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