Slow Motion
Registered
ehehehe a lot of questions... I'll try to answer but I must be forced to follow few rules. One is that I cannot tell everything because of I'm not so skilled to explain everything in the correct way it deserves, second reason is that things change very quickly in the racing world, so info I got refer to different "dates" and it is difficult to keep them together, third because teams do not like at all and didn't give the permission to reveal info on settings, specific performances, etc... and if they continue to give info is because I respected their wishes. Last reason is that the engineers I'm in contact tell me only part of the whole stuff.
That said I can clarify that:
1. Michael Borda is the person that developed the HARD and WET compounds of the GP3 since the beginning, not only for this last build. He developed the tires using confidential documentation of Pirelli at that time. Then I edited few values of the realtime section to match different performances for each compound, tuning performances and wear depending of info I got by a couple of drivers (one directly by the driver, others via team(s) engineers.
2. Michael Borda never stops to develop his TGM formulas, so time by time he provided newer tires that I tested and reported, etc etc... For this last build he developed the rear tire time ago based on latest info I sent and newer info he got and I added new values into realtime section according with the new rF2 code.
About front tire of the GP3: it is exactly the same tire of another mod that S397 is developing, but that is in use at rear, nothing of weird I'd say
3. about S397 choices to rebuild or not old tires according to the new CPM, we all can hope that, but it takes time
4. For sure rFactor2 has its limits in managing graphical and physical data, no doubts, but the level is really at the top of a sim that is sold like a game at few dollars and continuously developed. We all would like to have something better every day, but sometime we could stop thinking to what we already have... My personal opinion is that I'd love to have more physics than graphics improvements, because the physics is the stronger feature of rF2 and I'd love to try to develop and drive a car that, just for instance, can be fully sensitive to the different weather conditions and surfaces, but I must wait for few more time!
Coming back to rF2, it is true that in some case real data must be "translated" a little bit more to match the behavior of the real car and that atm there are few areas of rF2 that are more difficult to be understood (at least to me!!). In such cases I followed a different approach, spending also a lot (very lot) of time:
- test the car with known conditions and closed to real data I got by a team focusing on one single feature
- record MoteC data and send them to the GP3 engineer (that is able to see, immediately, where I'm making a mistake in driving and where it is something to be fixed)
- edit data and repeat all the process for n times until the mod behaves like the real car (obviously based on answers/comments of the GP3 engineer
- last step (and this one can take long long time) waiting for the opinion of the driver(s) at their sim-rig(s) or at the workshop sim-rig of the team
5. several people complained about the excessive understeer of the mod, but I was always confident to be on the right way, because no one driver of the GP3 and other professional drivers in that "ambient", that drove the GP3 mod never complained about it, as well as any GP3 engineer that analyzed the data. The one to whom I'm more in friendly relations (not sure it is correct in English, LOL), "Mr.D" always pushed me to drive in a different way when nothing in the MoteC data showed wrong data entered into rF2 files. And I too notice the understeer, but it is true it can be managed with a different driving style... understeer that is now less than before, especially at high speeds, due to the new tires that not only are based on the new CPM, but are developed on updated real data of Pirelli... Sincerely I'm not able to say how much is the new CPM, how much the new data, but I'm feeling that the GP3 is very very sensible to any minimum change, that what I'm able to feel driving the 2017 vs. the 2018 (where change only tires) I'm not able to feel with other mods.
6. For this reason (= the unbelievable sensibility of the mod to any minimum change), I didn't edit any other value in the 2018 car.
And this is the most important point in my personal opinion!
I developed and tested a lot of mods, few (very few) times alone, the most of times together passionate mates, that in their working life have similar knowledge to what are developing here (= much more skilled than me!), but this is the first mod where any change is really immediately perceptible. The mod can behave differently if, for instance, 2 corners before you warmed tires too much just sliding for one second: it is something I never felt before and it means there is a so wide range for discovering the perfect setup for each different condition (weather, track, etc...), that the Dallara suggested setup used in the mod is the best starting point.
For what I was able, I hope to have answered in a good way, also because I think to have bored a lot of people writing and writing about the GP3 mod, when we have a lot of great mods for rFactor 2, made with love and mainly for free by talented guys!
) . It's great you manage to convince and collaborate with other GP3 engineers, drivers and S397 to make this mod as close to reality as possible.
