is it me or the skip barber feels like it's on ice?

the Skip is fantastic to drive.

 

I love the regional version, it's fast and easy to catch but punishes if you slide around too much. Doesn't feel like it's on ice imo. The car itself feels pretty much like iracing version before ntm, but has more feel, though I guess opinions about that differ. I found it relatively easy to drive, although it is very lively on those sport tires. ~59,3 on lime on regional. I guess 58 is doable for most people.

 

I love this car especially in the National slick-shod version. It surely takes a deft touch, I agree, but it's quite clear that that is the point of this car. The only issue I have with it is that my sense is that with a 150 HP 2.0L engine in a 1250 lb car, sticky slicks or not, it should light up its tires in smoke with a 6000 rpm clutch dump. This car, with either tire choice, bogs without a hint of wheel-spin and rolls out like a transit bus until the revs get up. Now I know that first gear ain't for drag-racing, but it still doesn't match the stated performance capability on the profile page: 0-100 mph in 8.2 seconds. My stopwatch says, 0-60 mph about 6-6.5 seconds and 0-100 mph in about 14 seconds. Oh, and like almost any rF car to date, you can't start the car in gear with the clutch depressed...it starts, settles a second or two at idle then stalls (starter button assigned and no auto-clutch).

 

It looks fine to me

Skip Barber Nationals at Croft.

 

Here is a video of some amateurs driving these things at road atlanta. hehe

 

Actually you can start the engine with gear in and clutch. I'm not sure in wich build it was fixed, but I remember it didn't work when I purchased the beta earlier this year. But at least the latest builds it has worked fine for me.

But I agree with the acceleration, it seems to me it's not correct. I have not taked time but it's not neccessary, it's way to slow (first gear too long?). And I think the car should be able to spin if you have full steering, max rpm, and then release clutch fast. But it can't.

 

I had my first really decent run in the Skippy tonight online, after a couple of quick spins (pun intended) offline after installing the update.
On a green track with cold tyres I have to agree yes its pretty slippery. I selected the National and joined the server, initially the best I could do on the NO Chicane LRP was 1.02 something when the fastest time posted was in the 56's. I nearly gave up then & there lol, where was I going to find 6 sec?
But i persevered and after about 70 laps or so and 20 written off Skippy's I managed to get down to a fairly consistent low 57, I was well chuffed.
I was surprised how much grip they had, and how hard you could push them thru the corner when you had the tyres warm, and the track rubbered up. Finding the technique is the thing, just be smooth with your control inputs yet don't be scared to be a bit aggressive at the same time, sounds like a contradiction but its the only way i can describe how to do it.
To those like me struggling, just keep practicing, it will come. .
This is a great Sim car, fantastic job ISI take a bow.

 

Nice going there Big...

Down to low 57`s is

I love this car and it is indeed a great sim car. I`ve lots more practice needed but I`m getting there and it`s great fun tryin`.

 

I did see some videos where they managed to destroy these cars pretty quickly, crash skip barber lime rock park might be something to search for, poor guy lifted off / braked at right hand turn after / at downhill and instantly got his car sideways and soon to wall, another got taken by 2nd racer whom made same mistake, from some reason driver did not made it wide and tried to avoid that 2nd racer, maybe had shoulder lock from surprise, anyway that another skippy took camera car with him, wrecking suspension and driver got some wild ride in form of rolling, both cars lost number of parts revealing skeleton underneath.

With car you can however go very lot sideways and still control it if wanted to, but as one pro trainer said, you better not wait the car or you crash.

 

My apologies to all. Appears I was a touch hasty on the starter/clutch thing. It does indeed start and run with the clutch in as Hedlund advises. Not only was I hasty with the remark, I may be a little hasty getting the clutch out after tapping the starter! If the throttle doesn't yet respond, it'll stall when you let the clutch out, but once it starts responding to the throttle and can tach it up, then you can.

That gap between starting and throttle responding is about 3.5 seconds or so. Certainly a disincentive to spinning and stalling (guilty far too often :/), but nonetheless I don't think it's realistic. I really don't think that such an artificial penalty needs to be laid on the unfortunate spinner; going off and stalling is bad enough.

The vehicle modder controls this with 3 numbers (most importantly the 3rd of the 3) in the StarterTiming= line of the engine's .ini file in the {vehicle}_main.MAS so long as an onboard starter is specified in the same file.

 

I guess this is another point to real starter wishlist, keep button down to crank and play starter sound as long, start playing engine sound when starter has been used enough, as simplest form would provide bit better starting procedure, even still far from all that is going on in reality.

With rFactor starting, I keep throttle bit pressed, then I know exactly when automated starting routine has finished.

One of annoying bits is when startup sound includes revving, yet motor is really not running, just canned sound to starter sound, which as here can be seen, easily makes false impressions.

Of course just having starter sound and engine running sound is going to sound bit lacking, but if we add warmup throttle handling it might be bit better, or one could apply bit of throttle himself.

However most important would be to remove revving part from startup sounds and have just starter motor / cranking sound there and to have that sound played as long as button is pressed and engine sound playing when engine is running, that I think would be relatively simple to implement while making starting lot better.

Naturally one learns to live with current implementation, but it is indeed quite far from realistic. Maybe we see some improvements for this area in future, never know what is cooking at ISI

 

I think this sounds great. This is how it should be in rF2. As you said, not the most realistic but far better than now. Nice, and quite simple probably

 

Good idea

 

First gear bogs in real life and is overly long in real life aswell. They take a while to get goin

 

My solution is to keep throttle down, turn wheel pop the clutch, repeat, as tail starts to slide one need to countersteer of course, but it does work quite well to get thing going.

Of course this works only with regional version as that has good balance between grip and power, I haven't tested national version, but I believe it is like old rTrainer, too much grip for that engine power.

If car does not slide, it must be fixed, slap turbo in it or something

 

I like the Skippy, but I really think ISI needs to add dynamic grass grip that varies with speed because it's uncontrollable in the grass below 40mph.

 

Well, I had few months ago my hobby car out of the garage and that grass is not very good material to drive on, snow is more slippery, but not huge difference between grass and snow, both are which I get stuck with that car, gravel is huge amount grippier than grass, also snow with snow tires is better than grass on summer tires, easy to find out if there is some sort of incline.

Maybe dry grass is bit better, but it is still nothing like gravel, my another car has abs and on grass it is always making noises as there just is no traction, with that car braking on wet grass with winter tires is actually worse than on snow from some odd reason.

There is huge difference between those surfaces in reality and in game it is so easy to push too much throttle as you can't hear anything happening below 50% and with 50% throttle on grass I get ton of wheel spin in reality, with motor that has only 160Nm of torque.

So I think that our view of how grass should be, can be easily wrong.

Of course there is also another view, rF2 does not currently have soft soil physics, most traction on grass comes when treaded tire digs into material, which currently does not happen, so this might be root of the problem.

BTW 40kph on grass is really bumpy ride in reality and stopping takes looooong

 

Oh man I gotta try it at Croft. Pretty much addicted to motorsports ranch ATM but Croft is next!

 

It's a blast. Steering with the back, correcting with the front. A real handful.

 

I think the inability to light the rear wheels up is actually accurate; the iRacing skippy is exactly the same. Not sure what's going on in the drive train for that to occur though