You are welcome! BTW I dont know if you prefer to receive feedback about this program in this forum or if it would be better to do it in the software website support forum. I ask because I guess the feedback willl be rather different if the user is a real racer or a virtual racer. I think as it is know it is quite useful for real drivers since all advises are more or less based in the sensations of the handling of the car. However for sim racing things could be done in a slightly different way that could make this a very powerful tool and much more friendly to handle. This would require to be able to import directly cars, setups, tracks and stints. For sure, it is not straight forward how to do it and I would not start either with all. I am not used to other sims apart from rFactor series. I dont know therefore how the different files are codified in other platforms. I am mechanical engineer and I started long time ago a personal project that could help me improve my setups. The project has been stopped for one year due to the lack of information about several parameters regarding car physics. I was only able to do something to properly adjust the gearbox ratios and some minor parameters. My tool, to call it something, was an openoffice calc sheet (I don't have Excel at my PC. Only at work). I am not a programmer in the sense I don't know programming languages as visual basic, .net or any other. However, I am quite skilled for programming logics and can do quite interesting things with excel type apps. I will upload what I did for two or three different vehicles of rf2. One of my problems is that, sometimes, engine, ratios and other config files have different format with respect small details as blank spaces, ... that spoil the automatic import of those. This is very upsetting since unless you understand the formulas behind the sheet is really difficult to fix. Usually understanding other people's programs is difficult especialy in excel due to the inability to have a structured code line format but a chart with multiple inputs from other cells. Having the chart tuned up for different cars might help understand whoever that wants to use it how to solve format reading issues when adapting to other car. I will try to upload this examples today or tomorrow. Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk 4 Beta
I figured i'm gonna go in for a closer look, and bought it. I am absolutely not convinced if this tool give me any benefit, but above all 2 things fazes me. Not only Avast generate a message but also Avira! And why is this tool starting with windows? There is absolutly no need for this kind of tool. Without any info or asking during installation, quietly and secretly. I would not knowing it, if Avira does not showing it at windows startup. Not much inspiring confidence imo.
My ESET Nod32 Antivirus 6 shows no issues whatsoever. I'm pretty sure it's a false positive. can you give any reasons? would be good to have contrasting opinions so others can make an informed choice as to whether to purchase
Toe, Caster, Gearing, Diffs, Brakes... Check, all on the list for future updates. We do already cover most of those subjects in our published articles and there are a few more on the way too.
I have yet to purchase the tool as it is now, but from what I am reading it sounds fairly similar to what was available in the past. The tool used to be an excel spreadsheet that had calculations setup to provide feedback on the numbers you entered or the boxes you checked. In my experience from using the previous tool, it can be helpful for a period of time, but if you really want to get into creating a good setup, you need to learn what each adjustment is doing to the car and why the adjustment affects the handling the way it does. As an example, learning damper adjustments you learn that you are controlling how fast the weight is moving when you apply the brakes or throttle, as well as the weight shift while cornering. From this you learn that you want to limit transfer only so much as it provides the balance you want in the corners. You will also shortly learn that setup creating is an art form as there is always give and take when it comes to dampers. That being said, the person new to racing or to creating setups might find this tool useful, but it's usefulness will only last until you actually learn how to setup a car. Is it worth $20? For a lot of people, sure, but for the experienced setup engineer it is not very useful as they already know the basic information that is being presented. For this type of tool to be helpful for the advanced setup engineer, the tool would need to be able to take motec data from the car, analyze it and give specific setup change information back in order to balance the car for the track. If Race2Play can come up with something like that, they might be able to generate quite a number of sales.
I hope so! I did just a little test now. Most suggestions from this tool i had also done without it. But that is just a suggestions in time and only my own opinion. For less experienced users it could be a nice help. With more Features/Options in future updates it could also be more helpfully for me. btw: Could we get a option for a bigger Font? Especially in Corner Wizard its hard for my old eyes to read the text.
shouldnt it be called suspension fu? Toe, Caster, Gearing, Diffs, Brakes thats alot of setup info missing that it doesnt support. you mentioned earlier that its mostly to support real world racing, i may be wrong but in the real world im sure they have most of the things on the car that this program is missing, its a bit misleading.
Intradesting thread/tool Question to Rich Goodwin as a self confessed setup n00b (lol), where your previously created setups combined with your driving style reasonable? could you compete mid-field or beyond?
What I want to say first is I agree that the setting missing need to be added, I think it reflects how crap I am at setups that I didn't really notice. I'm glad they're going to be added, however. In truth, I've won races, I won last week in the lotus 49 on iRacing. I have very limited experience online on rF2, unfortunately. Normally I user setups people are nice enough to share with me but they are never quite "Right" for me. What I have noted thus far, even with the limited variables is that I put what was wrong in to the tool, it calculated and never failed to improve the feel of the car, to me. In my test last night I gained masses of drivability and lap time. I also agree with other posts here that say for the guys that are fairly experienced with setup, the gains/results may be negligible. For someone like me who can identify an oversteering/loose or understeering/tight vehicle but look in the settings and wonder wtf spring rate, rebound etc is, I think it's very helpful indeed. I am going to treat it as a learning tool. Take the recommendation of the tool, put them to work and learn from it so I can then, at some point do it myself. Indeed, by the end of my session yesterday evening I was making little tweaks I KNEW would work. It is what it is guys. For someone like me, very useful, for a race engineer......mehhh
Yeah that's what I thought as well, if there is still more time in a car (whatever the reason) then it will assist much more then someone already pushing the limits and looking for that last tenth. Everything is always subjective in simracing hehe, i'm not an expert but I have coached some drivers in our league to become faster and what struck me through the years was that some of them didn't even have the basics covered, braking/lines/exit. so any setup would pretty much do for them, they where not going to get faster by tweaking it. On the other hand I've been helped by a motec wizard for an entire season and whilst I learned allot and took advantage of the hidden gems I also often ignored certain logical solutions (decrease ride height x% to generate more downforce in turn this and that) simply because it didn't suit my driving style. Of course this could be due my own inability to adapt Ah thx, that was my next question. whether or not the tool actually educates and helps you understand whats going on. very important imo.
I guess I'm not allowed to post that excel document which they used to make for free? Very handy and it doesnt cost you the price of 2 decent indie games...
It's nice but where is the body torsion in sim to allow transfering real experience and reactions on car dynamics when givin adwise how to setup susspension, sway bars bla bla bla Body and material torsion adds to the dynamic and interacts with the whole package. A stiff body reacts totally different on same changes as a soft one. I don't know how things are designed but it is important for car dynamics. Just a little example, while some intereferences in real where absorbet by the body it will directly add to the susspension intereferences and cause odds on the whole dynamic in a wrong sim. First it needs a complete simulation before real adwise and suggestion are teaching right. The reaction on changes will mostly teach something wrong.
Im sorry but I have to laugh at such a comment and I wouldn't expect this kind of hard sell, pushing people who feel slower and almost threatening them that if they don't buy it they are going to be left behind by the great number of people who already have it You guys have made it sound like the holly grail for setups, if you had such confidence in your product as you seem to have why not offer as a trial/demo to people ? then surely once people tried it and went some 2, 3 secs faster with it, they would buy in a second however most probably wouldnt buy it after a demo run. Looking at your software and peoples example of it seems to be very simple and basic input from extreme understeer to extreme oversteer is you choice of description of problem. Im sure if most people read for a few hours online for free (never mind in the long distant future lol are you saying it takes us years to read a book ? hilarious comment) there are plenty of guides and car setup's tips and will give you a much greater knowledge of what and why your changing things in relation to over and understeer also learning a lot more about everything else in the process. You will find a guide specific to car or type of car you want to sim race which is also going to be better than a piece of software designed to give you answers to questions for any car and also knows any driving style of the person using it. You can also then read up on motec (free used by proffesionals) and using this to help make a setup to suit the track/car perfectly although this will take a little more knowledge and understanding of everything envolved theres also guides out there for using motec with sims and how to interpret info. You may well come to conclusion once fully competent at car setups that a ideal car and track setup may also not be the fastest setup for yourself at the track, over the years I found a lot of the time the fastest setups in sim racing don't always look correct as ur ideal data should in motec. Just a few links quickly found that will help get understanding and more. http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/9378-Racing-Car-Setup-Guide some guides http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/7429-rFactor-2-Car-Setups setups http://www.racedepartment.com/ setups and everything else http://www.simracingworld.com/files/download/1545-gtr-2-motec-i2-pro-beginners-guide/ also don't forget google you will find more! If anyone uses anything in these links you will be way way faster than before maybe even way way way faster Also if any real life professional racer gets this software and uses it for anything other than advertising and marketing id be shocked. If they used it to actually setup the car id be totally dumbfounded, for example take a step back and imagine what Mark Webber would say about it and I can only see it actually helping someone who is totally new to sim racing and no understanding of cars/carsetups also but would like to drive a better balanced car quickly, its not going to provide a competitive edge at the sharp end of the grid. Your target market however is real racers with experience and even race engineers you say ? lol this has to be complete pipe dream as they will be using a lot better technical data they receive from cars and along with the info they receive from the drivers the race engineer will them interpret this information and decide best area to look at setup and then do some testing with these settings as this is there job!. I'm sorry i may be slight to hard on this but can you guys really imagine a race engineer sitting talking to a driver saying, what did you think of that lap ? and driver says oversteer into t3 for example, engineer then goes to just type this into setup fu and wallah fixed it lol this almost feels like a delayed april fools gag to me, as i think your target market is people who don't have a clue about setups and that these people will buy it if you make it sound good enough which im sorry again but to me feels like its all abit of a con for a quick buck you guys could easily prove me wrong though and just provide it with a free trial that would show your confidence in your product and from my side would let them see how pointless i think it may prove to be. If you said it helps get understanding of basic idea of car setup and settings to a new sim racer then id says it probably would and possibly worth it, I just think some of the claims of like 2/3 sec and maybe find yourself in 20th behind everyone using it lol are outlandish.
Probably one of the best investments that someone can make as far as learning to setup a race car is Carol Smith's book "Tune to Win". http://www.amazon.com/Tune-Win-science-development-tuning/dp/0879380713 and it can be had for less than $20. It will cover everything a beginner will need to setup a car successfully each and every time.
OK, i did a few more tests today. I had change the fontsize by myself. Not a ideal solution cause the windowssize is fixed. Found out that the startup with windows seems to be for the update function. If i understand it correct, this funktion search, downloaded, accepted and reinstall the program autonomous. I would prefer to decide by myself, if and when something is installed on my pc. So again, there is no need for startup with windows. Especially cause in this case Avira gripes at every startup. If the Avira message is a false report, than it should be easily reportet from the developer to Avira. In this case i am not forced to stop my Antivirus any time i start the program. Today i testet it with 3 cars. 2 of them i had already setups for, the other car i used for the first time in rf2. I have to say, all 3 cars fits much better to my driving style with my own setup as any setup i followed the programs solutions. I does not axpect a perfect setup from this kind of tool, but i expect a bit more than just a few precasted textmodules that fits to a relevant setup problem like a horoscope in the newspaper fits to any individual human. Like i said, it could be a nice option. But imho not at this stage.
This either implies you actually had setups for all three cars or have enough knowledge to set up a car anyway?
Thanks for this, I have had a few years of setup knowledge and decided to try this out, I think if you have a degree of setup knowledge and are interested more in the interactions and detailed explanations you will need to read books, this tool isn't for that. It is more a setup troubleshooter. To keep your setup going in the right direction. A few thoughts on what I would like to see added. I hope that at some point a simple both to cornering is added? The more parameters added the better the tool will be, some of these have already been mentioned, but please add as many as possible, regardless of real world easy to change or not Something I remember from some setup books (cant remember exactly which they were) is on occasion it would explain a little about which changes had a greater affect and also the other effects that change would have, including what could be negative impacts of those changes. So with a group of changes, they could scaled. which have the greatest impact. A scale basically, each could also list the other effects each change (optionally) so the user can make a decision how they want to take their setup forwards in a more intelligent way. I appreciate this goes back into the realm of confusion, but done in the right way, maybe, as mentioned by the checking of advanced options e.g Show (other interactions/advanced notation)? It should be fine, setups are an art, that is where this tool could excel, giving the more advanced use more to think about. I also think more of a point about the changes being made should be highlighted, the small three line paragraph isn't the bells and whistles it could be. It is just too small and very basic. I am not convinced by the real drivers line, sorry. Thank you for developing it, I hope you can take it forward as you wish I will use it some more if I think of anything, I will give you some feedback that is hopefully helpful taking it forwards if I can. Looks like you have had a few good suggestions already
