Understeer Going to Snap Oversteer Explained

Great article by Niels_at_home:

More here:

http://www.racedepartment.com/2012/06/understeer-going-to-snap-oversteer-explained/

 

Watch fast drivers and slow drivers... fast drivers keep the wheel straighter. It scrubs the tyres less, keeps you in a better position to recover from understeer, makes it easier to catch oversteer, and lets you get the power on earlier. If there's one habit/instinct (it makes sense; turn the wheel a little and you turn a little, turning more has to be better, right? ) to overcome, and keep revisiting, this is the one.

 

Wise words. Obvious to some, not obvious to many. If the tires are already at (or past) the limit of grip, adding more angle is not going to suddenly make them grip (despite what arcade games tell you).

It's counter-intuitive, but you need to counter-steer when you're understeering as well as oversteering. If you're understeering, you need to unwind the wheel (i.e. counter-steer) to get more grip.

This was always a problem with the older Pacejka curve tire models (rFactor)...hopefully with the newer tire models (rF2) a more realistic feel can be achieved.

Here's an interesting bit from Nico Rondet, a driving instructor who does a lot of physics work for Simraceway:

 

I was wondering where we could find a good skid pad to test g forces of cars? I drive mainly vintage formula 3 ATM and the telemetry shows around some corners tapping into the 2 g range but only nearly getting there. I also wonder how to read the oversteer data correctly does anybody have a good sense of whats going on with those maths and could explain it?

 

Skidpad is here http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Skidpad
Basic graphically but perfect for this purpose. There are several circles with various diameter.

I personally never bothered with after race telemetry like motec. Instead I downloaded some F1 TVStyle that directly shows gforce when you drive, its interesting to test different cars and watch when and how they break grip.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Going-Faster-Mastering-Race-Driving/dp/0837602262


A cheap book you can buy on amazon or ebay. Explains so many things that apply to sim racing it's scarey. Great, great, great, great read.

 

That is a good book! I have it and read it time to time, That skid pad looks great also someone should port that over for use in rf2

 

My goodness, you dont know HOWWWWWWWWWWWWW MANY TIMES ive wanted to show something like that to people on these and other forums who complain about how much easier the slip angles are in real life, how the cars are so much more forgiving and also more grippy in reality etc, when 98% of them havent even raced real race cars and if they did probably werent near its limits like we do when we go barrel rolling into corners in the sims.

Watching too many onboard videos can do more harm than good when it comes to understanding car behaviour and physics. Everything just seems more grippy and easier on video because you cant tell how much the driver slowed down to avoid understeer, how he hesitated that quarter of a second on increasing the throttle because of the back getting light (not enought to do a visual correction, but rather only something the driver can feel, since in reality you can feel grip loss and "about to have" grip loss throught the car before you even feel it in the wheel or visually aswell). You cant notice all this stuff on videos so everything just seems so much more grippy, more forgiving, easier, stable etc etc.

 

I've been wondering why in rF2 I've had to use different amounts of steering lock than in other sims. This explains it.

 

Some good info there guys thx for that,

Most have probably seen this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQRmYMlmdqM

but for those that havent go to 15:10 for a skid pad lesson.

 

Rob Wilson here, goes over the different driving styles, he worked with loads of f1 drivers and I learnt alot from the video about how to drive. worth a watch I love how be compares the styles and how to lewis always come out of corners flat and then goes across the track for the next corner at the end of the straight.

If you have hour to spare, get youself a coffee or beer as its the weekend and just listen to Rob speak about stuff. I found it to be amazingly great interview!

 

You're 100% wrong.
and heres my proof:
http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/2620-Rfactor-2-Beta-A-comprehensive-constructive-review
written by myself. With videos showing me driving in real life, on the limit.

i just got back and played netkar pro recently and it is quite frankly much more realistic to drive than RF2 in its current form.
I'm going to do a follow up to my original review of Rf2, which was written some time ago, comparing the two games, and to real life.

you're completely wrong about what you can and can't pick up from videos either. The point is, you don't have to know what the driver is feeling - you can see what the car handling characteristics are like in large oversteer or understeer situations - and that is how it should be in game.

but anyway thats neither here nor there, i advise you to read my review.

 

Rob Wilson has some good material but he also says some things that I do question at times. I know he's a pro and works with lots of drivers but I've also heard some anti-Rob Wilson training methodologies too. I guess what he does works for some and not others. I do agree though that getting race engineers onto driving courses does help them communicate with their driver as it gets them to understand what the driver feels.

He's on quite a few Flying Lap episodes and other podcasts (I think the one posted above in Canada was the 4th or 5th time he's appeared on TFL over the past 3-4 months). He loves Kimi!

 

Going back to the subject. I still see in Rf2 cars going fast with massive understeering setups aplying full lock at almost every curve. So that's something that hasn't been completely fixed yet.

 

oh what podcasts are those? he does love kimi, i presume he worked with kimi and was blown away, ive seen all the ones hes been in and hes a joy to listen too. I wish there was more stuff like it, it will help my rfactoring a treat

 

I'm not talking about large oversteer corrections, I clearly stated in real life you can't tell when a driver Is feeling oversteer or understeer until later when and if he makes a correction because in real life you can actually feel grip before you feel it through the wheel or even visually aswell. Then if you keep going past and need to correct of course we can see that and then say the car is loose or tight, but we can only tell ononboard vids through visual and steering movements, when infact in real life you can feel grip loss before you even have to make corrections and therefore sometimes a car that looks ok from the outside or onboard cam is actually not so nice to drive, you just can't visually see what the driver is feeling, untill it goes far enough that he has to correct or you can tell by visual.

 

yes, my point is it doesnt matter if you dont know what hes feeling, the point is you can see what hes doing, reacting to his feelings. Thats the crucial thing.
you can see the result of his feelings, and therefore understand what a car would be like to drive, on the limit, from that. you might not know the feeling, or have the ability, but a car on the limit comes out in 3 ways - understeer, oversteer, or neutral 4 way slide. You can therefore see what the driver is doing to counter these 3 different characteristics of a car on the limit, and compare it to what you do in RF2, when you experience these 3 same things.

 

Watching onboards is next to useless. Its just fun, point. If you don't know what the driver was doing, you can't have even slightest idea what the car behaviour is.
Example? If you'd watch Jim Clark's onboard, it could appear that all his cars were understeering/neutral. When in fact he was just so brilliant and SMOOTH driver that no matter what car he drove it looked calm. But they weren't.

 

there are tons of examples on youtube of onboards of modern day f1, of drivers getting in oversteer moments or having to correct.
yes, they have the ability to do it - the point is....they do it because its possible to do it.

dont really know what your point is about jim clark to be honest.. doesnt really have anything to do with this discussion.
the argument was that you can't tell what the driver is correcting from onboard videos.

my argument is that there are plenty of examples - like my very own video, from my review of Rf2, where im driving in real life - that demonstrates what race cars are like in very oversteery or understeery situations. Infact in my real life video, theres an excellent bit describing the very subject topic - understeer going into snap oversteer.

it proves that racing cars, if you have the skill, are very controllable and manageable on the limit. like Jim Clark demonstrates. like loads of professional racing drivers demonstrate.

in netkar pro, it actually allows you to utilise this same skill. in RF2, it doesn't really. granted its still in Beta, but the way the weight transfers in NKP, together with the ffb, is simply on another level.

 

My point is that you can't really tell from a video if the car has strong tendency towards understeer/oversteer.
So comparing onboard with your own experience in any sim isn't reliable.

Well generally, this is a neverending discussion, there is no ultimate most realistic sim. Ask 1000 people and you will get 1000 answers (I know there aren't many sims today, but no two people in the world will have exact same opinion on every car from every sim. Somebody will tell you rf2 60s cars are super realistic but frenault sucks, someone may agree on one and not the other etc.)

And most funny is, that even feedback from real racing drivers is not reliable. Not at all. If a pro driver says car X in sim Y is not realistic, it might be just because hes not used to sitting in front of monitor, with no gforces.

Theres no denying that NKPro is extremely good sim. But I don't think theres any point in trying to prove that its the best, in all regards.