Motor City Tunes - Project Cars 2 Garage

[Motor City Hamilton]

Formula Renault 3.5



Track: Silverstone

Wheel: Tuned with ClubSport Wheel Base V2.5 and ClubSport Pedals V3 with damper and performance kit

Tune: @iggy is correct in his post above that the Formula Renault 3.5 snaps loose beyond corner apex in slow and medium speed corners. I only had about an hour to spend with this car today and was able to improve it, but there is more to be had in this car. SMS has done a nice job with Project Cars 2 at making tuning very real world. You can improve cars with tuning, but you cannot fully eliminate the car's bad habits.

I remain really annoyed that SMS has not fixed the telemetry screen yet. In PC1 there were circles under the tire image on the telementry screen that would grow in size and turn from yellow to red when the tire loses grip. In PC2, they circles show up on pit road, but then go away when manual control of the car is achieved. Without these telemetry circles, it is difficult to see exactly what is happening with the tunes, forcing a trial and error approach.

I did try a number of LSD settings, but they made very little difference at all. Usually in a late corner loose situation, an unlocked LSD is most of the cause. In this case, there was no improvement at any setting. So I moved on to optimize tire pressure, camber and toe. Then I adjusted springs and dampers in an attempt to keep the rear more planted (increased rear rebound) and let the nose raise quicker at the apex (lower front rebound). The car got much better with the spring/damper adjustments.

I do believe that there is more to be found in tuning with this car. Maybe more spring/damper work? Maybe more with tire pressures in the rear. The temperatures look great across the tire and between front and rear, but has rear grip been reached to its fullest?

Tires/Brakes/Chassis



Suspension



Dampers



ECU/Engine/Gearing



ECU



Differential

[Motor City Hamilton]

Mr Hamilton, DynoMoHum here... help me... I'm stumbling badly with the Formula Renault 3.5. Loose beyond the apex in slow corners. I eventually got it sort of drivable but I'm sure there's more tweaks than I came up with. I'd love to see your opinions on this car.

Formula Renault 3.5 posted above.

[iggy]

Formula Renault 3.5 posted above.

Thanks MC Hamilton... I'll have to give your tune a try. The one thing that I did that seemed to help the most , was to modify the slow bump and slow rebound in the rear... I didn't change the spring settings at all. It went from being totally undrivable to being OK. I tried playing a little with rear toe but at that time, the thing was so unstable that I don't think I could have ever noticed any subtle improvements. As I recall, somehow I managed to make it through a race at Algrave without really getting things all that controllable , but when I got to Nurburgring I just could not control it at all, and had to start really digging in deep. ( normally in any other computer simulations, I never would have tried rebound rates and such ).

anyway, I will have to give your tune a try. I'll also try to report back in more detail about what I did to my setup to get it OK.

I did try your Ginetta Junior tune around Oulton Park... It took a while for me to get used to it, but after I did , I found it pretty forgiving coming out of corners, or getting through them a bit too fast... it was/is definitely a bit easier to drive then the setup I had used. My setup probably mostly had some tire pressure changes from the 'Stable' setup that SMS provides, maybe a bit more camber on the rear, nothing too complicated. For some reason with your setup I found myself needing to turn in a bit earlier, it really did require me to modify my driving style a lot ( or at least the style I had grown accustom to given the handling of the car ). I then went on to try your tweaks at Donington... Oh my... that track still has me struggling. I could do one or two laps OK, but still found myself going off track more then I should... I will say your setup drives WAY BETTER through the grass then mine.

[Motor City Hamilton]

I will say your setup drives WAY BETTER through the grass then mine.

Now that's a complement!

Dampers seem to do a lot in Project Cars 2. The Formula Renault 3.5 tune gets more stable once the tires are warm. That makes me think that there may be more grip available by playing with rear tire pressures. And for Nurburg, I would raise the ride height quite a bit. Even at Silverstone the car hits the bump stops in the braking zones.

Let me know how the tune works. Maybe we can both learn a bit together?

[iggy]

Now that's a complement!

Dampers seem to do a lot in Project Cars 2. The Formula Renault 3.5 tune gets more stable once the tires are warm. That makes me think that there may be more grip available by playing with rear tire pressures. And for Nurburg, I would raise the ride height quite a bit. Even at Silverstone the car hits the bump stops in the braking zones.

Let me know how the tune works. Maybe we can both learn a bit together?

I haven't had as much time as I'd like to try things, my father's going through some difficulties with his health, but anyway... I did enter your Formula Renault setup and run it around Nurburgring GP last night for a bit. First thing I noticed, is I got through the first two corners without spinning out, which on the SMS 'stable' setup is nearly impossible to do at anything above a snails pace, so it was immediately obvious that your setup was a huge improvement over anything SMS provides for that car.

Beyond that, I have to say that your setups are a lot different then my own, particularly with break pressure, so it makes it fairly hard for me to get used to your setup. You may laugh and that's fine, but I generally set my break pressure to 70% right as soon as I start, this allows me to drive in fast and deep and then more or less push the brake to the floor for a moment without any brake lockup... I usually hold that brake to down until I slow enough to get through the corner, or the tires do lock up, and if they lockup, then I back off a tiny bit, etc... your brake pressure requires that I significantly alter my driving style. Now, as near as I know, there's probably very little reason I can't just lower the brake pressure on your setup to allow me to be more comfortable with braking, that is, I don't think it has major impact on how the car handles, I think it would just alter the timing and 'feel' that the driver uses to get the car to slow, but should not cause any balance issues under braking.

So, ultimately your setup seemed to have the rear end more firmly planted then my setup does, however I have not yet driven any faster with your setup. I believe I can likely drive faster with yours once I get used to driving it that way, because with my setup, I am nearly on the edge all the time and can easily spin out in medium speed corners if I get on the gas to fast. Another laugh for you... I had actually restricted the air flow to de-tune my engine so that I could control it a bit better, that was before I knew I could just as easily increase traction control to probably accomplish the same thing.

I really believe that if I were to get the braking more to my liking, and make a few driving adjustments , that your tune will be significantly faster then anything I had come up with. But I need some time to actually explore it a bit more, most likely won't get a chance to drive again much until the weekend as I'm going out of town for the next few days for work...

I do really look forward to continuing to understand more of these setup changes and how it all works. I'm new to Project Cars really, I had purchased PC1, but never really got into it very much... and well Gran Turismo Sport , has all but eliminated the ability to fine tune cars, and now that I've spent a few weeks seeing what's available in PC2, I'm pretty well hooked on this now. In some ways it's overwhelming , but hey, it's all fun and educational at the same time.

In closing... I have one simple question about your setup... Tire pressures seems a bit low. Most of what I've been reading , had lead me to believe that PC2 tire pressures like to be higher than what many of us had gotten used to using in other gaming type products, or even in PC1. Was there a particular reason you kept the tire pressure lower on this setup?

[Fight-Test]

iggy, brake pressure very dependent on the driver so use what you want. Different pedals, load cells and after market add on's make it different for everyone. I have a very short throw on my pedal and its very stiff, I use 80%. Anything above 90% will send me into a death spin. Lower than 70% and its like trying to stop a bus. If I use different rubber spacers in the V3 pedals my pressure will change to match the hardware change. Find what works for your style and setup and roll with it.

[Motor City Hamilton]

Beyond that, I have to say that your setups are a lot different then my own


Tire pressures seems a bit low. Most of what I've been reading , had lead me to believe that PC2 tire pressures like to be higher than what many of us had gotten used to using in other gaming type products, or even in PC1. Was there a particular reason you kept the tire pressure lower on this setup?

As @Flight-Test mentioned, brake pressure is a personal thing. I am using the Fanatec Clubsport pedals with load cell for PC2. I had a Logitech G920 for Project Cars 1. There is a huge difference between a load cell pedal and a potometer pedal. Not sure which you are using, but your approach is similar to mine. I look for brake lock at about 3/4 to 7/8 pedal movement. You want as much available movement as possible so that you can go between a light feathering of the brakes and a hard push that almost locks.

As for tire pressures, to be honest, I am still in the early stages of testing in Project Cars 2. I think you are right that there is more to gain with pressures. I am just not ready to believe the current "rules of thumbs" on the forums without more testing. I read one that said 30 psi is the optimum pressure for all wheels/all cars. I have a bit of experience with this in real life and pressures were easy to read through the inside/middle/outside tire tempuratures. Project Cars 2 doesn't seem so capture this level of detail - as I have never seen a tire temp with the center either much higher or much lower than the inside or outside temps. So I guess tire temperatures overall could be an indication? Just need to do more testing.

Would love to learn together. It is helpful to hear feedback from others on tunes and adjustments to try. Let's keep this conversation going.

[SGETI]

Here is some info regarding tire pressure. this info came from someone who worked on the game. Sorry, forgot his name.



EDIT name, http://forum.projectcarsgame.com/mem...-Casey-Ringley

[Fight-Test]

Motor, this is great thread. I have been enjoying reading your findings.

I have been testing and running a good bit of league racing. I also have Hkraft, one of the forums resident master tuners helping and I'm finding that you should get your BAR and PSI running perfect numbers after running around 7 to 10 laps and tires are at temp. LMP2 for example, 1.8 BAR and 27 PSI, give or take a number. Don't even worry about the temps or the colors on the tires. Once you get this right, then start watching your tire pressure individually. You might have one tire dropping too low or getting high in certain corners or its just a problem over the whole track. You can start to fine tune the individual tires at this point to help with problem tires and to get temps closer across the tire. Once I have the BAR and PSI on then the rest is very easy. Just spend time running multiple 10 lap stints which is good for soft or hard but target PSI and BAR will be the same for both compounds and you might need different pressures to achieve it. So on the colored tire in the hud which I never use as a tool is for tread temps from what I read and not core temp.

I'm still learning also but this process has treated me right so far for long distance racing. So you might need to determine based on what tire and car what your PSI and BAR should be but once you feel confident in the numbers, tires should be pretty easy to get spot on with little work.

[Gix916]

Here is some info regarding tire pressure. this info came from someone who worked on the game. Sorry, forgot his name.

that's a handy little chart, can somebody let my race engineer have a copy...