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[DiRT 4] Constructive feedback on the subject of car-feel and physics: The Ultimate Thread

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1 D4 Rally is realistic because of real world driver input. Same with RX. Even if those seem to exist in totally different worlds where different physics are to be observed. Even if RX looks like real world footage and rallying doesn't.
2 We don't know real world physics, we don't drive R5 cars and therefore we don't know enough to provide valuable feedback.  But let's keep the feedback coming anyways.  If we do have an experience of driving real world cars that we find in the game, then we drove it in extreme conditions not resembling D4 surfaces etc.
3 We should believe in Codemasters, they will fix this game. Make it even more realistic that is, because it already is realistic. They said so, so we should believe them. Because.
4 Dirt Rally was a prove of how unrealistic game turns realistic with right feedback from community. Even if it is not realistic, because D4 is. Despite D4 handling completely different from Dirt Rally. Both RX and rally are realistic.

Those couple of the most common fallacies that I am reading here, and I have already answered every single of them, actually I did it multiple times. I really don't want to sound rude, or anything, but I cannot answer to the same claims over and over.

Dirt 4 rally is realistic in a way- I am sure it's physics engine is capable of simulating many factors other sims don't- such as tyre biting into a loose surface. That being said if parameters of any of those factors is flawed we get Wales that act like WRC Rally Poland 2017. Except it is even more extreme in lateral grip than rutted Poland with banks straightening the cars was. Wet Wales doesn't resemble wet Poland, but that's another topic.

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If the game is not played already according to Steam ,and im SHOCKED  its popularity waning so bad,lets just hear something to address the issue for us simmers.
As those gamers ,the game was made for possibly with game pads,arent playing either.
I dont know,i just know that im disappointed in more of them not getting the cars right.That said,i will buy all their titles and support them ,and just hoping for a true sim eventually.

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To everyone complaining about the response they gave, keep in mind this is large company. It's called hedging, you don't go out saying "yup we'll fix it all!" to quell what people are saying. That's a sure fire way to further piss everyone off when it potentially turns out that they maybe aren't able to do as much as you originally wanted.

Look at it in the sense of under promise and over deliver. I would have liked further clarification as well but we know they are looking into this. We know what they were able to do with dirt rally from feedback so I'm at least going to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

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^ KNOW all about that and customer service !!!!!!!!!!! Trust me.I also know it takes two seconds to type a response and be involved in discussions with us like they  used to in Dirt EA days ,right?Could be just some light  hearted yeah "we agree" or " looking into" .etc.

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^ KNOW all about that and customer service !!!!!!!!!!! Trust me.I also know it takes two seconds to type a response and be involved in discussions with us like they  used to in Dirt EA days ,right?Could be just some light  hearted yeah "we agree" or " looking into" .etc.
And they did say they were looking into it just now in the road book... From what they've said they've had a majority of the dirt team out on vacation after launch. Who knows, maybe most of the people in charge of the physics and handling models have just gotten back so they really couldn't have made any statements even if they wanted to. We can speculate all we want.

All we know for sure is they've now stated they are definitely looking into it and to look for more information in the coming weeks.

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4 weeks vacation? Wow that must not be tenure based lol.OK OK i hope soon we'll hear something.Its just hard as i really want to keep playing and know whats coming from them.

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4 weeks vacation? Wow that must not be tenure based lol.OK OK i hope soon we'll hear something.Its just hard as i really want to keep playing and know whats coming from them.
Well this is one of the few times vacation is even really a possibility. Often times it's nose to the grind stone for months(we're talking way more than 40 hours a week) just before release to get everything done and in order. And after launch is one of the few times before people start working on post launch stuff or moving onto the next game. If cm isn't blowing smoke about vacation I'm actually happy about that as if you read into what the larger devs and producers do which is drain you for months up to release and then lay you off as soon as you're not needed.

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Onylra said:
Dampers are probably the single most important aspect of tuning for handling here, yet they're the most obscurely explained and difficult to adjust parts of your setup. Think of bump as controlling the motion of the wheels (unsprung mass), and rebound as controlling the motion of the chassis (sprung mass).

If rebound is set too low (in theory) the chassis will bounce on return (bad), too high and it'll take too long too return (also generally bad, but may help unsettle the rear-end if tighter than the front, which could be desirable). It's pretty normal to have bump/compression set at around half the rate of rebound (and that's in track cars who don't have to eat  nearly as many bumps, common sense suggests rally tunes trend towards an even greater disparity), but there are so many factors that influence optimal settings, including driving style.

As a rule of thumb I start by setting front bump to -2; front rebound to +1; rear bump to -1; and rear rebound to +2. Then adjust according to how the car feels, but this general ratio I'll try to retain whether I'm softening or stiffening the car. The idea behind the softer front and stiffer back is to encourage a bit of general oversteer.
Thank you, it actually works.
I managed to get a decent setup for the Fiesta R5. In case anyone is interested.
Can you elaborate about the zone division setting? I read the text, but I don't really know what to do with it.
This setting decides the threshold of force when the 'fast bump/rebound' comes in to play. So you can have different damping settings for both typical cornering forces and more extreme shocks (like landings). It's tough to adjust with any confidence, IMO, because you have no diagnostics (how are you supposed to know when exactly it kicks-in?).

What I do is set 'fast' bump/rebound a little softer and more neutral (mindful of ride height), in anticipation of landings and rocks. Seems safe. Perhaps you could improve performance through crests and dips with more adventurous settings? Needs experimentation, or more knowledgeable input than mine.

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Onylra said:
 The idea behind the softer front and stiffer back is to encourage a bit of general oversteer.
Allot of cars ingame have a natural stiffer front to rear. So youre mostly limited in how soft vs hard you can go over the rear.
That's true, but it's in that relative disparity that the magic happens. Increasing relative resistance increases load on the rear, which increases the relative slip angle, which induces oversteer.

We need to be mindful of the difference between oversteer, and a drift - one you can tune for, the other requires technique (and a supportive tune).

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Scyy said:
To everyone complaining about the response they gave, keep in mind this is large company. It's called hedging, you don't go out saying "yup we'll fix it all!" to quell what people are saying. That's a sure fire way to further **** everyone off when it potentially turns out that they maybe aren't able to do as much as you originally wanted.

Look at it in the sense of under promise and over deliver. I would have liked further clarification as well but we know they are looking into this. We know what they were able to do with dirt rally from feedback so I'm at least going to give them the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

I completely agree and understand why they kept it vague. But he basically said the same thing in the Dirt Show segment. And that was at release. Over a month ago. It concerns me that in both cases he said "We are spending a lot of our time analysing the data coming from the game to get a better understanding of what (if anything) we can do about things."


Based on the Dirt Show comments I thought it would be just simply getting someone in to help them tune the rest of the cars.  If it was just the fact that they didn't have enough time with Meeks or anyone else to finish the tuning of some of the cars, I don't think he would've worded that statement like that.


At any rate, I'm still having a blast with the game and do support it. I just haven't made any serious attempts on the Rally Career side because of Pace calls mainly. I do enjoy generating a stage and driving modern cars. But as for the older cars and handling on the Rally side, I try to drive the car for what it is in the game just to get through the Career Stage. Once the smoke clears and either things have changed or they say "It's real learn to drive it", I'll take a more serious stab at the Rally career.

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Ok, I don't want to sound rude either, but I feel the need to clarify some things :):

SamRWD said:
1 D4 Rally is realistic because of real world driver input. Same with RX. Even if those seem to exist in totally different worlds where different physics are to be observed. Even if RX looks like real world footage and rallying doesn't.
This is a false statement. Both, rally and rx can be realistic and they actually differ quite a bit. Different tires, surfaces, specs and so on lead to a situation where you just can't copy paste everything. That means, yes, the basic underlaying physics might be the same, but the conditions, that have great impacts on these, don't. So driver inputs can and will lead to different results by their very nature and one of them can be closer to the real thing than the other one. RX beeing realistic doesn't imply that rally is or isn't, but i can be argued, that because rx feels right, rally might be close too, if the basic physics are the same. That's a different statement.

SamRWD said:
2 We don't know real world physics, we don't drive R5 cars and therefore we don't know enough to provide valuable feedback.  But let's keep the feedback coming anyways.  If we do have an experience of driving real world cars that we find in the game, then we drove it in extreme conditions not resembling D4 surfaces etc.
Surfaces, setups etc. do make a difference and yes, not everybody has real world experiences, but even then, this doesn't make their feedback worthless. Never said that. The problem is, that the expectations and experiences of different people simply vary. But that isn't even the problem, because even if we can describe exactly what is happening and what should and shouldn't be (and may actually be right about these, based on experience or other data), then it's still not guaranteed that a proposed reason is in fact the real and direct cause of a found deviation. It's way more complicated than that, because of the complexity of the mathematics behind it that can and will interfere with other things.

SamRWD said:
3 We should believe in Codemasters, they will fix this game. Make it even more realistic that is, because it already is realistic. They said so, so we should believe them. Because.
If they can (and hopefully agree, because just going for what people say is realistic isn't necessarily true), they will do it. They are equally interested in improving their product in every way they can, because that is what people praise and sells copies. And I said I believe that they listen, because thats the best way they know. They still need the necessary resources to be available in order to take action though.

SamRWD said:
4 Dirt Rally was a prove of how unrealistic game turns realistic with right feedback from community. Even if it is not realistic, because D4 is. Despite D4 handling completely different from Dirt Rally. Both RX and rally are realistic.
Dirt Rally was well guided by community feedback and also by rx-drivers. That made DR more realistic in the process, yes. But realism in simulations isn't an absoulte value, it's a degree. One that Dirt Rally pushed well up in many areas compared to other rally-sims at that time. Dirt4 has done the same thing again and of course this comes with different handling characteristics and nuances.

I hope that makes my points a bit clearer ;)

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For those who don't believe there are hidden assists- I just did a test where I just generated Australia stage, speeded up Fiesta R5 and just simply pressed the brakes. On replay I could CLEARLY see that there was ABS trying to get some grip when wheels should be locked. Unless there is so much grip brakes barely make wheels locked for a moment and then wheels regain grip. 
EDIT: Just choose a chasecam on replay- slow down replay speed if needed.

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Onylra said:
IMO it's too underpowered and imbalanced to expect too much in the way of throttle oversteer, though it's definitely there - the M3 rocked my socks, to be honest. I actually like the RWDs in this game overall... please don't hurt me!)
Great point about feeling underpowered thats my feeling to most cars too.
Onylra said:
Onylra said:
Dampers are probably the single most important aspect of tuning for handling here, yet they're the most obscurely explained and difficult to adjust parts of your setup. Think of bump as controlling the motion of the wheels (unsprung mass), and rebound as controlling the motion of the chassis (sprung mass).

If rebound is set too low (in theory) the chassis will bounce on return (bad), too high and it'll take too long too return (also generally bad, but may help unsettle the rear-end if tighter than the front, which could be desirable). It's pretty normal to have bump/compression set at around half the rate of rebound (and that's in track cars who don't have to eat  nearly as many bumps, common sense suggests rally tunes trend towards an even greater disparity), but there are so many factors that influence optimal settings, including driving style.

As a rule of thumb I start by setting front bump to -2; front rebound to +1; rear bump to -1; and rear rebound to +2. Then adjust according to how the car feels, but this general ratio I'll try to retain whether I'm softening or stiffening the car. The idea behind the softer front and stiffer back is to encourage a bit of general oversteer.
Thank you, it actually works.
I managed to get a decent setup for the Fiesta R5. In case anyone is interested.
Can you elaborate about the zone division setting? I read the text, but I don't really know what to do with it.
This setting decides the threshold of force when the 'fast bump/rebound' comes in to play. So you can have different damping settings for both typical cornering forces and more extreme shocks (like landings). It's tough to adjust with any confidence, IMO, because you have no diagnostics (how are you supposed to know when exactly it kicks-in?).
Also is largely effected by driving style too.
I loved an old F1 game called "Geoff crammonds GP" because it gave you tools you needed to examine suspension travel, rideheight, torque curves, wheelspin etc ingame with easy access and a great presentable interface. It was so easy to tune a car and there almost nothing left to guess work involved because it gave you all the telemtry information you needed to tune the dampers/suspension.

I'd kill for a modern day sim that offered that level of detail to tuning. Dont know of any sims and even 3rd party apps that can match it.

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Probably Impreza GrA is the most underpowered car I have tried in D4.

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So i spent most of yesterday and now 2 hours today trying to iron out the evo and subaru 01. I tried everything i could think of even going to extremes using -1.00 toe in the rear. Yet to no avail i couldnt even get the Subaru to a point where it was not drivable at even with that toe, super soft suspension, super hard, a mix, any time you throw the car it just insta recorrects the front. And yes i was intentionally trying to make the subaru undrivable the fact i couldnt really worrys me.

Honestly i am at a loss right now after 70 hours i may just have to shelf it for awhile. Went back played dirt rally and wether or not its as realistic or not, that game feels BRILLIANT, i think that should be the real concern right sure we want ultra amazing realism, but is fun not the primary thing here?

Also can not help but think during the career in the later events the difficulty is artificially increased by loads of weather. I understand mother nature is a beast but this is borderline rage inducing. Sorry coming off a really disappointing tuning session.

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Well, I don't think there is a hidden ABS. Because
- if you can see it, it's not hidden.
- it's not working. With enough brake force, you have to very careful with braking, or the rear comes around
- could be just a visual bug in the replay or a general visual bug.
Can you see it also during gameplay in external view with the camera looking from the side?

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SamRWD said:
Probably Impreza GrA is the most underpowered car I have tried in D4.
That car is the one car in this game i feel is really nice to drive after alot of tuning.I did have to shorten gears to get it feeling right in the power. Im still really confused how i can run 30/70 center bias being 70% to rear yet i dont feel any of that extra power to the rear. 

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The surface isn't the issue.  The big complaint with DR was that the cars felt too light.  For D4, to simulate added 'aero', it seems they've whacked the gravity value up a bit.  The car is now squished down on its suspension, travel is reduced & grip is through the roof, which all leads to really weird behaviour on the limit & on the track edges.

If the car model was altered & actually simulated to weight more, the transition would be a lot more progressive, but the 'aero' has really f@cked the nice car balance we had in DR.

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KevM said:
The surface isn't the issue.  The big complaint with DR was that the cars felt too light.  For D4, to simulate added 'aero', it seems they've whacked the gravity value up a bit.  The car is now squished down on its suspension, travel is reduced & grip is through the roof, which all leads to really weird behaviour on the limit & on the track edges.

If the car model was altered & actually simulated to weight more, the transition would be a lot more progressive, but the 'aero' has really f@cked the nice car balance we had in DR.
Honestly think you are pretty on point. I cant help but to feel as though i am forcing the car to things it just doesnt really want to do which in return makes for some really strange snappy driving that is the only way i can explain the feeling of the cars in D4 they just feel very snappy because of some kind of excess grip. The thing i question the most still is the RX cars do not behave this way and they have a different tire model correct? if so still leaning towards what ever tire model they have made for rally is not right. i would like to see either a RX car on a rally stage or the RX tire model on a rally car.

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Don't forget to run that weekly with Subaru R4. It is just amazing. The best behaving car in game. Maybe little bit underpowered.

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Who ,when and why after Dirt said aero needed improved !? It seems Coleman and Codie's keep bringing that up and I for one never seen complaints about that during EA.I did see lot of issues about weight and grip though and tarmac handling .
Afaik the cars flew because they were too light ,not because of aero needing improved .

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KevM said:
The surface isn't the issue.  The big complaint with DR was that the cars felt too light.  For D4, to simulate added 'aero', it seems they've whacked the gravity value up a bit.  The car is now squished down on its suspension, travel is reduced & grip is through the roof, which all leads to really weird behaviour on the limit & on the track edges.

If the car model was altered & actually simulated to weight more, the transition would be a lot more progressive, but the 'aero' has really f@cked the nice car balance we had in DR.
Made some aero testing with Hyundai i20 R5:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qSnlYXbin0cOVW_IT4uqqLRLpFCy8muhcSTGs7mICxE/pubhtml

Average suspension position difference is only few millimeters between 0 km/h and 170km/h. I don't think that the downforce is the reason for the high grip levels. Of course the downforce could have just been set to an unrealistic high value from the 0 km/h and the speed doesn't affect the amount of the downforce.

There is something weird happening when the tires aren't touching the ground, but i haven't managed to find a reproducible test route in the Dirt Academy yet.
It looks like the downwards acceleration is about 1.1G when the car is flying in the air. If the car is upside down, the acceleration is about 0.9G.

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Yeah, that's what I mean.  'aero' is just a crude canned constant downward force.

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If it is aero then it is constant indeed. Because it is also apparent on very slow corners.

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Yeah, and it shouldn't be.  In fact, most of the Rally cars in the current game shouldn't produce much aero at all.  The Grpb Quattro is the only one with a meaningful aero pack

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