A little rant! :D

[bogani 745]

Porkhammer said:

I've been meaning to invest in a new shifter myself at some point... one that I can switch between sequential and H-pattern in a jiffy. I seriously hate flappy paddles, so you have my sympathy! I've been looking at http://www.fanatec.com/eu-en/shifters/clubsport-shifter-sq-eu.html .. it's really expensive (2400 swedish kronor). But I reckon it is worth saving up for.

Yea I've been looking at that too. Sadly they raised their prices some time ago. It used to cost 199 Euro.

[TonyRickard 17]

Porkhammer said:

Well to be fair, watching rallying onboards one will see that the drivers rarely exceed 300 degrees of rotation on their wheel... in fact I have not seen any proper rally car onboard that turns so much - let alone 900 degrees.

An old thread but an interesting observation. I think the reality is that at speed it is very rare to apply anything near the full range of steering. The more modern 540 degree setups in the current cars allow the driver to not need to move their hands on the wheel but they aren't going from lock to lock except in low speed manouvres in the service area.

Even with the older 900 or 720 setups it is pretty rare to see a driver use much more than 360 degrees in action.

This amazing vid of Bertie Fisher suffering brake failure and avoiding the spectators shows the range of steering used at low speeds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07-XgXawlAU

Whereas in DIRT Rally (and some other sims) we seem to be able to flick from full lock to full lock using very low steering degrees with very successful results (although not without a lot of skill because it is very easy to over correct!) that doesn't really resemble real world rallying.

The actual values of steering degrees in the DIRT Rally cars (as of June) can be found here:

http://blog.codemasters.com/dirt/06/dirt-rally-force-feedback-update/

[dgeesi0 295]

what we must remember is with better technology it will lessen as cars become easier to drive and people become faster and better and fitter.

you cant compare 1970s tech and cars to what we have today. many forget to factor that in.

go hop in a old car and drive it then hop in a modern car. you dont have to have arms like a gorilla to go round simple corners.

people who drive on the edge and are fast dont need to use high degrees because they are so precise .

mostly the people who argue about you must have 900 and so on are those old escort drivers or purists looking through the rose tinted glasses and smoking on a pipe :p

[gheeD 15]

200 degrees of rotation out of 540, 720 or 900 degrees =/= 200 degrees of rotation out of 270 degrees. 

Limiting the rotation of the wheel to 270 will scale the whole steering down that much. Important to remember. 

[TonyRickard 17]

gheeD said:

200 degrees of rotation out of 540, 720 or 900 degrees =/= 200 degrees of rotation out of 270 degrees. 

Limiting the rotation of the wheel to 270 will scale the whole steering down that much. Important to remember. 

Moving a 270 degree wheel 200 degrees is the same as moving a 900 degree wheel 666 degrees or a 540 wheel 400 degrees. The point is you can move 200 degrees much faster than 400.

[TonyRickard 17]

dgeesi0 said:

mostly the people who argue about you must have 900 and so on are those old escort drivers or purists looking through the rose tinted glasses and smoking on a pipe :p

The lowest we have on a modern rally car is 540, the vast majority of the cars in DIRT Rally have 720 or 900 degree steering.

[gheeD 15]

Yes exactly. It was pointed more towards porkhammers argument (your quote) that watching onboards rallydrivers dont turn the wheel much more than that. But that doesnt mean its a reason to limit the degrees to such low number.

[TonyRickard 17]

gheeD said:

Yes exactly. It was pointed more towards porkhammers argument (your quote) that watching onboards rallydrivers dont turn the wheel much more than that. But that doesnt mean its a reason to limit the degrees to such low number.

My observation is that the technique differs between the sim and real world rallying in terms of the amount of steering input. If it was a successful technique in real world then teams would implement it as they don't have the technical restrictions they had back in pre power steering days. This isn't unique to DIRT Rally, similar discussions existed for RBR.

It is hardly a deal breaker as drivers can choose an authentic matching steering ratio who have 900+ degree wheels as documented in the FFB Update blog:
Based on the information we could find we’ve set each car up in DiRT Rally with the same degrees of lock as they have in the real world; older cars such as the Lancia Delta have 1080 degrees of lock while the new modern cars such as the Fiesta RS Rally Car have 540 degrees. To take advantage of this we’re recommending that you set your wheel to the maximum degrees of rotation available in your devices settings.

However, it just seems a shame we choose between authentic or optimal for the game IMHO.

[Porkhammer 78]

gheeD said:

Yes exactly. It was pointed more towards porkhammers argument (your quote) that watching onboards rallydrivers dont turn the wheel much more than that. But that doesnt mean its a reason to limit the degrees to such low number.

Nope, ten years worth of muscle memory is the reason for that limit. ;)

[JZStudios 585]

Porkhammer said:

I've been meaning to invest in a new shifter myself at some point... one that I can switch between sequential and H-pattern in a jiffy. I seriously hate flappy paddles, so you have my sympathy! I've been looking at http://www.fanatec.com/eu-en/shifters/clubsport-shifter-sq-eu.html .. it's really expensive (2400 swedish kronor). But I reckon it is worth saving up for.

Hmm, well according to Google, it only costs the equivalent 1734. Anyways, that's what I have since I decided to just go flat out and buy something good. It's WAY better than the Thrustmaster  shifter, and instantly switches H to SQ. Only problem is, unlike the TM shifter, the SQ in the Fanatec one literally uses 3rd and 4th gear, so some games (PCars) won't let you double bind buttons so you have to remap it. At least in DR you can change all the controls really quickly in game. (I also had the TM shifter and returned it.)

[Porkhammer 78]

This topic is like 6 months old, JZ, so... maybe that's why the price is different.

[JZStudios 585]

Porkhammer said:

This topic is like 6 months old, JZ, so... maybe that's why the price is different.

I paid that 6 months ago. In any case what did you end up going with?

[Porkhammer 78]

I haven't afforded it yet... :P                              

[JZStudios 585]

Porkhammer said:

I haven't afforded it yet... :P                              

Oh, well the Fanatec is definitely better. To switch shifter modes on the TH8 takes about 3 minutes, and the Fanatec is a lot sturdier.

[xkevlarx 0]

I played for years with Driving Force EX and 200 dor and it felt perfect. Then I jumped to DFGT and learned to drive with 900. Authenticity is big thing for me, but driving with 900 is such a chore I've come to senses and now it's 720 for older cars and 540 for those who have it irl. I'm contemplating on going to 540 for everything, because DFGT is such noisy wheel.

I know people who drive Abarth with 1080 dor, the amount cranking is ridiculous.

[JZStudios 585]

xkevlarx said:

I played for years with Driving Force EX and 200 dor and it felt perfect. Then I jumped to DFGT and learned to drive with 900. Authenticity is big thing for me, but driving with 900 is such a chore I've come to senses and now it's 720 for older cars and 540 for those who have it irl. I'm contemplating on going to 540 for everything, because DFGT is such noisy wheel.

I know people who drive Abarth with 1080 dor, the amount cranking is ridiculous.

Fun Fact: My head sticks out the top of those FIAT's. The cabriolet is great because the windshield cross spar is directly in front of my eyes.

[bogani 745]

I did buy the Fanatec SQ shifter a few weeks ago, it a nice piece. I like the H-shift the best, SQ shifting got quite a long throw.

[shadow118 18]

xkevlarx said:

I played for years with Driving Force EX and 200 dor and it felt perfect. Then I jumped to DFGT and learned to drive with 900. Authenticity is big thing for me, but driving with 900 is such a chore I've come to senses and now it's 720 for older cars and 540 for those who have it irl. I'm contemplating on going to 540 for everything, because DFGT is such noisy wheel.

I know people who drive Abarth with 1080 dor, the amount cranking is ridiculous.

Almost the same with me. I had a Formula Force EX for couple of years, also 200°, was playing all racigng games with that. A few months ago got a DFGT, went straight to 540°. anything more is just too much for me to handle, but afer driving for a while with 540°, the 200° is also not enough anymore :d  
I did have a DFGT before I had the FFEX (that was 5-6 years ago, but it died. Actually I managed to kill two of them :D), but in rally games that I played at that time, mainly CMR5, I still used 200°. Now with the new DFGT I use 540° everywhere

[own996 0]

Agreed on not being able to reset the daily/weekly/monthly stages.
My approach is to do some practise offline until i'm constantly putting in respectable times.
And then when i actually go and do the daily challenge, i bin it on the second corner and put in a mediocre time :)
But well, no harm done, it's all good fun.

[Cortextual 146]

 You guys remember that thread where porkhammer was crying that the game was too hard? Maybe that's when codies gave him his superpowers.

[Porkhammer 78]

Cortextual said:

 You guys remember that thread where porkhammer was crying that the game was too hard?

The problem was that the Subaru was pretty rubbish without upgrades.

[RyuMakkuro 6]

Porkhammer said:

Cortextual said:

 You guys remember that thread where porkhammer was crying that the game was too hard?

The problem was that the Subaru was pretty rubbish without upgrades.

Well, AI is running with all the upgrades on Master level, so it should be only natural that you lose. As long as the cars stay competitive when fully upgraded, the non-upgraded level shouldn't really be an issue.

[Porkhammer 78]

Yup, but it was way back in May - I didn't know a lot! :D

[JZStudios 585]

Porkhammer said:

Yup, but it was way back in May - I didn't know a lot! :D

Funny, I still suck after all this time.

[Procver 3]

I've been playing since June, but I really improved recently after a week (including weekend) of lots of playing. I was doing around 50th-60th in the events, now I'm regularly around 10th-30th.
Having my girlfriend not around for that time really helped me, time to think things a little more... lol