New to sim racing and Assetto Corsa

[TamaThps]

A little background: I have a G27 wheel, and previously had only played Gran Turismo 5. I wanted to get into a newer and more serious racing game recently, and after some research on the existing and upcoming games I decided to pick up netkar pro in order to try out the Assetto Corsa technology preview in anticipation for the full release.

I'm liking the game so far and I'm trying to improve my skills/time. I've seen some great hot laps on youtube of more experienced racers, and I'm trying to integrate their style into my own racing. Sadly, the best I've been able to achieve is in the 1:29 range so far, so I still have a lot of work to do. So far I've noticed that I can't just mash the throttle, but instead have to give it different levels and control it more, and that I need to turn more gradually in places to avoid bringing the car to almost a halt from turning to sharply.

I'm not expecting to become an incredible racer overnight, but I'd like to know some tips for you guys that have been in this longer. I have some questions. Some are more general (could apply to any game) and some are more specific to Assetto Corsa.

1. Generally, how do you practice a track? Lap the track over and over? Practice specific turns over and over to master one and then move on? Practice different sectors?
2. Any tips in general for someone new to sim racing?
3. Are there any apps in AC that I should pay more attention to that are usually used for practicing?
4. Is there a way in AC to set a start point on the track, and a shortcut to restore the car to that start point? For instance, I've seen in some hot lap videos, they start from a standstill a few turns back from the beginning so they have full entry speed at the beginning of the lap. This would help a lot for me, as I tend to mess up a lap away at a specific point, and the rest of the lap doesn't even matter because I already screwed up. It'd be nice to just quickly restart.
5. I randomly saw someone mention that ctrl+o sets you back in the pit in Assetto Corsa. Is there a listing of all of the key shortcuts in Assetto Corsa?

tl;dr Please try to answer some of the questions above, keeping in mind I'm new to Racing Sims.

Thanks!

 

[TamaThps]

DOH! Just realized in the menu 'Hot Lap' is an option. Mine had been on practice the whole time. That kind of settles the need of placing a start location since it starts you off a few turns back like I mentioned in #4.

 

[Tony Rickard]

1&2/ There is no substitute for track time. Aim to hit apexes and track out to the exit kerbs. You may find you need to brake earlier which feels slower but gains you a lot of time. Learning to rotate the car with some controlled aggression and where you can straighten corners with the kerbs helps too.
3/ If you use the Delta performance app you will see which corners you are gaining and losing time over your previous time
4/ the hotlap option starts you a couple of corners from the start/finish straight

Don't get too hung up about fast times, it will come with practice and like any activity there are some who simply have the greatest talent. Someone new to golf wouldn't compare themselves with the pros, it is the same in sim racing.

Most of all have fun

 

[Hampus Andersson]

Understanding how to go quick is key.
Otherwise you´ll do 200 laps and haven´t learnt a thing.

Once you understand the theoretical part you can take that knowledge and apply it practically.

 

[Majnu]

watching this thread with great interest.

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

My two cents: (I'm not very fast myself but will try to help anyway)

At first don't worry at all about lap times...just make laps until you know the track well enough that even with the game off you can visualize the track in your head.
Once you know the track watch replays specifically to see what lines guys are running through the turns. Make more laps trying to run the same way through the turns that the fast guys are.
Once you know the track and what lines to run you will already be faster than you were before.
Watch replays some more and try to see where the fast guys are braking, turning in, and how much speed they are going through the turns; start banging head on wall when you feel you are doing everything they are and still not running quite as fast!

 

[Requiem84]

Understanding how to go quick is key.
Otherwise you´ll do 200 laps and haven´t learnt a thing.

Once you understand the theoretical part you can take that knowledge and apply it practically.

Quoted for truth.

Read about the basics of driving a racing car fast. Focus on taking lines through corners that allow you to get on the gas as soon as possible. If you get on the gas 0,1 second earlier than your previous best, you win 0,3, as you take the speed with you on the straights.

Don't focus too much on late braking yet, get your lines okay, and most important of all, the exit speed of the corner is key.

Post a replay of a lap of yourself, so we can help you .

 

[Jordi Casademunt]

As Michael said...Disregard laptimes, acquire experience.

Disable timing apps so they don't distract you, and then start lapping. Focus on being consistent, not overdriving the car, not making any major mistakes. Start by finding a good driving line, that's the basic. Don't worry if it feels slow, you're just exploring the track. Find a stable braking point, even if it's 50 meters before the fast guys brake.

When you're comfortable with the line, work on the corner exit, basically how you apply the throttle when going out of the corner. You want to be on the throttle as soon as posible, but you don't want to oversteer/understeer because of it. If you have to lift before you exit the corner, then that's too soon. During this stage you might have to change your line again to optimize the exit (a different line will allow you to go on the throttle sooner).

Last, when you feel you've got the throttle under control, then you can work on pushing your braking point a bit closer to the corner. Optimizing your braking point won't gain you lots of time compared to getting the line right, and getting on the throttle as soon as possible, and in fact overshooting your braking point will make you a lot slower, so it's the lowest priority of the 3. Just from getting the line and the throttle more or less right, you should be able to hit 26s or so.

Once you are there, videos will help a lot. Before that, they might make you overdrive the car.

As for specific turns to practice, probably the best ones are the one before the backstraight, and the final S before the pit straight. I'm sure getting those right can improve your times a lot.

I hope this might help, it's just some basics. If it doesn't make any sense to you, then I'm probably too sleepy to write anything coherent.

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

also I think a driving style is some kind of presonal thing.. especially in hotlapping (where you don't need to save your tires for another 30 laps or so)... ofcourse the basics are the same... but some drive more agressive and others drive more smooth... and still both can have equally lap times.... so it is very importend to get a feel for the car.. and how you personally can archieve the best corner exit speeds ..ofcourse without loosing too much at the corner entry... the corner exit is orfcourse the most importend but wouldn't bring benefits ofcourse if you brake way too early... so it is very importend to get the feeling to get the best balance between corner entry (incl. brake points) and corner exit.. in the way that suits best to your personal style... some are fast if they "drift" (not realy heavy drifting just a bit sideways) a bit into the turn.. others are at the same pace with smothing the car around the turn... it depends on how you get the best feel for yourself for it.. in the long term later when we do racing and more importantly long racing.. the smooth way often has a bit more tire headroom at the end of the race... (but ofcourse that all depends on car and tires and so on how drastically that results are)

what is also importend (which implements finding your own style) to get consistend... you can only become faster (in terms of skill) if you get consistend.. because if you are unconsistend.. you may have "the luck" to drive one fast lap... but then you don't know afterwards how you did that... if you get consistend... you also become faster and faster after time... so you can get more and more to the limit...


at the end.. there are theoritcal basics.. and if you know them and know how to translate them into driving.. it just depends on feel... racing etc.. is a very very sensitive thing and has a strong relationsship to meditation or trance in my opinion.. because when you drive at a fast pace or your personal limit... you self become the driving.. you don't drive you are drive.. the faster the car the more this comes into play..

I often remember myself to very long races at another sim... where I drove a 3 hours race in a lmp car.. it was an interesting expirence to see what differend kinds of behavior the brain does at such long races... there where parts of the race where I drove very "awake" (which was medium fast) .. and then at some point I just got into a rythm and went faster and faster.. till I was in a trance or meditation like state... (was the point where I drove my fastest laps).. but then there came a point where I got out of this trance and I suddenly didn't remembered where I was on the track.. I realy totally had no clue if the next turn is right or left or if it is tight or fast.. and so on... I was totally disorientated.. it was like waking up from a dream or so... (at that time I was ofcourse very slow and almost crashed and such things...) .. then I started to find back into the rythm ... and so on...
a bit like the thing with the rem phases...



however don't know if that was interesting for you or could help... I just started typing lol..

what I wanted to say mostly is.. you can adopt a style only to "x" percantage... the little details (and that are the things which make you fast at the end) you need to develop for your self so you learn the basics but improve them with your own feel... like cooking you know the "rough" amount of things that need to be in there... but the fine tuning (where you tune it in the detail to your liking and give it the special flavor and so) you need to do by your self.. like how many grains of salt and so

(no, I am a bad cook.. )

 

[TamaThps]

Thanks for all of the posts guys, I appreciate the advice.

For now, from the cumulative advice, I'll be working on the following:

• Research/find some tutorials on racing lines, and understand how to apply it in game. Up to this point, I've just been doing my own thing, and kind of learning from trial and error.
• Work on improving my corner exits.
• Work on being consistent. I'll start making mental reference of exactly when I need to start braking before a corner (and adjusting the reference as I improve my line) and when I can reapply full throttle for a proper exit.

I'll keep working on it from that approach. Maybe post a video of my hot lap when I feel it's worthy

 

[Struan Robertson]

This is a good watch.

 

[Stereo]

• Research/find some tutorials on racing lines, and understand how to apply it in game. Up to this point, I've just been doing my own thing, and kind of learning from trial and error.

At its most basic, you are trying to avoid any sudden changes in direction. The sharper the corner, the slower you have to go in order for the car to make it. Generally this means you start on the far side of the track from the corner, swing in to the apex, and then go back to the far side after the exit (if corners are closer, modify this - if you want to be on one side of the track exiting the first corner, and the other entering the next, you may want to aim for somewhere in the middle so you don't go all over the place).

You'll hear people mention the apex a lot. That's the point near the middle of the corner where you come as close as possible to the edge of the track.

Basically, the green line shows what happens if you turn into the corner early - by the time you hit the apex, you still need to steer a lot to straighten the car out. This means you're going slower. The red line shows what happens if you wait longer but turn more sharply - you hit the apex pointing down the straight, and you can accelerate sooner - but to turn so sharply at the start, you need to be going slower. On a relatively low-powered car, you want to slow down as little as possible, so the best option is in between - go through the corner smoothly without having to turn sharply at any point, and you can take more speed through it.

You can also see in the picture that green has a slightly earlier apex, red a slightly later one - moving it around affects the way you take the corner, and this is a convenient way to describe how to adjust your driving - moving the apex.

 

[martinsalat]

Thanks for all of the posts guys, I appreciate the advice.

For now, from the cumulative advice, I'll be working on the following:

• Research/find some tutorials on racing lines, and understand how to apply it in game. Up to this point, I've just been doing my own thing, and kind of learning from trial and error.
• Work on improving my corner exits.
• Work on being consistent. I'll start making mental reference of exactly when I need to start braking before a corner (and adjusting the reference as I improve my line) and when I can reapply full throttle for a proper exit.

I'll keep working on it from that approach. Maybe post a video of my hot lap when I feel it's worthy

try gtr2.it have an racing school.

 

[LazyBug]

All these theory talks are very easy to understand but very hard to make it done driving this car. Its just too hard for me to maintain a steady speed and best cornering line compare to other game that i had played like F1 2011 / Shift 2 / GRID / Dirt 3.
I feel like even my cheap saloon car is actually much easier to drive than the car in this preview.

 

[Aristotelis]

Looooooong time ago, I had this project about a simracing wiki. Never finished it but it's still there.

As others have said, do NOT practice without studying first.
Driving fast IMHO is 50% technique, 25% reflexes and 25% talent. You can learn to drive fast, you're not born fast. Some people learn to do it easier and sooner than others, but everybody can learn to drive fast. Results may and will vary, but you can learn and you can keep learning, it never ends.

So first study the basics, study the technique, it is very important and keep it simple and watch the details. As an example I've seen hundreds of people telling me that they try to use the whole road, and then watching their replays you can see more than half a meter of space in both entry, apex and exit. Those are lot's of tenths of a seconds on any turn and become seconds at the end of the lap.

Remember, there is no single point in a track where you lose seconds. You lose tenths on every turn. To better understand how much time you're losing, always do this. Divide the seconds by the number of turns and you'll get how many tenths you need to gain on every turn. That's your gap and that's why it is difficult to became faster. It's the small details on every single turn.

Oh yes, here's the link
http://flyingpigpedia.wetpaint.com/page/Base Course

 

[Sebastian Wolff]

great stuff Aris, just reading through all of this.

 

[LazyBug]

Oh yes, here's the link
http://flyingpigpedia.wetpaint.com/page/Base Course

Cant say i understand all the stuffs that being say in that article but more or less i learn something new about braking.

Lets see what happen if i brake less and turn at the same time, actually i try that before but most of the time car spin when i downshifting, may be i downshift too early or something.

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

All these theory talks are very easy to understand but very hard to make it done driving this car. Its just too hard for me to maintain a steady speed and best cornering line compare to other game that i had played like F1 2011 / Shift 2 / GRID / Dirt 3.
I feel like even my cheap saloon car is actually much easier to drive than the car in this preview.

It is because you feel alot more in a real car then in a chair in front of a table
also the view has alot to do with it... it's not only that you have more perihpical view in real life or with a trible screen setup.. but the sense of speed is much higher with more degrees of view..
to get a feeling for the speed.. it is usefull at the beginning to watch the speedo ingame and compare it with the speed you drive in reallife... in reallife it already feels quite fast if you do a turn with 80 kmh (depends on the turn ofcourse but I think you know what I mean) infront of a singlescreen 80 kmh feels like just rolling around...

all these things (like not feeling the forces and rotations and vibrations, less field of view and so) make simracing quite hard at the beginning... it needs abit of time till you get used to it.. so you can judge how fast you are ingame..

that also adds to the thing that you are going very fast (too fast) to the limit of the car (but it doesn't feel like the limit for yourself at the moment because you miss all the information of reallife).. so you start to drive over the limit of the car.. and then the car becomes instable, oversteery or understeery

when you got used to the less informative computer table it starts to feel quite natural

the funny thing is for me personally the above titles you listed are much much harder to drive then sims... because they feel totally strange and unreal to me that I don't know what the game is wanting me to do... at least with a 900° wheel... with a 270° wheel I was quite fast in shift 2 ... but the feeling was very unrealistic.. the cars where floating from left to right like a boat or hovercraft or so... but didn't under or oversteer at the same time.. but then suddenly become drifting and so... was realy strange...
in the f1 titles it felt like there was a spin switch... it felt like the game read the data and if it hit a specieal value then a switch is enabled which spins the car...

it feels (not only feels it is so) like the arcade or simcade titels are made for gamepad inputs.. so you can and also need to be rougher at the input...
and sims are made for steeringwheel inputs so you can and also need to be smoother..(well maybe wrong to say the sim is made for that input... but a car is made for that input )

 

[Hannes-Joshua Thor Barthel]

Cant say i understand all the stuffs that being say in that article but more or less i learn something new about braking.

Lets see what happen if i brake less and turn at the same time, actually i try that before but most of the time car spin when i downshifting, may be i downshift too early or something.

I think you didn't blip... that cause the rear tires to break too hard/block because of the engine...
make a blip (shortly push down the throttle to let the revs go up.. so the match the revs of the lower gear... and so there is not that abrubt engine brake which causes the rear tires to block) everytime you downshift

downshifting without bliping is like you pull the handbrake everytime you downshift...

 

[LazyBug]

I think you didn't blip... that cause the rear tires to break too hard/block because of the engine...

Yup you right i didnt blip most of the time when downshifting, something never really need to do in playing simcade game.
Anyway at least now i know why the car keep on to lock and spin just like that every time i downshift to 2nd gear.

Many thanks for your time.