rF2 S397 GT3 @ Spa-Francorchamps - Fri 27 Nov 2020

[Michael Rudolf]

I was once again disconnected from server just before formation lap, so no race for me. After a bad qualifying I was hoping in a good race. This happens to me quite often in RD races since two years... Very frustrating to see there's no fix after so long time

Have you made your own livery, and did you "create driver" in the game when you did this?
If so, this might be the reason why. If you just create a livery, and put it in one of the existing cars as an alt-file, that works without issues.

Actually noticed that you appeared as an unknown class for me, the only non GT3 class car. So maybe there is indeed something wrong with the car you picked.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

Indeed, just did a quick AI session trying things out. Again, same setup, max fuel (thought maybe car bottomed out or something) and same thing happens. Alone no problem, rear is like on rails. Behind two AI cars and all of a sudden rear steps out uncontrollably. Very weird, haven't noticed that on any other track so far, at least by far not to this extent. Didn't even realize so many ppl were affected.
Also missed that my second round was a really close call

I went from 31st to 15th without making a single actual pass. Just by picking up places from people spinning.

The most "fun" situation was when I had someone close to my rear in to Eau Rouge, I expected that driver to lose it, so when I felt safe I looked in the mirror, and indeed. I saw him coming backwards, then a second later a second car came backwards at the same spot, hitting the exact same tyres outside of radillon. Not to be outdone, when I was getting a bit away from that, but still looking in my mirror, a third car came spinning in the exact same spot. It looked like someone had gotten a 5-banana peel power up in Mario Kart.

 

[Alex Townsend]

Sounds like a very odd race indeed. I have to say that all throughout the week I had issues with the 488 rear end stepping out no matter what I did on the entry to raidillon.
I had to slow right down and even then it still felt a little hairy going through there.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I had no issues with the Porsche, other than driving sideways as normal. I really need to paint another car pink so I can change car. I'm driving it like a rally-car!

But there was something weird when following others. No doubt about that.

 

[Jan Larsen]

Indeed, just did a quick AI session trying things out. Again, same setup, max fuel (thought maybe car bottomed out or something) and same thing happens. Alone no problem, rear is like on rails. Behind two AI cars and all of a sudden rear steps out uncontrollably. Very weird, haven't noticed that on any other track so far, at least by far not to this extent. Didn't even realize so many ppl were affected.
Also missed that my second round was a really close call

View attachment 422894

At least I'm not the only one which kinda confirms my earlier post with the funny aero unbalance in the draft
Btw, could you pitch me your Fezza setup? The default stinks and I'd like to try it out with a decent setup on it

 

[Jan Larsen]

But there was something weird when following others. No doubt about that.

You should've seen the mayhem I came upon after cresting Eau Rouge on lap 1 and 2. In 20 years of simracing, I've never seen anything like it in a league race with decent drivers like here than I did tonight

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

You should've seen the mayhem I came upon after cresting Eau Rouge on lap 1 and 2. In 20 years of simracing, I've never seen anything like it in a league race with decent drivers like here than I did tonight

Indeed. One thing would've been if this had been 30 new drivers. But the vast majority of us have been racing a lot, both in rF2 and other sims here on RD, and we generally are able to behave, drive fair and without much issues.
This was a very weird evening. It was fun (we had some laughs on Discord ), but weird.

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

Same aero issue occurs at Portimao too. Seems to only be a problem on curves with elevation changes.

 

[Luca Ciarfella]

Results from today's race

So, I was the fastest in race?!? Wow
It's a shame that this is what happened in the first eau rouge of the race...

 

[Magnus Dahlgren]

GT3's are very pitch sensitive, following somebody you loose downforce and being compressed(bottoming out is the worst) by going uphill you will spin if you do not feather the throttle. I'm actually surprised that so many spun, not by the physical phenomenon but by the sheer amount of fast names I saw spelled back to front when going through Eau Rouge and Radillion.
I found that using harder springs and raising the packers helped, however my 488 was still a bit tail happy, at both Eau Rouge/Radillion and Blanchimont. But my setup was crap really(in terms of comparative performance), I only had minimal time to do work on it, made it on to the server for the last 8(?) minutes of practice and just tweaked it according to my general taste and predictions, but that still couldn't completely cure the loose rear end. The sad part about rF2 is that the game (still!) never telegraphs to the driver when the car bottoms out, there's no visual or audible cue and I have never felt it through the wheel(yes sure, you can go by the feeling of lightness or lack of grip but it's so faint and so rapid), so usually when the car bottoms I don't register it really so the sensation to me is that the car just freaks out from nowhere! This is something I guess also contributes to the difficulty in tackling this corner.

The exact same thing happens in ACC when following somebody, if you're to close to someone you have to feather otherwise you'll end up as a wreckage blocking the pit exit. Driving with clear air in ACC I could keep my foot planted on the throttle all the way through but as soon as I stayed close and tucked in behind someone I had to lift otherwise the car would rotate to much at the start of the corner or run wide at the exit depending on what line I took.
However despite the fact that the FFB in ACC still isn't at the great level of rF2 it does however telegraph to the driver, in all the three senses, that the car is bottoming out. You get a small jolt in the wheel, sparks fly and that horrible scraping sound is just like a small ice pick through your ears.

So from 20th to 2nd, wow! I have never been that speechless crossing the finish line, a great race but also a wacky one!
Definitely worthy of a Mario Kart analogy!

Edit: Not my best screen shot but I do like the framing...

2nd Edit: Haha I might've come across as a bit critical and judgemental in my text but I'm sure normal order will be resumed and I'll have to eat up my own words the next time!

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

I went from 31st to 15th without making a single actual pass. Just by picking up places from people spinning.

The most "fun" situation was when I had someone close to my rear in to Eau Rouge, I expected that driver to lose it, so when I felt safe I looked in the mirror, and indeed. I saw him coming backwards, then a second later a second car came backwards at the same spot, hitting the exact same tyres outside of radillon. Not to be outdone, when I was getting a bit away from that, but still looking in my mirror, a third car came spinning in the exact same spot. It looked like someone had gotten a 5-banana peel power up in Mario Kart.

So, I was the fastest in race?!? Wow
It's a shame that this is what happened in the first eau rouge of the race...

View attachment 422914

I think I figured out the trio of cars I mentioned.

EDIT: No, this was L1. Oh well. I happened more that once then!

 

[Wayne Hutchison]

Quite and up-and-down race for sure. I went from 16th to 9th to 27th to 9th over the course of 50 minutes

 

[RasmusP]

Mine neither :-(( The 3090 would interest me due to the 24Gb of VRAM: in rF2 with my 1080 with 8Gb VRAM, rF2 took it all. My new 3080 has 10 GB VRAM, and rF2 takes it all.It would interest me to see how much it really takes, maybe 23.9Gb? )

Really? How?

Well that did not go very well for me. Had a good start and just managed to avoid the 488 of I think @pokornyib who spun at Eau Rogue which should have been a warning. Had a nice battle with @Simon Marshall for the rest of the lap. Then it began. Next three times Eau Rogue got me and I spun out big time. No clue why that happened, never had that once all week in any practise with the same setup, really weird. Didn't trust the car at all after that and had issues in Eau Rouge pretty much every lap and caught 3 DTs sliding off track trying to avoid more spins. Looked like it could have become a nice battle after all when I was at the end of the P4-P9 car train but got another DT and ended up 7th. Considering that I obviously wasn't the only one with troubles today. Thanks for the great and fair racing everyone and congrats to the Podium, good job keeping it together!
And thanks for organizing @Ole Marius Myrvold

View attachment 422878

Practice: That was an odd race. Right before qualifying my pedals buggered off, refusing to work anymore. I almost rammed someone and threw it in the fence to avoid. Sorry about that scare, I had no control. Then when it finally did stop, it full throttled its way back out on to the track like it had a mind of its own, so I quickly discoed to try and troubleshoot. They had been acting up in the weeks before so I thought the pots were finally done after 10 years. But all 3 of them at the same time? Something was fishy. It turned out to be a faulty usb plug on the motherboard of all things, once I switched to another USB and recalibrated, everything was back to normal. Had anyone ever had an USB go bad?

Qually: Came back in with about 5 minutes to go, hurriedly scrambled a lap together to end up 15th, hardly ideal. I knew I was in for a tough time through the first few corners. Oh boy was I right...

Race: ...because everything went tits up in Eau Rouge on both lap 1 and 2 where HALF THE FIELD(!) binned it on both laps, including myself. As Michael said:

I totally agree. The car was completely undrivable through Eau Rouge when behind other cars, its like the draft aero coding is completely wrong. The car should understeer through there, not oversteer like mad. It basically caught everyone out leading to massive pileups. When I joined the crash on both lap 1 and 2, several other cars had already found the wall before me, so I basically slid right into the pileup already there. While amusing to see, its still frustrating.
After those two big hits, lots of traffic, a drive thru(I f.... hate track limits, in real life and in sims) and whatever time lost elsewhere, I miraculously brought it home in 5th. Most likely because of others mishaps.

Indeed, just did a quick AI session trying things out. Again, same setup, max fuel (thought maybe car bottomed out or something) and same thing happens. Alone no problem, rear is like on rails. Behind two AI cars and all of a sudden rear steps out uncontrollably. Very weird, haven't noticed that on any other track so far, at least by far not to this extent. Didn't even realize so many ppl were affected.
Also missed that my second round was a really close call

View attachment 422894

You're not the only people finding this out!
There's definitely something wrong since the last update. It's like they linked the "front washout" effect to the rear by accident.

GT3 cars aero balance in draft

The GT3 cars aero balance moves in the wrong direction when in dirty air. They lose too much rear downforce and not enough front downforce.

forum.studio-397.com

Post from Risto Kappet. He's a professional simracer and knows his stuff. And he is mad...

S397 definitely fcked something up with the gt3s and gte's lately... It's like drs gets stuck open when you're following someone.

 

[Babywetrat]

hey - sorry for the tech problems. Especially to whoever I rolled backwards into at the start. Went from perfect in practice, to no ffb (even after resetting) in warmup to no controls at all at the start of the race. Couldn't brake, couldn't ESC out. Had to de-pretzel myself out of the rig and hold the power button on the PC. Hopefully that removed me quickly.

Sounds like I missed an entertaining time.

 

[Babywetrat]

what a scary race. Entered the grit and after start of formation lap i realized "hey, no ffb" hoped for a restart, but no, than thought about where is the ffb reset button(never used it the last month and years, ah, ok there but oh, that device isn't active any more....
So, in the end 23 laps without ffb at spa, a lot of work.
Got 3 cut warnings the first 2 laps during the learning of driving without ffb, afterwards it went ok, had a lot of fun.

thanks to ole for organizing, as always a greta event and a lot of fun.

sounds a bit familiar. Simucube 1?

 

[Herlev]

What a wacky race
As everyone else, I really struggled with the aero balance and keeping the car pointing in the right direction.
But besides that, it was actually a fun race.
Thank you @Ole Marius Myrvold for hosting

 

[akephoe]

sounds a bit familiar. Simucube 1?

No, Thrustmaster t300rs. I can't Tell when it happened the läßt time before. First thing i did after the race was to the set a new shortcut

 

[AyrtonForever]

Hmm. I can only think of one thing right now.

Have you made your own livery, and did you "create driver" in the game when you did this?
If so, this might be the reason why. If you just create a livery, and put it in one of the existing cars as an alt-file, that works without issues.

i have made my livery as usual following the S397 guide, by creating driver etc. this on other races worked fine but i could investigate on this. so was my livery and car class invisible?

 

[Michael Rudolf]

i have made my livery as usual following the S397 guide, by creating driver etc. this on other races worked fine but i could investigate on this. so was my livery and car class invisible?

Did not pay attention to the livery, I think neither car nor class did show up. Not an rFacrtor expert but maybe check if you have some custom .rcd files in your rFactor 2\UserData\player\Settings for your car. They also download from the server if someone else used them, might be something is interfering there

 

[Jan Larsen]

You're not the only people finding this out!
There's definitely something wrong since the last update. It's like they linked the "front washout" effect to the rear by accident.

GT3 cars aero balance in draft

The GT3 cars aero balance moves in the wrong direction when in dirty air. They lose too much rear downforce and not enough front downforce.

forum.studio-397.com

Post from Risto Kappet. He's a professional simracer and knows his stuff. And he is mad...

S397 definitely fcked something up with the gt3s and gte's lately... It's like drs gets stuck open when you're following someone.

Looking at that thread, it looks like S397 has taken notice and is looking into it. Whether that translates into a fix, or a tweak, well who knows.