Special settings = best laptimes ???

Quo-Fan

Hi,
months ago someone raod at rfactorcentral forum that he has found out very special ingame settings for sensibility and so one. He said that ther is a special combination of all settings which will make you about 2 seconds faster on a track. He also siad if he changes just one of those settings he will be around 2 seconds slower again. He didn´t publish the setting and the thread was closed at all.

So simple question: Could it be that he was right? Is there a special combination of ingame settings that will give you a speed advantage?

Background of my question is that we due often some events in our league, different mods, different tracks. There is a team of four players which which joins us then. And they are in every qualifying very, very close together on position 1 to 4. Difference from P1 to P4 is under half a second, and difference from 1 to 5 is allways around 2 or more seconds. This can be luck or competence, but allways the same four people on different mods and tracks?

What do you think?
 
Cheating, experience in racing, better hardware... if they are doing that all the time, then it is not about having a bit of luck ;-)

Having good setup, with good fps levels (above 70-80, preferably more than 100), low or non existant input lag, comapared to slow and laggy PC with 30fps will make huge, like day and night difference.
For me, having less than 50fps is just uncomfortable. I just don't feel that confident because rF is not that smooth like when you have 80 or more fps.
 
LMAO. I upgraded my computer and went from 20 FPS to 60....my times are still the same.
 
If you did not noticed any improvement, then that does not mean no one will... especially, when at 20fps FFB already acts noticably different. So, maybe I should LMAO? ;-)
 
When I bought a new machine, went from a 1.8ghz single processor to a quad-core 2.8 ghz system, I didn't get much faster but I was way more consistent.
 
I think people get used to low frame rates and somehow manage good times. I don't personally know how they do it but they do. A friend of mine had a rig that got no more the 35 and would drop as low as 15 at times. He somehow made it work. I on the other hand couldn't keep it on the track. I am normally significantly faster. This friend now has a new rig and I am still significantly faster. Like beatnik, my friend got more consistent.

The longer you race the more you realize you have to learn. Practice practice practice. I do firmly believe there is some natural talent there too. Setups can help, some cars/tracks more then others. But track time helps the most. The only "setting" I can think of that may improve laptimes would be disabling VSync so controller lag is eliminated. But that helps more with consistency then raw laptimes. I can't tell you how many times I have seen guys run significant'y faster and I just can't figure out how. I keep practicing and then end up surpassing them. Check out rFVCRMerge. It lets you overlay two (or more) laps in sort of a ghost replay where you can get a better idea of where one driver is gaining time.

Here is an example of what rFVCRMerge does:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGcbiKFTU6s

You can see I am loosing time on the exit of the final turn. With that long strait it is critical to get a good run off that last turn.

Oh and here is another cool example. This is everyones fastest qualifying lap all merged into one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHKAodm3-FM
 
Also keep in mind that setup development can be accelerated when you have 4 guys sharing thoughts and doing lost of testing. Also sharing thoughts on driving line, brake points and stuff like that can help. I would suggest befriending these guys and picking their brains.
 
A good setup can easily mean the difference of 2 seconds faster lap time. I remember someone sent me their setup for Sardian and my time improved almost 2 seconds as I just could not get a good setup going for that track (not that I'm a great driver either lol). So thanks to he-who-will-rename-nameless I was able to at least tag-up behind the big boys (notwithstanding a severely scratched/dented car by the end of the race).
 
Could also be Psy-ops. Messing with heads is part of online gaming. Although it may get you called a cheater, and subsequently banned for no legitimate reason. :D
 
Ok, ok, clear so far.
By the way, our actual mod is Porsche PCC2007, hard to drive and hard to brake. But the frantic four are in front of all...
I know that they do a lot of testing season and that they share the setups, maybe that is simple said the reason for all.
If practise is the key, then i have a lot or work infont of me!!!
 
LesiU said:
Having good setup, with good fps levels (above 70-80, preferably more than 100)
Click to expand...

Having more than 60/65 fps is useless as human eye doesn't note any difference. ;) It is definitely better to have a solid 60 fps with v-sync on (which avoids image tearing). There's indeed a lot of difference from driving with 30 (or less) fps and 60: probably not in laptimes, but the global experience is much smoother. :)
 
Uff said:
Having more than 60/65 fps is useless as human eye doesn't note any difference. ;) It is definitely better to have a solid 60 fps with v-sync on (which avoids image tearing). There's indeed a lot of difference from driving with 30 (or less) fps and 60: probably not in laptimes, but the global experience is much smoother. :)
Click to expand...

I can see even a difference between 100 / 200 and 300 FPS, i can test and reproduce that as often i want!
VSync increased input latency which cost you laptime!
>100 FPS we cannot expet wonders but i definately do not want to play with less than this.

But i agree that vsync enabled feels like 100 FPS when @60 FPS, thats cause images are ordered and with same timegap between them beeing rendered.
but this increased the latency and thats not good.
 
Lol, whats wrong with you?
I bet 10.000 $ that i can see the difference immediately,
there is a big difference between computer games and movies!
 
You honestly care if your sim is running at 200 fps instead of 300? Anyway, I thought the human eye couldn't tell at that rate
 
Hardware. I'm talking about steering wheel, pedals, gears, and..yes a good driving position. With a good setup (really important) you can feel great difference IMHO.
 
TBH the gap between 200 and 300 is a small, but its noticable.
~100 FPS -> smooth
>150 FPS -> smooth as butter
>200 FPS -> smooth as hell
 
I'm wondering why I can drive better with the ffb reversed(instead of a neg in from of ffb sterr input a positive)
 
My FFB is reveresed too...I can't drive it unless it's reversed. Otherwise it feels all funky near the wheels center.
 
There is no monitor on the market that can run more the 120Hz. Most run 60Hz. Some can accept 75Hz but really only display at 60Hz. So it would be absolutely impossible to see a difference if the monitor isn't even capable of displaying that fast. The real key is to disable VSync.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjHqXKqeDgE
 
Noel Hibbard said:
There is no monitor on the market that can run more the 120Hz. Most run 60Hz. Some can accept 75Hz but really only display at 60Hz. So it would be absolutely impossible to see a difference if the monitor isn't even capable of displaying that fast. The real key is to disable VSync.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjHqXKqeDgE
Click to expand...
So there is no point in running more than 60fps if the monitor isn't capable of over 60Hz?

As for the lag (RE: the youtube vid). How do you know it's input lag not just graphic lag? When I had a much slower PC I had such a lag and it increased dramatically proportional to the graphic load (i.e. more cars on the track). It looked exactly like that youtube vid but worse. But I'm 100% sure that visual movement of the wheel didn't represent its physical movement, hell, back then I was faster than these days!
 
The FBB in rF v1255 runs by default with a fixed rate, here the line ("1" is the default value) in the controller.ini

Fixed Rate Inputs="1" // whether to sample joystick/wheel inputs in a thread for better precision

So i think the wheel physical movement is not afflicted by FPS, but the rate i guess is not crazy high, say tuned on the minimum requirement CPU power.
 
FFB steer force input max="11500.00000" // Recommended: 11500 (-11500 if controller pulls in the wrong direction) had it at neg but couldnt feel the car slide or correct it in turns.now with it positive I got my 1st podium finish(3rd) in my race leauge after only hrs of changing it.i also have to have ffb strength in positive(in game menu)if i pull it towards neg it then changes the steer force input back to neg.i just had to turn down ffb strength and turn up center spring to get it so the wheel doesnt flop left and right.i dunno...but it works for me:)
 
Noel Hibbard said:
There is no monitor on the market that can run more the 120Hz. Most run 60Hz. Some can accept 75Hz but really only display at 60Hz. So it would be absolutely impossible to see a difference if the monitor isn't even capable of displaying that fast. The real key is to disable VSync.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjHqXKqeDgE
Click to expand...

Thats not true!

The monitor is reading the frames from the gpu, not matter if they re finished or not, and the gpu renders the pictures to the dvi-output,
so it happens that the upper part of the picture is newer than the other part!

Thats the reason for vsync, vertical sync.
With this setting the gpu is waiting until the monitor has read the complete image before a new one is rendered again!
This results in very very smooth 60FPS, but also increases the input latency a lot.
 
I know how VSync works. The monitor is still only going to refresh at 60Hz regardless. So what if part of the image is newer then the rest. You still aren't going to get full frames at anything over 60fps. The eye can't see much over 80fps anyways. So even if you had a 200Hz monitor your eye isn't going to know any different.
 
As long as frames are rendered inconstantly and that will propably never change each fps more will make it more "smooth", i can definately see a huge difference up to 200 fps.
I agree that >100 FPS are enough for 98% of the time, but more is sill better, at least for the ffb.
 
Maybe it helps with FFB. The internals interface is tied to the frame rate and RealFeel uses the internals interface so maybe RealFeel would feel better at higher framerates. But I still don't see how your going to "see" a differences out of a 60hz monitor. I have actually found rFactor runs smother when you limit the frame rate because it puts less load on your CPU that way. Maybe with a very fast CPU this isn't a problem. I have an E6420 and a HD5770 and when it is uncapped my CPU runs around 86%. With it capped at 60FPS (not with VSync but with "Max Framerate" in the PLR file) my CPU usage drops to 36%. So I don't get those aggravating stutters with it capped. My guess is with the cap I have enough spare CPU time to handle background tasks without pulling time from rFactor.
 
Pandamasque said:
So there is no point in running more than 60fps if the monitor isn't capable of over 60Hz?

As for the lag (RE: the youtube vid). How do you know it's input lag not just graphic lag? When I had a much slower PC I had such a lag and it increased dramatically proportional to the graphic load (i.e. more cars on the track). It looked exactly like that youtube vid but worse. But I'm 100% sure that visual movement of the wheel didn't represent its physical movement, hell, back then I was faster than these days!
Click to expand...

You are right. It isn't "input lag". It is "graphic lag". If you Google VSync it is always referred to as "input lag" which isn't really what it is. The problem is that your brain is responding based on what it sees on screen. So when the screen is lagged then you are giving inputs too late. So when you turn the wheel the physics engine reacts instantly, but you don't see the results instantly. This is why turning off VSync can improve laptimes or at least improve consistency.
 
killdrums said:
FFB steer force input max="11500.00000" // Recommended: 11500 (-11500 if controller pulls in the wrong direction) had it at neg but couldnt feel the car slide or correct it in turns.now with it positive I got my 1st podium finish(3rd) in my race leauge after only hrs of changing it.i also have to have ffb strength in positive(in game menu)if i pull it towards neg it then changes the steer force input back to neg.i just had to turn down ffb strength and turn up center spring to get it so the wheel doesnt flop left and right.i dunno...but it works for me:)
Click to expand...

Logi wheels are reversed. Changing this line in the INI file is just like sliding the FFB strength slider to -100 in the rFactor controller screen. Keep in mind that ISI released a new rFactor.exe made just for the G27 that fixed this slider so it now needs to be set to +100. Hahaha. What a mess. This new rFactor.exe for the G27 also adds support for the shift light LEDs. You can find it here:
http://downloads.rfactor.net/rFactor_G27Update.zip
 
DeDios said:
Hardware. I'm talking about steering wheel, pedals, gears, and..yes a good driving position. With a good setup (really important) you can feel great difference IMHO.
Click to expand...

+1

Spending time to really sort out you driving controls to suit you, I was trying hard and was happy to run in the top 10 in most leagues, I have found after much testing that running lower FFB in the profiler and in game have put me right up the front. Problem is to much feedback means you are reacting to the feedback not the car position on the track, you should be able to feel the feedback but not have it control/effect your steering inputs. Also I have changed to running Leo's FFB from Reelfeel and will never go back :)

FYI my rig. Vision Racer, G27, A1 pedals, SLI-M and 37" LCD
 
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@Noel Hibbard
I thought it was just the wheel itself 'graphically lagging', not the rest of the picture. I've just tested (visually with AI driving) V-sync versus no V-sync and found that V-synced 60 FPS looks A LOT smoother than 200 FPS! (@60Hz at least) I'll see if I can get similar effect just by capping FPS with V-sync off.
 
Pandamasque said:
@Noel Hibbard
I thought it was just the wheel itself 'graphically lagging', not the rest of the picture. I've just tested (visually with AI driving) V-sync versus no V-sync and found that V-synced 60 FPS looks A LOT smoother than 200 FPS! (@60Hz at least) I'll see if I can get similar effect just by capping FPS with V-sync off.
Click to expand...

With V-sync on it looks very smooth. But then you have a little steering input lag.
Set V-sync on and turn your wheel often from left to right, you will see, that the ingame wheel isn´t synchronic to your real wheel and with V-sync off the wheel is 100% synchronic to your wheel, but it can happen, that you then have tearing and isn´t not really smooth.

But back to my main question: special settings and better laptimes is bull****, right?:D
 
I think it all comes down to the setup sharing within that group. When my team gets together for a group practice session we bounce ideas off each other and in the end we all become faster.
 
And not just the setups either. if they share their replay's and 'secrets' the 4 of them will have a big advantage on the rest of the grid. just seeing someone taking a chicane differently, or braking later/earlyer etc realy helps becomming fast. for fast drivers its usualy the tiny little things that make all the difference.

I have tried to encourage the drivers in our league to do this publicly because when medium/slow drivers get an insight in how its done the overall racing becomes better but its not going as i would like to see. even i keep my cards to my chest as a championship is developing and going my way. 'screw them, i'm not sharing anything anymore!'

:)
 
Well we have an open setup policy. We believe that helping the drivers not up to speed creates a better overall racing environment. It also has the added benefit of making our league feel like a community. Many a time have I found myself in another persons car helping with their setup, going over their motec logs, and watching their racing line to give them pointers.
 
Pandamasque said:
@Noel Hibbard
I thought it was just the wheel itself 'graphically lagging', not the rest of the picture. I've just tested (visually with AI driving) V-sync versus no V-sync and found that V-synced 60 FPS looks A LOT smoother than 200 FPS! (@60Hz at least) I'll see if I can get similar effect just by capping FPS with V-sync off.
Click to expand...

It isn't just the animated wheel that is lagged. It is the whole picture. As Quo-Fan said, VSync will look silky smooth but adds a delay. If you turn VSync off you get tearing (top half of the screen is newer then the bottom half) but if you use "Max Framerate=60" it will minimize the tearing to almost nothing. At the same time it reduces the load on the GPU and CPU which will reduce those aggravating stutters that almost all gMotor sims have.
 
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