How I Upgrade

This will make no since but on the DEC, I felt the car had just enought roll to keep me from sliding into / during the turns. Same as when I run them at 85 to 97%. I thought that a higher % should give you more grip when down shifting into turns. I may
have diff's all wrong but thought why not try the other end of the %. PS, please keep in mind that I had gear ratio's to match my driving. Higher final and higher individuals gears. Opposite of what I thought the RPM's should be hitting at to keep control
of the car on the down shift.

 

Assuming the tuning physics are similar to what they were in FM4, the Decel setting on your Differential basically controls how much off-throttle oversteer the car will have. This can best be felt when coming up to a bend where you don't need to brake,
but only need to release the throttle to bleed off just enough speed to make it through on the proper line. If you release the gas in the middle of the turn and the back end starts to come loose, chances are your Decel setting is too high.

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You mention wanting/needing more grip when going into turns. If you're braking in a straight line and can't turn into the corner when you want to, it could be because your front wheels have locked up. In which case, you either a) are going too fast and
need to brake for longer before attempting turn-in, b) have your brake bias set too far to the front (a little bit to the front is usually good, since weight transfers forward under braking, but more than 5% or so I usually find to be too much except in rare
cases), or c) need to soften your front springs a bit...it'll induce a little more dive into the body, but it should help keep it from plowing straight on or running wide off-line.

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If you already know all of that, or if what I said no longer applies to FM5, feel free to tell me to take a hike...

 

Don't take a hike Trippul - that's great info. Now you just need to step up and get the Xbox One, Forza 5 and the Thrustmaster!

 

*Grabs pen and paper* all ears

Any tips like that I will take and use. It sounds very close if not 100% on point with how F5 works. The soften the front springs is what got me. Still on phone but will be back with more questions G. Do you know much on AWD cars vs RWD cars on F4? I
use to use AWD cars in Horizon ( different than F4, I understand that) but in F5 it seems that most, not all, RWD or Mid motor cars are the way to go ( not AWD). Thoughts on that vs tuning in F4.

 

Does anyone here understand power to weight ratio? I was in a multiplayer match last night. I got to talking with a new ( new to me) called Fox. Dude was good...real good. So during the beating ( i was taking) we / he was talking about tuning and power
to weight. Quick point: if the weight is so much vs the power...the car will never run good / great. Against people that know how

 

Against people that know who to drive...the car won't fall out a tree. I think a few of the cars I had did well but when I went to AWD cars...it was all over but the crying.

 

Gah...had a whole long reply typed out, and then clicked on a link and lost it all. I'll try to remember what I wrote later on when I have time.

 

For the suspension settings I still like to use a mathematical formula since what you're really trying to achieve is proper balance of the cars weight i.e. front to rear weight distribution but partially contingent upon, and adjusted for, the drive type.
My camber angels, brake settings and tire pressures are all done based on telemetry feedback but the differential is done by "feel". My gearing is through a "one gear at a time" process and applies a specific methodology. This method I've adopted is the culmination
of my Forza knowledge which has been in development since Forza 1 on the old Xbox and is a continuing work.

 

One example: Camber angles. When setting these I determine what speed I'll be going most often when negotiating turns with the particular car I'm tuning. This is to say, if I have a long track with fast, sweeping turns and I know I'll be doing around 75
mph for the turns I set my camber angles to match. Basically, and this is a bit of an over simplification but, I set the camber angles, both front and rear, so that when I'm in an average turn which I'm tuning the car for, my outside tire is as flat on the
road surface as possible. When you've done things correctly you'll see that the tire temps across the outer, center and inner are about the same. The whole point of adjusting your camber angle is to try and cause your outer tire to be flat on the road during
a turn. This permits for the most tread contact as possible in order to maximize grip.

 

Anyone know how to quote something other than the original post in a thread? These new forums are moderately migraine-inducing. >.<

@Peddler, RE: AWD vs RWD

Really, a lot of it depends on the driver and how you feel most comfortable...there really is no all-around "best" drivetrain layout. Generally speaking, AWD cars tend to have better acceleration and better launch, but also tend to be heavier and can tend
to understeer and "plow" through slower corners. Whereas, a RWD car will usually be lighter and more agile than its AWD counterpart, and will generally be easier to "rotate" through a corner by modulating the amount of throttle input. But...they tend to
not be as quick off the line as AWD, and if the car is very high-powered, it can be difficult to get all that power down to the pavement and keep it all under control with only two wheels.

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Remember that IRL, most passenger cars are intentionally tuned from the factory to understeer when pushed to the limits...it's much easier for a beginner to recover from the car going straight when you want it to turn, than it is to recover from a full-on
spin when suddenly the rear of the car decides it wants to swap ends.

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This is probably why most people (at least in Forza anyway) prefer to at least start off with AWD (or even FWD) cars, since they tend to be more predictable and easier to manage if things get pushed past their limits. Once you've gained experience and confidence
driving RWD though, they can turn in laps just as fast, if not faster, than AWD. It just requires a slightly different approach...you may need to adjust your braking points or alter your line slightly.

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RE: power to weight ratio -

Basically all this refers to is how much HP the car produces, in comparison to how much the car weighs. It may seem obvious, but any time you brake for a corner then accelerate after, your car's engine has to use its power to propel both you (the driver)
and the car itself back up to speed. Take a car that puts out, say, 500HP. A pretty impressive number by most standards. But if that car also weighs 5000lbs, a lot of that power is being sapped by fighting inertia, and trying to get all those pounds moving
again. The less a car/driver combo weigh, the less work the engine has to do to reach a certain speed. And if the engine has to do less work to get to a certain speed, then it makes sense that if it does the SAME amount of work on a LIGHTER car, the car
will reach that speed faster.

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Take for instance, the Ariel Atom. Nothing very impressive horsepower-wise. But for a while, it was at (or near) the top of Top Gear's power lap board because it weighs about as much as a box of tissues, and is able to put the power that it DOES have to
extremely good use.

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Basically, light weight is not the ultimate solution to a fast car (obviously, it's a combination of a lot of factors), but reducing a car's weight will always help it go faster, and should always at least be considered when creating a tune.

 

This thread gave me an idea. My tuning ability is Forza is pretty well rounded but I still have a few holes. I'm sure there are some folks here who will know things in areas of tuning that I do not know about and visa versa. We could all benefit from one
another by creating a threat devoted to tuning tips.

One of the holes in my game? Caster angle. I do a generic setting based on drive type and weight but frankly, this is one aspect I don't really understand.

 

I have to admit, I don't fully understand Caster Angle myself. My understanding of it is that it relates to how much, or how quickly, the front wheels will tend to return to normal (pointing straight-ahead) when no steering input is applied. Wikipedia
mentions that large caster angles are often used in racing to "improve camber gain in cornering".

I actually just went and made a quick 3D model for myself to help visualize it. Picture a lollipop,
this one, for example. Imagine holding it so that the stick is on top. That's your steering axis, the lollipop is on the bottom, and is the "tire". Imagine holding the stick so that it's completely
vertical, straight up and down, and then twirl it between your fingers and imagine that's what happens when you turn the car's steering wheel left and right. The rolling direction of the tire will change, but because the steering axis (the stick) is straight
up and down, there is no change to the tire's camber angle (in other words, there's no "lean", and the tire's contact patch with the ground takes up more or less the full width of the tire regardless of whether the "steering wheel" is turned left, right, or
straight ahead.)

Now, take the stick and imagine rotating it back from vertical, say 45 degrees or so for the sake of simplicity, (so instead of looking like "|" it looks more like "\"). Now, when you twirl the stick to change the car's steering direction, you notice that
the tire now will go up on edge (negative camber) when it's turned left or right. The more severe the angle of the stick (the further away from vertical), the more severe the camber angle when the wheel is turned.

So...judging by this, it seems like it stands to reason that one could reasonably run a more severe caster angle while reducing the car's front camber. Theoretically, this would allow the tires to be closer to straight up and down while going straight (no
camber at all), and would induce sufficient camber while cornering to maintain a maximum contact patch.

I'm pretty sure I get the theory now, I'm just not sure exactly how that all translates to the game, or which range of settings tend to yield the best results. Yay for learning though!

 

At last , a working , useful explanation of the mysteries of caster and camber . Thank you Trippul . As I understand , this has to do with " breaking gyroscopic stability " . And if I am correct , it has to do with how easily a car will turn into a corner
. Knowing all this , I will probably stick with my current rule of not messing with it .

 

My guess (and it's just a guess...I haven't actually tested it) would be that having a more severe caster angle would impede turn-in response, but would help with actual cornering grip (due to the increased negative camber it induces). The opposite seems
like it would be true as well...the closer to vertical the steering axis (small caster angle), the more responsive the car's steering will feel, but potentially at the cost of cornering grip.

 

In an effort to keep this thread going, I'll pose a question.

One of the things I find that I rarely change in my tunes are the gear ratios. I'm sure that, depending on the venue, there are a good two or three tenths that I'm leaving on the track every lap as a result. Harry, you mention that you know your way around
a (virtual) gearbox. Care to shed some more insight on the techniques you use when adjusting your gears? (Or, anyone else feel free to chime in as well...)