SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Review: GTR: FIA GT Racing

Weight transfer is mostly felt in the tires, which in a way makes sense considering that modern racing cars are sprung very stiffly. I suspect that most of the actual suspension work is done by the tires; lowering the tire pressures helps settling the car, but reduces the amount of input I get from the car. I found that adjusting the default setups according to these following general guidelines, helped me improving the handling of the car, at least to the extent that I can play with the car on the slip-angle just a little bit:

Decrease tire pressure front and rear by about 5 - 10 psi, if possible make front and rear about the same values. This will also help combat that ballony feeling from the tires which to me feels like a suspension which is not properly damped. You might think its great and if so, don't adjust the tire pressures.
Lower the front anti-roll bar to about 100
Add caster to the front wheels so that the caster is about 7 - 8 degrees
Try lowering the spring values at the rear if the car snaps away at the rear
Move the brake balance slightly towards the rear if you continously lock up the front wheels under braking

You might also want to experiment with the visual effect simulating world movement and g-forces to find values that work for you.

The most important handling characteristic of any racing car should be how well it corners. Confidence-inspiring stability, especially in cars utilizing aerodynamic downforce should be paramount to any driver. The biggest leap in terms of lowering lap-times in motor racing comes from the cars being able to take corners much faster than before aero. In this sense I find the confidence-inspiring handling through corners if I'm at the correct speed, otherwise I find the cars anything but confidence-inspiring! Perhaps I'm just not "an aero-sensitive" driver. Driving with no traction control, no ABS and no auto-clutch, at first I found very little information in terms of clues given through steering, by audio or visual means, to tell me if I was in danger of exceeding the limits. With more practice I find it gets slightly easier to interpret the clues that are there in the game. Understeer is communicated very well to the driver, but I still can't really feel the rear-wheels spinning (from applying too much throttle) until it is too late and I'm facing the traffic. This is probably very realistic as I keep hearing that modern, high downforce car have lousy mechanical grip. For now, I admit defeat and am still learning to drive without traction control, as I'm hopelessly old-fashioned (looking forward to trying GT Legends!).

Trailbraking into a corner (staying on the brakes while steering into a corner) seems almost impossible with these cars, so braking and turning at the same time is not a good idea. Some cars I find can be controlled a bit by braking in the corners though. If I emulate ABS by quickly getting off the brake, steer a bit, brake a bit again etc., it is possible to break the rear-end away just enough to enter a brief slide, but it is nowhere near a full-blown drift or a powerslide, and it seems to be a risky strategy for going fast.

It's important to realize that I'm most definitely not asking for GPL-style all-out drifts, but merely observing that I find it quite hard to drive the car consistently and confidently just within the slip-angle. Again, I'm just an average driver and not particularly gifted. To sum my impressions up: For my liking, the cars are all more or less understeery into and through the corners on the limit and to me it feels like this aspect is overmodeld. This leads to a constant fight to manage an enduring understeer condition. So far I have not been able to make a setup that satisfactorily changes the balance towards more neutral or slightly oversteering handling because when I apply the few trick I have learned from driving other sims, the car snaps violently away when it goes. If you have a good setup to achieve this, please be in touch!

Some of the cars, Saleen, Lotus, BMW lend themselves more to driving them with the throttle than others.

Force Feedback

Force Feedback is generally very good with bumps in the road and curbs being presented to the driver in excellent fashion through the steering wheel. With more seat-time other subtle forces announce themselves like feeling what both ends of the car are up to. I would like a few more clues in the force feedback letting me know what the rear-end of the car is doing.

Sound

Well, the sounds are outstanding and probably the best I've heard in a long time out of the box. I'm having a hard time imagining anyone from the community who can improve upon the sounds in a "realistic sound mod", as the default sounds really are superb. Even with a basic stereo setup working off the onboard AC97 soundcard I have at my disposal, I can find little fault with the sounds.

Pressed hard, I wouldn't mind a bit more "beef" to the sounds of especially the Saleens and the Porsches. But that might be my soundcard and not the actual sound-samples that are used.

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