Due to this game not giving a good enough description of what (and how) parts work, people have no idea how to tune things for what they want the car to do, so i'm just gunna sit down for a minute to explain a few things.
Edit
Terms and explanations
Side Loading
The weight that transfers to one side of the car during cornering, one tire can only take so much weight/pressur pushing it sideways before it breaks loose, taking the car with it.
Under-steer - What happens in most cars when you crank the wheel very very fast at speed, or slam on the brakes with no ABS. you go in a straight line, due to the front tires losing traction, but the back tires keeping traction.
Over-steer - When you lose traction with your back tires, in a tight corner, or while hammering the gas in a RWD car, the car tends to want to "Spin" around on you, useful for getting around hairpin turns (depending on driver preference. Its best to aim for a slight bit of over steer, as you can control over-steer with experience, where as with understeer you have only hte choice to hit the brakes and hope you get traction.
RWD - Rear Wheel Drive
FWD - Front Wheel Drive
Suspension
Ride Height
Generally speaking, lower is better. the lower your car the lower the center of gravity, and the less weight gets shifted side to side in corners (Side Loading) However if you are seeing sparks come out from under your car when you go over curbs, its bad.
Real life section - (not game applicable, i dont think.)
lowering your car more than a little bit will throw the stock suspension geometry WAY out of whack on most vehicles (i'm mostly familiar with 5 liter mustangs) and will lead to deteriorated handling, without changing much more then the stock spring ride height. Cutting springs is a big nono, unless all you care about is looks....
Sway Bars
This is one that i'm not terribly familiar with (i havent studied the geometry) but Sway bars (stiffer) reduce side loading again, keeping the weight balanced between both front, or rear, tires during higher G maneuvers, resulting in greater handling.
Spring, soft VS Hard
Think of Soft vs Hard springs as how far your springs will move up/down before they "lock" ... and simply wont let the suspension move any further.
helps to balance exactly how much side loading you want your car to have
Shocks
A very overlooked part in most situations... soft VS hard should be labelled FAST and SLOW .... its like an air shock on a screen door, the softer this is the faster your springs will reach their "locked" position, a very hard setting here and it can seem as if you have no springs at all.
I cant really tell you what an ideal would be, not enough game time, as i'm sure its not what real life would be, and arbitrary game numbers dont confer well with reality at any rate. some general tips...
Drag - Softer springs and shocks... for rear wheel drive cars you want the front end up in the air, more weight over the back tires this way, more traction. although these cars arent really traction limited. You must balance this with enough downforce and stiffness so you can maneuver around obstacles.
Circuit/URL
circuit needs a little softer suspension due to bumpy terrain, but in general, lower, firmer, steering machine.
Drift
Kill everything you can on your rear suspensiun to make it lose control at the slightest possible turn (hint, sideload your one rear tire to the point it wants to explode!)
Street-X
this one is a hard race... a slight bit of over-steer would help here.
Tuning for dummies
For Drift and Street X, I’ve found it’s very useful to change your ECU and turbo torque curve to put more emphasis in midrange RPM.
For drift, it helps your car break traction a lot sooner. For street x, your car pulls harder out of corners. You lose overall BHP in the top of your RPM, but your peak torque arrives around 2000 RPM sooner.
I just wish there was some sort of copy + paste function in the dyno tuning mode. It sucks when you’ve just crafted a great ECU + Turbo curve that squeezes every last BHP in one race mode, and you can’t replicate it in another.
For drift, it helps your car break traction a lot sooner. For street x, your car pulls harder out of corners. You lose overall BHP in the top of your RPM, but your peak torque arrives around 2000 RPM sooner.
I just wish there was some sort of copy + paste function in the dyno tuning mode. It sucks when you’ve just crafted a great ECU + Turbo curve that squeezes every last BHP in one race mode, and you can’t replicate it in another.
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flatblacksleeper
- Turbo Charged
- Posts: 179
- Joined: 20 Oct 2004, 02:31
- Location: CA
OK, I'll post a pic of my fuel map for ECU and turbo as soon as I can.
I'm driving an RSX. It's standard ECU and Turbo map are pretty peaky (like most of the first few 4-cylinder cars) and pathetic for torque. Most of the power is in the top end.
I don't fully understand how the mapping system works in the game, but the basic principle is pretty simple: Remove power from RPM ranges you don't use often, and you'll have more power to add in the rest of RPM range.
For example, I don't see any use in having turbo boost in the first 3000 rpm (since you hardly spend any time there), so pull those down to zero, and you should be able to add more to the mid and high RPM.
You do need ECU torque in the low RPM to launch the car, so I don't mess with that too much. Maybe just a slight reduction, depending on the race type and car.
For drift and street x, remove some ECU torque and turbo boost from the high end and you should be able to add more to the midrange, where it counts most in these race types. Your dyno run will show a loss of some BHP overall (around 20+bhp less in my RSX), but you'll notice your peak torque arrives a few thousand RPM sooner.
Keep in mind that these are my experiences for the Civic and RSX, which are happiest in high RPMs with the standard ECU and turbo map. It could be totally different for the high displacement Mustang, Supra, etc. Haven't invested time in those cars yet.
I'm driving an RSX. It's standard ECU and Turbo map are pretty peaky (like most of the first few 4-cylinder cars) and pathetic for torque. Most of the power is in the top end.
I don't fully understand how the mapping system works in the game, but the basic principle is pretty simple: Remove power from RPM ranges you don't use often, and you'll have more power to add in the rest of RPM range.
For example, I don't see any use in having turbo boost in the first 3000 rpm (since you hardly spend any time there), so pull those down to zero, and you should be able to add more to the mid and high RPM.
You do need ECU torque in the low RPM to launch the car, so I don't mess with that too much. Maybe just a slight reduction, depending on the race type and car.
For drift and street x, remove some ECU torque and turbo boost from the high end and you should be able to add more to the midrange, where it counts most in these race types. Your dyno run will show a loss of some BHP overall (around 20+bhp less in my RSX), but you'll notice your peak torque arrives a few thousand RPM sooner.
Keep in mind that these are my experiences for the Civic and RSX, which are happiest in high RPMs with the standard ECU and turbo map. It could be totally different for the high displacement Mustang, Supra, etc. Haven't invested time in those cars yet.
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flatblacksleeper
- Turbo Charged
- Posts: 179
- Joined: 20 Oct 2004, 02:31
- Location: CA
lol
The Audi TT, despite having the 2nd best handling rating (next to the Miata), is horrible for cornering ... I've tried everything I can think of to try to get it to stop understeering (as far as reducing rear springs/shocks/sway bar/downforce/grip to 0) and it still understeers (though not as bad) ... The best setting I got (can't remember) resulted in a decent 1.5 second reduction on the circuit test track, but it was still several seconds slower than the Miata and the RX-8 ...
Good writeup Moose. I'd like to add a few things:
First, as Moose mentioned, the relationship between the way the game treats tuning is a bit tweaked from how tuning works in real life. Don't think reality. And don't let the way this game works determine how you define tuning to work in the real world. That being said, if you have a real-world understanding of how tuning works you will have a head-start with tuning in the game. You'll just have to alter your perspective a bit. There are some really excellent books that make fun reading if you're interested in the details (eg. Paul Frere's "Sports Car and Competition Driving"...my favorite, and Bob Bondurant's "Bob Bondurant on High Performance Driving").
One thing that does carry over from reality is the idea of the tuning "combination". It's not one or two things that effect a car's characteristics, it's the entire setup. Change your ECU parameters and you will likely need to change your suspension setup in some way to compensate for the difference in power delivery. Change your brake bias and you may need to alter your springs and shocks. And so on...
CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME, THEN TEST. This is by FAR the most important key to tuning in any situation (both real world and in-game). Why? Because if you tune more than one thing at a time you won't know what made the difference.
Take notes as you tune. When I'm tuning a setup I have a notebook next to me. That's what all those numbers are for. Tuning is all too complex to try and remember what it going on. Write it all down from one change to the next and annotate each change with how it impacted the car.
When testing a new setup or a change, drive no less than 5 laps in the chosen situation. You simply CANNOT determine what the difference was in 1-2 or even 3 laps.
KNOW THE TEST TRACK. If you tune on the test track provided then this is easy. But if you tune and then test on a city track you really need to make sure you know the track well. Why? If you don't know the track really well and you don't already have an established "pattern" around the track that leads from one braking point to the next, from one apex to the next, then how will you know if the differences you feel are because of the changes you made or if it is the way you drove that lap differently? It is best to test and tune on the test track because it is easy to learn and easy to build a consistent driving pattern on. The bland test track makes for a great "control" variable in the world of suspension tuning and experimentation.
I want to expand on Moose's definitions for oversteer and understeer. For example, if you have an oversteer situation then that means the overall setup is causing your rear to be too "loose". This is confusing when discussing tuning because what is actually happening is that the settings are too "tight" and that makes the rear end "loose". "Tight" referring to the settings themselves (eg. hard shocks or springs, large swaybar, etc.) and "loose" referring to the actual behavior of the car (eg. the rear swings around on you coming out of a turn). Conversely, if the front is too "loose" (meaning the settings are too "tight") then you may have an understeer situation.
Address suspension tuning from multiple directions. The knee-jerk reaction to an oversteering car is to "loosen" the rear settings (eg. smaller sway bar, softer springs/shocks, etc.). But you can also address this by "tighening" the front settings (eg. larger sway bar, harder springs/shocks, etc.). This is how the overall combo comes into play. If you have a car that you can't quite tune out the oversteer without inducing understeer when adjusting the rear settings, try tweaking the opposite end of the car with the reverse adjustments.
Here is an example: I have a Supra (RWD) with a mean oversteer when coming out of the apex. But I like the way the car sets going into the braking zone and apex entry. Rather than tweaking the rear settings and risk losing that good braking and entry I might "tighten" up the settings in the front of the car (eg. by increasing the sway bar size) to address the oversteer I experience on exit. Put another way, tuning for understeer up front reduces oversteer in the rear, and vice-versa. Understanding this will help you to avoid linear thinking when tuning your setup and will allow you to more quickly establish a balanced suspension tune.
Note: The same holds true for the tires. One way to address oversteer is to put tires up front that don't stick as well. It seems counterintuitive but if you think about it, it makes sense.
Sway bars effect transitional balance in turns more than any other part. This is why the game recommends you tune these first. Consider the sway bars as "gross" tuning changes, while tuning the other parts are more "fine" tuning changes. From "gross" to "fine", here is a good rule of thumb of what sequence to tune suspension items:
1. ECU/Turbo/NOS
2. Sway bars
3. Brake bias
4. Ride height
5. Springs
6. Shocks
7. Steering ratio
8. Tire grip (though typically you will want to keep grip on max except for drift)
If you work in this order then you will have less to "redo" as you make changes. Ie., if you make a change to your sway bars then it will impact everything below it. There are exceptions to this where you may need to go back amongst the fine tuning elements and make adjustments (eg. an adjustment to the shocks may require changes in ride height or spring rate on occasion).
Those are the basics. Hope that helps. Thanks again Moose for starting this thread!
First, as Moose mentioned, the relationship between the way the game treats tuning is a bit tweaked from how tuning works in real life. Don't think reality. And don't let the way this game works determine how you define tuning to work in the real world. That being said, if you have a real-world understanding of how tuning works you will have a head-start with tuning in the game. You'll just have to alter your perspective a bit. There are some really excellent books that make fun reading if you're interested in the details (eg. Paul Frere's "Sports Car and Competition Driving"...my favorite, and Bob Bondurant's "Bob Bondurant on High Performance Driving").
One thing that does carry over from reality is the idea of the tuning "combination". It's not one or two things that effect a car's characteristics, it's the entire setup. Change your ECU parameters and you will likely need to change your suspension setup in some way to compensate for the difference in power delivery. Change your brake bias and you may need to alter your springs and shocks. And so on...
CHANGE ONE THING AT A TIME, THEN TEST. This is by FAR the most important key to tuning in any situation (both real world and in-game). Why? Because if you tune more than one thing at a time you won't know what made the difference.
Take notes as you tune. When I'm tuning a setup I have a notebook next to me. That's what all those numbers are for. Tuning is all too complex to try and remember what it going on. Write it all down from one change to the next and annotate each change with how it impacted the car.
When testing a new setup or a change, drive no less than 5 laps in the chosen situation. You simply CANNOT determine what the difference was in 1-2 or even 3 laps.
KNOW THE TEST TRACK. If you tune on the test track provided then this is easy. But if you tune and then test on a city track you really need to make sure you know the track well. Why? If you don't know the track really well and you don't already have an established "pattern" around the track that leads from one braking point to the next, from one apex to the next, then how will you know if the differences you feel are because of the changes you made or if it is the way you drove that lap differently? It is best to test and tune on the test track because it is easy to learn and easy to build a consistent driving pattern on. The bland test track makes for a great "control" variable in the world of suspension tuning and experimentation.
I want to expand on Moose's definitions for oversteer and understeer. For example, if you have an oversteer situation then that means the overall setup is causing your rear to be too "loose". This is confusing when discussing tuning because what is actually happening is that the settings are too "tight" and that makes the rear end "loose". "Tight" referring to the settings themselves (eg. hard shocks or springs, large swaybar, etc.) and "loose" referring to the actual behavior of the car (eg. the rear swings around on you coming out of a turn). Conversely, if the front is too "loose" (meaning the settings are too "tight") then you may have an understeer situation.
Address suspension tuning from multiple directions. The knee-jerk reaction to an oversteering car is to "loosen" the rear settings (eg. smaller sway bar, softer springs/shocks, etc.). But you can also address this by "tighening" the front settings (eg. larger sway bar, harder springs/shocks, etc.). This is how the overall combo comes into play. If you have a car that you can't quite tune out the oversteer without inducing understeer when adjusting the rear settings, try tweaking the opposite end of the car with the reverse adjustments.
Here is an example: I have a Supra (RWD) with a mean oversteer when coming out of the apex. But I like the way the car sets going into the braking zone and apex entry. Rather than tweaking the rear settings and risk losing that good braking and entry I might "tighten" up the settings in the front of the car (eg. by increasing the sway bar size) to address the oversteer I experience on exit. Put another way, tuning for understeer up front reduces oversteer in the rear, and vice-versa. Understanding this will help you to avoid linear thinking when tuning your setup and will allow you to more quickly establish a balanced suspension tune.
Note: The same holds true for the tires. One way to address oversteer is to put tires up front that don't stick as well. It seems counterintuitive but if you think about it, it makes sense.
Sway bars effect transitional balance in turns more than any other part. This is why the game recommends you tune these first. Consider the sway bars as "gross" tuning changes, while tuning the other parts are more "fine" tuning changes. From "gross" to "fine", here is a good rule of thumb of what sequence to tune suspension items:
1. ECU/Turbo/NOS
2. Sway bars
3. Brake bias
4. Ride height
5. Springs
6. Shocks
7. Steering ratio
8. Tire grip (though typically you will want to keep grip on max except for drift)
If you work in this order then you will have less to "redo" as you make changes. Ie., if you make a change to your sway bars then it will impact everything below it. There are exceptions to this where you may need to go back amongst the fine tuning elements and make adjustments (eg. an adjustment to the shocks may require changes in ride height or spring rate on occasion).
Those are the basics. Hope that helps. Thanks again Moose for starting this thread!
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Moosehead115
- Ricer
- Posts: 45
- Joined: 15 Nov 2004, 01:57
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unfknblvble
- Turbo Charged
- Posts: 110
- Joined: 21 Sep 2004, 08:00
I might be living in the past a bit much, but back in the MCO days, many good tuners, and generous people shared their various setups so those people that just don't get it (myself included) could have better cars to drive. Now naturally, car behaviour is a very personal thing. But I found some great improvements in handling especially but using some of these shared setups. An someone elses setup was way better than the default one. Even if they didn't suit a certain driver precisely, there was usually remarkable improvements over default settings. I hope the NFSU2 community goes the same way. I can certainly understand the good tuners wanting to keep things sacred for their attempts to tune the highest powered car or have the best circut racer etc... But if anyone has some basic setups that will help the average joe, please don't be shy about posting them. I love my Eclipse ingame, but it still has all default settings. If anyone has anything that'll improve the car, please post it.
Cheers
Cheers
Thanks guys. Happy to help.
And I agree with unfknblvble. Sharing setups is a good thing. No one setup is good for all, but it does help to get folks started with tuning because all the major tuning will be done already and they can focus on "fine tuning" the downloaded setup.
I'm still new around here...is there a place we can share setups? If not I hope we decide to do this. It was a great help for the Nascar 2004 racing sims and it would come in nice here too. Also, how does one share just cars or setups? I haven't spent a lot of time exploring NFS U2's directories, but as far as I can tell the saved games are packed up into single files. A tutorial on how to add individual cars, setups, etc would be incredible if anyone has the info.
Cheers
And I agree with unfknblvble. Sharing setups is a good thing. No one setup is good for all, but it does help to get folks started with tuning because all the major tuning will be done already and they can focus on "fine tuning" the downloaded setup.
I'm still new around here...is there a place we can share setups? If not I hope we decide to do this. It was a great help for the Nascar 2004 racing sims and it would come in nice here too. Also, how does one share just cars or setups? I haven't spent a lot of time exploring NFS U2's directories, but as far as I can tell the saved games are packed up into single files. A tutorial on how to add individual cars, setups, etc would be incredible if anyone has the info.
Cheers