Gravel car control?

[The Good Dave]

Is there anybody else that find sit extremely difficult to maintain control of a car when driving on gravel/dirt? I have all of my assists turned off, but that's because I'm familiar with how to feather the brake/throttle with an X-Box controller to keep it steady under braking/accelerating. But it seems like there's just nothing I can do to stay in control of my car on the dirt race track in the game.

Maybe this is mostly just because of the lack of rally tires? All of the tire options seem to be road-purposed. Hopefully a rally tire option is coming soon. But also, when using rally suspension on the dirt race track, when landing a jump, I tend to bottom out and then my car starts flipping end over end. And as soon as I get the slightest nudge from another car, it can scarcely control the resulting fishtail.

I don't know if anyone else is having the difficulty I am, but so far, none of the cars seem to be very fun to drive on dirt.

[Fox]

Yes I agree with you, driving these cars without assists using a controller is very difficult indeed, especially with the more powerful engines.

The game used to have 'rally tires' as one of the upgrade options, but they were removed, and paradoxically the 'racing tire' upgrade now gives you better grip on both tarmac and gravel. I assume that the 'racing' bit is just a generic term for 'dirt racing tires' and 'tarmac racing tires', and it assumes that you fit the respective type of tire depending on which track you choose. Perhaps in the full game rally tires will make a return, would be nice to see, but for now racing tires will give you slightly more grip even on dirt.

However there are two bits of really good news -

*) BB say that they have remapped the trigger button sensitivity on gamepads with the upcoming patch to make it less 'instant', so hopefully there will be less wheelspin on takeoff and it'll be easier to finesse the throttle once the update comes.

*) They have also confirmed that controler configuration/sensitivity options will be included in the patch too. So pehaps reducing the steering sensitivity and cranking up the deadzone a little will also make the cars less 'pointy'.

Here's hoping these things will fix some of the issues :D

[The Good Dave]

Sweet. Thanks. :-)

[hrolkrug]

i use the smaller euro car with rally suspension, open differential, standard tires, brakes, and engine. that seems to work well enough with how it is now. i do agree though the other cars seem a bit out of whack on the gravel track and to a lesser extent on sand.

[The Good Dave]

I tend to use the sedan most, but the "Mini" is my second. Uusually stick with limited slip diff. But yeah, as said above, the racing tires do make a world of difference on both dirt and tarmac, even though that's counter-intuitive. But whatever. Alpha!

[Adenru]

Ever driven heavy car on sand?

[jannesBB]

We removed the different types of tires since we're still working on to perfect the surfaces and the tires never worked quite like we would have wanted. However, it's definitely something that we want to include in the future, just done right.

[The Good Dave]

Groovy. Thanks. :-)

[YIPPEEKAIAI]

thx

[Fox]

Originally posted by Adenru:

Ever driven heavy car on sand?

A little, yes. And while that was never at speed, I found that the cars tended to follow the wheel ruts of other vehicles already dug into the surface, and to dig in themselves rather than slide around like they were on ice.

Yes we aren't saying that cars should handle as well on loose surfaces as they do on tamac, but I think a slight boost to general offroad grip - just a small one, to add a little bit more of an edge - would be more realistic.

[Dr._Hibbert]

I did some driving on gravel and tarmac with Logitech G27 and didnt find it hard.
Only thing which made big difference was camera view. Drove first inside cam,but steering corrections were always too late like there would have been some lag. So after changing to on hood cam it went away.
Didnt check fps,but i guess GTX 660Ti SLI cant run this on max settings.

[Fox]

Originally posted by Dr. Hibbert:

I did some driving on gravel and tarmac with Logitech G27 and didnt find it hard.

Thing is, we're kinda talking about playing the game with a controler here, not with a wheel.

If a player is used to a wheel then I daresay a wheel would be a lot easier, because you have a greater degree of precision in throttle and steering. And also BB have said they have put a lot of time into the wheel handling, in order to make the game feel really good with that control method, but they admitted themselves that they have kinda ignored controllers a little so far.

With a controller and no assists at the moment, the tires feel like they have a little too little grip to be realistic. With a wheel you could probably drive around it and not notice, since the wheels are more precise and have been tuned to the game better. But with a controller it's noticable.

We could do with a slight grip increase for all tires to make it more real - only a tiny change, barely enough to notice, but it would make the game so much more realisic, and so much more playable with a pad. Controller sensitivity and config options in the next update should help too.