FR90 Impressions

So I've been mainly racing the FR90, I started with the V12 assuming the cars would be equal minus the sound of the V12 ( I mean it sounds awesome), V10 and V8. I decided to go ahead and buy the V10 and V8 after having raced the V12 for a couple of weeks and was surprised to find that they are not equal and are quite different.

And surprisingly, to me, the V8 (more neutral balance) is the best balanced and easiest to drive of the 3, followed by the V12 and the V10 coming in last. The V12 and V10 seem to suffer from an understeer and feel heavier than the V8 on corner entry. The V10 feels like it has more torque on corner exit and likes to snap sideways going between 1st, 2nd and 3rd gears. The V12 suffers from that too but not quite as extreme, but the V8 is the most manageable of the 3 on corner exit and drive.

I know it's not even possible but I would like to be able to adjust the clutch-less shifting parameters, kill time on the upshifts and the blip amount on the downshifts, engine braking adjustment would be sweet too. I am going to mod my shifter tomorrow to sequential to really make things even more difficult with these beasts.

I've been doing races of 101% Ai level, with that setting I can push at 100% and get to the back of the top 5 but have to usually back off to 80% to make the tires last. I've been doing 20 lap races and with tire degradation, driving at 100% the tires don't last very long when using the soft's. I've struggled to the get the hard's to work, I've softened up the suspension and raised the dampening and think I might be able to use them in a race. I think a medium compound would be nice, or make the hard a little a softer than it is.

I was a little peeved about the Ai having advantages in races which I thought was down to Ai behavior, but after having purchased the other cars. I now see that the different FR90's do have strong points, which now makes more sense. After the last patch the Ai behavior is improved and I am having a lot of fun with the class of cars.

I think it's genius to have 3 different cars with some different characteristics rather than 1 licensed reproduction of a 90's F1 car. It makes the racing more interesting in my opinion, the FR90's are a real challenge to drive and am I loving it. My next championship will have some sort of mandatory pit stop with either increased fuel consumption and/or tire consumption. Anyone come up with a good option on that?

 

Hmm i mostly drive the V10 and it felt okay outside some very high speed corners like Suzuka's Dunlop Curve which took a bit setup work to actually be able to take with confidence.

Its turn in seems largely impacted by throttle application. Maybe too sensitive to it even accounting for the differential settings. Given im feeling heavy understeer on full throttle on the high speed corner over the bridge after the Spoon hairpin in Suzuka. I had allot of greif frequently because the car just would not turn. It just understeered off the road. (Changing my racing line, throttle application or both solved that problem). Never had any issues no matter what downforce settings when going through 130R. So perhaps its an intentional design flaw of these cars between 120-260 km/h?

This on throttle oversteer became very apparent after the recent Fx90 physics update in the games last patch.
edit: to simplify what i mean.
Full throttle application causes the car to understeer whereas if i just have it at 50% throttle the car turns fine.

The throttle understeer is also very evident through the "solitude Esses" on Macau. The Formula V10 x90 is especially understeer/oversteer tendency is sensitiive to throttle application no matter what speed youre doing. Over 120-260.

Something i found useful although very very hard to do a couple of months ago during the monthly competition on Spa Francorchamps. (Running minimal rear downforce and mid-max front downforce you could literally balance the car with very very VERY fine and focused throttle control. Mind you desptire sticking it in for a few hours i didnt manage to break any amazing runs*too hard to keep the car straight*. But i was running good leads over the top timed run in the last week of the comp when racing the ghost car.

On tyre wear i think the durability is fine on "Hard" until
78% Around this point i find i need to be even more careful on accelerating out of low speed corners.
60% is when things get super loose and you'll be dropping too much time to justify not pitting for a tyre change. Bare in mind at 60% you're normally 35-40 minutes into a race for me. On the hardest tyres in 1 hour - 2 hour long races.

 

I went back and did some more comparisons between the 3 and have to say that I think I might like the V10 the most. I don't know, I tried them on Dubai and Imola and I really like the V10. Maybe placebo effect and there is no difference other than sound, LOL.

What do you run the Ai% at? What's a typical race for you? Thinking about running Tire Wear x2 and Fuel x2, 25 lap race. I typically give myself 1 mulligan on race starts, it's kind of hard to judge braking when the Ai can stop at a faster rate.

 

Depends on track but between 98 (Sepang) - 104 (Macau, RRR)
Typical race is 60 minutes or 80 minutes depending. I just run everything at 1x.

Braking is a funny one indeed with some long straights. Indianapolis is a special one.

 

So I did a race tonight, 25 laps, Fuel X 2 and Tires X 2. I started on the Hard Tire and they didn't last any longer than the Soft's. We all had to pit every 6 laps, it was kind of ridiculous but also a lot of fun with the pit stops. Very easy to make a mistake and lose time in the pits.

 

What track was this? i find it hard to beleive. You do notice the car more twitchy after 10 laps on hards but its not something that gentler throttle application and more careful gear changing cant overcome.


@ 1:40 i have my last pit stop and get by fine for the last 20 minutes on hard tyres. The stint before that was also 40 minutes on hard tyres (missed the tyre change in my first pitstop because i forgot my keybindings for the pit menu lol).

 

The track was Shanghai Circuit, I had Fuel = X 2, and Tire Wear = X 2. About 6 laps in, I noticed the Ai were diving into the pits for whatever and about that lap the Hard Tires fell off pretty good, so with the x 2 factored in I was probably getting 13 laps. But the Ai were so much faster with fresh Soft Tires and I didn't have very good grip. Also take into consideration, the heavy fuel load too.

 

I did some research and was surprised to find that the V10 was actually the dominant motor of that era. So much so that Ferrari ended up going to V10 from the V12 because of the lighter weight. And there was definitely a V8 during the same period. So I think it's pretty cool that Sector 3 created 90's style sim, but picked up on the different motors of the era and created the FR90.

I modded my shifter, so it's sequential now, and it's kind of interesting how that changes how you drive and shift. I've also done some overclocking and seem to have the game running really well with the Oculus and Sim Commander, the experience with the FR90 has been a lot of fun.

Does Raceroom support surround sound? I feel my surround sound speakers are playing in stereo.

 

Yes, it's working fine for me.

 

If adjusted correctly in windows, you should be able to select your speaker configuration in the ingame audio menu. Do you have real surround sound in other games? If not, you might have a look at your driver/Win Mixer...
Also happened to me once, that my rear speakers were playing mirrored to the fronts. Have a weird 4.1 Setup, wich only works well when chosing 7.1 in the driver and ingame... Hope that helps.