Prototype gp500 physics model

[girlracerTracey]

I see the logic in using a wheel.. I couldnt do it personally, wouldnt feel right after using the xbox pad for so long..
I think the only thing stopping the bike from flicking left/right quickly and smooth is the handlebars shaking from the virtual rider.. Which is realistic in my opinion! I still think an adjustable steering damper would sort that out.. As it would and does help in real life..

All I can say Bob is that it is now flicking in and holding lines beautifully. But it is a subtly different style of "riding". You cannot rotate the wheel back and forth as quickly as you can flick a thumbstick.. In some ways it's a smoother style if that makes sense. Ideally I would prefer to be able use a joypad with similar results in the game though.

I think in truth to rectify things properly for joypad users the "filter" needs to looked at carefully by someone and modified slightly. In my honest opinion.

grT

[BOBR6 84]

The thing is though im not so interested in using direct lean or anything.. I honestly think by watching the bike on the screen the reactions of the bike/rider are really good when flicking left/right with direct lean off!

When you pull the bike up, the virtual rider puts pressure on the bars so the front wheel is moving left/right which will stop the bike from going left/right quickly!

Another example.. Phillip island last corner entering the straight, left hander bike is cranked over, as you go over the brow the front end lifts! If the bike is still leant over and the handlebars are wobbling from the virtual rider, when the front wheel touches the ground at a slight angle you get a tankslap and sometimes its difficult to pull the bike upright!

Realistic!

Doesnt direct lean just ignore these physics?

I honestly think a steering damper (adjustable) will work!

[girlracerTracey]

I am still getting those effects I think Bob with "direct lean" on.

Isn't the "direct lean" aspect to this just a filter placed between the controller input and the physics engine which activates when direct lean is turned off which then filters the controller input from a joypad (or similar) to the physics engine?  i.e. with direct lean off the filter modulates and modifies the rate of controller input from say a joypad to the physics engine to allow the joypad to work more properly in theory with the game? So the filter adjusts controller input from a joypad to suit the game? I think that's the theory anyway. As I understand it.

So all elements & effects in the gameplay itself should still be there I think. (Notwithstanding whatever "rider lean" on or off setting you are running or whether or not you are running with "direct steer" in the game).

I think we are talking only of a filter to controller input here. When talking about the "direct lean" off setting. Or at least that is my understanding..

grT 

[BOBR6 84]

Im not sure.. When I tried direct lean the bike tips in/turns straight away regardless of what is happening with the bike. Usually ending with a crash!
With Direct lean off, if I push the stick to turn/lean and the bike isnt ready.. Nothing happens! Or delayed response best said..

[girlracerTracey]

Oh O.K. I see what you mean now..

Again all I can say is that with direct lean on when playing with a steering wheel I think the same factors apply as you describe when setting up the bike for a corner. I could be wrong though. But it feels the same if not very similar to me..

I think the controller joypad / direct lean on/off aspect is proving to be quite a subject for debate on these boards..that's for sure! 

I think perhaps others more experienced than I am on the "game" can probably answer your point on this much better than I can. I need more time with the steering wheel and more time on the game in general to comment accurately in all honesty.

"Midge"

[HornetMaX]

Well Max I have to say you are 100% correct in what you are saying..

I have to admit I do like when messages start like that

I am now 100% convinced that the physics model for the gp500 bikes is fine. The reason I am saying this is that I plugged in an old Microsoft Precision Racing Wheel that I had stored with me and to my surprise it was recognised by my windows 7 gamer pc. I didn't think it would work with Windows 7 but to my pleasant surprise it does..

It has transformed the feel of the game. Having calibrated it under the gpbikes settings I tried it with the NSR500 Honda and it works perfectly. Not only that but I can now vouch for the fact that the gp500 physics model is fine. The bike turns in nicely and it holds a nice line through the corners. I didn't really want to use a steering wheel but with "direct lean" on it works perfectly. I just need to fine tune the input settings for the wheel but for  my personal preference but otherwise it's a great solution to the problem I was encountering.

The control with the wheel is really nice to be honest and is much better than I thought it would be. So in a way I'm a very happy bunny indeed!

So I agree the bottom line here is with the "filter" not with the game physics or with the specific "varese" physics for the 500cc bikes. In fact with the wheel the "varese" physics now seem very impressive to me indeed.

This has transformed the game for me. I'm now a member of the direct lean club but to my surprise not with my xbox controller but with a steering wheel.

I think we do have a few others playing with wheels: if it feels OK for you, then it's all good.

Now for the reason Direct Lean ON feels OK with the wheel and less so with the joypad: with a wheel your movements will be slower compared to a joypad. because of the wheel inertia and because of the movement amplitude (and nature): it's much easier to flick your thumb quickly than to steer left right quickly. In fact, even with a joystick (a real one) your movements will be slower).

I suggest you to do the following experiment: play 1 month with the wheel, just to give your brain enough time to forget how GPB feels on a joypad with direct lean OFF (the setting you're accustomed too right now). In a month, try again to play with the joypad but with Direct Lean ON and get back with your impressions.

I could bet that in a month time, joypad + direct lean ON will no longer look as terrible to you as it looks right now.

With the joypad you CAN be as smooth as you're with the wheel: you just ... well, have to be smooth and not bang it left/right in 0.05 seconds.
If you want to bang the stick left/right as fast as you can and not fall, then you have to turn direct lean OFF

Thanks for all your help and advice Max. I really appreciate it. 

Thanks to you. That service will be charged 250 GBP per hour spent writing messages (+ VAT). Please send your address for the invoice.

If you don't want to pay, well too bad. Send the address anyway if possible, I can try to sell it to Jamoz for even more.

MaX.

[HornetMaX]

Another example.. Phillip island last corner entering the straight, left hander bike is cranked over, as you go over the brow the front end lifts! If the bike is still leant over and the handlebars are wobbling from the virtual rider, when the front wheel touches the ground at a slight angle you get a tankslap and sometimes its difficult to pull the bike upright!

Realistic!

Doesnt direct lean just ignore these physics?

No, not at all. These things are in the physical model of GPB, they don't come from direct lean.

I'll try to provide a simple explanation of what an input filter does: let's take the smooth option you can apply on any channel (e.g. front brake).
Let's assume you have the front brake on one of the pad's triggers and that it has a 0-100 range.
If I have no smooth and I press the trigger ultra quickly, it's output will go from 0 to 100 almost instantly: if you graph the signal evolution against time you have (almost) what is called a step: 0 until a given time, 100 after that time.
If you activate the smooth option and press the trigger just as quick as before, the joypad output will still be the "step" we have seen, but this step will be fed into a filter (typically some sort of lowpass, can be a simple linear or something more complex) that will smooth it. This means that the sudden jump (0 --> 100) will be smoothed to something more progressive, like this:



The blue line is the step (unsmoothed), the green line is the smoothed step. So with smooth off, what goes into the GPB physics is the blue line, while with smooth on what goes in is the green line. Now, most people react to this saying "Well, the filter is all good: if I push the trigger too quickly, it will smooth it out". That's not entirely true as any filter will typically introduce a delay. Look at the graph above and imagine you want to brake up to a value of 10 (y axis). You do want to maximum brake. With no smoothing, you have it instantly. With smoothing, you reach 9 after 2.5 seconds (values here are unrelated to GPB). So you can see you have a delay. The delay depends on the "amount of filtering" and on the filter precise algorithm, but some delay is inevitable.

With steering/leaning the things are more complex. The basics are: in GPB your "lean" stick dictates the target lean angle, i.e. the bike's lean angle you'd like to have.
When you push the stick right up to a given point, let's say 50% of the stick maximum range:

• the stick output is translated into a target lean angle
• the target lean angle is fed into the virtual rider: it will essentially compute the torque to be applied to the handlebars (and the rider movements, if not manual)
• the computed handlebars torque is fed into the bike's physics model, to be integrated in time

Now already point 1 is tricky as the computation of the target lean angle keeps into account many factors: it knows the max theoretical lean angle the bike could have in the current conditions (that's something tough !) and it scales what your're asking with respect to that. This is a gigantic help: it explains why direct steering is so hard to use (no such computation takes place with direct steering: it's up to you to know until which angle you can lean without falling).

Anyway, for our discussion on direct lean, what counts is that your stick output is filtered (or the target lean angle computed at step 1 above is filtered, which is roughly the same).
Now filtering --> smoothing --> delay and sluggishness.

The "--> smoothing" explains why when you play with direct lean OFF and you try direct lean ON you find it hard and not natural: it's because there's no smoothing, you have to smooth your thumbs ! You do crazy things with your stick with direct lean OFF, the filter saves your ass. You do the same with direct lean ON, you fall.

The "--> delay and sluggishness" explains what grT has experienced on the 500cc.

As an extra argument, try to check this: direct lean OFF, put the bike full lean right (steady) and then release the stick to the middle (just remove the thumb from the stick and let it center). You will see that the bike picks up (i.e. goes vertical), but slowly.
Now if you watch somebody's thumbs while playing with direct lean OFF you'll see that to pick up the bike faster, instead of simply releasing (or bringing) the stick to center, they "overshoot" it, they push it in the opposite direction and then back to center.
In the graph above, this would be like: I want to have 10, but if I ask for 10, I will get 10 in 2.5 seconds, too slow. So let's ask for 15: I'll quickly reach 10 and then I'll ask for 10.
In practice, you're fighting against the filtering.

Now try to convince me "it feels more natural" 

I honestly think a steering damper (adjustable) will work!

There's already a steering damper in GPB but it's not adjustable (in game, but you can modify the bike's model).
I'd like to have it exposed and adjustable, but I'm ot 100% sure this will help too much: unfortunately what we lack when playing GPB is not tuning options but feedback about what is happening on the bike under our ass

MaX.

[BOBR6 84]

Man.. This is turning into a monumental headf#*k!!! Haaahahaha 

No no! I fully understand what you just explained (i really do) thanks!

It really is difficult to gauge what is happening with the bike sometimes on the screen!
Which leads to sore fingers from typing on this forum lol. I just try to compare what I see/feel on my bike to what goes on in gpbikes.. Same as anybody else has their view on what is realistic or not.
Obviously we have to remember the compromises with control input!

I would still like to see the steering damper in-game though as part of the bike setup! 

Also to have your telemetry in the game maX would be great! To add another page to flick between setup and telemetry would be spot on!

[HornetMaX]

Also to have your telemetry in the game maX would be great! To add another page to flick between setup and telemetry would be spot on!

You can run the telemetry app in parallel to GPB.

Run the telemetry viewer, run GPB.

Ride a few laps, Alt+Tab to go to the telemetry viewer, Ctrl-L to load the telemetry (it remembers the last dir used, so ...) double click on the last file (files are named so that the "alphabetic" order corresponds to "older to newest" order) and you're all set.

MaX.

[C21]

If you want to bang the stick left/right as fast as you can and not fall, then you have to turn direct lean OFF

Sorry MAX but i totally disagree on that.
It does not work.
You will fall instantly.
I tried this in most of the fast chicanes and waht happens?
Crash.
The virtual rider tried to get to the opposite direction but the bike did not follow (don´t know how to explain exactly, a movie will be better).
That´s the problem with fast direction changes and DL off.
e.g. first right corner Victoria after the star/finish line....deep right hander, stick on max lean right. If you want to get the bike really fast up (turn stick fast to the left) you will crash because the virtual rider force applied to the handle bar seems to be to much for the bike. you will crash.

[girlracerTracey]

I suggest you to do the following experiment: play 1 month with the wheel, just to give your brain enough time to forget how GPB feels on a joypad with direct lean OFF (the setting you're accustomed too right now). In a month, try again to play with the joypad but with Direct Lean ON and get back with your impressions.

I could bet that in a month time, joypad + direct lean ON will no longer look as terrible to you as it looks right now.

Well I'm a girl in a bit of a hurry Max..a month is a very long time when you're only 18 years old. It's like a full year for you grown-ups! 

Out of curiousity, after playing with the steering wheel for an hour or so last night I switched back to my wired xbox 360 controller and left direct lean on. It already makes sense Max. A lot of sense!

By contrast playing with a joypad with "direct lean" off (i.e. with the "filter" activated) with the nature of the "filter" as it stands at the moment does not make any sense at all! Arguably. It messes up the handling characteristics of the physics. Arguably in an important & fundamental way.

I was firmly in the "direct lean" off camp but having now plugged a wheel in and experienced "first-hand" the true physics model I have switched camps. If I play with a joypad now or in the future it will be with "direct lean" on.

What I think the problem is here is that people are used to normal joypad behaviour, whether it's an xbox 360 controller or a PS3 pad or whatever, and normal and accepted joypad behaviour is to use the thumbstick for leaning the bike exactly as the "direct lean off" club wishes to do.. which is normal behaviour on xbox 360/xbox one, playstation 3 or 4 and from my experience all other pc racing games as well.. Indeed the joypads are designed to be used that way.

So I agree with Max. Sorry PiBoSo and development team but if you are listening your "fly by wire" filter needs fixing..! I would go as far as to say that it is a priority for the development team to do this. Certainly in my opinion in a finished gpbikes game this aspect must be properly addressed and the filter fixed. As it stands the filter arguably doesn't work properly..not with a joypad anyway.

Incidentally on the gp500 pc game I can use a steering wheel and it behaves perfectly, just as a steering wheel does in gpbikes. I now play the gp500 pc game using my xbox wired controller and it too works seamlessly and perfectly in the game. So dare I say it but whatever "filter" is programmed into the game for use with joypads works as god intended it to do.. the "direct lean off" club members would love it.

Anyway, Max as I was saying I switched from using my steering wheel back to using my xbox controller but this time with direct lean on. You're right it really is a case of disciplining one's brain not to flick the left stick back to vertical, or beyond vertical, to raise the bike when coming off a bend. You have to let the stick itself do the work..
Yes, it works Max if you apply this technique. Real challenge are quick direction changes left to right..through chicanes and so on..in the middle area of the thumbstick's range with the bike moving around it can get a little muddled..but again I guess this is about reprogramming one's brain.

Bottom line for me is I really enjoy the steering wheel, it feels great, but I immediately was lapping faster using the xbox pad with direct lean on. The faster lap time came quite easily. So arguably the joypad with direct lean on, dependent upon one's individual riding style, possibly does, as a bottom line, produce faster lap times?

What do others think? Is joypad (with direct lean on) generally slightly faster than a steering wheel? Have other people tried both options?

So my tendency Max is maybe to go with my xbox controller with direct lean on and coerce my poor brain into getting used to it..

Thanks to you. That service will be charged 250 GBP per hour spent writing messages (+ VAT). Please send your address for the invoice.

If you don't want to pay, well too bad. Send the address anyway if possible, I can try to sell it to Jamoz for even more.

MaX.

That made me laugh.

If I had the money I would put you on a retainer Max..but I am nothing more than a wretched and impoverished student. So all I can send you is my appreciation I'm afraid.

Having said that if we split the money and used a false address how much do you think JamoZ might be prepared to pay? 

grT

[HornetMaX]

If you want to bang the stick left/right as fast as you can and not fall, then you have to turn direct lean OFF

Sorry MAX but i totally disagree on that.
It does not work.

Yeah, I was exaggerating the thing. But with direct lean ON you would fall ever more than with direct lean OFF (if you bang the stick).

By the way C21, try what auto/manual rider lean does (with or without direct lean): I start getting some feedback that many cases of "losing the front" are solved using manual rider lean.

Out of curiousity, after playing with the steering wheel for an hour or so last night I switched back to my wired xbox 360 controller and left direct lean on. It already makes sense Max. A lot of sense!

By contrast playing with a joypad with "direct lean" off (i.e. with the "filter" activated) with the nature of the "filter" as it stands at the moment does not make any sense at all! Arguably. It messes up the handling characteristics of the physics. Arguably in an important & fundamental way.

I was firmly in the "direct lean" off camp but having now plugged a wheel in and experienced "first-hand" the true physics model I have switched camps. If I play with a joypad now or in the future it will be with "direct lean" on.

I guess a young brain takes less time to adapt to such changes then

So I agree with Max. Sorry PiBoSo and development team but if you are listening your "fly by wire" filter needs fixing..! I would go as far as to say that it is a priority for the development team to do this. Certainly in my opinion in a finished gpbikes game this aspect must be properly addressed and the filter fixed. As it stands the filter arguably doesn't work properly..not with a joypad anyway.

I wouldn't go that far (and the "fly by wire" thing was just an example, unrelated to GPB).
If I had to make the call, I'd make direct lean ON the default setting (and rename it to something else), but I'd certainly leave the option there, as the vast majority of players we have now do use direct lean OFF. I'm convinced that if we had direct lean ON  by default, much less players would play with it OFF.

Bottom line for me is I really enjoy the steering wheel, it feels great, but I immediately was lapping faster using the xbox pad with direct lean on. The faster lap time came quite easily. So arguably the joypad with direct lean on might, depending upon one's individual riding style, possibly does as a bottom line produce faster lap times?

What do others think? Is joypad (with direct lean on) generally slightly faster than a steering wheel? Have other people tried both options?

I can't comment on lap times and, most likely, others won't be able neither: once you're in a camp (ON or OFF) it's hard to do an unbiased comparison.
On the other hand, you could try to do one, as being new to the game probably makes you less partial to one or the other solution.

All the very fast guys (list that does not include me) are on direct lean OFF, but that does not prove a lot, since they mostly started with it OFF and stuck to that ever since (with the occasional 10min try with Direct Lean ON when I rant about it, usually ending in "It's weird, back to OFF").

Having said that if we split the money and used a false address how much do you think JamoZ might be prepared to pay? 

Hey Jamoz, try to give an order of magnitude with one of your animated gifs ...

MaX.

[C21]

By the way C21, try what auto/manual rider lean does (with or without direct lean): I start getting some feedback that many cases of "losing the front" are solved using manual rider lean.

I will try but i played a loooooonng time with automatic rider so i have to readjust my brain to my fingers and controls.....not easy at the moment....i will not switch while developing some mods right now.....

[HornetMaX]

By the way C21, try what auto/manual rider lean does (with or without direct lean): I start getting some feedback that many cases of "losing the front" are solved using manual rider lean.

I will try but i played a loooooonng time with automatic rider so i have to readjust my brain to my fingers and controls.....not easy at the moment....i will not switch while developing some mods right now.....

You don't need to get accustomed to it: just do a few laps with manual rider lean on.
You can do the first ones without leaning at all, and then try to lean (it's not hard).

It seems to make a big difference in problematic corners.

MaX.

[JamoZ]

I feel violated and used...