i know i should learn on my own and i will but for now so i can enjoy the game and try to understand everything later.
as far as tuning calc goes it may help with your builds but it is really about tuning to your driving style that will make you much faster I don’t use a calc for tuning and I run top 1% lb times in non board cars with an auto trans so remember that practice and adjust various things till you find what works well for you
Do a google search for FMTC or FTC or Forza Tuning labs… They have a spreadsheet that does a pretty decent job of getting you going. Then depending on how ambitious you are, you can try to dig into it a bit more.
dont have excell
dont have excell
dont have excell
dont work. i been talking to the guy who made the forza tuning spread sheet he says u need excell or it does nt work properly.
“Open Office” worked OK for me.
Well tuning calculator gives you only a “decent base setup”
In other words it gives you just as good setup as upgraded untuned car.
Therefore Id say calculators are useless.
I can’t completely disagree with this, but at the same time, when I started using a calculator, I lessened my lap times by 2-4 seconds.
However, to be honest, a very typical setup has camber set at -0.9 F/R, Toe at 0.1 front and -0.1 rear. Simple weight calculations can yield spring settings. What I like is the fact that the calculators use formulas to logically sync Sway Bar, Spring, and Dampening settings. The dampening settings can have huge effects on the driving attitude of the car, and the scale of those settings seems somewhat arbitrary. I like trusting someone else to have done some their homework to offer something of a more coordinated setup than my random “maybe this’ll work” settings.
Well I do agree that the calculators “which give you good base tune” tend to be better than nothing. How ever
To get a fast time you need to have
- car
- Track
- Build (parts added)
- Tune. (adjustments tweaked)
Combination of 1 and 2 gives you base time good or bad depending the skill of a driver.
Adding build (3) changes it, usually to better time but if you really try it can give you even worse time.
This is the point where calculator doesn’t really work too well (by my understanding) as you just add the parts which you want and feed the results to the calculator.
The calculator gives you the “best” result. it gets. How ever this only affects the laptime only tenths on short track, possibly even a second in long track.
Therefore the build is crucial for the good laptime.
While tune might save few tenths, or even second off from that time, the car might feel a little better for most part, every bump, jump, fast elevation change, (bottom curve on alps, corkscrew of laguna seca) is not calculated in there.
My friend tried to set a good car for Camino Viejo some time ago. He had good build, but there was problem. I drove that car, and it gave me good laptime, no doubt about it but I noticed that every bump I drove over the car bottomed out and that caused huge timeloss. I reseted the tune (same build no tune), and I got only 0.1sec lower laptime. and the car felt just as good. then I tuned the car, and cut off 0.4 seconds.
Then I did a little test, I went for hockenheim short circuit, I ran the calculator tune, I ran with stock tune (with same upgrades) I was only 0.03 seconds slower, I tuned it, and somehow my tune was almost identical for the original calculator tune, 0.01 slower. The difference is so small that it can be overlooked in lack of consistency. and therefore identical time.
This is what I mean. It gives you good setup. Probably slightly better than the base tune (only upgrades) but it doesn’t really give you better car overall.
And if the driver isn’t consistent with or without assits, it invalidates all of the times in testing.
The one I use takes into account the power settings, weight and weight distribution. You enter in the peak HP and Tq values and the rpms they happen at. As well as redline, tire size, and all the pertinent information including lateral g’s and top speed from the benchmark tool. I’ve used some calculators that did see to ruin a car more than help. You’re right though, any of them will only give you a starting point, and none of them will ever be able to “hand” you the ideal tune. There’s far to many different driving styles and levels of driver skill to be able to do that. I’ve mentioned in other places the one I use, I don’t want to keep bringing up it’s name since I’m not affiliated with it and don’t want to seem like I’m advertising or pushing it for them. If you’re interested, send me a pm about it.
And there goes exactly what I mean.
“You enter in the peak HP and Tq values and the rpms they happen at. As well as redline, tire size, and all the pertinent information including lateral g’s and top speed from the benchmark tool.”
That is 80% of the problem
Lets say I take Dodge Charger Daytona, build it to A600 Being a power junkie I throw in engineswap from Viper Comp Coupe, and throw turbo in it just to get that little bit more power, I still have enough pi to throw in suspension, transmission, arbs, diff, and wings, and knock that rear tire size up couple widths.
Now I have pretty much LeMans Missile in my hands, Although I have the wings which makes it useless in there too.
Then I feed this info to calculator.
And then I go racing in Positano, Iberian, Camino Viejo, Ladera.
And Now I don’t thikn that the +800hp thing that I just created work on any of the mentioned. in fact I can tell you that it will not work on ANYWHERE.
If the calculator would do the car from ground up. you feed a car, track, and class, you want. and the calculator gives you the parts and tune settings, THEN and ONLY THEN I could even consider that the calculator is actually good for anything.
But that calculator does not exist yet. because it needs a driver.
Why does it need a driver?
I have built cars that the ingame AI just cannot control. cause it does not know how to drive them. For example I take my Shelby Daytona Coupe on road america.
- The AI never leaves 1st gear, just keeps banging against the limiter.
- After speedville loop there is small right turn, where I don’t brake at all, just throw the car to small slide, and power trough it on 3rd gear. The AI comes there notably slower bangin against the limiter, and brakes to turn trough the curve. OVER 60 mph SLOWER than I do.
Other example. S class AWD toyota MR2 -95 (I know it’s rather silly car)
Its built to be literally thrown around. in small slide. and it does it fairly well, At best I can tease LB cars in few tracks with it
The AI will fail in every corner slowing it down, and understeers wide, just because, “it came in too fast” it didn’t know that you should just throw it in with small oversteer.
Therefore, the calculator is useless.
I’m not sure I’ve given the right idea… you build the car, THEN put in the information. Yeah, it doesn’t give you which upgrades to do. It’s just a calculator for the configurable settings… knowing how to build the car is a different skill set as far as I’m concerned. I’m not trying to convert you or anything… it just sounds like you quickly tried one tool and assumed the rest were worthless. It’s alright though, I would prefer to understand enough to not need any tools.
Ps I would never expect one car, one tune to be suitable for any short curvy track AND a long fast track… I doubt anyone would. If they do, their fooling themselves.
All I’m saying, that as long as the calculator does NOT build the car, it’s not worth anything.
Other thing is as long as the calculator don’t know what track it should tune, it is also worthless.
It gives you wrong spring settings almost always. How
Think about alps. you need fairly stiff suspension for the curve at the lowest part of the track. if not, you will bottom out, and the car literally washes away from you.
Think about Maple valley, you need fairly high suspension, so you wouldn’t bottom out on kerbs which you WILL drive over.
Think about Hockenheim, which is flat as can be, and you barely hit any kerbs, and if you do, they are very low, now your car should be as low as it goes, or at least almost as low as it goes, for lower center of mass.
The calculator cannot calculate that unless it knows the track you want to drive. and for my knowledge, there isn’t such calculator.
And the example I gave to you in my previous post. That is just one type of racer that has asked why he is so slow.
I have not tried this, but… functions in a web browser, no need for Excel.
and this.
[edit] I am not endorsing either of these, just providing an answer to the OP. These, and, I am sure, others are out there - feel free to try them - may encourage you to try things, test and experiment more.
yep ^in other words, the calculators are not a shortcut, not a substitute for experience playing (driving) the car you build/want to race, where you want to race it.
You can tune your setup from the games numbers or from the calculators. The calculators just give you a different beginning setting to start from - sometimes worse.
And just to point out, there is experiened tuners still hanging around here in forums and in game.
You can ask their help, and they can teach you. Although for that, you need to be fairly consistent driver for that. And by consistent, I don’t mean “fast”
I mean that you can hit around 0.5 seconds 10 laps in row Okay, there might be driver error on one or 2 laps which causes you to fail on that. But in general, you know what I mean.
You can ask, and they might tune a car for you.
For example, I have over 150 cars in A class alone over 50 in B and S class and almost 50 in C class. and I don’t have any problems in sharing them. I actually might enjoy tuning some more cars.
Please don’t think that I’m touting the calculators as the end all of tuning… They aren’t, and I’m not trying to convince anyone that they are. Im just saying that, at least the one I use, attempts to take an intelligent shot at a good place to start… I have never had it give me a tune that was worse than stock… Of course I’ve discovered that in a decent car, I can set top 1% times with a stock car… I’m not boasting, my time may still be in the top 25k… But hey, top 1% of a half a million people is pretty good right?
It’s my perspective that having a “calculator” helps someone new maybe feel like they’re starting at a good place, rather than having to jump into things where everything is unknown. It helped me at least.
I’m going to bow out of the discussion at this point. I’m not sure how else you (juggernaught) or I, can say the same thing we’ve already said, any other way.