What Sim Racers Don't Understand About TC & ABS

welcome to overtake i'm ermin and this is the story age-old is simracing itself you've just dived into your first real sim maybe it was project cars too maybe it was assetto corsa maybe it was grand prix world or perhaps you're even ancient enough to vividly remember the day rebs came out you've set up your sim rig run some laps and practiced hard at a few tracks of your choosing you take a look at the world leaderboard and you're 10 seconds off per lap what could possibly be going on [Music] [Applause] well aside from looking into the finer points of basic driving technique with apexing trail braking using runoff etc one of the first things you're lumbastic with on the online forums is learn to drive without tc and abs noob to those uninitiated tc stands for traction control and abs stands for anti-lock braking system abs has been mandatory in road cars for a very long time as it prevents your grandmother smashing into the back of that parked truck when she plants her foot all the way through the brake pedal on her civic with no finesse just like you should plant your finger all the way through our subscribe button to make sure you don't miss out on any great future overtake content did you like that segue i know i did in a non-abs car what tends to happen is that the wheels lock under braking and cause the car to skid along the road's surface potentially destabilizing it dangerously as well as drastically reducing the car's braking power abs was a compromise worked into the car to cause the brakes to pulsate when they would otherwise lock allowing more traction to be maintained with the road surface and thus reducing braking distances in emergency circumstances road abs systems are often more inefficient than simply riding the brake at the car's grip limit a skill generally reserved for top tier racing drivers which your grandmother in her civic presumably is not tc on the other hand works on the throttle pedal primarily designed to help rear wheel drive vehicles put power down on the ground efficiently traction control is renowned for stopping any cars over 400 brake horsepower drifting well basically everywhere all the time the drawback with road-based tc systems is that they often cut too much power and will tend to destroy your lap times these are improving over time as manufacturers include sport modes intended for the track or spirited road trips it would appear that in our older and more rudimentary simulators it was often the case of disabling all assists even factory-enabled assists or those that are intended to be run in certain race leagues often led to quicker outcomes this led to a somewhat confusing appropriation of knowledge in simracing while it's true that many rudimentary sims modeled extremely basic traction control systems often intermittently cutting all engine power to the wheels and large intervals the reality is that real-life tc systems especially race grade ones are more nuanced than sublime a car intended to be run with tc in real life is actually quicker using that system than not it's only recently with the advent of sims such as asceto corsa competizione that we've had race traction control systems modeled with such accuracy as to actually reflect this real-life behavior more closely in order to demonstrate this i'm going to show you three laps of the legendary laguna seca in the mclaren 720s gt3 one using the assistive systems set fairly low another maxing out the assistive systems and a final lap with no assistive systems whatsoever if this goes as i think it will the lap time should get progressively slower as we go along also try and stay assistive systems three times really fast assistive systems assistive systems assistive systems okay kicking off with our main setting the one that i would usually race with an acc one tc three abs on the mclaren 720s here at laguna seca you will jump between one and two tc usually depending on what the condition of the tires is here we go slightly overshooting the apex of the first corner but turning it back around getting on the throttle kind of using the tc as a bit of a as a bit of a slip catch you can kind of play with the rear end of the car on throttle now as i do right there helps you rotate the car while accelerating one of the great things about mid engine cars you can see as soon as i cross the apex i get on the power the abs of course holding me down stopping me from locking the tires i'm i'm mashing the brake as you can see fully fully kicking in the abs there getting on the power nice and early allows me to rotate the car without worrying about spinning out mid corner so dab on the brake catch the hook on the inside straight on the power no worries about slipping out the tc has got us these are very very aggressive assist settings but they're very very fast at the same time here we go through the the mighty corkscrew pretty reasonable line as we head on down and coast try and nick the apex there straight on the power it's one of the great things about mid-engine cars you can drive very textbook shift down a gear slightly overshot the apex slipped a bit through there got a little bit out on the sand nothing too tragic we're coming back around ever so slight overshoot on the last corner went a little bit wider than i'd like as you can see the delta was dropping down we've lost about one tenth there i would say still for a reasonable lap time of 121.9 [Music] okay kicking off with our max assist section so we've got the tc dimed all the way to 12 out of 12 abs dimed all the way to 12 out of 12. let's get on it let's see how this works ideally this should be very very easy to drive but not too fast we hit the brakes hard at the three marker catch the apex this time using uh engine braking very hard to get on the power oh you can hear it struggling the tc's interfering with the corner exit so much ah the entire way through even in a moderate speed corner see the tc is just pulsing all the way through the corner the moment you put the power down it's a terrible setting to run i mean it's very very very noob friendly if you've got young children who are maybe learning how to sim race this might be a good way to start them you can see the delta is already suffering we're already going up to 0.8 we catch the nook in there i'm finding that the drive itself is actually not too bad i don't think the lines are terrible i think it could even be a better quality drive than the one with less assist which is not too surprising given that the assists actually help you drive but unfortunately rob you of precious tents as we get a second second in the red on the delta the throttle absolutely being punished that there's no power delivery to those rear wheels as we go through last corner oh just nothing it's just struggling it's just like ganking its way up through the revs absolutely awful would not recommend for a lap time of 123.4 and now for our final drive no assists at all and that that is a great start so far so one would think okay lower assist is way quicker than high assists so surely no assist at all is going to be the best possible outcome well nope this kind of gives you an idea of what to expect here acc with a more realistic modeling of gt3 cars and the way that they respond to assists generally means that when you turn the assists off entirely you're going to have a pretty bad time as we go into the first braking zone braking nice and early at four kind of locking the wheels shooting way out deep onto the marbles yep collected all the marbles on our nice slicks beautiful absolutely brilliant exactly what we want working our way through t2 here not too bad mid-speed corners okay that's usually where the assists don't do too much delta is nice and solid here as you can see we're reasonably solid haven't lost too much time there all right going up to another relatively high speed corner however banking uphill as we shoot out wide a little bit oh the card no it snaps on me it just does that nebulous drift thing that acc loves so much and believe it or not with the tc off it will do it oh so much you just there's no sense of security there's no blanket of security normally when you come out of the corner you just plant the throttle and the tc sorts out the rest for you in a gt3 nope nope can't not even with the earlier brake zone coming up to the corkscrew almost over so oh my god almost spun out going downhill it's an absolute train wreck using no traction control and no abs in this mclaren here at laguna seca you can see i overshoot the apex nicely there coming up to the final corner with a nice three second gap on our delta beautiful all right almost up to four seconds oh yep that's that's what we want all right now that we've warmed up the tires with the burnout let's go in for another lap let's see what we can do that was actually the first time i ever drove a gt3 in acc with no assists so it was a very novel experience it turns out it's very hard not to lock the tires here we go hard braking zone trying to yes using the engine braking a lot more this time i'm pensive i've i hit the brakes early i'm rotating i'm feeling it out the throttle i don't trust first gear anymore we dip it down second and we're still okay we're still okay no tc of course i'm feathering the throttle you can see i'm not planting it down as i normally would just feeling it out peeling it out and yes okay we've managed to commit to the throttle again already a second down about a third of the way through the track absolutely brilliant all right banked uphill as we just go wide we absolutely go either car snaps on me mid corner lost an absolute ton of time there brilliant love it dipper gear going there that's that's relatively safe you have gravity helping you there a lot of downforce it's all good now the moment of truth the braking zone for the corkscrew uh oh and then we overshoot again it is so difficult over those bumps to finesse the brake to not lock on you and to feel it in the sim my lord not the easiest thing in the world all right as we approach the second last corner now drop a gear turn in try not to go too wide we've done okay we've done okay there we're only about three seconds behind hard on the brakes at two turn in almost yeah lock the tires we've got a bit of a snap this is very dangerous first gear we don't like first gear with no tc and shooting up to the finish line for a time of 125 not that much slower than full assist surprisingly [Music] well that was wild you can see the difference is immense when it comes to gt3 cars specifically designed to use traction control that's not to say that in some road cars with more rudimentary systems you can't get a quicker time by getting the tail out with the throttle but it does require quite some driving ability and is increasingly becoming more difficult as modern cars are beginning to rely on these systems as part of their overall balancing do bear in mind the difference between sim level and car level assists also note the differences in these systems between hardcore simulators such as acc and cincade titles some sims such as the codemasters f1 series will allow artificial abs and traction control which are dialed to make the cars easier to drive for newer drivers but will rob experienced ones of precious lap time this is what the community would often refer to with older more rudimentary renderings of these systems in sims in proper simulators however with accurate renderings of these systems in cars designed to run them you should almost always aim to keep them on this is something i've been wanting to get off my chest for a while because it's the equivalent of what we call bro science in the fitness community essentially self-perpetuating myths espoused by industry gatekeepers that are not really relevant any longer so next time you load up your favorite gt3 sim if it's a good sim you shouldn't be afraid or think any less of yourself for dialing a few points of tc and abs don't worry it's how the actual race car drivers do it and it's certainly how weird overtake to until next time smash that sub to get notified of future sim racing content and i'll see you all later [Music]

Channel: OverTake_gg

Views: 657,368

Keywords: esports racing, sim racing, simracing, traction control, traction control sim racing, sim racing traction control, traction control turn off, should you turn off your traction control, maximum traction control, gt3 cars, traction control gt3 cars, abs, abs in sim racing, abs racing games, traction control racing games, assetto corsa competizione, project cars 3, iracing

Id: UXErNpT0BUg

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 22 2021