As a 6.8k driver I remember when I first got into F3 and later on GTs that I wanted to have a "cheat" like the brake threshold because I had seen drivers like Sven Haase use it and convinced myself it was the best option to drive smoothly. In F3 this made absolutely zero sense: if you are threshold braking on a F3 you are braking incorrectly and leaving quite a lot of performance on the table: since it is a HDF car, it requires your brake shape to be more similar to a triangle rather than reaching a cap, maintaining it and then bleeding off like you would in a GT car for instance. This is due to the quick bleed off of speed and effectiveness of aerodynamics, you brake really hard initially and come off the brakes almost immediately to avoid locking up as you lose speed. Moreover (and this goes for all type of cars), the cylinders and the pads will vary as you change track/car combo, in some combos you will need larger pads, in others small pads and having to keep the same pads to keep the same braking profile because of a technical issue that you introduced yourself is just not a bright idea and it will cost you laptime. In GTs it definitely can help to not burn the tyres and be more conservative under braking (and over a stint) but this is just a crutch to gap a skill issue that will take much longer to solve because you are not focussing actively on it and building a muscle memory for it but instead you're relying on software not to brake too hard regardless of how much you push. Lastly, for the technical aspect, you are going about setting a brake cap in the wrong way. Some brakes have a 16bit signal which ranges from 0 to 65535, some others have 8bit which go from 0 to 255. Instead of limiting this range (which for 8bit pedals WILL be an issue) by 20%, you should INCREASE the registered value within iRacing by 25%. This means your pedals keep using their full range and iRacing considers the full signal of your pedals as 80% maximum brake. But again folks, DON'T DO THIS. Cutting corners is never a good idea, especially if you want to improve your driving. Best of luck to you all, see you on track!
Ideally you want muscle memory, but if you have low end pedals (logitech entry level, tm entry level etc) which admittedly, are used by more people out there than not, this can be, and is a useful method. Maybe not for F3 tier or higher, but then again, you will not see a lot of top 5 / top 10 drivers in those series, who race with absolute entry level gear.
If you advocate to not use the hack to limit at the threshold for locking up / activating ABS but adding some % to increase the maximum modulation of the brakes, I would recommend to make it a fixed value that gives some headroom in all cases. So maybe 90% for F3. I think changing the value each week by a couple of percent creates more damage via lost muscle memory than it gives gains. I’ve been through a lot of ways to setting up the brakes myself and I did it this way too at some point. Only difference is, I put the 10% I took of the maximum into the bottom range to give me more precision there. So 20% force was 10% output to me and from there, I made the it linear up to 90% max. This made it easier to modulate in the 5-15% range, which I found very important in HDF cars. However, after all those phases I finally returned to a fully linear setup up to 100%. My impetus was that I hated going to cars which allow for 100% braking or cars, that require less modulation in the 5-15% range, but operate more in the 15-30% range (e.g. PCup). I might be minimally faster with the hack, but I am able to recognize the needs of different cars better now and feel more capable jumping between them. Having gone full circle in 2 years, I can not recommend deviations from linearity, unless they are either the same across every single car or are really needed to get the last hundreds in an ultra-competitive environment.
I've played with the curve shape too. I arrived to the same conclusion regarding linearity - its best not to mess with it for me. It's one thing to reduce the the max peak and keep same linearity, and other thing to also tinker with the brake shape. In my experience, I found that I could adapt quite nicely without damaging my muscle memory by changing week by week the max - however - that's just me. I would recommend people to experiment with different things and see what works for you! Keeping the same reduced % in the higher end it's also an option, what I am trying more to advocate for is to avoid the 'Brake Hack' with fixed value at the EXACT threshold for reasons mentioned.
@@GitGudRacing Agree on not using the exact threshold and that people should experiment and find the best settings for themselves. If I hadn’t tried a lot of things, I’d still be wondering 😀 Even if I voiced some disagreement before, I enjoyed the video. Food for thought is always great and I especially appreciate these nitty gritty details of technique being discussed.
absolutely man, I do enjoy these discussions a lot, thanks for taking the time to word it. I tried a lot of stuff too, with all the elastomer combinations, different mechanical curves in my hardware settings of the pedals, changing the angle, changing the distance of the pedals, a lot, haha! It's great for people to see different perspectives, like what you explained above with your attempts to fine tune the linearity so 1st of all they'll be aware that they can try that and 2nd to make some educated guesses of what will happen if they try it. Although, the best way to know it is always from direct experience@@stefanheineken6930
@@GitGudRacing It’s week 13 and I’m back to experimenting again myself 😀 I used to have the throttle on minimum travel, but am trying out the longest travel in comparison to increase modulation there. I noticed I was doing well getting on throttle but my lifts were often to harsh/too strong/too inconsistent. Good results so far! Pedal angles are also back on the menu. I had to change it on throttle after the travel change, but now I want to revisit the brake too. Don’t know if I asked you before, but did you try springs instead of elastomeres on the brakes? There was a video of Race Beyond Matter on the inherent issues of elastomeres, where they actually relax under constant pressure and I was able to see it in my own brakes. Went for the hardest spring I could find and won’t look back! Anyways…you put out great content in the last couple of months. Keep it up!!
I did saw the video and I'm in the market for some springs for my pedals. I want to try it. I actually do feel the brake pedal trailing on its own. Regarding throttle travel - from my testing I got the best results with the biggest travel on my pedal (you know all of this is subjective). Seems like a fun week to do testing mate! @@stefanheineken6930
For me the question is how does the brake feel in reality in these cars? Can you brake 100% in F3 or GT3? Anyway very good advice always finding stuff that I still don't know.
@@JohnnyEMatos This makes no sense, every car has a force limit where that 100% is, only that is variable based on car I guess which can't be simulated with SIM pedals unless you have active Pedals, and that's why you need these hacks.
@@bbogdanmircea most race cars will accept more pressure than any human could possibly output on a brake. You mean to say there's a point where the car can torque out of control, but that doesn't mean it's the maximum amount of pressure you can put on the brakes. It also varies depending of road conditions. This is why you only see % for accelerating in real life telemetry and PSI for the brakes instead of % too
This is cheating at solitaire. Will get good results in the short term but will limit the development in the long term. Perhaps makes sense for someone with lower end pedals but for anyone with load cells this is just a bad idea.
Join the discord! Let's polish our driving skills together: discord.gg/6GEEa6cV9J
As a 6.8k driver I remember when I first got into F3 and later on GTs that I wanted to have a "cheat" like the brake threshold because I had seen drivers like Sven Haase use it and convinced myself it was the best option to drive smoothly.
In F3 this made absolutely zero sense: if you are threshold braking on a F3 you are braking incorrectly and leaving quite a lot of performance on the table: since it is a HDF car, it requires your brake shape to be more similar to a triangle rather than reaching a cap, maintaining it and then bleeding off like you would in a GT car for instance. This is due to the quick bleed off of speed and effectiveness of aerodynamics, you brake really hard initially and come off the brakes almost immediately to avoid locking up as you lose speed.
Moreover (and this goes for all type of cars), the cylinders and the pads will vary as you change track/car combo, in some combos you will need larger pads, in others small pads and having to keep the same pads to keep the same braking profile because of a technical issue that you introduced yourself is just not a bright idea and it will cost you laptime.
In GTs it definitely can help to not burn the tyres and be more conservative under braking (and over a stint) but this is just a crutch to gap a skill issue that will take much longer to solve because you are not focussing actively on it and building a muscle memory for it but instead you're relying on software not to brake too hard regardless of how much you push.
Lastly, for the technical aspect, you are going about setting a brake cap in the wrong way.
Some brakes have a 16bit signal which ranges from 0 to 65535, some others have 8bit which go from 0 to 255. Instead of limiting this range (which for 8bit pedals WILL be an issue) by 20%, you should INCREASE the registered value within iRacing by 25%. This means your pedals keep using their full range and iRacing considers the full signal of your pedals as 80% maximum brake.
But again folks, DON'T DO THIS. Cutting corners is never a good idea, especially if you want to improve your driving.
Best of luck to you all, see you on track!
Ideally you want muscle memory, but if you have low end pedals (logitech entry level, tm entry level etc) which admittedly, are used by more people out there than not, this can be, and is a useful method. Maybe not for F3 tier or higher, but then again, you will not see a lot of top 5 / top 10 drivers in those series, who race with absolute entry level gear.
If you advocate to not use the hack to limit at the threshold for locking up / activating ABS but adding some % to increase the maximum modulation of the brakes, I would recommend to make it a fixed value that gives some headroom in all cases. So maybe 90% for F3. I think changing the value each week by a couple of percent creates more damage via lost muscle memory than it gives gains.
I’ve been through a lot of ways to setting up the brakes myself and I did it this way too at some point. Only difference is, I put the 10% I took of the maximum into the bottom range to give me more precision there. So 20% force was 10% output to me and from there, I made the it linear up to 90% max. This made it easier to modulate in the 5-15% range, which I found very important in HDF cars.
However, after all those phases I finally returned to a fully linear setup up to 100%. My impetus was that I hated going to cars which allow for 100% braking or cars, that require less modulation in the 5-15% range, but operate more in the 15-30% range (e.g. PCup).
I might be minimally faster with the hack, but I am able to recognize the needs of different cars better now and feel more capable jumping between them.
Having gone full circle in 2 years, I can not recommend deviations from linearity, unless they are either the same across every single car or are really needed to get the last hundreds in an ultra-competitive environment.
I've played with the curve shape too. I arrived to the same conclusion regarding linearity - its best not to mess with it for me. It's one thing to reduce the the max peak and keep same linearity, and other thing to also tinker with the brake shape. In my experience, I found that I could adapt quite nicely without damaging my muscle memory by changing week by week the max - however - that's just me. I would recommend people to experiment with different things and see what works for you! Keeping the same reduced % in the higher end it's also an option, what I am trying more to advocate for is to avoid the 'Brake Hack' with fixed value at the EXACT threshold for reasons mentioned.
@@GitGudRacing Agree on not using the exact threshold and that people should experiment and find the best settings for themselves. If I hadn’t tried a lot of things, I’d still be wondering 😀 Even if I voiced some disagreement before, I enjoyed the video. Food for thought is always great and I especially appreciate these nitty gritty details of technique being discussed.
absolutely man, I do enjoy these discussions a lot, thanks for taking the time to word it. I tried a lot of stuff too, with all the elastomer combinations, different mechanical curves in my hardware settings of the pedals, changing the angle, changing the distance of the pedals, a lot, haha! It's great for people to see different perspectives, like what you explained above with your attempts to fine tune the linearity so 1st of all they'll be aware that they can try that and 2nd to make some educated guesses of what will happen if they try it. Although, the best way to know it is always from direct experience@@stefanheineken6930
@@GitGudRacing It’s week 13 and I’m back to experimenting again myself 😀 I used to have the throttle on minimum travel, but am trying out the longest travel in comparison to increase modulation there. I noticed I was doing well getting on throttle but my lifts were often to harsh/too strong/too inconsistent. Good results so far!
Pedal angles are also back on the menu. I had to change it on throttle after the travel change, but now I want to revisit the brake too.
Don’t know if I asked you before, but did you try springs instead of elastomeres on the brakes? There was a video of Race Beyond Matter on the inherent issues of elastomeres, where they actually relax under constant pressure and I was able to see it in my own brakes. Went for the hardest spring I could find and won’t look back!
Anyways…you put out great content in the last couple of months. Keep it up!!
I did saw the video and I'm in the market for some springs for my pedals. I want to try it. I actually do feel the brake pedal trailing on its own. Regarding throttle travel - from my testing I got the best results with the biggest travel on my pedal (you know all of this is subjective). Seems like a fun week to do testing mate! @@stefanheineken6930
For me the question is how does the brake feel in reality in these cars? Can you brake 100% in F3 or GT3? Anyway very good advice always finding stuff that I still don't know.
In real life braking is not a percentage thing, you can always press harder
@@JohnnyEMatos This makes no sense, every car has a force limit where that 100% is, only that is variable based on car I guess which can't be simulated with SIM pedals unless you have active Pedals, and that's why you need these hacks.
@@bbogdanmircea most race cars will accept more pressure than any human could possibly output on a brake. You mean to say there's a point where the car can torque out of control, but that doesn't mean it's the maximum amount of pressure you can put on the brakes. It also varies depending of road conditions. This is why you only see % for accelerating in real life telemetry and PSI for the brakes instead of % too
@bbogdanmircea in real life there is no actual 100%. How would that even work.
Damnit, there is no way to do this with Fanatec is there? I'm referring to the percentage settings at 9min in
As a 3K: no just no this would make me worse at all racing games i stick to fully linear setup
This is cheating at solitaire. Will get good results in the short term but will limit the development in the long term.
Perhaps makes sense for someone with lower end pedals but for anyone with load cells this is just a bad idea.
thats the best way to lose any muscle memory, don't do it mate.
Teo
Yeah don't do what this guy says ppl. Iracing account Rui Oliveira Teixeira and Rui Teixeira4