My Diaries

A Lurid Tale of Obsession, Depravity, Wits and Attempted Wit

Fri Jan 22, 1999

I got my A class license!!!

Based on mail to Nick.

Strange, I had thought I'd manage to get all the Arcade red bonus dots first. I've got all but four red dots. None on Trial Mountain (I have done a concerted effort at it yet), and I am having trouble with B class on Deep Forest. C class I won after persisting with a field in which I noticed that the car which started second consistently moved up and finished first. That can cause interference which you can take advantage of.

A class. My wife stayed overnight at her sister's on Wednesday, and so I stayed up far too late. First I went back and reassured myself by redoing all my B class tests. That is a waste of "days" in the simulation, since you end up wanting to keep all the records. I got lots of silvers, and gold for the start/stop tests. The second start/stop I didn't get gold until I accidentally put it in automatic. So there I learned that in automatic you get automatic optimal downshift help. Can be useful on some courses and tests, but in general I find I want to know what gear I'm in and don't want the torque at the wheels suddenly changing, etc. E.g. I tested automatic on Arcade Deep Forest B, and seemed to lose about 5 or 10 seconds a lap. Their shifting is reasonably good, but can't, e.g. anticipate a hill or bend which makes a marginal upshift detrimental.

I guess it does say in the manual, but it's still sort of disappointing when you do a silver time not as good as your previous silver time and so only get a bronze "prize". It's sort of fun when G.T. Silver disappears from the records...

One of the cornering tests, and the final are still bronze. Quite quickly I got a time on the final about .05 seconds over silver, but never got any better. (Final is Eunos around High Speed Ring).

I realized that the biggest problem in Gran Turismo had helped make it difficult to pass the cornering tests the first time. The corners looked like ninety-degree corners, but are almost 180. (I recognize it now, of course, as Deep Forest). I exacerbated that problem by using "wide" view option. You need to apex a lot later than visual input alone suggests. If I were making up the tests, I would include a simple ninety-degree cornering test. Maybe two; one with long straight before, another with long straight afterwards. I now use "narrow" view, and the problem is less severe, but still noticeable.

So things clicked for the A tests. I finished A-7 before A-6. I did not need to use the handbrake to get bronze in the A-7 test even though they say you do. I just drove conservatively and tight.

A-6, a twiddly section from Deep Forest, stumped me for a while. It was gratifying that I used my head to solve it. I realized that on the second sharp corner, before the short straight into the second tunnel, you needed to apex late (go deep) so you got better acceleration into what is essentially the finishing straight. So, on a time when braking, downshifting, turning and then accelerating through the first sharp corner all came together, I concentrated on going a bit deep into the second, and sure enough, I got my bronze.

A-8 was weird. It took me a relatively long time to learn to keep the Supra RZ on the road and even get a time. That was about 4 seconds over. The car tends to understeer a lot and is difficult to provoke into oversteer at all. In fact, I went and checked the specs because I began to suspect it was a stupid 4WD. Anyway, shortly after the first run which got a time, I came down to within a second of my bronze. Sometime after that was a run where I 360'd twice in the first hairpin but somehow did not "FAIL", so I kept going for the practice. So, I begin remembering A-3 and A-4 and how long they took, and I decide "you're not going to get this one tonight", and just relaxed and thought of it as educational practice at both conscious and subliminal levels. And so what happens, but a few runs later everything comes together reasonably well and I get 1:17.556, almost 1/2 second under. (And I probably hadn't reset the game as recently as I would have if I had expected to pass . I'm up to almost 1000 days now; I really think they should announce "New Year's" for you. Play Auld Lang Syne or something).

This is almost like a diary. I keep all my outgoing mail. Some of this might be synthesizable into Web pages if I can decide on a focus.

So, now it's almost late and really I should to bed, but after saving the final replay (it obviously wasn't perfect, and didn't feel so as I did the run, and will probably be very good for analysis), and saving the game state with the A license, I wanted to make use of it.

I'd read that the "Clubman Series" was a good way to make a bit of Chromium (that's what "Cr" stands for, isn't it??? ), and so I entered that. Not knowing what to expect, I used my racing Cerbera.

Comments on the entry screen say "requires advanced racing skills", so I felt glad that I had chosen the racing Cerbera. However, really the screen should say "requires advanced racing skills or a car which absurdly outclasses the field". First race, Autumn Ring, I crank up the final drive, try some practice, seem pretty smooth, start to qualify, and it's a total disaster. But, I note, that my initial test run (from standing start) was 4 seconds faster than the first place qualifier. So that was encouraging. Race starts, and I tear away in front, no problem with the hairpins, but then I lose it completely on the 270degree corner after the underpass, forgetting about my upshift quick spin recovery technique. So I'm way back in 6th, and think, well they'll wait a little, so maybe I'll salvage 5th or 4th, but, no, I easily manage to get back into first just before the underpass the second time. So I take it really easy from there on. The section up the hill to the "stadium" part is tricky too. Each car seems to need a different technique, so, I loaf along. This turns out to be enough to actually anger the handicapping algorithm into sending a car past me. But I just stay behind and power past it on the final straight. Advanced driving techniques, don't you know.

So then on Clubman R5 and Trial Mountain I get pole and win both, leading from start to finish. I really hate that Clubman track, the way it's not worth trying to avoid "clipping" the walls. And portions of my drive around Trial Mountain made me think "Nobody needs to buy Test Drive Offroad; this is like an off-road test drive". But with a car like the Cerbera you can get away with all that nonsense and win anyway. So I win my first Camaro (of probably many more to come), along with all the quite generous associated Chromium. Oh well, sometime when I've got more time I'll enter tougher series and take proper amounts of practice time with whatever car I'm using, and try to make it all look more elegant. And I can remember that this series exists to finance my bad habits even faster than the Sunday Cup.

And I must admit those A-class tests do help with taking the trickier parts of Trial Mountain.

The fact they have only 11 tracks and run them backwards to get more indicates they are short of space on the CD. (Trial Mountain II actually has the arrows going the wrong way!!!) This is unfortunate because I think it would be fun if the "game map" actually corresponded to a simulated village you needed to drive around. Portions of the village would probably look suspiciously like portions of the R5 and R11 courses. There could be cops who would give you tickets for speeding and dangerous driving. I'm not sure how you'd get around to buy your first car, or get back after a sale, however. (GTTA? Gran Turismo Transit Authority?) (Gee, maybe they could make you racer by day, Leisure Suit Larry by night. The more races you win, the more...)

Another fantasy enhancement is a 1929 Bentley, but I'm not sure if their car drawing routines could handle that, let alone the problem with getting a physics model for it. And licensing. It would probably feel like a pig to drive anyway.

I wonder, what's the youngest age at which children can really appreciate Gran Turismo? When can children understand manual transmission? I vaguely remember understanding it between grade 6 and grade 7 (roughly, um, add 5, 11 years old).

I have observed that pole times for Spot Races seem to be better than ones for the same track in the Sunday Cup.

If so, it might be nice to indicate somehow that Sunday Cup and Clubman Cup are actually easier than Spot Races. The two series seem to be just an easy way to raise Cr (And Demios and Camaros) to support your habits. Not having different values for different prize cars is "not a nice touch". I.e. different values for different prize cars would be "a nice touch".

For all races it would be nice to give some winning times, or "time needed to win". Best time is sort of irrelevant. Worst winning time (by a human) would be more relevant. Time of computer winner when you come close second is probably best indicator of needed time, but the handicap algorithm is strange. More strictly, time of computer winner when you drove a clean race and came a close second might indicate the time. (Since if you have a catastrophe, they do seem to wait for you). Time of second place competitor is some indication, but in some series they seem to hang just behind you no matter how fast you go, or, to a point, how slow you go.

In Sunday Cup, High Speed Ring, the strange handicapping algorithm which usually manages to finish a car about 1 second behind you fails as you can leave all 5 cars > 10 seconds behind. Of course, once you get to >13 seconds or so, you can't even tell how far ahead you were. (On other tracks I think I've had up to about 5 or 6 seconds before the 2nd place car).

Although I didn't need it for B-1, I'd suggest to people that they use an automatic transmission for B-1 and B-2 if they want to get gold quickly, because the computer optimally downshifts (engine brakes) for them when they brake. This seemed sort of counter-intuitive to me, but it makes sense when you think about how the cars are emulated and the goals of the game designers.

Conversely, attempting to get gold in B-2 using manual transmission would be a good way to learn to quickly downshift properly. I've come to the conclusion that if you over-downshift, the emulation acts on the assumption that your clutch is out until car speed is low enough to match maximum engine speed. That is, you lose your engine braking until the car is slow enough for the new gear. Do you think that is the case?

Another good place to practice proper downshifts is A-3 and A-8. I actually ended up using automatic in A-3, but got my bronze in A-8 with manual. It is nice to stay in the same gear as you manipulate the throttle. But in A-3 my lack of co-ordination seemed to over-ride that concern. But in arcade mode I tried automatic to see if it would help my Mitsubishi Eclipse win Difficult in Deep Forest Racing Way and it seemed to drastically reduce my times. (it is actually "Racing Way", isn't, it, not "Raceway").

Proper downshifting is difficult, of course, because you need, for each gear of each car, to determine what tach speed in that gear corresponds to the red-line in the next lower gear. For upshifting, you basically just shift when you hit the red-line. (You may want to shift a little later if there is a big jump to the next gear, or earlier if the next gear is very close). Of course, that infinitely-variable "racing gearbox" can be used to make the downshift tach speed a constant as well. Good thing I wasn't in charge of the project, or you'd have to choose gears and final-drive from a (large) set of discrete integer ratios. (I'd express them as decimals, but I think it would be more realistic and in someways simpler to limit the granularity). Even when shifting by ear, you don't get a definite clue when to downshift, because actual engine speed will be different for different downshifts. In real-life in one's one and only car, one learns what each gear sounds like when the engine could stand the gear one lower, and also knows the speed ranges (if one has a cheap car without a tach; notice how all Japanese cars with automatics come with tach because automatic is more luxurious than tach, but most Japanese cars with manual do not have a tach because they are economy packages?). Drivers who regularly drive different cars, or cars with different gearing setups, must develop strategies for remembering these things.

By-the-way, you have surely noticed that one can set the gear ratios in GT in inappropriate orders. I.e. set 3rd to be lower than 2nd. Or does something notice before you try and save it? I should try that sometime. When I get bored of trying to finish in each position in each of the spot races, or something.

Hey. That would be good. A page of silly things like that (try to finish in each position in each spot race) to try when you're feeling bored or frustrated with Gran Turismo. I guess "try driving a car with badly order-gear ratios" might be another. Hmm... Perhaps it does notice because what would that do to its automatic gear shifting algorithms? Aaa... It would probably just end up more-or-less skipping the bad gear.