XBOX Gotham Racing experts,help?
 

Hi,

When making turns ,how do you do it?

Should i downshift when approaching turn?

Should I use the hand brake?

Should I used the pedal brake?

Should I use a combination of the above?

I pretty much lose control on the turns and it's killing my time :(

Thanks so much : >

PS: Any tricks or tips welcomed.

Deborah

Well, for starters, you can create a profile using the name (Case sensitive) to unlock all of the cars and tracks.

OK, if it's not a real sharp turn, make sure you are on the far side of the turn going in...

EX: Mild right turn...Stay to the left side of the road, start to turn right just before you get to the turn, and tap the hand brake to give you a little extra 'turn' if necessary.

For sharper turns, follow the above example, but lay on the hand brake a little more to 'spin' your car to the desired direction, then tap the floor brake to regain control.

It's pretty much a 'feel' thing, but these are the basics, for me at least.

This series of articles might help you : Physics of Racing

It's really meant for real road racing, and is a bit... dense... at times, but it's really handy for driving games that have even semi-realistic physics.

First thing to keep in mind is that the tire only has so much traction. You can use that traction for braking, accelerating, cornering, or any combination of the three. However, if you use 50% of the available traction for cornering, you can't brake nearly as hard as if you weren't cornering at all. If you use 99% of the traction for cornering, and you then accelerate or brake, you will cause the car to oversteer (car's back end slides around) or understeer (car's front end refuses to turn) depending on which tires lose traction first.

Here's a picture you need to memorize.
http://www.seansa4page.com/images/miscpics/apex.gif

Most drivers will tell you "late apex as early as you can". This is because early apexing is the worst thing you can do. Basically, in an early apex, you carry too much speed into the turn, and save all of your turning for the end of the turn. You run out of traction and room, and you slide, generally crashing into the wall.

In a late apex, you do all of your braking ahead of time, and turn late, but at a slower speed, and you do all of your turning in the early part of the turn. Taken to an extreme, late apexing is as detrimental to your time as early apexing, but the results of screwing up are not nearly as severe.

Now, there may come times when you need to early or late apex in order to set up for the next turn, but as a general rule, you want to do your turning in a smooth motion, and once you begin your turn, you do not want to have to increase or decrease your turning radius if you can help it. Steering inputs will generally upset the balence of the car and cause you to lose traction. If you set up for a bit of a late apex, and the car is nicely balenced, you can gently apply throttle past the apex point, and the loss of traction will push the car toward the edge of the curve and the correct line. The benefit of this is that you will be accelerating through the latter portion of the curve, and you will exit the curve with a higher speed than you would have otherwise.

If you want an example of how bad early apexing can be, watch this video. The guy in this video has a very bad habit of early apexing and using the throttle to bring the tail around in the latter part of the curve. It bites him in the ass a few turns into the film. I'm not sure it will help you, but if you realize that he's early apexing every corner, maybe it will help you spot the same when you're playing the game. Early apexing is the most common beginner's error.

Re: XBOX Gotham Racing experts,help?
 

Realized I didn't answer all your questions.

1. ) Answered above.
2. ) You should downshift if you need a lower gear when exiting the turn. You DO NOT want to downshift in the middle of a turn. Doing so will upset the car and cause a spin. Do any downshifting you need to do before the turn. If you find yourself downshifting after you're through the turn, then you need to downshift before you actually turn.
3.) You can use it to cheat and get the back end of the car rotating to tighten up your turn. This works pretty well in arcade-style racers, or games with a drift-style racing, but works horribly in real life, or in games with real physics. It's also very easy to lose control of the car this way because you are essentially removing traction from the rear wheels to induce turning. I don't recommend using it. It's the really rare occurance that you'll see real-life racers using this technique.
4.) Yes, you should use the pedal brake if you can. As above, try to do all your braking before you turn. There's a handy thing called "trail-braking" which some people use, but keep in mind, this is an advanced technique, and a mistake will cause a spin. Basically, you don't use 100% of your traction in the early part of the turn (the turn-in stage), and you use that extra bit of traction you aren't using to finish the last part of your braking.
5.) well... kinda. Read the above posts. Ask me questions about what isn't clear.

dvdsteve2000 ,

Wow, thanks for the code to unlock more car's and tracks : >
At the rate I was going I don't think I would have had enough KUDO's for awhile . THANKS SO MUCH !


einTier,

Wow, you really went above and beyond. Thanks : >

The picture helps ALOT! I'll have to tattoo it to my eyelids .LOL.

I printed out both explanations to my questions and will read when driving.( On pause of course)

What driving games come close to real physics?

Also, How about S turns. Do i position the car the same as a regular turn , just in reverse?

Thanks so much : >

Deborah

dvdsteve2000,

I entered the code , small case n, o, s , l, i and CAP W

It didn't open the other car or tracks.
Do i reset, on / off?

Thanks

Deborah

Gran Tourismo has decent physics... Sega GT coming out for Xbox has good physics too. The physics for Project Gotham are part realistic and part fantasy... opinions vary on it. Rallisport Challenge is good for pacticing slides and corners

Glad I could help. RandyC and I are the resident auto racers around here, so this is something I can talk about for hours.

The game that set the bar for physics on console systems was the Gran Turismo series. On the PC, probably the closest was "Gran Prix Legends". It's so realistic that it's almost impossible to play unless you have a fantastic joystick/steering wheel and you are a race car driver yourself.

Usually, driving games fall into one of two categories.
1.) Overly arcadey style games. These are usually found in arcades where "fun" is more important than "realism". You'll also find this kind of game in arcade ports. Typical examples would be Ridge Racer, San Fransisco Rush, Crazy Taxi, and Mario Kart. Generally, using the handbrake and driving like a madman work best in these games, though proper apexing does help.

2.) Overly realistic games. Typically only found on home systems, though Ferrari F355 is a notable exception in the arcades. These games try to re-create the feel of actually driving a car. Generally, you won't see "stunt" tracks or custom cars, and the car responds best if you drive it the way it was meant to be driven in real life. Proper apexing is a must, not an option. Gran Turismo is considered a prime example of this genre.

S turns are a bit more problematic. The problem is, an S-turn is just two normal turns hooked together. I don't have any illustrations to explain this, so hopefully, you can follow along.

Look at the turn in the illustration above. If we look at it, we see that coming in on the outside of the turn is preferred, so that we can carry as much speed as possible through the turn. With a proper track-out, we see that we're again on the outside of the turn when we're finished. Now, what happens if I tack another curve on the end of that? You'll see that suddenly, you're on the inside of that turn when you want to be on the outside. At this point, you'll either lose a ton of speed, or you'll early apex (which we already determined is bad).

So, what to do? The thing is to think of the two curves as a whole, not as seperate entities. To set up properly for turn two, you may have to take a less than optimal route through turn one. If the corners are far enough apart (say, separated by a short straight), you can simply drift over to the other side and set up properly for your next turn. However, this is not usually case. In the case that the curves are one after another, you want to draw the straightest line possible through all the curves.

You may have to perform a very late apex at low speed to set up properly for the second turn. Ideally, you want to be accelerating through S-curves (or at the very least, not decelerating) and you want to explode out of the last one, which means it is the most important one to set up correctly.

Here's a pretty good description of a typical line around a real-world track.

When I used the code, I put them all lowercase, and it worked for me.

einTier

Thnaks, your the best : >

Must go to sleep now, between Gotham and Halo I got nothing done today, but it was fun : >

I'm sure I'll be back with more questions : >

Deborah

Strange??? It didn't work on mine when I tried all lower case???

Capitalize the first letter and leave the rest lower case.

Oops, maybe that's what I did. :confused: I'm really not sure, I borrowed this game from a friend a while ago. Sorry.