[Russell Sobie]

Ah... I knew I had seen it before. The "upcoming series" page looks nearly identical, so this whole time I've been like "why isn't it here?! I know I've seen it before!"

So I guess ideally the expansion on the upcoming series page should also include the table that is seen in the registration menu. Is that possible?

Setups are big thing, the actual racing is just simply not a complete picture of racing. I also disagree about AC setup interface not being good, I have the opposite opinion. I think it is best. I would like to see more options, like for example caster, or even having an option to completely change tires, not only compound. But it probably would be too complex for everybody. 

Fixed setups are indeed common because lots of simracers has zero interest in engineering aspect of racing, which i repeat - is a huge part of racing. So naturally those people dislike the idea that some other drivers might gain an advantage because of knowledge in those things. Variety of skill is not an argument against setups, it is an argument in favor for setups, you can not say that being good with setups doesn't help to some slower guys to catch faster guys who are less into technical aspect of racing. 

Perhaps setup market is nice for people who doesn't want to learn making better setups. I have never tried it, but I always found it very enjoyable to discuss setups in forums and chat. Setups are not very valuable comparing to knowledge. 

[snip]

Ok... I understand everything else is a bit high tech for most... but tire pressures.... absolutely everyone should be able to set +/- correct tire pressures. I would also leave wheel alignment in. I'd say choosing tyre type is rather useless, ok when you have to choose between soft/hard, but when you have to race with cars with semislick/street tire... you know...


To sum up everything - fixed setups are bad thing, always. Perhaps the only good thing of it must be that you are pretty much prevented to make a setup worse

Lots to unpack here. Firstly, "racing" is exactly one thing in simracing... and that is actually being on a track trying to get by the guy in front of you while trying to keep the guy behind you behind you. Dealing with setups is only part of simracing because no one else is going to make changes to your car for you. The user has to do not only the racing, but also the engineering (note that these are two different things). But that's just you and I being too pedantic. Moving on.

Secondly, lots of people have zero interest in the engineering aspect of simracing because they don't want to simulate being an engineer. They want to simulate being a race car driver. In real life, there would be a bunch of people whose job it is it to take input from you (the driver) and make changes to the car so that you can drive around the track faster than you were before. If you want to simulate being an engineer and really enjoy it? Kudos! I don't have the time. I'd rather be racing cars... and baring that, I'd rather be painting them (check out my many threads in the Paint Shop here on the SRS forums!).

Thirdly, people that like fixed setups may fall into the camp that they don't want people's superior knowledge of the dark setup arts getting in the way of fairness. That is understandable... and I'm somewhat in that camp myself. I like the idea that all things being equal, who can drive THIS CAR the fastest. Not this car with this one thing tweaked so that you get a really good exit on turn 4, and that thing tweaked because you like to brake later than most, and this third thing tweaked because of blah blah blah, you get the idea. In fixed setups there is only one thing you have to do when you practice, and that's "run this car with this setup around this track until you figure out how best to go fast, and then figure out how to do it consistently during the race."

When setups are a part of it, practice then explodes in the amount of time you must take. Does that make the racing more casual? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Opinion.

If someone has access to decent setups and doesn't have to put in that practice time, then those of us that have bothered (in the past) to spend a bunch of time doing a setup are going to feel like they wasted their time. This is why in series where it is not fixed I just go in search of a popular setup for the car/track combo and then mostly treat it like a fixed series anyway. I practice my usual amount in that one setup, and then show up for the race. Sometimes I do okay, other times I lag behind the pack. I can only remember one time I beat people that are usually faster than me due to a setup, and that was one that I downloaded... not one that I created through my knowledge of setups. And the only reason I beat them was because thesetupmarket happened to be down the day of the race so no one else had access to it... but I grabbed it the day before!

And I totally get the fun of discussing setups and whatnot. No complaints there. At one point I enjoyed figuring all that stuff out as well... now I just don't want to deal with the hassle.

And finally: The User Interface. The UI in AC is pretty poor overall (if you aren't using Content Manager, stop reading this and go download that front end now), but the setup interface is particularly bad. There is no reason for all of the tabs, especially since cycling between them can only be done by two tiny buttons on either side of your screen. They waste huge swaths of screen space with that setup. The UI doesn't scale to your resolution, which compounds the problem with the tabs... if the UI scaled, they wouldn't have to waste so much space. You can EASILY get every setup parameter for the most complicated cars in the game onto a single page at best, two pages at worst. Instead they are like... 12+ pages in some cases? And you have to be on a specific page for loading and saving? It is like they got a book on UI/UX design 101, and then page by page ignored everything in the book. I didn't bother with VR long enough to feel the horror of what VR players must endure when trying to do setups in AC.

I think back to rFactor 1's two pages of settings and how easy it was to quickly tweak a number of things and get back out on the track. Even PCars 1's interface was better, if I recall. I haven't tried 2's yet. Hell most of them are probably pretty garbage because most simulator developers don't hire UI/UX experts to do their interfaces. They cobble together something "that works" and that is what usually ships.

In short, open races are fine if you want to put in the (exponentially more) practice. But fixed races are also fine for those of us that do not. Or, for those of us that want a challenge to having to drive a car that was not literally custom built for their driving style. Or, for those of us that want to spend as little time in AC's travesty of a setup interface.

Oh I almost forgot the other post: about the tire type the only reason that is open in fixed races is because there is a possible exploit where you can pit and take any tires you want (pitstops don't adhere to setup locks). Because it can't be policed, they just opened that up. Lots of people have mentioned the tire pressure being something they'd want access to. I wouldn't be opposed to that either, as that aspect of setup is about as simple as it comes, and for some reason most Default setups are garbage in that regard.