Change Steering Speed to Improve Controllability

Hey, I don't know if this has already been mentioned, I didn't find anything when I searched.

Anyway, I've noticed that one of the reasons the cars are hard to steer is that they steer very slowly.

Something I once read when configuring a driving game was that the steering speed should be set "as fast as you can handle while still keeping control of the car". So I tried upping the steering speed, and I got some good results.

If you open gameDirectory/lua/vehicle/input.lua, you can tweak the steering speed on lines 170 and 171:

--if using a joystick
if M.analogue == true then
steeringRate = steeringRate * 1.2
else steeringRate = steeringRate * 1.8
--keyboard needs to be faster

I can't actually remember what the two numbers were originally, but I think they were 1.2 and 1.8. Anyway, I changed them both to 3 and got a significant improvement in controllability. I haven't tweaked it much yet, though. There are probably better numbers that could be used.

There are lines at the top where steeringRate is initialised (actually twice, so that's a bit of a trap), but I think they're red herrings. As far as I can tell it doesn't matter what the initial value is because it gets completely reset every frame anyway. Lines 170 & 171 are the places where I discovered you could actually tweak the behaviour and get results. I didn't really want to mess with all the dynamic steering logic, but these lines looked nice & safe to modify.

Anyway, hope this helps people who are struggling to control the cars. The sports car is still a beast though

 

I've noticed the same even with a 360 controller. Without the dynamic steering its too little, with it, its too much right now. A simple slider in the options menu would be nice.

 

I'm actually using a 360 controller too, it's just not precise enough, and even when it is, the steering takes way too long to respond.

I do have a wheel, but I haven't set it up with the game yet. I'll have a look to see if this setting affects my wheel too. I'm guessing it will.

 

I think that's true for Keyboard, touch the key and it rips the steering to full lock.
Haven't played with Xbox controller as I don't have one, and couldn't figure out how to get my PS3 controller to work.

 

Well, what I find is that once you've steered and you need to correct, it takes too long for the tyres to swing the other way, and by that time you've spun out. That's why bumping up the speed improves it for me.

I find keyboard is okay as well. It was actually better than gamepad when I had the gamepad at the lower steering rate. You just have to be on the ball and constantly tapping left & right to correct.

 

This is great! Thanks for the tip. I found it very hard to drive with the Xbox 360 controller and the default settings (actually 1.1 and 1.8). The RWD cars had particularly wayward rear-ends. I found the Bolide pretty much undriveable at any speed, and with dynamic steering turned off it was way too twitchy - and the tie rods (track rods) kept breaking! Now I can actually do a few laps of the race track in it without destroying the car

When it was set to 3.0 I found the steering still too slow for the Bolide, but if I set to 4.0 or higher the tie rods would break easily again. 3.5 works pretty well for me. The Covet is very easy to drive now.