Drifting is damn near impossible

Ok. I have a lot of experience with cars and thrashing them around. I know for a fact that drifting in real life isn't this hard. Literally with any RWD vehicle, I cannot drift on pavement, only dirt. Drifting on dirt is kind of wussy so I want to on pavement. Is there anyone who knows the secret to drifting on here? I've tried tuning and can't get it right. The only cars I can manage to hold a drift with are AWD ones which are also to easy and wussy to drift with. I have a g25 wheel but can't spin it fast enough to stop snap oversteer with any RWD car I attempt to drift.

 

Well... the hardest part about drifting in this game... actually has nothing to do with the game itself. It's the simple fact that you can't feel the car starting to let go... normally you would feel G forces that let you know your on the edge of grip and it's going to let go. In a game, you have none of that, so you have to be able to use your eyes and ears only to know when it will let go. Once you figure that out, you will instinctively start your countersteer sooner than normal (or about the normal time you should be countersteering in real life) and you will start catching drifts much easier.

If you feel you have that part down already and still aren't catching them, try turning down your wheel rotation angle. This, in effect, decreases the steering ratio while keeping the angle the same... this makes it much easier to get your wheels from lock to lock fast enough to catch your drifts.

Lastly, try some of the drift missle tunes in the game already... they have special steering and suspension components to really let you drive on the rack at crazy angles without too much effort.

 

You could try base model Miramar, it is really nice, you can drift it even on two wheels:


It's easy to hit every apex with base model Miramar:


You can pull long insane angle drifts with base Miramar (as long as you pull the handbrake and don't overheat the brakes):


That is best drift car in BeamNG, just make sure you install welded diff and if you are about to get serious, make sure you have plenty of caster for that counter steer behavior you trust in real life!
--- Post updated ---
Sadly I haven't had chance of testing BeamNG with a wheel, with gamepad it is almost too easy, but then again going from lock to lock is really fast. In some other games default cars did not have very realistic countersteer, but that could be modded in, I don't know how realistic "automatic tail catching" is in BeamNG, but in reality all you need to do really is let go of the wheel, wheel will countersteer and then just control angle with throttle. If that part is lacking, it is bit hard to adapt to steering.

If you want easy drifting, go bigger, put some supercharger power to H-series and it is really easy to control, at least if you have the space. Semi is even easier, but needs bit more power than what is available by default.

 

Another thing I do have to note is that if you have a G920 (like myself) or if your wheel behaves like mine... unlike in a real car where you can just flick the wheel to catch a drift, the wheel on the 920 doesn't spin fast enough on its own... unless you do big truck drifting like fufsgfen did there... to actually catch itself. You can't just let go and hope the force feedback will be enough to bring the wheel around... on my setup anyways... I actually have to force the wheel around fast enough to catch it, so, in turn, it has made me adopt a completely different technique for drifting. I actually drift RWD cars that are setup for rather high levels of understeer rather than oversteer because of this... that way I don't have to rely on the car to automatically try and catch the drift with the front tires, but, instead, since the car wants to be going in a straight line anyways, the car actually starts to catch itself, and, in turn, gives you plenty of time to get control of the slow to move wheel.

 

The FFB in Beam is no good for drifting. You're likely out of luck, sadly.

 

How so? I remember it even turning the wheel to countersteer naturally, ffb has always been good for me.

 

Maybe it's on account of my own settings, but my FFB lags quite badly, so the wheel never countersteers naturally. Rather, it countersteers naturally, but with such a horrid delay that it makes drifting impossible.

 

Hey i use a thrust master tspc and catching drifts is really easy for me i just feel the car and feel it let go it might be from playing other games like assetto corsa and rfactor2 but they really have taught me how to catch a car when sliding

 

I've gotten 2 drift 200BX's and set one to flee from me with ai and i bumped it and it drifted the whole fucking track.

 

I have read about devs mentioning that FFB will work with framerates between 60-120fps, not below that, also stenyak did ask about framerates, so that could be one of the issues, indeed probably lot of improvement can be made with knowing more about OP's setup and FPS.

With all sims I have played, best experience has been with constant 60fps, I have never had hardware capable of steady constant 120fps and never has had those fast refreshing monitors either, but maybe 120fps might work if there is monitor and CPU + GPU that can keep game running 120fps all times, I doubt such exists though?

However different wheels and different wheel settings affect things too.

It gets bit better when FFB is set strong enough, but that tend to cause other issues, like loosing more subtle feedback.

Longer the wheelbase, easier it will be to drift, also weight helps to make drifting easy.

 

Yeap. The FFB seems to have some kind of built-in lag, or maybe it just stops lagging at a stupidly high fps like 300.

 

I think all games have some input lag, but really can't comment on how laggy FFB feels with wheel in BeamNG. I remember though that when I attempted to race more seriously, I turned FFB off in other games, it could not keep up with me.

With game pad issues is usually turning too much, then being afraid to turn enough.

One thing that came to my mind is that look enough far ahead into corner, it is quite easy to look at car, dashboard etc. instead of where wanting to be next.

Semi with enough torque (2800hp, over 5000lbs, specs as Banks super turbo truck engine) is easy as easy can get, but it is not ready yet, currently it is quite terrible actually, challenge is more in estimate how much space you have and how much space you will need, it has to be going sideways so early that with my poor skills success is rare. Anyway from this to something really light and short wheelbase is opposite ends of how difficult drifting is.

 

my G27 doesn't center back up so letting go causes a spin out...I run really low force feedback so I don't hear clang after clang (something with Logitech wheels makes a clanging noise when there's high amounts of force feedback and it gets annoying fast, I will upgrade to a Thrustmaster to get around this though)

 

Ok, try this, grab your wheel normally, then open up your palm, use your right thumb to turn right, left to turn left, it takes bit practice, but that was fastest turn speed I could get, you only grab wheel when changing wheel direction, only briefly, so essentially you spin wheel with a thumb.

You have to be really quick with the hands though.

For me it was first with low amount of force feedback, then I just turned it off. Sadly wheel had self destructed itself when not in use for a long time, so it's only gamepad for me now.

 

I have seen guys using car's shifting knob, aftermarket part type, not sure if that needs much modding though?