Is ACC Pay to Win?

I think it would have been interesting to also test the agressive setup with tire pressure adjusted to hit 27.5psi, since it is an adjustment most of us could actually manage to make and has quite an important impact on the lap time.

Austin Ogonoski has been saying it for years, it's never truly about the physics when it comes to aliens, it's always about the exploits.

Maybe the solution is to have some fixed setup servers like in iRacing. Then you would have both and see who is more skilled in setups and who is more skilled in driving

Thank you for these videos. It's nice to see normal people doing test like this.

The tire pressure on pro setup is much closer to optimal, which makes this comparison not as accurate as we would like it to be.

Great video, love the content, keep em' coming! ; )

It helps for sure. If you can’t get your setup perfect for you, then you don’t have the confidence (or aren’t able to) in the car to throw it around. But the best setup vs someone that is faster than you isn’t gonna help you win, maybe just get you a little closer to them. Also just helps you to be more consistent as the car will be easier to drive

I have tested this too for myself, to check if I am stupid on motec and RST on making car setups or maybe I am slow average player. I did the same like you. After some hours of playing I have discovered that setup which I have made was not bad at all, my driving style too, but I could not find difference why on bought setup I am 1 sec faster. Later I have found that on bought setup camber was set to crazy value 4,0 deg. So I have changed 4,0 on setup made by myself, and then I have found another 0,7 sec. Sometimes small crazy changes in setup will change a lot, but every setup is made for specific drive style of driver. For one setup can be interesting for another player rubbish. The best for me was to learn telemetry and setup, compare it to bought setup, find differences and improve my own setup on small adjustments and tests, to tweak it into my drive style. :)

Of course is the grip much better. You start with +1 PSI (28 PSI is perfect) and they reset after every round in hotlap mode. You should compare with the same PSI or drive in training mode for 30min.

I think this comparison would be very interesting if an additional free set up is used. Like the ones from fri3d0lf (this dude is awesome btw). Like I am a second faster with his race setup compared to the default aggressiv setup.

3:33 "Thats Raidillon actually!" 😂

Completely pointless, 1) set the pressures to be the same not way too low on the default. 2) don't run the "slower" setup first then the paid setup. You are just practicing for the paid run.

It'd be interesting to revisit this topic in 3-4 months to see if (when?) the esports teams find new exploits in 1.9, and if those exploits convey as much of an advantage as the current ones do.

Would be interesting to see how the pressures were on each setup, because ACC is very dependant on them and you didn't adjust them. That slone could make for almost 1s

Thank you, very interesting. I always thought that ACC was a bit weird and way too reliant on doing suspension setups that a player can't feel (using mid range or average equipment). The over reliance on the setups hurdle actually puts me off using ACC as a main sim. I would prefer the racing simulation to instead, focus on using dynamic road surface conditions, random track events, yellow flag events, and weather as more important point of difference for having how drivers and cars can be different and competitive from each other. The range in suspension setups should be more limited to how much can be varied so that the cars can be a bit more homogenized, and lead to having a more level playing field for all users. I want to race and not be wasting time on setting up, even though that is an important part in RL racing. The typical sim racing rig, doesn't have the "g-force feel" which helps to gauge what is happening to a car. I would prefer that the devs just ensure that the driver can feel the grip limits of the tires instead of an over reliance on suspension set-ups that are cryptic. A RL car's set-up is always a compromise anyway. IMO, if an alien's time is way faster than a RL track record, then there is definitely something weird. Although, more homogenized setups could lead to boring racing and so if the car's are too similar to each other then how do sim racers compete and still be entertained by a game? I think that for a sim racing game, that the drivers should focus more on having to manage a dynamic track surface with their radio /crew chief advising them, which parts of the track will have issues with grip due to random debris and spills and temperature. Some added focus in game development on tire wear management, car deterioration and economics. Also, adding more AI to AI car accidents, slip streaming, random track debris, impact suspension damage, smoke screens, dirty windshields, hot weather and overheating issues and more random track events eg. slight drizzle, fog, crazy spectator invasions, would make for more entertaining sim racing, than wasting hours of time trying to work out the perfect setup just to get anywhere near an alien's lap time. I doubt the aliens would be able to replicate their time in a real car anyway. I love the car simulation but wasting time on something that can't be felt is not that great. Maybe when G-forces can be simulated in the average sim rig, then wasting time on crazy set-ups would make more sense.

It can only be considered pay to win if you were paying for something that would otherwise be unavailable. Everything possible contained within a paid-setup is available to everyone free, but the catch is you need a ton of experience, knowledge and skill to leverage it.

I'd be interested in seeing your time after tweaking the default setup more to your liking, as well. How close would that get you to the paid one?

Great video! Can I ask you what gloves you have? Do you have a link?

I also use paid setups and it works for me, but if you're going to try to make a point with a vid at least bother with doing the test properly and make sure at least the PSI, fuel level and TC/ABS settings are the same.. You conveniently placed your face over the PSI display, but I can see the rear tires are around 26.5 in your aggressive setup test, and around 27.6 on your paid setup test. At least I can look forward to being select among a shortlist of winners.

The best option would be fixed set up options when creating a server. With only tire pressure and down force adjustments or something. As a casual sim racer I don't have hours to tweak a set up. This would be perfect to jump on with mates and have a few good eaves of an evening. Nothing is more soul destroying knowing your getting beat just becuase of your set up