Tyres are a big part of how the car will handle in Assetto Corsa, they form a main part of the car dynamics along with suspension. Testing these takes a lot of time to make sure the car doesn’t do anything strange under different circumstances. One example of this I found in the model I started with the combined factor being defaulted to a value of 2 if the line wasn’t present in the tyres' data file. This made the tyres act much more like an arcade game, extending the tyre grip far beyond what it was stated to be, allowing me to brake artificially deep into corners. This became one of my starting points to bring the virtual model more in line with my race car. Some cars in Assetto Corsa have many extra data files, and some have data.acd (which can be unpacked using Content Manager). Each car has its own folder in the content/cars area; or alternatively, you can go straight to the folder by opening it from content manager.

Guessing will only get you so far with data, you can employ trial and error for a long time and not get any closer to what you want the car to feel like. Even if the car feels close to the real thing, it might not always be as close as you think. That’s why it’s important to check the real data, and then be able to compare your own data from the virtual car. You can test your car on the track and do hundreds of laps to get to a similar lap time, but is it fast in the same areas as the real car? This can’t really be known unless it is video recorded, even then it’s not the defining proof that it is behaving properly.

Recording data and video to look at from your own test sessions massively helps with this as well as being exciting, especially when it’s as easy as one click startup software running in the background. With .vbo files recorded on a VBOX Video HD2 and those using either VBOX Sim or VBOX Sim Pack it is possible to make direct comparisons in Circuit Tools.

This is where VBOX Sim really helps to cut down uncertainties and testing time. If you’re setting up the car to hit a certain figure for cornering forces, or have real data to compare to, VBOX Sim can pinpoint exactly how far your data is from that, allowing you to work towards those figures rather than continuously guessing and not making any progress.

Having data which is accurate, easy to read and easy to compare is important to help identify where the car handling is going wrong.