Civetta Scintilla

We need fake speed, some kind of dynamic field of view in the car's interior!

 

TL;DR we need motion blur

 

I took 3 cars, a race tuned Toyota Trueno, (wallowy suspension characteristics) a Group 5 Bolide (LOVES to understeer on entry of corners) and the race Scintilla to the Nordschleife track. The Toyota and the Bolide only took me 1 attempt to learn their characteristics and do a clean lap of the entire course. The Scintilla, on the other hand, took multiple attempts to make it around the track in one piece. It took me ages to figure out how this car needed to be driven around green hell. I'm not just saying that this car handles terribly, I'm saying that it handles bad for what it is, e.g. a track focused supercar. This isn't just my opinion either. Plenty of people on this forum have said that the Scintilla has chronic understeer, even people who claim to love this car.

 

I'm pretty sure this is not implemented in Drift mode. After a few testing the Scintilla does have slip angle limit, maybe I tested in 0.25.0 and made the conclusion too early. The problem is, after spinning out once, sometimes the Drift ESC no longer prevents you from further spin, idk whether it is a bug. On the other hand Bastion Redtail's Savage Mode is surprisingly similar to Side Slip-angle Control, highly recommended, you can put the throttle to the floor and drift it without the risk spinning out.

Open diff is open diff, the torque distribution is always 50:50, non-adjustable.

 

This tells me you simply don't know how to control an awd car at its limits. It does understeer, but only when you try to plow through a corner at full throttle and max steering lock, rather than braking in a straight line into the turn in, decreasing the brake pressure as you turn in and then increasing the throttle as you exit the corner, in tandem with the decrease in steering angle.

I took the Scintilla GTx (Awd!) for a quick rip around WCUSA's track, and recorded it. While I was at it, I also did a quick lap in the Group 5 Bolide, since you said it "handles better". (Which I disagree with: it certainly handles worse on corner exits and at low speeds, and as it is easier to snap past the limit. I have a feeling what you're perceiving as better handling is just a greater sense of control as the result of full slick tires, downforce, weight reduction and a much higher sense of both speed and grip level due to the stiffness of the chassis and suspension, leading to a better sense of control over the vehicle, and a greater awareness of its limits due to their harshness.)

Both laps are certainly not the fastest they could be, both of what my abilities and the limits of the car, neither of which I believe i fully utilized the potential of, but they're a good comparison. This was done on an Xbox controller, with the Scintillia GTx in Corse mode to prove that the electronics do not hinder the performance, however I am certain that turning off traction control could yield me a second or two.

Here are the results:
1:52.884 Seconds for the Scintilla GTx.
1:51.207 Seconds for the Bolide Group 5.



(mind to crunchy gearshift in the bolide, the game froze for a split second and it didn't register my clutch input )

I Stand with Diamondback and am not sure how people still believe this car handles poorly. Does it understeer? Yes! But Only if you don't drive it properly. The car is the single most capable vehicle in the game from my limited experience, and any quarrels you have with it are just those, your own. Not with the car, but with yourself.

 

So I did some testing about the drive mode and open diff(brake steer) & LSD on
Hirochi Raceway Long, rolling start, 3 laps, and the results are:
Vivace 410 Arsenic DCT
Open diffs, Arsenic mode: 04:39.024
Open diffs, Off mode 04:34.795
LSDs, Arsenic mode: 04:33.097
LSDs, Off mode: 04:32.644
Scintilla GTs Corse DCT
Open diff, Corse mode: 04:18.568
Open diff, Off mode: 04:16.491
LSD, Corse mode: 04:16.783
LSD, Off mode: 04:15.330

 

That shows just how advanced the open diffs in the Scintilla are! It's crazy how much thinner the margin is between lsd and open diff runs

 

I feel that your testing and the cause behind the Scintilla being harder to drive with lots of understeer will come back to the lack of a well done sense of speed in game, it’s very possible that you don’t think you’re going as fast as you are, therefore entering into a corner too quickly and under steering quite badly.

 

I agree, I found myself believing that the car handled poorly until I realized I was consistently driving 20-30 mph faster than the sbr4 (which I used as a good handling baseline) into each corner, believing I was going the same speed. I believe this game could definitely use motion blur or other effects to truly add to the effects of high speed driving.

Edit: The statistics here on this thread clearly show that the Scintilla handle better than other cars people compare it to, but when they complain about the car handling poorly, they are also probably unconsciously going considerably faster than usual into the corners, just like I did

 

Has street tires
Has racing slicks

 

The Bolide also weighs nearly if not 1000 lbs less, and has a pretty similar amount of power, only about 100 less if I remember correctly.

 

Yup, pretty much all the time differential came down to the weight difference (Bolide weighs less) and the tires plus aero working together on the bolide to give it an advantage in the corners, as well as the rollcage stiffening the chassis.

It really goes to show just how fast the Scintilla is, that it can be only around a second behind a Group 5 spec-built racecar.

 

I extensively tested the Scintilla GTs Corse capabilities on the Nordschleife, and have gotten a laptime just under 7 minutes. (6:59:915) The car gets the decent laptimes mostly from its great acceleration and topspeed, in the corners it is actually lacking comparing to other (real) vehicles of its class. The Nordschleife offers many corners for great compairson, such as Hatzenbach, Flugplatz, Schwedenkreuz, Metzgesfeld and Mutkurve.

At fast corners, it does do great and wonderful, really profits from the aero. At slower corners however it does perform far below from what one can expect from supercars. There are street legal sportscars with only 510 HP, which do outclass the 710 HP supposedly-track focused Scintilla GTs corse by a few seconds.

Now i do not know what kind of concept/philosophy the Scintilla had in mind, is it supposed to be a showoff car that is supposed to look nice and feel great, or was it actually meant to be a handling-performance track oriented supercar. That said, lets get into it.

At Hatzenbach the Scintilla enters the corner with around 175 km/h and gets an exit speed of 200 km/h. It is not possible to enter the corner with ~190, like most of the real track focused supercars are able to.

Before Flugplatz, there is a longer straight where the Civetta reaches around 270 km/h, and then you have to very carefully maintain the balance and brake slightly, in a manner to not trigger the ABS. If this is done correctly, and you manage to turn into while applying little brake pressure, speeds of ~190 in, ~210 out are possible at the outmost limit. While doing so, the car is very unstable and it often happens that it simply starts to loose traction, and slows down by quite a bit. The Handling has reliability issues at times.

On Schwedenkreuz, it actually does do great. In here it's really noticeable how it does profit from its aero. You can enter this corner quite easily with up to 240 km/h, and the car does not unsettle or fight with you whatsoever!

Approaching Metzgesfeld, it does do about ~180 km/h in, and can hit up to ~200 kmh/h out. In such a car, 200 while turning in should be possible.

After reaching insane 280 km/h on the straight before Mutkurve, it turns in at about 180, and exits at ~200. And again, for such a car, higher speeds should be doable without much of a fuzz.

 

Does the race front hood add anything more than looks ? That big gap would certainly be used for frontal downforce, as seen on the 488 pista for example.

 

Continue testing:
Scintilla GTx DCT
Open diffs, Corse mode: 04:16.713
Open diffs, Off mode: 04:16.379
LSDs, Corse mode: 04:14.985
LSDs, Off mode: 04:15.056
Scintilla GTs DCT
Open diff, Corse mode: 04:17.739
Open diff, Off mode: 04:16.476
LSD, Corse mode: 04:16.300
LSD, Off mode: 04:16.445

As shown, the GTx w/LSDs, despite having less horsepower and less downforce, is able to beat the GTs Corse w/LSDs.
Also about the handling. The Scintilla has "snap understeer", of course any RWD will oversteer if the throttle is all the way to the floor, but the Scintilla is unique is that after trail braking and then when you apply a little bit throttle(10%~30%) at the apex, the vehicle will suddenly understeer. The solution is either apply throttle a bit later, or apply larger throttle and attempt to use power oversteer to counteract snap understeer.
In the GTx w/LSDs, snap understeer is mitigated by the preload of LSDs and the non-existant power oversteer(cuz it's AWD) is counteracted by the LSDs torque bias. This as the result, makes the GTx w/LSDs able to apply throttle way earlier than other models during corner exit.
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Thus, the ultimate solution is still AWD + LSD

 

My concern with the frontal area is that there's a large empty gap created inside it when the Frunk Liner is absent and there's no undertray panel specifically designed to cover that hole on the floor of the car, in the place of the Frunk Liner.

 

This is very interesting to read. I personally never tested the GTx (AWD) versions of the car since there's no GTx track focused version and I do most of my testing on the Nordschleife, so I usually go for the GTs Corse and the Race version for racing. I will certainly try it out when I get back to BeamNG.
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I think what you said about this car's handling around corners like Hatzenbach and Flugplazt is the reason why it was difficult for me to get this car around the track. I would think before going into a corner "alright, this car should be able to take this turn at ___ MPH" only to end up flying into the wall. I would constantly overestimate this car's cornering ability. I still think the reason for this car's mediocre handling is due to the lack of frontal downforce. Just 100-200 pounds could reduce the understeer at mid-speed corners. I think the straight before Flugplatz is where I crashed the most. The car would either understeer into Flugplatz because I would brake after the crest to maintain stability, or lose stability because I would brake during the crest, upsetting the car. I don't know what you're using, but I usually use a controller to play BeamNG since setting my wheel up is a bit of a pain.

 

Ok I just did a test drive and I'm guilty of that, I didn't realize how sometimes with this car I'm trying to take corners at 200km/h