This manual and its appendices are intended to give an overview of the complex and fascinating topic of race car vehicle dynamics. They also discuss the strengths and peculiarities of GPL's physics model and implementation in some detail.
However, there is no substitute for a detailed understanding of race car vehicle dynamics. Race drivers today, both real-world and sim-world, need to understand what's going on in their chassis and at the tire contact patch in order to get the best out of their car.
Toward this end, we highly recommend that you acquire copies of the best race car vehicle dynamics books available, and that you peruse certain Web sites containing detailed discussions about GPL's physics implementation. Because this implementation is so detailed and so accurate, virtually everything you read in the real-world racing books will apply directly to GPL. The Web sites focus on the cars modeled in GPL and will also alert you to specific issues peculiar to GPL.
Ricardo Nunnini has done a fantastic job with his GPL Foolishness Web Site. This is the most comprehensive reference and tutorial on GPL's physics that I know of. It covers driving and setups, and touches on hardware and other topics. Reading this site is essential for any serious student of GPL and the art of racing.
Steve Smith wrote Four Wheel Drift, the book that comes with GPL, and has developed an addendum to that book, the Advanced Setup Guide, as well as the F2 Superguide, an excellent guide for setting up GPL's Advanced Trainers. Much of the material here is also applicable to the Grand Prix cars and the Basic Trainers.
New! Steve's new 60/60/1 Setups have changed my opinions about differential settings. Be sure to check out his explanation and try his setups! See my comments about this approach on the Differentials page.
My own Web site is a general reference for GPL. It contains extensive information about GPL, including a general FAQ and FAQs dealing with hardware and online racing, downloads, and links to many other GPL-related sites.
Virtual Racers' Online Connection (VROC) is a Web site devoted to Internet-based racing with GPL. At VROC, you can host and join races with GPL enthusiasts worldwide. As you begin to master the art of developing setups in GPL, my guess is that you'll want to test their worth - and yours as a driver - in the heat of battle with other real, live drivers. VROC is the place to do it.
If you're like me, not exactly a math genius but with a desire to understand race car behavior and know the practical details of race car setup, there are two books which I feel are indispensable. These are Carroll Smith's Drive to Win, and Paul Van Valkenburgh's Race Car Engineering and Mechanics.
Carroll recommends a number of other excellent books, including Going Faster, by Carl Lopez, a long-time instructor at the Skip Barber Racing School. This book is essentially the textbook for the racing school, and is a book no modern racing driver should be without.
If you have a taste for engineering formulas and a desire to know it all, Race Car Vehicle Dynamics, by Milliken & Milliken, is the book for you. It's expensive, but it's been Dave Kaemmer's bible throughout the four-year development process of GPL's fabulous physics engine.
All of these books are available from Amazon Books and Barnes & Noble, as well as Classic Motorbooks at 800/826-6600.
Note: Doug Milliken tells me that Amazon and Barnes & Noble don't stock his book, so it can take a long time to get it if you order from them. He recommends ordering directly from the Milliken Research Associates site or from the SAE. Doug also notes that many other good racing books are available from the SAE site.
Replay analysis is the virtual-world race engineer's equivalent of telemetry. It can be extremely valuable both for helping to hone driving skills and for analysing the impact of setup changes.
The best replay analysis tool I know of is the superb GPL Replay Analyser, by Jonas Matton and Martin Granberg. GPL RA can extract laps from one or more replays (including replays of online races) and do plots and graphs on up to five selected laps. It has a number of terrific features, including:
- Track map with plot of the racing line used by each driver
- Real-time, moving plot of these racing lines
- Speed, gear, and revs at each point
- Zooming, printing
- Graphs of speed, revs, and other "telemetry" parameters
- Time difference graph between two laps
- Map with highlight to quickly locate track section being graphed
- Zooming
- Practice lap times
- Race lap times
- Lap charts (practice and race)
- Complete race reports
- Drag and drop replay files onto GPL RA
- Double-click on replay files in Windows Explorer
- Search all replay files for a given track
- Extact and save single laps from larger replays
GPL RA is a powerful and extremely useful tool. I use it after many online races to help me understand where I'm losing time to faster drivers, and to evaluate my performance over the course of the race. It's also useful for keeping track of fastest laps for add-on tracks.
GPL Spy Girl, available from the GPL Utilities area at The Pits, combines a lap from each of two replays into a single replay file, which can then be viewed in GPL.