Idea for improved Controlling Scheme

[inTights]

Hi,

First of all, excuse my English. I hope my point come across nonetheless.

I always wondered how to make the control of bike better. IRL, everyone can easily just move a bike and get around, and this shouldnt be the biggest hurdle in a bike game. Using a steering wheel only improves the precision. Even a mod to handle bars, wouldnt change much about the fact that so much about riding in a game, is automated. Of course, to an extend, it has to be, as a lot of balancing is done by the human inner ear, but there is room for improvement to use, even the gamepad, to a greater effect. The biggest difference to simulating the handling on cars is, that the rider's body and movement, has a major impact on the handling (obviously), but that has to be managed better. So the idea is to bring more control to what teh rider (body) does. I imagine like 3 modes of positioning of the rider's body on the bike. This is probably a lot easier to realize, or applicable, with GP Bikes as the rider hangs far more over the seat, but is still relevant for this game. The goal is to better use the whole range of the analog sticks, or whatever input (even digi-pad would benefit of it).

So, Mode 1 would be rider sitting in the middle, and the whole range of the input device, moves the rider (or merely teh handle bar) effectively just slightly so its very easy to just drive straight. Something that is very easy IRL too.

Mode 2, triggered by the shoulder button left or right, is the rider hanging slightly on the side giving the whole bike and rider the notion for that direction, and the whole range of input would then move the rider/bike from, lets say, angle 8° to 20°, or whatever.

Mode 3 (probably only useful for GP bikes) would be the rider hanging way off to the side, and again, the whole range of the input device could be used to make adjustments.

I think this would get rid of all the twitchyness that is inevitable as of now and makes it more accessable to control. The whole realism factor doesnt suffer, for those hardcore simfans (i am one too btw), but theres just only so much that can be automated without being boring arcade. There is stil a lot of skill necessary to handle the bike, or get good times with it for that matter.

So what do you guys think?

[Mace-x]

I´d like that, altrought i already struggle when landing a jump, clutch, downshifting, both brakes and sit to take a corner hahahaha

Lots of time you have around 1-2 seconds to do all of the above and hope you´re not going too fast to avoid rear wheel lifting and loosing control, adding the above controls would be great but i cant see myself using them, the game has lots of buttons to press right now. 

[HornetMaX]

I don't think that would work.

Importance of body movements is vastly overestimated: people tend to think you actually steer a bike with your body (which is false).
For MX body movements are more important (especially mid-air) but still, you don't steer the bike because of what you do with your body.

The major difficulty is that the bike steering behaviour is very different between "low" speed vs "high" speed (high in that context starts at 50 Kmh): unless one is using Direct Steer Torque or Angle (what here is often called "hardcore mode"), then this affects you big time. But hardcore mode has other problems when playing with a joypad.

MaX.

[inTights]

@Hornetmax, correct, its not all, but a major part of getting around rough terrain- However, what teh different modes would do is 1) give a visual aid and wider range of animations, and more importantly, 2) limit the range of the input. Having the range of the thumbstick correlate the the whole motion teh handlebar can do, is just way too sensitive. It would help with the big difference between fast and slow. The leaning/foot-out mode [2] used at low speed would have the rider applying more steering for sharp turn, but in mode 1 be able to drive slow without jerking spastically.

@Mace-x, i think it would become a natural habit after even a short time. For flat turns you basically change no mode. While braking for a slow corner you tap the appropriate should button and when exiting the corner, the opposite one.

I just think many have tried and all use teh same method, but it always ends up ridiculous difficult (and again thats not what makes a sim a sim) and so automated that tehre is no room for precise racing. Its so dependent on perfect lines. As of now with the hardcore method, sure, maybe 10 or 15 people can get the bike around the track, but having races that  look anywhere close to how races are in real life is just not going to happen. And im not talking about one pass, but laps after laps actual close racing.