Walkman wrote: |
Further testing could be done to ensure that wherever we decide to cap "jumper" settings is faster with optimal jumper strategies than terrible drifting at +0 settings. |
Yo.
Alright, so here's my attempt to clarify where sliding/drifting stops being beneficial over regular driving. First test is neutral settings (+-0) on PT1:
youtu.be/HDgqxr7SHUQ
Screencap of the last frame (Left = drifting. Right = normal driving. This will be the case for future tests and screencaps) :

In the above PT1 demo, it was slower to slide/drift around the first 2 hairpin corners after the chicane because the benefits of drifting are weaker the faster the ship is travelling around the corner and the actual drift itself is usually slower than taking the turn normally - what makes it faster overall is the higher exit speed, which can only be properly utilised on a straight that's at least somewhat lengthy. Even though these downsides greatly limite the effectiveness of drifting at neutral settings, I was still able to save almost a whole second on the opening lap on PT1 in the TAS demo.
The benefit is also greatly increased when longer corners and boost are thrown into the mix:
youtu.be/PQXSbMJXLCM

The Silence 2 scenario is probably the best and easiest way of testing where the speed benefits of drifting stop so here's the same test but at +1 settings:
youtu.be/oOOzd-apUg0

Despite the settings now being above neutral, drifting is still faster by 0"62...somehow.
+2 settings:
youtu.be/aqJxdTtsuTk

Driving normally at the start saves 0"05 and only doing one drift on the first dash plate saves about ~0"2 over doing two of them at each dash plate.
This is where it starts to get tricky. In my opinion, I think that the 0"04 / 2-frame difference in the +2 settings test is negligible since the execution of the drift needs to be near-perfect in order to gain a tiny advantage, which, at least in this scenario, I think is only realistically achievable in a TAS.
Ultimately, these are (somewhat rough) TASes and not real-time runs so the potential to cut down time by sliding/drifting may not fully translate from these TAS demos to console runs, but having said that, the fact that there's potential in the first place is concerning. Despite the benefits of lowering the minimum settings allowed to 0 or maybe +1, I'm currently leaning towards slightly lowering it to +2 purely because that's where the sliding/drifting benefits seem to stop, at least for console runs.