Editing NFSHS Car Performance Tutorial

- By Justin Martin aka IH8COPS

 The purpose of this tutorial is to teach people how to edit the performance file of NFSHS cars. Please do not email me with questions regarding this tutorial, I will not respond to questions about car performance editing. If this tutorial does not answer your questions, try posting a message on the Total NFS Message Board

Part 5: Tires/Grip Tires Tire Specs Front - The size specs of a tire. These seem to have absolutly no effect on car performance, however, I always set them to the correct setting anyway. This should be pretty much self-explanatory, the first number is width, the second is width/height ratio and the third is diameter. These numbers can be found in magazine road tests, on a car's webpage, in a car's owners manual, in the door jamb sticker, and they are always writen on the side of the tire. However, as you could probably guess, this seems to have little effect on the game. Don't believe me? Replace the tire specs (front and rear) with a single zero.

Tires Specs Rear - Same as Tire Specs Front, except these are the specs for the rear tires.

Tire Wear - Absolutly no effect on the game, given that NFSHS does not support damage/wear to tires, i'd assume this is yet another unimplemented feature. Leave it set to the EA setting of 0.0

Tire Factor - As with the Tire Wear, this does not have any effect on car performance. Leave it set to 1.0

Lateral Acceleration Grip Multiplier - This has a major effect on handling, and is probably one of the most important handling settings. Low settings make the car less nimble, slower to react to steering inputs. High settings make the car more nimble and quicker to react to steering inputs. Nimbleness seems to be affected slightly by other settings also, so there is no real guide on what to set the Lateral Acceleration, because it will vary depending on other settings.

Lateral Acceleration also seems to have a effect on grip, though not much. In general, keep this setting between 2.0 and 5.0

Aerodynamic Downforce Multiplier - This is the amount of downforce the car produces. The effect of this is usually only seen on tracks with sudden, sharp rises, where cars with low downforce will get airborn.

This setting does effect handling, but for all but the most extreme settings, the difference is hardly noticable. I'd recomend trying this set at 0.05 to 0.1 just so you'll see how it affects handling, however, that setting would be way beyond realism for even a grand prix car. The larger the number, the more downforce the car has.

Here's a approximant guide to go by

0.000500 - Low Downforce Vehicles (ie trucks, suv, some cars like Lotus 7, Morgan)
0.001000 - Typical modern car (ie Honda Accord)
0.001500 - Sports cars (ie Corvette)
0.002000 - Supercars (ie Ferrari 550)
0.002500 - Race cars (ie Mercedes CLK-GTR)
0.003000 - Grand Prix cars (ie Formula 1, CART)

Front Grip Bias - Seems to be weight distribution, though it is set a bit more rearward than the car's real weight distribution. For example, the Camaro's FGB is 0.53, the real weight distribution is 56%/44%.

In general, EA seems to set the FGB about 3% more rearward than the real weight distribution, so that's what i'd recomend using.

Wheelbase - A car's wheelbase is the length from the center of the front wheel to the center of the back wheel. This is common information, printed in almost all magazine road tests, on manufacturers webpages, and in owner's manuals. If all else fails, get out the freakin' tape measure and measure the wheelbase yourself. Unfortunently, this does not seem to make any difference on performance, even when set unrealistically long or short. But set it to the correct setting anyway.

Note that the wheelbase is measured in Meters.

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