Broken Cars?! How GTA Spoilers & Downforce Works - GTA 5 Fact-Finding №37

Back when GTA Online was released to the world  in 2013 the only performance upgrades available were Brakes, Engine, Transmission and Turbo.  But mid-way through 2014 another was added to that list in the shape of Spoilers. While  brakes improved the cars ability to stop and turbo increased power for better  acceleration and top speeds, aftermarket spoilers became necessary on any car  that had them in order to increase the traction bar within the game. This meant that every  car with a spoiler

instantly became quicker, as they could take corners at higher speeds than  they previously used to be able to. Examples of big losers in this change were the Adder in the  Supercars class and the Exemplar in Coupes, which didn't have spoiler upgrades available to them and  so suddenly found themselves in a worse position relative to where they they used to be as all  other cars around them with spoilers got quicker. One could argue that this was the start of a trend  that has continued over the

years of cars in GTA getting more and more traction with straight line  performance staying the same, making them easier, and less interesting, to drive. One could also  argue the traction to power ratio of the Adder, thanks to having a relatively beefy engine  and no spoiler, is one of the best in the game and makes it one of the most fun to drive  with against others in a competitive setting, alongside older sports classics and muscle  cars. But that's an argument for another time. Since that

change spoilers have become  commonplace, with almost every new car having a spoiler upgrade of some description. Some  cars even get a traction boost from other upgrades if they don't officially have a spoilers category,  like the Front Bumper modification on the Toros. Some cars, like the T20, get active spoilers  that increase traction when they're raised. But that wasn't the end of the story for traction  bonuses, because with 2016's Cunning Stunts update a new breed of cars were added with

a new concept:  Downforce. And this became an increasingly common thing to see on higher performance cars moving  forward, to the point that some of the quickest cars around the lap have all utilised downforce  modifiers rather than traditional spoilers for a long time now (although a non-stock spoiler  is still required to be added in Los Santos Customs to get more out of the downforce - for  more info on that check out the ultimate setup guide video I did for cars in GTA, which will be  linke

d in the description and pinned comment). A lesser known third change to traction bonuses  came with the Doomsday Heist update in late 2017, bringing a new breed of downforce cars that  worked differently to those in the past and has remained the default way of high  performance cars to generate their speed until the Open Wheel cars were released in  late 2019 and handled things very differently. But, while most cars fit nicely into one of the  three groups of traction bonuses (those being old s

poiler, old downforce, and new  downforce), some are outliers. And because these very specific cars straddle the  lines between multiple traction bonus methods, they're obviously broken. It's classic Rockstar  of course. The cars in question? The Itali RSX, Comet S2 and S2 Cabrio, and X80 Proto. All of  them could be, and probably were intended to be, quicker than what they currently are. In this  video we'll delve into how they're broken, why they're broken, and what it would look like  if they

weren't broken. And it will inevitably take us on a journey through how spoilers and  downforce works in this game. Strap yourselves in. Now as is natural when trying to collect, sift  through, and explain 8 years worth of changes to the way cars work in GTA, some of the finer  details of all of this won't be covered in this video in the interest of time and scope. But if  you're interested in understanding everything that's going on check the description for a  document that explains everythin

g in great detail, created by adam10603, Chilli, and  Nismo. And a big thanks to them for their help in researching all of this  in order to put this video together, with essentially all of this info coming directly  from the handling files and game code itself. So to gloss over the basics - air moving over  a car in real life pushes it into the ground, with higher speeds generating more force. High  performance cars use this property of physics to try to generate as much downwards force  as pos

sible, with the use of front and rear wings for example, in order to stay stuck to the  road at higher and higher speeds during corners. A car without such help is more reliant  on the grip produced by the tyres biting into the road surface. And this real  life physics property is modeled in GTA as well, which is why you can see cars being  visibly pushed down at higher speeds. In addition to that though, each wheel on a  car in GTA has its own value for downforce. Every car in the game has a  d

ownforce value attached to each of its wheels and it's this value  that determines how grippy the car is, with higher values pushing the wheel into the  ground more, increasing its traction. Spoilers and downforce modifiers are acting on this  value to increase the traction of each wheel. Most cars in the game, even those newly added if  they're not high performance super or sports cars, use the same spoiler mechanics that  have been in the game since 2014. Without any spoilers all cars in this

group have  a flat wheel downforce value (which from this point on I'm going to abbreviate to WDV) of 0.035.  When a spoiler is applied the WDV doubles to 0.07. Now obviously every car also has its own traction  stats in the handling files that are unique to it, which is why a stock Entity can go around a  corner at higher speeds than a stock Adder, and cars that have higher base traction will  get an even bigger benefit from a spoiler. Some cars from the Cunning Stunts  update in 2016, most not

ably the RE-7B, Tyrus, and ETR1, had a new value in the  handling files called fDownforceModifier, which allowed the WDV to be calculated dynamically  on the fly. For these cars, and cars that have this feature when they were added later, the  WDV is actually 0 when not moving, and increases exponentially until the car reaches 90% of its top  speed. At that point the WDV is 0.035 multiplied by the downforce modifier value. As an example,  the RE-7B has a downforce modifier value of 3.5, meaning

its final WDV is 0.1225. When a custom  spoiler is added, this value increases by 25% more, rather than doubled like with regular  spoilers, meaning that a fully upgraded RE-7B has a maximum WDV of around 0.15. That's more  than double the value of the 0.07 experienced with a regular car, and explains why these  downforce cars are so grippy at higher speeds. Naturally though that comes at the cost of grip  at lower speeds, with these cars having worse performance in slow speed corners as their 

WDV drops below 0.07 when travelling below a certain speed. In some cars that don't  have very high downforce modifier values (meaning values that are in the 1 to 2 range,  with a value of 1 being equivalent to having no extra downforce), it would actually be better  to have the old mechanics and a regular spoiler. This can be seen with the Itali GTB, which uses  standard mechanics, and the Itali GTB Custom, which has a fairly low downforce modifier value of  1.5 (in comparison to the 3.5 value

of the RE-7B). Because the cars are basically otherwise  identical, on most circuits that aren't full of longer faster corners the regular  GTB will actually end up being quicker, because the GTB Custom can't keep up enough  speed on a normal track to experience better grip from its downforce than what the regular  version can with its normal spoiler. In essence it works just like high downforce cars in  real life - the quicker you're travelling, the more downforce you're experiencing  and the f

aster you can go around corners. The newer downforce mechanics found on cars from  the Doomsday Heist update onwards use values in the hundreds for the downforce modifier  (for example the Emerus has a value of 350 in comparison to the 3.5 of the RE-7B),  though this is probably just used to differentiate them from the older mechanics  because the calculations divide by 100 first before doing anything with those values. For the  newer mechanics it's a very similar situation to what we just saw,

except there's a lower cap at  the top and a higher cap at the bottom. We'll use the Emerus as an example and compare it to the  RE-7B since after the initial division of 100 they basically share the same downforce modifier  value of 3.5 anyway. While the RE-7B has a WDV of 0 when standing still, the Emerus has a WDV of  0.037. At the top end, the RE-7B's WDV is 0.1225, whereas that of the Emerus is only 0.105. So the  Emerus still experiences some good grip at low speeds in comparison to the RE

-7B, but doesn't  have the same level of grip at high speeds. While the WDV of the RE-7B increases  exponentially immediately upon moving, the WDV of the Emerus stays at a constant  0.037 until it reaches 40% of its top speed, then increases exponentially until maxing out  at 90% like the RE-7B does. Essentially the new downforce mechanics allow for the best of both  worlds, with the cars still being able to perform somewhat competently at low speeds, but not  having quite the same performance a

t high speeds. This basically serves to negate the problems seen  with the Itali GTB and its Custom variant that I just mentioned. Non-stock spoilers on these cars  again increase the WDV by 25% just like before. I'm only going to touch on the downforce  mechanics for the Open Wheel cars because it's not the focus of this video, but open  wheel cars act slightly differently again. It is however the same principles with WDVs all  increasing until the car reaches 95% of its top speed. But custom w

ings have unique modifiers  that only affect the WDV of the front wheels or the rear wheels depending on whether it's  a front wing or rear wing being applied. With all of the wing options changing the WDV of  front and rear wheels, there are many ways to set up these cars as we covered in detail  in the Open Wheel cars lap time testing video, which will be linked in the description  and offers a lot more information on this. There is one final type of traction  increase that we need to cover, a

nd that's active spoilers. These are the things  you find on the back of the T20, Furia or Ignus, that raise up as you reach a certain speed. They  essentially act identically to the regular spoiler mechanics, with a WDV of 0.035 when the spoiler  is down and a WDV of 0.07 when the spoiler is up. There are some special cases like the Nero and  XA-21 which have slightly higher WDVs than normal when the spoilers are raised, but they largely  work the same when raised as if you applied a regular sp

oiler to any non-downforce car. One  thing to note is that active spoilers always override regular spoiler upgrades and downforce  modifier values. For example the XA-21 and X80 Proto have active spoilers as well as upgrades  in Los Santos Customs that increase traction, and the Itali RSX has an active spoiler as well as  regular spoiler upgrades and a downforce modifier, but none of them make any difference  because the active spoiler behaviour always takes precedence and  overrides everything

else. Speaking of the Itali RSX, what's the deal with  that car? It feels so fast but also really slow at the same time. The Comet S2 is another  one that looks like it should be quick based on the handling files, but gets a mediocre lap  time. Both suffer from poor cornering ability, and the reason is related to their active  spoilers. This also applies to the relatively new Comet S2 Cabrio which is basically  almost a carbon copy of the regular Comet S2. Now these are the only three cars in th

e game that  have active spoilers, regular spoiler upgrades, and a downforce modifier, and while the active  spoiler behaviour still takes precedence, I at least find that an interesting coincidence.  In the end it doesn't matter though because these three cars all have an active spoiler that force  a constant WDV of 0.035. It doesn't double to 0.07 like all other cars with active spoilers.  They're all essentially permanently stuck in a state equivalent to a regular car with no  spoiler upgrade

. The active spoilers on these cars basically force them to not use the downforce  modifiers that they have to gain extra performance, while at the same time not presenting  any benefit to cornering ability on their own. Whether this is intentional or not is impossible  to know. Perhaps a dev who didn't know better thought that by forcing the active spoiler to  not work, it would allow the downforce modifier to work instead. Obviously that's not the case.  If they had active spoiler that worked

as normal, both Comet S2s would get lap times  around the 1 minute 2 second range, which would put them on the same pace as the  Comet SR and around the top 5 in the sports class. If they were using the downforce modifier instead  they wouldn't be much quicker than they are now, and they'd actually be slower on  tracks with more slow speed corners because their downforce modifiers  are actually a pretty small 1.2. Meanwhile the Itali RSX would improve  substantially, regardless of whether it was

helped by a normal active spoiler or the downforce  modifier, and become easily the quickest sports car in the game. The car has the potential  of getting a sub-58 second lap time with the active spoiler working as it should, and a sub-57  second lap time with the downforce modifier of over 3 that it has working as it should. It should  be noted that these lap times are quicker than the Krieger and Emerus at the top of the Supers  class, and closing in on Vigilante and Open Wheel car levels of

lap time, so maybe it's a good thing  the RSX in particular doesn't work as it should. Regardless of whether it had a normal spoiler  bonus, the active spoiler bonus, or using the downforce modifier that it has, if it was working  properly the Itali RSX would be a sports car with a better lap time than all supercars and only  beaten by Open Wheelers. But as of right now both the RSX and the Comet S2s struggle in the corners  because, just like the old Adder and unlike most other cars these days,

they essentially  don't get any benefit from a spoiler upgrade. Despite having an active spoiler and  spoiler upgrades in Los Santos Customs. One final broken car, and this one definitely  isn't intended behaviour, is the X80 Proto. The X80's flaps act as an active spoiler,  increasing its WDV as the tilt of the flaps increases. It starts out at 0.035 like usual, and  as the flaps tilt slightly upon moving, raises to 0.042 when travelling in a straight line. When one  of the flaps is in its mos

t upright position, when cornering, the car's WDV increases to the usual  0.07. However, depending on where you are on the map, the X80 will experience different behaviour  when getting a WDV increase when turning. Being on the left side of the map will make the right  flap have the final say on the car's WDV, and being on the right side of the map will make  the left flap have the final say on the car's WDV. Since the flap that activates is the flap that's  on the side of the direction you're t

urning, this can have some interesting effects. If you're on  the right hand side of the map and turning left, you'll get the full traction bonus from that  left flap. But if you're on the right hand side of the map and turning right, the right flap  isn't doing anything and you get no traction bonus. The opposite is true if you're on the left  side of the map, or driving around a circuit that crosses the line between the two halves of the  map. It's basically like driving with a custom spoiler

in some corners, and a stock spoiler in  other corners. The only way to fully experience what driving the X80 Proto should be like, is to  have a circuit that crosses the middle of the map and have only right turns on the west  side and left turns on the east side. So we've pretty much covered the full story  of grip increases on cars in GTA Online, from the very early days where there was no way  to increase grip, to now where there are multiple different methods and bugs to go along with them.

  And the irony of it all for me personally is that the original cars were the best. Over time we've  seen a general trend to more grippy cars, but the power driving them forward hasn't seen the same  level of improvement. The higher downforce cars are for sure an interesting experiment, but  they're really boring and frankly bad to race with. Open Wheel cars for example can take  corners at such high speeds, but have really poor top speeds in comparison. That leads to cars  that can take most c

orners at full throttle which completely removed any element of skill involved  in braking, taking the correct racing lines, etc. Some of the best cars to race with these days  are those with not a lot of grip and really high top speeds. The Pariah is a perfect example  since even with its regular spoiler upgrade it isn't the most grippy car in the world, and its  powerful engine and super high top speed require some skills to be able to handle. And in possibly  the greatest irony, one of the mo

st fun and skill based cars to use for races in the supercars class  is the Adder. With its lack of spoiler upgrade and still respectable top speed, it's a challenge to  drive well while providing some excellent side by side racing experiences. If anything that should  be the power to traction ratio baseline for most supercars, but I get the impression Rockstar  have been trying to consistently make cars easier to drive over the years as a whole. We're  just lucky we got outliers like the Pariah

. Nevertheless it is interesting  to see how things have developed. I just hope that for the next GTA game we get cars  with some higher top speeds and less traction. The fact we now pretty much have cars at the  top of the muscle and sports classics classes that handle just like bog standard sports cars, when these classes used to be filled with somewhat  challenging cars to race with, says it all really. So I hope you've enjoyed this journey  into Spoilers and Downforce in GTA. Let me know all

your thoughts down below  in the comments, whether it's about how cars handle these days in terms of  grip levels, or if you've got something to say about the broken cars like X80 and RSX.  And of course like the video if you enjoyed. Thank you all so much for watching I really  do appreciate it, and I'll see you next time.