I'll open with, "this is a guide for the technical minded gamers, those who want to get the best performance out of their car."

If you want to just enjoy the game, the open road, have an arcade feel, leave all the settings on default. Don't touch anything, and drivng will be pretty easy, and effortless, the default is desinged that way. For more of a challenge, and personal touch, that's where these settings help you mold the performance to your desire. Making a grippy car slide, or making a drifter grip the road like glue.

-Traction Control (TCS)
This limits throttle to the wheels to maintain traction. Fully to the left disables it all together, allowing you to spin the tires by just slamming down the gas. This may look cool, but the tire burn, and lack of grip, means less acceleration, so you'll pick up speed much slower. Now at one point, 1/10, the TCS is active, but will give the smallest assistance in maintaining traction. This will be enought to launch the car at full throttle without losing grip, however during turns, the friction along with the throttle can easily make the tires lose grip. Between 1/10, and all the way to the right is a balancing game, how much do you want the car to hold grip instead of accelerate. Basically, more to the right, and the TLS prioritizes grip over forward acceleration.

Small note, sometimes if you want to force the car to lose grip by intentionally pushing too hard, having the TCS low can help.

-ABS (Anti-lock Breaking System)
If you don't already know, this is basically the same as TCS, but the opposite force, trying to stop, instead of pushing forward. All the way to the left disables it completely, and fully breaking your car will most likely slide, and that will actually take longer to fully stop the car. 1/10, and the ABS is active, but just barely. In most cases, this means you have full stopping power without trying to turn, but adding truning forces into the mix, and the wheels may still lock up. Again, between 1/10, and all the way right, it's a matter of balance, how far you want the brake power to go before it locks up the wheels.

-ESP (Electronic Stability Program) (Yea, real cars have these)
Admittadly, this one may take more testing, but what I found, it limits the power of the engine to maintain control to the driver. More to the right, you will have a much easier time making turns, however the car will feel slugish at times. personally, I leave this off.

-Slide Help
This is a game setting, I don't think real cars have this. It's for drifting, and changes the resting angle of the steering wheels to assist in controlling the drift. For instance, if you're drifting a right turn, the wheels might turn toward the left on their own. May make drifting easier, but personally, I feel it takes away the challange of it. I leave this off, or at a low setting.

These settings affect the individual car.

-Aero Distribution
This is pretty easy. Balance. This is the downward force of the air on the car, rather it's more downforce on the rear, or the front. Middle is neutral (or even), and more to the left is rear, more to the right is front. At high speed, this is how much grip gets balanced between the front or rear tires. Mainly noticable when trying to turn. More downforce up front, and the car turns more agressively, however the back can slide out very easily, so high risk of losing control. More downforce in the back, and the car gets more stable at high speeds, even resists turning at all if set to the extreme. Also, extreme to the front, and it can actually be hard to drive fast in a straight line at all.

-Gearbox
This is the max speed of the gears. No tuning each gear, just the overall balance. Most cars the default will be all the way right, which is maxing out the highest possible speed of the car. In theory anyway. Just because your car on the highest gear, maxing out RPMs, can reach 300/mph, doesn't mean your car can push it to reach that speed. You'll notice at times your car at the last gear, won't max out it's RPMs. Like the red zone is 9k, but the engine might be doing 7k. I can't say for certain, but I think of it as lack of torque, or power. It's an interesting balance, but max speed doesn't help you if you can't accelerate to reach that speed. You'll notice certain cars actually reach higher speeds if you tune the gearbox a little for acceleration. Also, think about what's more important, that max speed, or getting ahead of the pack between corners. It may be better to sacrifice the speed for power. This also comes into play on inclines. You do need more power to gain speed going up hill, and downhill takes less.

-Tire Grip Front/Rear
I honestly think this is very self explainatory. Less grip, more sliding. Also means brakes locking up more, and easier burnout, so less stopping power, and less acceleration. If a car happens to be too grippy for you, maybe this will help. Keep in mind the role of the front and rear. Your front steers you, and the back keeps you going straight. If your front wheels can't grip the road, you won't be able to turn. If your back wheels can't, your car may slide, but with skill, it could be a controlled slide, aka, drift.

-Brake Power
Very simple, just limits the power of the brakes. Think of it as not stepping on the brake all the way. This limits the actual brake down from 100%. Makes it easier to avoid brakes locking up the tires. There's no improving here, just trimming the perfomance to your liking.

-Brake Balance
This is the balance of the breaking power applied between the front and rear wheels. Basically, which will lock up first, or be at greater risk of losing traction while breaking. If you set this in the front, and your front wheels lock up, you won't be able to turn, your front wheels will just slide sideways. Turning power is in your front wheels ability to hold the road, and rotate sideways, pulling the front of your car in that direction. The more that grip is used for braking, the less it will turn your car.

Suspension
-Suspension Compression Front/Rear
This is how soft your suspension is. Softer, and less force is needed to push the wheel up into the car, this is to the left on the tuning bar. Soft suspension allows bumps to be absorbed before affecting the motion of the car. Hard suspension, and the sudden impact on the car may make it lose control, cars that rely on road grip. The suspension reacts to the tarrain, as well as throttle, braking, and turning. Stiffer rear suspension may drive the rear wheels into the ground for better acceleration, It's a physics game, figuring out what affects what, and how, and to take advantage of those forces.

-Suspension Rebound Front/Rear
This is how quickly the suspension settles to it's resting point. Left on this bar, and the car will bob up and down, and to the right on the bar, it will settle immediately. In movement, consider how fast you want the body of the car to settle. If your car drives over a bump, should it rise and fall with that bump, or act like it wasn't even there? Less rebound, and the car will have a floating quality, and keep it's motion more steady, even while the suspesion is taking in bumps, curbs, dirt, ect.

Think of a raid car, (R/R). Soft compression, and soft rebound, you can drive over a rock, and the car doesn't react, just moves past it. Stiff rebound, the car will try to level out fast, and stiff compression will force the body of the car to react immediately over any little change.

-Geometry Camber Front/Rear
This is the tilt of the wheels. Left is inward /-\, right is outward \-/, and middle of the bar is square |-|. Think of this according to the grip you are looking for under the circumstances you need it. Tires being flat against the road have the best traction, however the wheels tilt with the car as the car rolls in a turn. Negative camber /-\ can mean less grip in straight paths, but when trying to turn hard, and with softer suspension, the outer wheel will tilt, and grip the road, giving you more control of the turn. That why DF cars have the default negative camber.

They say Positive camber \-/ doesn't give any benefit, but it's my suspicion that when the suspenion allows the wheels to move upward, into the car, the wheels gain a negative camber. So say force under throttle bottems out the rear, and you have positive camber, perhaps at that moment, your tires go flat, and you gain more traction, more acceloration than if they where flat to begin with. Maybe same for the front under braking.
(I have yet to test this theory, but will soon.)

Anti Roll Bar
-ARB Front/Rear
This is tricky, I was completely wrong how this works at first. Let me explain what an anti-roll bar actually is. It's a bar that connects the left and right suspension to each other, and transfers the force of one moving to the opposite side. This means as one wheel goes up into the car, the other wheel on the opposite side will react the same way, even if there's nothing under it. On roads, in turns, this helps, as the cars mass tends to shift, the body starts to roll towards the outside wheels. This lifts the inside wheels, maybe not completely, but enough to lose grip. With ARBs, the suspension of the outside wheel in the turn, forces the opposite side to lower the car as well, both sides working together, lowers the center of gravity, and the car practically hugs the road, and risists shifting it's weight. Instead of rolling, or leaning sideways, the car drops, and turns, much more responsively.

The downside of this, at least in the game anyway. The suspension doesn't differentiate between a turn, and driving over a bump. On tracks, ARBs give you incredible control and stability. However off roading, let me use R/R for example. Go find a bunch of rocks, and park your car or truck on them. ARB will try to keep the left and right wheels even with each other according to the car, not the terrain, so you'll see a wheel or 2 hovering over the ground, not gripping anything. Turn the ARB setting all the way off, essentially removing them all together, and you'll see each wheel now acts indipendantly of the others, each one reaching for grip. This is what you want when driving through the whild. One point, one click, any ARB at all, and the left and right will be connected, which means not always have full contact with the ground. All that being said, the setting is the degree to how much the opposite wheel reacts to the one under pressure. A low setting for exampe may help for S/R cars, or dirt, where you want to minimize weight shifting (rolling), but still want small bumbs to only affect the wheel going over them. Stiff ARB have the opposite effect when hitting a bump on one side, as it rocks the car to find balance.

These settings are all about personalizing how the vehicels handle and perform for you. Key word, it's "personalizing". It's all about expiramenting, testing, and finding what works for you. The game doesn't explain much, so hopefully after reading this you won't feel so blind changing things.

One more detail about these settings. They all work together, and several effect each other. Finding balance on one setting isn't enough, you have to see how it will effect the other setting. For instance, ARBs connect to the suspension, if the suspension compression is stiff, the car won't lower itself in turns. If you have no ARBs, and the suspesion is soft, the car will shift it's weight, or roll sideways, tilting the wheels, and this will affect camber. Each setting effects a characteristic of the car, but understanding the physics, the forces, and the balance of it all, is how you master your cars performance. At some point, driving will feel effortless, like it's second nature to you, like your car is part of you.

I couldn't fit in every single detail, as some of the aspects are intricate, but hopefully this guide will help you on your way to breaking records, and getting the most out of The Cre 2. Have fun, be patient, and good luck.





(This is my guide, not perfect, and may be improved later on. If anyone has any major notes, or advice, feel free to comment.)