Yea, but you play on "normal steering", don't you? What
Normal Steering does, it
changes your actual steering input in the non-visual part of the game, just the physics engine I mean, to what is needed. On a controller it
changes the steering acceleration super fast if countersteering is needed and basically jumps to the ideal countersteering angle as soon as you flick the stick, with the car's weight at the front it makes the steering acceleration slower to not upset the car. It not only does this on a controller, but when using a wheel too.
If you turn that aid off - and that is what it is,
the most powerful assist (and most unrealistic if not on a controller) in the whole assist menu,
even though it's called just "normal" - drifting is harder than in rFactor 2, harder than in any sim even pCARS1, which's tire model was almost broken for slow-speed drifting.
I also made a video about Simulation vs Normal steering for a private talk with another fellow gaffer:
https://youtu.be/QfTkHVKQLsk
As you can see in the video, the steering angle change is non-visual. The tire direction differ from what the car is actual doing.
It's a bit like turning your simulation physics racing game into a bit of an arcade racer when playing with a wheel. Or the "latest news" comparison:
Like using controller aim-assist when using a mouse.
If they called it "controller steering help" instead of "normal steering" and "1:1 input matching" rather than "Simulation Steering", it would not only be more correct, it would make it more obvious to wheel users, how broken the tire physics are if you're not just following the racing line input suggestions but trying to drive it like a real car.
It feels to me like Turn 10 is disguising the shortcomings of their physics model ever since FM5's tire model by hiding that it can't cope with weird, snappy steering acceleration that should not lead to an almost uncatchable spin, but can't be achieved using a controller with the speed-sensitive steering and Normal Steering aid anyway, so nobody notices it.
[Side-note: Personally,
what I think the lag between physical and on-screen steering wheel is, is not actual lag, but an input smoothing filter that averages the last 60ms or so of input signal values (typically used for controllers in racing games), adding a kind of damp-spring to the steering because the physics engine /tire model has trouble coping with too swift changes]
