I picked up NFS:MW at a yard sale and of course, no manual. I don't understand the performance tuning options. can
someone explain these?
Handling - adjusts understeer/oversteer by adjusting front/rear grip ratio.
Overall grip remains the same, it just adjusts the ratio. It should only
affect cornering grip, but in reality it affects overall grip. Move the
slider to the right and you have more front grip and less rear grip.
At two or more clicks over, takesoffs are slower because of rear wheel
spin. Setting it one or two clicks to the right make increase oversteer
to help a car corner better, but I find that more speed is scrubbed
off when you do this. I ended up leaving the handling centered on the
Porsche Carerra GT and the Lotus Elise, which are the two fastest cars.
For online play with peformance matching on, the faster cars are detuned,
probably a bit lower than the BMW M3 GTR, making it the fastest
car with peformance matching on, slowing down the overall game and I
rarely play online because of this. I would suggest 0, 1, or 2 clicks
to the right and try it out on a track you know well to see if there's
a difference.
Ride height - lower should mean faster cornering speeds. I set it to
minimum (all the way left).
Turbo / Super charger - more to the right means higher power at the
cost of some lower rpm torque. I usually set it all the way right,
but this is probably not optimal.
Aerodynamics - I assume that it increases overall grip at the cost of
some top speed. It doesn't appear to affect understeer/oversteer
reaction. I set it all the way right, but again, this may not
be optimal.
If there are other values, I just leave them centered.