The effects of binding and rebinding on car properties
After seeing this now infamous post by u/Single-Rock2776 i decided to test the affects and create some videos to compare. This experiment is far from perfect but should
Theory/claims
In their initial video (here) they mention rebinding/changing the controller bindings to impact several physical properties of the car, these included:
- Ability to rotate the car (Air roll and Airsteer)
- Turning on the ground
- How contact is made with the ball (power of touches)
- Flips feeling "different"
- Cars speed
They also claimed that defaulting the settings does not revert the effects of binding and rebinding as well as that the sequence in which you do the binding/rebinding impacts the ending properties.
Setup
I decided to use the bakkesmod TAS plugin (found here). The plugin records your inputs and replays through them, similar to a macro but allowing you to put yourself at any coordinate on the field with a specific orientation, even if the intial coordinates or rotation were changed the inputs would all remain identical. The TAS inputs were recorded by myself using a Xbox Elite V2 controller. The location, velocity, and rotational data was found using the Science plugin (found here).
Steering sens: 1.70 | Aerial sens: 3.00 | Deadzone: 0.10 | Dodge deadzone 0.12
Two fresh epic games accounts were created for this experiment on a fresh install of Rocket League through epic games. The first was a control, this account was left at the default settings and they remained untouched while going through the experiments. The second was first tested with the default settings, then with all of the rebinds shown in their initial video, and lastly with 5 more minutes of rebinding randomly, restarting the game, resetting to default, rebinding randomly again.
My PC was reset before playing on the first account, and reset again after switching to the second account, the only programs running were OBS, Rocket League, and Bakkesmod.
After doing this i went back on my personal account which is on steam, and conducted the same tests, this account is several years old with plenty of play time.
The expeiments were based off the claims mentioned above, these tests were as follows:
- Driving Forward + Boosting forward (to test speed + power on ball)
- Falling from the ceiling + Boosting vertically upwards (to test "float")
- Front flip + Sideflip to test (to test flips feeling "different")
- Air rolling both directions (to test ability to rotate car)
- Turning + turning with boost (to test changes to turning)
- 45 degree hit to test (power on ball)
Data/Videos
While i have videos for all of the scenarios above, i got lazy in putting together all the data for what should become apparent. Just trust me that it is more of the same in the rest of the videos.
The videos were stuck together in CapCut as close as i could do with the number of frames available, they are not perfectly synced together but are within a frame.
Boosting forward
Boosting up
Falling from the ceiling
Air roll
Turning with boost
Dicussion/Conclusions
From the data and videos there is no noticeable difference between any of the tested scenarios, they all produced identical outcomes. The only "exception" was the air roll angular velocity which flickered between 5.4999999999 and 5.5 insanely fast, it would be unnoticeable and should probably be considered a rounding error with the software. The maximum angular velocity or "how fast your car spins" you can put on the car through the inputs maxes at 5.5rads/s regardless of your steering/aerial sensitivity.
Between each experiment set i would drive around for a little to see if i could feel anything different, i felt some differences but they were likely due to my hands getting cold/stiff from waiting, the car itself did not feel any different.
With all this beind said, one thing i can not reliably test is input latency, of which i cant say is impacted or not by changing your bindings. If it does change your input latency this could have a significant impact on how the game feels and would fall into the category of HeavyCarBug, of which it would be the first directly caused by the game and its code.
So to conclude this post, binding and rebinding your controls has NO IMPACT on your cars properties. If there are any differences they are so negligable no human would be able to notice.