Driving Academy: Dirt Rodeo driving direction changes and other woes

[97tercel]

Good day,

After spending 8 hours across numerous days attempting to accomplish 3-stars on the "Dirt Rodeo" challenge in Driving Academy, I finally achieved what I thought would be a 3-star finish. At the end, it gave me only two, and displayed the "direction changes: 1" as the one I missed. Upon viewing the replay, I made a direction change indeed one time.

Shouldn't the star criteria then be only if the player makes 0 direction changes? If the criteria is to make one or less, and I made only one, does that not count as one or less?

I am very confused with the state of these Driving Academy challenges. I have seen a number of posts pointing out how unrealistic and frustrating they are, only to be invalidated by SCS associates stating that "they have been tested multiple times", and others stating "they aren't mandatory". It is part of the game I paid for, and I would very much like to accomplish these challenges. I tried replicating frame-for-frame a youtuber who accomplished Dirt Rodeo with three stars, only to find that on a mouse and keyboard, the steering simply does not go lock to lock as smoothly and quickly as those with full sim setups. I am playing with just keyboard, using mouse only for camera view.

The last section Dirt Rodeo is incredibly difficult. There appears to be no physical way for me to accomplish it, at least not without making a direction change. I go up and down that hill for hours, only to find that there appears to be no way to fit the trailer around the turn without hitting either side of the cones.

I have also noticed a number of bugs, including faulty hitboxes on many traffic cones (especially with regards to the trailer and trailer bumper, making the final section of Dirt Rodeo especially difficult), and in once case my timer didn't count time correctly (added nearly 45 seconds to my finished time on "Scatterbrained"). I verified each of these with a replay.

[Madkine]

Mark will likely also chime in, but the primary response is that they are intentionally difficult and if you want to complete them, get better.
For me these challenges are well above my skill level.

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[num_cmon]

Yeah, game sometimes give you "direction change" when you hit things(which obviously isn't your case) and sometimes when you brake too hard. Was kinda frustrated on one of the challenges where I was going fast enough towards parking zone. Slapped this space bar to engage parking brake and got that direction change literally for nothing.

I've also noticed this thing multiple times in game with unexpected scenarios where something happens and I need to brake hard. Sometimes in these cases my truck starts slowly moving backwards after stopping. (I use sequential transmission option so it's not me. Also it happened with parking brake in driving academy to me.)

[DisgruntledTrucker]

There should be a little bit of "grace" before it registers the direction change, but not much.

I will add that IRL, if you do a hard brake to a stop and release the brakes immediately, or even slightly before, you stop - the truck will indeed roll backwards. This is due to the suspension binding and unbinding

[num_cmon]

I will add that IRL, if you do a hard brake to a stop and release the brakes immediately, or even slightly before, you stop - the truck will indeed roll backwards. This is due to the suspension binding and unbinding

TIL
Thanks!