.md

Comparing Setups

Put two setups of the same car side by side, parameter by parameter — what changed, what only one side has, and what cannot honestly be compared.

Two setups, side by side, one row per parameter. Use it to see what a remix actually did, to line up the version that worked against the one that didn’t, or to find out why two setups you have been treating as siblings behave nothing alike.

Setups is in Public Beta and requires a personal Plus or Ultra plan. A Team seat alone does not grant access.

Opening a Comparison

From your library, click Compare setups, select two setups and choose to compare them. From a setup you already have open, use Compare with…. That picker lists up to your 50 most recently updated setups in the same simulator and leaves out setups for a different car. Either way you can switch the version shown on each side afterwards — comparing v1 against v5 of the same setup is a perfectly good question, and often the most useful one.

The Five Kinds of Row

Most rows are identical and stay quiet. The rest are sorted into categories, because “different” is not one thing:

RowWhat it means
(untinted)Both sides agree
Δ ±nBoth sides have the parameter and the value moved
only in A / only in BOne side has the parameter and the other does not
≠ unitBoth sides declare a unit, and they are not the same unit

Each category carries a word, not just a color, so the rows stay readable if you cannot separate the tints.

Only in A / only in B is not a rounding error. Two setups you picked independently can come from different base files, so a parameter existing on one side only is routine — and reading it as “unchanged” would be a difference you have no way to notice.

≠ unit outranks the values. iRacing writes display strings that follow your metric/imperial preference, so the same tire reads 165 kPa in one export and 24.0 psi in another. Braking Lab does not convert — a value converted by eye is worse than an unconverted one, because it looks authoritative — and it does not pretend the two numbers are comparable. A unit mismatch is flagged even when the two numbers happen to be equal, since that equality is a coincidence of scale, and it stays out of the change count.

Reading Δ: Not Every Number Is a Magnitude

In Le Mans Ultimate a setup value is an index into the car’s option table, and the label beside it is what that index resolves to. So subtracting two of them counts positions on the dial, not physical units.

Braking Lab says which it is rather than leaving you to guess. A row that reads

CamberSetting     -1.00 deg  →  -0.75 deg     +5 steps

moved five clicks, and those five clicks are worth 0.25 deg. Printed bare under a header that says Δ, +5 beside two physical labels would be a sentence that contradicts itself. The word is what makes the number true, so it travels with it.

For iRacing the value is the magnitude, and Δ is the plain difference.

When Braking Lab Refuses to Compare

Some pairs cannot be compared honestly, and a refusal that says why is more use than a table of noise:

  • Different simulators. LMU and iRacing do not share a parameter vocabulary, so lining up their values would compare names that only look alike.
  • Different cars. Both car identities are known and they do not match. Putting them side by side would align values that have nothing to do with each other.
  • No readable values. An iRacing .sto is encrypted, so personal Braking Lab Setups does not accept, store or compare it. Export that setup from the garage as .htm and upload the export to make it comparable — see iRacing setups.

And one warning that does not block: if either setup stores no car identity, the comparison runs without the same-car check, and says so. Read those rows knowing a difference may simply be a different car.