Introduction:
An excellent tool was released for ARCA Sim that many of us, including myself until it was pointed out to me, didn't know about. A plugin was included with the sim that everyone with the newest updates should have. Thanks to Rob Cobb for creating this for us.

What this plugin does is it takes a snapshot of your setup as you leave the pits and then records various bits of data on each run. It then builds an .htm file viewable in any internet browser. Using the information shown in this plugin should be a huge help in the creation and building of setups.

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Configure the Plugin:
To configure the plugin, you must find the ARCASetupDiffsPlugin.ini file. This file is located in the root Arca Remax folder. You can open and edit it with notepad in the same way your PLR is edited. Here settings can be changed for the plugin by changing the values after the equals sign.

Some of the values that you may consider changing:
Enable Race=0 change to Enable Race=1 (the benefit of this would be that it would record data during the race, by default it does not)
Max Laps=?? to Max Laps=400 (I don't remember the default value but I made it much larger for long practice runs, and full races)

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The Plugin:
Now that its configured, do some laps in practice on a track that you'd like to work on. Once you're back in the garage after doing some laps, Alt-Tab out of the game and find the .html file that was created.

This is found by going to ARCA Remax/UserData/"Your profile"/SetupDiffs/"Track Name"

There you will find a .htm file for each session you've had. Find the session you've just done, found easiest by sorting with the Date Modified, and open it up by double clicking it and it will open in your web browser.

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Using the data:
The data is divided by Runs into columns, each column corresponding to the data retrieved during that run. Each time you exit back to the garage, you pit, or have a yellow flag, it will end the run and create a new one.

In addition, it will take a snapshot of the setup that was used during that run. A limitation to this, is if you change a setup while pitting, it is unable to record what changes were made.

The page will look like this:

For each run you can click the number of laps link, to give the details for each lap. And at the bottom you can see the details of the setup by clicking View Complete Setup.

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Explanations:

Grip: "An approximation of what fraction of the contact patch is not sliding." Thus, a value of 0 would mean that the tire experienced a complete slide, or locked up, during the run. A value of 100 would mean 100% grip was maintained during the whole run. Any value in between will be the maximum grip loss during that run. (So for this tool to be useful, it would be a good idea to not spin your tires or lock them up coming in and out of the pits since it takes the max grip loss and not an average)

Wear: "Fraction of maximum possible 100%. Not necessarily proportional with grip loss." So your tire wear should start at 100% and go down as the tires wear. Improving the rate at which this number goes down should result in being faster during longer runs. To do this, it would be a good idea to run an equal amount of laps for each run. In addition I assume a value of 0% meant the tire blew.

Color Coding:
Red = Engine overheat light activated
Yellow = Most extreme value recorded for the run/session
Green = Best lap, fastest speed etc.

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Thanks:
Once again I thank Rob Cobb for creating this. His web page providing info and updates on the plugin are available at:
Plugin Link

In addition there is a link for donation.

My intention is to add more to this post, including descriptions of what each detail means and perhaps what should be taken from it. Particularly if someone could give me a great description of Tire grip and wear, and what you're looking for in those values. And I was curious of what the color coding means. Feel free to post anything else that would be useful in using this plugin.

Thanks.

Thats cool, a little Arca Motec if I understood well, useful for a car that changes a lot in a full tank run, thx for sharing

That is really cool. I remember in one of the patches they talked about adding a setup plugin but I thought it was the setup comparer where basically you plug 2 setups in it and it shows them side by side so you can see what difference there is between the 2.

A few things I saw posted over at RSC from the creator of this plugin. I figured they might be helpful in understanding the plugin a little more.

"I included the grip and wear data because they looked like they might be interesting, but I'm still not making much use of the numbers. Here is what the documentation I have says:

Grip: "An approximation of what fraction of the contact patch is sliding." This leads me to believe that a value of 0 means the tire did not "slide" at all during that lap. If that is the case, maybe the plugin should be highlighting the highest value rather than the lowest....

Wear: "Fraction of maximum possible 100%. Not necessarily proportional with grip loss." From what I have seen, wear starts at 100 at drops as you "wear out" the tire."

"If you work on setups by noting which changes drop your lap times and the affect the changes have on tire temps, this tool takes care of recording that data for you.

Writing down tire temps can be a pain, but the biggest problem I have after making a few runs is forgetting what setup changes I made along the way.

The tool keeps track of lap times with tire/engine temps AND shows them WITH the setup changes that were made for that run. You should be able to take a look at the output from the plugin and note how each group of changes affected your tires and lap times.

As a side benefit, I thought it might be valuable to view max and avg tire temps rather that the last tire temp reading."

"Red = Engine overheat light activated
Yellow = Highest value recorded for the run/session (except for traction mins)
Green = Best lap, fastest speed etc.

The yellow highlighting for the tire pressures and temps were added first in an effort to make sure enough laps were being run to get the tires fully up and warm. If the warmest tire temp is on the last lap of the run, I take that as an indicator that more laps are needed to properly evaluate the tire temps. All the other highlighting followed that initial desire."

Thanks William,

Finally took the time to go back and update the post with those explanations including some of the further discussions that went on over at RSC. I hope my explanations are correct, to the best of the communities knowledge. (since ISI really seems to be the only people that know what those grip and wear values really mean) Feel free to correct me with what other people found out or your own observations.

No problem. Also it should be noted that inside the ini file you can enter a folder location anywhere on your computer for the files to go to. For example I have mine set to go to a folder on my desktop.

Mine is like this:
"Folder=C:\Documents and Settings\WilliamXP\Desktop\ARCA Setup Diffs"

It is under the [Output] section.