Hey, if you flog an engine hard enough the oil overheats too. But usually not before the radiator blows its top. Usually overheated oil means actual engine damage.
I think it's mostly because it's simple, straightforward, and open ended. There's no pretentions of a "plot" to worry about, no slogging through pre-generated tournaments, just hop in the car and drive. You don't even have to install anything.
The multiplayer works very well, which is something very few racing games can claim. That's a very big selling point these days.
Finally, I think people really appreciate the developers being so involved in the community. Unlike most games, where you buy the game, maybe download a few patches for serious bugs, and then what you've got is all you're getting, the LFS team are continually improving the game, and seriously considering the opinions of the players. When everyone was complaining about the "Blackwood Bump" and the dangerous chicane, we got an updated track with the bumps smoothed out and the chicane widened. People asked for a high speed track, and we got Westhill. We wanted touring cars, and got the GTRs. How many games can boast improvements like that?
The multiplayer works very well, which is something very few racing games can claim. That's a very big selling point these days.
Finally, I think people really appreciate the developers being so involved in the community. Unlike most games, where you buy the game, maybe download a few patches for serious bugs, and then what you've got is all you're getting, the LFS team are continually improving the game, and seriously considering the opinions of the players. When everyone was complaining about the "Blackwood Bump" and the dangerous chicane, we got an updated track with the bumps smoothed out and the chicane widened. People asked for a high speed track, and we got Westhill. We wanted touring cars, and got the GTRs. How many games can boast improvements like that?
Well, the XFR and UFR and kind of special cases. They frankly have too much power for their own good, and racing them without frying the tires requires about as much throttle control as the FO8 
That said, it's possible to keep their tires under control, for a relatively short race at least. An endurance race with these cars would be... interesting.
That said, it's possible to keep their tires under control, for a relatively short race at least. An endurance race with these cars would be... interesting.
Indeed, the tires are preheated. Just sit around on the start line for 5 minutes without moving, and your tires will cool off--blue is not ambient temperature, BLACK is ambient, which is why the center of the tire goes black when you blow it out.
At any rate, when I'm driving my best, I usually have trouble with my tires being too cold--the only time they overheat on me is when I'm driving poorly. Of course, that just means I'm not very good at driving "at the edge".
Anyway, watch a really good driver, and s/he can keep the tires a full perfect green until the tread literally wears completely off. I've seen it happen.
Last edited by 5th Earth, .
Well, I'm rehashing, but let's see...
Group B-type rally cars--especially the ones made just as the class got banned
Can-Am racers
"muscle" cars--something with a crappy leaf-spring solid rear axle
rwd competitor for the UF1--I'm thinking VW Karmann Ghia clone
Old-style formula racers--bullet body, skinny tires, no downforce
Group B-type rally cars--especially the ones made just as the class got banned
Can-Am racers
"muscle" cars--something with a crappy leaf-spring solid rear axle
rwd competitor for the UF1--I'm thinking VW Karmann Ghia clone
Old-style formula racers--bullet body, skinny tires, no downforce
That's not a stiched screencap. Did you figure out how to hack the camera?
(good work btw!)
I imagine that a narrow field of view is better than a wide one, right? You won't see as much of the track in each shot, but there will be less distortion due to perspective, and the objects on the edges of the shots will line up better.
That's really odd. I can't see any reason why that should have happened--you didn't bounce over a curb or anything, and I didn't catch anything unusual watching forces mode.
The only thing I can think of is maybe your rollbars are too soft, but just looking at the replay that doesn't seem to be the case.
Incidentally, make sure you specifiy what car you're in, if your racing name is different from your forum name--I missed it the first time because I didn't know what car to look at. Also, that part of the track is more commonly referred to as the "S" rather than a chicane.
As for your driving, your lines are inconsistent, but you seem to have fairly good control of the car. Just practice is all I can really recommend.
The only thing I can think of is maybe your rollbars are too soft, but just looking at the replay that doesn't seem to be the case.
Incidentally, make sure you specifiy what car you're in, if your racing name is different from your forum name--I missed it the first time because I didn't know what car to look at. Also, that part of the track is more commonly referred to as the "S" rather than a chicane.
As for your driving, your lines are inconsistent, but you seem to have fairly good control of the car. Just practice is all I can really recommend.
You're using a keyboard, aren't you?
IIRC it'll work in XP as long as you leave the program open in the background. it's not optimal as it eats some system resources, but sometimes I have to do the same thing in win2k, which has the same non-persistent deadzone problem (FFS Micro$oft, honestly).
I think there is some tire noise, but it's not very prominent. I only notice it on the oval, when I'm running 260+ km/h.
Transmission whine is something worth noting--it'd also be audible in the road cars when in reverse, since the reverse gear in all manual cars is straight cut for mechanical reasons.
Audible pit crew is an ambivialent thing for me--yes it's realistic that you'd have a pit crew , but somehow it just doesn't seem "right" for LFS. I'd almost say what you should do is have a friend in spectate mode watching you all the time, and have hir actually talk to you.
IIRC, isn't a little red light supposed to come on in a road car when you're low on fuel? It's not exactly calibrated to anything, but it's a nice warning.
It looks like the argument was resolved, but I was going to say in a real-world application the amplitude stays the same, because increased movement due to downforce in one direction is exactly offset by decreased movement in the other direction, due to the same force.
Anyway, besides changing ride heights screwing up your suspension geometry, there's also the basic issue of keeping the car low to the ground--by using stiffer springs, you can have a lower ride height without bottoming out in the bumps and corners. Ignoring ride height regulations and track surface conditions, in the spirit of maximizing performance you'd probably keep going lower and stiffer until the frequency got so high the car was impossible to control.
Okay, so to sum up... downforce does not affect suspension frequencies. So 0.6 of my calc is wrong too, but only because of asking for weight+downforce (ignoring the issue that 2Hz to 1 tonne as a linear ratio is a bad assumption).
2 Hz per tonne was the wrong phrase--I know that frequency decreases with increased weight. Knowing that the relationship is not linear is good though--it won't change how the program works, but it will change how I use it.When it comes to downforce, I calculate suspension frequency with the downforce in effect. Since the car "weighs more" with downforce, I base my spring rates on the increased weight. That way the car acts "normal" when it's at speed. That the frequency will increase at low speed is understood--but I measure downforce using the average speed I have in corners, so I'm not going to be going significantly slower except in the pits, where the suspension isn't very important. Of course this means at high speed the frequency is actually too low, but in that case I'm probably driving a straight line and again a perfect suspension isn't very important.
I have a question regarding suspension frequencies, sparked by recent discussions around my suspension calc.
In your guide, you say optimum frequency is around 2 Hz per 1000 Kg of car mass. Does this mean that on a front or rear-only basis, the optimum frequency is 2 Hz per 500 Kg?
In your guide, you say optimum frequency is around 2 Hz per 1000 Kg of car mass. Does this mean that on a front or rear-only basis, the optimum frequency is 2 Hz per 500 Kg?
With those downforce and speed settings, apparently yes. You've done nothing wrong that I can see, we appear to be looking at a limitation of LFS. The FZR is just too nose-light (now that I think about it, my previous post was inaccurate--high downforce and speed would have made the springs softer, so clearly that wasn't the problem).
Granted, if you speed up a bit then the spring rate falls to usable levels, but I can certainly see a situation where 40m/s is plenty fast.
My only suggestion is, either change the optimum frequency to a lower number, or manually plug in 260 for spring rate and work from there.
The force given in the GRC includes both a driver and a 50% full gas tank.
At what speed are you measuring the force, and what are your wing angles? That will make a big difference what sort of values you are getting. And what are you using as optimum frequency?
244 is within the allowed range--maximum stiffness is 260. I know that 166 and 244 is a wide difference, but bear in mind the FZ50 GTR has really unbalanced weight distribution--more than 60% of the weight is on the back, so if you use the same optimum frequency in the front and back, the front springs will be much stiffer than the rear ones. For this reason, for the FZ the "0.75 max frequecncy difference" rule doesn't apply as strictly to the FZ as to other cars.
Is this a bad thing or not? I'm not sure, really. Try it and see what the car handles like--my guess is it will handle reasonably well, since stiffer springs in the front will tend to cause it to understeer, and the FZ normally has huge oversteer.
As for 244 and 166 being high, yes those are high values, but if you are running a lot of downforce at high speed, I could see getting numbers that high. On the other hand, I would ask you if you really need that much downforce, and is your test speed really representative of your average speed in corners, which is where having the proper spring rates is most important. For example, on my oval setups, even though I can hit 283 km/hr (~79 m/s) in the straights, I test at 270 km/hr (75 m/s) because that's closer to the speed I actually carry in the corners (and incidentally, my wings are usually set around 4-7 degrees). On a tight circuit, say AS_cadet, I might set my test speed as low 25-30 m/s.
Well, I'm biased, but I checked the math over once more to make sure I hadn't made any stupid mistakes (again), and I'm pretty confident that (f*2pi)^2*m is correct, at least judging by my source for the equation, http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/shm2.html
Whether or not the fact that we're working with two tires/springs makes a difference, I don't know. I haven't thought about it before, but I don't think it makes a difference. My guess is that the slider shows the total stiffness of both springs taken together, so everything works out the same.
I've updated the calc. After looking at Bob Smith's GRC2, I've realized that my calculations for downforce aren't just slightly wrong, but terribly, terribly wrong. I've changed the spreadsheet accordingly, and I'm now advocating using the GRC2 to derive force data, so I'll limit myself to the equations I'm pretty sure I understand. The spreadsheet should be much more accurate now, though of course, there's no accounting for taste--just because the spreadsheet gives a numerical answer down to 3 decimal points doesn't mean it's "right".
Amusingly, you can do this in any car, even the UF1000 (brakes only of course).
I always try to tune my car when I've got about a 50% fuel load. That way, any weirdness in handling caused by changing weight is averaged out, starting slightly off, getting better, then slightly off again, instead of starting perfect and then just getting worse.
Granted I've yet to have a race when I needed a full tank... but the idea is still valid.
Granted I've yet to have a race when I needed a full tank... but the idea is still valid.
Personally, when the S2 version of Colcob's analyzer comes out, I'll definitely be using that. The issue is not just that the S1 version doesn't have downforce support, as mentioned, but also that it doesn't have physical data for the S2-only cars (weight, weight distribution, and fuel loads). Getting the correct values out of it would involve inputing just as much data as you do in my version, except you have to hunt a lot farther to find the appropriate fields. The main virtue of my version, once you know how it works, is it is simple, fast, and flexible to new cars. It could be a lot faster, given the amount of manual calculation that is involved, but I intend to improve that eventually, provided Colcob's S2 analyzer doesn't come out soon.
The issue with downforce, if you're curious, is that the undertray and body downforce are applied unevenly to the front and rear of the car. I'm making an educated guess, judging from the forces view in LFS, that they are applied to the CG of the car, which means they affect the front and rear in proportions equal to the weight distribution of the car. A 60/40 distribution means body downforce is also split 60/40. I include this in my calculations.
This is all well and good--except my spreadsheet doesn't include the "dry" weight distribution, only the distribution including driver and fuel. While driver and fuel will affect the distribution of physical weight in the car, they will NOT affect the distribution of downforce. Which means that, if the distribution with driver and fuel is 55/45, but the "dry" distribution is 60/40, then downforce from the undertray and body will be split 55/45 instead of 60/40, as would be correct.
I call this a minor issue because the difference in distribution is usually only a few percentage points, and so has little end effect on the spring rates. But it's there, and I felt obligated to mention it. (in addition, front/rear wing forces are simplified to acting directly and solely on the front/rear wheels, but I don't have data to do them properly, as you have in the GRC)
The issue with downforce, if you're curious, is that the undertray and body downforce are applied unevenly to the front and rear of the car. I'm making an educated guess, judging from the forces view in LFS, that they are applied to the CG of the car, which means they affect the front and rear in proportions equal to the weight distribution of the car. A 60/40 distribution means body downforce is also split 60/40. I include this in my calculations.
This is all well and good--except my spreadsheet doesn't include the "dry" weight distribution, only the distribution including driver and fuel. While driver and fuel will affect the distribution of physical weight in the car, they will NOT affect the distribution of downforce. Which means that, if the distribution with driver and fuel is 55/45, but the "dry" distribution is 60/40, then downforce from the undertray and body will be split 55/45 instead of 60/40, as would be correct.
I call this a minor issue because the difference in distribution is usually only a few percentage points, and so has little end effect on the spring rates. But it's there, and I felt obligated to mention it. (in addition, front/rear wing forces are simplified to acting directly and solely on the front/rear wheels, but I don't have data to do them properly, as you have in the GRC)
Last edited by 5th Earth, .
LFS Suspension Calc
The LFS Suspension Calc is a small and simple spreadsheet that does a few slightly complicated equations regarding spring rates and damping. It's a fast and relatively easy way to determine how stiff to make your springs, and how much damping to use for a given stiffness.
This spreadsheet, although technically usable on its own, does require the knowledge of the exact forces on the front and rear of the car. This can be determined with difficulty by yourself, or it can be determined easily and quickly by using Bob Smith's LFS GRC2, which includes a downforce calculator.
The first version of this spreadsheet, 0.5, is fundamentally flawed. It will give a decent approximation of the right values, but it is, in a word, wrong. Version 0.6 (hopefully) fixes these flaws, mostly by making the talented Bob Smith do the real work. This version is also a little easier to use.
This spreadsheet, although technically usable on its own, does require the knowledge of the exact forces on the front and rear of the car. This can be determined with difficulty by yourself, or it can be determined easily and quickly by using Bob Smith's LFS GRC2, which includes a downforce calculator.
The first version of this spreadsheet, 0.5, is fundamentally flawed. It will give a decent approximation of the right values, but it is, in a word, wrong. Version 0.6 (hopefully) fixes these flaws, mostly by making the talented Bob Smith do the real work. This version is also a little easier to use.
Last edited by 5th Earth, .
Reason : spreadsheet updated
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