There are always alot of different opinions for Sim Racing-beginners but I would recommend to take an easy car for the moment and learn to drive stable and consistant around easy tracks (for example Blackwood GP). Take your time, do not push the car, and try to get 10-20 laps in without crashing or spinning, good laptimes will come later.

By the way there are alot of real drivers who do regularly Sim Racing for practise and preparations for the next Track. Jaques Villeneuve only knew the Australian Track from a Computer Sim, and when he came to F1 as a Rookie in his first Race he drove on the Pole immediately, he never was at the track before or in a F1 car, he only knew the Track from the Sim.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. even has his own NASCAR Sim Racing league where he regularly drives, Montoya, Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, there are alot of examples for real Racers using Sims on a regular bases for practise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79l31B_O3Yc

Just last year when Villeneuve was driving in a BMW M5 around the Nürburgring Nordschleife he said during the drive that he feels a little uncomfortable driving the last part of the track, because from the Videogame when he is doing Hotlapping he always restarts the lap when he makes a mistake, therefore he knows the first parts of the Track very good , but he doesnt see the last part of the track that often :-) Anyone using GPL knows exactly what he means

By the way, you should also consider buying NASCAR Racing 2003 from Papyrus/Vivendi, it is another excellent Simulation just like LFS, and you can drive the Portland Track in that Sim.

I think the feeling of Speed is very good in LFS, 100 km/h really looks like 100 km/h and not like 300 km/h in PGR for example. But then I also have TH2GO and that added really alot to the immersion and feeling of Speed. I think the feeling of Speed is excellent in LFS, but I'm always wondering if the cars are to fast, some cars who are close to cars I have driven in the real life are just a little bit too fast from 0-100 km/h or on a Quartermile, they seem to me like about 2 seconds too fast from 0-100 and approximately 3 seconds too fast down the Quartermile... Especially the Road Cars.

Quote from dpcars :

the replays i saw (is there a way to get in-car view for replay?). i meant saving it as video. haven't found that functionality yet, if it's there

If you press the "2" button on you keyboard you can save the last Replay. While watching a Replay you can press "V" to change views and then you also get the in-car view one.

You said that you still have some problems feeling when the car breaks out, especially with rear wheel drive cars. You have to compensate the lack of G-Forces with the Sound and the Vision, and when you didnt do much Sim Racing before it takes some time to get used to that.
I'm sure with more experience you will see and hear when the car is about to break out, for the beginning you might want to drive threw critical corners in a gear higher to prevent any Wheelspin when accelerating out of a corner. Don't hesitate asking whatever questions you have about LFS and Sim Racing in general.

To what Race Tracks did you take your DP1 car on by the way?

ah

I would also donate or pay for it, if we could have a real life Track in the future. Snetterton is a very nice Track as I know it from GPL. Snetterton, Goodwood, Brands Hatch or Silverstone, there are alot of good tracks in Britain were Scawen is from which would be awesome to have. It would be especially nice if the LFS F1 car could have a real GP Track to run on.

I really do like the different Tracks we currently have in LFS, they have nice Graphics and also the Track Layouts are fantastic (except for the Oval Track), but one or some real life Tracks would be great aswell.

Chances are slim that there is going to be a real life Track in LFS in the next couple of years. Probably real life Tracks will come as soon as Modding-Track creation will be possible in LFS, which could be 2, 3 or more years away. But how much does it approximately cost to license a track for a Game? Could LFS afford a GP Track or any other track in the future?

Last edited by George Kuyumji, Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:58.

Does Chaz drive with a Wheel? IF not, and he has to drive with a Wheel against Vettel, it could get atleast a little close, but generally Vettel is going to struggle staying on the track at all, if he doesnt get practice time.

I have sended Chaz a PM threw LFS World, I hope he sees it and joins this Thread, maybe he can tell how he got that opportunity and tells us some more things about it. But AFAIK there is no automatic message appearing in LFS World when a new PN was received, so maybe he misses it.

Lets hope its not just a bisy foto session and they give Sebastian some time to get comfortable to it.
And whos the LFS Champ in Australia?

Ups someone was posting it already

Fun and games for Vettel

Next Wednesday, the 14thof March, BMW SauberF1 test and reserve driver Sebastian Vettel will be getting involved in some fun and games with Official Corporate Partner Intel in Melbourne ahead of the season opening Australian Grand Prix.



From 13.00 to 14.30 hrs he will be found on the business end of a games console in Myers Department Store in the city centre, but his busy schedule doesn’t end there!



Less than two hours later, at 16.00 hrs, the young German tester will then be battling for supremacy in the Intel game “Live for Speed” against Australia’s computer game world champion on the simulator in Luna Park.



Link to Article

The G25 is a good wheel, the best Wheel you can get for its price, but it doesnt deserve to be called realistic Controller when there are other Wheels on the market who does use real Racing Steering Wheels. The G25 is a good Mass Market product, but the ECCI, TSW, VPP and soon BRD and FREX are a awhole another level of Quality controllers over it.

You should also try out the Logitech Profiler Program, get it on the Logitech Website. Then you can setup every detail you would wish for every Axes and Buttons, you can also save different Setups for different Games, and start the Profile automatically with the Start of the Game. It's very handy. (Did you guys know that we in Austria call Mobile Phones "Handys", and most people think its an English word for Mobile phone...)

IMO NASCAR Racing 2003 Season (the Papyrus Sim) has the best car Physics, even still in 2007.

Quote from juurme :

Hehe how many users have goed over mouse to wheel ? Well i drived with mouse already about 1 year (Demo )And its seems to imbossible to drive with wheel ?And whats better +´s and -`s for mouse and wheel?
I think driving with wheel is lil bit more chances in curves or wadeva

For FFB Wheels to feel right some tweakings should be made, it needs different settings for each Sims and sometimes even between cars. What wheel do you have and with what settings do you drive?

Using a Steering Wheel for the first time is hard the first weeks, but after some practise you most likely will start to enjoy it and be faster. Spend some time finding the FF Settings you like.

Man what an awesome Race! I'm sure someF1 and Montoya Fans are going to tune in some more for the 35 remaining Races. What a solid performance by Montoya finishing in a good 19th Position after an embarassing last place for quite some time during the Race. But he had problems with the Setup so he can be quite satisfied. I'm sure if he gets some more experience he can be a regular Top 10 driver. He had a bad strategy in Daytona too.

And what a spectacular finish, one car, which finished infront of Montoya crossed the finish line upside down and on fire.

Quote from Drift_0k :

possible with 3 plasma 42 inch tvs? that even cooler

It is possible and it works if you can afford it

three 17 inch CRT = around € 150
three 19inch TFT = around € 600
three 22inch TFT = around € 900
three 24inch TFT = around € 2100
three 42inch TV = around € 3000

Quote from Whitmore :

A real driver does not need to have experience of driving different sims to give useful feedback on the sim they are developing. All he has to do is compare that one sim to reality. As I said before, you are confusing endorsement with development input

The point is how can he compare the car in the Sim to reality when he doesnt know much about Sims? He cant. Simple Example: Take a real Dodge Viper driver who has no experience in Sims, and let him test Viper Racing, he may very well consider the suspension movements and weight transfer of the car to be "good" or "very good", when maybe they are poor compared to other Sims. But how should he know if he doesnt know other Sims? It is actually very logical that real life drivers cannot improve or comment on Sims very good when they have only little experience in Sims, which is the case with most real drivers. It is essential for the real driver to have experience in Sims to give useful feedback on it.

Last edited by George Kuyumji, Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:25.

Quote from Foropsico :

Is good to see some people understand this and not defending LFS like a
fanatic.

And who defends LFS "like a Fanatic"?

Quote from Whitmore :

You are confusing driver endorsement with driver input. This isn't about whether a driver is judging which is the best sim but a driver giving feedback to improve a sim. Check out Alx Danielsson's review of NetKar Pro in ASS magazine if you don't believe a race driver can provide useful feedback.

Theres no confusion in that regard. The point I was tryieng to make is that any input of a real Race car driver or comments about a Sim should not be taken to seriously in nearly all cases. I dont know about Alex Danielssons Review of netkar Pro, I have driven F2000 cars myself and regard netkarPro a very good Simulation of it. But the truth is that most if not nearly all regular real Race car drivers have not spend thousands of laps and a intense time configuring, experiencing and testing a number of different Sims for a long period of time. So there opinions is limited not by there knowledge about the real car, but by the limited knowledge about different Simulations in general.
That Danielssons might be a regular Sim Racer and a regular real Race Car driver, but that would be the exception of what is going on with every new Race Sim or Game, you will always find a real Race Driver say the Physics of that particular Game are top notch and that he has helped improving the Physics. It is infact hard to find any Racing Game without some Marketing Bla Bla from a real Race driver.

Last edited by George Kuyumji, Thu, 15 Feb 2007 14:03.

I'm not addicted to this Game, and most longtime LFSler would switch as soon as something better comes along me thinkgs. I'm addicted to Motorsport, I can take out my car and drift in the rain or in the snow, I can go out with Friends and do some indoor Karting, every few months I can afford to do some Racing in a Race Kart, it is fun and all but its not enough.

Somebody who likes Basketball or Football, can just take his ball and go out and play, he can easily join any local Club and do his hobby on a competitioning level.... But how should we Motorsport Enhusiasts experience our Passion? Just by watching TV? As I said you can do some karting or drive fast on Public Roads, but that doesnt really has a point in doing, so how can we experience our Motorsport Passion? We can simulate it, and in that way experience Motorsport the best way possible, if you dont have the money for a real Race Car and Season. So I think most are addicted to Motorsport more than to a Game itself. Its just about what Game captures Motorsport the best in our opinion.

niall09 you should consider joining a league, the Racing is better there and the whole Race experience is even better as well. You will like the 'Game' even more.

Last edited by George Kuyumji, Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:44.

Quote from JJ72 :

Well one thing I know for sure that is benefitial using fictional cars is that....you can manupulate the performance of the car and get leveled competition. If you are fixed to a set of real performance values, the difference between cars will be rather large. (although car balancing is rather bad in LFS so far it's an ideal that is possible to work on.)

About the point of racing simulations should simulate real world as far as we can, I am not so sure. I am now exploring the world of flight simulations, and it's a rather inspring experience because every serious aircraft they made are accurate not only physically, but also historically, they even find perioded pilots who has experience in that particular plane to review the physics, and it seems the portion of real pilots playing flight sim is quite some higher than the portion of race driver playing racing sims. The meaning of immersion in flight sims, that every switch, every bolts and nuts has to be exactly correct is quite attractive. starting an aircraft from cold is a occasion, so is the actual flying experience.

It's rather different in racing sims however, I own a copy of GT legends because or the amazing lineup of cars, in terms of graphic and sound it does a notable job in recreating the real vehicles, but still, when out on a track, trying to do a fast lap, all of these doesn't seems too important, whether the ignition switch work, whether labels on the dashboard are correct as it is, racing simulation is much more about the actual driving, it occupies your senses so much that the physical aspect is more more important then the rest, as long as the visuals and audio are not so bad in a way that they carry you away from the experience.

Same goes to the cars, whether it has the exact torque curve as a real car or not isn't that much of an importance, as long as it is realistic according to the law of physics. Even if you make a car in LFS, which suspension hard points and wheel dimension is different from any other car in reality, it wouldn't matter and thus stand out as unrealistic, because the inner working is sound, I might even say this is a real car but a real car that has yet been produced, because on paper it's possible to design and manufacture a car with such stats.

That's my point on why real life reference helps creating a realistic simulation, however depiction of the actual object itself is not. And I think as long as you have a good physics engine, it will be rather easy to inject real life datas and create "real" cars.

Think about it, when F1 designers start a new car, they start with concepts base on engineering principles that they know is sound, they do not start base on the old numbers of previous cars and reverse engineer it, because they already know how that part of physics works. Their new car, is basically designed out of fastasy, experiemented in virtual reality and then built in real life, most of the time the end product will behave very close to what is simulated, up to that point it's all down to engineers and their maths, rather then what the driver feels. The driver feedback in the end is just a final check on the actual outcome conceived from a mental point of view, very important for the result, but a driver cannot design a car because the information pool he draws from is different from the engineers.

That's alright in real life because physics is a constant, but in sim racing, how can a real world racing driver tell whether it's the fault of the physics engine, or the data that goes into engine that creates the problem? The driver can tell whether the car reacts correctly under a turn in - throttle lift scenario, but he cannot possibly know whether it's the setup, the parameters, the physics engine, or even the input controllers, and because they don't spend hours a day messing with a sim in different combos, they cannot cross check and unlike us, knows the flaw in the physics models.

Yes its kind of a shock isnt it? How the Flight Simulators have advanced and improved in all areas, while we Sim Racers still got stuck somewhere in the 90s. You should check out some Payware Updates for Flight Sims, every button, every switch is working and simulated, everything real Pilots have to deal with is just amazingly good Simulated.

Back to the Point about why real Race Drivers comments about a Sim have to be taken not too seriously. I try to explain it better.

I have driven Formula cars and have spoken to F1 Drivers, while real Race car drivers know exactly how there cars behave, they dont know what can and should be simulated, how far have Simulations advanced? How good is a Sim compared to a other?
The real Race drivers just dont know, thats why there comments about Sims cannot be taken to seriously, unless they have driven thousands of laps in different Sims, tweaked and setted up the Wheel and the Sim correctly. Most real drivers have not done this, thats why Alexander Wurz for example thought the best Simulation is on the Nintendo 64. If I show Alexander Wurz Grand Prix 3 from Crammond he would probably change his mind and say something along the lines of GP3 is the most realistic F1 Simulation. Just because he has no experience in Racing Simulations.

And you also have to take into consideration that alot of drivers dont really care about what they are saying about a Computer Game, if there Manager says, "were going to make a Advertisement for this Racing Game", the driver is not going to argue around and just comment positively about it. Just take a look at Dale Earnhardt Junior, the Man has his very own NASCAR Racing Online league, he is a regular Sim Racer of Papyrus NASCAR Racing 2003 Sim, yet, he makes advertisement for the Electronic Arts NASCAR Game, because his Management tells him so.

Quote from chanoman315 :

crashing at t1??, no one can miss that, im a teeanger, and i think almost all the races, i raced, i didnt crash, and if i crash is because the fps( 6fps)

6 fps???

I wouldnt like to be anywhere close to you at a Start

I just checked to see if Dale Earnhardt Juniors NASCAR Racing 2003 Website is indeed still there....

Turns out he has his own Online Sim Racing league :headbang: