I don't have a shifter, yet. I use the sequential style on my DFP with my complete ECCI pedal set with clutch.

The problem I have is that the brake depresses too far below the gas pedal and I have a problem doing heal toe work because of it. As a result I don't do it much. I would like to do it as practice for the real thing though.

Quote from NoQuarter :

...
I tried earlier today to look for a quote I heard a while back...I think it was Jeff Gordan's crew chief to Jeff Gordan when he had a test drive in an F1 car some time ago. I have to paraphrase (if you know who did say this, and the exact quote, please let us know):

A drive in the worst Formula 1 car is better than a drive in any other race car.

lol, I suppose that is pretty true (of course it depends on your preferences). But driving the worst F1 car when you are trying to keep up with the best, looks to be pretty nightmare-ish to me.

Quote from dadge :

ah the old workhorse of the American Army. I too love this machine. just like the F-15 was the benchmark for fighter/bombers. the Huey is the same for Medium lift choppers. i could talk for days about that chopper m8.

Yes it was. It has a special place in my heart. I wrenched on them for about 6 years. Then I got my commission and went to flight school where I learned to fly them. It is a real, "hands-on" kind of aircraft. Very responsive but you could never get complacent with it. It would bite back in a big hurry.

Quote from ev0 :

I think this car is one of the few examples that I have seen where form follows function, but the function has created a beautiful form. Peoples' perceptions of aesthetics are obviously subjective, but in my opinion this car looks stunning.

It does look a bit... odd to me. Maybe it is all the different lines on the car.

But, that does not mean that I think it is ugly; far from it. I love the look of my old Huey helicopter, but it is a design that is far from sexy. It is in the meaning of the thing and the uniqueness of it that sometimes dictates the reactions to the aesthetics.

After reading all of Dennis' blog on both the DP and the Bikini projects, I feel a bit of a connection to the car. I at least understand, in a small way, what has gone into the building of it and I can appreciate its form in a different way now.

Quote from ShannonN :

It wasn't meant to be funny Hallen, it was meant to highlight srdsprinters lengthy posts regarding the DP1 and this guys acheivements, I thought it bordered on 'hero' worship and my post was, sadly an attempt to highlight that...

ShannnoN

Why didn't you say that in the first place? I can understand your position now.

Although I disagree with some of your positions, I do agree that the Devs will do what they deem to be appropriate in their own time frame. I totally respect that and in fact I encourage it. Most of the time, "design by committee" does not work.

We are not trying to be pushy, at least I am not. I think it would be cool in LFS, but there are tons of cars and tracks out there that I would love to have too. They will happen when the devs are ready or not at all. I will still love LFS.

It was my suggestion, one that I have posed before, that it would be cool to include real tracks and cars for the purpose of Club racers all around the world to use for training and car setup. These people don't have the resources of big race teams, so something like LFS as a tool for them would be very cool, and I think popular too. But that is just my idea; I know there are a lot of things that have to happen first and that my idea may not work out in the long run.

Many people here have not taken the time to read Dennis' logs. Having some of the stuff paraphrased here does no harm. Most of us are car and racing fans and want to see stuff like this. I think it is just interesting and motivating to discuss.

Quote from ShannonN :

Wow how many shares did you say you had in this guys company? Or did he just make you head of his fan club and give you a gift certificate for a free lap at some stage?

Hmmm, even putting a smiley at the end of that, doesn't make it even remotely funny.
Point was, Tristian was out of line or maybe he was trying to be sarcastic too? Either way, srdsprinter was spot on in his comments. It doesn't take a fanboy for that; it just takes somebody who knows what he is talking about.

If you guys have the time, I highly recommend reading the blog. It takes a while to get through, but it is a very good read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

Quote from axus :

Have you noticed that LFS models tyre deformation and hence tyre forces by the way? Here's a good slowmotion movie where you can have a look at that:
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=14198

I do love that video

However, there are some issues with the tire model. One of them causes a situation where we use much lower tire pressures in LFS than we would in the real world. This leads to some pretty dramatic tire flexing. I do think the flexing is accurate given the pressures we use.

Hey Dennis,
If you want to see some good LFS racing, tune into OLFSL TV. Pool 1 starts at 11:00AM our time.
You can use browser plugins or Winamp with the correct codecs to watch. It is pretty cool. There will be an announcer calling the race. (Are we nuts, or what? )
Go here:http://lfs-league.com/
and then click on the OLFSL TV link.

Depends on what you like. You seem to favor open wheel cars and you only have significant laps on a couple of tracks. The highest pecentage on Aston club... which honestly is not that challenging.

You have low miles and your times are not that great (no disrespect intended) so whatever league you join, you will be in the lower pools. This is not a bad thing, you will get to race people who are at a similar level.

Choose a type of car or cars to race and look for leauges that offer multiple pools (based on qualifying times or hotlaps) with a good level of people racing. If you want to try a bunch of different cars, try the OLFSL.

Look in the league section of the forums.

What is even more cool is that Bob's analysis has made it onto Dennis' design blog. Dennis also gives LFS a nice mention!

Dennis,
I did have a question about the louver design over the wheels. I understand why they are there.

However, why did you not have the main chassis made with a rectangular hole over where the louvers will go? Then have separate louver panels made. The main chassis could have a lip on the front of the hole and a depression on the rear for the louver panel to slot into. Then use dzus, camlock or similar fasteners to mount the louver panels.

I watch a lot of ALMS, and you see them blow out their louver panels all the time throwing "klag" up through them. Why not make them easily replaceable instead of part of the entire chassis? I suppose it would be more stiff with the louvers integrated?

Forgive me if this is a naive question or if you covered in your blog. It just crossed my mind after reading your design blog on the design process. I am only on page 4. But it looks like the louvers made it to the final design.

I have a 20 meg jpg of PIR. I patched it together from about 30 individual photos. I was thinking about developing a track model for it, but I am not that talented with 3DS. If anybody wants a copy, just let me know.

Good luck with the project and maybe I will see at PIR one of these days. I am hoping to do some lapping days with the local BMW club this year.

Last edited by Hallen, Fri 23 Feb 2007, 15:54.

Knowing that GT4 is not what we LFS fans consider a simulator, I still agree with the point. Driving a sim is not the same as real life, no matter how good the sim is. IRL you have the real possibility of major financial damage, major bodily harm and possibly death to deal with. It changes everything.

I have some experience with test flights and you do things methodically. In the best cases, you test one thing at a time and try not to complicate things to get the best possible analysis and to minimize risk.

It sounds like Dennis is going about it the right way.

I would love to see Portland in LFS, but that is not going to happen any time soon. I have often thought that if LFS had real tracks and the ability to create your car model, that it could be actively used by club racers all over the world for testing, track knowledge and setup analysis.

Yep, he was not pushing the car hard at all. ALMS LMP1 prototypes will hit upwards of 160-170mph down the front straight and will be touching up against 170+ down the back "straight" (its actually a long curve). LMP1's are 925Kg (2,039.3 lbs) minimum, with somewhere around 800hp making about 2.55lbs/hp. Dennis' car won't have as much grip because of the tire sizes and compounds and no downforce, but if you assume those things to be equal, his car should perform in the same basic range, at least as far as power goes with 2.25lbs/hp.

(JJ Lehto lost the rear wing off his Audi R8 on the back straight in 2005, he hit the boom camera that was shooting the entry to turn 9.)

The DP1 also is not setup with wings, so his downforce is limited. You want to prove the car, and you take it a step at a time.
The spin on the kart track looked more like too much rear brake bias than anything to me.

The PIR updates depend on city funds. It looks like the repaving will get done this year though. The city manager has been withholding funds for the last few years.

There is also a new club track going in on the east side of Mt. Hood.
http://www.oregonraceway.com/index_files/Page812.htm

You can see from the picture that there is not much built yet, but it looks to be fun eventually (looking at the track map). It won't be able to support professional events though.

Bremerton doesn't have a road course does it? It looks like it just has the oval and drag racing. They are talking about a road course, but it hasn't happened yet, has it?

Pacific Raceways does have an aggressive development plan. They hope to attract some top class racing there eventually, which would be good. The NW only got 2 top races per year, ALMS and CHAMP car, and now ALMS is gone. More racing would be better.

Thanks, I guess I should learn to read...

That is just 45 minutes north of where I live. I have been meaning to get up there and rent a kart for a few hours.

Up here, there are not a lot of tracks to go to. There is Portland International Raceway (PIR) where a couple of his videos are shot, Pacific Raceway up near Seattle (Kent) (3.5 hour drive north) and Spokane Raceway in eastern Washington (~4.5 hour drive north east). Only PIR offers professional racing and the city is trying to shut it down. Not cool.

Hey Dennis, great project you have going there. I would love to drive a copy in LFS... or real life

Is the "First Spin" video done at Pat's Acres in Canby?

Well... he is shown as a developer for his login. Either it is a hack, or he has joined the team. Scaphlosier does not sound as good as Scavier.

Edit. LOL, 7 posts in under a minute

With any simulation, there will generally be a point where the model you are using breaks down. I think that happens with LFS with lower tire pressures.

There are many systems in the world that depending on external conditions will change their behavior dramatically. A simple example is water. It is a liquid. Make it cold enough, it changes from a liquid to a solid. If you water simulator does not take that change into account, you will get some odd results.

I think that LFS models tires pretty darned well, but in certain cases, the model breaks down. I doubt there is much in the system about deformation due to low pressures, material flex, bead adhesion, etc. Plus, tires change how they react dramatically with pressure. It would be hard to completely model all of that realistically.

My suggestion for LFS is to limit the usable tire pressure range for each tire type. Then work on the heating algorithms a bit to tweak them in a bit better. That way, you wouldn't be able to use an unrealistic tire pressure to gain advantage and it would be the same for everybody. (Nobody IRL drives a street car on the track with only 22psi in the tires)

You also wouldn't have to try to model super low tire pressures in the system completely because you either have a reasonable tire pressure, or the tire is flat.

Maybe just tweaking the temperature and sidewall behavior would be enough, but limiting the tire pressure range would be effective too.

One of his points was that he drives a semi... I am guessing he is a long-haul driver and sleeps in the cab at night at rest stops. There is most likely no way to have an internet connection in that case.

I spend a lot of time with LFS offline. I do some hot lapping, but mostly I am preparing for league races. It would be tough to race in a league if you are gone from home for weeks at a time.

If you are into sports car racing, then LFS is really the best sim out there. It provides challenges on a different level than an arcade game does. Unfortunately in your case, to get the full enjoyment out of it, you really need to race online with other real people. You can spend a lot of time making skins, perfecting setups, working on getting that last 10th out of a particular combination, but the true satisfaction comes from racing other people online.

Just ignore the snide American bashers out there. We will just take the higher ground and assume they were just tongue in cheek comments.

Personally, I like the new sounds better for the most part. I think they are lacking at the top end on most cars, but there is only so much you can do with speakers and sound generation.

I do have one comment, and maybe it was said before, but I just wanted to comment.

I think the biggest difference (other than the basic tones) between what we hear in the game and what we hear in the car is the environment.

The way I look at it, the sounds we hear are as if you were driving down the road and there was nothing there but the engine, or nothing there but the transmission, or the exhaust. You then take all those sounds and pipe them to your ears at the same time. You end up with a decent mix, but you are still hearing individual sounds.

In a real car of any type, the whole car, and especially the cabin on a tin top, act like a resonance chamber. Yes, the different structures within the car will muffle sounds, but they will also transmit vibrations throughout the car and what we end up hearing is different from what was originally produced. We end up hearing different sounds, but we also hear mixed sounds and tones that can't really be traced back to just one source. Just try to isolate a noise in your own car some time. What is generating that sound? It is very hard to tell sometimes, especially when you have a squeak or rattle or clunk. You might be able to tell it is coming from the back of the car, but maybe not. It is like a giant mixing chamber that alters sounds enough as to make it more of a symphony than a group of single instruments.
Put the exact same engine, exhaust, transmission, differential, wheels, tires and the same level of sound proofing into two different cars, lets say a XRG and XFG (in the real world) and the cars will sound different while you are in the car. The engine might sound exactly the same as a single component, but the end result in the car will be different.

I think that the team is on the right track for the sounds. More work will be done in the future. What we hear now is great, it is so much more communicative than other sims. It will get better and better as we move forward.

My observations on the sounds:
1)The sound is more clear with headphones, but lacks punch. With my speakers, the sound has more rasp to it. I can feel it vibrate my chest at certain throttle positions. This might be harmonics kicking in giving you that pulsing feeling. I have cheap speakers, so the rasp might just be distortion even though the volume is not that loud.

2) Road going cars definitely do have gear noise. It does get louder as you go faster and the pitch does go up. However, much of the time it is drowned out by the engine, road and wind noises combined. So the gear noise should not necessarily be lessened in the cars, but the engine note and road noise should mostly overwhelm it, but it should still be there as a component of the overall sound.

3) I think the transition from low RPM to high RPM should have a steeper volume increase. I just don't think the volume of the engine gets loud enough at higher RPM. This seems to particularly be a problem with the BF1. The engine sounds about the same as before, it is just drowned out by the gear and traction control noises.

4) For any competitive driving that I have ever seen, to include club racing, as a minimum, the driver's window must be down even in road cars for safety. The only time I have seen windows up is for track days and fun drives. This would allow a lot more tire, road, and wind noise.

5) This is a sim, not a real car. I think the tire noise must be adjustable in a wider range so we can hear it over the other noises. It might be a bit of a crutch, but I think it is needed because we can't feel the g's, so to speak.

6) For those that think the cars don't sound good, try driving them like you would a normal car on the street (because that is what you are really used to hearing). Don't shift when the red light tells you to; shift into 5th like you were cruising at 70 mph down the freeway. Most of the cars sounds right. Most of us have only heard race cars from outside, or from in-car videos. Every car is going to sound different, and depending on the microphone type and location, you will get vastly different sounds every time. Don't try to judge LFS sounds by those recordings. Take elements of them, yes, but don't try to make LFS sound like those recordings. For example, the gear noise in some recordings are totally intense. I suspect some of this is from the microphone location and is not representative of how the car would sound from the driver's seat.

If you are a BMW guy, Last months issue of Roundel Magazine (the BMW Car Club of America magazine) has a section on the Dragon while driving a new BMW Z4 Coupe. Nice road, and nice car.

The only problem with using it in LFS, is it does not loop back on itself. You could only do a one lap race, or timed runs.

I grew up driving on roads similar to this. None of them as well maintained or quite as intense as the Dragon seems to be, but amazing stuff all the same. To us, it was just the normal thing. It was also the normal thing to lose a friend or two each year to those roads (and stupid driving). But, every time you are on a section like that, it is still fun to drive and you wonder what it would be like to drive it in LFS

Quote from TypeRCivic :

Well I guess people have there own opinion of " BLUE FLAG " but when a server declined connection because of one punk who rammed me of the track and instantly I'm a " BANNER. " I dont have much positive things to say about the problem, and I really wish people would stop the BS about blue flags. I do let up on gas on straight away or go wide on a corner, but I dont agree with spaming BLUE FLAG before you see me or if I cant see you in mirror.

Cause and effect...
Don't let it worry you too much, just choose another server. There are lots out there.

I have little patients for drivers who don't pay attention. It is one of my faults I guess. I voted to kick a guy last night because he did not honor the blue flag, tried to race me, then blocked me into a corner. I did punt him, but not intentionally. I voted to kick him just to get his attention. I knew the rest of the guys on the server would not vote with me, they much prefer to teach and guide rather than punish.

If you wreck a lot and rejoin from the pits, are very much slower than everybody else on a server, or you become a moving chicane, even if you do try to observe the blue flags most of the time, you will still get booted or banned from some servers.

Pick another car or another server where the competition level is more suited for you. Or, if you are experienced, and it is just a new track/car combo for you, practice offline for a bit until you get up to speed.

I think that most people agree, as do I, that spamming Blue flag binds at cars that are way out of range is annoying, but is nothing worth worrying about too much. Just do your best, and if people are still being stupid about it, just pick a different server.