lol, you are officially the 238,291,102nd person to ask this question.
The devs don't work to a schedule. The devs work to a set of goals. When the goals are met, they release the software. If you work to a schedule, you inevitably will have to compromise quality and functionality to release on time. They way they do it here is better.
The devs don't work to a schedule. The devs work to a set of goals. When the goals are met, they release the software. If you work to a schedule, you inevitably will have to compromise quality and functionality to release on time. They way they do it here is better.
I also want the AI improved. It is a great way to practice alternative lines for a league race without making online racers want to ban you as a wrecker 
You can say a lot of things about the AI, but they don't carry a grudge and they don't start cursing at you
However, Eldanor is right, you can race online anytime, with little planning. People are not going to be offended if you pop in for one race and then leave. I used to think that it was rude to do that, but it isn't. Come out, race a few laps, say bye, and leave. No big deal.
If it is a track and car combo that you don't know well, then tell everybody, start from the back and be careful. You can sill get good racing in and you will be surprised at how quick you pick it up.
You can say a lot of things about the AI, but they don't carry a grudge and they don't start cursing at you However, Eldanor is right, you can race online anytime, with little planning. People are not going to be offended if you pop in for one race and then leave. I used to think that it was rude to do that, but it isn't. Come out, race a few laps, say bye, and leave. No big deal.
If it is a track and car combo that you don't know well, then tell everybody, start from the back and be careful. You can sill get good racing in and you will be surprised at how quick you pick it up.
Me too. I have heard of making effective use of white space, but that is a bit extreme!
I like those a lot. I think that it does show how well LFS simulates the sound based on what the engine is doing. Yes, it could use more elements, but these sounds show how with a little tweaking, we could get some more rich sounds out of what we already have.
I think the Harley sound is very close to the ALMS Panoz engine too. I love the sound of that car
I think the Harley sound is very close to the ALMS Panoz engine too. I love the sound of that car
PC's are general devises that do a lot of things. Sure, you can build a specialty machine that is a great game machine, but it can obviously still do email, spreadsheets, hacking, porn, etc.
A general device is almost never going to be as good as a dedicated device. Consoles are dedicated devices, they are made for playing games and not much more unless it is incidental like watching DVD movies.
However, consoles have a long way to go before they are good enough to replace a PC as THE gaming environment.
First, they have to be unlocked and not proprietary to the manufacturer who then holds the developers' feet to the fire as to content and royalties.
Second, they have to be integrated into the Internet easily or just as easily linked to a PC for modifications, updates, server control, and new content (and probably a bunch of other things I can't think of).
Third, developers must have the freedom to produce content for the consoles that they want to make.
The reason you get mostly lame racing content on consoles are:
1) It is designed for the quick fix and not for the serious racer.
2) The games must appeal to a mass market or the devs won't make enough on the project to pay the exorbitant fees required by the box manufacturer.
3) The box manufacturers would never allow access to their proprietary information willingly for a small, independent dev team for a number of business and strategy reasons.
Eventually, we will have dedicated gaming environments that are open and integrated with PC's and the network. You may use your PC monitor to play the game, or even use your PC as an interface device for the game system, but the game system will have its own dedicated hardware that is designed for nothing else but playing games.
But, right now, games consoles are still toys (albeit fun toys).
A general device is almost never going to be as good as a dedicated device. Consoles are dedicated devices, they are made for playing games and not much more unless it is incidental like watching DVD movies.
However, consoles have a long way to go before they are good enough to replace a PC as THE gaming environment.
First, they have to be unlocked and not proprietary to the manufacturer who then holds the developers' feet to the fire as to content and royalties.
Second, they have to be integrated into the Internet easily or just as easily linked to a PC for modifications, updates, server control, and new content (and probably a bunch of other things I can't think of).
Third, developers must have the freedom to produce content for the consoles that they want to make.
The reason you get mostly lame racing content on consoles are:
1) It is designed for the quick fix and not for the serious racer.
2) The games must appeal to a mass market or the devs won't make enough on the project to pay the exorbitant fees required by the box manufacturer.
3) The box manufacturers would never allow access to their proprietary information willingly for a small, independent dev team for a number of business and strategy reasons.
Eventually, we will have dedicated gaming environments that are open and integrated with PC's and the network. You may use your PC monitor to play the game, or even use your PC as an interface device for the game system, but the game system will have its own dedicated hardware that is designed for nothing else but playing games.
But, right now, games consoles are still toys (albeit fun toys).
Pretty much. The main reason is to match the revs for the gear your are downshifting to. This keeps the rear wheels from locking up because you are also hard on the brakes at this point. It is almost the same thing as blipping the throttle for downshifts in LFS. The difference is that you have the ball of your right foot (the "toe" part in Heal/Toe) on the brake and you use your heal to blip the throttle. You use your left foot to work the clutch. It is a tricky maneuver to learn and perfect.
I have a clutch pedal but I don't try to heal/toe much. When I depress the brake enough to get the desired stopping power, I have a hard time getting my heal up onto the gas pedal. It is almost as if the gas pedal needs to be set back further, but there is no adjustment for that.
I think that different racing series and different cars have different ways of shifting. In ALMS for example, the Porsche GT2 cars will heal/toe for downshifts, but not clutch for up shifts. They do use a sequential gearbox though.
Last edited by Hallen, .
Very nice!
Hey Vykos! Somebody should take this, do a bit of cleanup editing on it, and turn it into an article to publish in one (or more) of the many online magazines. It captures the essence of the LFS experience better than anything else I have read so far.
For the U.S. for most forms of sports car and open wheel racing.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrmo/the_flag.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~mrmo/the_flag.htm
I appreciate your position on this and your attempts to describe why you prefer the FF in rFactor. I think I understand what you are saying. To you, those cues let you know how fast you are going and makes you feel more like you are in a real race car.
However, I am just the opposite. The vibrations and spasms that rFactor generates with the wheel are distracting, counter productive, and I seriously think it will damage your wheel over time. The key point is that it masks what the car is doing. I agree that it would be nice to feel the vibrations and G-loads that a car produces, but doing it through the steering wheel only is not going to work very well. It just comes off as feeling contrived.
In LFS I can feel the weight shift of the car when I feather it into a corner. This is essential to going fast in LFS, especially with the sports cars. I could never get this sensation from rFactor.
In rFactor, I could not find a way to setup a car with the proper amount of oversteer. The car would always understeer on turn entry, and grossly oversteers on exit. I can't explain this very well, and maybe it was just because of the lack of feel from the FF, but it felt wrong and unintuitive.
I do still check my speedometer when hotlapping with LFS. This is to check my exit and apex speeds to see if a certain line can carry more speed through a particular corner. Other than that, I don't really use the speedometer.
Fortunately, you can turn off most of the rumble stuff in rFactor so it does not get in the way so much, but it also seems to affect the rest of the FF options too, so it is really hard to tell what is going on. I also hate the way the screen bounces around and vibrates in rFactor. I had to turn that off as it gave my a bad headache. When you are in the car, and your body is undergoing the same accelerations as the car is, you don't see this kind of bouncing around. You only see bouncing like that when you are a non-stabilized camera mounted on the roll cage.
LFS is more technical than rFactor. It is more like a symphony or jaz than a power chorded metal song. This mirrors real life in that real racing is very technical. The first things you will be taught in driving school is the circle of grip and weight transfer. If you don't understand these things, you are not going to be fast. LFS forces you to understand these things. That is why I prefer LFS over rFactor.
And that is what they are meant to be... scary. Those pictures are from the Multnomah county Sheriff's department. They cover Portland, Oregon, US. Meth is a huge problem here. Those pictures are real. Those people destroyed their lives for a high. Meth is also very dangerous to make. It requires some nasty chemicals that have a tendency to blow up if you don't work very carefully. Imagine a bunch of drugged out derelicts working in a garage trying to put this stuff together... yikes! You can't even buy Pseudoephedrine(Afrin, Afrinol, Chlor-Trimeton, Novafed, Sudafedhere) anymore if you have the sniffles. It requires a doctors prescription because Pseudoephedrine is one of the ingredients for meth.
But, I still think it was a bit funny. Kid was just pointing out that the devs have been nearly working themselves to death for us...
I agree that there are a lot of challenging corners out there. To me, there is a difference between Challenging, and Dangerous. The corners that Becky talks about are dangerous in that in order to go fast over them, you have to take a line that would never be used in the real world and if you don't hit them just perfect, you wreck.
I prefer corners that are challenging to get right and if you don't, you lose time and possibly wreck, but can also be taken reasonably fast if you don't get it just perfect.
Aston National turn 1 to me is a cool corner. It is tough to get it perfect. You always feel you could get just a bit more out of that corner. The last turn on WE1 is very similar. I like both of these corners in both directions because of that.
I don't like some of the chicanes, like FE Club R on the back ~straight and the chicane on KY3 coming off the oval section. I consider these dangerous corners. People take unreasonable lines over those curbs that will work 7 times out of 10, but will wreck you the rest of the time. In order to be fast on those tracks, you have to drive that way (lines that would never be used in real life). I prefer chicanes like the revised Blackwood chicane, possibly the chicane on the back-side of WE1 and some others where you take some curb to be fast but not a lot, and requires skill and throttle control instead of random chance to be fast.
I prefer corners that are challenging to get right and if you don't, you lose time and possibly wreck, but can also be taken reasonably fast if you don't get it just perfect.
Aston National turn 1 to me is a cool corner. It is tough to get it perfect. You always feel you could get just a bit more out of that corner. The last turn on WE1 is very similar. I like both of these corners in both directions because of that.
I don't like some of the chicanes, like FE Club R on the back ~straight and the chicane on KY3 coming off the oval section. I consider these dangerous corners. People take unreasonable lines over those curbs that will work 7 times out of 10, but will wreck you the rest of the time. In order to be fast on those tracks, you have to drive that way (lines that would never be used in real life). I prefer chicanes like the revised Blackwood chicane, possibly the chicane on the back-side of WE1 and some others where you take some curb to be fast but not a lot, and requires skill and throttle control instead of random chance to be fast.
Nope, I am using the 1.150 version and have also tried the BMW Sauber.
There are things about the game that I know I don't like because there is no description of what things mean and what type of car each is, etc. This is a learning problem on my part, but rF should make it more intuitive and easier to figure out. I am no computer dummy, but I have as of yet figured out what "digital rate" means for a controller setup. Most of the cars are undriveable if you use 720° or even worse at 900° with a DFP. I am still twiddling with the FF and controller settings trying to find something I like.
It does not change the fact that you still can't feel what the car is doing very well and the car's reactions seem somewhat "canned". Please don't get me wrong, it is still much better than a lot of games out there, it just isn't to my tastes as far as the physics and interface goes.
I have not attempted rFactor online, but I do own a copy and have raced it quite a bit at home. I can tell you that car setups are very different than LFS and there are some annoying quirks in their physics. You need a much more powerful GPU and computer to get decent frame rates out of rFactor as compared to LFS. The sound is really, really bad. Tire scrub and squeal is very uncommunicative. The engine sounds are really bad samples that don't tell you squat about what the car is doing.
All the cars will understeer with just a slight turn of the wheel when you are at anything above 30mph. You really can't dial this out of the cars with setup. You can make the cars oversteer, but only when you don't want them to. It is almost like weight shift is not modeled in the sim.
The reason I have it is because I do occasionally want to drive on tracks that exist in the real world and because I am playing around a bit with track modding. rFactor does offer this capability. There are a lot of bad tracks out there, and some really odd mods, but there are some pretty good ones too. Overall, as compared to older EA games, rFactor is better, but it still comes nowhere close to the driving experience you get in LFS. rFactor can be fun, but it is also frustrating because the cars just don't behave like you expect them to. The AI are far better in rFactor as compared to LFS though.
I have tried the nKPro demo, and found it felt and drives very much like rFactor. The sound is even worse in nK Pro. I also had some trouble with frame rates.
So, sorry for not being able to tell you about online use... I really should try it out there too.
All the cars will understeer with just a slight turn of the wheel when you are at anything above 30mph. You really can't dial this out of the cars with setup. You can make the cars oversteer, but only when you don't want them to. It is almost like weight shift is not modeled in the sim.
The reason I have it is because I do occasionally want to drive on tracks that exist in the real world and because I am playing around a bit with track modding. rFactor does offer this capability. There are a lot of bad tracks out there, and some really odd mods, but there are some pretty good ones too. Overall, as compared to older EA games, rFactor is better, but it still comes nowhere close to the driving experience you get in LFS. rFactor can be fun, but it is also frustrating because the cars just don't behave like you expect them to. The AI are far better in rFactor as compared to LFS though.
I have tried the nKPro demo, and found it felt and drives very much like rFactor. The sound is even worse in nK Pro. I also had some trouble with frame rates.
So, sorry for not being able to tell you about online use... I really should try it out there too.
Sorry about the point and spray comment
I guess I should read more carefully.
A lot of the older FFB wheels use a belt between the motor and the steering wheel. Your belt could be just plain worn out so it slips causing this strange lack of FFB consistency. If you are running some Sidewinder application to control the wheel settings, try turning it off and only use the control panel settings and LFS settings... just an idea, it might not help.
The brake locking thing is something I struggle with on several cars. It is worse on the GTR type cars than the street cars. Basically, the wheels stop turning because of the amount of brake pressure, you don't really hear the lockup, but since you don't have the clutch in, it basically kills the engine. Since the engine doesn't really shut off, the affect is your RPMs drop considerably. When you release the brake , the RPMs are still low for the speed you are going, so the rear wheels stay locked for a while because of engine braking. It can be very hard to deal with. Again, try reducing the amount of rear brake bias and overall braking amount. It should clear it up mostly.
I guess I should read more carefully.A lot of the older FFB wheels use a belt between the motor and the steering wheel. Your belt could be just plain worn out so it slips causing this strange lack of FFB consistency. If you are running some Sidewinder application to control the wheel settings, try turning it off and only use the control panel settings and LFS settings... just an idea, it might not help.
The brake locking thing is something I struggle with on several cars. It is worse on the GTR type cars than the street cars. Basically, the wheels stop turning because of the amount of brake pressure, you don't really hear the lockup, but since you don't have the clutch in, it basically kills the engine. Since the engine doesn't really shut off, the affect is your RPMs drop considerably. When you release the brake , the RPMs are still low for the speed you are going, so the rear wheels stay locked for a while because of engine braking. It can be very hard to deal with. Again, try reducing the amount of rear brake bias and overall braking amount. It should clear it up mostly.
Lets not get off topic on how the tires look when worn. That is a completely different topic.
I do agree that it would be nice to balance the classes. But it is not going to be simple. I think I understand what Gimpster is saying, reduce some of the variables so that balancing can happen more easily. With that, I would agree. However, I think by doing this, you will greatly reduce the unique feel of each car. Sure, FWD and RWD difference will be there, but I bet you will lose some of the unique feel of the cars. I love the different feel in the cars and would like to keep as much of that as possible.
A lot of real racing series use different methods to balance cars. Weight restrictions, inlet air restrictors to reduce HP (but generally not a HP limit), fender flair size, wheel size, displacement limits on engines... only complete spec series use HP limits per say. ALMS or LMS uses weight limits, air restrictors, and other things that preserve the unique aspects of each car, whilst trying to make it possible for all car types to be competitive. We have more of a controlled environment so we can balance classes without having to lose the unique feel of each car. A XR GT should be heavier than a XF GTi. The HP output should be different. That is what makes the cars unique and more like the real world. What I am afraid your suggestion would lead to is a single car class that just happens to have FWD, RWD and AWD options with different shapes, but no real character differences in the feel of the cars.
The issue I have with the tires revolves around wear rates and temp.
With R2 tires, in most cases it is almost impossible to wear them out. You reach an overtemperature condition long before you wear the tires out. The temperature gets to the point where they are undriveable. It might be that we all drive the cars too hard and slide them around too much compared to the real world. However, as it sits now, R2's are really only good for qualifying runs or a couple of hotlaps before they are so hot, you can't drive on them. This seems unreasonable to me. R2's should be really good for 2 laps, then drop in grip a lot and then hold steady over the next x laps until nearing the end of the available tread, they start trailing off again quickly. This should be associated with the tread remaining, not just a function of temperature like we have now. If you don't overdrive the R2's during a race, you can keep the temps down, but then you are as slow if not slower then the cars running R3 tires. There just seems to be something wrong with this.
Second, I think excess camber should not necessarily cause overtemp on the inside patch after a lap like it does. However, after a few laps, you should definitely see a lot more wear on the inside patch compared to the rest of the tire. Yes, it should be hotter too, but not overtemp (unless you are spinning tires or sliding a lot).
My point is that real tires should not be going to an overtemp condition so easily.
For the road type tires, we have a bit of a problem. They don't wear very fast... just like real life. You can run a 50 lap race at BL and you should still have tread left. However, road tires will get hot easier and become undriveable if you do try and overdrive the tires. I don't think we see this enough with the road tires. Club racers often use the same tires for several races, or even a whole season. I doubt we could model this in LFS, which is OK, but we should do something about the heating.
So, I guess the tires come down to the issues of the race tires overheating too quickly or easily and not wearing quickly enough, and the road tires not overheating enough when being over-driven.
I do agree that it would be nice to balance the classes. But it is not going to be simple. I think I understand what Gimpster is saying, reduce some of the variables so that balancing can happen more easily. With that, I would agree. However, I think by doing this, you will greatly reduce the unique feel of each car. Sure, FWD and RWD difference will be there, but I bet you will lose some of the unique feel of the cars. I love the different feel in the cars and would like to keep as much of that as possible.
A lot of real racing series use different methods to balance cars. Weight restrictions, inlet air restrictors to reduce HP (but generally not a HP limit), fender flair size, wheel size, displacement limits on engines... only complete spec series use HP limits per say. ALMS or LMS uses weight limits, air restrictors, and other things that preserve the unique aspects of each car, whilst trying to make it possible for all car types to be competitive. We have more of a controlled environment so we can balance classes without having to lose the unique feel of each car. A XR GT should be heavier than a XF GTi. The HP output should be different. That is what makes the cars unique and more like the real world. What I am afraid your suggestion would lead to is a single car class that just happens to have FWD, RWD and AWD options with different shapes, but no real character differences in the feel of the cars.
The issue I have with the tires revolves around wear rates and temp.
With R2 tires, in most cases it is almost impossible to wear them out. You reach an overtemperature condition long before you wear the tires out. The temperature gets to the point where they are undriveable. It might be that we all drive the cars too hard and slide them around too much compared to the real world. However, as it sits now, R2's are really only good for qualifying runs or a couple of hotlaps before they are so hot, you can't drive on them. This seems unreasonable to me. R2's should be really good for 2 laps, then drop in grip a lot and then hold steady over the next x laps until nearing the end of the available tread, they start trailing off again quickly. This should be associated with the tread remaining, not just a function of temperature like we have now. If you don't overdrive the R2's during a race, you can keep the temps down, but then you are as slow if not slower then the cars running R3 tires. There just seems to be something wrong with this.
Second, I think excess camber should not necessarily cause overtemp on the inside patch after a lap like it does. However, after a few laps, you should definitely see a lot more wear on the inside patch compared to the rest of the tire. Yes, it should be hotter too, but not overtemp (unless you are spinning tires or sliding a lot).
My point is that real tires should not be going to an overtemp condition so easily.
For the road type tires, we have a bit of a problem. They don't wear very fast... just like real life. You can run a 50 lap race at BL and you should still have tread left. However, road tires will get hot easier and become undriveable if you do try and overdrive the tires. I don't think we see this enough with the road tires. Club racers often use the same tires for several races, or even a whole season. I doubt we could model this in LFS, which is OK, but we should do something about the heating.
So, I guess the tires come down to the issues of the race tires overheating too quickly or easily and not wearing quickly enough, and the road tires not overheating enough when being over-driven.
lol, you're funny
Nobody is forcing you to buy any of this stuff. You get it because you want something out of it, either entertainment, communications, or because you want to make money with it. If you want better stuff in the future (and not too distance future) you have to pay for it. It is the nature of the beast that older technology does not play well with newer technology. You can't make everything backwards compatible.
I don't know enough about DRM to have much of an opinion on it yet other to say that I don't like the idea of software telling me what I can and cannot do with my computer. If I want something, I buy it. I don't share it and I don't give it to other people. Having said that, you don't own the software or the music you buy. You own a license to use the product. I can understand wanting to protect your products from piracy, especially if you sell to a relatively small community. LFS does a good job of this. However, I cannot support invasive systems that won't allow me to use my computer the way I want to use it.
LFS Graphics are good now. However, it is not perfect. You can still tell you are looking at computer generated graphics. Some day, it might get hard to distinguish from computer generated graphics and real life. I don't want more eye candy now at the expense of other features. However, especially for a racing game, there are some things that just make it better. Much, much higher resolutions would help. Being able to see things more clearly, at a much longer distance would help. You can't really do that now with what we have technically, not even with DX10. Continual improvement is important, but each step needs to be carefully evaluated based on the goals for what you want to accomplish.
You contradict yourself there. I am not sure what you are asking. The FFB will react to the drivers' input and the physics affecting the car. You will feel differences in resistance throughout the spectrum depending on what is happening.
Depends a bit on the car and the settings, but generally, yes. The steering should get a bit lighter when you are understeering.
Probably not. What are your settings? Typically, in LFS you should set the FFB overall amont to where you like it, both in the wheel settings and in LFS. Set the spring effect and damping to 0. Most people say to leave the centering spring on, but set to 0.
Uh, just point and spray?
This has nothing to do with FFB. It seems that the brakes can completely lock the drivetrain without locking the wheels, or there is a bug where the wheels are locked, but not squeeling, I am not sure which it is. Anyway, try reducing the brake amount you have set for the car or moving the brake bias further forward (or rearward on a FWD car). This seems to mostly happen with the LSD diff on the higher powered cars, so you might try the locked diff.
Hmmm, that may be true, but the main reason to limit FPS is your refresh rate of your monitor. Any higher of a frame rate might lead to some jerky frames, but that is because the frames are skiped by the monitor. If you can keep your frames at about the same speed as your refresh rate on your monitor, you won't be doing a bunch of unnecessary GPU work. The high speed GPU's are great for keeping things smooth up until turn 1 and for being able to run with max everything, but if your monitor is set at a 75Hz refresh rate, turn on V-sync and your GPU will match your screen frequency. Anything more than that is just cool to see.... wow! 150FPS!!!! But it ain't really doing you any good that way.
I run 75FPS pretty much all the time. I will get dips on a full grid, but not too bad. 3GHz Pentium, ATI X700 GPU, 2.5GB RAM.
I see that from time to time at random intervals, but it happens off line mostly. I think it has something to do with another app, like my email program doing something that sucks up cycle times. It is not lag, but stuttering. Make sure that he doesn't have some process running all the time that decides to kick in while LFS is running. I am thinking about something like the SETI program or instant messenger or virus software.
Sure you do get stuff for your chores
illepall . Lets see...A place to sleep
A bed
A pillow
Food... lots and lots of food
Free cable TV
Rides to the park or baseball game
I bet your parents even let you take showers at their place
Laundry service (or maybe just access to a free washer machine)
Need I go on?
Suck it up. You get everything else for free. Do some extra chores. Ask Dad if he will pay you $5 or $10 bucks to wash the cars (do a good job). Or maybe Mom will pay you to clean the bathrooms (everybody hates that job [especially if you have a little brother with bad aim]). In other words, earn it, and you will enjoy it that much more and maybe you will impress your Dad
+1
I am having more problems with this now with the U# patches than I used to with older versions. Now that could be because the wheel is getting worse, or LFS has become more sensitive to it. It's probably the wheel. Yet I know several other racers who have problems with this and it seems that a simple short sleep after each gear change would solve the problem. But what do I know?
My skips are pretty much always just one extra gear and mostly on gear up, not gear down.
I am having more problems with this now with the U# patches than I used to with older versions. Now that could be because the wheel is getting worse, or LFS has become more sensitive to it. It's probably the wheel. Yet I know several other racers who have problems with this and it seems that a simple short sleep after each gear change would solve the problem. But what do I know?
My skips are pretty much always just one extra gear and mostly on gear up, not gear down.
You still only get 60FPS On your display if you have a refresh rate of 60Hz, that is my understanding anyway. Read this:
http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/faqs/kb/10,42.html
Vsync should only be disabled when benchmarking so that the videocard and processor are not being limited by the display. Frame rates will appear higher with vsync off but the amount of information displayed is limited by your monitor in that instance. A monitor with an 85 Hz refresh rate will only display 85 frames per second even if the videocard is rendering 400 frames a second. The visual quality may decline as a result also because some frames could be skipped as a result of excess rendering so the interpolation between the first frame and the next frame displayed could be off resulting in 'tearing' or jerkiness.
Dang, I forgot about the long break... too bad it didn't start a week earlier. I wouldn't have had to miss a race then...
Thanks for making me laugh guys. You see, I AM the Dad. My son (who is 18 and I get to kick out of my house soon ), is always on the computer playing (usually) WoW. I tell him, 5 minutes, then it is your brother's turn. A few minutes later there is a major fight out in the living room between the two... and it interupts my nice LFS race 
), is always on the computer playing (usually) WoW. I tell him, 5 minutes, then it is your brother's turn. A few minutes later there is a major fight out in the living room between the two... and it interupts my nice LFS race Another reason you see people wanting locked diffs is because they don't want "one-wheel drive" like you get with an open diff. So, having a preference, and depending on the car and the track, welding an open diff to be a locked diff would make sense. You will have two wheels driving you off a corner instead of one.
I think another reason an LSD is preferred for racing IRL, is that if your inner driven wheel is spinning faster than it needs to becaue of a locked diff, you are needlessly using up some of your traction budget. Sure, inside wheels are less loaded, but they still contribute to the total traction budget.
LSD's are a compromise, trying to take the best of a locked diff for having two wheel drive coming off of corners, with the best of an open diff for cornering and driveline health. As with most compromises, there are problems but overall it works.
In LFS, LSD's seem a bit quirky, so that may be another reason people are using locked diffs. Under braking, you get that problem where the engine bogs down, which causes the driven wheels to lock once your release the brake because your engine revs are too low. Plus, there is no preload...
I think another reason an LSD is preferred for racing IRL, is that if your inner driven wheel is spinning faster than it needs to becaue of a locked diff, you are needlessly using up some of your traction budget. Sure, inside wheels are less loaded, but they still contribute to the total traction budget.
LSD's are a compromise, trying to take the best of a locked diff for having two wheel drive coming off of corners, with the best of an open diff for cornering and driveline health. As with most compromises, there are problems but overall it works.
In LFS, LSD's seem a bit quirky, so that may be another reason people are using locked diffs. Under braking, you get that problem where the engine bogs down, which causes the driven wheels to lock once your release the brake because your engine revs are too low. Plus, there is no preload...
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