It was mostly good racing for me on server 5. I did not have a good set until race day, and I have been working on my (real) car for the last few days, so did not have time to practice. I bettered my hotlap time by .2 seconds in the race.

The first lap carnage at the chicane worked out for me. I did hit somebody though. I was slowed way down, there was a hole between wrecking cars, I aimed for it, and suddenly there was another car there. I have no idea where it came from, I will have to watch the replay. I hit it, and it flew off. Sorry.

I was then in 5th place, but slowly catching the 4th place car. I caught him, he went through the chicane, and wrecked, went flying through the air. I was braking, trying to make sure I did not get collected, but my rear brakes locked, and around I went. I think I held 4th place for all of about 2 seconds when the car behind, who had been gaining on us, passed me. I finished 5th.

Server worked flawlessly and Solar did a great job with the hosting. Thanks guys!

Oh, and the no resetting rule is a good one, and there for good reason. Like you said, you reset and found yourself back on the track. What if another car was going through there right then? You would have ruined their race.

This has been an issue with the LSD since it came out. It was especially a problem with the XRR, but happens on all cars. The drive axel basically gets locked by the brakes. Your tire might not be locked up, but the axel. is. The rev's will drop just like you say, and it usually results in a spin. I have even had this happen with the UF1.

Try moving your brake bias further to the rear if possible. If not, lower the brake force some. The other thing to do us to use the locked diff. For some reason, using the locked diff removes the issue.

Less camber in RWD rear wheels is because of more traction for power (as stated earlier) and because the rear is generally stiffer by nature because the lack of the steering requirement. In other words, the rear should have less overall dynamic camber change than the front does (at least in formula cars).

F1 cars typically run around 3° front and 1.5° rear camber. However, I don't know if that is a static or dynamic setting. (Steve Matchett book, Chariot Makers)

Teams often add camber to increase the heat in the tire. I am interested by this because if you try this in LFS, you end up with a very hot inner tire, but a cold outer tire.

I'll have to go read that other thread on the sidewalls in LFS. This could have a dramatic impact on just how much camber is effective.

Quote from Bean0 :

JOHN Player Special

Now go and stand in the corner :dunce:

:dunce: :tired: :sorry: :uglyhamme
Too early here, must have coffeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Thanks for the correction. But you get my point... right?

As far as the car sponsors go, I have seen a lot of people who like to do historic car skins. Like the Gary Player Special, and the old Marlboro Ferrari skin. You can't go back in time and whipe the tobbacco sponsors off of those cars, so why not show them on a skin now?

The problem with running a longer race on a public server is that people join and leave constantly. You get a huge mix of drivers from the alien, to the first-time driver. You get a lot of problems with some drivers just wanting to practice mixing with people who are actually in the race. It works out sometimes, but I have rarely seen a longer public race where more than a few cars actually finish the race, the rest either get bored and leave or just wreck out.

We do run occasional public races that are longer. We announce them on this forum, so they are semi-planned. We will usually lock the server down once qualifying is done so people can't join.

We also run some medium length races on a pickup basis. But, you really need an admin there the entire time to make sure things are running smoothly.

So, long races are best left to organized efforts. They rarely work well on public servers.

My problem with it is that I can drive a good line, not make any mistakes in the XRT, and have a FXO in front of me that slides big time through the corner and takes a poor line, and I can't catch them. They power out of the corner and walk away.
So, not only is it "easier" to drive, but good driving skills compared to poor, does not even out the situation. If one car is driven poorly, another car in the class that is driven very well should be able to beat the poorly driven car. It seems to not be the case right now.

Now, having said that, it could just come down to setups, but I don't think so.

I don't like the FWD cars as much as the RWD cars. I prefer to drive the RWD, but the way it is now, if I want any hope of winning I have to drive the FWD car (in the TBO class).

I would like to see either the TBO class or LRF class at KY2 either forward or reversed.

XRG+XFG on SO Long would be cool too.

Quote from AeoIus :

I never practice offline and have never done so. It's an online simulator so that's what I want to use. And although I am definitely not a great driver I'm reasonably quick to learn a decent control of a car on a circuit.

And there we have the crux of this particular problem. It is a dilema. But just because LFS is an online racing simulator, you can't just take one of the words and make it manditory without the others. If you take "online" as being manditory, then you must take "racing" as manditory. Wandering around the track running multiple seconds slower than everybody else, taking wrong turns, not able to control your car at all is NOT racing.

Unfortunately, there are people out there that simply don't care one way or another. They have trouble controlling the cars so they just bang around until they get board. This behaviour does ruin races for us, but they don't care. You can be nice to them, but again, they don't care because they are not paying attention. You just have to live with it or do most of your racing in leagues.

Did you unlock the R or T versions previously? If you did, then you don't have to re-unlock the U version.

I used to have this happen with my older graphics card. Sometimes when I used shift+4 to go to windowed mode, and tried to use a different app, LFS would slow way down. If found that resetting the graphics driver by changing a setting would sometimes fix it. Other times it would just crash the program. It did not seem to be a LFS problem, but more of a DirectX / Graphics driver problem.

I do get stutters from time to time now, but that has been happening since S2 alpha came out. I think it is realated to another app trying to do something in the background.

In your case it sounds like it only happens while online. I don't know the answer, but if you system is a bit on the old side, then you could be getting too many packets from the server. It might be set at 6, where 4 is better for slower computers. Try running in a window and watch the CPU meter in the task manager to see if it is peaking out.

The biggest problem is most of us want to encourage new racers to learn. We are willing to allow exceptions for them, even when they brake way to late for turn one and take everybody out. The wrecker idiots take advantage of this niceness in all of us. This then in turn makes a lot of us react negatively to honest mistakes. Our first reaction upon getting hit is to call the other driver a wrecker. I personally think this is the biggest damage that wreckers do. Not ruining a few pick-up races on a server, but they cause disention and disrespect amongst honest racers.

So, the way I see it is to do one of two things: Be very liberal with bans and realize that if you make a mistake and take out other cars, that you most likely will get banned from a server, even if you are not a wrecker. Live with it and try not to make big mistakes in the future.

Or, we can just keep trying to be nice and deal with the wreckers like we always have. Once they are identified, ban them and try to spread the word with other server admins. This can be frustrating, but is probably still the best way to go.

One thing that would help is to have a website address in the welcome message for all organized servers and on the website have a "contact the admin" email link. That way it would be easier to contact admins. Or, just post that email as part of the welcome message.

If you don't feel like you are just about to lose control, then you are not going fast enough.

However, the more you practice, the more it feels like you are in control, and you push it just that little bit further. During a long race, you step it back a bit to maintain consistency.

I love some of the comments here, it shows me that although we are all different, some things are the same everywhere.

There are some briliant cars out there, and there are some real duds. There are some that are sad, because they could have been so much more and some that are sad because they were in the first place.

I have seen great stupidity in design, engineering and service from all parts of the globe. Nobody has it perfect, but every once in a while, things just click and you end up with something special. I think LFS is one of those things.

I'm sorry Tristian if I came off as just a bit defensive. After I posted, I thought to myself, why am I trying to defend the US car makers? I don't like most of what they do and what they make. The best thing that has happened to them is the competitive pressure from European and Japanese manufacturers.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Yes, and there's a reason. America is still in the 1920's with car and engine design. Mmmm, pushrods and leaf springs. I know, lets call this car the sports version...

P.S. I know it's not so bad now, you're probably in the 1970's of European car design. But come on, America has yet to produce half a dozen good sports cars. The Newest 'vette is suposedly the best yet, and it has a time on Nurburgring to prove it. But optimising a car for the Nurburgring doesn't actually means is necessarily any good in real life. I'd bet a Mazda 787B is quicker round it, but I'd also bet it's utterly useless on an open public road. So don't use the 'it's good round a track' argument here, it cuts no mustard with me. When America makes a good chassis/engine/body I'll be the first to admit it.

Overstatement or just plain ignorance?
America has a huge market for a very wide variety of cars. I doubt you will find push rods in many cars now... except for NASCAR where it is mandated by the rules. Plus, pushrods can be better for certain applications just like live axels are. It is all in what you want from a car.

The big American manufacturers are slow to respond and they do have a tendency to follow trends instead of taking risks. But that does not mean that we are without some alternatives. Check out http://www.panozauto.com/

I own a Chevy... truck. It's a good truck. I also own a BMW 323. It is a great car. In some ways I wish more American manufacturers would produce something more innovative. But, they mostly produce generic boring cars that are geared to the mass-market here in the US. And they do work fine for that purpose. Somebody has to make cars like that. I do get annoyed at the Marketing hype calling certain cars "sports" versions when all they do is add bigger wheels and a useless spoiler, but that is true of a lot of car manufactures.

I am not defending the big three manufacturers, in general, they suck for sports cars, but there has been some good movement in the right direction over the last few years. It is frustrating because they can do it if they push for it, but they always manage to screw things up. The latest trends are nostalgia muscle "pony" cars, Mustang, GTO, Charger. They look cool, but they are still big and lacking in a really good suspension system.

Of course, you can slam any manufacturer for lame ideas and features. The BMW "no maintenance" gearboxes are just plain stupid and the E46 model of the 3 series does not even have an option for a limited slip differential.:pillepall

Quote from danowat :

Not bashing Americans, just their cars, big difference my friend .

As for the Brits having a superior attitude to cars, its a bit difficult to have that when we have little or no car industry to speak off.

Dan,

lol, and that is a sad thing considering the rich racing history.

If you have ever driven here in America, you would know why things are the way they are. I have driven across this great land a number of times. There are roads of all types, but the fact is, there is a long, long way between stops in some places. I have driven for hours without seeing a town and in some cases, another car. I used to commute once a month 3/4 of the way across the state of Oregon. That is almost like driving across Germany. This kind of trip is common here.

Quote from danowat :

Trouble is with the vette, and pretty much every other "yank-tank" is the lack of finesse and general "barn-door" engineering that is employed.

The american philosophy is, chuck a huge engine in, and thats that, sod the handling.

Its certainly better than it used to be, heck the new vette can actually go round corners

Dan,

Tsk Tsk, Although I agree with you to a degree, I am not a fan of American big iron, I would disagree about the Vette. It is a sports car... it just happens to have a big engine too. The thing turns like it is on rails... yes, it is an old cliche' but it is true. The brakes are outstanding, the steering is precise. Sure, it pushes (understeers) a bit like all street cars, but that can be fixed easily. It is a car that can be turned into a race car with just a roll cage and gutting of the interior.

Why do you think there are so many out there? It looks great, it is quick, and the price is not outrageous. Normal people can own them.

The fit and finish of the interior has always been sub-standard, and it is noisy, but it goes like the proverbial bat out of hell.

It is just a slightly different philosophy: Instead of super high reving, small turbocharged engines, the Vette uses a big engine with massive torque running at (relatively) lower RPMs. I drive a BMW, the power does not really kick in until you are over 3000 RPM. In the Vette, you get a real, visceral kick in the ass as soon as you romp on the loud pedal. It is very satisfying. When the only fun a lot of Americans can experience is their daily fling up the on-ramp to the slow moving freeway, then that little kick in the ass is really worth it.

The Z06 is pretty much a inexpensive super car. It is that good.

Back on-topic: I don't really feel as much of a need for real cars in LFS as I used to. I would much more prefer a wider variety of race cars, like LMP1 & LMP2 prototypes. Widen the classes a bit with more example cars, and keep them competitive. That will lead to the best overall racing. The FZ50 is basically a Porsche knock-off, and I would like to see something like a BMW knock-off, but I don't need the real car design.

http://www.speedarena.com/gallery/gallery.html

I really like this site. It covers SPEED World Challenge, ALMS, and a lot of other series. Very good stuff.

Quote from tailing :

The way I see it hotlapping itself isn't very realistic so defining what is realistic behaviour when hotlapping is kinda a moot point.
If I happened to be in a "hotlapping" situation in real life I'm pretty certain there would be nothing stopping me from driving backwards or doing burnouts or whatever.
I dunno, I don't feel that strongly either way but find some of these discussions about what is and isn't realistic in a computer game a bit strange.

Exactly!

A simulator recreates the rules of physics for a certain purpose. It does not recreate the rules of a track or common sense. As little as possible is scripted.

It may not be realistic BEHAVIOR by the drivers, but it is perfectly realistic and understandable. But I would also argue that our behavior in the sim will vary greatly with our behavior in the real world... and that is part of the beauty of a sim. One of the beauties of using a Sim is the ability to repetitively do something in a short period of time, and that is what happens with hotlaps, they are getting to the meat of the problem.

I also have a problem with certain behaviors in the sim, but there is not much you can do about it.
A case in point of the behavior thing: The last chicane on KY GP Long is usually cut at about 120mph in the XRR hotlaps slamming over the curb and the speed bumps. No driver in his right mind would attempt that more than once in the real world.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Pit Spotter! Racing online without it should be penalised by castration !
http://www.kegetys.net/lfs/

Ouch Easy for YOU to say!

The Ghost car patch was OK, it is well done, but I almost never use it.

The Pit spotter voice comes straight out of NASCAR 2003 season. I wouldn't doubt there are individual sound or ogg files with the voice in it for each statement. Just record your own and replace them.

I may have to give some of these others a try too

I also found that running with higher pressures on the R2's with the XRR will make the tires last without overheating for the entire tread life of the tire. That really did not happen before patch R (now T). You could only run a couple of laps with R2's before they overheated. You pretty much had to run R3's for races of any length at all.

I also like the fact that if you run tires under-pressure, which was the norm before, you can really feel the difference in how the car responds. Low pressures lead to a mushy feeling where higher (closer to realistic) pressures make the car feel more crisp and you don't lose as much grip as you used to. The tires do take a while to come up to temperature, but they eventually do.

I really wonder about the usefulness of R4 tires right now for any car. They are too hard, they don't take heat well and they don't stick. It is nice now that the R2's are a viable option for races as opposed to just being used for hotlaps.

I always say to practice offline, at least until you can find your way around a track and the basic braking points with a particular car. You don't have to be competitive on that track to go on line, but you should at least be familiar with it. That said, anybody is welcome online. I find that if somebody goofs, they say they are sorry, and that they are just learning, then I am a lot more patient with them and am happy to try and help.

Use the mirrors and work hard on staying consistent.

I advocate making small tweaks on your own sets. I have learned a lot about setups in the last few years. I have researched online and learned about grip, damper settings, toe-in, camber, etc. It is fun to read about all these things on real race, and race driving web sites. LFS does a good job in general of modeling these settings and it is fun to see how the car reacts to the different changes.

The AI can be good when trying to learn alternate lines. They also help you concentrate on where you are on the track and not just following other cars... usually right off the track. I sometimes race them and try NOT to pass them. Just follow along and learn how to see my brake points and turn in points with them in the way. It is good training for real races.

The Original LFS League is well run with great events. The league is well attended and you will find people at your skill level to race with. They don't have a season going right now, but it should not be too long before they do.

FWIW
Street cars now have four basic transmission types.

Automatic
Multiple internal clutch packs and usually containing some form of planetary gear system. The driver does not need to shift at all. Some automatics come with an option for the driver to select gears manually, but they are still an automatic transmission. The shifts can be slow compared to a manual or SMG.

Manual
The driver operates a clutch and gear shift lever. The gear shifting is normally in the standard H pattern.

Sequential manual gearbox
This gearbox is basically the same as a manual transmission, but some mechanism, usually hydraulic or electrical, operates the clutch for the driver. The drive selects gears. The driver cannot skip gears, like going from 2nd to 4th. The shifting sequence is like what a motorcycle uses. The shifter can be a stick (common in sports cars and rally cars), or paddles. In street cars, this type of system can be setup to be completely automatic too where the driver does not select gears at all. But the system still has just one clutch that is external to the gearbox. A good example of this is the BMW SMG (sequential manual gearbox) found mostly in the M3. I don't know for a fact, but I believe this is the basic type of gearbox found in an F1 car.

Continuous Variable
This has long been a theory in transmissions but is just now starting to see use in street cars. Audi is the first in the modern era (that I have heard of) that uses this type of gearbox. There are no real shifts in this system. It continuously varies the gear ratio based on the car speed and engine load. It can be setup to be totally smooth where no shift type hesitations can be felt. The driver can select "gears", but this just tells the transmission where to go to. I believe the Audi has been setup to actually give a bit of a hesitation so the driver can feel the shift and know it has been done.

Quote from ArosaMike :

I'll tell you what he's like for real a week on Monday if you want :P I'm racing him (no joke!)

Yeah, let us know. Out Karting with him and his brother?

But I bet he will be standoff-ish. He has been treated very poorly by the media for his entire professional career. He has had major medical problems that almost killed him. He is now inundated with attention and I think he is trying to learn how to adjust. I don't think he minds doing the interviews and all that, but I think he does not like all the attention when he is just trying to find his way to the bathroom.

The squeeky clean image of F1 is just a sham. There is a difference between acting sophisticated and really being that way. They put on a good show on TV and I do honestly beleive that a lot of the drivers and crews like each other and respect each other. But, just because you use nice four sylible words or four letter words to bitchslap somebody, it is still a bitchslap. Jenson Button is an expert at the art of saying nice words whilst all the while implying that somebody else is a butthole. Scott just needs to learn how to play the game and focus his aggression where it will help him not hurt him.