Although your intentions are laudable, and I really hope you can make it happen, I can tell by what you write that you don't have a firm grasp on what it takes to make a motion simulator.
Maybe there is only one vector at a time. But how do you define that time slice? 1Hz? 2Hz?10Hz? You are only thinking linearly if you think that you can just apply one force to simulate the car in a corner. What about transitions? Left to right, brake to accelerate, that kind of thing? What is the position of the platform when these things occur? Don't you think that "bull ride" up and down motion is necessary in transition when forces change and you've already leaned the platform as far as it will go in one direction?
Anyway, best of luck, but I suspect you have a lot of learning to do.
Well, except nothing you say has even a remote connection to the reality of LFS. Business models differ between companies just as the expected returns from said businesses differ.
Sam and the others said it quite well. You would do yourself a favor if you actually paid attention to what they said. And no, it isn't being a "fanboy" to understand and appreciate the business model that LFS has been created under. If you don't like the business model, then fine, that's your prerogative. But don't criticize something you don't understand.
Although I suppose this technique can and does work in a sim, I think that doing it that way in GPL and probably that vintage of cars was more due to the bias ply tires rather than a driving technique. Bias ply required larger slip angles to work properly and that is true of both the front and rear end.
I also think that LFS, and more so in iRacing, have a very sharp drop off between grip and no grip allowing something like this to be more effective. If you try to do something like that in a real car with radial tires you are going to eat some ditch.
I also think that LFS, and more so in iRacing, have a very sharp drop off between grip and no grip allowing something like this to be more effective. If you try to do something like that in a real car with radial tires you are going to eat some ditch.
Wow, Sam, Wow... you should have just stopped after your historical review of the symbol. The rest of that is total hogwash without one shred of truth in it. You really should know a bit more about what you are blathering on about before you engage your keyboard.
On topic.
You all already have what you paid for and you have all gotten way more entertainment out of this product than the paltry amount you paid for it.
With our without new content, it is still the very best racing simulator on the market.
Those who are bored because there has been no new content in a while will also be bored a few days after new content is released. Go back to watching MTV and your "reality" shows and stop worrying about this.
Hmmm, is somebody offering their services in that regards??
Good post Sam.
We all know how Scawen works. As he fixes things and adds new things, his plans may change in an instant as he finds something else that is in dire need of attention, or finds something that is just not up to his standards. It is partially this type of development that has given us such a stable, usable, and exacting platform to play with.
I don't have any direct knowledge on any of this, but I am sure that all is well and things are progressing. In my opinion, I expect that everybody will be ecstatic with whatever it is that comes out in this next release.
We all know how Scawen works. As he fixes things and adds new things, his plans may change in an instant as he finds something else that is in dire need of attention, or finds something that is just not up to his standards. It is partially this type of development that has given us such a stable, usable, and exacting platform to play with.
I don't have any direct knowledge on any of this, but I am sure that all is well and things are progressing. In my opinion, I expect that everybody will be ecstatic with whatever it is that comes out in this next release.
Even good hotlappers are "smooth". You can be smooth on the controls while still being really fast on the controls.
Smooth also refers to stuff you may not be picking up on. Like on turn in, a small movement to start the weight transfer and then a smoother turn in from far earlier than what most people do would be pretty smooth.
Most people turn in too abruptly and too late. That causes rapid weight shift and rapid increase in force at the tires. This is what I would call not smooth.
Smooth also refers to stuff you may not be picking up on. Like on turn in, a small movement to start the weight transfer and then a smoother turn in from far earlier than what most people do would be pretty smooth.
Most people turn in too abruptly and too late. That causes rapid weight shift and rapid increase in force at the tires. This is what I would call not smooth.
I would agree with all of that.
However, I have heard from several "real world" club racers that on certain cars, and only up to a point, stiffer ARB's in front will decrease understeer or stiffer ARB's in the rear will decrease oversteer. They claim this is because the ARB's help to limit the camber change at the wheel due to suspension geometry. Therefore, stiffer bars increase overall grip up to a point. I don't know if this is true, but it holds a certain amount of sense because ARB's should help limit suspension deflection and therefore the inherent camber change couldn't get as high. But I don't know for sure if this is how things really work.
I also don't know if LFS models this or not, but I suspect that it does.
Now if you are already using uber stiff springs and ARB settings, then the suspension deflection is already limited and the camber change isn't much of an issue.
I wasn't debating the point that it is obviously trivial to make setup changes in LFS compared to real cars and the fact that testing can be virtually infinite in LFS. It is a sim, and that is one of the fun things about a sim.
I agree that variability in the track conditions would be a big deal and would greatly add to the challenge. Cars that actually flex and twist around like they do in real life would be good too. That is where the road going XRG would be very squishy and the XRR would be very stiff. Right now, they are probably identical in stiffness, which of course is simply not right.
Yes, I am looking forward to the day when the track warms and cools as the day goes on, where the humidity changes, were even the track condition changes as rubber gets laid down... even having to deal with "klag" as David Hobbs calls it. I am sure the we will get there in time. Throw some rain into the mix with realistic drying patterns, and I think we all will have found nirvana. But, for these things we have to wait and work with what we have.
Well, he did say "Awefull" which probably means the same as "Full of Awe". I take that to mean he is humbled by the LX.
Bob's setup analyzer is way cool. It will help in understanding what setup changes do.
LFS has its limitations.
You can change things in the engine... you have the intake restrictor. That's enough for now. Many club classes only allow minor changes to engines like a performance "chip". That's about it. Plus "buying" headers and other stuff to put on the car just makes things messy and complicated for racing online. You want to talk about class balancing issues then?
You can change the weight. Again, that is enough for now.
Just because a car is faster (eg, it is the R version), doesn't necessarily mean that only the faster car should have adjustments. I have seen plenty of street machines that have been modified for track/street use. Camber plates are relatively cheap and easy to install, many also have caster adjustments. Adjustable coil-over suspensions are easily attainable for just about any car. Fender rolling, wider tires, aero devices, diff changes, brake upgrades, etc. I have seen it all and I have seen it on cars that might surprise you.
All race cars, and I do mean all, have a roll cage. Period. You don't race without one. You can't really use that in LFS as a delimiter though. I view the XRG as a "prepared" class car in club racing. You should be able to make a pretty wide range of adjustments to it.
What I don't want to see is setup capabilities so limited that everybody just pushes the sliders up and to the right and there ya go... that's the fastest set. There must be enough variability to allow people to make both good and bad sets and to accommodate different driving styles. It's all in the fun.
You can change things in the engine... you have the intake restrictor. That's enough for now. Many club classes only allow minor changes to engines like a performance "chip". That's about it. Plus "buying" headers and other stuff to put on the car just makes things messy and complicated for racing online. You want to talk about class balancing issues then?
You can change the weight. Again, that is enough for now.
Just because a car is faster (eg, it is the R version), doesn't necessarily mean that only the faster car should have adjustments. I have seen plenty of street machines that have been modified for track/street use. Camber plates are relatively cheap and easy to install, many also have caster adjustments. Adjustable coil-over suspensions are easily attainable for just about any car. Fender rolling, wider tires, aero devices, diff changes, brake upgrades, etc. I have seen it all and I have seen it on cars that might surprise you.
All race cars, and I do mean all, have a roll cage. Period. You don't race without one. You can't really use that in LFS as a delimiter though. I view the XRG as a "prepared" class car in club racing. You should be able to make a pretty wide range of adjustments to it.
What I don't want to see is setup capabilities so limited that everybody just pushes the sliders up and to the right and there ya go... that's the fastest set. There must be enough variability to allow people to make both good and bad sets and to accommodate different driving styles. It's all in the fun.
That may be...
But every set that I have ever used that was competitive AND setup for longer races has always been quite reasonable. Sure, some used locked diffs, and tire pressures are a bit goofy in LFS, but other than that, they had perfectly reasonable spring, damper, and ARB settings.
Find some of the sets used by the good teams in MoE or IGTC or other top series. I think you will find that most of them are quite reasonable. They are well within the bounds you would find on a real car.
I think extreme sets are put together for one of two reasons.
The person building the set doesn't really know what they are doing and because something in the set is totally goofy (but within normal ranges) they have to compensate with something totally unrealistic somewhere else.
Or
People are compensating or exploiting some quirks in the LFS physics.
Most of the time, however, this type of set is only good for hot lapping or short sprint races. They are either to unpredictable to drive in a longer race, or they will eat tires.
I do want to see some limits placed on setup options for some of the cars. A more limited range of spring and damper settings would be OK for example. But I don't want to see things to the level of only allowing changes to tire pressure and maybe camber. If you are going to race a car, unless it is a showroom stock class, you are going to make changes to make the car faster.
I have seen this kind of thing a lot with the ATI drivers. It seems that changes often do not take effect in a particular game until you quit that game and then start it again. It is most noticeable if you have a slow GPU. Turn all the features to max and LFS still runs fine. The shut down LFS, restart it and your frame rate is down to about 6. Turn all your GPU settings back down again... and your frame rate is still at 6. Shut down LFS start it again without making any GPU changes, and your frame rate goes back up.
So, anyway, make changes in your GPU settings, shut down the game, start it again, and everything should work out fine.
Yep. That is one of the reasons I stopped using my daily driver and bought a track rat. It has liability on it, but that is only to get back and forth to the track. www.griplimit.net
Most insurance companies for cars will NOT cover track days at all anymore. Read the fine print. It will say anything done on a track is not covered. Period. They won't care if it is a "school" or anything else. If it is on track, it isn't covered. There is track day insurance that you can get now, but I would only do it if the car/bike I had was worth a lot.
I have seen a number of $100k Porsches stuffed into walls. Probably around $10k worth of damage each. And even though I have seen that, it is still a pretty rare occurrence. Nobody has ever gotten hurt while I was there.
Yes, it was very nicely done. MoE should require something like this for all teams, especially for the 24h races. As a viewer, it makes it more interesting when you know something about the team and the drivers.
Also, great job on the 24h race. The telecast was great, DWB was fun to listen to, and kudos to Appie and the rest of the Admins/Marshals. It is a thankless job, but nothing could happen without them.
Also, great job on the 24h race. The telecast was great, DWB was fun to listen to, and kudos to Appie and the rest of the Admins/Marshals. It is a thankless job, but nothing could happen without them.
I am sure it is different for each club/track/location. But around here, all the clubs run something similar. There is generally 4 run groups. Novice (always with instructor), Intermediate (sometimes with instructor), Advanced, and the Instructor group (Instructors get a session for themselves as a bonus for instructing).
All instructors are free or covered in the price for admission. All new drivers will have an instructor, no exceptions.
Each group runs a 20 minute on-track session in order. Each group gets 4 sessions in a day (assuming nobody prangs a wall or dumps 16 quarts of oil on the track... stupid oil cooled Porsches
).
Corner workers are present so you need to know your flags. Passing is only allowed in certain areas and a point-by is usually required.
Be careful. This habit is like crack. It is tough to quit once you start.
All instructors are free or covered in the price for admission. All new drivers will have an instructor, no exceptions.
Each group runs a 20 minute on-track session in order. Each group gets 4 sessions in a day (assuming nobody prangs a wall or dumps 16 quarts of oil on the track... stupid oil cooled Porsches
).Corner workers are present so you need to know your flags. Passing is only allowed in certain areas and a point-by is usually required.
Be careful. This habit is like crack. It is tough to quit once you start.
You do know that LFS has those settings? I generally have it mostly off because, to me, it detracts from the realism.
When in the real car, your head is moving around, but the way your eyes react, etc, it is really difficult to make a sim behave the right way. iRacing likes to move the car around you a lot. LFS actually does move the driver's eye position with the resultant effect of everything moving around.
iRacing is correct in an odd sort of way because your eye will naturally lock onto something in the distance and you will perceive that the car is moving around but the world isn't. LFS moves the drivers point of view which forces your eye to find something to lock onto on the screen. But, since we don't have depth perception and we can't easily move our head to keep things in view (you can with a TrackIR, but it is somewhat difficult to learn), things are not really natural.
There are few ways to do this type of thing effectively in sims. It is an inherent limitation of current technology. Just my opinion. I know others feel differently about this kind of thing.
I would tend to agree. When you get right down to it, you get an opinion. Maybe an educated and experienced opinion, but still an opinion.
There are just too many variables to be able to make direct comparisons between a sim and the real world. Getting the exact same car, same weight, a tire model that reflects the actual tires used, ambient temperatures, tarmac condition and wear, humidity, etc, etc.
I think some of the worst recommendations I have seen come from real world racers who don't spend much or any time using racing simulators. A sim is just too removed from reality for a comparison for them. People who are attuned to how sims work and also have some real track experience will generally give you a better comparison. But even then, by nature, it can only be a limited comparison or in other words, just an opinion.
I have track experience. My opinion is that LFS does a better job overall in simulating car physics and, importantly, visual and physical (Force Feedback) feedback as to what the car is doing. However, and this is a big caveat, I don't push on the real track like I do in LFS. In LFS, I am right on the limit or over the limit all the damn time. On the real track, I get close to the limit most of the time and rarely go over the limit. Cars/Tires behave very differently under the limit compared to on the limit as compared to over the limit. So even my opinion has limitations and I can only go so far with my opinion of simulator realism before I overstep my experience.
As a side note, I mostly see people equate realism with visual/graphical things. In other words, if the picture on the screen looks more real to them, then the sim is more real. Even when speaking of physics and tire behavior, I have found that many people are still influenced by how things look as opposed to how things behave.
iRacing seems a tad better than rFactor for physics. However, even worse than rFactor, iRacing makes me feel like I am driving a Wacky Racer or something. In the Solstice, it feels like the hood of the car is detached from everything else and is just bucking around. No real car has the hood come up in your face when you accelerate like that... even if you have a soft suspension.
From the stories that I have heard, originally, it was your heel on the brake and use the ball of your foot to blip the throttle. I think this was probably because of completely mechanical brakes and a long distance to between the pedals.
Later, it became toe/heel shifting because most people started switching to the ball of your foot on the brake and the heel or the side of your foot for blipping the throttle. Maybe this was because the pedals were closer together or it offered the driver a better level of control and speed when doing the shifts.
There are a lot of problems for doing it either way and it depends on the car configuration, the size of your feet, the distance between pedals, the throw of the pedals, the flexibility of your ankle, etc.
The key is smooth brake application and control while being able to accurately match the revs. However you accomplish that is good.
I think he is referring to the pressure feedback. Most brakes come to a point where they don't move anymore and it becomes a pressure application. The harder you press, the more braking you get (but with very little to no pedal movement). On sim pedals, when it gets hard to press anymore, you are out of brakes. It is all based on travel.
Some help can be derived from using the tennis ball trick or by getting some quality pedals. But they all still have the same basic problem. It is all based off of movement.
Another problem with sim brakes, especially while using something like the tennis ball, is the brake pedal wants to spring back with quite a bit of force. Real brake pedals don't do that. The obviously spring back to full up, but not with that much force. Having this force pushing back against your foot makes it much hard to heal toe smoothly. It keeps pushing against your foot and when you roll your foot to hit the gas, the brakes let up some. This leads to jerky braking and tire lockups, etc.
I am actually surprised by the long pedal throw in that video. From other videos that I have seen of race prepped cars, the throw was lot shorter and it was more the pressure at the end where the modulation takes place.
But, here is another video showing quite a bit of pedal travel too.
http://video.google.com/videos ... operty-revision&cd=1#
Here is another one that uses much less pedal throw. It is a bit hard to see because the brake is partially out of the picture. This is a C6R with a sequential box and you can see it doesn't take much of a blip to match the revs.
http://www.badboyvettes.com/qtlimerock07
And of course this one in a Radical. The shifts are fast, but you can see the brake travel is fairly short.
http://video.google.com/videos ... ion&cd=1&start=30
Sorry for the long links.
But, here is another video showing quite a bit of pedal travel too.
http://video.google.com/videos ... operty-revision&cd=1#
Here is another one that uses much less pedal throw. It is a bit hard to see because the brake is partially out of the picture. This is a C6R with a sequential box and you can see it doesn't take much of a blip to match the revs.
http://www.badboyvettes.com/qtlimerock07
And of course this one in a Radical. The shifts are fast, but you can see the brake travel is fairly short.
http://video.google.com/videos ... ion&cd=1&start=30
Sorry for the long links.
Since all brakes are hydraulic, you are trying to compress a fluid, which you can't compress. At a certain point, brake travel should stop for the most part as the slack in the system is taken up. Then you are basically pushing on something solid that shouldn't move any more. Sim pedals, even the best ones, are terrible at this. I have great pedals from ECCI and they use a nice cam system to simulate better brake action, but it still relies on motion, not on pressure.
If the pedal continues to move, you have a bad master cylinder, a leak, or air in the system. The latter is the most common. The brake fluid will start to basically boil at a certain temp and this will introduce gasses into the system. The gasses are compressible and this is what causes the pedal to start moving towards the floor. Drives will have to "pump" the brakes up to be able to apply an braking force. That is why they check before a hard braking corner to make sure they have some pressure.
I don't think simulating the brake heating will do anything to stop people from setting a low brake level insuring that they won't lock up. Longer, slower braking will definitely add more heat than short, hard braking, but I don't think that the settings we are talking about here will make any real difference. Modulating brakes in a simulator is tough. The best thing anybody can learn is how to slowly back off on your braking as the car slows down. This will help you get a lot faster in most situation and allow you to trail brake more effectively. Setting your brakes really high and "modulating" them can make you a lot faster, but it will lead to more lock ups and difficulties. Lets face it, there is no tactile feedback with most sim pedals. There is just motion travel. It is hard to modulate based off of that.
The guy's name is Johnson, I think. Former pro football player. The did install a throttle blip button on the shifter for him. He would just hit the button when he wanted a blip.
Is it that you can't roll your ankle anymore? Or can you not twist it?
I am not any good at heal toe. I don't have much of a suggestion. There are extensions for gas pedals that you can get, or possibly moving the pedals closer together will work. It is all about positioning things properly. It could be that you are just stuck until your ankle loosens back up, if it ever does.
There are infinite variability in spring/damper combinations. It is most likely true that for a given car weight and spring rate, there is a vary narrow range of damper settings that will be effective. However, even within that narrow range, there is plenty of variability in the car handling. My point was that unless you go out and get custom springs made, which most club level racers won't do, then you are stuck with whatever is available on the market that will fit your car. You then will probably get custom valved dampers made up for the car with the potential of some limited adjustability on those dampers for track conditions.
For the race platforms, more options should be provided. However, we all know that you can set silly values in LFS for springs and damper rates. Limits should be set more realistically I think.
Many of us like to play the R&D roll. I am not suggesting that if you pix X spring rate that you have to use Damper Y. I am saying you have a choice between x number of spring rate settings and y number of damper combinations. They can be used in whatever combination you want.
In any case, I think the most important thing is allowing servers to be setup to control setup variables in the way wanted. I see this mostly valuable for league racing, but servers like the CTRA could also make valuable use out of it.
What I don't want to lose is the ability to experiment with a wide range of setup possibilities for all the cars. I really don't like that the XRG and the XFi don't have rebound damper settings. It should be there. I know why it was changed, but if we can limit the ranges of settings while keeping the full scope of settings available, then I think it would be better.
Limits to the range of values that can be selected would be a good improvement. I think that those options should be fairly large, but not infinite like they are now. For example, having 8 different spring settings and 16 different damper settings would be more than enough for most of the street going cars.
However, you are all assuming that these cars will all get used in some form of "Spec" class. In other words, the non-stock components are strictly limited. This is often not the case and there is plenty of club racing classes that allow for extensive changes. As long as certain rules are adhered to, things like the type of springs, dampers, camber plates, brakes and even engine mods, are fairly open. That means that there are a large number of possible configurations.
The point that it would suck to have to have different setups for different servers based on server side options is a valid point. However, server side options for limiting car setups are necessary in my opinion. This would give league administrators the option to create different car "classes" or spec series that limits the changes that can be made to cars. For example, limit the springs and dampers to one type like the do for the Spec E30 NASA series here in the US. It would be super nice if these server side options are set, then it will override whatever values that your selected set currently has.
Anyway, just turning off different settings does not make much sense. But limiting the infinite variability does.
However, you are all assuming that these cars will all get used in some form of "Spec" class. In other words, the non-stock components are strictly limited. This is often not the case and there is plenty of club racing classes that allow for extensive changes. As long as certain rules are adhered to, things like the type of springs, dampers, camber plates, brakes and even engine mods, are fairly open. That means that there are a large number of possible configurations.
The point that it would suck to have to have different setups for different servers based on server side options is a valid point. However, server side options for limiting car setups are necessary in my opinion. This would give league administrators the option to create different car "classes" or spec series that limits the changes that can be made to cars. For example, limit the springs and dampers to one type like the do for the Spec E30 NASA series here in the US. It would be super nice if these server side options are set, then it will override whatever values that your selected set currently has.
Anyway, just turning off different settings does not make much sense. But limiting the infinite variability does.
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