WAAAAY too much negative camber. You're not consistent enough to use that much. You're just cruising down the straights destroying the inside edge. The only times you benefited from it was when you got into zero steer and you only did that a handful of times and mostly only on the exit. The right front tire was barely working at all. Pull some camber out. (EDIT) Ah, I was playing around with it in LFS and rather than taking camber out try going to 0 degree toe settings. The FBM has some toe by default and you might try taking that out. If that does nothing (I doubt it) making the anti-roll settings softer will give the tires more life but might affect grip drastically.

You also need to trail brake more. You're probably not seeing the benefit from it because you're using the default brake bias. Dial it in to 50/50 and then try it, it'll respond better. You're only carrying brakes past the turn-in two times per lap at most, and only by a hair. Turns 1, 5 and 8 all use a good amount of trail brakes. As a result you're way early on the throttle into all of them. Throttle pick-up should be just before the apex, not just after entry. To force yourself to trail brake more, brake where you're braking now, but brake lighter. You only want to use as much brake pressure as necessary to rotate the car. Too much and you over slow. Too little and you go wide. Once you've got the car in the right slip angle get back on the power to settle it, even if it's just neutral throttle. A stiff differential setting will help you with that.

You mis-shifted a couple times. With the FBM you want to hold the shift paddle/button/lever as you approach the shift point and then just back out of the throttle half way sharply. That's the fastest and most consistent shift with the FBM.

You had a couple incidents of what we call "terminal understeer". This is when the front tires are well beyond maximum but the rears are barely working at all. Usually this happens when you run wide and the momentum shift in the G-forces stops. When this happened to you (like on the last lap in turn 5), you added more steering. Don't do that, it really only makes things worse. Come off the throttle and use a bit of brake if you need to to get the car pointed towards the exit. Just because you run wide doesn't mean you can't have a good corner considering.

Hope that helps. I'm only nit-pickey because I think you're a good driver. Truth is, the better you are the easier it is to critique.

Last edited by MadCat360, Sun, 5 Jul 2009 00:14.

Quote from oqvist :

Turbo S won´t arrive until september it looks like.

They said in an interview that it's a conservative date. It could get shipped sooner but don't count on it.

As long as mine is here before Forza 3 I don't care.

Quote from tristancliffe :

But that's isn't the small team of Victor, Eric and Scawen anymore. They want to work in this way. It's why they teamed up and made LFS - to get away from managing other people or having multiple people working on different things in different ways...

If it gets to the stage where LFS has to have more programmers or artists then I'd imagine they'll just stop developing it and move onto another project that doesn't need more people. I don't see that happening for a while, but I do see that happening over enlarging the team.

When it'll happen is anyone's guess. It won't happen tomorrow though.

Personally, I hope they expand the team when the time comes, because I like LFS a lot and I'd like to see it continue on for many years, growing all the while.

Nice little unit.

I had a little bit more space so I built a simple A-frame table thing that can slide under my desk if I really need to get it out of the way.

Quote from Intrepid :

You comparing two different things. Mod teams work on a voluntary basis. There is rarely any financial incentive nor a large commitment other than free time. LFS is a different kettle of fish as Scawen and co have to actually feed themselves through this project.

I find it quite funny how people can come on here (especially demo users) criticising the development of LFS when they themselves don't have the balls to go and do it themselves. And that means properly, not doing mods on a Sunday afternoon!

I, in the past, have fallen victim to this trait. I spent a large amount of time criticising iRacing and its payment plan, until it dawned on me what a stupid prick I was being. Who am I to complain? I get ALL the benefits from these projects with minimal commitment or investment.

It is a bizarre situation we find ourselves in when people that have paid £20 or so for a product that is more than worth it start spouting insults to the developers. The deep hypocrisy of these people is that if they don't like the work rate of LFS developers won't don't they start their own project!?

Not two different things. I've seen a lot of projects with many monetary commitments, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars just vanish for seemingly no reason.

If people never complained about anything, all we'd ever get would be crap. If standards are not constantly raised for product expectations, be it food, medical, entertainment, industrial materials or anything else then progress slows down. Demands and expectations are met and the world moves forward. Customer criticism is a big part of that. Case in point, Forza 3. If the whole community didn't go up in arms about cockpit mode, there likely wouldn't be one in Forza 3.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Less overheads, less sharing of work and the complications that bring, and most importantly because THAT IS HOW SCAWEN, VICTOR AND ERIC WANT TO WORK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!! THEY LEFT JOBS TO WORK ON A PROJECT WITH A SMALL TEAM. HOW HARD IS THAT TO GET INTO YOUR BRAIN?

I get that. But how is 5 people not a small team? How is even 10 people not a small team, for that matter?

Example. I used to fly transport for a parachute assault group in an MMOFPS. We had 60 members. We never had any trouble communicating, organizing and executing immensely large scale joint operations across entire continents as mid-teenagers. That trend continues now with my airsoft wargames. We have no trouble organizing 80+ man assaults, ambushes, snatch-and-grabs and escorts over milti-square-mile AOs, even though some fireteams don't have radios. If a bunch of 20-year-olds can do that I think the LFS team can handle having a couple extra members with absolutely no problems.

Fact is, this is an incredibly ambitious project, and it's come a long way, but we're starting to see signs of it's death here. Long update times, lack of communication, I've seen this trend a hundred times before in mod teams, clans and many other independent projects, and it never ends well. When that will be is anyone's opinion, but eventually, sometime soon, LFS's current team will get utterly swamped and progress will stop. If they don't grow, LFS will not grow. Simple as. The fact that people are so defensive about it really only emphasises the problem.

I could see where an XFG-ish car could have a 0.95 G rating overall in a corner, such as when you combine trail braking and cornering or acceleration and cornering, but for just pure sideways grip that doesn't seem right. Are all the other cars generating abnormally high G forces?

Quote from PMD9409 :

They want to keep it as it is.

Then the game will reach a point in the near future, if not right now, where it can no longer be improved by the current team. If LFS is to grow very much more they need to grow as a studio. An IndyCar racing team does not have 3 members. 3-man teams are for club races. Do you want LFS to be stuck at the club level for the rest of it's career? Why not bump it up to pro-am?

I never asked that they do it, I asked why they do it.

Quote from tristancliffe :

It's nothing to do with budget or massive staff levels. They want to work in their little 3 man team. If they could afford another member of staff there still wouldn't be a new member of staff. Why do people find this so hard to understand?

What I find hard to understand is the negative difference between 3 men and 5 men in this case.

With 3 men you have people doing many different jobs. Whereas with 5 men:

1 mapper/asset artist

1 car builder/tester

1 coder/network guy

1 PR/tester

1 project lead/producer/creative director/little bit of everything

They're doing a really impressive job as it is, but you can always make a situation better. Tell me the benefit of having a 3 man team versus a 5 man team.

Quote from SparkyDave :

Slightly OT: Another tactic Iv'e seen is when you go for a pass, get inside,side by side at apex, then the car on the outside does not give enough room for you to complete the pass, instead they turn into you on exit, I mean who exits a turn and stays on the inside of the track? anyone know what I mean?

I don't do a whole lot of online racing yet but if you're side by side at the apex the outside car will usually have the advantage going down the next straight. But, if they don't use up all the road to give you room that's pretty bad form, but what are you going to do, punch them? Personally if I'm side by side and remain so till the exit I'll just leave a little bit of margin on the exit in case he doesn't give me room.

Quote from The Very End :

Taken from LFS webpage.
So tomorrow it's 1 year since the patch.

I know the dev team doesn't want to get assimilated or have a thousand people or anything like that, but wouldn't hiring just a couple more guys be reasonable? Or are they really stretching the budget that much?

Quote from aoun :

To me, that Lola FJR is b-e-a-utiful!

No kidding. There's a garage full of them at Infineon at the Jim Russell school. All carbon fiber, stick sequential, Mitsubishi Evo 9 engine (300 HP Turbo), tons of downforce, 3 gees in the corners, 160k each.

I'm gonna get to drive one for 3 days at the end of the year! (thank god there's a 7.5 k deductible!)

Quote from Pablo Donoso :

According to Newman Haas Racing, their test center said that IRL cars can produce enough downforce to drive on the roof of a tunnel, without falling, @ around 100mph. That's crazy xD My instructor also told us the wings on Formula 2's are effective around 80+mph or more. lol the suspension travel on most formula cars is like an inch or two, that number I'm not sure about but it's not more then a few inches max.

note: you should buy the S2 license, it's totally worth it.

I'm just guessing the travel based on just looking at a Formula 1 car sitting still versus at 190 MPH. The only reason it entered my head was when a SPEED announcer mentioned it and I could see the cars a lot lower at high speed than say sitting on the grid or a pit stop.

Ya I'm getting S2 when my Porsche wheel gets here.

For answer: see "Let's get real..." thread.

Quote from KarateBoy :

Driving Force GT on eBay (or CL) is around your price range. Very good wheel for the money

Quote from Gabkicks :

u shouldnt go lower than the driving force gt.

Thirded. The Ebay ones are around 70-80 bucks.

Apparently it's not Xbox compatible since Codemasters only mention the already existing wheels for the Xbox version. Oh well.

Quote from Flame CZE :

or it was an F3 car...

Wot you mean like this? (Lola FJR-50)

Quote from tristancliffe :

At 1mph you should need the same steering angle to follow the same line as you would at 100mph, until other effects like understeer or oversteer or suspension compression become important.

Which would be going fast enough. If they're not important then you're not going fast enough. That's my point. Go fast enough, and you don't need to use any steering. Speed is a matrix of a lot of factors, not just MPH.

Quote from Forbin :

I already described the special case of rear slip and its effect on steering input. Yes, the steering wheel may be fairly straight in a 4-wheel drift, but that's not really using less steering. The front wheels are still at an angle relative to the direction of travel (i.e. angle of attack). This angle is required to generate lateral force. If the angle of attack is 0, the lateral force is 0, in which case you're going straight, not turning.

What you described as being possible in a Honda Civic is quite simply impossible. I think we can all agree it's not going to be experiencing a 4-wheel drift. You might be able to initiate some brief oversteer but no front wheel drive car will hold it.

A front wheel drive car is easier to get into slip angle than it is any other car, just not on the throttle. Still, a FWD touring car can be set up to keep a decent amount of slip angle even under power.

The difference between turning the steering wheel and the tires creating their own steering effects via angle of attack is not semantics. It's two very different ways of doing things. You want me to start quoting books? I have a test day on July 9, want me to ask all four of my driver coaches?

Last edited by MadCat360, Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:35.

Quote from Forbin :

That's not how it works, MadCat360. The car doesn't magically turn tighter because you're going faster. You need a specific amount of steering input to maintain a specific steering radius, regardless of speed. If anything, you probably need more steering input as you approach the limits of lateral grip due to slippage.

That would be the case if tires were a static factor, but they are not. The more work a tire is doing the less work the steering has to do. If the tires aren't working then yeah, you'll need to use a lot more steering than if you were on the limit. We call this "steering with our feet". The perfect culmination of turn-in, speed, angle, apex, brake release and throttle application produces a zero-steer corner. With the right rear brake bias it is entirely physically possible to drive a track without using the steering wheel. Humanly impossible, as it would be the perfect lap and no one can do that, but that is perfection in a theoretical sense - a four-wheel drift.

I think we're all agreed LFS is a good enough sim. Take a look at the fastest replays. Very little steering input. It's mostly zero steer.

Quote from Pablo Donoso :

lol noooooo thats bad for the rack & pinion / power steering to turn 100%, also your cv boots/joints if its front wheel drive will be damaged much faster. lol if you turn the race car's wheel too much, it will stop rolling and start deflecting the sidewall, it also binds the chassis. To put it in easy terms, binding the chassis is putting excessive force on a frame. Like a paperclip that is bent constantly, it will eventually snap, as will a race car, it loses rigidity, not to mention speed. lol

You're not understanding what I'm saying. Take a normal Honda Civic through a u-turn at 10 or 15 MPH and you'll need to give the wheel a couple turns. Take it through at 25 or 30 and you won't even need to give it half a turn. The faster you go, the less steering you need to use, even if the corner geometry is the same. Any steering input = loss of speed.

Another example. If I'm below the limit in my kart, say on a cooldown lap or a recon lap, I'll use maybe 20 or 30 degrees of steering to get around a 30 MPH hairpin. If I'm carrying enough speed, trail braking right and turning in at the proper place I will use less than 10 degrees of steering, if any at all. The fastest way around a corner is the one with the least amount of steering input. No matter the car, no matter the setup, no matter the conditions this is the one constant in cornering theory.

That looks great. I love the super long nose and the rearward cockpit.

Quote from Pablo Donoso :

lol without quoting everyone else, you have to think about other factors that make a car turn. Here's a question, how many tires steer the car? The answer is all 4.

Many things such as elevation, weight distribution of the car, the COG (center of gravity), brake bias, Limitied slip differentials, drivetrain layout like front engine powering rear wheels, or mid engine powering rear wheels.

Then there are the variables of the car in motion, such as how it transfers weight, braking, slip angles, tire sidewall deflection, chassis binding due to oversteer, etc.

It is a lot more complicated then just the steering settings of the front tires. In a street car, we are used to turning the wheel all the way, for things like u-turns, but in formula or le-mans cars, the steering ratio is dropped do to the time it takes to rotate the wheel. The one I drove is the Star Mazda Formula 2's, the steering never exceeded more then the 150 degrees from 0 being located in the 12 oclock position.

This is me in Turn 11, infineon raceway, in the F2000, you can see, the tires are not turned much even though it is a 185 degree u-turn with a radius of approximately 200 feet.




This is me in the same turn, bat in a TRC training car, which had stock production tires. Even with those, the wheel is turned a little more then shown above, but it never exceeded more then 150 degrees in either direction from the 12 oclock spot.

Yes but we're talking specifically about how twitchy the wheel is, not the car itself. Even though a road car must use more or less full lock to take a u-turn, if you did that at racing speeds you wouldn't need to move the wheel anywhere near as much.

Quote from Riel :

FBM is not very much downforced.

I believe this forces áre simulated and also is the suspension reaction to it...?

I don't know. I've only tested the FBM as I'm only a demo user. But even so much as 100 pounds would be enough to move the suspension noticeably and at full wing angle the FBM is producing about 330 pounds of force at 120 MPH.

Quote from Greboth :

While I am not a LFS fanboy, I think saying it is a flawed simulation is wrong. A flaw makes something not perfect and while LFS isn't a perfect sim (cold tyre physics, damage etc), Forza 2 is just as flawed in that it is dumbed down and so isn't perfect either. Forza 2 is a final game where lfs is still in development so who knows maybe lfs will be come perfect one day. I wait for forza 3 though to see what improvements have been made, all I cans ay for now is I am looking forward to it.

Well, it drives nice to me. All the inputs respond as they should (except straight line braking but it's not a big deal). The cars I've driven at the limit on the track feel as they should. Though the laptimes are quite a few seconds too quick.

Personally I can't wait to try Forza 3. I'm still playing Forza 2 almost daily, if only for a few quick laps.

Quote from DragonCommando :

I thaught it did that in LFS, I never realy looked at it though.

Ya I looked at one of my replays in the FBM going down the back straight at Blackwood and from 0-125 there was no change in ride height. FBM is no F1 car but it should still press down with several hundred pounds above 110 or so.