Quote from Chrisuu01 :

Quiker force feedback moters better force feedback smoother bigger wheel
The shifter is good pedals are not that good same as the DFP..

DF GT's pedals are much better than DF Pro's pedals. Yes, they may look the same outside, but inside the DF GT is similar to G25 in that the pots are geared instead of directly connected to the pedals like the DF Pro. The result is that the pots take a lot less stress and last much longer than in DF Pro. Plus DF GT's pedal pots are big metal casing ones, whereas DF Pro uses small plastic pots. BIG difference.

Anyway, go for the GT.

Quote from Stefani24 :

Maybe rbr has not the best optical damage model, but as said the best tehnical, and the flips and crahses look damn realistic.

Mechanical damage FTW! In RBR you can bend any axle and feel it through FFB, damage clutch so it slips, rip off the door to hear un-muffled engine sound, crack the windshield, damage the radiator so steam come out... Plus the co-driver actually sounds badly hurt when you hit a tree.

NFS Prostreet's visual damage wasn't so bad, either. Although it feels like done in stages, the end result looks very convicing up close.

I think it makes little difference if you only hotlap, where you just practice to be very consistent lap after lap. But for racing, where the situation changes all the time, FFB could help deal with deviations from a hot lap.

I'd never ever drive rally games (RBR) without FFB, though.

Quote from Timdpr :

I only downloaded this ~1 week ago, and got RBR for christmas, so there's probably a lot I haven't tried! What should an RBR noob do now?

All gold at school?

Quote from Shadowww :

What about cost of electricity?

750 watt should really use less electricity than the 400 watt one, due to it running at much lower % of its capacity and is therefore, more efficient.

Quote from pb32000 :

I used to do airfix when I was younger with dad. Some of them turned out pretty good, took bloody months to do though. Then mum put them all in a box and they got crushed/smashed

Mums do that! Anyway, my New Beetle here. I have a Peugeot 206 WRC I've been meaning to do for 6 years.

Quote from Tomba(FIN) :

When will it be released? I'd love to get some real flying sim.. I've been waiting for one since B17

You mean IL2 1946? It's already released!

Quote from Ripley :

...or, if you prefer more relaxed flying-conditions, Rise Of Flight (still in development).
http://www.riseofflight.com/en/index.html

I've been with Il2 since its first demo, but this WW1 sim really catches my eye. The blog's in Russian so... What's the release date?

Quote from jbirdaspec :

First thing I do is turn off the profilerer by not allowing it to auto start. It's menu's are messy. It's bloated fancy soft that be quite jicky. And I can't be sure, but sometimes I think it even try's to dynamically mess with your configurations while you drive. Some people might like it. I choose to set my configurations up in windows using the Game Controller configuration menus in Control Panel. Controller company's are all to good and making awkward software...anyways:

I play many different sims at the same time, and they often need different rotation ranges to work well. That's why I keep the profiler on for my G25 so it can adjust rotation automatically as profiled. It's absolutely useless if you only play LFS, though.

Quote from jbirdaspec :

Thanks for pointing that out. I just put them on the floor and pressed each one a few times to see how they felt. The DFGT pedals do feel a bit firmer. Not by much, be they do. Especially the brake. I guess I didn't take notice because I never actually used the DF GT pedals since I had my RS2006 already.

Sorry if I gave anybody a false inpression of these pedals.

Jay

Not only look the same outside, they should also feel pretty much the same because the springs are the same and attached the same way. What's different is that the DFGT adopts the G25's design of gear driven pots (also bigger ones) instead of the DFP's direct driven pots on the pedal axes. This means that some play in the pedal position shouldn't put unwanted load on the pot, thus wearing it unecessarily.

Quote from Shotglass :

shame on you
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOQRRZYF5LA

Oh god another lesson from the merciless LFS forumsMy earliest arcade memory only goes back to "Gentlemen, start your engines!"

Quote from JJ72 :

I thought arcade racing games are dying.

my bottomline requirment is the game does not have a "secret trick" and you can drive normally to be competitive, example of secret tricks are like the "eraser" technic in initial D and "handbrake+clutch" technic in BG4. (i dunno what you call it in taiwan )

I know they continously shift up and down in Initial D3, but dunno if it's the eraser. I do get the idea, and hope our physics engine doesn't accidentally reward secret tricks.

Quote from Shotglass :

oh and it absolutely must have magical sound shower

Err... what is that?

Quote from Shotglass :

most important thing for me is dont filter the inputs too much
if it takes 5 seconds for the game to react to any steering inputs (eg trackmania with a wheel) its failed

Indeed. Our current bike game has filter in lean. Imagine you already have to lean your massive body and the controller, and still the in game bike lags a bit.

Quote from kingfag :

control wise I would say something like NFS Porsche Unleashed. Cars are quite easy to drive, good sense of speed and you'll need to use the brakes to get a good lap / run.

PU was a game I really liked. Perhaps taking out the understeer from it would work in an arcade?

Quote from theirishnoob :

i think something with great graphics, Tons of cars and ofcourse multiplayer would be ideal ( i.e 2-4 player, over 4 machines )


something to stand the test of time

We'll definitely do multiplayer. Would a national ranking be a plus?

Quote from tristancliffe :

Something that is fun and rewarding for car people (and not just sim people), but also easy enough for beginners (e.g. car person's other half) to play without being made to look stupid.
A decent cockpit view, a bonnet view and a chase view.
Perhaps some weather effects - wet races in arcades are rare.
Do not overdo the sense of speed, or the ability of the cars too much. It just makes them look and feel crap.
Have a clutch in the steering system so that if it's abused too much (yobs, youths and frustrated players) it doesn't render the whole unit unusable for months. I've seen people slam wheels from lock to lock as hard as they possibly can, so it must be able to withstand that level of punishment.

I didn't think about weather effects! I'll keep it in mind. I'd really like to give cars semi-realistic performance but still keep the sense of speed. That's why I leaning towards the Atom which is nimble and close to the ground. About punishment, you should see the H-shift on the only F355 machine here - totally miserable LOL.

Quote from LFSn00b :

nah, not hillclimb imo. more like a downhill racer(alps, possibly) with old 80's Lambo's, Ferrari's and Porsches would be damn sweet.


I don't really care about the graphics, but sure it would have atleast little prettiness in it? As long as the gameplay and fun factor is there, i'd get it.

Yes, considering people still play arcade games made nearly a decade earlier, the gameplay has to work. Up/down hill racing (as in Initial D) is hugely popular here and provides very concentrated tracks. But anyway to make a track naturally concentrated, but not hillclimbs?

Quote from ACCAkut :

sort of cell-shading graphics would be new for racing games, dunno if that is even possible. Maybe in a hillclimb/head-to-head envirement, which would fit the x-bow and atom quiet well. And of course good FFB

Auto Modellista is one cell-shaded racer I know. I think it works better in urban scenery, though.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Hmm, well realistic cockpits and good FF would be nice.

As for cars, well anything that doesn't handle completely rubbish would be nice. Licenced cars would be good but not overly important

As for bikes, something that was fun and semi-realistics. And because of this, rider lean would need to be controlled because you have to countersteer on a motorcycle, steering inputs aren't even visible above 30mph.

Something like TF2 or ME would be really good in an arcade, because all the arcade machines we have are all running graphics engines from the late 90's/early 2k. :hide:

I'd prefer a more realistic cockpit, too. Maybe steering wheel displays like rev/shift led's, on-wheel digi speedos. A revolution on bike input could be heaven or could be hell. A LOT has to be considered for a countersteer-based bike input system: input precision/lag, FFB precision/lag, visual lag... It's something I'd really like to see realized!

Great feedback, everyone! I'm not sure how much say I got outside of handling, but life is long Got any particular "theme" you like? Legal/illegal? Hill/urban/highway? Retro/futuristic?

Quote from BlakjeKaas :

are arcades still being made?

They certainly are! Especially the music/rhythm games are very popular.

Last edited by yoyoML, Sun 25 Jan 2009, 03:45.

Background: I actually got a job of game designer in a company. I will work on handling in arcade car and/or bike racing games. By arcade I mean the "walk into arcades, insert coins and play" kind, 100% arcade. Current machines are only sold to China, though. So I doubt many of you here will get to play the games I work on.

Market research? Yes. I'd like to know what kind of arcade racing you might like to play? What are the points that you absolutely can't stand about current arcade games, and which games? What arcade games contain elements you like? For example I loved Sega Rally Championship for its beautiful stages and controls that rewarded good discipline. Current "hot" car racers here are huge drifting types like Initial D. This game requires almost no braking, but precise (in time) steering; features pivot-point physics, licensed cars and pretty graphics. Is car licensing a deciding factor for you? Would you like mandatory drifting through every corner, useful drifting when provoked or realistic/slower drifting when you make a mistake?

What cars would you like to see covered? Personally, I'm very interested in making very light sportscars like the Ariel Atom and KTM X-BOW.

What hardware features would you like to see? Steering wheels that offer "real" feedback? Real-ish cockpits? What about bike controls? What do you think of the current controls that control lean by leaning the machine with a fixed handlebar? Or would you like to lean by steering and let force feedback lean your body?

What would you think about a non photorealistic graphics approach? I'm thinking Team Fortress 2 or Mirror's Edge kind of rendering. I'd like the game to totally stand out in the arcades, so a very unique art direction could help.

Is there anything else that could really entice you to give it a try? And what could bring you back again for another go?

I know LFS players won't be our main customers, but still, if a few simple design decisions help broaden the appeal then why not? Maybe you'll get to play a decent arcade game as well, if we sort out the licensing issues to sell machines worldwide. Who knows?

Last edited by yoyoML, Sat 24 Jan 2009, 17:52.

Quote from bjrossi :

I found this command, I will experiment and see if it's possible.
/wheel_turn [degrees] - specify turn angle of controller

edit:

made the script, but the command is the wrong one. Even with controller wheel set at 900, the wheel turn is locked at my 15°, and that is what I wanted to change on the fly. I guess there aren't any scripting methods to change from one setup to another.

Try setting wheel turn compensation to 1. Then make scripts /wheel_turn 720 and /wheel_turn 90. When you run /wheel_turn 720 the steering should be totally linear (very sensitive) but when you run /wheel_turn 90 the steering should be highly non-linear (un-sensitive).

Not exactly what you wanted, since the linearity is changed instead of the lock, but maybe it'd work.

Quote from Ikaponthus :

All you have to do is consider what we're talking about to come to a logical conclusion. GT5 is a mass-produced product that "simulates" 500 cars (or whatever), and it's aimed at the console market. Most of the target audience are kids who can't even properly handle the clutch on their parent's station wagon yet, let alone a pure-bred racing machine... and they would be controlling that racing machine with a playstation gamepad ... and winning races! In this case, simple logic suggests they're hardly going to be making a high-fidelity simulator. Getting a racing car around the first corner at half-racing speed would be a commendable acheivment for a 14 year old with a gamepad. They might market the game as "realistic", but that doesn't make it so." (from an above post, slightly edited)

By your logic, in LFS people could be controlling racing machines with a mouse and winning races!!! So LFS is not a sim.

In fact most PC sims can be played with a gamepad successfully, if you turn on some driving aids and tune the speed sensitivity, linearity, damping and all sorts of input filters. That GT is accessible with pads simply means they've tuned excellent driving aids and input filters for the exact pad gamers use. Forza 2 does it, too. You can see from its telemetry that the pad input is heavily filtered and never the same as that fed into the physics engine.

This, by itself, doesn't make the underlying sim any less sim. You need only plug in a nice G25 (kills filtering) and turn off all the aids to find a very "sim" game in GT.

Quote from Ikaponthus :

I guess I'll be the firt to say that the ISI rFactor cars aren't that bad at all.

I don't know what people are going on about. They're much more realistic than the cars in pretty much any other racing "sim" apart from LFS. Certainly more realistic than the cars in GTR2 anyway.

I even think the rFactor stock-cars are more realistic than those in NR2003, with the exception of the damage model. Yeah go and flame away. But "hard" doesn't mean "real". I'm the first to admit the obvious: I've never really driven a NASCAR. But with what experience I do have driving, racing and watching racing (whatever that counts for), I think that the ISI stockcar in rFactor feels more realistic than those in the much vaunted Papyrus sim.

To me LFS intuatively feels the most authentic, but rFactor isn't as far behind as most people seem to think.

I say again: the stock ISI cars are crap.

You must be using stock FFB with those cars, because if you switch to RealFeel when driving ISI cars... Well, they're undrivable with RealFeel. The FFB is all wrong and not even left/right symmetric! If a car doesn't work with RealFeel then it has wrong suspension; if a car has wrong suspension then it's crap. A pure physical FFB (RealFeel or LFS) can tell you that much. It's the beauty of simplicity.

To enjoy rFactor, you must
1) Use a good mod. A good mod must have correct suspensions and tyres. The HistorX, Caterham and Corvette mods are good. The stock ISI cars are rubbish.

2) Use RealFeel with these mods. You should only need to tweak 1 number per mod, which is a max steering force value like that in the GPL config file.

3) Turn off all the vibration crap in the stock FFB by setting FFB level to low.

Then it becomes quite playable, only that the mod tracks from different authors aren't consistent in quality/features/color tuning.

Quote from DrBen :

Why then do the rfactor-developers even send out a demo-version, if it doesn't provide an honest chance to get into the feeling and to specifically discover the sim-potential of that "game"??

Since the cars that come with the demo are crap... I'm just as puzzled. They have very peculiar design logics IMO, or else why would they bother to build a super complex FFB system that would be destined to fail?

Because even the road cars have only 720 degrees in LFS, you may as well set the rotation to 720 in control panel, and 720 in LFS, too. This way, you get FFB locks at +360 and -360 degrees when driving the road cars. Cars other than road cars are not affected by this, though.

Also, since the DFP can be a little slow at catching oversteer, you can reduce rotation somewhat below 720 in control panel, but keep 720 in LFS. This way, you can steer quicker and still keep different car types at different locks. It is not entirely realistic, but is a way to fight the slower FFB.

Quote from BigPeBe :

I have a good argument, it is not a proper car.

And plus as how stupid it may be, car's sound is very important part of it.
Racing car has to sound like it's being nuts, if only thing it does is "bzzzzzzzzz" it doesn't make me feel anything.

Sounding like being on nuts doesn't make a good car. Much noise + much vibration = structure to take and damp that, or age real quick. Besides a quiet car lets you hear the tyres.

Quote :

Plus does electric cars even have a proper manual gearbox?

Having a gearbox doesn't make a good car. It is best that the powerplant does not require a gearbox in the first place. A gearbox is heavy, has lots of moving parts, eats power and needs driver attention.

Quote :

I want to smell the petrol.

Only important part of racing isn't who's gonna win. It's the cars making my heart beat going up and even feeling the sound on my chest.

Releasing a smell of petrol doesn't make a good car. Sure if you'd like to smell that it's your preference.

Quote from jtw62074 :

Good to hear, YoYo and Flyby. I don't have a working wheel at the moment so can't try it out. Does the steering torque drop to nothing around or passed the limit?

I can only say, when the torque drops to nothing, there's quite little lateral force change already.

Quote from JJ72 :

actually grid without the bloom and yellowish tone is a beautiful game.

It is. Taking out that yellowish bloom stuff is as simple as "true" -> "false" in one of its config files. Once rid of the bloom, Grid is THE most beautiful racing game on my PC currently, both technically (dynamic reflections/cockpit shadows/broken mirrors/visual damage) and artistically.

Still I'd prefer GT5's cleaner and more subtle visuals most of the time. I'd choose GT5 over Grid anyway, if I had a PS3.

Quote from flyby3d :

Just for info, the recently released 1.0.3 patch of NetkarPro fixes this problem. Kunos explained that in previous releases the caster angle was always fixed at 0 and now is correctly set.

I can confirm this. I've tried different caster angles, including 0 of course, and the steering forces are correct.

Quote from Glenn67 :

Apparently so and I agree that this is what the op is seeing...

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=47581

I wonder if the simulation of pneumatic trail would have an impact on how FWD vs RWD feels currently in LFS?

So it seems PT isn't there...

FWD should really make you feel through the pneumatic trail, where more engine torque means less trail. But of course braking should greatly increase the PT, including in RWD. I guess most obvious would be that lightening feel when understeering due to steering too much (instead of spinning or locking).