Quote from B2B@300 :

IBefore this type of racing here in Australia they had Touring Cars but what happened with them is that one manufaturer would dominate for great lengths of time (years even decades) and that detracted from the racing (bit like F1 ) .

Not true at all. In fact the old touring car racing was more competitive, more exciting and much more dynamic. We saw great wins from Holden, Ford, Nissan, Alfa Romeo, Volvo and the list goes on. Nowadays you just get fully race-modded family sedans (and way too many of them on the pathetic little tracks in the series) of only two brands and the cars are practically identical anyway. Bring back real touring car racing in Oz I say.

why do u care what type of font i type in...big deal...

but anyways, is it our fault that people dont know about cars? why play a car game if you dont know about cars. the point of a sim is for it to get as real as it gets and adding performace is gonna make it more complex? true but the more complex the more of a thrill it will be to try and make your car better then others, this isent even a big deal to me i dont care if they add it or not, but seriosuly ya'll guys take it like the world will come to a end if they add alittle perforace jesus and you cant doubt that adding performce wont make the game less unrealisitc, it will make it more realisitc. If they took away performace parts in real life, if you were a car tuner you whould be pissed so dont try to act like adding it, will be such a big deal

why do i have this feeling this conversation about parts is going to be endless admins/moderators.. lock this thread now

Is it our fault? No. Why play a game if you know nothing about cars? Well, I'd hazard a guess you don't really know much about cars (judging by your argument skills, general posting style, and the use of speeeling, punctuation# and grammar), but just think you do because you've read Max Power magazine (or the Aussie equivalent). If LFS was totally realistic I very much doubt you'd be able to choose an inlet manifold given the parameters for pressure/flow, heat transfer, pressure drop, length(s), etc, or how to work out the primary lengths of your exhaust manifold.

"Aha," they usually say at this point, "but I didn't mean that real, cos that's just silly." So now you don't want it realistic, despite you saying you wanted it as realistic as possible? You want a dumbed down NFS/GT4/Forza/PGR style tuning system where adding a stage 1 turbo = +40 horsepower and a medium camshaft = +15 horsepower.

You see, it just won't work. You either have it realistic and have only about 5 people understand it, or you have it dumbed down and lose the focus of LFS. At the end of the day we can have this:

Close racing
Equal cars, so it's just about driver skill (with a setup to match his style, but perhaps these should be fixed on some cars too)
More programming time on important things like tyre behaviour or aero modelling, or gravel trap design

OR:

Ricers
Silly cars with phat wingz
All cars turbo'd
less close racing
A sim dominated by 11 year olds who think they know about cars
less programming time for good things
dissolutioned, well, everyone
less fun
but arguably more realism if done absolutely 100% properly, in which case no one will bother anyway.

P.S. I meant this all in a nice way, but re-reading it has made me think it's come across as more agressive than I intended. Ignore that, and pretend I'm smiling whilst you read it (or doing that face <--)

I'm a garage idiot. I don't know much about cars except how to drive them. LFS allows me to choose a car, mess with relatively simple things like suspension and gearing and then go and race it against other people, having spent as little time in the garage as possible. I guarantee you that if anything as technical, fiddly and dull (game-wise) as some of the things that have been brought up in this thread made it into LFS I'd sod off and play something else, and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one. I have this feeling that a lot of the pro-tune argument is coming from the GT/NFS end of gaming where you spend credits on upgrades and go instantly faster. Again, I know stuff all about RL tuning but I do know it's not as easy as just buying a part and bolting it on. But I think arguments against including this kind of stuff have already been made, and in a more educated way than I could. I simply think I'm one of many LFS fans who like that you can start the game and get racing in about 2 minutes, with minimal stuffing around. Adding realistic tuning options (which, to be realistic, would need to be very complex and difficult to figure out, especially for a layman like me) would alienate many LFS players.

I'm also amazed when seemingly dead threads get resurrected...but hey, it is Easter

Quote from Hankstar :

I'm also amazed when seemingly dead threads get resurrected...but hey, it is Easter

We do encourage searching, so it's only fair old threads come up. If they didn't search we'd flame them (nicely ), so they'll never win really. But searching is good, as long as they then read the thread a bit.

yeah this thread is ment to discuss the mod/part issue.. not a flaming war anyway.. i can clearly see the fear that lfs is going to be a ricergame when adding parts to it... but that would only happen if you would add streetrace tuning features in it.. i dont think it would be that bad if lfs had circuit racing parts (something DIFFERENT then streetrace parts).. also for example if we exclude engine parts.. but maintaining the other parts.. it cant go that bad. i remember an old game were you were actually constructing your own engine (bolting ur parts and stuff).. was really cool and you could adjust every single parts parameters.. if LFS had this.. it would be very nice.. im honest.. im not a car mechanic... but ido think its possible to add parts and keep lfs a nice game whatsoever..

plz forget about the ricer / nos NFSU issue.. (you know what i mean)its about circuit racing parts.. it shouldnt be compared anywhere near streetracing or other racing games like forza/gt4/pgr/nfs..

if lfs would be having parts.. it should be different then all other games (makes it special)
different tuning.. different parts system .. just a completely different system..

and yes it may not attract racers.. but mechanics would be interested i think if the race parts/tuning system would be incredibly realistic..

anyway .. ima keep on dreaming it wont happen anyway..

lol didn't notice this came back

i would like to remind everyone that it was build your own engine lol

to all you people who where saying that suspension setups are simple i beg to differ. There not more complicated than engine tunning.
http://www.dewtronics.com/tutorials/phor/index.html
dosent look so simple too me

Engine tunnig can be about personaly preff as well. some of us here may preffer a turbo car while some of us preffer a Na car.(small example)

like i said it wasnt a matter of adding X part and getting X result it was about Specifing Numbers weather it was cam duration or lift Turbo A/r or runner lenght. and such
More horsepower dosent mean victory, thats some sort of ricer mentality.

If u where a shity driver in this car your gonna be a shitty driver in any other another car. And the way LFS is its gonna take more skill to drive a more powerfull car. you excellent drivers have nothing to worry about

this might seem real nooby and i honestly didnt read the whole topic but
if a "class" system was implemented couldnt this all be resolved. In forza on xbox they have classes. Your power, weight, and other upgrades all determine what class ur in. then every one in a class could have a chance \
just somethin i thought about looking at this thread with people saying that it would be all about parts. but not i f everyone had an equal chance at getting the same "ultimate" setup for a CERTAIN class.


Edit: sorry i didnt realize how old this was

The most engine tuning capability they should ever add should be spark, fuel and boost mapping*. The rest, I think, should remain sealed. If you can add new parts, you're making new cars, reather that tweaking existing components. Just as you can't change the suspension of an XF GTI for double wishbone. You have to learn to be the best, and get the best out of the cars available to you, not physically change them.

*but even this would need propper engine damage modelling, and maybe a selection of fuels to use with different properties and weights.

EDIT: But even then everyone would be a millionaire in the game because they'd choose to tune their engine to last only one race each time...

I did think about copying and pasting my standard response into this thread, but decided against it.

I still think any form of upgrade system would turn out to be a waste of time in the end. People would eventually work out the best setup for each track and everyone would use it, just like the vast majority of people all use the Inferno setups. This results in all cars being the same again, making any upgrades you added a waste of time.

Quote :

For a good portion of the past few months I've been writing a 2-stroke engine simulation based on what I've learned writing 4-stroke models for inclusion in Virtual RC Racing 4.0. So far the results are quite good and we fully intend to have this engine tuning in VRC as it's very much a part of real racing.

anyone care to give me the odds of running into another member fo the VRC community here, AND them offereing the same arguement i was going to?

as a suggestion, i would suggest that engines be restricted on parameters buil into the cars (bf1 would be restricted to 2.4L V-8's for instance), and that an "engine" be a separate setup file so that you dont have to transpose a crapload of numbers form one set to another jsut cause you want to use the same engine. a setup CALLING for a certain engine is another thing entirely


"Holy crap it seems there were a lot of posts while i was reading, it was only one page when i started (or ive finally got bonkers)*

One final note, this might also allow for other "Formulae". IE the Formula V-8 is what is is because of the supposed impositions on its design by the supposed sactioning body of the series it was designed for.

Some friends and i used to run a series with Mechanik, Formula V6-Lights. Lighter Weight, lower power, and a suprisingly competitive and exciting formula. I couldn't help but reminisce a little about that when i finished reading.

Quote from Hankstar :

All I can say is: best of luck.

There are a few stats I'm going to have a go at estimating:

Percentage of LFS'ers who like racing: 100%
Percentage of LFS'ers who know anything about adjusting suspention: maybe 50%
Percentage of LFS'ers who don't know about suspention setups who could actually be arsed learning about adjusting etc just for LFS: bugger all % I had to learn, so there is at least one

Well, that threw your arguement out of the window.

I'd learn for a kick off and I bet most of the population would aswell...


So +1 for me


You can have normal servers which don't allow tuning but then others which do.

Not difficult TBH, just a hell of a lot of coding for Scawen but if he wants to make the best Racing Sim there is, he has to get round to it after fixing everything else he ahs to do atm.

Quote from Concorde :

Quote from Hankstar :

Percentage of LFS'ers who don't know about suspention setups who could actually be arsed learning about adjusting etc just for LFS: bugger all %

I had to learn etc ...

Do me a favour. Quote me directly so it makes sense:

Quote from me :

Percentage of LFS'ers who don't know about building/tuning who could actually be arsed learning about tuning etc just for LFS: bugger all %

is what I actually said. Your post makes it seem that was I against suspension adjustment. And nothing you said threw my argument out of the window because you seem to have either misrepresented or misunderstood my argument to begin with. I wouldn't dispute that many of us have indeed learned about adjusting suspension through playing LFS or some other race sim.

Quote :

Not difficult TBH, just a hell of a lot of coding for Scawen

Piece of cake then. So why don't you go, with all your obvious coding knowledge, email Scawen and tell him how easy it would be for him to code in engine tuning/building options for 20-ish cars ranging from a 1000cc four-pot to a highly-strung Sauber F1 car and see what kind of response (if any) you get.

Quote :

...he has to get round to it after fixing everything else he has to do atm.

Quite. If ever.

Err no, I changed YOUR post into what I posted. I changed the engine setup into suspention setup.

People had to learn to setup suspention, I had to. So basically throws your argument of cba to learn out of the window.

Maybe I should have made it abit clearer, but then maybe you should read

Just to explain again.

You say no-one would learn to setup engines, well who came to LFS with all the required knowledge to setup suspention? I didn't have any, and I bet 75% of the population didn't. I learn't and so has everyone else apart from maybe 5%

If its added, people will learn. End of!

Why even quote me at all if you're just going to change what I said to suit your argument? It's dishonest, lazy and it confuses the issue. I actually had to double-check my original post because I thought "there's no way I would have said something that stupid" and, hey presto, I didn't.

I already agreed that a lot of people would have come to this game without knowing much about suspension and would have learned about it through playing LFS. Your claim of throwing "my argument" out the window is halfwitted. It wasn't my fecking argument!

You might as well have changed my post to

Quote from Hankstar :

Noone's going to bother learning how to change the colour of their wheels

and then said "but I learned, so nuts to you". Changing my post to suit your point of view was misleading and immature. I'm baffled as to how you think it's acceptable.

Mmm, necro posting FTL. 7 months? Seriously, are you just trying to cause trouble?

Anyway, I know nothing about setting up a car. I don't drive IRL and my knowledge of mechanics is "Yup, that's an engine". In fact, I couldn't even get to grips with Bob's Setup Guide and tool.

However, I've had to learn how to set up a car in LFS (suspension settings, gearing, the lot) because I never got on with the Inferno setups. I always found them way too twitchy and just basically couldn't drive the things.
So I started with the Race_S sets and worked from there. I learned how to create oversteer/understeer, I learned what I needed to change to increase turn-in/out response, I learned what was causing any spins or slides and eventually how to alter gear ratios to get the effect I wanted (although I'm still not great at getting a decent accel/speed balance for some tracks).

And I'm not even that much of a hardcore LFSer. So I think that anyone who is interested will learn if they have to. It's just that everyone gets a setup and assumes that's the best there is and adjusts their driving to suit. I prefer to adjust the setup to my driving style

But as far as engine upgrades go, I stand by my previous comment.

Quote from Hankstar :

You might as well have changed my post to and then said "but I learned, so nuts to you". Changing my post to suit your point of view was misleading and immature. I'm baffled as to how you think it's acceptable.

Errr, its not immature, I changed your post to change it to a situation which HAS already happened and is happening at this moment! I've seen many many many other people changing peoples posts like that, and they don't get flamed


Your original post:

Quote from Hankstar :

All I can say is: best of luck.

There are a few stats I'm going to have a go at estimating:

Percentage of LFS'ers who like racing: 100%

We can agree there

Quote from Hankstar :

Percentage of LFS'ers who know anything about building/tuning RL engines (GT4 knowledge doesn't count): maybe 50%

I changed that from "engines" to "suspention". Exactly the same scenario, people buy the game and start having to adjust suspention to become faster. Same thing will happen in the case of engines. And I doubt its even 50%, maybe 20 or 25%.

Quote from Hankstar :

Percentage of LFS'ers who don't know about building/tuning who could actually be arsed learning about tuning etc just for LFS: bugger all %

*snip*

And this is where your totally off the mark! Most definatly more than 50% learned to tune suspention, Im willing to bet about 80% had to learn. So everyone will learn to do engines aswell, hell I would most certainly! I don't even do proper races, but I still would!



Ill be honest I stopped reading at that post, my first impression of your post was, "WTF is this guy on", and so without reading on I assumed that was your stance all the way through. I still don't know if it is or isn't because I haven't read it yet.


But we have to stop with all these "Oh it will make it more unbalanced". No, it won't. The guys who are fastest will have had spent the most time tuning and setting up for them. You want to win races? You have to do the same.

Then I hear you cry, "I want to win but don't have time", well you had time to tune suspension did you?

But to become THE best Racing sim, the car has to become TOTALLY customisable, thats engines, gear, suspention, the lot!


The buying parts thing is really abit arcady really, I think sticking to tuning is the best bet

There is a feature in LFS that is fantastic, and that is called the community. The majority of the community want to have fun, not win races. Sure, they (we) want to win, but not at the expense of lapping a track by ourselves half a lap ahead of everyone else.

With that, there is another feature in LFS that is fantastic, and that is called "send setup". See, folks who don't understand setups can politely ask and the generous usually responds with a setup. There is even a website developed for the ease of sharing setups called the Inferno Setup Field as well as a section on the forum here for setup questions and sharing.

BUT, suspension and chassis setup is quite a personal thing. One setup may suit one particular driving style, while it drives like total crap by someone with another driving style. Thus, folks either learn to tweak setups themselves, or they wait until they finally recieve a setup from the generous community that does suit them and their driving style.

Engine tuning is not the same as suspension tuning. Engine tuning will produce 1 perfect setup that will be the fastest. If it would be implemented similar to car setup currently, then sharing will happen until everyone is running the same engine tuning, since there will only be one optimized for the fastest time. If it is not implemented with the ability to share like suspension setups, then there indeed will be those who can no longer race competitively because this is a racing sim, not a racing garage sim.

Comparing engine tuning to suspension tuning is comparing two completely different things as one would be optimized for a car/track and the other will be optimized for the individual.

Quote from mrodgers :

There is a feature in LFS that is fantastic, and that is called the community. The majority of the community want to have fun, not win races. Sure, they (we) want to win, but not at the expense of lapping a track by ourselves half a lap ahead of everyone else.

With that, there is another feature in LFS that is fantastic, and that is called "send setup". See, folks who don't understand setups can politely ask and the generous usually responds with a setup. There is even a website developed for the ease of sharing setups called the Inferno Setup Field as well as a section on the forum here for setup questions and sharing.

BUT, suspension and chassis setup is quite a personal thing. One setup may suit one particular driving style, while it drives like total crap by someone with another driving style. Thus, folks either learn to tweak setups themselves, or they wait until they finally recieve a setup from the generous community that does suit them and their driving style.

Engine tuning is not the same as suspension tuning. Engine tuning will produce 1 perfect setup that will be the fastest. If it would be implemented similar to car setup currently, then sharing will happen until everyone is running the same engine tuning, since there will only be one optimized for the fastest time. If it is not implemented with the ability to share like suspension setups, then there indeed will be those who can no longer race competitively because this is a racing sim, not a racing garage sim.

Comparing engine tuning to suspension tuning is comparing two completely different things as one would be optimized for a car/track and the other will be optimized for the individual.

So ummn, all the F1 cars have the same engine settings all race? Same with any championship races?

They all get tuned to some extent, to get the most of it for that track.

I will say it now that there will not be on fastest setup for all the tracks, plus with this we can bring in engine damage, so if you push the engine too much, it starts to get damaged until It blows. But that needs oil, water and temperatures.

Some tracks might need more torque while others might need power, we dont all change gears at the same point, we all have different driving styles as you said.

Ah, but all the F1 cars are different... It would be fair to assume that for any given track both F1 cars in a given team run the same engine settings.

As LFS is all about identical cars, those identical cars will have an optimum engine setup for any given track. Okay, so we might have different engine setups for each track, but once they are optimised (a couple of weeks I'd imagine) then it's just a case of loading the Aston Club engine settings or whatever. So we end up back at square one, but with one thing more to remember.

And besides, engine tuning (with sensible limits) won't magically make an engine be torquey or powerful, it's very much the construction of the engine that does that, and surely we don't want different engines flying about for each car? That would be silly. Unless people want to spend a few months designing a virtual engine, but it would take Scawen decades to catch up with Ricardo on that front.

Another thing occurred to me, fuel consumption.

I don't properly race, more CNR or City Driving, so in CNR I'd tune for all out power and use fuel up like no tomorrow and maybe blow an engine in 5 laps.


I love pushing things to their limits, and to mess around with an engine would be great

Quote from Becky Rose :

Real racing is about money, and how you expend your money on technical progression. Even in the Go Karts I race the teams with the hottest engine tuning and most advantaced telemetry systems analysis and best organised "pit crews" are the winners.

I just turn up with a kart on a trailer, and I race against motorhomes and flat pack kitchens with carpetted garages.

If you want ultra realistic racing put money into the game, because money is all that really matters in real motor racing. Many a talented driver doesn't get very far because of the lack of it - for instance currently Britains best Grand Prix hope was an arrogant little kid I used to thrash in Formula TKM but he found a financer and went all the way. There's many a more talented driver out there.

I do agree on some of your arguments though - I got given a better setup than my own on South Long Rev today and went 4 seconds faster instantly. LFS is 30% skill, 30% T1 luck and 40% suspension & gearing setup.

as much as money is a big part of this isnt racing more about the passion and joy of having battles trying to go the fastest and racing to be the best, most professional racers race because they enjoy it and it seems to me that money comes 2nd or 3rd in why they race thats my view on this, so why put in engine building lfs isnt about modding if you want all that buy need for speed or some other game the majority of people i know who play this game is because they enjoy racing not messing about with engine blocks or being the richest racer they strive to be the best


plus if u beat someone thats in a more expensive kart/ any other vehicle than you doesn't it feel so good rather than just mullering them through price and performance...

Well to me the reason to have is not the obvious "so i can gain an advantage"
its adds strategy makes the race more dynamic and add to the realism.

First off I completly disagree with the logic that one setup can be the best. i said it before there can be some pref when it comes to engines as well. The only time that would happen(optimal setup) is if you had a race with no restrictions on the engine then i suppose it might be possible.

Having the option to build your own engine would imply a real time engine simulation. which means you could have very realistic engine damage IE Spinning a rod in cylinder four or something.

I could understand if u want to preserve close racing but having the same car dosen't do that. by keeping engine the same i suppose some people feel its down the the driver. but i don't agree with that suspension settings are just about performance oriented as the engine. give two racing teams same car and a team who does not know how to set up the car and i certain they will be lapping slower.


With that said i have been in servers where none of the races are close because of the difference in skill. ex one person lapping in 1:29 another 1:27 another 1:25. in those races in becomes clear after the first lap whos gonna win. Sometimes i am racing and i am clearly faster than someone and vice versa. i would not mind racing someone with more power but less skill so it can actually be close.

Quote :

Piece of cake then. So why don't you go, with all your obvious coding knowledge, email Scawen and tell him how easy it would be for him to code in engine tuning/building options for 20-ish cars ranging from a 1000cc four-pot to a highly-strung Sauber F1 car and see what kind of response (if any) you get.

you are aware that you don't program the outcome for each car you program the model to see its own outcome. that said he would just have to code one generic concept of a "Engine" which would be the same code running the XRT engine and the F1 engine only difference would be the same variables that make a road going car engine different from and formula car.
So know programming 20 different things for 20 different cars.

My thought on this is:
By tuning your car ,isnt UPGRADING it but customizing it
What i mean is that you have cams timing,A/F mixture and this stuff
Each will have a unique effect not only on the cars performance but damage,like engine is heating fastest when you run very high rpms or too much boost,you can have broken pistons and white smoke coming,broken transmission because of a bad downshift or bad start etc.
It's like the suspension,you can have a better suspension but you can customize it
Also,i read somewhere here that some will find the ultimate setup and then all the time devs spent on that is gone.As said,the customizing will have different effects on your car and not only that.Different tracks require different setup just like suspension.In a dragstrip you want all the power you can have just because its a straight,but on a 30 lap you will need efficiency,because if your car overheats,your out of the race.
But first,other things should be done in LFS like realistic damage.
I'm not saying this should be done now,all things will be made sooner or later!!