Quote from Forbin :

The OP clearly lacks the skills necessary to drive an LX fast and therefore thinks all setups should meet his idea of an acceptable level of driveability and a lack of adjustability to suit his lack of learning ability.

O rly... thank you for your wisdom...

Seriously, Boris, this is the kind of thread I'd expect from someone who has been with LFS for less than a year, not 5. Can you honestly say you haven't the slightest familiarity with what any of the setup options do?

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Are there any real mechanics/race drivers here, do you have all those options when you're setting the car up?

I do trackdays and races on my motorcycle. I do all my own work in the garage besides mounting tires on the wheels. I still remove and install the wheels myself.

What options are you referring to, exactly?

Spring rate? Stock rate on the front of my SV650 is something like .65 kgf/mm. Middleweight race bikes typically use about 0.9-1.0 kgf/mm, depending on rider weight, and the max is something like 1.2 to 1.5.

Damping? At the moment, I can only change the fork damping on my SV via fork oil weight. Thicker oil = more damping. However, Traxxion Dynamics makes a cartridge fork insert that provides fully adjustable compression and rebound damping. Likewise, the rear shock on my SV has no damping adjustment, but I can buy a new one (Penske, for example) for a reasonable price that provides full adjustability. Rear shock changes are also dead simple. I can't speak for the exact range of adjustment but I would imagine it is substantial.

Ride height? This is very simple to change on the front on any bike. Just slide the fork tubes up or down in the triple clamp. As with damping, this adjustment requires an aftermarket rear shock on my SV. The range of adjustment on both ends is very wide.

Steering lock? Not so critical on a bike since riders tend to use so little on the track, but some reduce it slightly to prevent the bars from hitting bodywork or the fuel tank at full lock.

Caster/rake? Most riders use ride height changes to change rake angle. On some bikes it's possible to change the angle of the steering head. Again, there's a very wide range of adjustment here.

Toe? Yes, all bikes have this adjustment, at least in the rear, except it's simply called "alignment". If it's not at least fairly straight, the bike acts very strange. Perfectly straight (0 degrees) is ideal.

Gear ratios? Yeah, LFS does get a bit crazy in this respect. Basically all I can do on the bike is change front and rear sprockets, which changes the final drive ratio.

Tires? This is one area where there is significantly more adjustability in real life than LFS, unless you race in a spec-tire series.

Tire pressures? Hmm... no explanation needed here.

Flexibility in setup options is one of the main things that got me into LFS. Removing them entirely from the sim is like taking half of the fun out for me.

Unrealistic setups are made due to current tire model flaws. I have already referred to this many times. FWD cars in LFS reeealy suck for this reason.

I also think that server side setup restriction is the way to go for all cars and classes.
As I have already said in another similar thread. Event organizers are the ones who restrict the amount of changes you can do to the car you are racing.

rFactor has fixed setup servers. Everyone has a certain setup determined by the server. At first I thought this was great - even field and all, everybody with the same car. After facing for a while I thought the exact opposite.

1) faster drivers were still faster drivers - and there were still seconds in it
2) it's very frustrating to drive around a track doing 1.23s when you know you can easily do 1.20s - but the default set is arse
3) You have to drive a car you don't like, unless you are the server admin and specified your set!
4) the set is likely to be n00b safe which makes it boring and slow to drive for experienced racers

So the end results of the race is the same except that half the field didn't have any fun cos they have to drive a crap car.

I have around 10 sets for as3 (of course, I'm a CD) which caln all do 1:40.50s and they all do them in different ways. Comparing and tweaking these I have learned so much about:

- car behaviour
- effect of one setting against another
- other ppls driving styles
- setting up cars

I find I enjoy LFS more now that I understand more about cars. It allows me to take an "alien" set and adapt it tomy needs - or learn how to drive it myself - or understand why I can't drive it

I find it makes me a much more complete racer and it has helped me become noticeably faster on many other combos.

Once you've cracked the basics you can take any set, make it fit your style in no time and be competitive. There really is no need to be 2 secs a lap off the pace because of the set. Any half decent set can be made to run competitively. It's the last half second to the alien times which is the real crunch point. But you don't need to go that fast to win 99% of the races you participate in.

So honetly, I coulnd't disagree more with the argument of the title post of this thread...

aceracer

Great post aceracer! I can't fault any of your arguments, noice!

Quote from Bawbag :

Since when was using locked diff an advantage? If it was such a big advantage then everyone would use it, but they don't. Even in MoE race, quite alot of teams used clutch pack (I know we did)

Whether it is still an advantage following better clutch pack modeling is not the point, it is still widely used in LFS and totally unrealistic for modern single seaters and GT cars. There are very few examples of modern GT cars comparable to LFSs GTRs where locked differentials are used as an alternative to a clutch pack system (other than for cost saving in grass roots racing). There have been a few examples where locked diffs have been used in circuit racing, but nearly always either in very high power endurance racing prototypes or unsophisticated older GT cars where the track surfaces were a lot worse than today, these were still the exception rather than the rule and always came with lots of understeer as a price to pay. Usually justified because it was both made a wildly powerful car (we don't have any in LFS) controlable and easier to drive at the expense of outright speed and because of issues with clutches not be strong enough to take the torque (never been an issue for LFS type GT cars).

Aside from the RWD cars, where there is at least an arguement that it is possible and has been done before is the issue of FWD cars with locked diffs. In all the time it has been up for debate nobody has ever found me a believable example of a front wheel drive circuit racing car using a fully locked diffential. In most front wheel drive cars it would make the steering extremely heavy (which we get round) and would put huge forces over the driveshafts, causing all sorts of issues, especially if they haven't been equalised correctly. I don't think we have any driveshaft twisting simulated, which would also adversely effect a car with a locked differential.

Quote from Hallen :

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.

Adjustments in real cars are not as precise and cannot be performed trackside so easily. They are mainly for basic setup to account for manufacturing tolerance, accident damage and general bodging. The perfect car wouldn't have much suspension adjustment, producing fastenings and adjustment mechanisms adds drag and weight where you want it least. In reality testing time and data feedback is limited and the car, track and weather are never exactly the same between sessions as they are in the sterile world of LFS atm, personally I think the sterilness is a bigger issue than the freedom of setups, if the cars allowed pointlessly precise setup adjustments that wouldn't be an issue if LFS somehow randomly made slight changes to the shape and structure of the car and all suspension components to accomodate for real life wear and tear on a car, which is really far from a rigid body.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Are there any real mechanics/race drivers here, do you have all those options when you're setting the car up?

I suppose I've got 4 different angles of experience.

Riley 1.5 stage rally car - tyre pressures, 3 choices of tyre (gravel, fast road, road legal semi-slick), choices of different designs of steel and aluminum brake drums (in development, not really a setup choice), brake shoe material, all geometry is modified but fixed (other than standard tracking).

Morgan Roadster (road legal race car) - tyre pressures, single control tyre for all conditions (although other wet tyres are allowed few bother with the hassle/cost on road tyres), camber shims (everybody has them set to maximum allowed by series), 40 notch single way adjustable dampers (rather cheap units, better ones would have fewer adjustments over a smaller more useful range), brake regulator (under car, not worth cockpit mounting).

F4 (single seaters, wings and slicks) - tyre pressures, control slicks/free wets (but we only use one type), fully adjustable suspension arms (mostly in order to get the geometry how it was designed to be, not adjusting it from standard), adjustable camber, caster (car dependent), ride height/corner weights, wings (total guesswork, just move them up and down in a slot done by feel and not really replicable), adjustable coil over dampers (changing springs is difficult and time consuming without specialist equipment). Gear ratios are adjustable, but it takes at least half an hour to do so is rarely done trackside unless absolutely essential.

Endurance racing BMW E36/E46 2 litre 4, 6 cyl M3, V8 (races between 2-24 hours) - cars are literally ready to go out again without work after a 24 hour race, well built and reliable usually finish far higher than over stressed machines that are quicker in terms of raw pace. There are very few adjustments made really, the cars are setup for the drivers that drive them and stay the same pretty much all season (bar dampers/wings/gearing if really necessary). The cars are setup more towards what the drivers want than what might be theoretically faster, there's no point in setting a car up to be quick if it just ends up in the wall. The cars always run the same hard compound slicks (probably like R4s in LFS!), the tyres can last upto 4 hours, meaning two pitstops, keeping pit time and cost down. During the build process pretty much anything can be changed, and the suspension is redesigned, better cars will have 4 way adjustable dampers, typically with about 8 notches on each setting. Rear wings are adjustable (but aren't terribly precise), the aero package has to be decided during shell preparation. There is little that can be done about changing front downforce, high downforce cars have adjustable winglets that help a little but really it simply has to be balanced with the rear wing and if you build a car without a suitable front splitter to put on it then there is nothing you can do trackside. Gearing can be changed, but rarely is. Changing the final drive is easier, a quick diff change with military precision takes 14 minutes.

Quote from Forbin :

Seriously, Boris, this is the kind of thread I'd expect from someone who has been with LFS for less than a year, not 5. Can you honestly say you haven't the slightest familiarity with what any of the setup options do?

Offcourse i know what some of them do, but it never interest me to investigate and make some setups. But that's not the point, what bothers me is that most of the fast sets take advantage of unfinished physics, wrong physics, whatever you want to call it, and that makes some cars feel totally dead and unrecognizable... but they're FAAAAST

How do you know what each and everyone one of the cars "should" handle like though? Just wondering, because I don't think a car can lose its characteristics, but you can make them more subtle with setup changes. Most of the cars handle bad with default or race_s setups in LFS, so people make different setups that theoretically will make the car go faster. It's not much different in real life, for eg, I've got a '94 Ford Laser road car, was fully stock. We put new shocks, lowered and stiffer springs in it - it's a different car now.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Offcourse i know what some of them do, but it never interest me to investigate and make some setups. But that's not the point, what bothers me is that most of the fast sets take advantage of unfinished physics, wrong physics, whatever you want to call it, and that makes some cars feel totally dead and unrecognizable... but they're FAAAAST

Honestly I think what you're saying is way over the top. There may be some extreme sets which are quick but I would say that's the exception rather than the rule. And there's never any need to drive them to be competitive.

Name me a track/car combo and a target time (humanly possible, not WR please ) and I will drive it with a set that doesn't need exploits or freak settings. (of course then we'll start arguing how the car should feel... but it could be a fun challenge ). In fact I'll drive it with 2 completely different sets that don't need them.

Secondly, what's wrong with making the car feel like you want it it. Honestly, my XFG will never feel like my FZR, no matter what I do to it. But if I think it's an understeering beeeetch and I make the rear harder to combat it, I think it's the most natural thing in the world. And doesn't alienate from what the car is.

In the vast majority of cases and sets I have I really don't think there's that much to it. Most of them are just solid sets optimised for track - nothing extreme or crazy about them, no exploits - and I always get my sets from fast drivers and then adapt them to my needs.

Cheers

aceracer

A good driver will win irrespective of settings... I can normally win using Race_S in the XFG on CTRA 1. Whether that's me or the fact everyone else sucks there is for another day, but it's the driver making the car, very rarely the other way round.

I agree with Aceracers ^ post.

What exactly is wrong with making a car oversteer or understeer based on personal preference.

When I saw this topic I did expect some stupidity, but this is just too much, you are even leaping over Bawbag's tard bar with such ease that it makes him look like a headless chicken. My first instinct was to tell u to go die in a fire because ur an incompetent whiney bitch, and I did that, but I deleted the post right away because I knew one of the mods would just do it for me, so here comes the sensible response.

Your basic argument is this: "I can't do it, so take the option away for everybody so they can be just as slow as me." Why don't u just go live with the amish? I bet there's no camber adjustments on wooden wheels, so there will be nothing to confuse you.

There is even a Cyber Setup Guide translated into _YOUR_ language, and if you would've just bothered to read it ONCE, you would know 95 % of the things you need to know to set up any car (in LFS). But no, maybe you glanced at it once, tried a few clicks here and there, and the result wasn't an earth-shattering change in speed and feel - so you gave up. GG there.

As far as real life cars go, because of the fact that a very high percentage of the population consists of people like you (i.e. incompetent retards) - all the production cars are set up to respond to ANY circumstance with massive understeer, they are also as soft as a clubbed baby seal. That just won't cut it in racing. LFS has a precise enough physics model to simulate a real car better than almost any sim out there, and the setup options all do what they're supposed to.

Another thing, you suck. That's not an insult, it's just a fact, because most people suck and they will take it upon themselves to judge setups. News flash, 80 % of the time the problem isn't the setup, it's the driver. There's a sickening amount of people out there who will blame a perfectly good setup for their lack of driving technique. They don't know how to turn, how to brake, how to combine the two etc.

Yet another thing, since your last race information is from May '08 we can conclude you are nowhere near active enough to judge anything related to driving nowhere near the limit. So just save us all a lot of time and effort, stick to a RACE_S setup and bind the following text to one of your F keys: "I am better than all of you cheaters who have setups, take RACE_S and I'll beat you." Then you can continue to live happily ever after in the wonderful land where you're right and everyone else is wrong.

I've actually been wondering, where is that Cyber Setup guide. Looked, but couldn't find it :/

Quote from ajp71 :

I suppose I've got 4 different angles of experience.

(good stuff)

Thanks for the info! This puts LFS's setup options into perspective.

Oh I forgot, real life has nothing to do with this game.. I can not setup the car better than IRL racers and I am slower than those that can -> I suck.

/thread

Quote from Fuse5 :

I've actually been wondering, where is that Cyber Setup guide. Looked, but couldn't find it :/

http://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Basic_Setup_Guide

Quote from scipy :

Why don't u just go live with the amish? I bet there's no camber adjustments on wooden wheels, so there will be nothing to confuse you.

:hihi::hihi::hihi:

I think both sides of the fence have good points in their argument.

1. The setups in LFS are too 'open'. There is too much range and resolution of adjustment on most of the settings, and too many settings on a lot of the cars.

2. Any racer worth his salt will use any and all means necessary to find each tenth of a second. If that means using an 'unrealistic' setup in a sim (or simply an extreme one in real life) then so be it.

3. Drivers have different styles. Some gel quickly with the uber-fast 'alien' sets, others go nearly as fast with more 'sensible' sets. Some prefer corner entry oversteer, others prefer a bit more understeer.


If the range, resolution and number of variables in the garage was reduced to more normal values for that type of car then the most extreme sets would become more 'normal'. Combine that with refinements to the physics so that the really silly stuff doesn't work anymore and everyone would gradually convere in their requirements. The aliens wouldn't be able to (and maybe wouldn't want if it wasn't an advantage) setups that differ so greatly from similar cars in real life, and the non-aliens would be content that their 'realistic' setups aren't so far off the pace.

To blindly state that Boris must be rubbish because he doesn't like the silly-sets isn't really fair (this coming from me!). And to blindly say that the silly-sets aren't silly when they patently are is also daft. As much as it pains me to say it, try and see it from each others' point of view.

Well, I did try. I agree that spring/arb adjustments of 0.x are quite silly, and I agree that road cars should have a bit less options available on them. But you see, Boris has a reputation/past - he's is as stuborn as a mule and has been banned (or about to be) from numerous serbian forums because he will start an argument and only keep going on and on about his point of view, and after a while, people who have tried to be sensible and show him the error of some of his ways just realise it's a waste of time and energy, but he still doesn't let it go. Ofcourse, he really has no pull over LFS devs and I doubt they will remove setup options just because someone makes an invalid argument like his was, but still - we are on the verge of something kinda new, and for the people who've gone through the trouble of learning more about sets and how to utilise them as an advantage it would be kind of silly to take it all away just so it's easier for the "rest". But hey, I really couldn't care less about XFG/LX/whaeva shitbox car, just dont touch the race cars (we could do with a bit finer steps in toe adjustments even :P).

Quote from scipy :

but you see, boris has a reputation/past

...

First off I admit I am not real good at LFS, but I do have some AutoX and went to Skip Barbers performance racing school and I think I did fairly well.
Probably not a delicate as I am in real life, that and no fear of death.....

here are my 5 ideas (for road cars, maybe for all cars):
1: Limiting it to some degree;
Gear ratio for an example seems to be the consensus here that the level of customization is too much for people on both sides of this argument. Gears should be tuned to X.0 or even X.00 but not to X.000.

Suspension should be tuned to the whole number or the tenths but to the hundredth. And so on for the other settings.

2: Make it easier with predefined levels (Novice setting menu);
Creating another menu for novices so that there are 3-5 levels for each setting:
Example Gears could be set to Close Medium or Far, but each setting equals a setting like the way it is now. So if us novices could see that we may like a Close gear ratio then we can tune accordingly and if we mess it up we can just set it back to Close gear ratio and begin again.

3: Same as 2 but remove fine tuning all together
(fine tuning meaning how setting are currently on LFS)

4: Limit what can be tuned even more (realistically);
dramatically decrease the setting level
Brake Pressure: Now UF1 Torque could be 100Nm to 10,000Nm. How about just putting it to a level maybe 1,000Nm and the max you can change it to is + or - 2,000?

5: Create ONLY 10 (or less) set banks for each car;
For each car there will only be 10 sets you can choose from not unlimited as it is now. Having a limited number eliminates the 1 set for every track instead that people do now, there will be people who keep a long track set, short track set, Drag, drift, ect...

I believe a one of these or a combination of these would greatly help the experience of LFS for all at all levels

Maybe I should Post this in the Improvements Suggestion forum... maybe I will.

What do you people think?

Woah woah woah Scipy, what's wrong with you (ili ti, koji ti qrac?)

First of all, i've been banned from ONE forum, and that's because admins couldn't stand the fact that their beloved ISI sims suck, and i liked to argue with them about that..

Second, i don't think one driver is better then the other if he spends 70 hours a week fidling with setup, finding glitches and practice 500 HL's in a day... that's just robotics.

I may named this thread wrong, i didn't mean we should all drive with Race_S and that's it, i meant exactly what someone said here (sinbad i think), that devs need to decide already what these cars in LFS are, and what they represent. I want them to be limited to the real life setup options, and if some hole in the physics is connected to some part of the setup, then just disable that setup option, and keep it only for beta testers and alike...

Quote from OmniMoAK :

5: Create ONLY 10 (or less) set banks for each car;
For each car there will only be 10 sets you can choose from not unlimited as it is now. Having a limited number eliminates to some degree of 1 set for every track instead there will be people who keep a long track set short track set ect...

Any racer worth his salt has a different setup for each of the tracks he goes to, in LFS or real life.

I know that in my case, my setups in LFS did not vary much from track to track, especially if there were no extreme features of the track (e.g. AS4's Eau Rouge, FE's curbs). I started with the same base for each track and tweaked the compression dampers, ARB's, ride height, tires, tire pressure, camber, gearing, and downforce (where applicable). Springs and rebound dampers generally stayed the same.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Second, i don't think one driver is better then the other if he spends 70 hours a week fidling with setup, finding glitches and practice 500 HL's in a day... that's just robotics.

It does. It's, you know, practice. The thing that they say makes you perfect. Maybe you should try it sometimes.

Quote from geeman1 :

It does. It's, you know, practice. The thing that they say makes you perfect. Maybe you should try it sometimes.

So if i don't have 70 hours a week for LFS, that makes me a bad driver?

What's with the attitude!

In LFS tracks are static (Becky made a good post about this issue), so in theory they can be driven with machine-like precision. This is hardly realistic, RL drivers can not do this.

Limiting setups per track / car would not work, one could always just copy the files before race.. And if the setups were not separate files, we could not use setup analyzers. I like the idea though.

Physics changes will eventually make unrealistic setups obsolete.