Hello, I think there should be an explanation when you hover over a certain setup option, for example, I hover my mouse over Camber and it gives me an explanation of what Camber is and how changing the slider will affect how the car handles in the game.

People will send u to wikipedia or something but for me it's a good idea. I still can't get how work some of options.
It would be very good for new users of LFS. They don't care about looking for stuff on other sites. They want simple information in game.

Just look at the size of Bob Smith's Advanced Setup Guide, the help balloons would take over the entire screen and yet they wouldn't cover all that you need to know

But do newbie needs so much info about some setting?
Even he won't understand it. Just one sentence for each setting would make setups more understandable.

what so like if you hover over suspension siffness it would say

Changes the stiffness of the suspension

i could see how it would be helpful for a first timer
mabie have an option to stop the message from coming up or somthing could come with it

Quote from sk8line69 :

what so like if you hover over suspension siffness it would say

Changes the stiffness of the suspension

So u think that stiffness affects only stiffness? If dev's will think like u do. This sim would be arcade.

Better than a tooltip would be a help icon that opens a window over the current screen with what you might want to know. So next to the > arrow would be a ? icon.

But spring stiffness does only change the spring stiffness. If you want to have a pop up that tells you how the roll stiffness or ride stiffness distribution changes, or how the wheel frequency changes, or how THOSE changes will effect camber recovery, tyre loadings, scub, drag etc etc.

Leave it as it is. If people want to know more they can buy Milliken and Milliken or go to their local library. LFS is not educational software, and shouldn't try to be.

All i'm saying is it could be a good idea, like yeah maybe a ? next to the >
I know a bit about setups but I still don't know all of it, and I don't want to be looking through wikipedia for all types of things, as some of them don't relate to how it will affect the car in LFS, only cars in real life, although LFS isn't far off, it isn't 100% Realistic, so I'm just sayng it would be good to know what you're actually doing to the car rather than fiddling with settings that will spoil it.

I don't see any reason that it shouldn't tell you what to expect from a change. It's simple enough and could even be lifted straight from Wikipedia or what people post here.

A single sentence isn't going to cause much of an issue but would save people requiring a 3rd party site for information.

Oh how did I ever get by without hover helps in the garage? How did I ever win any races without this crucial feature? Surely I must be a super genius for divining the mysteries of setups on my own without needing my hand held.

Not everyone who plays LFS knows what effect each setup mod is going to have and not everyone has the time, patience or inclination to use trial and error.
It's like the tutorials - if you know how to drive the cars you don't need them, but that doesn't mean they should be removed.

Short instructions are impossible to be written about each setting.
That’s because almost no setting value has always a given affect on handling.
Even setup guides that suggest how to alter damping settings in order to affect the car’s handling at certain states (corner entry – mid corner – corner exit) x (increasing – decreasing – throttle – braking) are too simplified and inaccurate in many circumstances… and this is about multi-page setup guides… go figure. It’s impossible to give a worthy tip about any setting in a few words.

If you don’t want to spend time experimenting with these settings, then do not bother changing them.
There are plenty of good setups attached on setupgrids
http://setupfield.teaminferno.hu/
http://www.setupgrid.net/
There is also an in game feature that allows you to get a setup from anyone who is willing to give it.
And there is even a feature in www.lfsworld.net that allows you to analyze any uploaded hotlap, selecting an option that reveals all suspension settings, regardless if the driver actually wants to share that… You just have to do a bit guess work about tire pressures, camper and differential settings, probably taking some ideas about other similar setups. And voila you have almost any given worthy setup…
And don’t tell me that all given, in any way, setups are crap and doesn’t suit your driving style... this is bs.

On the other hand if you want to learn making your own setups, you have to do it the hard way… there are no easy "pills" for this procedure.

What if someone has a setup but thinks "I wish I could make increase the oversteer a little" because they keep winding up in a wall on corners or because it doesn't suit their driving style or their choice of controller. Now I know that the easiest way to do that, depending on the corner it happens on, is soften the front springs a little (although yes, this can be achieved through other methods and would cause other effects too).

The last thing the sim needs is people being turned away because of an intimidating number of setup options and no clue what to do with them.

Just because we've all been around for a million years and know more or less what we're doing with it doesn't mean that we can write it off for everyone else. Forza 2 has a fairly decent explanation of what you can expect from modifying settings in just a couple of sentences and if you have that to start on then you know what to change if something goes wrong.

Everyone deserves the chance to enjoy it, irrelevant of how much or little they know about car tuning. And people who don't have hours to fiddle but don't like the Inferno setups have as much right to a car that controls how they want it as we do.

No, the FIRST thing this needs is people being turned away because it's too intimidating. LFS is aiming to simulate motorsport, and that is not a simple matter. Softening the front springs could increase oversteer by the way - it depends WHY it is oversteering in the first place. You see - any one sentence on a tooltip can be made wrong, and LFS is not the place to have gigabytes of data on the nuances of setups.

If you want a 'sim' that's easier to pick up play Forza, NFS or Gran Turismo. But leave LFS (and it's direct competitors) as the "Thinking Man's Simulation".

Stupidity, whilst genetic to an extend, should not be tolerated or accepted - it should be challenged and overcome by those that suffer from it. There is no reason on God's Green Earth why even someone like grIp DriVer can't learn about chassis and vehicle dynamics if they actually tried.

If LFS had a basic/advanced setup switch, with a limited selection of settings in basic mode, e.g. tyre pressure, camber, ARBs, diff settings, brakes.

Then it would make sense to have short help text that explains what every change will turn out to.

In advanced mode (as it is now) many parameters are too intertwined for a brief text to be of any help. IMO obviously.

-1

Not a bad idea as such, but very difficult to do right.

Setting up a car is a complex task, one variable affects many handling characteristics. Explaining this requires a lot of space, so short explanations in garage screen would most likely be misleading rather than helpful.

All the settings are named correctly, so one can google their effect on the car. (Or read about them in setup guides made for LFS.)

I started playing F1 in rfactor and man, car setup is a pretty big science. No way could it be covered in game by tooltips or something. If you want to know how to setup a car you need to study it. When it comes to open wheelers, there is a certain order how to setup the car, e.g. start with the wings etc.
Anyway, I was thinking it would be cool though, if there would be some kind of "data box (perhaps like a chart)" so when you do change settings, it will show you what are you losing and what are you gaining, e.g. changing the angel of the wheels would reflect on straight line speed and cornering. Benefit of that would be the fact that you would have a visual feedback of the changes and the areas they affect. After few laps you would start figuring out whats the difference between the settings and the way they affect the performance. I think this would save a lot of time, especially for beginners not to mention people would not be put off by the complexity of the car configuration. wow. I this came out long. I hope my idea gets through and somebody will actually bother to read it