Hi.
Once again lets talk about road grip in LFS.
Mainly I want to talk about my opinions and suggestions. And hope to find users that agree with me. Not to confuse users, I am NOT going to talk about NFS style of unrealistic arcade grip. More of LFS style unrealistic slipping.

Lets get right to the point. After playing lfs for many years and different patches, I still find that there is not enough grip on the cars. And I dont mean some specific car, but mostly all of them. Some more, some less.
How this problem occours ? Just driving and feeling it. Its not right.

Basically, its kind of strange, how in different speeds the road grip doesn't change enough. Lets say, driving fz5 (also other rear wheelers) about 90km/h. It is not fast, regular highway speed. And going into average bend (not even corner), the car starts to slip.(not talking about wheelspin with rear wheel drives) It feels littlebit like a boat on water. You just dont feel the tarmac under the tires. And with other cars as well. They just want to skid out of the road.
I guess lot of you say, that you have to control the car and speed and such, but. I've driven quite a few different cars in real roads. Slow, fast, hard, tarmac, gravel, ice. There is not a problem going 90km/h into a bend or a curve on tarmac. Also have done it on gravel with regular family suv. 80km/h into corner, it starts to skid, u turn the wheel, add or release gas (depends on the physics) and kind of drift through it.
But in lfs the car wants to go straight. It feels like you are driving on the grass. At some point you have little grip and suddenly there is none until you stop.
I mean, this is not how the tarmac surface works. Its hard to explain, but in lfs it feels like, when you start slipping, it just goes. What it should do, is when the speed decreases, the grip comes back. It feels like the car physics are not connected to road or something like that. It is realistic when you turn into a corner in high speed and you start to lose grip, but when cornering the speed will automatically decrease some amount and thats the time when grip increases. But in lfs cars just skid straight with lot of understeer or immediately spin from lot of oversteer. Does not have the feeling when tire can hold on to road. Its like rowing a boat on water, when you turn, it still moves the direction you were going before turning. Within different surfaces the time is different. On water or ice it takes some time, on grass or gravel it takes little less. But on tarmac the reaction should be immediate.

There was one lfs version, where it was different. You felt the car and when it started to slip. I dont remember, was it U,P,R or S version. If someone can help to find download links for them, i would try again.

Another little thing. When I popped rear tires with fz5, it just wants to spin. It's logical when you increase throttle, but not when just coasting. I mean, got up to some speed (about 50), and released throttle and the car totally wants to spin around. This is not realistic. Where does the force come from to spin it ? You can drive a car with totally empty rear tires in straight line. Doesn't matter, if its front- or rearwheel car, engine in front or rear. The physics will keep it straight when just rolling ahead.
Also when it goes sideways, it slips too much. And that with only 5-10km/h. Try it yourself, and notice that the forces are actually wrong. It is just skidding.


Last issue or question is about cars bouncing and flying all over the place when crashing. Why ? And when will it be changed to normal ? Cars do not fly over the trees up in the air when driving into something.

But ok, first is still the physics and grip problem. It is NOT real, no mather what large numbers of users might say. And I really hope the developers make something with it. There is some mistake in somewhere, that doesn't make lfs realistic (what is actually the aim of this game, ? )

Therefore, hoping to recive answers from users who feel the same way and like to make things better.

Thank you.

Next time you drive one of your real cars and do a bend at 90kph, watch your steering input. Not alot, is it?

Now do the same in LFS. Notice how you're overdriving the car?

the spining with flat tyes lol a car will try to spin off gas and on gas i have driven a car with 2 rear flat tyres and it is very bloody hard to keep straight untill the rim touchs the road and even then it sometimes still slides

Most cars in LFS if anything have too much grip. Some of the tyre slip physics need work though IMO. ATM I feel a locked / spinning / excessively steered tyre has too much grip, but it's tricky to get right. LFS isn't too far off anyway.

What most people find is that they are always driving much faster / more agressive in LFS than they realise. When I go out in something real, even a kart, it takes a little while to get used to the overwhelming extra perception of things going on around you, which you miss massively in any sim.

Just a random fast reply. It's hard to tell how fast you are really going in a game. Friends play LFS at my house, they drive at 200kph and drive like they are doing 45km/h and wonder why it's so hard.



A quick real life example.
(scale is close but no 100% accurate)

I took this corner in a FWD 80's hatch at 100km/h (speed limit) and then my car really started to get some skidding sounds, became quite unsafe and I had to reduce speed to about 80km/h to get safe through the whole turn. (Well not entirely safe, it's rated at 65km/h exit speed something)


This corner looks about the same in LFS and taking it at 100km/h you have to back off a little to stop the car skidding.


I am in no way a car expert, but seems pretty close to me, even thogh it never appears to be because the felling of movement isn't there like in real life. It's hard to feel your real ground speed in LFS like in real life.

Sense of speed and scale are very dependant on yur field of view as well. If you have a 19" monitor a meter from your eyes, your field of view will either be very limited or wildly distorted. This makes distance and speed much harder to judge. I drive with a real FOV of 88 degrees and same setting ingame, and corners, elevations and speed is easier to judge.

@atledreier: what FOV would you suggest for 40" screen @ 70cms from eyes?

I use 120 deg now, but thats so I can see both mirrors all the time. Helps me drive safer if I can see beside me a bit more.

The natural FOV for that setup would be around 64-65 degrees.

okie dokes. Cheers

But FOV always has to be a compromise I find. If I had a monitor which filled literally my entire vision only then would I be able to use a setting like 120+ with it being realistic. Personally I use 79 but that's only on a 19 inch widescreen, although it's placed directly behind my wheel. Even so, the "natural FOV" for that would probably be less than 40 degrees .

Edit: Bob's calculator is here.

im also not satisfied with the grip in lfs. maybe its because the sense of speed. when im driving 100 i feel like going.... 50kph
it also could be the lack of road-bumps, the way too soft-setups you use for racing in the cars like xrt, fz5, the skidding sounds you dont even recognize cuz their're so quiet... oh well i dunno it just doesnt feel right imo

You can download better skidding sounds in lfs-database. Yeah, sens of speed and no g forces are a huge disadvantage.

I just tried Bob's FOV calculator, I'm currently using 90 as I am used to this from playing FPS games earlier, and all these seem to use 90 by standard. It just looks correct perspective-wise.
The FOV calculator, on the other hand, suggests 29.5 degrees with a 16:10 22" TFT @ 90cm. No way I can drive like that
Also, with a lower FOV, all textures are kinda blown up and low-res to me. Especially visible with skins in formula cars.

BTW, modified skid sounds are awesome. Also turn up the volume.

Maybe its false sense of speed, but then it needs some improvement. The sounds should be louder and more detailed yes.
But still, driving trough only slight bends in 150km/h, cars still want to slide off. There is no feeling of grip or speed. Maybe the best way to understand this is to turn all sounds off. And then compare some other game. In some games you can feel, how car has grip and starts losing it. I don't mean totally arcade style grip, but normal, like it should be, when you drive actual car.

Does anyone know, where I can download U,P,R and S versions of LFS ?

Patch R ? If i recall corectly, never existed one.
check pm inbox.

Driver error then! You can't honestly expect a car to hold perfectly when cornering at 150km/h and not break away from ya, it just will, just as it would in real life, but...

I do see what you mean about how the grip is lost though, in that it is maybe a little too sudden sometimes, from full grip to little or no grip within half a second, not as gradual as real life, but this is very much to do with the sense of 'feel' which is nigh on impossible to achieve in a sim, plus it can be down to setups, tyre temps, etc...

For some reason I downloaded an old version of LFS on the weekend. It was a version of S1. The skid sounds were much more pronunced, even more so than DaveWS modified skid sound. It actually felt more realistic because there was more feedback from what the tyres were doing.

I wish I had remembered the exact version number, I'd go back and get the raw skid sounds and convert them for a try out in Version Z.

Actually the tyre sounds are too loud already. Especially in the race cars you probably wouldn't be able to hear the tyres at all.

They are a bit too loud on purpose though, to give you a bit more feel.

Quote from Clm :

Maybe its false sense of speed, but then it needs some improvement. The sounds should be louder and more detailed yes.
But still, driving trough only slight bends in 150km/h, cars still want to slide off. There is no feeling of grip or speed. Maybe the best way to understand this is to turn all sounds off. And then compare some other game. In some games you can feel, how car has grip and starts losing it. I don't mean totally arcade style grip, but normal, like it should be, when you drive actual car.

Does anyone know, where I can download U,P,R and S versions of LFS ?

Where do I start

Tyre sounds did get reduced to bring them back closer to realism - although I do agree that we need some small aids to replace some of the feel missing in real life, the sound feedback is still higher currently than you would likely get if you were driving in an enclosed car with a helmet on.
I can clearly hear the difference between tyre scrub, light skid and major skid which gives me ample sound feedback (I have tyre sounds boosted to max and wind, etc very low)

Controller set up is very important to get the most out of LFS, since having LFS early 2004 I've used several controllers (xbox controller, momo wheel and G25) with all of them I was able to get increased "feel" by getting the profile settings just right. So spending time getting them right is well worth it.
With the G25 I have disassembled the pedals and spaced them apart more realistically, also have added spongy material to the brake pedal so as to give it more feel. That's a couple of simple mods that make a good improvement.
I'd like to mod the brake pedal further with a load cell to get it to operate more via pressure rather than travel, with the clutch I'd like to and stronger spring "zones" to better simulate clutch bite. The G25 itself has far superior force feed back over the momo.
I've also recently built a cockpit which has realistic posture, line of sight and most importantly ensures everything doesn't move around when your trying to drive.
All these things add significantly to my perception of driving a sim vs real life.

FOV and display set up - has a very big impact on how we drive. I've used a single screen most of the time I've had LFS and did find lower more natural FOV allowed greater precision and perception of depth allowing me to get better lines through a corner than higher FOV settings which tend to distort the view and your sense of depth somewhat, making it more difficult to be precise. The major downside of using a low FOV setting is the lack of sense of speed.
In real life visual sense of speed comes from your peripheral vision, it is your peripheral vision that is the most sensitive to movement while your central vision is not (hence why they say in drag racing you shouldn't look at the christmas tree directly, have your focus such that it is more in your peripheral vission and you will have a faster reaction time)
The way I used to compromise is that I'd have a low FOV started out using 58deg and being overly reliant on the speedo for speed indication, which is less than ideal but did work to some degree, over the years I gradually increased FOV settings up to 90deg. (80-90 deg is a good compromise for a wide screen monitor giving you some sense of speed while not distorting your sense of depth to badly) At these setting I would still need to look at the speedo a little but was able to concentrate much more on my lines.
Recently I've upgraded to a triple screen set up and now have FOV set to 135deg and the screens placed about 650mm from my eye position. With these settings I get a very good sense of speed in addition to retaining an excellent depth of perception.
This has greatly added to the "feel" I receive from LFS and with this setup I virtually feel no need to look at the speedo at all and can judge my speed quite accurately by visual and sound ques alone.
Still in real life it is easier to judge because you can also feel every vibration and force acting on a car. With a Force Dynamics motion platform I am 100% certain the feel you would get from LFS verses real life would be pretty good, it still wouldn't be the same as real life feel though.

What's my point? Well some of the limitations of any sim is the input and output devices with which we interact with the sim. The better those input and output devices are the better the experience we are going to have. What I am saying is that sometimes we blame a sim for lacking realism or not working correctly in this or that fashion, but actually what you are asking maybe is that the sim be made less realistic so that it behaves how we think it should with the limited hardware set up we might have, making assumptions here I know which can always be dangerous

Having said that I do agree that the tyre physics could be improved, but then so could my lap times it's all relative. As I've said in another thread recently I don't have the experience of feeling like the cars drive on ice in LFS, far from it! In fact I feel incredible levels of detail of grip in LFS and find you can correct slides (both understeer and oversteer) easily and imo realisticly. The BIG difference though from LFS and real life in this regard is that to get to that level of feel from an LFS car requires a greater familiarity with the car than you would need from a real life counter part, but once you are tuned into a cars handling and limits I find them very similar to real life.

As to your statement about going arround bends at 150km/hr in real life without sliding, well that is all very subjective. I've been in an e-type jaguar doing approx 135mph arround a 'gentle' bend with a Ford GTO following - the Jag was like it was on rails the GTO was loosing it and struggling to stay on the road. In addition I've know dozens of incidents were cars have come off 'gentle' bends because people were trying to go around them just that little bit too fast - often the same people have driven the same bend hundreds of times before at similar speeds and get a false sense that they have more grip than they really have (many incidents like this have ended in fatalities) To make a comparison to a bend and car behaviour between LFS and real life is far too subjective to determine anything useful. The other major problem with comparing LFS to real life is the way we approach driving in the two realms, even if it is only on a subconscious level you will be more cautious in real life, in reality the vast majority of drivers in real life don't ever approach the limit of grip (when their intentions is speed not talking drift or wheel spin ), in LFS I believe a lot get this impression of wrong tyre physics because they approach the limit of grip too quickly and not in a smooth manner, if they were to drive in a similar fashion on a track in real life they would end up facing backwards more often than forward .

LFS is far from perfect, but with the right approach and time taken to set up everything well it can give a very realistic racing environment, but there will always be limitations. And yes I'd like to see improvements such as car barrier crash physics fixed, improved tyre and racing environment physics. In my mind though the tyre physics are just down to fine tuning the differences between how road tyre behave vs slicks, how different compounds behave, how tyres heat and cool, etc. I think the broad functioning of the tyres is very good as it is, it's just added levels of detail from this point forward. Don't get me wrong though, levels of detail can have dramatic impacts on how things feel. If you were around and remember when flywheel inertia was introduced, it had a dramatic effect on car handling in corner transients for me. So each improvement in the finer details can change the whole way the sim feels.

Edit: - Just to add after re-reading your first post, you have correctly identified a current limitation in LFS tyre physics that I agree with and that Scawen has acknowledged in the past - that of low speed grip levels verses high speed especially in the area of loosing and regaining traction. LFS behaves pretty realisticly at speed but is not 100% at slower speeds - it's better than it used to be . This for me though doesn't destroy my experience of the sim and I can easily adjust to it, but it is one of the small areas which I look forward to seeing improvement in the future and that Scawen has stated he will revisit at some stage. It's a difficult balance to achieve I guess as many suggest LFS may have too much grip when it comes to wheel spin and perhaps too much when talking about sustained lateral g mid corner but at lower speeds it does seem to take too long to regain grip laterally when recovering from a slide. These things though in my mind are minor (still would take a lot of research, testing and thus time to achieve good results) and I'm certain will be improved upon over time.

Thanks for all that explanation. Nice piece of writing you did
I tryed different cars and different FOV's. Yes, at some point, it feels like there is maybe too much grip.
It bit hard to explain what I ment in my first post.
It's kind of the skidding or sliding part of the grip. When it goes, it does not regain the grip fast enough, as you said also. That, I think, is the issue im trying to unfold here.

Good example I found out while driving. When you slide sideways out of the road, on the grass... and then slide back to the tarmac, you don't feel the grip difference enough. It just slides like before, makes some skidmarks on road.. and then slowly regains the grip on the tarmac.
When in real car, when you slide sideways from gravel or grass to tarmac, what happens ? The car "yanks" pretty hard. The tires suddenly have huge connection with road. Higher cars even want to roll over, thanks to high center of gravity.
I haven't done this in high speeds, but i think that going more slowly, the "yanking" motion is harder, because of the inertia the car body and sudden tire grip. Maybe it's the same, because the grip of the tarmac should be always the same (leaving out different variables at the moment).

Maybe we are getting to the core of the problem here. Can it be, that the grip does not come back quickly enough and makes the feel that car is kind of floating on water while sliding ?

Huge improvement would be also flexible chassis. That would change alot with the physics, but thats future.

Quote from Glenn67 :

Snip

Awesome post, you pretty much nailed it there

Although I agree with you Clm I will defend LFS a little.

Some part of FAIL (our perception fail) is in setups and default head movement. Try doing really roadish setup. Higher, softer, less dumping, less antiroll, inrease some options in head movement menu. That way doing corners gives more info when you are driving like mad.

Another thing is screen. Once I've done some recordings inside a car. Driving was ok but movie was crap. All dirty gear changes looked completely smooth on gauges, on screen and sound. Speed looked like 1/3 of rl. Crap.

LFS waits for tire physics improvements, but is not that bad and I'm glad that I am not one that remember time when LFS had greater tire sounds variety, ie on vertical load - but I'll play volume levels to be sure about that.

i posted a similar thread in the beginners forum not so long ago and can agree with what the op has said. having said that its still a great sim.

Quote from pasibrzuch :

Some part of FAIL (our perception fail) is in setups and default head movement. Try doing really roadish setup. Higher, softer, less dumping, less antiroll, inrease some options in head movement menu. That way doing corners gives more info when you are driving like mad.

Absolutely, of course a 'realistic' setup will feel more like a real car.
But the thing is, the further we get to the limit, the further I feel I get from reality. Also, these 'realistic' setups are not fastest - the setups that feel a bit off reality are the fastest. And get even further from reality on the limit.

I'm in no way trying to put LFS down, it's an awesome effort and it's really a good simulation. It's the only sim I can drive, the ISI effect simply kills my will to drive.

The other thing to remember is that 99.9999999% of the cars most people have driven in their lives have an OPEN diff.

The other diffs present in LFS have a huge difference in dynamics on how you gain and lose grip when you are close to the limit. They have been designed to allow you to put down the most power at all times.

An open diff on the other had is designed so that "average joe public" who normally never get near edge of traction have some hope of catching the car.

Also if you use the option enabled in LFS that looks with steering input you will find it far far harder to notice the "snap" of grip regain. With the view locked forwards you notice it more.

Lets face it most of what you are trying to detect though is feeling of G through your body. I remember ages ago the developers of the 301 platform said that when driving with motion so you can feel this stuff better so you tend to overdrive less.

With LFS you only really notice the transistion of grip AFTER it has happened. By the time you feel the back go through the FF is a massive amount of time after the back has gone in car dynamics point of view. There needs to have been enough "slip" at the back to cause the front wheels to try and track and hence cause the counter rotation you feel.

IRL you feel these changes in G instantly so can correct far far sooner, normally before the back has gone too far. This leads to less tire overheating so less loss of grip.

With sim racing unless you have a motion platform you have to learn to read what you are asking from the car and predict the edge, not rely on the FF to tell you. The FF becomes more an aid. I try and imagine what I am asking of each time for every input and play this through the "circle of grip" as I play.

As for setups. A road car setup is for safety and comfort hence will always be slower around a track than the more firm and snappy snappy sets used in racing where driver comfort is actually the last thing that actually matters. A firmer setup has less mechanical grip than a soft but reacts to imput faster to allow faster reaction and correction which is required while racing to get fast times.