1. If I got into the real world counter parts of these cars, after a few laps of recalibrating myself for the difference between real accelerator, brake, clutch, and steering...would I be able to approach my in game lap times?

I know in a sim you can't feel the G-forces but wouldn't getting more input in real life just make it easier to anticipate and react?

I feel like LFS teaches you the concepts and techniques of real racing such that in a real car you would already know what you're supposed to do but it would take you a while to learn how do with a real car the same things you did in LFS. But if you never had any exposure to a sim you would have to learn all the concepts and techniques on top of control.

Of course IRL you wouldn't have the confidence to take the same risks you do in LFS. I crash a lot but IRL it only takes one bad crash to end my life or send me to the ICU.

Has anyone here ever tried racing a real car?

The day you step into a racecar thinking that your sim-racing helps you only the smallest bit is the day you can say goodbye to your family, forever.
Of course you will know the techniques and in real racing you use the same techniques. But all the input from your senses and your output through your hands and feet is completely different.

How does the technique of heel-toeing help when you are entering a corner 15km/h too fast and you're applying too much braking force for that particular car while trail-braking?

This goes for any sim that will ever be created. It's not LFS's fault that it is this way.

Vain

I'd say, if you were hopeless at track driving before spending alot of time with a sim, you'd probably be a bit less hopeless after, but driving the car on the limit, "approaching your in game lap times", absolutely not.

Quote from somasleep :

Has anyone here ever tried racing a real car?

well, a bit of karts, all it really taught me was to use all of the road, to be more agressive and push more, so nothing spectacular, but g-forces definately help1

I firmly believe the fear factor plays a huge part in peoples ability to drive fast. Some people learn to push through the fear factor and that's how you become a great driver, but you have to trust every aspect of that vehicle to push it to the limit. You have to know the tyres are in good condition and at the right pressure for high speeds, you have to trust your mechanics or your own mechanical ability if you are working on your own car because one mistake or mechanical error in real life can mean you're dead. Real life doesn't have a Shift-S feature.

With that said, if you were to take 2 men with average driving skills and told them to meet you at a race track in 1 months time for some racing lessons, and gave one of them a good force feedback setup and pedals, gearstick etc.. and a copy of LFS installed of course and the other guy just went about his business as normal. I bet you any money the guy who played LFS for 1 month would progress a lot faster than the other, if for no other reason than just having seen how that racing enviroment works.. apex's, racing lines, braking zones, drafting, opponent awareness etc..

Quote from somasleep :

Has anyone here ever tried racing a real car?

Some of us have. Mostly karts I believe, but some have proper cars (no offence to karters intended by the term proper).

I Googled for feedback from professional drivers and this is all I found. Just as he mentions I’ve heard that some pros use sims to prepare for unfamiliar tracks. I guess the only people who can definitively answer this question are professional drivers.

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Racing Simulation software, better known as racing "games" or "sims" have come a long way in the past few years. As the home PC has become more capable, programmers have taken us to new levels of sophistication and realism. We "gearheads" now have a wide variety of products from Arcade style entertainment games to driving simulations worthy of professional use as a training and practice aid. As a professional racing driver, I have used "sims" to learn new tracks that I am going to compete on, as well as polishing my skills in the off season. I often find that my lap times in the real car are not far from my computer lap times. With the cost of running a modern racing car now measured in hundreds or even thousands of dollars per lap, "real" testing time is used up by engineers for setting up the car or evaluating a new component. Driver practice time is simply not in the plan. Because of this many drivers are turning to sims to get the time they need to get up to speed quickly on an unfamiliar racetrack. Its not only drivers who work with racing sims either. I know of one instance where a NASCAR crew chief made a big change to his car set up based on the game NASCAR 4 and the driver promptly put it on the pole at a recent race.

Quote from somasleep :

Has anyone here ever tried racing a real car?

Once I've saved enough pocket change to buy my Ferrari F430 and get it on a track, I'll let you know.

A short story...
A friend of mine, who is a reaonably skilled driver, was once challenged by some clown in one of those customized Asian street racers. You know, the ones with the giant exhaust pipes which sound like a lawnmower. Custom suspension, souped up engine, fancy tires, a butt-ugly ineffective wing on the trunk which did nothing but make the car slower, etc. (Please tell me these are never seen in Europe).

Anyway, my friend blew his doors off in his stock, tiny, Toyota pickup truck. We both laughed for about an hour.

Moral of the story, technique can be far more relevant than the equipment. Sure, the pickup truck won't do so well against an F1 car, LOL, unless perhaps that same idiot is driving the F1. With respect to technique, I think LFS is valuable as a training aid. Nothing is a replacement for the real thing however, although LFS is much safer and far less expensive.

Quote :

I know in a sim you can't feel the G-forces but wouldn't getting more input in real life just make it easier to anticipate and react?

True. A racing driver drives with their bum, it's what connects them to the car. My luxuriously padded reclining leather office chair doesn't seem to give me the same feedback as my fibreglass, thinly padded, lead lined (i'm below minimum weight) bucket seat in the kart.

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But if you never had any exposure to a sim you would have to learn all the concepts and techniques on top of control.

If you're into racing enough that you want to give it a go then you already know the fundamentals, you might not know what the racing line is around every bend just by walking the circuit, but you know enough to copy somebody else and find the groove. Soon you learn the line just by looking at the bend(s) as corners like Russel Bend at Snetterton where the laws of physics get temporarily suspended are rare (I so wish one of the LFS tracks had that approach and bend!).

Quote :

The day you step into a racecar thinking that your sim-racing helps you only the smallest bit is the day you can say goodbye to your family, forever.

Hmmm, not sure I fully agree. If you approach LFS as a racing simulator then you can learn a lot of very useful stuff. The majority of my racing experience is Go Karts and i'm finding i'm learning a lot about some aspects of big car setup that I just can't learn in a kart. It's all very well understanding what the options are - which my general keenness on racing and cars has for the most part taught me, but understanding how changing things on the setup effects the car is a totally different and more important thing.

You can also learn some basic racing concepts, most LFS'rs learn early on to respect the blue flag a lot sooner than a real racer (despite all the furor whenever somebody gives way only 8 seconds too soon.). However we often dont pay enough attention to the yellow flag, we treat yellows like a F1 driver does, "Thanks, i'll bear it in mind" - in most racing formula's it's a case of, "I wonder how slow the marshall with the radio gear thinks I should be going... Is he powering up the mic, or scratching his nuts?". T1 is no less destructive in real life, only the accidents are less dramatic as a moderately light nerf in LFS seems to cascade into an aircraft carrier flight deck during kamikazee hour.

What you will not learn is how to drive quickly. There is a difference between how I would drive my Saab to my previous Alfa Romeo, the Alfa could turn a corner quicker than a coin toss and powered out with 240bhp of instant thrust, the Saab lurches around bends and turbo lags out of them - and in no way resembles the jet aircraft in their telly adverts (it's reliable though). They're chalk and cheese, although the same class of car ... LFS is about as close to the real thing as that.

The first time I was in a sticky situation on the road, (which involved having to take to wet grass at 60 mph to avoid an oncoming car on the wrong side of the road), I instinctively aimed it for the gap, swept it round to avoid a tree, then corrected the rapidly swinging rear with a big handful of opposite lock, and found myself travelling the right way down the same road at 50mph before I even had time to think.

All of those instincts were learned from sim racing. I didnt have to think, or panic, or worry about how to control the car, it all just came naturally. So whether sim racing makes you faster on the track or not, I couldnt say, but it might just save your life .

Well at the karting meet last year, lots of us had never driven a kart before or raced anything before (I think everyone had a driving license though) - and we were all substantially faster and cleaned around the track than your average Joe. Hopefully we will prove the same again this year.

ive noticed that ive become far more decisive when driving on the road since using lfs

in fact she who must spend all my money commented that im driving far better now than ive done since our son was born. as far as i can work out i went into that being carefull with him in the car mode and never came out of it

@colcob, ouchies. Whenever I have a run-in on the roads my instinct is to say "oh shit", but if I need to turn the wheel hard then all of a sudden my brain kicks into autopilot. I think there is a marked difference though - LFS can teach you a few basic fundamentals on car control and how to avoid an accident but...

In real racing sometimes an accident, like in LFS, is unavoidable. What real racing teaches you very quickly, and LFS cannot hope to instill - is how to crash.

I'll give an example, when racing a Formula C kart and your single brake caliper shatters as you enter the braking zone at the end of a 90mph strait, your heading into a 20mph corner with very little run off because it's a slow bend... LFS teaches you how to recover from a "wobbly" situation, but only real life teaches you that something pretty drastic has to happen to stop that brake caliper breaking = broken bones...

In that example it was my brother driving, he turned onto the grass to shake some speed, slew across the track sideways so the tyres where fighting the direction of travel, but as he was unable to hit the wall backwards because of his mommentum he instead opted for the head on approach and at the last minute flicked the kart forward again - hitting the wall sideways hurts and generally results in the loss of a rib or two. The impact was around 50mph ish.

Just to really scare me witless the tyres where full of water so there was a huge plume of spray as he impacted which for a moment I thought was fuel, I thought I was about to see my uncontious brother go up in flames, so I leapt over the pitwall and ran across the track - dodging a kart on the way over to the far side of the circuit whilst the sleepy marshall hunted for his red flag. I arrive trembling in fear and the cheeky schmuk just stands up and says, "We need too replace the brakes.".

Quote from Becky Rose :

What real racing teaches you very quickly, and LFS cannot hope to instill - is how to crash.

Indeed. I remember watching a F1 race long ago, and Pironi (I think it was) lost control of his Ligier and crashed. The TV commenter was enthusiastic: he said it was a very professional crash, because Pironi managed to turn the car while sliding and went into the barrier backwards, so the engine cushioned the impact.

Maybe it would help realism if LFS said, after a bad crash: "You broke 4 ribs. No more racing for tonight." (Or: "Neck broken. LFS license ended.")

Quote from Bramski :

....... if for no other reason than just having seen how that racing enviroment works.. apex's, racing lines, braking zones, drafting, opponent awareness etc..

I agree with above, but I think, no sim prepares one for the g-forces (especially braking), which will work on you during a race. The heat and constant poundering of noise is also something which can stress people out, distracting from the clean racing line.. ;-). Also it can be really unnerving how brutal racing drivers (or wanna-be's) are driving their cars.

Having quite some kilometers offline (and very few and slow online), I don't drive any faster on the road (if situation permits) or feel prepared by racing with LFS, because crashing IRL hurts and is expensive and in LFS you don't really need to care....

p.s. my humble, private opinion ;-)

Quote from wsinda :

Indeed. I remember watching a F1 race long ago, and Pironi (I think it was) lost control of his Ligier and crashed. The TV commenter was enthusiastic: he said it was a very professional crash, because Pironi managed to turn the car while sliding and went into the barrier backwards, so the engine cushioned the impact.

Maybe it would help realism if LFS said, after a bad crash: "You broke 4 ribs. No more racing for tonight." (Or: "Neck broken. LFS license ended.")

well...in RBR if i do go off , i'll try and slow the car down and aim the front away from the tree/rock/wall so the side ofthe car hits the tree to minimize damage to the engine... I've seen many wrc drivers do the same thing.

The suspension damage in lfs discourages me from taking large risks... but of course i dont have to worry about injuring myself.

Quote from wsinda :

Maybe it would help realism if LFS said, after a bad crash: "You broke 4 ribs. No more racing for tonight." (Or: "Neck broken. LFS license ended.")

i dont think is gonna work, because lfs "life" cost £24.


can we have spirit?? reincarnation maybe?
we could have ghost cars!

just kidding...

i use lfs as training ground. i use only the slow fwd. i try to see how the car behaves and then after i can predict exactly what the car will do, i get in my '95 delta 1.4 (nice car, slow as f***, incredible brakes though) and go to an empty parking space and try to adapt the knowledge.

i think that if one is responsible, has the appropriate mindset and approaches things carefuly, using lfs to learn real car behaviour is not only safe, but good.

Did some random browsing/reading yesterday and found a neat comparison.

Aston Martin Racing guy: "my third le mans was pretty hard, we all drove 2-hour stints with in-car temperature peaking at about 71 degrees". (308km/h)

Random LFS race report: "was hard concentrating with 27 degrees in my room!" (0km/h)

IMO, LFS is pretty "real". Except for the part where you crash your front end until it is gone, but your car still runs. And if you use a keyboard or mouse...

Note to Self: GET A WHEEL. kthx!

Quote from Gabkicks :

well...in RBR if i do go off , i'll try and slow the car down and aim the front away from the tree/rock/wall so the side ofthe car hits the tree to minimize damage to the engine... I've seen many wrc drivers do the same thing.

I saw one WRC driver doing that too last year, result: one dead co-driver. Head-on crash is what is the most safe one type of crash, I'd think the drivers try to protect their life more than the engine. So I think you've misinterpreted what you saw.

That must be pretty hard on the driver. Way to end your friend's life.

Quote :

i use lfs as training ground. i use only the slow fwd. i try to see how the car behaves and then after i can predict exactly what the car will do, i get in my '95 delta 1.4 (nice car, slow as f***, incredible brakes though) and go to an empty parking space and try to adapt the knowledge.

i think that if one is responsible, has the appropriate mindset and approaches things carefuly, using lfs to learn real car behaviour is not only safe, but good.

Errr. Your one of those hooded boy racers dealing dope listening to rap music in the shopping centre car park at night? And you call that responsible? lol ...

Are people here really trying to suggest that LFS is NOT real?
Do you mean to suggest that it's not better than those guys who go out in all kinds of 4 wheeled things on tarmac?illepall

Quote :

Did some random browsing/reading yesterday and found a neat comparison.

Aston Martin Racing guy: "my third le mans was pretty hard, we all drove 2-hour stints with in-car temperature peaking at about 71 degrees". (308km/h)

Random LFS race report: "was hard concentrating with 27 degrees in my room!" (0km/h)

71 fahrenheit is 21 celcius... Could this be what the driver was elluding too? I'd pass out at 71 celcius, and after 2 hours i'd be crispy.