So it's back to the game pad since my wheel bit the dust some time ago. I have no other choice at the moment which sucks, but i'd like to make the best out of it and get back to playing LFS.

Can anyone advise me on which settings work best for straight up good lap times? I want it to be as realistic as possible. I have analog steer smooth on the max settings so that my steering is as slow and smooth as possible. I will not speed it up like those who race with a mouse and are able to turn the steering wheel at lightning speed.

I think it's unrealistic and unfair, but to each his own. So analog steer smooth must be max for pin point precision and realism. But what other settings are important to make for the best possible driving experience?

I have my buttons and keys setup, it's just the other settings that need to be fine tuned so i can hopefully be competitive. any help would be greatly appreciated guys.

maybe some screen shots of your settings would be great. Thank you.

Well I am using the Logitech Dual Action Gamepad but I am not using the analog steer smooth on the max settings because I think it is not enough fast on corners as I want so I set them to 0.65

But I am using these settings on my gampead:

http://bildites.lv/images/w727h4g7v0971bpfr7yt.jpg

But again I am varying the Wheel turn for some cars and combos, for example, on Kyoto Oval the wheel turn I set about 93º on every car, but for XFG on other tracks I am setting about 240º-300º because there is no smooth driving as on Oval.

Usually my times are 0.2-1 second off the WR and 0.9-2 sec for Open wheelers

Hope I helped you

Sorry for my bad English

Let's face it there's no way playing with a gamepad can be made realistic, and not much you can tune to improve your performance when using one: it's all down to your skills (sensitivity and precision mostly)

To make good lap times you need to use as little steer smoothing as you can possibly live up with, it's a tradeoff between taming the twitchiness and still having a decent reaction speed.

Since the sticks move so little, you may also want to decrease the steering lock in the setups you're using, 12-16° worked for me - this however will have the side effect of making more difficult to save the car from a spin and also if you end up in the grass the wrong way, you may have a hard time trying to get it back straight especially on South City your best bet is to just pit.

Why have gas and break on a combined axis? doesn't have mean the gas is always floored unless you're putting your foot on the break? i don't get it.

I use a ps3 pad and keep the same settings that I used for my wheel, you just gotta be gentle with the steering. I can still be a match for experienced G25 users if I pay enough attention

Quote from Jimston :

Why have gas and break on a combined axis? doesn't have mean the gas is always floored unless you're putting your foot on the break? i don't get it.

This should explain little bit
http://bildites.lv/images/zue13x8hnx43ulbu7.jpg

one of our team mates uses a ps2 pad. he is very quick with it too. i have tried with an xbox360 pad but failed.
ps2 pad for lfs seems to be the best option.

I used to play with an xbox 360 controller and enjoyed it quite a lot
i tried to have some steering smoothness (not full) to allow for higher accuracy around the zero point, but i don't think it in any way influenced the spped of going from full left to full right. The way I understood this is it just made the wheel-steering-angle vs stick-position relation less linear around the zero point.. i used to be able to move my wheels to full left in an instant (faster so than wheel drivers i used to watch).. i might be wrong about how this setting works though...

i used to be happy with it until i installed win7 and lost my XBCD drivers (which are the best for an xbox controller in my opinion).. for an obvious reason too: I lost the "separate axes" option on the front triggers (since the default win drivers do not allow that option and thus the game cannot use the controller as two axes...) I didn't go into the hassle of getting XBCD to work on win7, but i think someone mentioned a way...

Quote from sevenforums.com :

SUCCESSORY!

Well I finally have it working, and for posperity I'm going to post the steps here, because thread is one of the most popular hits when you type "XBCD Windows 7" on google, and given the views I suspect a few ppl are going through what I went though, so here is how I did it:

Install Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider 1.3b, choose "Test Mode" and reboot.

Install the 0.2.6 drivers from XBCD - XBox Controller Driver ... gt; Latest 0.2.6 Version

Run the driver installer as Administrator, installing only drivers. Dont bother installing the certificate. Reboot.

Run DSEO again, hit Sign System File, then type "C:\windows\system32\drivers\xbcd.sys". Reboot again.

Open Device Manager, look for "Microsoft Common Controller For Windows Class", and goto properties for "Xbox 360 Controller".

Goto Driver tab, and click "Update Driver". Click on "Browse my Computer for Driver software".

Click on "Let me Choose" and you should see XBCD driver. Click it, hit ok and that should do the trick.

Open the XBCD Setup Util, and you should see the gamepad listed. The buttons go crazy, but this is a fault of the setup util, always has been. 0.2.6 even has built in profiles for different mappings, the one I use is triggers on seperate axis. I tested this out on rFactor and it works great, rumble support and all.

Hopes this helps anyone else having this problem!

Maybe that would help

Its all in the "footwork" or your fingers in this case the smoother you are the better i have been using the stock setings ingame (came from gran turismo)

I lived in Gran Turismo before I found LFS and worked up to a wheel, there was definitely something about the way GT handled/smoothed input from buttons that worked wonders. Never did get the hang of the sticks