Hello,

I want to know if other lfs player suck as much as I do.

I play lfs for over 1 year now. I did race a lot in Blackwood with the XFG. But I never could get better laptimes than 1.35! When I see others doing 1.33 I wonder where they got these 2 seconds.

In the last half year I had a really bad internet connection what prevented me from online playing. Though, I have been driving offline.
I was quite proud of my laptimes since it was getting hard to beat my own pb's, e.g. Fern Bay gold with XRT, FZ5, FXO...

But than came the big disappointment! I looked up the PBs on lfsworld and realized that I was not even close to the champs! Sometimes about 9 or 10 seconds too slow!

I mean, I want to become good in this game, but it seems that you have to dedicate your whole life for it.

I will continue racing but I have no idea how to get even close to these laptimes.

Is it normal that after driving one year I suck like that or are there others who feel the same?

Greez

I just checked your LFSworld stats, and saw you had a mileage of 5.428 km. That pretty much explains a lot. Lots of the fast guys got more than 100.000 km mileage. LFS isn't a game were you become good from nothing

I have 322k km driven, and many, many people who've started much later and driven much less are way faster than me in every car. There are many variables to success in LFS, and while practising helps, *how* you practice matters too as does talent (yeah I don't have it ).

In racing, and pretty much anything really, there is always someone out there who is better than you. That's life.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

I have 322k km driven, and many, many people who've started much later and driven much less are way faster than me in every car. There are many variables to success in LFS, and while practising helps, *how* you practice matters too as does talent (yeah I don't have it ).

This

You have 300k and thats makes you have more "Exp" on the track, it teach you to know how to battle door to door with others, teach you when and where overtake others, it teach you the Etiquete on the track, but doesnt teach you to be fast as an alien

Certanly fight with you on the track ( When you are on the xrt and i'm on the lx4 ) is a totaly awesome experience like allways i say


To the OP, do a few laps in single player, and save the replay and give to us, maybe we can help you to show where are you loosing time on the track

Also you can do laps with the LFS race line ( Pressing 4 ) and helps you to know where to brake and where to lift the accel and where not

Quote from Inouva :

Also you can do laps with the LFS race line ( Pressing 4 ) and helps you to know where to brake and where to lift the accel and where not

IMO, this is to be avoided. Any driver is much better off learning how to pick out their own reference points and lines.

ok, thanks for the hints.

as i see i need to drive much more kilometers. ok, the 5.000 km I drove are not a reference point, as I said, I drive mostly offline. It could be about 15.000 or 20k in total.

I find the point to practice without racing line interesting. I always drive with racing line. I will try to do it without.

One more question.. how do I save the replay and where do I find it?

Greez

press 2 while racing
spr or mpr directory. (s = single, m = multiplayer)

try MRT. I have a good set.

You have to have good sets! Racing offline doesn't bring you nice sets. And downloading it from the net, well, I've seen not much good sets online.

Which sets are you on? Try to get some on setupgrid.net if it's not done yet.

I would strongly disadvice you to follow the game's lines(4). First of all because every racer has his own preferences on the matter, you will be faster with yours, once you'll get more experienced. Also, I have to mention that some of the game's lines are very messy and inaccurate.

Obviously with 15-20k kilometers you're still pretty much in a learning stage. Try to get more experience, that will help already.

Quote from cargame.nl :

And downloading it from the net, well, I've seen not much good sets online.

There might not be a lot of top-notch sets but you can definitely find good enough bases for starting, especially on road cars.

ok, i've attached a good round in Blackwood with the xfg.

I got the setup from a guy doing 1.33 laptimes and have always been racing with this one. I got used to it.

Also I downloaded the whole package from setupgrid to have always the right setup for the right car and right track.

Would thank you if you could analyse my racing line (which is the lfs racing line)

Imo, you are losing time mostly in braking zones. You're effectively not trail braking at all. Brake a little bit later, harder and trail the brake into the corner. Generally your lines are good, but just not aggressive enough. I'm not an expert though.

Watching other racers online is a very good way to learn how to be quick. See how and where they break, what lines they take, how fast they are going through and exiting corners, where and how hard they step on the gas, et cetera.

You can also kindly ask other racers to send their sets. Most often they will share theirs. Sometimes the set you get is all wrong for your style and taste. But if you collect a large amount of sets, you will find one that you can drive quickly sooner or later.

When I started out I got my hands on a few sets from really fast racers. But I found these sets undrivable for me. But as I progress in experience, I went back to some of these undrivable sets and discovered they're actually very good if handled properly. So don't just delete sets you get from really fast people that you can not handle. They might be useful sometime later.

Quote from jensbrix :

I just checked your LFSworld stats, and saw you had a mileage of 5.428 km. That pretty much explains a lot. Lots of the fast guys got more than 100.000 km mileage. LFS isn't a game were you become good from nothing

Not true.

More to life than being the "quickest". Back in the day of CTRA and LR|Race 1 in the XFG/XRG and the TBO combos, I would have many a good race with some of the Inferno boys or others from reputable teams. Ok so my strength was with the XFG and yes I won a large majority of the races but whatever.

Didn't your parents ever teach you the Rabbit and the snail or the hair and the tortoise or whatever the heck it's called nowadays.

I could run lap record times (back in 2009) but doing so may screw my tyres up so on a long track over 5 or 6 laps such as FE Gold my tyres would degredate.

To combat this I made my own setup (and it worked and took me to many victorys/fastest laps) because if you don't take the time out to understand why your car responds different with positive toe over negative toe (for example) you can't be a fast driver. A good driver can drive, where as a great one understands the physics behind what's going on and can utilise his knowledge to improve.

You can get great sets in the 'car care' section on http://www.team-redline.co.uk/forum/ and good advice from any Redline member
on our servers. If you ask any of them, they are happy to watch you and tell you where you'r going wrong. Try demo first.
Happy racing.

Everyone seems to be giving him setups when his issue seems to be how he can improve in his driving...? Setups don't make the drive from my experience.

A good driver can drive around any setup issues, especially in the smaller engined cars such as the XFG, by being that - a good driver.

Basically a locked diff, hybrid rear tyres and stiff rear suspension/compartively soft front suspension and high ARB at the back and you have a setup capable of winning...

thx for the replys!

With trail braking you mean progressively release the brake while approaching the apex, no?

@S14 DRIFT: I totally agree with you that having some knowledge on the car physics can help to progress. But it is a lot of stuff and since I am just discovering the motor-sport it is a lot to learn. So I just use the pre-made settings.

Some more questions:
I've been trying to brake later and hit the brake harder. The problem is, that the car tends to turn into a drifting position. But drifting is no good for fast laps. What do I do wrong?

When and how do you hit the brake... Before, I braked and down-shifted almost simultaneously. I thought the combination of the motor-brake and pedal brake would be the fastest way to stop. But I saw some others that downshifted when the revs were already really low.

It is amazing... the more you play lfs the more you realise how many details this game takes into account!

Quote from a-k-m :

With trail braking you mean progressively release the brake while approaching the apex, no?

That's correct.

Quote from a-k-m :

I've been trying to brake later and hit the brake harder. The problem is, that the car tends to turn into a drifting position. But drifting is no good for fast laps. What do I do wrong?

When and how do you hit the brake... Before, I braked and down-shifted almost simultaneously. I thought the combination of the motor-brake and pedal brake would be the fastest way to stop. But I saw some others that downshifted when the revs were already really low.

Go on the brakes fast, but steadily. If you hit the brakes too hard, you will upset the cars balance and it's difficult to recover without drifting. Trail braking should help to keep the balance, when releasing brakes.
In LFS you can set the brake pressure so that you get the maximum out of brakes, so no need for engine braking. Also blipping the throttle on downshifts keeps the tyres from spinning, but I think only LX6 is affected much by this.

Quote from a-k-m :

It is amazing... the more you play lfs the more you realise how many details this game takes into account!

It really is

Quote from a-k-m :

With trail braking you mean progressively release the brake while approaching the apex, no?

If I am not mistaken, it is engine breaking (preferably on rear-wheel cars).

Quote from a-k-m :

thx for the replys!
I've been trying to brake later and hit the brake harder. The problem is, that the car tends to turn into a drifting position. But drifting is no good for fast laps. What do I do wrong?

The break balance is set too far rear.
The car will try to get the wheels that applies most breaking force to the front. If that happens to be the rear wheels, the car will try to turn around when you break.

Quote from a-k-m :

When and how do you hit the brake... Before, I braked and down-shifted almost simultaneously. I thought the combination of the motor-brake and pedal brake would be the fastest way to stop. But I saw some others that downshifted when the revs were already really low.

It depends on the car, but generaly I release the throttle and break first to bring down the speed and revs before shifting, so that the revs hit just under the redline after shifting. If I shift too early, the engine will over-rev and sustain damage. Another effect of either over-reving or reving the engine very high when engine breaking is that the combination of engine breaking and disc breaking can overcome the tyre grip, and thereby cause the wheel to lock up.

Engine breaking must also be taken into account when setting the breaking balance. On rear wheel driven cars, a perfect breaking balance will be distorted by engine breaking, meaning breaking too much on the rear tyres which causes, as you alreay have experienced, the car trying to turn around and go into the turn with the rear first.

On some cars/setups that are understeering while breaking, I often intentionally set the break balance a bit too far back to help the car turn into the corners. But it can be difficult to control, sometimes causing me to go sideways instead of turning if Im too agressive on the breaking.

Quote from Skagen :

If I am not mistaken, it is engine breaking (preferably on rear-wheel cars).

No, it's exactly like he says...

Quote from Skagen :

The break balance is set too far rear.
The car will try to get the wheels that applies most breaking force to the front. If that happens to be the rear wheels, the car will try to turn around when you break.

The car doesn't "try" anything, it does what it's set up to... If that means a rear wheel locks up for whatever reason (of which too much rear bias is only one reason), you will probably get more face time with your fellow racers than you wished...

Just a friendly hint: break = kaputt... You mean braking...

Sort out your proirities:

If you have real talent, practice and be one of the bests / aim for a top team to improve faster, get into leagues.

If you don't have talent or time, find a place to race with competition at your level. Once you can handle the car and be competitive (1.35 BL1 XFG is competitive, mid pack wise) you can already have a lot of fun and close races. That's where I belong - I'm still trying to win, but I'd rather have a 5 lap door to door battle for the 15th spot than a win on a nearly empty demo server

I've been thinking about this for a while, and this thread (and especially this last post) seem to make me think i'm not the only one.

Is there any interest, for a league for slower drivers, something like.. if you PBs are < X (insert time here), then you're accepted.

I ask, because, i don't have much time for LFS, about.. 2 hours a week, tops, nowdays. And the leagues seem to be filled with guys that are much more talented (i know practice isn't everything) and have more free time.

But that doesn't mean, that slower driver can't have fun, as long as they all run in the same level.

I have a server i can open for this (not 24/7 though).

Is there interest ?

Quote from tibone :

Is there interest ?

Yes, as I'm the same boat.

Unfortunately, these days just having a sever won't do; you need admins/players to keep it alive or it'll just die off in a couple of days/weeks.

How about if we spread the word and have regular sessions at a given day/time to start off with.

Of course it'll take a bit of work to sort out the cars, tracks, days and times to suit everyone, but I think in the end it'll be worth it...

I'm in.

My idea would be set up something like a small league.
Set up a day/time and have some races there. Perhaps 3x20 minutes racing, without qualy and random grids.

Cars and tracks, it would be build from slow/small to fast/bigger.

so start with something like AS1R and XRG and work all the way up to KY Long with the GTRs.

Or something like that.

Sounds good.

If you make a new thread in the leagues subsection it would help to get interested drivers involved; get them to make a post to say their interested and put forward their ideas etc.

Hello,

Today, I practised a lot again with the combo xfg bl1. And finally, I did it !!!

Could do one time a 1.34.85 and one time a 1.34.90 and 1.35.00!!

Also noticed that there is still room for improvement.

One very important aspect is the braking! I practised the trail braking and noticed that I did it very wrong before. But it was nice to keep up with the fast guys (in fact; it is much more exciting)

But this is XFG... There are still A LOT of other combos to get fast with.
Since I am still very slow with other cars and tracks I find your idea very attractive tibone.
Another problem that comes to mind when setting up a league: it depends where you from... I am European and as I see you come from brazil. So there has to be set a time that allows both regions to compete together...

Did you already post a new thread in the leagues section regarding your idea?

Greez