I have been a fairly long term demo user and for a long time struggled with any 'Fast' setups and confidence with rear end grip. I am using a KB and Mouse and when using these setups the rear would spin around without any warning or feel. I got over it by inducing a more understeering setup but then I'm not as quick.

The Formula XR car seems much better, even on default setup I find it fairly well balanced.

I am now a S2 licence holder (hooray) and love the BMW Sauber. However I am having the same issues. At higher speeds it's not so much of an affect as the aero is clearly helping, but I am still having issues with very low rear grip/feel at low speeds, ESPECIALLY on downchange with this car. I even set the engine braking to 0 but if I am turning into a corner and it shifts into the lower gears (usually 1st and 2nd) then the back snaps around. It;s frustrating. How can I overcome this? Stiffening the rear end up?

Thanks.

Try blipping the throttle when changing down into the lower gears. When coming out of a corner be careful with the throttle, don't ram it on, be gentle. If that doesn't work you could always try shortshifting along with it.

Hi

Quote :

I am using a KB and Mouse and when using these setups the rear would spin around without any warning or feel.

With keyboard/mouse driving those cars is harder. A ffb wheel gives feedback so it is possible to react before the car spins because you feel it coming. With mouse it is more of a surprise and when you see the spin it is already too late.
One can learn that too, but the process of blind trial & error is slower than feeling it naturally with wheel.

Quote :

I even set the engine braking to 0

Yes, that could be one setting to adjust.
But just to make sure: It is "engine brake reduction", so you would want a high setting to have less engine brake.
Also try to shift gears down later. (Maybe even do not shift down for a turn at all until the exit, and then gradually shift down earlier)

what about autogears u never know when it shifts

yeah, that snap happens a lot with autogears as you can't really predict when it happens, if you can i'd suggest shifting manually as then you can actually use it to your advantage

I don't know how anyone can drive the open-wheel cars in LFS without a force feedback wheel and pedals. I did alright with a joystick, with throttle on the trigger button and brake on the thumb button, but that was back when we only had 3 cars (what are now known as XFG, XRG, and XRT). Once I bought a wheel, things got a lot easier and I got a lot faster.

Is purchasing such a wheel completely out of the question?

FWIW, a lot of hotlap setups do tend to be very loose. Case in point, my recent race setup for FO8 @ SO5 had an extra degree in the rear wing compared to a hotlap setup a teammate provided me with. Even then, there were places I had to be very careful to avoid oversteer using my race setup.

Quote from Gutholz :

Hi
With keyboard/mouse driving those cars is harder. A ffb wheel gives feedback so it is possible to react before the car spins because you feel it coming. With mouse it is more of a surprise and when you see the spin it is already too late.
One can learn that too, but the process of blind trial & error is slower than feeling it naturally with wheel.

Yes, that could be one setting to adjust.
But just to make sure: It is "engine brake reduction", so you would want a high setting to have less engine brake.
Also try to shift gears down later. (Maybe even do not shift down for a turn at all until the exit, and then gradually shift down earlier)

Thanks so much Gultholz, that made it so much better! It's still a bit loose on the rear and hard to drive given my control combination but it's at least stable enough for me to have fun now.

Quote from Forbin :

I don't know how anyone can drive the open-wheel cars in LFS without a force feedback wheel and pedals. I did alright with a joystick, with throttle on the trigger button and brake on the thumb button, but that was back when we only had 3 cars (what are now known as XFG, XRG, and XRT). Once I bought a wheel, things got a lot easier and I got a lot faster.

Is purchasing such a wheel completely out of the question?

FWIW, a lot of hotlap setups do tend to be very loose. Case in point, my recent race setup for FO8 @ SO5 had an extra degree in the rear wing compared to a hotlap setup a teammate provided me with. Even then, there were places I had to be very careful to avoid oversteer using my race setup.

In all honesty, no, it's not. I intend on getting a FFB wheel, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. I do expect my times to tumble once I have one so that's good to know.

Thanks.

Quote from Forbin :

I don't know how anyone can drive the open-wheel cars in LFS without a force feedback wheel and pedals. I did alright with a joystick, with throttle on the trigger button and brake on the thumb button, but that was back when we only had 3 cars (what are now known as XFG, XRG, and XRT). Once I bought a wheel, things got a lot easier and I got a lot faster.

Is purchasing such a wheel completely out of the question?

FWIW, a lot of hotlap setups do tend to be very loose. Case in point, my recent race setup for FO8 @ SO5 had an extra degree in the rear wing compared to a hotlap setup a teammate provided me with. Even then, there were places I had to be very careful to avoid oversteer using my race setup.

I drive all the cars with mouse, quite easy actually. You don't need FFB to know where you car is and what it's doing, sure it helps (A LOT), but I can see if the rear end is getting loose as well as hear it. Counter steer and throttle out of it is what I always do (can even get some good slides with FO8).

Also a lot of these "fast" setups are hotlaps setups that are made for 1-3 laps so the tyres wear out failry quickly, which could be a factor to the read end slipping out on you (OP).

Quote from BeNoM :

Also a lot of these "fast" setups are hotlaps setups that are made for 1-3 laps so the tyres heat up very quickly, which could be a factor to the read end slipping out on you (OP).

Fixed for you...

Quote from BeNoM :

I drive all the cars with mouse, quite easy actually. You don't need FFB to know where you car is and what it's doing, sure it helps (A LOT), but I can see if the rear end is getting loose as well as hear it. Counter steer and throttle out of it is what I always do (can even get some good slides with FO8).

Also a lot of these "fast" setups are hotlaps setups that are made for 1-3 laps so the tyres wear out failry quickly, which could be a factor to the read end slipping out on you (OP).

This is a bit rude of me so I apologize ahead of time:

You're not exactly setting the world on fire with your lap times. I don't think your experience necessarily invalidates my statement.

Yes, you can get around the track with M+KB, and maybe even set some good hotlaps with sufficient practice. However, I suspect the speed comes much quicker with a wheel, and a wheel is better suited to the precision required for close racing. Additionally, while it may be easier to catch big slides with a mouse, I contend it's easier to prevent slides bad enough to require catching in the first place with a wheel.

Quote from Forbin :

This is a bit rude of me so I apologize ahead of time:

You're not exactly setting the world on fire with your lap times. I don't think your experience necessarily invalidates my statement.

Yes, you can get around the track with M+KB, and maybe even set some good hotlaps with sufficient practice. However, I suspect the speed comes much quicker with a wheel, and a wheel is better suited to the precision required for close racing. Additionally, while it may be easier to catch big slides with a mouse, I contend it's easier to prevent slides bad enough to require catching in the first place with a wheel.

I don't agree with that, there's been multiple posts (all of which are quite a few years old, so I could only find one) that I've read about people asking why they cou;dn't beat Mouse/KB users and how Mouse/KB users got Word Records.
(For example: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/1335-ks-%26-mouse-vs--wheel)

I've played LFS one all 3, mouse keyboard and wheel, and I'm much faster with mouse and even beat quite a lot of wheel users online.

Of course whee;s have more precision, that's why their slower... With a mouse you can go full lock either way within a matter of milliseconds because there's no FFB and because there's no auto-centre which is what wheels have.

Look, I'm not here to argue with anyone, I'm just stating the facts that mouses are quicker. If you don't belive you can look through the forum posts and WR's.

Anyways, have a good night

Quote :

I've played LFS one all 3, mouse keyboard and wheel, and I'm much faster with mouse and even beat quite a lot of wheel users online.

When and on which tracks would that have been, because in online stats you basically have no laps counts.. There are only few tracks/cars where you even have more than ten laps and your laptimes are all slow.

Quote :

If you don't belive you can look through the forum posts and WR's.

People say lots of things in forum posts and WR's with mouse are super rare.
In theory hotlap would be perfect for mouse because there is no reacting required, only memorizing. Rather believe in race results, like mpRes statistics.

99.9% of the time I play LFS, it's offline

Quote from Forbin :

I don't know how anyone can drive the open-wheel cars in LFS without a force feedback wheel and pedals.

You would be surprised how fast some people using keyboards can get For example Steelbeen.

Former mouse driver reporting in.

Wheel is not necessarily faster, especially if you have eazy mouse track. But there are things that are significantly harder with mouse:

• curved braking lines (someone mentioned ABS hacks?), trail braking and even normal braking
  
• following another car or going side by side
  
• being stable for more than ~5 minutes stint
  

Some people can overcome this to pretty high degree, but what myself gained with wheel is ability to do long stints which helped a lot to develop in this game. After I got better I can even switch to mouse with FO8 and be alright for couple laps. (Before buying wheel I couldn't drive FO8 at all).

Just keep in mind that you gonna have to learn the game from the ground up again

Quote from vitaly_m :

Former mouse driver reporting in.

Wheel is not necessarily faster, especially if you have eazy mouse track. But there are things that are significantly harder with mouse:

• curved braking lines (someone mentioned ABS hacks?), trail braking and even normal braking
  
• following another car or going side by side
  
• being stable for more than ~5 minutes stint
  

Former mouser too. Definitely agree on first and second point. Third point, not that much, but probably because mouse make it easy to drive at 90-95%, but going at 100% is hard.

If your main problem is "lack of feel", then yeah, a wheel would be the obvious quick fix... No doubt that mouse can be fast. But you have to do it while missing information and precision an appropriate controller would give you. It's like walking blind on a tightrope. Can be done, but definitely not ideal.

Overall switching to wheel made me a much faster and better driver, I really regret not doing it earlier.

Also from a health POV keyboard and mouse puts a lot of strain on hand and wrist, really not something I'd recommand if you intend to play regulary. I don't remember ever getting pain from wheel sessions, on the other hand.

After reading about formulas and mouse driving I can't let the fact go by that MARUS managed to beat BL1@FO8 WR with a mouse. It appears that the hotlap is now deleted but I still have the replay if you're interested. His lap time was 1:00.51

Somewhen earlier this year hotlap tracklimit checks got stricter and some times were removed. But even if that lap was still listed, look at WR charts, the top-10 times (or even whole first pages) for all tracks are always wheel and mouse is exotic minority.
And that is in a mode that kinda favors mouse due to its unlimited retry nature.

Quite a lot of MARUS WRs got wiped coz of handbrake usage.

What you should not forget is that whenever someone switches from mouse to wheel it takes a lot of time to get back to your mouse pace initially. I heard of couple guys who purchased wheel but keep playing on mouse because wheel didn't work for them.

...

Also, sometimes people use mouse for steering and pedals for throttle/braking - this one is good for hotlapping, and you can't check if those WRs were done with that combo, coz LFS would tell it is "W".

And there is also another thing into it: steering lock. If you have smaller steering lock then it is kinda best of all worlds - you have good throttle/braking control plus it is easy to counter steer. Precision can get worse but not too bad there.

There is no way to check everything of that from LFS WR database, so there is not much point in putting the question in "what is better"-way.

Quote from vitaly_m :

Former mouse driver reporting in.

Wheel is not necessarily faster, especially if you have eazy mouse track. But there are things that are significantly harder with mouse:

• curved braking lines (someone mentioned ABS hacks?), trail braking and even normal braking
  
• following another car or going side by side
  
• being stable for more than ~5 minutes stint
  

Some people can overcome this to pretty high degree, but what myself gained with wheel is ability to do long stints which helped a lot to develop in this game. After I got better I can even switch to mouse with FO8 and be alright for couple laps. (Before buying wheel I couldn't drive FO8 at all).

Just keep in mind that you gonna have to learn the game from the ground up again

Quote from BeNoM :

I don't agree with that, there's been multiple posts (all of which are quite a few years old, so I could only find one) that I've read about people asking why they cou;dn't beat Mouse/KB users and how Mouse/KB users got Word Records.
(For example: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/1335-ks-%26-mouse-vs--wheel)

I've played LFS one all 3, mouse keyboard and wheel, and I'm much faster with mouse and even beat quite a lot of wheel users online.

Of course whee;s have more precision, that's why their slower... With a mouse you can go full lock either way within a matter of milliseconds because there's no FFB and because there's no auto-centre which is what wheels have.

Look, I'm not here to argue with anyone, I'm just stating the facts that mouses are quicker. If you don't belive you can look through the forum posts and WR's.

Anyways, have a good night

Interesting posts. I guess like anything, some are better with KB&M and some are better with a Wheel. I've yet to try a wheel but believe I will be better for the reasons given that I will have better feel with the car and will be able to get consistency.

For example, My best ever lap at FBM Blackwood is 1:13.90, which I know is quite a bit off the ultimate pace. Consistently, I can do mid to low 1:14's but because I've had to adopt a more understeering setup with my mouse, if I push more then I just pile straight on at corners. The other issue is consistency like I say. Most corners I am fine but the final corner at Blackwood I lose probably 1/2 or even a full second. I cannot get a rhythm through there! Looking at others, it should be a small lift then power through there in 4th gear. While some laps (probably 2/10) I get it perfect, the next lap I try and do the same thing and it just drives straight on. I know some of it is me, but I feel I will improve here with a wheel.

Anyway thanks for responding all.