Hello Drifters,

As you may know from the other thread, I've been working on an incompatible patch for a few reasons. One thing it is possible to do, is increase the maximum lock on some of the RWD cars to open them up for drifting. At the moment, I think drifters mainly use the XR GT Turbo and FZ50 GTR.

I know that there are suspension modification kits available in real life to allow extreme steering. But for the most extreme angles, spacing is needed and limits on wheel width. These changes aren't available in LFS at least for now. I want to make it as fun as possible for drifters but staying on the side of realism, within the limits we have.

People have suggested various lock limits from 55 to 65 degrees. 55 and 60 were the most common suggestions.
I set the maximum to 60 degrees as a starting point and had a look at the 8 cars that could have a maximum lock increase.

LX4 / LX6 - due to wheels intersecting suspension arms, looks like a sensible limit is 45 degrees.
XR GT / XR GT TURBO / FZ50 / RACEABOUT - seems OK up to 60 degrees because front wheels are narrow enough
XR GTR / FZ50 GTR - 60 degrees looks too much with such wide wheels - 50 looks OK to me

These are the results I've come up with by visually inspecting the cars. I've attached two images so you know what I mean about the XR GTR looking wrong with 60 degrees. I think that the real life cars with such steering lock have extra spacing and larger wheel cavity to make it possible.

So now a couple of questions.

1) I don't know much about drifting so I don't really know what is most important. Would it be a problem, to limit the GTR cars to 50 degrees of steering? How about with the road cars? Are the extreme angles more or less important when the power is higher?

2) When I say "it seems OK at this angle" I am assuming 100% Parallel Steer. One complication here is I think the Parallel Steer needs to be enforced at such extreme steering angles. Is that OK, do all drifters always use Parallel steering anyway?

if you want to study, about drift angle, look at wisefab.com.

in my knowledge, parallel steering depends on track type(slow or fast). one direction gives you bigger angle, other faster car, with less angle.

Edited: Would be nice, to have street tires, for GTR cars.

65 degrees gives you "safety", because in competition, you don't use max. angle, but it helps to save mistakes. let's say, you are drifting with 45 degrees angle and you need to make correction. 50 degrees wouldn't be enough.

Quote from Pfortnoks :

...
Edited: Would be nice, to have street tires, for GTR cars.

this is the purpose in this incompatible patch among the increased lock and multiplayer :
- road tires available for racecars.
- Rallycross tires available for GTR cars.

Well it's possible, but drift cars don't run such wide tires on the front anyway. Maybe adjustable tire width? But I guess that's too much to get into now.

The XRR runs 335 width on the front according to some info I found on the forums. For example, the highest allowed tire ON the REAR in Formula D competition IRL is 305 on the heaviest class. Nobody would drift with 335 on the front.

In my opinion, 45 is enough for street cars, 60 could be good for the higher powered cars.

Quote from Nadeo4441 :

Well it's possible, but drift cars don't run such wide tires on the front anyway. Maybe adjustable tire width? But I guess that's too much to get into now.

The XRR runs 335 width on the front according to some info I found on the forums. For example, the highest allowed tire ON the REAR in Formula D competition IRL is 305 on the heaviest class. Nobody would drift with 335 on the front.

In my opinion, 45 is enough for street cars, 60 could be good for the higher powered cars.

Agree : adjustable tire width and rim size would be the must

Also adjustable wheel track and wheel position... but I doubt that will happen.

Quote from Nadeo4441 :

Well it's possible, but drift cars don't run such wide tires on the front anyway. Maybe adjustable tire width? But I guess that's too much to get into now.

The XRR runs 335 width on the front according to some info I found on the forums. For example, the highest allowed tire ON the REAR in Formula D competition IRL is 305 on the heaviest class. Nobody would drift with 335 on the front.

In my opinion, 45 is enough for street cars, 60 could be good for the higher powered cars.

With XRR total mass 1100kg, it would be totally enough, if fronts would be 235mm and rear tires 265mm

Edited: Front suspension should be the same width, or little bit wider than rear. If rear is wider than front, car is fast, but hard to control

This is how looks like xrt with 55 degree. Its fun for me but xrt do not have enough power to keep that angle. Its fun to get into a corner with your doors but you cannot keep this angle if you dont drive with high speed on some big layout for example or your tires are not hot.

45 degrees in the XRT and FZ50 has been fine. I think maybe max at 55degrees other wise add more power (50hp) because then more angle on those cars then it will feel underpowered or twitchy

Hi Scarwen, interesting post, commenting on the xrg personally this car barely has enough power to push out the rear tires, mostly it requires heating to high temperatures for the rears to even kick out for the xrg extra steering would be pointless imo.

As far as the XRT goes for me it's already possible to sit at the maximum lock to comfortably drift on the autocross layouts extra steering angle would only help to save extreme amounts of angle and is not much of a big deal, although it would be fun to do some backward entry with the extended lock, it really isn't required to drive this car comfortably.

I support all other cars to have the steering lock changes especially lx4/6 and raceabout.

I would suggest considering something for the rb4, it is also used sometimes as a drift car.

I definitely agree with this make it standard 45 degrees for all RWD cars, and street and dirt tires for race cars. Maybe next update we can talk about tire sizes.

Just one small suggestion, maybe there could be option that these steering changes would work just for drift, cruise servers and single player? But not hotlap mode or race servers?To not have strange race setups with 60degrees streering as its not really realistic racing wise.

Quote from Pathseeker :

Just one small suggestion, maybe there could be option that these steering changes would work just for drift, cruise servers and single player? But not hotlap mode or race servers?To not have strange race setups with 60degrees streering as its not really realistic racing wise.

I dont think it would give you any advantage at all, but a good suggestion

Quote from Nadeo4441 :

I dont think it would give you any advantage at all, but a good suggestion

Advantage wise maybe,but as Scawen says itself he wants to keep it close to how it is in real, so this way it would be keept like that, so those changes would affect only drift servers, single player and cruise servers where you can "modify" car for drifting, and not in racing servers, or hotlap, yes it will take more work, but i think that would be start for maybe some future changes for specific things only for racing or drifting.

From what i can tell, in sladi masters series most people use 0% parallel steering with 60 degree angle, myself included. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to adapt from that to 50 degrees with 50-100% parallel steering. XRR and FZR have a nice power output more suited to drifting than the road car counterparts, it's definitely easier to catch on to them and more fun too. Not saying the original road cars sideways aren't fun, but power can be a slight issue sometimes, LRF excluded.

60 degrees of lock in the road cars sounds a bit too much though, 45 is imho enough for them. XRT bogs down if you try to get the angle high enough so you'd need full lock, only after the rear tires hit over 80 celsius, the tires start to lose enough traction to keep the revs up.

There is one concern that came to my mind though. If the steering lock would be raised for the GTRs(well, why not road cars too), how much work would it be to also change the steering wheel's rotation from lock to lock? At 540 degrees lock-to-lock, 60 degrees of steering angle is way too sensitive from my experience with these cars. It doesn't take much to change wheel turn compensation from 1.00 to 0.00 temporarily so I have all 900 degrees in use, but sometimes i forget this setting on before going back racing and wonder why my car doesnt turn as well as it used to until i remember that setting

It is important to note that drift as motorsport discipline allows within of real competitions to participate in cars with different engines, wich castom made modifications and tuning, which have leads to the fact that the participants have different amounts of horsepower and torque, as well as with suspensions kits, chassis selection and etc, and even allow the use of different tire widths up to a certain limit. For example, there are some cases in competitions when rivals in pair runs have a difference of 500 horsepower!

But here it is also worth noting that real Pro competitions already have more power then GTRs in LFS, and than they even have, the some cars power reaches 1000hp and more. And on average it is 700-800hp today. Maybe this should be noted for the future updates. And Im referring to the thread is made a real Pro drifter about the XRD (XR - Professional Drift Version) in Improvement Suggestions forum and i hope to see that in some day.

I would say that in real competitions, the steering lock is depends to the power of the car that you have, in local events where cars have 250-400 hp there is no a strong need to install the wisefab kit and have a large steering angle, 40-45 degrees is enough, if you have 450 or more hp then more and more pilots come to the needing for a large steering angle and install a wisefab kit or some similar suspension kit.

Therefore, i propose to adhere to the same principle in LFS, i as a drifter in LFS do not see a strong need for 60 degrees for XRT and all less powerful RWD cars, 45 is more than enough for me, for example you can make 50 degrees for FZ5, and 55 for RWD GTRs.
And in LFS drifters always or almost always use 0% Parallel steering.

Is there a possibility of increasing the steering angle for cars like fbm? Going from 17° to 20°~25° (nothing extreme) would/could help newbies (like me, or racers who are trying to learn formulas, after learning gti class) correct more mistakes, and allow dedicated people to (nearly) drift it too.
Personally i love the idea of (reosonably) increasing steering lock

Quote from Mate2169 :

Is there a possibility of increasing the steering angle for cars like fbm? Going from 17° to 20°~25° (nothing extreme) would/could help newbies (like me, or racers who are trying to learn formulas, after learning gti class) ...

I disagree, on FBM many newbies struggle with overheating tyres very fast already, and higher steering lock limit would definitely make that worse. (in fact, many newcomers might not even know about them overheating tyres due to steering on the lock constantly and after a while, they're just feeling the car not turning in as they'd like and giving up shortly after that). So in my opinion, the reason being helping newcomers learn the car better just doesn't stand.

Absolutely agree with Alexandr_124rus! Just want to add something i think is important to test those GTRs by drifters who have big experience in LFS drift and also real drift. Those 335s in front can make this update just useless. XRT with its power doesn't need more then 55 of angle. RAC is almost never used to drift(due to its sensivity and short wheelbase). LXs same as RAC.

So basically or GTRs with less tyre width or XRT with more power and minimal wheel spacing adjustments(+-3cm).

XRD is the answer to everything!

Thank you Scawen for supporting drifting community

Im using 0% parallel steer and all drift setups that im got from sharing is same. Xrr and fzr need 60 degrees imao, xrt is fine now with 45 lock. And i read that XRD topic and agreed with the point. For Drifters need a car class that looks like the cars that exist in real competitions.

LX4 brings AE86 vibes more than XRG does due to high reving inline 4cylinder. Hard to maintain drift once tires get hot after 3 laps. Maybe change XRG to a 8rpm redline 180 Hp too? Anyways I enjoy LX cars for drifting often

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

But here it is also worth noting that real Pro competitions already have more power then GTRs in LFS, and than they even have, the some cars power reaches 1000hp and more. And on average it is 700-800hp today. Maybe this should be noted for the future updates. And Im referring to the thread is made a real Pro drifter about the XRD (XR - Professional Drift Version) in Improvement Suggestions forum and i hope to see that in some day.

Good point here, and for XRD there is no need to change 3D model of XRR, is fine now for drifting, and if it will happen that will solve many problems, such as the discrepancy of the tire width relative to real competition, and lack of GTRs power, etc. Cuz on XRD devs can make 285mm rear tire wide and 265-285 for front on more durable semi slicks, 700-800hp, and the rest that is written in the topic, will need some testing and this is it. And such a cars will not be able to participate in racing cuz it not need for drifting.

Quote from Pathseeker :

Just one small suggestion, maybe there could be option that these steering changes would work just for drift, cruise servers and single player? But not hotlap mode or race servers?To not have strange race setups with 60degrees streering as its not really realistic racing wise.

And that is will solve too if XRD will happen.