I was thinking about how to hold NASCAR like event in the LFS, and even some time ago I tried to do some test races on an oval with xrg (because there is no other way)
Yes, our oval is quite small, and it is impossible to hold superspeedway-type competitions on it. But it is still possible to have small races like in Nascar. So, what prevents the holding of a proper NASCAR racing? And there are two main reasons.
1. Netcode algorithm. (which is responsible for collisions and for displaying the positioning, rotation and speed vectors of cars online) It does not allow to do predictable bump drafting. (when car pulls up behind the lead car and bumps into the rear of it, pushing the lead car ahead, to maintain momentum, and cars pack going faster) We tried bumpdrafting, but even on slow xrg but it's still too hard to do bump drafting, I was only able to do it on video when I found someone with a low ping who could hold the car well but still sometimes the cars bounces away unpredictably. And it's even harder on faster cars. But the laps when it got good were about a second faster than those going without bumpdrafting. So it's too good a technique not to use it.
Especially you can't form close packs of cars when they're travelling within centimetres of each other. Because if someone lags a bit, one goes through the other for a second - laghit and there's a domino effect and all the cars just fly away.
2. Aerodynamic model. There is no side-drafting effect in LFS. (When a car races alongside another car and “dumps” air flow from that car's nose to the spoiler of the other car, causing the other car to lose momentum and allowing the side-drafting car to pull away. This allows for occasional overtaking on the outside line braking the inside cars of side drafting.)
We know there's a slipstream model in the LFS. But it's not always clear how it working. Is it just a cube directly behind the car that has discharged air in it? Then it wouldn't work properly in the corners. Because the angle of the car behind will be different and this cube will go sideways. In reality, the car forms a path of rarefied air where it passed.
Also not clear if drafting in LFS allows the car in front to go faster? And if it does, does it only work for two cars? Or will multi-car packs go faster than two cars in drafting? We tried to test this but it's too difficult to do so for the netcode reasons, and the results aren't consistent to be sure.
Of course there are other reasons that we have only a relatively small oval, that there is no full-fledged safety car bot, that there is no system caution flag and yellow flags like in nascar, and splits, (although it can be done insim) as well as limited tyre changes, aerodynamics damage system, engine heating and cooling by air flow (this is a big problem when driving in a dense pack, and on this cars sometimes a little out of the pack that the radiator would get some air).
But the main reasons are that you can not fight for positions in close packs. And nascar racing is all about that. And for that we need to at least fix the netcode and fix the aerodynamic model in LFS.
Yes, our oval is quite small, and it is impossible to hold superspeedway-type competitions on it. But it is still possible to have small races like in Nascar. So, what prevents the holding of a proper NASCAR racing? And there are two main reasons.
1. Netcode algorithm. (which is responsible for collisions and for displaying the positioning, rotation and speed vectors of cars online) It does not allow to do predictable bump drafting. (when car pulls up behind the lead car and bumps into the rear of it, pushing the lead car ahead, to maintain momentum, and cars pack going faster) We tried bumpdrafting, but even on slow xrg but it's still too hard to do bump drafting, I was only able to do it on video when I found someone with a low ping who could hold the car well but still sometimes the cars bounces away unpredictably. And it's even harder on faster cars. But the laps when it got good were about a second faster than those going without bumpdrafting. So it's too good a technique not to use it.
Especially you can't form close packs of cars when they're travelling within centimetres of each other. Because if someone lags a bit, one goes through the other for a second - laghit and there's a domino effect and all the cars just fly away.
2. Aerodynamic model. There is no side-drafting effect in LFS. (When a car races alongside another car and “dumps” air flow from that car's nose to the spoiler of the other car, causing the other car to lose momentum and allowing the side-drafting car to pull away. This allows for occasional overtaking on the outside line braking the inside cars of side drafting.)
We know there's a slipstream model in the LFS. But it's not always clear how it working. Is it just a cube directly behind the car that has discharged air in it? Then it wouldn't work properly in the corners. Because the angle of the car behind will be different and this cube will go sideways. In reality, the car forms a path of rarefied air where it passed.
Also not clear if drafting in LFS allows the car in front to go faster? And if it does, does it only work for two cars? Or will multi-car packs go faster than two cars in drafting? We tried to test this but it's too difficult to do so for the netcode reasons, and the results aren't consistent to be sure.
Of course there are other reasons that we have only a relatively small oval, that there is no full-fledged safety car bot, that there is no system caution flag and yellow flags like in nascar, and splits, (although it can be done insim) as well as limited tyre changes, aerodynamics damage system, engine heating and cooling by air flow (this is a big problem when driving in a dense pack, and on this cars sometimes a little out of the pack that the radiator would get some air).
But the main reasons are that you can not fight for positions in close packs. And nascar racing is all about that. And for that we need to at least fix the netcode and fix the aerodynamic model in LFS.