Just out of curiosity - Are there any LFS players who have experience of real club racing or track days? If so, have you found that skills such as race craft and car control learnt in LFS have improved your driving on real circuits?
My only experience is a day at Mallory Park driving a VW Golf GTi and a Formula Ford SS and that was several years ago although from memory the Formula Ford was easier to keep on the track than the LFS Formula XR
I think to be realistic we need an USB aural device to make the computer smell of hot oil and burnt rubber and there needs to be a dodgy burger van for sustenance in the pit lane - Any chance of these in the next upgrade please?
for me personally, the LFS gives me a sense of what i should be doing on a track, or atleast an idea of how fluidity and how to improve my times; but compared to actually driving, LFS doesn't is nowhere near real
if you get what im saying
if you dont; basically LFS can teach you the basics of racing and how to improve your laptimes... but it wont help you at all when it comes to commute driving
never driven before but offering my thoughts on this.
I would expect that lfs can teach the basics of the racing line. As you can learn wat line to take through corners and then apply that to real world track driving. I know it wouldnt be perfect but i expect alot of people have learnt about the outside inside outside line and slow in fast out which they could apply to track racing.
I would also expect that it could also help with car control. An example of what i mean is take 2 people one who has alot of experience with lfs and one who has no experience then put them on track in a high powered rwd car. I would expect that an over steer situations the person who has played lfs would be calmer and, not necessarily have better car control, but have a better idea of what they need to do.
Also i would of thought a basic idea of car control in that rwds car cant go full throttle as will oversteer, fwd full throttle is likely to understeer.
So really - i would expect lfs to be able to teach people the concepts of real life track racing and give them idea of wat a car will do (oversteer/understeer) but i wouldnt say any more than that.
i personally love the game, and from going to other driving games, to lfs, you can really tell the difference. i enjoy the game and feel it is pretty darn real.
I think there is heaps to be gained from it. Race lines, race craft, learning to feel what the car is doing and adjusting it's balance to suit you, developing instinctive reactions to certain situations...
You could take a real race car setup to be driven via remote control. The "driver" would drive the race car while viewing a computer screen. The steering wheel force feedback would be identical to what would be felt at the real steering wheel. The sounds would be identical to what a driver would hear in a car (including muffled sounds if earplugs are required because of the noise of the car). The pedals would have the same resistance to movement. This would be the perfect simulator, but it still would present issues compared to actually driving in the car, because you can't feel the forces of acceleration, and the perspective is significantly different. You'd never be as fast and/or consistent via the remote control as you could be in the car. If the goal was to get similar lap times, you would need some changes to make up for the lack of feedback, like changing the audio feedback to exaggerate tire sounds, and throttle, brake, and steering assists; the modified audio sound wouldn't cause too much harm, but the assists could create some bad habits like excessive inputs.
Change this to PC based simulations, and there will be differences in how real cars behave at or beyond the limits and the simulated equivalent, especially on tracks with irregular surfaces. Methods that provide the best lap times in a game, may not apply to a real car. For example, driver induced understeer (steering inwards to avoid or recover from oversteer) only works with certain cars and setups in real life. It works well in Grand Prix Legends, and works somewhat with LFS (although not as well as it did with LFS S1's physics). One thing that is common to games and simulations, is that braking while counter-steering just makes a spin worse, so some habits are good while others are bad.
I think racing sims will teach the basics, if the player is paying attention. For example, in a car well below it's top speed, the typical best line through a 90 degree turn is close to a hyperbola, with the slowest speed at the apex. If the car is near it's top speed (including speed limited by the drag induced by cornering forces), then a near constant speed circular arc is the best path. The length of a high speed section before or after a turn also affect the best path and speed to take in the turn. If the track beyond a turn doesn't allow for much acceleration, it's probably better to focus on speed in the turn to get through the turn quickly. If there's a long high speed section after a turn, then sacrficing corner time for better exit speed should be used. There's nothing inherent in a game or real life that will teach this unless you experiment a lot and learn from it, or learn this information from someone else. If the tracks included in a racing game don't include the type of situations encountered on real tracks, then you never get to learn how to deal with them.
The best racing lines often aren't intuitive, as in this guide for Willow Springs, which also includes the variations for the case of high powered versus low powered cars in the higher speed turns. Turn 3 and just after are examples of extreme hyperbola paths with a large speed variation.
I've noticed a marked improvement in my Autocrossing since doing it a ton in LFS...! smoother, more consistent...I also noticed the ability to notice the rear end coming out sooner and correct it cleaner and faster than previous to LFS...
in fact the first time I autocrossed ever was with a friend at a mazda event...autocrossed the new miata...and the first hairpin having never driven a FR (RWD) car in my life at the limit on an autoX course--the rear snapped under power in 1st gear and I corrected it like I have been driving the miata my whole life according to my buddy with tons of autoX experience next to me) and he was shocked at how fluid I was and how good my lines were..he kept asking me after--are you sure you've never autocrossed before (how did you correct that power oversteer so naturally and quickly? lol...my response was simple...no, just a lot of live for speed! lol
so I guess the answer is yes, LFS is realistic enough where it has actual appreciable effects on your driving ability if you play it enough.
In terms of the physics it isn't bad, it isn't perfect, but it is the best. But you've asked something new here, you've asked about racecraft! Now that's an interesting question, and i'd never really thought about it before, but no. LFS does not give a realistic experience.
I've always felt a bit intimidated that i'm going to upset people so for a a long while i've not done everything I could to block, have a go, or generally mix it up with other drivers.
When I go karting i'm tough as nails on the circuit, i'll nerf, tap, rub, cut you up and dice you to get passed and I wont think twice about doing so either. I've only ever had 1 black flag penalty in all my years which was a missunderstanding over a yellow flag, but I know what I can get away with and that's exactly how far i'll go.
I've always felt that if I drove like it in LFS there'd be an uproar! So I tend to give in far too easily when battling with other drivers.
The issue with LFS racing is there are very mixed levels of ability on the track at the same time which causes issues in corner speeds. There are different ideas about race rules and even some without any understanding of race rules. The final nail is the too many people do not lift or yield when they are beaten because they do not understand they have lost the line and what that means.
Catch the right group of people and you can have great bumper to bumper fights.
The troubles start because they think racing is hot lapping and have no concept of the differences.
In time I think LFS will get better too. At the moment we have a slightly dodgy collision model, so that once a month you get fired up in the air (actually, I haven't suffered or seen this for about a year), and we have lag - not LFSs fault, just a problem with online gaming and internet connections sold by ultimate bandwidth rather than latency or a combination of the two.
As communications technology improves we'll get even lower pings and more data transfer, so lag will become a non-issue. Then rubbing might be acceptable. But right now only idiots use contact on purpose, especially bump drafting (especially in the Sauber - lol, what morons think F1 cars bump draft :S)
Playing LFS has improved my R/C racing considerably - mainly I guess because I have my joypad configured the same way as my R/C transmitter.
But as for real life - no. It's a simulator. It simulates real life. Unless you immerse yourself in a total sensory environment driven by the game engine then you are never going to get all the sensory input required for your brain to be able to apply what you learn the next time you hit the REAL tarmac.
How often do you race IRL with a wooden dashboard and a mug of coffee ?
PS - What it does do really well IMO is to teach what adjustments to make to a race car to rectify handling traits......
I know it is possible to make any drivetrain of car understeer but if you are curcuit racing in a RWD car its going to be very unlikely your going to be in such a understeering car that if you go from little throttle to full throttle (while some steering is applied ofcourse) that you would not get oversteer. If it understeered still then the car would be so slow round a track so its not a good set up to have.
Want to know why the Formula Ford was easier to keep on the track? because you weren't trying to push it as hard as you do the FOX in LFS. Anyone can drive any racing car around a track, it's when you push it to the limit that skill is required to keep it on the track.
LFS has helped me develop my race craft more becuase the amount of races I can do on LFS over a week. I'm constantly trying new things out and if it works I'll carry it on to any racing I do, although I don't really do much these days
I suppose since I do a lot of r/c racing these days I've learnt a few things about car setup and what influences affect what, although most of that was learnt from reading a guide I printed off the net Either way it helps me in LFS and real life.
Formula cars are some of the easiest cars to drive in the world, simply because that is their sole purpose - to be driven (and allow the driver to get the most out of it). A road car is slightly harder to drive because everything is joined together with mushy rubber bits to make it seem nicer (and it fools millions every day), and is designed to carry luggage and what have you.
Any idiot (and I speak from experience ) can drive a formula car and not spin. Drive EXACTLY the same in the FOX and you won't spin either. But then the LFS FOX is almost impossible to spin anyway (easiest car in LFS, and generates some of the closest racing because of it).
I haven't raced at all in real life except for a few times on a hobby kart, but I have a good story to tell:
I and 7 of my friends went karting a month ago. We had a 15 min pratice, 15 min qualifying and 20 min race. I can proudly say I was at least 1 sec quicker over the next fastest guy. I was spinning a lot in practice, but come race I had no spins and all laptimes were within a second, whilst others had eratic laptimes and spins. The fastest laptimes times of every racer were smth like this:
After the race there were discussions on why some where slower than others. One guy said that real life driving experience is the key (as in driving your car on the public road). That had me ROFL, as I was the only one without a drivers licence and almost no real driving experience, whilst almost all others were driving cars on a regular basis...
So I think it is pretty clear that there is at least some skills you learn from driving LFS that work in real life racing... And there is not a lot you learn from driving around town.
I agree with the rest though...
Either way it helps me in LFS and real life.