Quote from Woz :

You will also find that almost everyone here prefers RL driving to LFS because of the extra feedback you get. In a sim you have to learn all the queues through the senses the sim does stimulate and then translate those to full in the blanks so you understand what the car is doing.

This means you have a lag in your reactions as the translation takes time and you also receive the queues later than you would get them IRL because IRL the key sense is your body.

You still have to translate and understand the cues from a real car though...?? If anything I'd have thought I had quicker reactions in LFS because the responses are much more 'pure', I'm not getting all manner of feedback from the car that I don't need at that point in time, I can just feel the wheels... I can also set the ff and steering lock to suitable levels such that I can get the wheel to the right spot more quickly.

Quote from Woz :

• The muscle memory of actions I need to take to correct problems when on the edge.
  

This saved my life I swear. I was driving down a narrow road with hedges close to the road either side. This means all the corners are blind. I was travelling quickly - too quickly in fact and breaking the golden rule of 'always make sure you can stop in the distance you can see'.

I came through this corner, only a slight right hander, at about 60 mph, nowhere near the limit in normal circumstances. As the corner opened up to my horror I saw two lorries blocking the entire road. They were too wide and were just squeezing past each other.

I had to hit the brakes pretty hard before I was out of the bend. The inevitable happened and the back started to step out. Not good when you still need to knock off speed.

Without even thinking and in a split second I had lifted off the brakes slightly and put a quick jab of opposite lock in then reapplied more brake. I pulled up to the lorries nice and smooth and caught the back perfectly without the horrible snatching you sometimes get.

Then I realised that the only reason I did this was because of the muscle memory that I have built up through playing LFS.

LFS MAY WELL HAVE SAVED MY LIFE! THANKYOU SCAVIER i OWE YOU ONE.

Quote from Blowtus :

You still have to translate and understand the cues from a real car though...?? If anything I'd have thought I had quicker reactions in LFS because the responses are much more 'pure', I'm not getting all manner of feedback from the car that I don't need at that point in time, I can just feel the wheels... I can also set the ff and steering lock to suitable levels such that I can get the wheel to the right spot more quickly.

I'd think you'd have quicker reactions in real life, the only difference I suppose is you don't have the same physical effort in LFS as you would in a real car. You can feel what the car is doing far easier because you obviously have access to more senses to predict what the car is doing and act quicker.

Oversteer is one which I find a lot easier to feel in real life, although I do feel it very easily in LFS but it's just not the same. Saying that playing other games lateley really made me realise how much better LFS oversteer FFB is. Half the games out there wont even make the steering wheel counter-steer its self like it should.

The problem with any game is after the race I never feel knackered like I would in real life and left thinking wow that was a tough battle, I'm just left thinking that was a pretty good race `shift + r` onto the next one.

Keiran

You just can't say that when driving a real car you get decent or good feedback from ...uhm... various parts of yout body. There are major differences between very similar cars, how they react and how they tell it to you. Basically it can be said that different cars have different handling characteristic. Even similar cars, take, example 3 fwd sedans with around 100hp power, have significant and easily noticable differences how they handle.

This can be noticed in LFS as well, but after decent amount of practise you usually start learning the car. And we even don't have 2 almost similar cars with so slight differences. And we can set up the cars the way we want or end up with. After all it's all about setups. Real cars are always set up little differently, and as a result you get snappy oversteering in moose avoidance test or pushy behaviour under hard cornering. Sometimes the car just turns on its roof and you're in big trouble

I think, that prehaps rather than comparing LFS to real life, which is next to impossible because real life is real life and LFS resides in a computer, prehaps what you need to look at is the Principle involved.

If the principles are the same for LFS as they are in RL then what else can LFS do. For me, a car in LFS handles the way I would expect but also doesn't handle in the way I expect. Slighty counter-intuituve but lets see if I can quantify that statement.

I have been driving for nearly 13 years. In that time I have driven anything from big v8's RWD's (Not owned) to my general FWD small engine run about. I've owned a Semi high, semi long RWD transit (Which is great fun btw. I really reccomemd it to anyone. Great eduactor in car control that was) a BMW 5 series (RWD again.) to a triumph Spitfire to a Lotus Elise and up to articulated lorries. Each vehicle give you something to learn, but the general principle will always be the same, you have a finite amount of grip and a finite amount of power which sometimes is at the rear, sometimes at the front and sometimes split both front and back. You learn how to cope with doiffering situations in different ways, my way was generally the crashing way. Which is seriously scary and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

What LFS allows me to do is drive like I know I can drive like but without the recourse of serious injury, death or an expensive insurance claim. LFS allows me to do that because it operates along the same principles that real life does and for me it's that that makes it realistic.

I know that a car taken beyond the limit will turn around and nbite you on the arse and leave your kids with a healthy Life insurance payout. Thats what real life does. In fact, I don't want LFS to be realistic. because real is scary, really scary. And expensive.

So LFS . . keep the principle just don't get anymore realistic . . .Thankyou.

One of the issues between games and real life cars is knowing which way to turn the wheels when the rear end steps out. Induce understeer by turning inwards, or counter steer by turning outwards? In general, induced understeer is used when slowing, since you can't brake and counter steer at the same time (well you can, but you end up facing backwards quickly), and counter-steering is used when accelerating. In very high speed turn where you're flat out on a non-downforce car, keeping the wheels a bit inwards can help stabilize the car, and prevent oversteer. On really quick reacting cars, you can't just counter-steer normally, you have to pulse the wheel outwards then return it quickly, then repeat if needed, since once the car corrects, it does it so quickly that it overcorrects if you're still counter-steering when it starts to corrrect. Since there's not enough time (for a human) to react, you just have to pulse outwards and back and see what happens. I don't know if there are cars in LFS where this is required.

Here are some sample videos:

Extreme example of induced understeer with LFS S1. It's just a demonstration, and not intended to be the fastest way around a turn. It does work in real life in a panic situation where you have to brake heavy while the car is oversteering to avoid an accident (better to have all 4 tires skidding, then a car spinning without any braking inputs).

lx6.wmv

Subtle example of induced understeer and counter steering methods with GPL. Tires are kept inwards when slowing and on the high speed right hand turn near the end of the lap. A lot of counter steering used just after the left 90 degree hairpin. Its' a bit easier to see what's going on in the bottom half / chase view of this video and note the direction that the front tires are pointed. The steering inputs are pretty quick here.

gplrngs.wmv

How not to drive smoothly at Norschleife (real life), "Sliding Stefan Rosers" driving "yellow bird", a 911 RUF Porsche.

nrdprsch1.wmv

Tiff of 5th gear driving the 2006 Z06 Corvette, once he gets to the race track part of the video, he does some serious power sliding at speeds up to 100+mph. You can see him sawing on the wheel quite a bit, but then again, Tiff likes to slide everything, including a real Ferrari F1 race car.

z065g.wmv

Can't download the compressor . . . . any other sources?

Quote from keiran :

although most of that was learnt from reading a guide I printed off the net

Would you mind sending me the link of said guide over PM?

LFS IS realistic! I have been driving racesims all my life, but nothing comes close to LFS. I have learnt more by playing than driving irl. I bought an Rx-7 last year, just so i could do some autoX and some other events. The car is very easy to handle and with R-compound tires the car feels VERY VERY much like driving LFS. Manoeuvers like this is nothing because it reacts exactly like LFS: http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b89/Minigotte/Sladd.jpg And i dont get paniced when the car starts to slide when cornering at 150km/h +. I just do as i do in LFS, and vice versa...

I have also tried a Force Dynamic (http://www.force-dynamics.com/video.html) with high force settings. That beats EVERYTHING! The game was GTR, i know, but it feelt realy nice! If it had been LFS it would have been exactly like driving irl, im not kidding. You must feel the outside forces if you want it close to 100% realistic, so dont blame the game for not feeling the forces enought. Buy a Force Dynamic and you will never complian again

:twocents:

i ave driven a single seater nd yes it does ave its comparisons this game would be da closest thing real life i feel even tho it is an cartoon ur racing !!but da cars in da game do handle really realistic nd half da characteristics of its kind even tho i dnt no wat an F1 car handles like

I have been doing track events for about 5 years now in a high horsepower turbocharged miata. I would say I am typically in the top 20% at most track days I attend.

Given tht simulators will only take you so far, LFS is the most realistic simulator I have experienced other than GPL. I just got a license for S2 and am amazed at the realism of this sim. I still like GPL because the low traction high horsepower cars really teach you alot about being smooth but I prefer the LFS overall experience more.

I have never had the mindset for autocross, but after playing with it in this game, I think I will do it more.

Gary

Well...replying to the question I can say Yes.
LFS taught me to drift (although it took a lot of money (wheel, 3 pedals, act labs gearstick)) but in the end I found myself heal-toeing my BMW 328 e36 on an abandoned airstrip knowing what to do at what time. So I guess the Devs have done a pretty good job with the physics