I have seen this since S2 came out with the damage model, and I am surprised nobody documented anything about it. Sometimes when a driver will hit a wall or something, the car appears to be damaged on your end, but the actual driver has no damage at all. There will be no visible damage to the car, or even with the damage bars seen at the bottom of the screen. However when you look at their car, it might act damaged as if it had broken suspension, wild camber, etc. When this happens, the performance and the way the car acts looks like it is severely damaged, yet it still drives around the track just fine.

Here I have an example of my teammate Jonesy tapping the wall on South City, and there is no visible damage on the car or even the damage bars, yet it looks like he broke his right front linkage completely. The forces view even proves this. The replay at lap 4 or so should show his car bouncing around. I asked Jonesy and he never even had any damage at all, and this is what I've usually seen when the damage is never "True", and just visual. Probably something to do with lag, but I have seen this a lot. BF1 is a perfect example, where someone might tap a wall and not get any damage, but all of a sudden their car will start bouncing around up and down wildly, but still be driving at a fast pace. Looks really bad. And like when people have their camber slammed to the side, they could be driving and the tire would look like it is dragging, causing a big skidmark wherever the car drives, and tons of smokes coming out the back.

I am using U20, but I have seen this in all versions of S2, it's not uncommon.

Strange. Maybe there is some kind of optimization that only sends damage packets if actual damage happened? Your LFS then, due to some inaccuracies of his estimated racing line, calculated an impact with some damage while he got absolutely NO damage - so the wrongly calc'd deformation was never overwritten by a "light damage" packet? If you can reproduce that, instruct your friend to drive into a wall lightly just to receive some damage. Maybe the new packet fixes your clients wrong calculation then?

But actually I know nothing about LFS netcode, so that's all wild speculation and guessing.

It's not just me that has it (if that is what you are saying), I know others that notice this too. It's nothing new. But I figured a replay would help solve this

EDIT: I just realized the replay doesn't show anything at all. But the impact that caused the "fake broken suspension" was at the beginning of lap 4. The screenshot I took should show you the evidence at least.

Yes, I know. I didn't mean "your" LFS specifically, but actually just "everyone else" who didn't create the damage firsthand.

I have seen this too. But in my replays (U) the damage fixes itself after a while...?

Maybe I'll post a replay as well.

Quote from Hyperactive :

I have seen this too. But in my replays (U) the damage fixes itself after a while...?

Maybe that happens, by any chance, as soon as you receive a new damage packet from that client?

Maybe my theory isn't that far off, after all.

Quote from Hyperactive :

I have seen this too. But in my replays (U) the damage fixes itself after a while...?

Maybe I'll post a replay as well.

Yeah the damage does appear to fix itself sometimes, but there are times that it just doesn't update the car's damage after a certain impact or something, and people just see some crazy damaged car going around the track as if nothing happened to it :zombie:

Here's a replay:

Look at me at T1. In the race I just hit the wall, checked my damage and continued the race. Noticed that strange damage episode when I was looking at the replay later

I ran into a similar bug today.
Damaged my car twice on a 35lap SO Long race. Both times i could see significant damage with F10 and also expected the car to drive worse, but it still drove like new.
Then when i watched the replay the car scraped over the ground and bounced off bumps, as it probably should have done while i was driving. (forcing me to pit and changing the whole race)

It is almost as if LFS "forgets" to update the damage in rare occasions and people end up with an invincible car.

I would attach the replay, but its over 2Mb.

It's quite funny when sometimes driving precisely perpendicular into a wall the front of the car looks damaged, the damage bars show nothing and the steering is totally, utterly and completely shot

Illusion, I think what u are talking about happens when your cars body gets damaged ,but not the suspension itself. This can result in the body(mostly the front wing) dragging over the ground and consequently making it impossible to steer.
If it's actually your suspension that gets damaged, making your wheels point in the strangest directions..but without visible damage in F10. Then it could be related to this bug and u should post the replay here next time it happens.

There is currently no damage bar for longitudinal bending. i.e. I've knocked my front wheels a good foot towards the rear of the car, but is otherwise fine, and F10 shows no damage.

@NotAnIllusion: Caster and Inclination damage don't show up in the F10 screen, but they do happen quite easily. In fact it's quite easy to get negative caster on the front wheels, which effectively inverts the force feedback, causing the wheel to want to go to full lock in either direction rather than center.