Quote from tristancliffe :

I actually have to rethink something I said earlier about steering feel - i.e. it going all light and mushy with lots of understeer. I was adament that this doesn't happen in real life, and indeed on road cars and karts it's not something I've ever been able to recreate. But driving the F3 car at Brands and Lydden I noticed it happening on the two hairpins. Too much lock (trying to cope with the understeer), and it DOES go all light and fluffy all of a sudden. This is something that LFS doesn't do (and I thought that was correct) but something that nK does (which I now know to be correct, but only so far in racing cars, not road cars).

seriously ? even up to the point that the steering wheel doesnt move by itself anymore if you let go off it ?

I like GPL, its cool. And i like Richard Burns Rally, i play it on xbox with some friends, my pc cant play it whatch my sistem

Quote from Shotglass :

seriously ? even up to the point that the steering wheel doesnt move by itself anymore if you let go off it ?

Dunno. Trying to make a racing car that I'm not totally in tune with, on a track I've never driven before go round a tight corner as fast as I can didn't seem like the right moment to let go of the steering wheel. I think it would have self-centered, but the self-aligning force (or rather the result of it on the steering column) became noticably less.

Quote from Bob Smith :

I find RBR a lot harder to drive than LFS, but I suspect that is also due to the massive difference in wheel time with both games.

It's because the road is narrower and ditches and trees are closer than in LFS.

GTR2 would be a good purchase if you enjoy GTL - the graphics/sound are a slight improvement, as is the feel of the cars. Plus the Nurburgring is drivable and doesn't look like its still 1998 in both GTR2/GTL which is a good bonus.

I purchased Race:wtcc a few days ago, its actually not bad for £23 but don't expect the same LFS level of feel/realism. Good fun in spite of this - good tracks, pretty good netcode, decent graphics and RWD's that can oversteer without the physics engine packing up and going home unlike past Simbin or ISI or whatever games. The damage engine has a definate impact on your race as well (aero, suspension, bodyparts and mechanical failures are all there). The demo is pretty rubbish though.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Dunno. Trying to make a racing car that I'm not totally in tune with, on a track I've never driven before go round a tight corner as fast as I can didn't seem like the right moment to let go of the steering wheel. I think it would have self-centered, but the self-aligning force (or rather the result of it on the steering column) became noticably less.

agreed it was sort of a stupid question
how much caster did you run on that day ?

4° iirc

maybe with low caster settings and a light car the negative aligning torque you get at high slip angles is enough to counterbalance the forces from caster

uh ... well ... probably not

It would be very interesting to know why exactly that loss of resistance occurs.

Aligning torque due to steering always tries to counteract the steering, aligning torque from caster tries to turn more.
But the way the aligning torque occurs depends on how much the tyre deforms, and in which way and is thus a question of tyre design. Milliken/Milliken Race Car Vehicle Dynamics has some nice tyre data where you can compare that. It's propably comparatively old data, but it already shows that race car tyres have an excessive drop in aligning torque at very early slip angles, while street tyres maintain a certain level of aligning torque.
Especially interesting is a aligning torque graph for a Dunlop champ car tyre. At 1000 lb vertical force the aligning torque drops from 160 lb-ft at 2° slip angle to ~20 lb-ft at 6°.
A Dunlop stock car tyre drops from 100 lb-ft at ~3.2° slip angle to 75 lb-ft at 6° slip angle. (At roughly 1000 lb vertical force. Approximated from 1100 lb and 800 lb graphs.)
Just compare how the aligning torque drops and you get the idea - the size of the drop-off is a tyre design question and lies in the flexibility of the tread and tyrewalls. The rest is just about calculating torque and it's complex, but not difficult. (But too big to post here.)

Vain

I was playing GTL again last night - just 5 mins. I just love the sound. Got in a 70s Chevvy - turned the subby and volume right up and set there revving the engine. That's almost more fun than driving!

But my question is this. Why do people hate sampled sound so much? Often on these forums people criticise games with sampled sound but I just don't see the drawbacks. So can some of you guys explain what you don't like about sampled sound compared with generated sound?

Quote from Vain :

You could do the GTR/GTR2/Race-demo-tour after you already checked GTL. Other content, same game.

I have the full version of GTL, and I'd say that the FFB is horrible. It feels remotely connected to what a car feels like, but on some cars it just completely fails, like the 911. Propably because of the weight distribution.
By the way I think that driving GTL is dangerous to your driving. In GTL it's a good strategy to pump the throttle to gain grip (the game thinks that there is weight transition and adds grip to the rear wheels).
It's a similar stupid thing as the diff in LFS. In LFS it's a good strategy to keep a few percent of throttle on to power-lock the diff, in real life you just decrease the possible lateral acceleration that way.

But the Nordschleife 1.0 of GTL is well done, which is why I have that game. I don't drive it in any powerful car though, because those are just too far off.

Vain

Im not sure if you know this one. Once a Guy from Virtual Racing created some great FF Settings for the Logitech Wheels. Strange thing is, later in GTR2 i have found the same Settings (except 1 or 2 small Deviations) as i was about to take over my Settings from GTL. You may have a look at this. If you do not own GTR2, the Demo should also include em.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

So can some of you guys explain what you don't like about sampled sound compared with generated sound?

It just doesn't seem to offer the feedback that realtime sound does Mind you, I'm very non-technical, so that's just my take. For me, it's a matter of feel.

Quote from Goop :

It just doesn't seem to offer the feedback that realtime sound does Mind you, I'm very non-technical, so that's just my take. For me, it's a matter of feel.

I don't get what you mean - feedback. Please explain

The sound currently gives you very precise feedback of the state the engine is in, regarding load, etc. Once you learn a car, you can tell the shiftpoint just by listening to the engine note.

With a sampled sound this is not the case, or very very hard to achieve. The generated sound also works 100% correct if you're not giving full throttle, which is often a problem with games using sampled sound engines. GTR2 for example sounds good on full throttle or on no throttle, but if you're in between it simply sucks, and at times you can even hear the sound sample switching back and forth from "no throttle" to "full throttle". Or CSR, for example, sounds absolutely pants if you don't mix it with the LFS sounds.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

So can some of you guys explain what you don't like about sampled sound compared with generated sound?

I like mixing both methods, currently I use CSR for the drivetrain sounds only. Samples I find are great for adding ambience and immersion. If LFS decided to properly simulated the drivetrain sounds I'd use that right away instead of the sampled implementation.

The reason I prefer the synthesized version of the engine sounds is that I can understand when the engine is being stressed. It just sounds plain different when going up a hill for example - which you don't get in any sample-based sound engine implementation to date (mind you, it could be done by DSPing the samples). Also, there's a distinct lack of "deja entendu" (already heard) since the looping points are not audible.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I don't get what you mean - feedback. Please explain

I don't really, either My guess is that LFS lets me know more accurately (or perhaps faster, or more intuitively) that a wheel is about to break traction (for example) than, for instance, an ISI sim.

That's pretty wishy-washy, sorry... perhaps someone more technically-minded can explain it better. Also, bear in mind I've done a lot more miles in LFS than I have with any 'sampled-sound' sim (tho I did get right into GTL, briefly), so it's possible I've just become accustomed to generated sounds

Quote from AndroidXP :

The sound currently gives you very precise feedback of the state the engine is in, regarding load, etc. Once you learn a car, you can tell the shiftpoint just by listening to the engine note.

With a sampled sound this is not the case, or very very hard to achieve. The generated sound also works 100% correct if you're not giving full throttle, which is often a problem with games using sampled sound engines. GTR2 for example sounds good on full throttle or on no throttle, but if you're in between it simply sucks, and at times you can even hear the sound sample switching back and forth from "no throttle" to "full throttle". Or CSR, for example, sounds absolutely pants if you don't mix it with the LFS sounds.

This is simple not true, im not sure what kind of Soundcard you have but it sounds like onboard or so Seriously LFS does it way better but sampling is not that bad as you think it is, its just outdated nothing more.

Thanks for all the replies guys. I now think I understand where you are all coming from. I will get on GTL tonight and try some mid-throttle driving and see if I can here the difference. TBH though I'm pretty sure you CAN hear when the engine is loaded or on part throttle in GTL. Or maybe it was my imagination filling in what was missing.

Will report back.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

TBH though I'm pretty sure you CAN hear when the engine is loaded or on part throttle in GTL.

Don't know about GTL, but all the other ISI-based demos I tried certainly don't do that. There's only a distinction in being on and off the throttle (you can also see this is the way the samples are split up in the game data directories) and there's no signal processing effects applied to them as they play, just crossfading and some simple volume modulation.

You can also figure this out if you try modding things in rFactor - there are no parameters that adjust the sample modulation for engine load, etc.

Actually, it works very much like CSR does.

Quote from 510N3D :

This is simple not true, im not sure what kind of Soundcard you have but it sounds like onboard or so Seriously LFS does it way better but sampling is not that bad as you think it is, its just outdated nothing more.

I might as well have confused it with GTR, as I haven't played the GTR2 demo all that much. My sound card is an Audigy 2 ZS, btw.

I agree, GTR may fit into your Statement, but in general the sampling Method works pretty good in other Games, especially in GTL & GTR2 But still its outdated i think or in other words, LFS has a better Concept.

"Audigy 2 ZS" good Choise, same here

Guys(esp. Tristan), how realistic do you find the tire sounds in nkp? Slicks in particular. I never hear them squeal, just a big swooOOSHhh when I spin. Is that correct at all?

Right now I'm going to put my friends Delta Audiophile 2496 soundcard in to hear the difference in sound quality with my onboard AC'97.

edit: Nope, can't hear any difference. I wonder what's all the fuss about with on-board audio being lousy...And LFSU30 still crackles on high revs.

Getting off topic, but I noticed a small but pleasing difference going from onboard nVidia to to the Audiophile 2496 card, but I also replaced my 3.5mm to phono lead with a good quality phono to phono lead, so that is bound to have increased the improvement. It's important to remember you'll need decent amp and speakers to pick out the differences though, I'm running about £1ks worth of kit here, if you're trying on some Logitech surround system then I'm not surpises you can't pick out the subtle differences.

Also the crackling is due to the sound generation clipping the signal, before it reaches the sound card.

Quote from kompa :

Guys(esp. Tristan), how realistic do you find the tire sounds in nkp? Slicks in particular. I never hear them squeal, just a big swooOOSHhh when I spin. Is that correct at all?

In the single seaters I've tried i can't say I can hear the tyres much, the engine + wind noises overpower any noises the tyres make, I assume when you spin on dry asphalt you'd hear the screetch. Locking up in the rain you can hear a bit of a sound, very subtle, locking up in the dry if it's only a tiny lockup it's not easy to hear, for fronts a tiny lockup is a lot easier to see than hear, and for rears you can feel it (and hear it but not through tyre sounds).

You definitely don't get the loud understeer squeel on proper slicks as you do in lfs, or the sliding noise from oversteer/drift - you're able to feel the understeer/oversteer a lot easier whereas in games you need the unrealistic sound to help you realise it.

I haven't tried nkp.