I agree with that, an Atom isn't what we need. A Radical/DP1 type of thing will be much more like it for a small sports prototype type of car.
@Vykos/kev - I think that given the fact this car is 4WD it will be very stable but also far more adjustable on the throttle than any of the current race cars and with its relative lack of downforce will suffer less from dirty air than the other race cars. Not to mention it's so physically small. This could be a blast round Fern Bay and with wings it could be the ultimate hillclimb car. At high speeds the short wheel base could make it scarily unstable but I reckon the 4WD will let it get away with it by pulling the front end out of trouble.
That's way too pessimistic. In Racer, some people manage to create a good-looking car in less than a month -- and they have to model it from blueprints and guess most of the technical details, whereas the DP1 began its life as a CAD drawing.
@KeiichiRX7: Thanks for the initiative. This should be blast to drive, and a great addition to LFS.
@jayhawk; It should take much less time to create the car. Most of the time comes from fine-tuning the physics of it. The actual modelling/mapping/importing to the game should take no more than a couple weeks for an average modeller working part time. And because LFS doesnt use LODs for car bodies, it should be easier than in other games, too. But like I said, physics tweaking varies. Sometimes you hit the physics right on the head first time, sometimes it could take a couple months of nothing but small tweaks to get what you want. That's Scawen's job, as I understand it.
Remember a CAD model is only the ultimate blueprint, it will never be any good as a direct import to a game model. I think if they wanted to the Devs could add a car in a week the thing is working fast tends to result in a crap result, look at the typical rF mod. As said above it's normally one or two little bugs that can totally cripple this kind of thing and bug tweaking takes longer than the main work.
EDIT - to the doubters over whether this type of car has any raceable potential. All I can say is that a 389bhp 4WD LX6 on road tires (734bhp/ton) is perfectly manageable and a completely different beast to the conventional RWD LX, it also proved to me that can do 4WD cars that are lovely to drive rather than the typical heavy understeery road cars. IMO this version is probably more raceable than the LX6 given the nature of the beast not being that fast in corners (though the DP1 will be producing some downforce it will still be more LX than FOX like) but being blindingly fast at getting out of them meaning that taking a good line to get the power do first will be critical. Oh yeah and even at 170mph it isn't unstable.
as a off topic bit, the MOSLER EUROPE factory is in my town, st. ives, and i could possibly pop down there and see what they would have to say about inclusion of one of their cars(soon to have pics of one outside their offices that i took today)
Give it a go, the worst they can say is 'NO". The Raptor might be a good car to have, and when youve got permission from the manufacturer, start a thread like this one to raise community support
I'd give the Devs an e-mail instead, much better for PR if they can choose to reveal it when they want to and it puts less pressure on them. I never saw threads about the Sauber
The problem is now a thread like this is here there is an (unreasonable) assumption that the Devs want the DP1 in their sim and that it will come at some time.
We've just decided to take a pro-active approach, rather than like the "cars we wanna see..." thread where people sit about and moan about wanting the same cars over and over again. I contacted both the manufacturer and the devs, put them in contact with each other, and we started a thread to show that such a car is wanted by the community (not bemoaned like the 50 different requests for a nissan silvia in all its various states of trim)
Crazy timing... I have been following the dp1 since the beginning and just last week emailed Dennis about having the dp1 in LFS. I heard back from him on Wednesday, saying he was interested. The devs also expressed an interest this when I was in touch with them a few weeks ago, so it looks like this may happen once they are at the right stage in development and ready to put more new vehicles in.
Dennis uses Solidworks to do just about all his CAD Stuff I dont know he can model the bodywork in it. I used Solidworks while I was working in an Industrial Design firm, and it's quite easy to use on small simpler objects (hairdryers and remote controls mostly) but I couldn't wrap my head around the process to make a more complex model like a prototype styled car.
On another note; the DP1 has a diff-mounted braking system. For those of you who have watched the spin video, trailbraking was the reason for the snap spin as I understand it. Diff-mounted brake setups do not accept braking and turning at the same time very well. I wonder how this will be implemented in LFS I seem to recall reading something about Dennis' intentions to attempt to rectify this (sort of). Anyone remember this? He had some sort of ingenious setup in mind for the customer version of the car, Im sure.
Well it still brakes each drive shaft individually AFAIK so it's probably more an issue of the diff settings themselves rather than the location of the brakes.
Another thing hopefully if we get this car we can see realistic diff options ie. almost none and certainly not locked diffs.
If it hadnt been 5 years since i had touched a CAD program i might have been able to, but it doesnt matter, i cant even get my concept sketches to come out right.
I remember in my 3dmodelling class, we figured that "if you could model a teapot, you could model anything". I think that mostly stemps from the fact that a teapot has always been the benchmark model for 3d engines though (always the exact same mesh too!)
from my understanding lfs does use the same phyics for every car
and since there are good cad models of it getting all the parameters for the physics calculation correct shouldnt be too hard (assuming that the guy who built it are willing to share their data)
the hardest part would be aero ... but maybe theyve already done some extensive cfd sim for it which would also help to improve the currently rather simple aero physics of lfs
yes they have, and yes they are willing to provide all support neccisary.
Dennis seemed pretty excited about the idea of his car in a sim. I'd feel really bad for him if someone made an rFactor mod for it and butchered it horribly
Maybe I'm missing something but assuming the driveshaft has infinite torsional strength then it shouldn't matter where the braking force is applied? I guess it must be something to do with the driveshaft twisting but as far as I can see that would only result in the wheel end taking longer to slow down than where the braking force is applied.
not the way i said it. I've been following the progress of the DP1 since pre-construction stage. I'm a huge fan of DP and his creation. It would be a stellar addition to lfs.
Sounds good though 
This should be blast to drive, and a great addition to LFS.
But like I said, physics tweaking varies. Sometimes you hit the physics right on the head first time, sometimes it could take a couple months of nothing but small tweaks to get what you want. That's Scawen's job, as I understand it.
I seem to recall reading something about Dennis' intentions to attempt to rectify this (sort of). Anyone remember this? He had some sort of ingenious setup in mind for the customer version of the car, Im sure.