thanks, Orion 
very nice artwork by the way. i share most of your views on web design.
very nice artwork by the way. i share most of your views on web design.
Hey Dennis, great project you have going there. I would love to drive a copy in LFS... or real life 
Is the "First Spin" video done at Pat's Acres in Canby?
Is the "First Spin" video done at Pat's Acres in Canby?
From the site: 09/28/06 Another big day - the first real performance test. Yesterday I finalized arrangements to use a local kart track, Pat's Acres, for a couple hours before they open for regular business.
so yea i guess :P. (had a big read of it yesterday remeber that being mentioned :P)
so yea i guess :P. (had a big read of it yesterday remeber that being mentioned :P)
Thanks, I guess I should learn to read...
That is just 45 minutes north of where I live. I have been meaning to get up there and rent a kart for a few hours.
Up here, there are not a lot of tracks to go to. There is Portland International Raceway (PIR) where a couple of his videos are shot, Pacific Raceway up near Seattle (Kent) (3.5 hour drive north) and Spokane Raceway in eastern Washington (~4.5 hour drive north east). Only PIR offers professional racing and the city is trying to shut it down. Not cool.
That is just 45 minutes north of where I live. I have been meaning to get up there and rent a kart for a few hours.
Up here, there are not a lot of tracks to go to. There is Portland International Raceway (PIR) where a couple of his videos are shot, Pacific Raceway up near Seattle (Kent) (3.5 hour drive north) and Spokane Raceway in eastern Washington (~4.5 hour drive north east). Only PIR offers professional racing and the city is trying to shut it down. Not cool.
You also have Bremerton Motorsports Park in WA. Both BMP and PR are ramping up to undergo complete renovations if they get approval and funding. PIR in Portland is the only one with reasnable lapping day costs.
The PIR updates depend on city funds. It looks like the repaving will get done this year though. The city manager has been withholding funds for the last few years.
There is also a new club track going in on the east side of Mt. Hood.
http://www.oregonraceway.com/index_files/Page812.htm
You can see from the picture that there is not much built yet, but it looks to be fun eventually (looking at the track map). It won't be able to support professional events though.
Bremerton doesn't have a road course does it? It looks like it just has the oval and drag racing. They are talking about a road course, but it hasn't happened yet, has it?
Pacific Raceways does have an aggressive development plan. They hope to attract some top class racing there eventually, which would be good. The NW only got 2 top races per year, ALMS and CHAMP car, and now ALMS is gone. More racing would be better.
There is also a new club track going in on the east side of Mt. Hood.
http://www.oregonraceway.com/index_files/Page812.htm
You can see from the picture that there is not much built yet, but it looks to be fun eventually (looking at the track map). It won't be able to support professional events though.
Bremerton doesn't have a road course does it? It looks like it just has the oval and drag racing. They are talking about a road course, but it hasn't happened yet, has it?
Pacific Raceways does have an aggressive development plan. They hope to attract some top class racing there eventually, which would be good. The NW only got 2 top races per year, ALMS and CHAMP car, and now ALMS is gone. More racing would be better.
Just picked up on this thread, VERY interesting.
If this car doesn't make it into LFS then it would be a very big shame, looks like a great piece of kit
If this car doesn't make it into LFS then it would be a very big shame, looks like a great piece of kit
Yeah, me too... haven't read the entire thread yet, but notice that the car designer is posting, so just wanted to say: Hello! Been watching the build on your site for a while now and loved being able to follow it from initial thoughts, through the CAD stages, and on to the tribulations of making it real. Thanks for all of that. As entertaining as it is informative.
Yes I watched the videos, didn't do a lot for me really, take it to an airstrip and cane the crap outta it see what it can do top speed and how stable it is when at full strap. Does it get the wobbles at high speed etc.
sticking to 60 mph an 2 or three gears on a really short track doesn't give it a chance to really impress. Maybe the designer doesn't want to test high speed yet he probably has so many changes in store it may not be worth his time
why I referred to it as a kart was If you remove the bodywork, it looks more kart (to the uninitiated) than a general open wheel type chassis suxh as formula ford etc?
Some announcement of the DEVs about the possibility of DP1 in LFS? 
Uhm... that track is Portland International Raceway; pretty highspeed. ALMS and CART race(d) there, just to give you an impression of the kind of track it is if you didn't watch the videos. That was not a cart track in the reply that you quoted, and hardly only 60mph.
Of course it looks more like a cart than an open wheeler; it is not an open wheeler. It is a mini prototype.
It would be great if the next incompatible patch had a new track or car but imho the announcement of such can wait until the release of the next patch is in sight. No need to hurry with it, yet
Scawen has got to find appeal in a real counterpart to compare LFS' physics against..
If you watch the videos you'll see the driver is really very poor. Even at 70% of the car he's not very smooth, moves his hands on the wheel etc. And watch the spin (I think it's the same driver) - he's so late correcting it (and fails) that I cannot imagine he has even any vague driving talent. That is why the videos are so unimpressive and unrepresentative of the cars abilities.
One of DP's videos is the first track outing, which did in fact take place at a karting track. Let me put it this way though, this was the first real outing for a completely independantly designed and produced one-off car. It would be ridiculous to go do high speed tests initially, as:
A) He'd like to make sure the wheels (& other things) don't fall off
B) Make sure the car behaves at lower speeds, engine, brakes etc
C) Most importantly, Top Speed was NEVER the goal of this car. It should be obvious from looking at it, let alone reading the description of the car.
Its a trackday car, where its all about cornering, accelerating, and braking, which this car is designed to do better than just about anything. This is not a car designed to entertain by going really fast in a straight line...
Big thumbs down on the "take it to an airfield and see what itl do" mentallity.
How on earth you came to the conclusion it was like a kart is beyond me. It's a small 4WD composite tub sports racer, what correlation you could find with a ladder chassis and solid rear axle and over stressed lawn mower engine is beyond me
Well the test at the kart track was low speed obviously, but he hit 122mph at PIR on his first track day there. He said he was still being easy on the engine too, so wasn't giving it full revs.
Sorry, I have to totally disagree. Yeah, he's not driving like a nutter (pushing to and beyond limits), but its a totally unproven brand new car. That spin is on the first day the car ever turned a wheel, on a test session mainly designed to make sure the wheels don't fall off, and the bolts are all tight (in fact, a bolt isn't tight and thus all was not going as expected)
Go to his site and look at his vids of his Mini S, and then go to Past, and look at his Scion XB with 100 HP. He routinely keeps up and Passes GT3 Porsches, Corvettes, and more, all while having Hundreds of HP less. The Westfield Megabusa he put together also has a lot of quality footage. Look at his ducatti collection, where on one occasion a former moto gp champ compliments him on his riding technique (he's an amatuer bike rider).
If you bothered to look(you didn't) Dennis also breaks down the spin you spoke of, frame by frame. By the time the tires locked, to the time the car was gone was such a short duration, there was no way to catch it. It was a flaw in the design of the braking on the prototype. Ask him about it and he will go into great detail about it. It shows very poorly on you to see a spin without understanding any of the unique vehicle dynamics the DP1 has and then simply assuming he does not have "any vague driving talent".
Edit: Linkage. http://dpcars.net/dp1test/da.htm
Dennis is following the thread and willingly participating in the attempt to get his car in LFS. The video wasn't made to entertain or showcase the cars abilities, but to give a progress report of the development of his machine. Again, if you had taken the time to read the site, or the thread, you would have known this.
Lastly, driving full-fendered street-tired cars is far different from light-weight slick-shod open wheelers. He, along with everone else, has no experience driving a car like his. So really, before you knock it completely take a look at what is really going on please.
Yep, he was not pushing the car hard at all. ALMS LMP1 prototypes will hit upwards of 160-170mph down the front straight and will be touching up against 170+ down the back "straight" (its actually a long curve). LMP1's are 925Kg (2,039.3 lbs) minimum, with somewhere around 800hp making about 2.55lbs/hp. Dennis' car won't have as much grip because of the tire sizes and compounds and no downforce, but if you assume those things to be equal, his car should perform in the same basic range, at least as far as power goes with 2.25lbs/hp.
(JJ Lehto lost the rear wing off his Audi R8 on the back straight in 2005, he hit the boom camera that was shooting the entry to turn 9.)
The DP1 also is not setup with wings, so his downforce is limited. You want to prove the car, and you take it a step at a time.
The spin on the kart track looked more like too much rear brake bias than anything to me.
(JJ Lehto lost the rear wing off his Audi R8 on the back straight in 2005, he hit the boom camera that was shooting the entry to turn 9.)
The DP1 also is not setup with wings, so his downforce is limited. You want to prove the car, and you take it a step at a time.
The spin on the kart track looked more like too much rear brake bias than anything to me.
With the production V8 in it. While his P/W is nice now, its not quite that yet, 180HP Suzuki motor. He wasn't pushing it very hard though.
Brake bias, and the way the brake is applied through the diff make trail braking near impossible on the prototype, something he has already adressed in plans for production versions to follow.
***Anxiously waiting for Tristancliffe response to previous message…
the purpose for the prototype testing is to learn - there are many novel solutions in the car so its dynamics are an unknown. first few tests have shown that some things work and others don't, i'm sure there are many more discoveries in store. at the time of first PIR test the car had about 50 miles on it and the engine about 80 miles. during the testinig i have to strike a balance between pushing hard enough to properly exercise various functions but not so hard that i break things. considering that there is only one prototype in existence and how much i have invested in it, i will continue to do the testing methodically, at my own pace. yes, pushing harder is part of the program but i will choose when and where. dragstrip testing won't happen until i have a pre-production car built and sorted so probably late summer at the earliest.
in some ways, if LFS physics are accurate enough, having the car in the sim might prove a useful development tool as well. or at least, with real-life testing proceeding in parallel, we could see how well things correlate. maybe the devs will include PIR as one of the tracks?
speaking of correlation, did anyone see the top gear bit on clarkson driving an nsx at laguna seca, first on playstation and then in real life? i can't fnd the video on utube now because it's been removed due to terms of use violation. but basically he's something like 10-15 seconds slower in real life than in the game
and finally, to give some ida of what the prototype with 180hp should be eventually capable of (when fully sorted and on slicks), you can watch this video http://www.dpcars.net/larry.mpg of my friend larry at PIR in his DSR. the car weighs same as the dp1 and is powered by a 180hp motorcycle engine. larry has run 1:09 at PIR with that car (the factory R10 qualified at around 1:05). the lap in the video is 1:13 and the video doesn't do it justice but it's the only one i have. that kind of pace i'll definitely need to work up to, won't be happening this year. biggest challenge is carrying speed into corners - it's a major commitment to drive into a corner knowing you'll need 2g to make it through and that you'll be hitting the wall at 80+mph if you don't make it.
in some ways, if LFS physics are accurate enough, having the car in the sim might prove a useful development tool as well. or at least, with real-life testing proceeding in parallel, we could see how well things correlate. maybe the devs will include PIR as one of the tracks?
speaking of correlation, did anyone see the top gear bit on clarkson driving an nsx at laguna seca, first on playstation and then in real life? i can't fnd the video on utube now because it's been removed due to terms of use violation. but basically he's something like 10-15 seconds slower in real life than in the game
and finally, to give some ida of what the prototype with 180hp should be eventually capable of (when fully sorted and on slicks), you can watch this video http://www.dpcars.net/larry.mpg of my friend larry at PIR in his DSR. the car weighs same as the dp1 and is powered by a 180hp motorcycle engine. larry has run 1:09 at PIR with that car (the factory R10 qualified at around 1:05). the lap in the video is 1:13 and the video doesn't do it justice but it's the only one i have. that kind of pace i'll definitely need to work up to, won't be happening this year. biggest challenge is carrying speed into corners - it's a major commitment to drive into a corner knowing you'll need 2g to make it through and that you'll be hitting the wall at 80+mph if you don't make it.
Talking about GT4 around here will get you choked. Just kidding, but most everyone here knows that GT4 is Far from true simulation of vehicles, but we understand the game vs real-life mentality, ability, and lack of reset button!
Unfortunately we don't have any real life tracks (yet) to be able to see vehicle time comparisons, but judging the real F1 car we have vs the other modeled Forumla specs, the times seem to follow a consistant pattern.
Knowing that GT4 is not what we LFS fans consider a simulator, I still agree with the point. Driving a sim is not the same as real life, no matter how good the sim is. IRL you have the real possibility of major financial damage, major bodily harm and possibly death to deal with. It changes everything.
I have some experience with test flights and you do things methodically. In the best cases, you test one thing at a time and try not to complicate things to get the best possible analysis and to minimize risk.
It sounds like Dennis is going about it the right way.
I would love to see Portland in LFS, but that is not going to happen any time soon. I have often thought that if LFS had real tracks and the ability to create your car model, that it could be actively used by club racers all over the world for testing, track knowledge and setup analysis.
I have some experience with test flights and you do things methodically. In the best cases, you test one thing at a time and try not to complicate things to get the best possible analysis and to minimize risk.
It sounds like Dennis is going about it the right way.
I would love to see Portland in LFS, but that is not going to happen any time soon. I have often thought that if LFS had real tracks and the ability to create your car model, that it could be actively used by club racers all over the world for testing, track knowledge and setup analysis.
Let's not get into asking for announcements or comments from the devs, it's not the time and place for it.
If they have something to say about it I'm sure they will let us know.
i was also thinking the same thing. would make a lot of sense as a third license level maybe? hope the devs give some thought to it, i'm guessing there's a large and growing market for something like that (if done right).
google earth should make creating accurate real tracks feasible. just have to know the town the track is near and you can find an accurate picture. here is one of the pats acres kart track, for example...
DP1 in LFS possibility [warning : large images]
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