I keep seeing sets that I download from inferno and that other people give me that have weird settings, so I thought I'd make a list of often overlooked things that good sets should have, in my opinion. I'm not a famous setup maker, but I get rave reviews from my sets that I give people. I'm also a PhD astrophysicist, so I have some physics knowledge.
1. Ride heights should be high enough to not bottom out on the straights. Cars with downforce will be pushed down on the fast sections and will actually bottom out before you hear the scraping sound. The only way to know your bottoming out is to notice a top speed decrease. Set your ride height high then lower it until you start to lose speed on the straights, then raise it back up to just above that.
2. Ride heights should usually be lower in the front than in the back. For now, using a lower ride height on the heavier end is a good way to get grip, but when LFS starts including ground-effect aero, we will need the front lower than the rear to get that downforce. So make your sets realistic now, and the physics patch that fixes that will reward you.
2. Front toe-out is highly overrated. Toe out in fast sweeping corners will scrub off speed, and since LFS has a parallel steer setting, always use that not quite realistic, but very effective). Use 100% parallel steer unless you are understeery in tight corners, in which case you decrease it until you have a good balance. In general, parallel wheels are a good compromise between fast corners and slow corners. Also front toe-out heats the inner tire edges and prevents you from running higher camber, which can hurt front grip.
3. Choose soft tires and high pressures over hard tires and low pressures. At most tracks, the softest slicks will last an entire fuel stint as long as they have high pressures. Once the tires start to wear they will cool down so don't worry about a bit of overheating. If you have massive overheating, like red everywhere, then switch to a harder compound. Brown patches in the F9 display are OK, but more than a few laps of red is bad.
4. The distance between gear ratios should decrease as you go to higher gears. For example, so if you set 6th and 5th to be 1.00 and 1.05, respectively, then 4th-1st should be 1.15, 1.35, 1.75, 2.55, respectively. Notice that the gears go up by 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8. The difference is being doubled each time. In a perfect world, you'd set the ratios with a computer and an engine dyno graph, but this gets you close. You can then tweak the ratios to avoid upshifting 20 ft before your braking zone and such.
5. Maximum downforce is usually not the fastest. Since most LFS tracks have long straights, you lose a lot of time in a high drag, high downforce configuration. Plus, more downforce causes more tire wear and heating and can sometimes keep you from running softer tires.
6. Spring rates should be roughly proportional to the percentage of weight on each wheel. If you want neutral handling over bumps and curbs, your suspension frequency needs to be similar on the front and back. This usually means that the end with more weight needs stiffer springs, since the frequency is proportional to the square root of the spring rate divided by the mass on the wheel. This is modified a bit by the suspension geometry and the lever arm effect, but for most cars this works fine. So a GTR car with a 40/60 front/rear distribution should start with 120 kN/m springs on the rear and 80 kN/m springs on the front as a baseline. Then tweak to remedy handling problems.
7. Front and rear downforce should have similar levels, with slightly more on the rear. If you car is neutrally balanced at low speeds, then you should keep it that way at high speeds. This means having the downforce on each end stay equal. I often see too much rear wing, which makes cars massively understeery at high speeds. Also equal downforce levels keep the ride height where you want it. At little excess rear downforce is good for stability, since cars are inherently unstable at high speeds, but don't overdo it. For most cars, the rear wing slider should never be equal to or further right than the front wing slider.
Let the discussion begin ...
1. Ride heights should be high enough to not bottom out on the straights. Cars with downforce will be pushed down on the fast sections and will actually bottom out before you hear the scraping sound. The only way to know your bottoming out is to notice a top speed decrease. Set your ride height high then lower it until you start to lose speed on the straights, then raise it back up to just above that.
2. Ride heights should usually be lower in the front than in the back. For now, using a lower ride height on the heavier end is a good way to get grip, but when LFS starts including ground-effect aero, we will need the front lower than the rear to get that downforce. So make your sets realistic now, and the physics patch that fixes that will reward you.
2. Front toe-out is highly overrated. Toe out in fast sweeping corners will scrub off speed, and since LFS has a parallel steer setting, always use that not quite realistic, but very effective). Use 100% parallel steer unless you are understeery in tight corners, in which case you decrease it until you have a good balance. In general, parallel wheels are a good compromise between fast corners and slow corners. Also front toe-out heats the inner tire edges and prevents you from running higher camber, which can hurt front grip.
3. Choose soft tires and high pressures over hard tires and low pressures. At most tracks, the softest slicks will last an entire fuel stint as long as they have high pressures. Once the tires start to wear they will cool down so don't worry about a bit of overheating. If you have massive overheating, like red everywhere, then switch to a harder compound. Brown patches in the F9 display are OK, but more than a few laps of red is bad.
4. The distance between gear ratios should decrease as you go to higher gears. For example, so if you set 6th and 5th to be 1.00 and 1.05, respectively, then 4th-1st should be 1.15, 1.35, 1.75, 2.55, respectively. Notice that the gears go up by 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8. The difference is being doubled each time. In a perfect world, you'd set the ratios with a computer and an engine dyno graph, but this gets you close. You can then tweak the ratios to avoid upshifting 20 ft before your braking zone and such.
5. Maximum downforce is usually not the fastest. Since most LFS tracks have long straights, you lose a lot of time in a high drag, high downforce configuration. Plus, more downforce causes more tire wear and heating and can sometimes keep you from running softer tires.
6. Spring rates should be roughly proportional to the percentage of weight on each wheel. If you want neutral handling over bumps and curbs, your suspension frequency needs to be similar on the front and back. This usually means that the end with more weight needs stiffer springs, since the frequency is proportional to the square root of the spring rate divided by the mass on the wheel. This is modified a bit by the suspension geometry and the lever arm effect, but for most cars this works fine. So a GTR car with a 40/60 front/rear distribution should start with 120 kN/m springs on the rear and 80 kN/m springs on the front as a baseline. Then tweak to remedy handling problems.
7. Front and rear downforce should have similar levels, with slightly more on the rear. If you car is neutrally balanced at low speeds, then you should keep it that way at high speeds. This means having the downforce on each end stay equal. I often see too much rear wing, which makes cars massively understeery at high speeds. Also equal downforce levels keep the ride height where you want it. At little excess rear downforce is good for stability, since cars are inherently unstable at high speeds, but don't overdo it. For most cars, the rear wing slider should never be equal to or further right than the front wing slider.
Let the discussion begin ...
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