It would be really nice to just have a huge long piece of tarmac, or a really long ring to test your top speeds on. Some cars cant hit top speed on the oval, and it would be nice to be able to figure them out.
I don't know, to me, the top speed on a particular track is important, not the top speed of the car, which I will never achieve while racing (except a few occasions, like drafting a FZ50 with the LX6 on Kyoto Nat )...
Correct, they don't. You need to know gearing, drag (in various forms), torque, gradient, tyre slip <snip> to find the top speed, and even then real life factors will probably make it slighly innaccurate anyway...
Bob Smith's GRC will tell you this anyway. Links in his sig, scroll up from this post. Though, admittedly, it won't tell you how long it takes to achieve a certain speed, only what the absolute max is.
Which makes me think... Bob, a nice feature for the GRC would be a simulated speed vs. time graph, so you can get a better idea what the "practical" top speed is. Naturally it won't perfectly match reality, what with imperfect shifting and everything, but accurate within a few seconds/10 Km/h would be good enough for me. Knowing the simulated top speed is of limited use if, in game, it would take 3 minutes to get there
I think a 10mile stretch of road with an adjustable finish line would be pretty cool, most of you may think it's pretty pointless but with 20 cars all trying to draft each other at 300km and people flipping crashing into the wall out of control would make a pretty entertaining race.
How about a big old bumpy airfield? There are loads of airfields in the UK that are used for trackday type events, with cones marking out a circuit.
Because a lot of them were former WW2 Bomber bases, the runways are enormous. Whether they'd be enough for an absolute top speed test, I'm not sure, but it'd be something different and given the trackday nature of many of the cars in LFS, it would fit.
Err, yes it does, although it isn't displayed on it's own as it's a rather pointless number. But if you scroll through the acceleration data table you can see times next to speeds.
Erm, have you never used the drop down box for list types and select "speed vs. time". ?
I'd love to see an Airstrip based "autocross" track, just a big airport no set course, so we could make our own layouts on it (saves devs work, creates more things to do) Its certainly realistic, closed airport near me is opening up to be an autocross/race track. Would certainly give you what you want, nice long straightaway (with bumps and crowned though) to test out your speed and it gives us creative junkies a chance to somewhat make tracks for lfs
The idea is not stupid... it could be fun to know the top speed of each cars, but I agree with Chaos... it's sooo useless to know the top speed of a car; most racetracks don't even allow to go that fast.
No, its not stupid, but just a big plain asphault strip is not very practical for the devs to spend their time on, now this airstrip idea I think thats got some real good vibe to it...
Hmm, I think its their game and they spend their time on what they is important to make this game the best sim it can possibly be. Gah i sound like a politician, but tis true Ive been playing LFS since Early on in demo days, blocks for cars and bumblebees for sounds, with every new update ive seen i cant say i have ever been "dissapointed" with what they decide to focus on, because I know they will just get to the other stuff at a later date
Personally I would think they are more oriented on getting everything in the game working as they wish before they tackle the smaller ideas such as this. But its not bad to throw it out there so they know how we feel
I like the idea of the very long straight road. I would like a "track" where I can just floor it and go and go and go.... I am really curios what these cars can do.
Long, but not long enough for top speed in any reasonably fast vehicle. Thus all the European top speed efforts flying the gear to this side of the pond (or Africa, or some other places) to test. Thrust SSC comes to mind, although thats an extreme case.