Quote from JJ72 :

I didn't confuse that, I realize higher damping means slower but not less weight transfer.

Your analysis of the situation is correct, however I think in real application you can't always use full braking power and not always brake in a straight line, depends on the flow of the track and so on. So whether "braking while turning in" means a situation where you are also inducing pitch, or simply inducing roll with your rear already lifted, would give very different outcome.

Seeing in the analyser that rear rebound damping has no effect with entry under braking, I guess it does only see it as the situation when the springs are fully loaded.

but then, why a corner entry with braking/loaded front tires, is more understeery then a corner entry without braking?

I'm not sure that the descriptions in the program correctly describe the corner phases actually, the phase in question isnt really braking while turning it, it's coming off the brakes while turning in.

So effectively the car is rolling outwards, and pitching backwards. If you consider this motion diagramatically, you can see that the only rear damper that is significantly active is the outside rear compression damping.

Basically, under full braking, both rear dampers will be maximally extended, and under full cornering the outside rear will be fully compressed and the inside rear will again be fully extended. So you can see that if you perform that transition smoothly around the outside of the traction circle, your inside rear basically stays where it is, and your inside rear goes full extension to full compression. Likewise you can also see that the outside front basically stays compressed and the inside front travels the full distance in rebound.

Hence for this transition, the rear compression damping and front rebound have the dominant effect on their respective ends of the car.

Wow the report proves the work needed for the analyzer is enormous :Eyecrazy: I will better savour this.
The comparison with other analysis softwares tells us that this analyzer is the only one which is free and so versatile, it's a true pearl

All the informations are well presented in this report, the routine diagrams are good idea.

Very precious document

Colcob:
So should I rename "with braking" and "with throttle" to "while releasing brakes" and "while applying throttle" respectively?
Any other comments on the program? You've been quite quiet on this until recently. Is it anything like you envisaged our ill-fated web-based project to be?

Bogey:
Yeah, this is no quick and easy project, it's taken lots of time. There was supposed to be a lot more routine diagrams (DSDs) in the final report, but I ran out of time at the end. Now I just hope I get a first for my project. If anybody has any questions, or wants to see the missing DSDs, it doesn't take too long to draw them up. Also you'll note the code/equations from LFS are blurred out, that is of course intentional as it is to be kept confidential.

Thanks and grats for this outstanding tool

I was able to do PB´s with every combo i tried out ! Even the LX6 becomes driveable

But i also have to report a problem: I was hotlapping and checking the set simultaneously with Project3. As far as i remember i saved a set directly into the settings folder which lfs was using too. A "read write error" occured in Project3 and it closed itself. After that all my *.set files in LFS\data\settings were gone. ALL ! Since then i only work with copies in a special working folder...

But - this may have a positive effect: Im reworking now all sets from scratch or from teaminferno and this made my mind clean and my times better

Btw: i posted a little HowTo setup a car using your tool in the Redline forum: http://www.team-redline.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=86.0
Feel free to correct and use it in any way if you like it.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Colcob:
So should I rename "with braking" and "with throttle" to "while releasing brakes" and "while applying throttle" respectively?
Any other comments on the program? You've been quite quiet on this until recently. Is it anything like you envisaged our ill-fated web-based project to be?

Yeah, 'while decreasing braking' and 'while increasing throttle' would be minimal but correct. While applying throttle doesnt really cover it because you would be applying throttle even when doing a neutral pitch turn-in. Also technically you could have a phase 2 entry even if you were increasing throttle and turning in, for example the second part of a chicane, which would have the same damping requirements as a trail brake turn-in.

I've not had time to have much more than a cursory look so far, but it does seem quite a lot like what we had planned Particularly the pane layout with setup parameters on the top and analysis on the bottom, with freedom to look at any analysis pane while changing any setup parameter. Like it.

If I was forced to offer some constructive criticism, I'd say you've obviously done a whole heap of work on the dry equations and can spit out tons of numbers, but the next phase of development should perhaps include some workflow analysis of how people could use it to actually create setups. Maybe work on some wizards or more comparative analysis.

I'd always imagined as well have the ability to lock certain performance parameters and have the actual settings auto-change to maintain them. For example, say you know you want optimum camber for 50m radius corners, based on the track you are setting up, if you change the spring stiffness you'll change the roll and your camber setting wont be right any more, so it would be cool if you could 'lock' a part of the setup (say aero balance, or basic spring balance, or critical damping rates) and have it auto change to maintain the performance parameter you have set.

Quote from spikee :

But i also have to report a problem: I was hotlapping and checking the set simultaneously with Project3. As far as i remember i saved a set directly into the settings folder which lfs was using too. A "read write error" occured in Project3 and it closed itself. After that all my *.set files in LFS\data\settings were gone. ALL ! Since then i only work with copies in a special working folder...

Ouch, I was hoping that report before was a one off. I did fix a bug related to that. I'm really confuzzled as to how all the sets get deleted, since my program contains no code to delete a set. That is really worrying. Did it delete all files in the folder (e.g. inc. .col files), or just all .set files?

I'll have to give it a test and see if I can suss out what's going on (after I back up my sets, of course ).

Otherwise, I'm glad you're finding it useful.


@Colcob - thanks for the feedback, that's food for thought.

Something that would be really useful is to combine RAF analysis to test balance in a certain corner. Often we end up with setups which are incredible around most corners but one or two corners, because of their camber, bumps etc. are messy. It would be really helpful to take the data from an RAF where we've done a decent job around that corner despite the difficulties due to setup and analyse the understeer/oversteer due to damping etc. from that RAF while limiting the time for just that corner.

The more complicated option would be to optimise the setup using a generic algorithm for that corner, from the track mesh, following a line as close as possible to that in a specific RAF. That, in itself is going to probably take a month to research, plan and code though. Still, great work so far.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Did it delete all files in the folder (e.g. inc. .col files), or just all .set files?

Only the *.set files were gone...

Quote from axus :

Something that would be really useful is to combine RAF analysis to test balance in a certain corner. Often we end up with setups which are incredible around most corners but one or two corners, because of their camber, bumps etc. are messy. It would be really helpful to take the data from an RAF where we've done a decent job around that corner despite the difficulties due to setup and analyse the understeer/oversteer due to damping etc. from that RAF while limiting the time for just that corner.

This is exactly what we had planned, way back when Bob, Dylan and I were working on an intergrated telemetry/setup analysis tool. It never got very far sadly, real life got very in the way, it's great that Bob carried on with it though, even without the telemetry stuff.

Quote from colcob :

... way back when Bob, Dylan and I were working .....

WOW...Celebrity status!!...Maybe the answer you were looking for was blowing in the wind??


Seriously though, great work Bob, I tried reading through your report, and got lost just after page 1...way over my head!
Very useful app, it now helps me to understand settings a lot easier.

Thanks. I did supect the report would only be of real interest to the die hard car techie types.

I'm hoping improvements I make over the coming months will continue to make it all the more useful.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Thanks. I did supect the report would only be of real interest to the die hard car techie types.

Actually I thinks that the report is very useful. Altough nothing really new, but somehow is the first time that I see all that stuff together in the same document.

I'm still hoping for a .pdf release (with better pictures)

If you can tell me a program that will convert a .doc to a .pdf, without being some shitty unconfigurable printer driver (like Flashpaper2), then I'll get the PDF sorted.

Quote from Bob Smith :

If you can tell me a program that will convert a .doc to a .pdf, without being some shitty unconfigurable printer driver (like Flashpaper2), then I'll get the PDF sorted.

well... altough not a "little" program, OpenOffice can handle .doc files and exports .pdf with some configurability http://user-faq.openoffice.org ... lcompatibilitypdf/58.html

Quote from Bob Smith :

If you can tell me a program that will convert a .doc to a .pdf, without being some shitty unconfigurable printer driver (like Flashpaper2), then I'll get the PDF sorted.

Micro$haft Office 2007 will convert docs to pdf...but you need a plug in for it.

It's standard there on my mac, so if you'd like a pdf, just host the doc and ill convert it.

I've been meaning to switch back to OpenOffice, if the .doc files it saved didn't require so much formatting to get them to look right under MS Word then I'd have kept it. Was getting too annoying for Uni though, that's out the way pretty shortly. Also Excel does own Calc.

Anyway I'll have a fiddle and let you know.

Quote from Bob Smith :

If you can tell me a program that will convert a .doc to a .pdf, without being some shitty unconfigurable printer driver (like Flashpaper2), then I'll get the PDF sorted.

Open Source PDF Creator: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

<rant>
If I may suggest as a tip for everyone, OpenOffice exports natively for PDF, LaTeX produces excellent PDFs (or PostScripts or DVIs), Mac OS X easily translates anything to a PDF file, and there are numerous free PDF printers around.

What generally does not help to achieve this is Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office. Acrobat is overwhelmingly big and heavy (not to mention expensive) to be used just a PDF printer or filter (which is not too different from a PDF printer). Office is even more expensive and does not export to PDFs natively.
So a better solution is either to use another office suite or a pdf printer which solves the same problem for any other program that can print.

Sorry for the rant. Any flames will be ignored because this is off topic here.
</rant>

Cheers, PJ.

Great work Bob, works very well to dial in the balance you want an a specific track

Hey Bob,

Loving your prog... I have some problems...

Number 1, is the gui. It won't resize. My screen size is 1024x768 with larger fonts, and alot is off screen, and I can't get it to fill the screen. Can you fix that please? Be really useful to be able to see all of it... Yes I could change my res, but then I wouldn't be able to read it lol.

One suggestion. Could you add something, that would allow you to adjust when the front unloading tyre locks under braking turning into a corner. ie say on Aston club, on last corner; when I brake, and turn in under brakes, the front right becomes unloaded, and locks... its a problem with roll stiffness, but I've not been able to dial it out. If you can come up with some way to allow us to control that, it'd be awesome.

Other than that, I love it.... just wish I could see it all. I think thats a priority.. someone else mentioned the same thing earlier... doesn't seem to have been fixed... (I just downloaded latest vers btw from page 1, problem is still there).

Venus

I dont think you can dial out the unloading of the right front because the only things that change download on a tire in a corner are COG, track width and inertia. You can however change the speed of how fast the loads change on your car with the dampers.

for bob:
Could you make a textbox where i can enter the values, because me and the sliderbars don't get along very well

Venus - I'll have a play and see if I can sort something out. It'll be ugly but at least you should be able to see everything.

mikey - it's already on my list but I'll see if I can get that added for the next version.

There are a few key features I want to add before the first official release, which will hopefully be in time for patch X. I'm going to try and PDF the report tonight. And here it is (PDF format).


Also, I'll need to settle on a name (Project3 is the working name). Anyone have any ideas?

Quote from Bob Smith :

. And here it is (PDF format).

Thanks!!!

Quote from Bob Smith :

Venus - I'll have a play and see if I can sort something out. It'll be ugly but at least you should be able to see everything.

Also, I'll need to settle on a name (Project3 is the working name). Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks Bob. As for the dialing out the single wheel brake lockup, all you need is something that shows when the tyre under brakes locks due to unloading. Given the complexity of the modelling in the progs analysis, I'm sure you could come up with a way. Though I admit, it doesn't sound easy. lol

As for name... lol well...

Lemons Setup Analyser - obvious pun for ppl who know u in here,
Setup Analyser - obvious
BSSA - Bob Smiths Setup Analyser.
Lemon - your a lemon if you don't use it. lol
BBSA - Bobs Brilliant Setup Analyser. lol bit much i think lol tho it fits
The Setup Project
Project Setup
Bobland lol
LFS Setup - obvious but fits though implies LFS did it - not good.
Project Lemon

Personally, I like Lemon. if you don't like that, then Project Setup i spose, tho its a bit unimaginative.

Suggestion: way off probably... but it'd be awesome, if you could somehow model a tracks setup. ie player makes a setup, and within the analyser, it can model it on that track, on specific sections. Longest straight (gear ratios), most difficult corner (balance) (god knows how you'd define that in code) etc .. love to see it, but possibly beyond your scope.

Venus

Well some names I had come up with:

LFS Setup Analyser - the name Colcob used for his spreadsheet analyser
Setup Developer - I think that name implies functionality above what my program provides
Vehicle Technical Analyser - the name I used for my Uni project, which is pretty undescriptive

Ideally I don't want LFS in the name as the program works just fine with real cars and I'd like to expand to cover as many other sims as possible. At the moment lots of things are hard coded to suit LFS, these will all become configurable over time.