The online racing simulator
I agree that bikes in LFS would have to been done really, really well in order to make them worth including because of the extra "dimensions" riding has over sitting in a car. Regardless of technical detail there is a vast difference between sitting IN a box with four wheels and sitting ON a stick with two wheels. The reason that there are maybe a hundred cars (or more) on the road for every single motorcycle I see is because one's simply easier. How else would you explain the discrepancy in numbers (leaving weather out of the equation)? The main reason driving is simpler than riding is because you just get in a car and push stuff and go - you don't need to concern yourself with keeping the car upright. Now, riders of bikes and motorbikes will be used to having good balance since they were children, but believe it or not there are many people in the world who have never ridden anything with two wheels and have no idea how to keep a two-wheeled vehicle upright. They couldn't just get on a motorbike and ride it in the same way that people with driving skills can get into basically any car and drive it. If you were going to simulate a bike and make it so that anyone could ride it you'd need to implement some kind of automatic balance and it'd probably be just like driving a sim-car - sit down at the desk, push buttons, go. Like I said, experienced riders have good balance as second nature, but at some point we all had to learn how to balance a bike (and some of us still have the scars). To cut it short, if you had auto-balancing bikes in a game you'd remove half the challenge of actually riding them. Regardless of what specific technique you use to take corners you still need to be able to balance in a straight line

But far from how well the bike was simulated, I just don't think an LFS bike would attract enough interest to make it worth including. Of course I could be wrong

Anyway, alas, my riding days are over and I have to be content with pedal-power these days. But I've loads of fond memories of my crappy old dirt bike (shit-brown Suzi 185 AG - the Aussie farmer's favourite) and dropping my mate's Ninja ten years ago - kids, don't ride on acid but at least I didn't crash my brother's Duck 600 Monsterdark like dad did :eek: - god, that was a sweet ride (he recently restored a BSA Bantam - one throbbing cylinder and one throbbing horsepower! ). I would've posted in that other thread but there's no photo of the ol' Suze.
I use a gamecube controller as backup... and My dad has a BMW bike.. a 650GS and it goes quite fast.. but not like a Suzuki hayabusa or something..
Motocycles are impossible because to drive a bike is impossible without Equilibrioception. Balance a motorbike is impossible with any game controller. It need than automatic balance, and thats boring.
Wow, "equilibrioception" actually is a word! Bugger me

Quote from t3h instawebz :Equilibrioception or sense of balance is one of the physiological senses. It allows humans and animals to walk etc. without falling. Some animals are better in this than humans, for example allowing a cat to walk on a thin fence.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrioception

:up:
Quote from Forbin :I suspect tristan's talking out of his ass, perhaps even doing a bit of trolling. I don't think he's ever ridden a motorbike before either, at least judging by his lack of a post in the "Your Bike" thread and his lack of enthusiasm for one in LFS.

Tristan has ridden bikes, as for talking out of his ass, I hope you don't mean about countersteering.............
You'd need to mount a handlebar device (with a steering axis, throttle, clutch, brake) onto the top of a force feedback steering wheel, and have that demonstrate the lean of the bike. So at speed, if you turn the handlebars to the right, the wheel turns to the left and the bike leans to the left. OK so you're not sat on it, and maybe it wouldn't work that well, but it would be a laugh
Quote from danowat :Tristan has ridden bikes, as for talking out of his ass, I hope you don't mean about countersteering.............

I'm well aware of how countersteering works and don't understand why a handlebar controller would be unsuited for it. Even a wheel would work, as I stated before, it would just be a little awkward.
See LFSTweak, there already is experimental bike physics in LFS... But I'm not sure will they ever be officially used. As driving a bike isn't anything like driving a car. Steering changes depending on speed, steering left going slow goes left but fast it goes right, and then there's the leaning and balancing... You'd need a crazy controller to do that. IRL it all comes naturally, but in a sim you only have the screen to guide you.
There's ntill the rotation issue. I don't know of any bikes tith 900 degrees ef motion on the bars.
Quote from Bob Smith :There's ntill the rotation issue. I don't know of any bikes tith 900 degrees ef motion on the bars.

Been drinking again Bob?
It's his funny keyboard layout methinks.
-1 for motorbikes in lfs

that being said, a joystick isn't all that bad for a motorbike game. it's not perfect because you can't lean and countersteer at the same time, but at least you can shift your weight fore and aft.
I should really look at the screen when typing!

Only I've not remembered all the key locations yet.

/OT
Live for SPEED!...bikes arent speed Joking lol
Quote from harjun :Live for SPEED!...bikes arent speed Joking lol

Actually, "Speed" as in NOT an adjective of measurement of object travelling but relating to the other meaning, is more closer to home in bikes than cars :banana_ra
-1 for motorcycles...

They are not G25 compatible
Quote from dawesdust_12 :Of course, attach a 2X2 with some duct tape to the top of your G25, and away you go! :P

ROFLMAO, hahahahahahahahahahahaha... that was...realy F***ING funny for some reason, made me laugh like I was nuts. Maybe it's becasue that might actualy be a good idea? lol, like, lets say, set the wheel to 90 degrees of rotation and do this, but with a bar, and it would work like a charm, only problem would be the throttle, but that can be done with the pedals anyway.
Equilibrioception would only be a problem at low speed. Counter steering would become intuitive enough just as most people make do without seat of the pants efficiently enough. If you've ridden a bike, you know it becomes second nature enough that you are doing everything pretty much instinctively (i.e. you don't have to micromanage your inputs) and nowhere near your brain's maximum overhead. So the lack of seat of the pants (tire traction, overal G, and chassis feedback) and equilibrioception (only critical at low speed) would not be enough to make bikes unfeasible.

A gamepad with enough axes like the XBOX gamepad and a set pedals would be enough to control everything: that'd be 8 axes, or a few more if you've got pressure-sensitive buttons as axes.
Steering (1), Gas(1), Brakes (2), Clutch(1), Lean(2), which leaves one axis free.. It could be given to a something like a subtle body position control, e.g. how stiff or soft your legs are with the pegs, tucking in, etc.
All the other stuff can go on buttons: gear shifts, etc.

There will be things that can't be modeled at this point, such as your knee against the ground (that's a few axes), but everything else is already enough to make bikes at least as fun and realistic as any previous bike game (which is obviously not a negligible potential for fun/market as Tourist Trophy and the like have shown), and definitely at least as fun as cars in LFS.

Bikes'll be both fun anywhere on the learning curve (imagine a big supermotard chasing cars around something like South City) and difficult to master, but very rewarding.
Quote from chrislennon16 :But do you not think that it would bee better if they kept that one and introduced another one that was say... a mile long?

Nah, they should do a copy of elvington raceway (airfield, york, where hammond crashed...) 2 mile runway... would be cool if the tyre burst on your third run aswell =D...

Well ok iirc it's two strips running alongside one another, right handside one goes for only a quarter mile and stops and the other carrys on till 2 miles...
Quote from matze54564 :Motocycles are impossible because to drive a bike is impossible without Equilibrioception. Balance a motorbike is impossible with any game controller. It need than automatic balance, and thats boring.

in GTA SanAndreas i already could make stunts with a bike, and it was realistic and funny for me, so wheres the point? lol

all what matters is the illusion
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