I have been playing RACE07 for a little since it was released, and one of the major things I can see is the way RACE displays the "roughness" of racing, the cars moves, the tracks have bumps and lumps and the whole things just feels a lot more raw and visceral.

Going back to LFS (as much as I love it) just feels very clinical and sanitised, which in turn makes it feel a bit "gamey".

Am I alone in this?, anyone else think that LFS could do with a bit of "roughening up"?

LFS will always be my primary sim, but there are many area's that could do with improving

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think a lot of it has to do with sounds.

It's not the sounds, it's just the way the car moves, the roughness and rawness of it all, it's very hard to describe, but there is certainly something missing.

Some technical reasons for the sterility: Sound engine produces very few ambient noises and sound effects, small and few textures track textures, dynamic alpha layers are missing (like dirt and scratches on models).

Yeah it could be a bit bumpier here and there. That's also why I'm playing the 1979 F1 mod on R-Factor now and then, it literally bumps your eyes out of the head.

Don't be fooled by the cockpit vibrations.... if that is what you are talking about here....

All recent ISI based games have those vibrations, even if the track isn't bumpy. Because externally, their cars look just as rigid as LFS cars when it comes to bumps & suspension play.

Then again, LFS tracks ARE too smooth mostly, and about the only tracks I like are South City and Fern Bay specifically because they are bumpy in certain areas. All the other tracks feel far too smooth. And in reality, even what looks like a smooth track, many drivers discuss the bumpiness of the track. There just needs to be better tracks for tight racing with touring cars and such. Much of the desire to have bumpier tracks is due to the very large and wide boring S2 tracks made for the bigger cars. We really need better tracks for slower racing cars.

It is probably a canned effect in ISI games, but it's a nice effect, and certainly adds to the imperssion.

Dan, if you struggle with immersion in LFS, drive in cockpit view (custom if you need), with real dials, analogue speedo (makes it harder to see so you don't look at it in corners) and the HUD disabled. If you want to check your split times in a race, have a shift+F button on the wheel to hide/show the HUD.

And, hasn't Scawen mentioned somewhere that he would like to add track bumpiness to LFS, at some point?

Already do all that mate

I haven't played RACE 07, but in last year's RACE I found a lot of those effects quite distracting. In particular I remember there being a very exaggerated bouncing effect in some places (going through Curva Grande at Monza for example) that just seems weird - more like a constant oscillation than driving on a bumpy surface.

I agree that LFS feels too clean though. The cars don't "feel" mechanical enough somehow.

I believe that we will have those kind of bumpy tracks,
more realistic sounds etc. when devs think its time to.
I agree Danowat, yes LFS has a little sanitized environment compared to other sims.

I've spent a fair bit of time on rFactor recently (mainly on the W196 and GP79 v2.0 mods) and I do feel that LFS lacks some immersion when I return to it.

I think it's almost all to do with the sounds. Driving in rFactor you hear the creaks and squeaks of the chassis and suspension as you hit bumps, whereas in LFS you hear the engine and the tyres and...well...that's it!

The FF in rF seems irreparably broken when it comes to bumps. Even with RealFeel enabled my wheel shakes around all over the place in response to bumps

However, I'm confident that this will eventually be fixed in LFS

Well...being a idiot I bought Race 07 and the whole game just feels awful, plain awful. I don't actually know what is it, but I guess it's the fact that FFB doesn't tell what the front wheels are doing, and it shakes a lot.

Few details also bother me a lot, like the fact that many cars seem to miss shift lights, and the helmet view I can't mod because Steam is evil.

On the plus side, it wasn't that expensive because the US dollar is weak.

Lets no get into the whole, this is better than that sim..........

FYI, you can mod the helmet view with the steam version, just drop the dds file in your race07 folder.

Quote from danowat :

Lets no get into the whole, this is better than that sim..........

FYI, you can mod the helmet view with the steam version, just drop the dds file in your race07 folder.

Well, you sort of went into it saying LFS doesn't do something. I'm not here to make war though, but I don't feel Race 07 shakes are that special.

Thanks for the tip though, couldn't find any information about it..and was too afraid to ask from RSC. :P

I am not saying RACE is better, now way jose, I am just saying that LFS could do with "its waters muddying" if you get my drift, it's too clinical, too sanitized and that leads to it being a bit gamey.

I am going to try and find some video clips, and try and do a comparison with RL and LFS to try and highlight what I am getting at.

The cleanliness needs to be lost by means of the same subsumption architecture the rest of LFS depends on. The effects and realisms are a product of the interaction between lots of lower level simulations.

The Racing line on the track at the corners comes from the tyres slipping the most there, eventually, scratches on the cars, oil stains on the track, creaks in the suspension will all be a product of the simulation, not a design feature.

eg.

engine failure due to engine model detecting over-heated engine and excessive mechanical forces from flat shifting, oil on the track due to track condition simulation in localised area, stain on the track due to track condition simulator rendering, fox spinning backwards into wall and bursting into flames as a result of traction loss when grip calculated from track condition simulation and tyre simulation interacting, collision detection physics crumple the crap out of the fox, which catches fire, because the petrol tank detect more crumpling that it could reasonably sustain while still holding liquid.

Sum all of the above, and you get s3, but you don't have to program "spinning out" you program aspects of grip, momentum etc. and spinning out on oil just happens.

The same goes for the bumpy track. When we have rain, the bumps will determine where the rain settles on the track, which bits are slippier than others, driving on the track in middle-wet conditions will dry it steadily etc. However, they can't code the bumps into the track without knowing how they're going to code the track conditions (wet road, oily road etc) simulation, because they will have to interact so heavily with it.

I see what you are saying, but you are missing my point, I am talking about the driving "feel"

put your monitor in the washing machine and sit on the tumble drier, fire them both up and lfs too, it'll feel just like the karusel.

I find the opposite. LFS feels so much nicer to drive. Playing rFactor I often find the car impossible to control because of all the bumping about seemingly because of the car going over the sharp edges of the track polys, rather than actual 'bumps'. A good example of this is the carousel at Nordschleife. It should be a nice, smooth constant radius turn, but a lot of the cars bounce right out of the banked part.

I've been having a go at making rFactor tracks and the 'bumps' you can add are simply a surface that makes the car osscilate up and down at a certain wavelength and amplitude, cetainly not random bumping as you'd get on a real track.

It might be constant radius, but it certainly is not smooth, even with a car with cheap immitation fruit pastels for suspension its very bumpy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbv0pshFW5Q

It's so bumpy, I went on it once on the bike, then every other lap, I decided to go round the smooth(er) top bit

I know what you mean too about the 'smoothness'. I find NKP excels in the 'feel' and some of it is the FF, some is also the sound feedback, but after a ahlf hour driving NKP hard, LFS does feel arcady-smooth.

I know this will freak people out, so I'll probably have to pad the post out with lots of appeasing justifications, but.....

I had a quick go at TOCA with a DFP the other weekend (TVR on Oulton Park). Now bearing in mind that I have only ever once before driven with a force feedback wheel, the over-riding impression was that (here's the appeasing bit...) the car's handling came from never-never land (ok, that's over with, no "but LFS is a sim" type responses please....), but the feel from the track gave a fairly convincing impression of weight reacting with a surface.

My only experience of driving LFS with force feedback was a little disappointing (FXO GTR on Fern Bay, and XRG on South City). I could feel the tyres resistance as they turned against the road, but there was very little sense that the road was anything more than a unitary, conceptual surface. Even on South City, there were a few, individual, moments that signposted themselves as 'a bump', but still the road surface seemed to have nothing in the way of a granular, moment-by-moment, identity.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

....the carousel at Nordschleife. It should be a nice, smooth constant radius turn...

Let me add to the bewilderment at that statement... Actually, in RL, its a scary, white knuckle moment, that you survive with an equal measure of luck and speed-sapping fear...

Would be interesting to find out how much influence the FF settings have on this perception of handling.