And here the other night he was bragging about women? I didn't think he meant cardboard ones.... I guess that's just efficient recycling for toilet paper rolls?
And the FZ5 sounds precisely like a flat six, at least fundamentally. Drive it properly like a real car with DAVEWS sound and anyone could identify it as a flat six within 3 seconds. LFSs engines all sound the best at low/med revs unfortunately. Which makes me think it's largely the mechanical clatter at high RPMs that distinguish RL sounds.
This is a compromise to allow high downforce cars like the BMW F1 to run. My guess is this is the reason Blackwood was smoothed out. If the tracks were bumpy, it would tear F1 cars apart.
In the USA, Race 07 is $20 (USA) at EBGames online. GTR2/GTLegends are offered together, also for $20 USA at the local stores. On the other hand, Need For Speed Carbon Collector's Edition was initially selling for $35 to $40 in the USA. Racing sims aren't popular in the USA so they're cheaper here.
Race 07 is supposed to be a "WTCC" game, so it doesn't have a lot of variety of cars. Open wheel cars are Formula 3000 and Formula BMW (relatively slow, not F1 cars). Obviously there are WTCC type cars plus, the Radical SR3+SR4, and Caterhams, which are quite good in the game, at 200, 260, and 320hp (in real life there is a 330 prototype), as it's captured the go-kart like driving style (they drift) fairly well.
The dashes in the cars are plain and once the helmet is removed (see below), the dashes in the open wheel cars are very plain. For the F3000, the animated shifting should have been skippped or used paddle shifters, since it's about 1/2 second behind the actual shift, which looks silly, but you can see the glow of the disk brakes from the cockpit view which makes up for some of this.
Bottom line for me, it was definately worth the $20. I made a video of a f3000, so those that don't have the game can get an idea of what it's like:
Are we talking about bumps in the track or are we talking about that annoying thing that rFactor does where the whole dash bucks up in the air when you hit a bump? I mean, it looks like the whole car is made up of separate parts and the steering rack is made of rubber. It is silly. Real cars don't look like that when they go over bumps.
Your eyes don't work like that either. If you have your eye on a spot in front of you, they will track that spot no matter what bangs and vibrations are happening. Your eyes do not work like a helmet cam.
Until you get a full motion setup, it will just look silly if you try and do things like rFactor does. I have to turn all that stuff off to drive rFactor. It is too distracting otherwise.
I don't think that the tracks in LFS are too smooth. Race tracks in general are smooth, at least ones that get any kind of regular maintenance. They are much, much smoother than real roads. I think South City has plenty of bumps in it they way it is. Aston has bumps. You can feel them and they will upset the car if you hit them wrong. It makes braking difficult in certain places.
Not so much bumps in tracks, but the way the cars react, they just seem too smooth, maybe it is the tracks, maybe its the smoothness of the cars, maybe its a bit of both, but LFS needs some more "rawness"
I disagree here... Kyoto, Westhil and Aston are pretty bumpy too... you just don't notice this when sitting in your chair... Try those tracks in the FD301 and you will be surprised how bumpy they are in certain areas...
Agree. Very concise statement which has also been rattling around in my head for some time- I'm sure much of it's to do with LFS being in alpha. But you're right- LFS is a bit too clinical/cool/mathematical in its general feeling. I guess that's why true simmers love it. The 'wow' factor in LFS is really only coming from the physics- and not really from anywhere else.
In a way, that's fine. When I play LFS, after awhile I start to feel like a very analytical and serious number crunching robot operator who's sole purpose is to find ways to shave 10ths off laps. When I play GTR2, I find I'm enjoying the more 'visceral' experience of racing against other cars- being surrounded by exploding and churning engines, the sense of being inside some mechanical thing.
But I'm never as focused as when I'm on LFS. I don't really take racing as seriously. I'm just going round a track, winning or losing, taking it all in. With LFS, you can come away exhausted from concentrating too much- and when that pays off, there's a much better feeling. So, I guess LFS can feel sanitised, but also, it's an intense experience as well.
I think that part of the 'problem' with bumps in LFS is that the physics engine puts some limitations on what contours the bumps can have.
Think about what happens when your car hits a curb with a hard edge - think SO1 pit in-road - it's a lottery whether you are launched into the stratosphere.
Basically, the bumps cannot have hard/sharp edges. They are really smooth sinusoidal undulations, so for them to be noticeable, they have to be quite large - like the ones exiting the SO1 chicane. If bumps could have harder edges, then there could be small bumps that would still be noticeable e.g. a 'lip' at the edge of some fresh tarmac...
I'm not sure how easy this would be for Scawen to implement - it really depends on how his tyre model works, the granularity of the track model, the frequency of the physics updates, (probably most importantly) the complexity of the filter used to smooth the impact of poly edges on the tyres.
It would be great to see improvements in this area.
Another thing that might make an difference to the reaction of the cars to inconsistencies in the track surface is chassis flex. This has been discussed a lot in the past, and Scawen seem to be very interested in including chassis flex modeling, so I think we will see it at some point.
This is true actually. I do really notice the sensation of being roughed around; air time feels far more like air time than other sims, and when I hit the ground I find myself cringing sometimes.
I think the cars react perfectly. If you really had your butt in the car instead of sitting on your stable apartment floor, you would then notice all the bumps.
Until the point where all of us can afford some kind of motion seat, you just won't feel it and will think the cars aren't moving enough.
The only fix for this is to exaggerate the bumps, like rFactor does, and make the sim more unrealistic.
Personally, I think that if you really use your eyes and really immerse yourself you will see the bumps, and you will almost feel them. BBT said it, he cringes waiting for the car to hit after getting air. That is because the reaction of the car is believable which makes you anticipate actual physical impact... which of course never comes because you are not physically there.
The more I think about it, I'm starting to see that you're totally right Eric. I think playing other things mentally corrupts the truth. It's about "recreating the sensation" vs recreating something close to reality, and without physical feedback it's blurry. I remember seeing/reading about using the Force Dyanmics, and man, LFS seemed violent just watching the FD move around. Bumps galore in places I had no idea about etc.
And with regard to the attitude of this board - at least for me personally, I have no issue with people playing other sims, and I don't think anyone here does really. The issue comes when a fan of other sims starts saying that the physics in LFS are off, which compared to anything on the market yet is pure & utter BS. Usually folks come here saying "how it should be" and that's when backs go up. Could certain things be better? Sure. (lots of things could...:hide But for vehicle dynamics nothing currently beats LFS.
i think it was tristan who posted about how the cars in lfs at least fly in a believable way after some of the more silly collision detection glitches about a year ago
sometime this year i saw a video about wreckers in gtr2 on youtube (im pretty sure its this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lna-uFBdxog at 0:26 ... 0:12 is fishy as well) which had an interesting bit where the car got air time and the cars flow stayed perfectly parallel with the ground for the entire flight
its quite embarassing to see how some sims handle rigid bodies aka the most basic thing in physics