what im basically looking to do here is to create a track that is just a strait line, all I really want to do is test out the top speed of cars. Is this possible do to at all????

in short, nope.

If you wanna test the top speed of a car, hit a barrier and put it on its roof, then floor it in top gear.

OR

Use bob smiths setup calculator.

Or use the Drag Strip or the oval.

nope but i this is one thing i really wish lfs had.

Quote from zeugnimod :

Or use the Drag Strip or the oval.

the problem with that is that eventually you run out of room and dont have enough of a straitaway to hit the top speed.....

well I guess there is nothing I can do about this.....

I can't think of a car that doesn't hit the top speed when you drive from one end of the drag strip to the other end.

Well depending on gearing, the UF probably doesn't even hit top speed on the drag strip. Would be nice to have a mock salt flats, but then again, I'd much rather have Spa or some uphill stage...

Quote from callmebob :

nope but i this is one thing i really wish lfs had.

I'm so glad lfs doesn't allow ppl to make their own tracks.
lol but i can understand how blackwood could get boring after a while

I fail to see how top speed is at all relevant to setting up a race car anyways?

I belive it has nothing with racing to do. It`s just exciting to see how fast the car actually can go. Like me, I would love to see the top speed of the BF1 on a long straight, why? I don`t know, but it`s allways fun to drive fast, and see how fast you actually can go with a car, because you can never reach it on the current track of LFS.

exactly, its just fun to go that fast..... a salt flat is a great idea... but I guess we are stuck just wishing for this one..... would be nice though.

I have to disagree. If you're driving alone on a flat area with no corners, it doesn't matter what speed you're going. The actual numbers are pretty much irrelevant - they don't apply to any track and there's no skill involved in simply flooring the throttle.

Quote from Dajmin :

I have to disagree. If you're driving alone on a flat area with no corners, it doesn't matter what speed you're going. The actual numbers are pretty much irrelevant - they don't apply to any track and there's no skill involved in simply flooring the throttle.

The point is not about skill, like said before, some people find it exciting to reach the maximum top speed for the cars. It doesn`t need to be any more complex than a hell-of-a-long straight.

The drag strip IS a "hell-of-a-long straight" and the oval basically, too.

I can understand how top speed in cars is exciting in real life. You might not be doing anything with the controls, but somehow you feel a bit out of control. It doesn't really matter what the car is either - doing 90mph in a car that can only just do 90 is as exciting as doing 200 in a car that can do 200. YOu are pushing what the car is capable of. The exception is German cars, which limit you to a top speed for no real reason other than zey kud, and so make their cars more boring in every way.

In a computer game you might as well watch the starfields screensaver for all the excitment it could possibly give you. You sit there. Not doing anything. No risk. No difficulty. And afterwards you have nothing useful from it either that a quick calculation couldn't have told you.

I think Scawen and Eric would spend their time better stapling mice to the ceiling (spidermouse, spid... oh) than making/including a 'top speed track' other than what we already have.

Quote from zeugnimod :

The drag strip IS a "hell-of-a-long straight" and the oval basically, too.

It isn`t very long imo.
Make it twice as long as the current one, and I`ll agree it`s long.

tristan, are you having a hard life or somehting?

I do agree to your 90-out-of-90-theory, but this is as good as it gets. I have kind of an inborn dislike for German cars, but your statement about them must come out of the English "we don't like Germans" corner. Just as only _some_ English hate Germans, only _some_ - actually very few - German cars have an artificially limited topspeed, typically 250 kph. And there ARE reasons for this. While being sold as kind of a gentlemen's agreement, it's probably more due to the fact that some production BMW doesn't handle THAT well at 300 kph, although its engine might pull it there (or push it, being RWD). Furthermore, in a country where there are still some motorways without speedlimits, it might not be too smart to sell 300kph-cars at affordable prices.

Now to the "it's boring / makes no sense to just speed down a straight in a sim". As true as this might have been for titles as "Test Drive I" and "Grand Prix Circuit", in real life it is NOT easy to drive in a straight line at 300 kph if the surface is anything less than perfect (why do the Germans limit their cars again??). So I guess if the devs modeled a salt flat, the experience of chasing it down would be just a bit more interesting than do the calculation.

Tristan, if you think an idea is stupid for reasons you don't really know, or just don't like it because of your personal taste, say it. It's always better to say "I don't like this kind of things" than "This is crap". But don't come up with spurious arguments, we're not THAT stupid.

there are american cars that have speed governors on them also. i'm not sure what the exact reason for them is, but i've heard its because the stock tires are only rated up to a certain speed (we're talking like 110 mph for example), so they don't want the cars going any faster or there could be a tire failure.

No, my life isn't that hard really. Certain challenges, but nothing impossible.

Nope, I have no problem with Germans. I have no problem acknowledging that from an engineering point of view Germanic cars are hard to beat. But they are, generally, lacking in soul and character, as though all interesting traits have been engineered out of them. If a car needs to be electronically limited because it's not safe above it, then the engine is either too powerful or the car too crap underneath. But in most cases they are fine - people routinely de-restrict them, proving they are restricted for no reason at all. It's not to limit power, it's not to improve safety (in which case they'd be limited to 150 rather than 250km/h). It's just an arbitrary limit. Not that most people go that fast anyway, but that's to avoid the principle of it!

Actually, fast in a straight line is quite easy. Okay, not quite as far as I suggested - you still have to do steering corrections, but not big ones - but it's certainly very very easy in comparison to doing anything else in a car (quiet at the back). But if a salt flat was modelled in a sim, it's just going quicker. No risk, no rush. Waste of everyone's time.

Reasons I don't really know? Huh? Against my personal taste - of course it is. This, you might have noticed, is an internet forum, where people's posts are their opinion. Not fact (although the opinion can be used to prove fact or make a point), just personal opinion. If my personal opinion wasn't what I wrote, I wouldn't have wrote it. Do you want me to put "this post is my personal opinion on the topic, not the opinion of someone I've never met"?

How about "I don't like it in sims because it's crap and a waste of time because the simution is not able to provide any of the thrills that a top speed run does in real life, as well as requiring, relatively, zero skill in both reality and simulation forms". Better?

^^ Another good point. 300kph rated tyres come at a premium. Costs and safety will always rank higher than performance.

Edit: I mean what UncleBenny said.

As for a top speed test track, it would be useful if we were designing and buildng cars and there was a detailed CFD modelling going on. Without that it really just is a number in the corner of the screen. Does LFS become more exciting if you use km/h instead of mph?

Quote from UncleBenny :

there are american cars that have speed governors on them also.

Just to clarify, not just American cars, as in American manufactured, but cars sold in the US. This includes Japanese cars such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, etc. I'm not sure about German cars though, VW, BMW, Mercedes.

Quote from tristancliffe :

(although the opinion can be used to prove fact or make a point)

You can never prove fact with opinion. You prove opinions with fact. Yes, opinion is used to make a point, that is true and is really the only reason to state an opinion. For example, your opinion of oval racing does not prove fact. But you opinion of oval racing does make a point, of which is a different point to many here than the point you are actually trying to make .

Quote from tristancliffe :

No, my life isn't that hard really. Certain challenges, but nothing impossible.

Nope, I have no problem with Germans. I have no problem acknowledging that from an engineering point of view Germanic cars are hard to beat. But they are, generally, lacking in soul and character, as though all interesting traits have been engineered out of them. If a car needs to be electronically limited because it's not safe above it, then the engine is either too powerful or the car too crap underneath. But in most cases they are fine - people routinely de-restrict them, proving they are restricted for no reason at all.

I mostly second that. But I don't think that some people de-restricting these cars are proof enough that they are safe enough above their restriction. never forget: today, cars almost have to be totally dumbo-proof.
I strongly believe that the average BMW-customer expects his car to be safe to drive (for the average road user in traffic, not the average race driver) in almost any circumstances. So the electronical limit kind of tells this customer "ok, that's enough, dumbo". Now if the customer decides to remove the restriction, it's his problem, not BMW's.

Quote :

How about "I don't like it in sims because it's crap and a waste of time because the simution is not able to provide any of the thrills that a top speed run does in real life, as well as requiring, relatively, zero skill in both reality and simulation forms". Better?

kind of prefer this version, yeah. maybe except for "it's crap" .

Quote from Bob Smith :

Does LFS become more exciting if you use km/h instead of mph?

yeah, definitely . sometimes I even use km/0.75h - now THAT feels fast.

Quote from flymike91 :

I'm so glad lfs doesn't allow ppl to make their own tracks.
lol but i can understand how blackwood could get boring after a while

ha, haha. but i sometimes wish lfs did have a more modable platform, even tho i understand that the current tracks are great, it would just be nice to see more sometimes.

Some of your posts remind me of what people must of thought in the 1400s, why would you want to explore over the ocean and find more land? What could you possibly do that you couldn't do here? There is plenty of land around here for people, It would only be a waste to have more. ie people saying what we have now is perfect and there could never be a reason to want anything else. Wanting to do something just for the hell of it is sometimes a good enough reason.

Actually driving on a salt flat is pretty hard, if you read any indepth re-counts of salt flat records, especially bike ones, you will see that it is quite difficult, certainly not anything like just pinning the throttle and switching your brain off.

The salt moves a lot, there are grooves from previous passes, the surface is quite slippy, and it's not uncommon to get wheelspin and two wheel slides at 160mph.

All that said, driving fast in a straight line on a straight flat piece of tarmac is a piece of piss.......