The online racing simulator
Tire heat model and dirt model.
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(49 posts, started )
Quote from Dethred :
PS: Whats up with tires starting off at 60*C ? Where on this earth is the temp ~60*C?

Preheated tires? As they use in formula 1.
The problem I see in the dirt model is as follows. I was running the LX6 at FE Green practicing on road super tires. I would loose a corner often and run fully through the grass/sand and pick up a lot of dirt, brown bars almost full. This could be on the first lap or after 10 laps. Then some folks joined the server and started running the GTR cars so I pitted and grabbed my FZR to run a few laps. Again just as in the LX6, I ran into the grass (fully through grass, not just clipping it with 2 tires, both cars). I would not pick up near as much dirt on the R2's hot or cold as I did with the road supers on the LX6. It also took a lot less to rid of the dirt in the GTR car than it did with the road car. I think it needs to be reversed there, the slicks need to pick up more dirt than the road tires. I was not driving either car hard, temps were cool (a light green).

As for the temperature complaints, it is simple, you are driving too hard. Tire pressures need to be adjusted to get the tires running cooler also. I read here complaints about cooking the road super tires. I can't even get them heated up. In the LX6, it takes me about 10 laps to get them warmed up at FE Green. I'm not the greatest in the LX6 or at FE Green, I'm just learning that track, but I spin, light the tires up on accelleration, lock up on braking and I still can't get the tires heated up. As for the GTR cars, I do over heat the tires on the FZR alot as I try to drive it too hard. And that is why, because I'm driving too hard.
Quote from ghengis :Preheated tires? As they use in formula 1.

Indeed, the tires are preheated. Just sit around on the start line for 5 minutes without moving, and your tires will cool off--blue is not ambient temperature, BLACK is ambient, which is why the center of the tire goes black when you blow it out.

At any rate, when I'm driving my best, I usually have trouble with my tires being too cold--the only time they overheat on me is when I'm driving poorly. Of course, that just means I'm not very good at driving "at the edge".

Anyway, watch a really good driver, and s/he can keep the tires a full perfect green until the tread literally wears completely off. I've seen it happen.
Yeah I've not sussed that out myself. They must be using lower tyre pressure and driving conservatively to begin with until the tread starts to thin.
I can keep tyres at optimum until the tread is about 20% thick, then the tyre slowly starts to cool.

I can counteract this by driving harder (sliding the car more, using throttle, brakes and steering less smoothly), but my lap times are slower than optimum, and the chances of me making a mistake go through the roof.
Quote from tristancliffe :I can keep tyres at optimum until the tread is about 20% thick, then the tyre slowly starts to cool.

I can counteract this by driving harder (sliding the car more, using throttle, brakes and steering less smoothly), but my lap times are slower than optimum, and the chances of me making a mistake go through the roof.

You can keep the surface of R2s cool, at a properly quick pace, for that long, in a car like the UFR?
Must be playing a different game to me
XFR yes (mostly, it obviously depends on the exact setup and mood etc), but yes, the UFR is very hard to look after the tyres. But thats a good thing - it shows different cars abuse the tyres in different ways, and that weight transfer, CoG's etc DO affect tyre wear/temp.

But then, I'm not as fast as you :P
Well, the XFR and UFR and kind of special cases. They frankly have too much power for their own good, and racing them without frying the tires requires about as much throttle control as the FO8

That said, it's possible to keep their tires under control, for a relatively short race at least. An endurance race with these cars would be... interesting.
Quote from Dethred :The tire physics are almost like driving on water with racing wet tires, and with dirt on the tires its like driving on snow for a mile. Not only that but even if the tires are cold they pick up dirt that stays for 20-30 seconds. A simple burn out on any set of tires would rid it of practically all the dirt.

And the tires, with a decent setup that can hang with the best of em' will overheat too fast and not come down soon enough.

PS: Tristan, its not too hard, its too unrealistic. And no you're not the stig.

+1

The physics makes the game hard to play for sure but about realism.... I have a friend of mine (witch used to drive a rally and a race car in a real life, let's say he knows how to drive) came home for dinner yesterday and I had him try the game... after 20 minutes he was still unable to make a lap without incidents on blackwood with RB4 ... how can a "so realistic" game could be so hard to master?.......... ho, he also pilots small planes and had no problems landing a cessna (with style) in Flight Simulator X on the first try...... does that mean FSX's an arcade game?
#35 - Jakg
I'd like to point out that atm if you put a MM of tyre on the dirt the WHOLE tire is coated in dirt. This is why getting dirt on a tyre makes such an effect on the car...
Quote from Uncle Rooster :+1

The physics makes the game hard to play for sure but about realism.... I have a friend of mine (witch used to drive a rally and a race car in a real life, let's say he knows how to drive) came home for dinner yesterday and I had him try the game... after 20 minutes he was still unable to make a lap without incidents on blackwood with RB4 ... how can a "so realistic" game could be so hard to master?.......... ho, he also pilots small planes and had no problems landing a cessna (with style) in Flight Simulator X on the first try...... does that mean FSX's an arcade game?

I think it's a case (for most people that struggle initially) of them not being aware of the car's speed, the sharpness of the corner, or the true level of input which you are making. Those are the things that real world experience doesn't help you with, and in relation to your FSX comparison, in a flight sim there isn't really an equivalent of the first two obstacles which I mentioned.
Quote from sinbad :.....I think it's a case (for most people that struggle initially) of them not being aware of the car's speed, the sharpness of the corner, .....

should we conclude that the less realistic part is "what is being drawn on the screen VS what's really happening" ?
Quote from Uncle Rooster :should we conclude that the less realistic part is "what is being drawn on the screen VS what's really happening" ?

No, what happens on screen is what is happening. The difficulty is that speed isn't easy to judge on a 17" monitor, corners are hard to judge on a 17" monitor, and you don't feel the severity or violence of your inputs because your chair is motionless.

My point is that your friend is struggling not because LFS is wrong or unrealistic, but because he cannot adjust what he expects to see and feel in a real car to the limitations that LFS has to work with (screen and no g-force).

For the record, I'm not arguing that LFS is perfect physics-wise. But it isn't as bad as......
Quote :"after 20 minutes he was still unable to make a lap without incidents on blackwood with RB4 ... how can a "so realistic" game could be so hard to master?"

........suggests it might be.
I wonder what the inverse situation would look like..... I mean to teach someone (who never drove a car) how to drive on this game for many years then throw him on a real car to see what would happen
Sim and RL driving are still two completely different things, because the forces felt through the body and the much higher field of view in RL alone make a huge difference. Even if you somehow manage to get absolute physics realism, it will never be the same as driving a real car, at least not with today's computer interfaces.

However, if you let somebody practice LFS with a G25 for a few months and then put him into a real car, he'll probably still stall the first few tries and still brake too hard at the beginning, but he'll pick up much quicker because the most troubling aspect of driving a manual - the hand/foot coordination - will already be second nature for him.
Quote from Uncle Rooster :I wonder what the inverse situation would look like..... I mean to teach someone (who never drove a car) how to drive on this game for many years then throw him on a real car to see what would happen

You mean pretty much what I did? Okay, so I had driven on race tracks before LFS, and had passed my road test years before I first played LFS, but LFS is still responsible for enhancing and fine tuning most of my real racing skills. And whilst I won't claim to be a professional in any sense, I seem to have reasonable car control, sliding F3 cars about more than happily.

The reverse, when real drivers try to play sims but fail to do well due to a lack of real feedback through forces, is why I don't think any sim should ever be pro driver endorsed - they haven't got a clue about sims, and shouldn't try to make statements about them being realistic (unless they play a lot of sims over many years and are okay at them compared to the general sim playing public, which won't happen because no pro driver would dedicate themselves to anything other than real driving).
Does anyone watch races?
Today a1gp drivers with thier 550Hp formule like cars, on a very tight track with lots of corners which in lfs would burn your tyres up in two laps.
Drivers all did the same on braking, and let te rear slide a bit to the oudside so the had very nice turn-in on the corners. Also in corners minimal slides all over, because these cars are apparently very nice to drive om the limit.

What did i say sliding?? Hmm according to many lfs people any type of pushing, driving fast etc. is not realistic and the cause of tyre-heat. So convinced it is also not possible in reality, because lfs changes reality. :bowdown:


I think it is a very simple problem, tyres temps and dirt-effect just needs some adjustments in lfs and all will be fine and lfs will be even more great.
I get a bit annoyed that people with real live experience, real racing drivers are told they are driving wrong,They are more or less told told: "Lfs can never be wrong.", You must be doing something wrong.

Sorry i disagree, to those people: Its on telly, youtube etc. see for yourself, real tyres dont overheat so fast and are not as bad with some dirt on it(althougt dirt certainly changes grips levels).
Sliding a single seater in such a way as to remain fast isn't how the majority of people drive in LFS - they just hurl the car about, randomly steering too much, and asking the car to not cope very well. The fast people in LFS will get 20 times more mileage out of ANY tyre than the slow people.

The people you watch on TV are rather better drivers than us (otherwise WE'd be on TV), and have rather better (more realistic) setups than us too. It's not entirely fair to compare the worse drivers tyre lives with good real life drivers, now is it?
#44 - Woz
Quote from Bluebird B B :Sorry i disagree, to those people: Its on telly, youtube etc. see for yourself, real tyres dont overheat so fast and are not as bad with some dirt on it(althougt dirt certainly changes grips levels).

How can you compare what you see in a vid directly to LFS, you have not frame of reference. You cant SEE..
  • how much G they are pulling.
  • how much loading they have on the tyres.
  • their exact control inputs.
  • what setup they have.
  • how they are nursing their tyres.
As Trist said, IRL you NEVER push as hard and as far into slip as many people do in LFS. The lack of G force, the slight lag in FF coupled with no fear of pain, damage or death from a crash means IRL you would never run laps at LFS "race pace".

Real life racing is actually about speed + mechanical sympathy. Most LFS players appear to believe its all about speed and nothing else. In LFS too many people run at "qualify pace" and then wonder why they have melted tyres.

If you could find a vid that allows a REAL comparission it would help but in the end tyre data if more valid than a vid.

No the tyres are not perfect, as Scawen has stated, but they are not bad.
#46 - Woz
Quote from Bluebird B B :No? Two examples of drivers at Nordschleife
Here you go
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwBJ8SHB42U

and
(jusy ignore the annoying music)
http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=QiWQl4Eb_jM

Have fun

Can't really see the feet in the vids or know the cars setup/config etc but the first vid shows it well enough. The driver pushes the car until the tyres SCRUB but NO FURTHER. He is smooooth with power feed in etc.

Now compare that to how MOST appear to push LFS, they push harder and faster. Its a fact of sim racing because your feedback lags slightly, no direct G feedback that you get IRL
I'd also bet he's using either very high performance road tyres (like road supers, which are almost impossible to melt in LFS, but better) or medium compound racing tyres. I doubt he's using the equivalent of sprint tyres.

Please compare like for like. Random videos of quite skilled drivers is not a fair comparison to how most people in LFS drive. Personally, I don't have a problem with melting tyres - in some cars it's a real struggle when I INTEND to melt them.
First of all, this thread is from 2005 when the tire temp issue was more visible than it is now.

And isn't it already accepted fact that the LFS tire heat modelling isn't that good and right? I mean, from what I've seen the main issues are that tires don't cool down enough quickly (try Ky2 with fz50), the tires mostly heat up from sliding and not from tire deformation and the tires lose too much grip when the temperatures start rising. And to add that, the cars still like to slide around "a lot" (which kinda makes the LFS feel) which with the sliding/heating "problem" makes them heat quickly unless you nurse them, more with some cars less with some others.

The heating isn't imho all that big issue and the road cars are pretty decent with current situation. It is just small fine tuning and some new features implemented and the tires could be little better again.
Yeah, they're not perfect. But nowhere near as bad as some people were trying to make out up there ^

I see it more as a fine-tuning exercise to improve them, but why bother until brake temps come and muddy the water (assuming high brake temps alter wheel/tyre temps). And if rain is going to come then maybe a rethink of the base model needs to be done to work with puddles/rain/aquaplaning, so it would make sense to leave temp issues relatively alone until these changes are carried out - we're not a million miles from #correct#, and other factors, like aero, are more limiting.
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