it is entirely plausable that one could recreate the same movements with a mouse. i dont think anybody has ever tried this in a real car though so its not been disproven.

Well in a way joysticks have been used for real cars.

Top Gear RC cars anyone?

I just wanted to mention, that a 13 or 14 year old girl drove a real size RC car (BMW) in top gear, and She was good at it.
So tell him to watch top gear, I bet that girl coulda done it with a mouse too

Quote from RudiTurbo :

I bet that girl coulda done it with a mouse too

You're only saying that so the Hamster can keep hoping.

Quote from MAGGOT :

It's unrealistic because you can drift with a mouse? What a hollow argument. The one you were talking to, obviously, has the intelligence level of a brick.

I know a few bricks that might be upset by that comment

Quote from Smurfen :

..and said lfs was arcadish because you can drift easily with a mouse...

Hmm.. all that tells me is that using anything other than a wheel in any racing game or simulator is unrealistic. The mouse doesn't condemn LFS at all, it condemns itself as a controller.

Or is the guy's argument that LFS is arcadey because it has mouse support? If that's his argument, he lost it. The plank.

Quote from SamH :

Hmm.. all that tells me is that using anything other than a wheel in any racing game or simulator is unrealistic. The mouse doesn't condemn LFS at all, it condemns itself as a controller.

Or is the guy's argument that LFS is arcadey because it has mouse support? If that's his argument, he lost it. The plank.

im sure he have lots more to say. but we had a drift comp to complete so didnt continue

Not going to read all of this, but tell him has he ever tried drifting in real life with a mouse? No? Well how can he tell it's unrealistic?

Quote from Gentlefoot :

I know a few bricks that might be upset by that comment

I would like to apologize to any bricks whom I may have offended with my comment.

Quote from MAGGOT :

I would like to apologize to any bricks whom I may have offended with my comment.

Too late - they've already told their mason pals; the gears are in motion.

Quote from BURN :

He probably just likes Rtractor cause of the mods n stuff... i guess. without them Rtractor, would actually be a Tractor-Sim

That's not true. That would require a mod.

Quote from Smurfen :

himself owns lfs s2 and said lfs was arcadish because you can drift easily with a mouse.

and rF is hardcore because you can't drift with a wheel?

Quote from Dac :

why dont you try it in your car? tbh i think its very realistic. the only thing that i feel is a problem is the shear lack of speed sensation in games. meaning when your in a car it feels much faster, not sure if its because of the real danger though.

well, it looks slow because of FOV. While you drive real car your eyes see 180 degrees, and ingame you see 90. You can set it to about 105-110 (without distorting picture too much) and get better speed sensation.
If you set camera to see car from behind, and set FOV even more, speed sensation is even more visible, but cars around edges of screen are a lot distorted.
I shoot with camera from passenger seat at 150 kph and zoomed it to match approximately FOV 100 (reference point was to see through camera parts of car i see in game, therefore FOV was right) and afterwards it looks so slow you could run with car.....
So that's why it looks slow - cos it's realistic with unrealistic (unnatural) FOV. solution would be circular screen

and yes, I think that discussion about rF "reality" in LFS afficionados forum is not very thankful IMO....
well i tried rF (few times occasinally, to give it a chance), and didn't "feeeeeel" it, you know, it IS good, but LFS is better.
See, told you, we're biased

Quote from xaotik :

Too late - they've already told their mason pals; the gears are in motion.

That is a baldfaced lie. Everyone knows the masons and the ironworkers are mortal enemies.

No 'gears in motion' for you!

Quote from squidhead :

and rF is hardcore because you can't drift with a wheel?

i dont know, doesnt seem so to me.... its just as easy to drift in rfactor with the OBS mod as it is with lfs

People spend so much time trying to prove or disprove these racing sims are realistic based on assumptions of assumptions.

It so strange, people want to tell if a game is realistic so they compair it to some other game, or what inputs can be used.

A steering wheel in most cases is simply moving your rack back and forth, why couldn't you move anything back and forth to represent that? it may be strange and take getting used to...but that doesn't make a game unrealistic...Hell some monster trucks have their rear steering operated by levers...

Has no one driven a car before? does it feel like that? You don't have to own a F1 car, or have sponsors to go racing. Find your local club(just because they don't advertise in the sunday paper doesn't mean its not there) and go auto cross. Does the game feel like that?

I will say LFS cars feel the most like my car (race springs, upgraded shocks, HLSD, sways, ect...), and that rFactor feels NOTHING like my car.

Ive never driven high down force open wheel car but I think rFactor does a better job of relating loss of grip/down force with higher slip angles...

Quote from Mattesa :

I've always dreamed of doing this. Take a car and set it up to be controlled remotely from a computer using a G25 or DFP. Place a camera where the driver sits. Then take the car to a track and have at it.

Something like this would go such a long way in exploring the scope and accuracy of something like LFS. Oh!!! I soooo want to do it!!!

Yeah, I've often thought about how cool that would be. It would settle the whole xyz is too hard/easy to control discussion once and for all. And it would give ultimate answers as to what we can expect from forceless driving simulations. Let's hope that some day a sim nut shows up who's rich enough to set up something like this for fun.

Quote from Rooble :

I never knew rFactor could talk, amazing.

Quote from XCNuse :

I'm more surprised rFactor owns (no pun intended) S2

Quote from Smurfen :

i dont know, doesnt seem so to me.... its just as easy to drift in rfactor with the OBS mod as it is with lfs

just like "Civic is just as fast as a ferrari when you swap the engine and put a hell lot of money into the suspension modifications"

Quote from Mattesa :

I've always dreamed of doing this. Take a car and set it up to be controlled remotely from a computer using a G25 or DFP. Place a camera where the driver sits. Then take the car to a track and have at it.

Something like this would go such a long way in exploring the scope and accuracy of something like LFS. Oh!!! I soooo want to do it!!!

Well people turn cars into R/Cs, and I've seen a guy do what you want to do with an R/C, so the combination couldn't be all that hard.

newbie (first post dont kill me) but i figure i should add my opinion to this thread.. note, i only have the demo (until after the next autoX, i cant afford to spend any money on games)

lfs is the one car game ive found so far that somewhat accurately shows what will happen to a car in a situation.. go from the loose to tarmac, with loose tires, most people think you'd get a lot of grip, but the dirt on your tires actually makes you loose a lot of traction, lfs simulates that well, low speed transitions feel decent, and for kicks, my lfs car is tuned to be as close to my real autoX car as possible, and i can definately see similaritys in the handling of the cars, neutral(ish) handling that will go straight into oversteer if u are hard on the gas pedal, kicking the clutch feels similar in the game, high speed braking feels about right..

if you guys want to try and verify my findings, just search online for your cars curb weight, suspension setup, engine hp output ect. and try to match it in the game, its funny how the game is able to somewhat replicate your real car.

i still think the back end of the rwd comes out too easy but overall i definately have no complaints about lfs's realism.. its a game for crying out loud !!

A better question would be is any sim that realistic, and in this case how close to reality is "realistic"? The real world has behaviors that go down to the molecular level, which is beyond what a PC based racing game could hope to model, so compromises have to be made.

In addition, there's the driver experience, since there's no feel of the acceleration forces, it's never going to be the same as real life. Visually exaggerating the roll and pitch responses would help here, but I've only seen this done in a "budget" racing game, Ford Racing 2.

Even in the case of a remote control setup for a real car, it's my belief that lap times would be faster with an external view than an internal view, because it would be easier to judge speeds, the cars reaction, and the cars position on the track, from an external view. An onboard view would be cool, but standing at a fixed position with a good view of the track, or a "chase" view behind the cars direction of travel (one not affected by the cars yaw reaction), would produce better lap times.

Quote from JeffR :

Even in the case of a remote control setup for a real car, it's my belief that lap times would be faster with an external view than an internal view, because it would be easier to judge speeds, the cars reaction, and the cars position on the track, from an external view. An onboard view would be cool, but standing at a fixed position with a good view of the track, or a "chase" view behind the cars direction of travel (one not affected by the cars yaw reaction), would produce better lap times.

Well, you could put your theory to a virtual test by setting up a small track in the carpark of LFS and driving it both with a custom static external view (the autox editor view) and internal view.

If what you say is valid then you should be able to drive much much faster laps with the external view since the internal view is already disconnected as it stands due to all the lack of feedback.

Quote from xaotik :

Quote :

in the case of a remote control setup for a real car, it's my belief that lap times would be faster with an external view than an internal view, because it would be easier to judge speeds, the cars reaction, and the cars position on the track, from an external view.

Well, you could put your theory to a virtual test

It would take quite a while for me to learn how to drive well from an external view, but there are good players of other racing games / sims that do use external views, although I don't know if there are any LFS players that use external view and will mention here at this forum.

The only time I use an external view is when drifting in games that have drifting, since I can't tell the actual direction the car is moving when it's drifting sideways on a track.

On the otherhand, if I had a 3 screen setup with a good peripheral view, I feel it would be better than the external view.

This depends on the players background. An expert radio control car racer is bound to be better with an external view than an internal view because that is what they are used to.

Getting back to the example of a real car being remotely controlled, what "deviations from total reality" would you consider to be OK? Should the force feedback at the players wheel duplicate the forces in the actual wheel or be modified to give better feedback of the grip level of the front tires of a car? Should the sound picked up by the in car microphone be modified to exaggerate tire noises as a means to sense that the tires are near the limits to replace the lack of feel from physical forces? Should the video perception of body roll and pitch be exagerrated to give a sense of the g-forces on a car? If the car has a high power to weight ratio, should traction control be implemented, similar to what is used for Formula 1 and the top GT classes in Europe, Japan, and USA?

Since few have seen the video exaggeration of g-forces, here is a video from Ford Racing 2, which exaggerates suspension movement, resulting in visual feedback of g-forces.

fr2stk.wmv