Devs, Heres an idea which I think would be neat. When a car runs out of gas, let it restart once but run rough and only go for another couple miles (or mile) whatever it be, I think it would be more realistic. Nothing like the fun frustration of trying to get a car to start thats out of gas!
Fumes man, fumes! :-p. I just think the ignition button should do more than restart it when it stalls from some big strange hit. I want to see stalling from engine failure and smoke coming from the hood area, etc .
Well, realistically yes, when you run out of fuel it shouldn't be that abrupt and absolute.
Normally when you run out of fuel, you start noticing this in the corners, when the remaining fuel floats away from the fuel intake in your gas tank. When back on the straight, the engine starts again and you can continue driving. Besides that, when you completely run out of fuel, it's also more like a few last hiccups until the engine shuts off, rather than a sudden stop like we have in LFS.
But that's all just nitpicking and the LFS model gets the point across quite good.
I remember F1 drivers waving their cars left to right and left again so that they could get what littel fuel they had left. This would also be cool to able to do. But it is ofcourse, a small detail
Simulating fuel swashing about in the fuel tank would be a tiny detail to simulate maybe in S3 or beyond, could also have a small effect on weight distribution but for now I'd rather see it drop dead than a canned effect of the engine running rough or only when it's turning
I don't think the car should start again once it runs out of fuel but when you get low on fuel around corners the car should jolt a little from the fuel sloshing left and right getting little air bubbles in the fuel line.
I think a two-dimensional simulation would be enough to get the effect, even if you simplify the matter by assuming the upper line of the fuel is always linear. That would reduce the amount of needed calculations to a minimum and still produce realistic behaviour.
Come to think of it, I agree this wouldn't take too much calculation, Vain.
There is of course, already a G number available for the car. It should be simple enough to determine how this would effect the COG of the fuel mass (and coupled with the fuel level, wheter the intake 'runs dry').
Also, fuel level already influences total car COG, as handling changes during a stint.
So you would just have to make the system a bit more dynamic by including an extra step. On the other hand, every extra calculation adds to processor load and you have to make damn sure those 'costs' are worth the benefit. As Playlife mentioned this is a small detail and certainly shouldn't be very high on the list of priorities...
I could imagine however, that when you tell someone this effect is simulated, they would agree instantly that calling LFS a 'sim' in stead of a 'game' is justified.
You only loose your laps when you shift-S to the pits, not when you drive there and stop at a pit box. Seems completely normal to me.
Anyhoo, this thread is discussing something else. If you're still unclear about the pitting thing, I suggest you search for an answer or post in the beginners section of the forum.
1. When the fuel-tank is full or at least half-filled the COG of the vehicle is about untouched by the distribution of fuel in the tank. Wether 5L go to the right or not doesn't really influence the COG of a 1300kg car, when you take the distance of the tank to the COG into consideration.
2. When fuel is low, like 10L, the mass of the fuel is so low that even if 50% went to one side the effect would again be very low.
3. The effect of fuel-distribution in the tank on the COG of the car is, so I estimate, directionally proportional to the acceleration of the car. Calculating the dynamic COG of the fuel in the tank would most propably produce nothing but a linear equotation that depends on the acceleration of the car. So if the effect should be calculated, even though it is small, it shouldn't be calculated by measuring the dynamic COG of the fuel using a finit-elements-method but by using an approximization using the acceleration on the fuel. If my assumption above is right this will give the correct COG, if my assumption is wrong it will still leave us with good results, costing less calculation time than the clock in the streetcars .
4. I'd like to trigger the "does the car run dry under this acceleration?"-calculation by a acceleration/fuel-load-ratio. If the ratio is higher than an empirical value the game begins to check wether the car runs dry by using the twodimensional linear approximization of the fuel distribution in the tank discussed above.
That would give correct results in any situation, even in a Mechanik'ed FO8 with 4g lateral acceleration and will only cause minimal CPU-load. Really minimal. In usual mode only the caluclation of a single division and one comparison and in propably-dry-mode just a linear equotation per frame.
I think it's worth this.
Vain
P.S.: Hm, I should one day begin to write in easier sentences...
the ecu on some new cars gives you a signal that you are getting close to the bottom of the tank by making the engine have "a miss" ie skip a cylinder in the firing order just one time - enough for you to notice. i think that could be cool would let you know you only have a kilometer left or so, and if you just went pass the pits, better go damn easy or shut her off and roll
Cog movements inside the tank? The effect is so little. You get almost bigger effect if the driver is chewing gum and moves the gum from left side to right side in his mouth.
Only thing I would be interested are the forces which are caused by the movement of the fuel. And they aren't that big either.
takumi: Would this also be done in race-cars? I don't thinks so.
Vain: I hadn't really though the fuel/car weight ratio through. You're right about that being too little an effect to be worth the calculation. The rest of your story seems logical enough aswell, and I think that when this would be implemented, it would certainly add to the overall experience of the game.
Diesels can do that - you just cut the mixture for a rev or two. But in a SI engine you'll almost certainly cause problems with weak mixtures or spark fouling.
Just tonight I saw top gear running an audi A8 for 800miles, with no refuels, and accidently I ran out of fuel today in LFS. In lfs I have completely no warning, suddenly my car stopped, I was thinking, wth is going here? Then I saw the fuel was all gone. There should at least by a warning light. In that audi you first had the warning light, than it started to make some noises, after that you could hear the fuel pump, pumping air, and after that, they arrived at their destination. The fuel meter was standing below zero for quite a while. But all by all, it doesn't have to be too high tech for me, just a warning light before you run out of fuel would be nice... Or did I look over that one?
I won't press F12, because that brings up a menu, and I don't want a menu in the middle of my "simulator", do you have a menu in your car on top of your steering wheel? We don't. Do you have a light in your car that tells you you're almost out of gas? Normally you do, so for a simulator, it should have it, it's that simple.
Sorry if I sound rude, but having the suggestion to press F12 is just lame, it's a simulator, so I should be seeing this kind of stuff in my car and not onscreen.
@sgt.flippy
Single seaters don't have a fuel light nor a gauge. Not sure about the GTRs but I presume most race preped cars would have them removed. The information is fed to the drive via the pit radio, so unless you want to have someone sitting on team speak reading out the values to you ... there is really no way to simulate this without a menu. You have to remember there are things which can't be avoided because a game doesn't have the same effect as real life.
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The rest of your story seems logical enough aswell, and I think that when this would be implemented, it would certainly add to the overall experience of the game.