I've been playing this for about a year on and off. Last year when i first installed it everything was great, then i had to reinstall windows. I've been very busy with work and exams, but now i've installed the game again and it seems whatever car i use, the handling is shit. It's very un-natural when turning. The best way i can describe it is by saying the car does not feel planted on the road. I have not changed any setups and am using the same x-box 360 controller as before. BTW im also waiting on a G25 delivery. So i never used to have these problems when i first starting playing. Could anyone help me out please. Thanks.

Quote from racerboy59 :

Could anyone help me out please.

What do you want help with? It's difficult to feel "attached" to the road at all if you are using anything other then a wheel anyway. And there's the "seat-of-pants" feeling that you get in an actual car also.

I don't know but i never used to get this problem. It's like there is no friction at all between the tires and the road. I re-downloaded it again from the official website last week. Im quite confused and annoyed. I was even thinking of buying S2, but not until i get this sorted out.

Uh, it's you.

I took a break of several months, returned to find I was up to 3 seconds a lap slower than before.

You lose touch with it, like if you stop riding a pushbike for a long time, it takes a while before you can go dirt-tracking

Quote from racerboy59 :

I don't know but i never used to get this problem. It's like there is no friction at all between the tires and the road. I re-downloaded it again from the official website last week. Im quite confused and annoyed. I was even thinking of buying S2, but not until i get this sorted out.

If you're playing on and off you probably missed the patch that was supposed to help gamepad users but wound up making driving with a pad impossible imo. The patch changed the peripheral input rate to match the game's engine, everything changed i went out and bought wheel.

Believe me, everything will change when you try it with a wheel

Feeling like you're driving on a thin layer of ice? Yep, I feel that too. And more and more with each patch it seems. The last time I felt really good grip on the road was in patch Q (best patch ever!). Just hope there will be more grip in the future.

OK thats good news then. As long as my wheel works fine when i get it!

Quote from arco :

Feeling like you're driving on a thin layer of ice? Yep, I feel that too. And more and more with each patch it seems. The last time I felt really good grip on the road was in patch Q (best patch ever!). Just hope there will be more grip in the future.

yeah thats what's going on with me. are you using a gamepad by any chance?

The physics changes in patch Y made my driving suffer alot. The game became much harder, tyres heated up quicker and setups weren't compatible and needed tweaking. Became a different game to me.

If you missed the Patch Y release you would be finding LFS quite different jumping into it now. The tyes seem to be a whole lot more slippery as well. I can't drive as fast and as hard as before. It's harder, but I dunno if that translates as "unrealistic". meh - I'm not good enough to make such judgements.

Try increasing the tyre cambers closer to zero (if they are already large negtive values and you're using older setups) And keep and eye on your tyre temps. They heat up faster and quickly get slippery.

did you get used to it eventually though?

hell no. Still learning, still annoying the crap outa me that I can't drive properly. But that's half the fun aint it?

BTW i edited my previous post.

edit:
You will find that joypad may heat up your tyres fast because the extreme turning agility possible. The tyres will heat up super fast because you can turn full lock really easily and this tends to heat up the tyres. Well, that's my experience. If you can soften the turning ability of you input device this might reduce tyre heat. Then concentrate on going less agressively and less sliding to reduce tyres heating up as well.

Some people like 360 controller, I however did not and found it too twitchy compared to a PS3 type controller. I couldn't get XBCD drivers to work at all so I was unable to fix the 360 controller sensitivities. Maybe you will have more luck there. (untill you get your wheel)

Wooo, when I saw the title I thought we had a LFS hater, heh. This is by a lery large margin the most realistic racer in the world, period. I would take the advice you've gotten here. there's just no way it's LFS. I've taken a 9 and a half month break at once point, from april '06 to January '07, it took me only 10-15 hours to get my skillz back.

I'd wait for the wheel, a 360 controller is no good IMO anyways.

hahaha. i just got S2! i can't believe what ive been missing out on. Also my G25 is due in sometime tomorow. I'll use some of the advice, but also im not too sure why you say its the tires overheating, because the problem is apparant from the very start of the race. Although it does get worse later on of course. Thanks.

Quote from racerboy59 :

yeah thats what's going on with me. are you using a gamepad by any chance?

Nope, wheel here.

Yes I agree, there seems to be less grip than used to be, even from the start. It all goes even further downhill than it used to as well from the start for me to. You have to join that, "I'm glad LFS is harder and more realistic" club to, which popped up around the introduction of patch Y.

I think that Scawen realized this since he decided to lower the CoG quite a bit of cars to make them more ''planted''. I agree that in general it feels a little slippery but I think it's not tooo bad.

Quote from racerboy59 :

hahaha. i just got S2! i can't believe what ive been missing out on. Also my G25 is due in sometime tomorow. I'll use some of the advice, but also im not too sure why you say its the tires overheating, because the problem is apparant from the very start of the race. Although it does get worse later on of course. Thanks.

You've got some great times ahead Moving from controller to wheel was amazing for me.

LFS now feels gripper then ever, in my opinion.....

You will enjoy the tyres screaming (not) smoking tyres as you peel away from the pits in an fz5. 360bhp of pure power.

Quote from Luke.S :

You will enjoy the tyres screaming (not) smoking tyres as you peel away from the pits in an fz5. 360bhp of pure power.

This is not just Live for speed. This is M&S, Live for speed.

Sorry, I had to.

In all seriousness... Go drive a road car without a steering wheel (maybe not quite possible, but illustration) and tell us how it feels :-)

You'll have a totally totally different experience with a wheel. The game will transform from a game to a simulator!

I'd like to add, force feedback gives quite a bit of "feel" to grip, IMO, it does make a very good difference to driving when you get it's strengths how you like it.

All in all... when your G25 gets here you'll get alot better feeling!

I can't wait. It's taking forever!!!!!

Never had a problem with grip, in this patch, or any other, I don't think grip has ever been "reduced" as a blanket change.

Quote from Haze7 :

I'd like to add, force feedback gives quite a bit of "feel" to grip, IMO, it does make a very good difference to driving when you get it's strengths how you like it.

All in all... when your G25 gets here you'll get alot better feeling!

Yeah, +1, I've got a very old MS Sidewinder wheel (non-force feedback) which is adequate, but I do tend to destroy my tyres during a longer race as I'm not getting the feeling of the limits of the tyres.

I've had a go with my brothers' G25 and believe me, LFS becomes a different game, the feeling of the car underneath you is immense, when I'm using the G25 I can feel the car moving through the wheel, as well as hearing (as before) when the tyres are trying too hard.

I dare you to come on here and NOT be totally blown away by the G25! (Bear in mind it takes a day or so to get used to driving with the G25)