I have an idea about combining several ideas into one track. Many people here want the Nürburgring (Nordschleife) as a track or something similar. I've also seen quite a few people here and in other posts ask for a hill climb and also a forest road you can drive on. All of these ideas can be combined into one track.

The issue with a really long track is that it may get boring and you need many cars in a race to make it seem like you are actually racing. What good is racing if there is 1/2 mile between each car? You might as well drive solo on an empty track

My idea is to combine some of the elements(turns and similar track sections) of the Nürburgring into a track that has a section that goes up and down a mountain. That way you also get your hillclimb tracks and a forest road.

As for the mountain, I'm not talking about a 15,000' tall peak, but more like the lower section of a mountain surrounded by hilly some land. Maybe have a 1000' elevation change for the section used as the hill climb going up the side of the mountain. That section can also be incorporated into the track and add the challenge of going back down the side of mountain. The rest of the track can be off the mountain on a hilly section of land. The track can have the appearance that its not a permanent track by having the hillclimb section appear as pavement with a dividing line down the middle. Also, there can be a dirt road going up the mountain to use for rallycross and an off road hill climb section.

To keep the people happy that want a long track, there could be a configuration that is 5+ miles along with several shorter configurations.

I have a general idea of the layout and need to put it in a picture form.

Quote from Forbin :

They're big RWD cars in comparison to a Lotus Seven, Honda S2000, Nissan 240SX, and BMW E30, and they have solid axles.

And most of the cars you mentioned are not solid axle cars or aren't commonly found in solid axle versions.

Quote from Forbin :

You seem to be caught up in the semantics of pony car vs. muscle car.

That's because you said before:

Quote from Forbin :

Old american muscle car = big RWD with solid axle

Which is NOT the type of car I was describing.

They are not "historic class" and "Old american muscle cars" especially if you want the developers of the game to use most of their current suspension designs and development. Most of the solid axle pony cars form the late 70's and early 80's on up use shocks and springs and/or struts and springs. There would be no work needed for leaf spring suspension development and all the different work that would go with it in addition to the solid rear axle.

Quote from Forbin :

They had/have RWD and solid rear axles in most of their models (barring the newest Camaro and some Mustangs), do they not?

I think you are completely missing the point. Camaros/Mustangs/other pony cars are not big RWD cars. Yes, most have solid axles and some models have had an IRS since the 1990's. However they are not muscle cars/big RWD cars.

Quote from Shadowww :

This?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi ... 010ChevroletCamaro-05.jpg

Yea, they weigh about two tons. ~1800kg if my quick math is right.

Quote from Forbin :

Old american muscle car = big RWD with solid axle

Which is not what most Camaros or Mustang or other pony cars are.

Quote from Forbin :

Suggested Improvements Log

Read it and realize none of your ideas are new.

The closest two entries I see are a "historic class" and "Old american muscle cars"

I wasn't limiting my suggestion to somehting based on the 1960's and 1970's models and would rather see soething a bit more modern.

Either an 80's or 90's model or better yet, soemthing based on the 2005 and up Mustang and 2010 camaro would be interesting. Maybe ~3500 lbs and about 300-350 horsepower with lots of torque. Of course all that power would be offset by the weight and possible the brakes along with a limit on tire size. Similar to what happens in some race series now where the modern pony cars are in the same class with cars like the Impreza WRX and Lancer Evo.

Also, Mustangs and Camaros and similar cars aren't muscle cars, they are pony cars which are typically smaller and ligher than muscle cars. Some consider pony cars a subset of muscle cars while others say they are a completely different class of car. For example the Impala, Chevelle, Road Runner, Charger, or Torino would be considered a muscle car. To use more mdoern cars as an example the 1996 Ipmpala SS and the more recent Mercury Marauder would be a muscle car while the newer Camaro and Mustang wouldn't. Then again, the new Camaro is so big nd bloated and heavy that its approachign on Muscle Car terrority. :doh:

I'm glad that S2 included many more cars and also that the VW Scirocco. The sim has a wide variety of cars. However I've been thinking about what style of car is missing from the sim.

We have several front wheel drive cars of different weights and power levels.
We have several rear wheel drive cars of different weights, engine locations, and power levels.
We have an all wheel drive car.
We have several different formula cars including a formula SAE car and F1 car and everything in between.
We have cars with many different suspension types.
We have cars with wings to provide down force or at least reduce lift and cars without wings at all.

However I noticed one style is missing. Its a style that has been in many forms of racing for a very long time. We don't have a solid axle front engined rear wheel drive car available in the sim. That style has been popular in various forms of racing Australia and North America for quite some time and also has seen some popularity in some European and worldwide series.
Anyone remember the old racing videos of the Mini Coopers and fiats racing against the 1960's Mustangs and Camaros? How about the Mustang winning the 1964 Tour de France international rally? The Australian Touring Car Championships in the 1970's had multiple wind by the Camaro. What about the Mustangs in the SCCA and Trans-Am series? What about the Mustangs in the IMSA GTO class and the SCCA Escort Endurance SSGT championship. The 24 hours of Daytona wins too! They also competed and won the Koni Challenge and Speed World Challenge GT Series. The Swedish Camaro Cup has been a popular series since the 1970's. The IMSA GT series is popular with the Camaro and Mustang. The Camaro was also the car used by the International Race of Champions for quite a few years. How about all those land speed records set by Camaros and Mustangs at the Bonneville Salt Flats over the years. They are also currently raced in the NASA American Iron series, which is quite popular. Also for you drift fans, the Mustang is a popular drift car. I haven't kept up with all of the Australian front engined, solid axle rear wheel drive cars over the years, but I remember some Ford and GM vehicles of that style being pretty popular in racing there in the past.
Also think of all the famous drivers that drove front engined rear wheel drive solid axle race cars. Parnelli Jones, Bob Johnson, Mark Donohue, Mickey Thompson, Roger Penske, Danny Ongais, Ray Brock, Bob Jane, George Follmer, Steve Saleen, and Lynn St. James just to name a few.

It would also add a new driving challenge because its a new style with different characteristics than the typical front engined rear wheel drive car with a 4 wheel independent suspension.

When I searched previous posts and about polls wanting a new type of car, I found that a V8 RWD sedan or coupe was pretty popular. Making it a solid axle V8 RWD car would make things new and interesting and also bring in a new style that has been popular in a wide variety of different forms of racing for many years.

Quote from Buzzn :

Thats a good Sugetion and a well writen posten but on the other hand there is allready a tread made for car`s we want to see in lfs so next time post it there

I've seen that thread and the RWD V8 solid axle cars were mentioned a few times, but I didn't see many people say why they want one in the sim.

I too your suggestion and added it there too.

Last edited by bavor, Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:07. Reason : Updates

I'm glad that S2 included many more cars and also that the VW Scirocco. The sim has a wide variety of cars. However I've been thinking about what style of car is missing from the sim.

We have several front wheel drive cars of different weights and power levels.
We have several rear wheel drive cars of different weights, engine locations, and power levels.
We have an all wheel drive car.
We have several different formula cars including a formula SAE car and F1 car and everything in between.
We have cars with many different suspension types.
We have cars with wings to provide down force or at least reduce lift and cars without wings at all.

However I noticed one style is missing. Its a style that has been in many forms of racing for a very long time. We don't have a solid axle front engined rear wheel drive car available in the sim. That style has been popular in various forms of racing Australia and North America for quite some time and also has seen some popularity in some European and worldwide series.
Anyone remember the old racing videos of the Mini Coopers and fiats racing against the 1960's Mustangs and Camaros? How about the Mustang winning the 1964 Tour de France international rally? The Australian Touring Car Championships in the 1970's had multiple wind by the Camaro. What about the Mustangs in the SCCA and Trans-Am series? What about the Mustangs in the IMSA GTO class and the SCCA Escort Endurance SSGT championship. The 24 hours of Daytona wins too! They also competed and won the Koni Challenge and Speed World Challenge GT Series. The Swedish Camaro Cup has been a popular series since the 1970's. The IMSA GT series is popular with the Camaro and Mustang. The Camaro was also the car used by the International Race of Champions for quite a few years. How about all those land speed records set by Camaros and Mustangs at the Bonneville Salt Flats over the years. They are also currently raced in the NASA American Iron series, which is quite popular. Also for you drift fans, the Mustang is a popular drift car. I haven't kept up with all of the Australian front engined, solid axle rear wheel drive cars over the years, but I remember some Ford and GM vehicles of that style being pretty popular in racing there in the past.
Also think of all the famous drivers that drove front engined rear wheel drive solid axle race cars. Parnelli Jones, Bob Johnson, Mark Donohue, Mickey Thompson, Roger Penske, Danny Ongais, Ray Brock, Bob Jane, George Follmer, Steve Saleen, and Lynn St. James just to name a few.

It would also add a new driving challenge because its a new style with different characteristics than the typical front engined rear wheel drive car with a 4 wheel independent suspension.

When I searched previous posts and about polls wanting a new type of car, I found that a V8 RWD sedan or coupe was pretty popular. Making it a solid axle V8 RWD car would make things new and interesting and also bring in a new style that has been popular in a wide variety of different forms of racing for many years.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I got it to work by upgrading from Z to Z25. I'm pretty sure other drivers used the G27 wheel with the Z version, so I don't knopw why the upgrade made a difference.

Quote from AndroidXP :

But you do see the blue bar in the lower right corner rising when pressing the clutch? And the red and green bars for brake and throttle, respectively?

The correct blue bars for all three get bigger when I press down the gas, brake, and clutch pedals. At the bottom of the screen, the red bar and blue bar for the brake and gas also show up correctly.

Quote from AndroidXP :

On the shifter tab (right of "Axes / FF"), all gears are correctly assigned? And you're also testing this on a car that has an H-gate shifter (any of the normal road cars)?

All the gears are correctly assigned on the shifter tab.

I'm trying the shifter with XR GT and the XF GTI

I also verified the clutch and shifter work correctly in another racing sim.

Quote from AndroidXP :

You probably have the clutch inverted. When you press the clutch pedal, the blue bar should rise, not shrink.

I tried both Invert0 and Invert1 for the clutch axis setting in LFS. Neither made any difference.

Quote from troy :

Sounds like your clutch doesn't actually clutch, did you double check all the axes in the control options?

The clutch pedal works correctly according to the controls screen. I can see the axis moving thwn I press the clutch pedal.

After some more experimenting, the only way I can get the H shifter to work is if I turn on autoclutch in the driver profile.

It is set up in the control menu and in the driver profile for an H shifter.

I purchased a new G27 yesterday. I haven't been able to get the H shifter to work in LFS. When I go to controls and select shifter, I can move the shifter through the gears and it does correctly indicate each gear in the controls screen. Also, the clutch pedal works correctly according to the controls screen.

When I actually get to the track, the shifter doesn't work at all. The car starts out in neutral and I press in the clutch and move the shifter into a gear and it doesn't indicate or act like its in the gear and the dashbaord still shows that its in neutral.

I can press the clutch pedal, move the shifter itn a gear, and release the clutch pedal and it still indicated neutral and acts like its in neutral.

I did a search and can't find anyone with a similar problem. Why should it work fine in the controls screen and not work on track?

Last edited by bavor, Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:25. Reason : update - Fixed

I updated to the T patch and ever since then, LFS would randomly lock up and play the same sound over and over again. When the U patch came out, I was hoping that it would fix the problem, but it hasn't.

It usually happens when I click on a menu item such as end race. It will lock up LFS and repeat the same sound over and over again. I tried letting the game go for a while thinking it may continue, but it will stay there for several minutes locked up and playing the same sound over and over. It sometimes happens withing a few minutes of starting the same and sometimes taked an hour to happen.

Every other game I play runs fine without any issues at all. CPU temperatures in my PC at idle are 28-30 degrees C and 37-39 degrees C when playing LFS. I tried updaing to the latest chipset, sound card, and video card drivers, but that hasn't helped.

Quote from der_jackal :

God forbid you ever tried to turn that thing at speed....wow what a nightmare. But then again it is / was a 60's-90's American car. Not meant for the twisty bits back then.
And those numbers are kind of skewed, the Nm was to the crank, I believe it actually lost a considerable amount by the time it got to the wheels.

However, there are still many peole that seem to think that high power FWD cars are undriveable.

Quote from der_jackal :

It took first in the FW class, they never did an overall winner between FW & AWD/RW IIRC.
The ridiculously overpriced HKS EVO took first in the AWD /RW segment.
http://www.caranddriver.com/ar ... =10165&page_number=16
Preface:
Sure some of the times on the road course can come down to the driver (IIRC they weren't driven by the same person around the track, each one was driven by somebody from that company / team),

Actually, msot of the cars, including the SRT-4 were driver by Larry Webster form Car & Driver.

Quote from der_jackal :

but surely that car should have been able to make up some of the difference by sheer brute force. It wasn't even .50 a second within reach of the best time of the Audi, and > 1 second off the times of the Hondata Lotus.
The SRT-4 had blistering straight line speeds, but pretty slow on the road course considering the weight, power and torque numbers IMO.

Actually, the car had no brakes. Well almost no brakes. Wilwood sent us the wrong brake pads and we didn't find out about it until the first run through the course. The pads were completely glazed over during the stop from the first part of the course, the acceleration run. Larry Webster from Car & Driver said the road course lap times in the car could easily be 5 seconds faster with properly functioning brakes. If you could see the magazine article with the comparison chart, you can see the car obviously had some brake problems.

Quote from der_jackal :

Best in class FW road course was the Mini;
Nearly 1/2 the HP and well under 1/2 the torque and at its best still ~.80" faster than the SRT-4. Sure it's 300lbs lighter, but again, 1/2 the total grunt numbers of the Dodge.
And it also had functional brakes.
For comparison from the other classes:
....
Also look at the results for the Forcefed Lotus Elise. It ran about the same lap times as the SRT-4.
I would have liked to see them get an independent driver for all the road course times because after all is said and done, those values really only serve to show AWD / RWD cars are easier at being driven around a track.

Most of the cars were driven with the same driver. Larry Webster form Car & Driver.

Quote from der_jackal :

But still at the end of the day, you can put as much power in a FW car as you can any AWD or RW car, problem is using that power on, in or around corners is lost. FW tuners are getting better at curing that, but there's only so far it can go before ol' Mr. Physics rears his head again and shows that fundamental flaw w/ FW cars.

True, but FWD cars aren't the poor handling pigs that a lot of people think they are. They can handle quite well. In some racing classes, they run the same lap times as the RWD cars with similar power levels and weights.

Quote from Blowtus :

if you think oversteer is what defines 'behaving like a rwd' then you lack an understanding of vehicle dynamics in general

I never said that. Thanks for putting words in my mouth.

Quote from Blowtus :

sorry, but the bit about fwd cars behaving like rwd is as much misguided rubbish as the first poster

I didn't say they behave 100% exactly liek RWD cars, but if you disagree, you have not messed around with the suspension on a FWD car.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

FWD and RWD is close in speed but if you are a bit like Tiff Needel, i.e. enjoy controlling cars near the limit, you'll curse everything that is front wheel drive as you can't play with them. And even racing, you don't get that 'balance the nose direction with throttle' with front wheel drive.

You can set up a FWD car's suspenstion to be steerable with the throttle at the limit. You can also get FWD cars to behave like RWD cars. My FWD daily driven car that I also use for autocross has lift throttle oversteer and also can be guided with the throttle aorund turns depending on how I drive it. The suspension is 100% stock except for th rear sway bar, which is thicker than stock. FWD cars can be played with on the track, you just have to know how to set them up.

Quote from himself :

It is known that FWD can not have more power than 200 - 220 bhp.

Quote from Jakg :

for a ROAD car the limit is 250 with proper suspension...

Where do people get these strange ideas? Have they not driven FWD cars before or do they read somethign that someone wrote 30 years ago based on false assumptions and assume it to be true today?

There are plenty of production FWD cars that have been available over the past 15 years with 250-300 HP. There are a lot of daily driven, modified FWD cars that have more than that. Even back in the 1960's Oldsmobile had a 425 cubic inch displacement(7.0 liter) FWD V8 car with 385 bhp (287 kW) and 475 ft·lbf (644 N·m) of torque.

I've driven modified FWD cars that put down 300 to 400 HP at the wheels acordign to a dynojet dyno and not a single one of them was difficult to drive or a problem to drive in an autocross or tight road course. They also behaved very well on the street and some weren't much different in daily driving than the same car with stock horsepower.

One of the high horsepower FWD cars I helped build won 1st place in Car & Driver's superfour challenge and about the same lap times as a forced induction lotus elise.
http://www.caranddriver.com/ar ... d=10165&page_number=8

As the article says, "With all that locomotive torque, we expected a wrestling match at the steering wheel every time we tramped on the gas. But that wasn't the case. There was a little tugging in the first three gears, but nothing to rival the antics of the two boosted Civics, and no worse than a stock SRT4."