I think that's largely due to the nature of the cars; smooth tracks and stiffly sprung aero race cars don't offer much in the way of body jounce, pitch or roll, while the stiff tyres don't slip much and give little in the way of visible yaw.
Road cars, and certainly rally, shows so much more movement in that regard, and thus look really alive.
Having now met Ian, I think his real life persona is quite different to how he has come across online. I met The Stig too, took several of us out for a lap or two of Silverstone. He can definitely drive!
Video footage from that event:
As a team, we are just hoping the title can be judged for what it is, though I understand there's always going to be links from the past, both negative and positive.
If you hadn't seen, the first teaser trailer is now online:
We recently had an event in Zürich as well, with some press invited to play the game. I did a few interviews to talk physics, this was one of the better ones, maybe you'll find of interest:
I still used VHPA very regularly, although not with LFS. I'm intending at some point to rewrite it in a modern language and make it far more flexible. I've learned so much about vehicle simulation in the past 15 years! No promises as to when, but the 7 gear restriction, poor electric motor support and rubbish moment of inertia calculations frustrate me when dealing with many of the newer vehicles on the market.
As for LFS mods, if the file formats have not changed then it's just a case of creating .veh files for the mod vehicles. As mentioned in my recent posts here, there's no method in place to automate that; it was a slow, manual process to get them right. I think anyone can do that, so you don't need me. I definitely don't have the time or inclination right now, I've never used a mod in LFS (apart from the ones I wrote myself back in 2007).
From when I last dug into LFS tyre physics (around 2009 or 2010) I concluded they heated and cooled too slowly, but lost too much grip when too hot or cold. These factors average out during racing, to give reasonable amounts of grip change, but fall apart in extreme conditions, like drifting.
It is nice to see people keep relatively normal cars alive to live a long life, and not just exotics or special editions.
What is the appeal to you personally in this car?
That's using the smaller US gallon. The Imperial gallon works at 16.1l/100km, so on par with your AMG experience.
It's the coupe version of the 3rd gen Holden Commodore, which was one of only a few models under the GM lineup to be manufactured in Australia. It has a few upgrade parts from a donor HSV (Holden Special Vehicles) model, such as the seats. 800 were imported here back in 2004-2005 but nowhere else in Europe got them.
Top Gear's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr_yQeWekgY
Top Gear Power Lap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7zyCzXOfo
For a daily A to B car I've no objections to electric, but I don't see how they can sell sports cars like that. The shifting of gear and roar of the engine is the main appeal to me, I don't even understand the appeal of automatics or paddle shifts, outside of track days.
I picked up a 'VZ' Monaro back in October and finally got around to getting a nice shot of it in the daylight.
The whole fuel price thing is clearly my fault, just my luck that prices would rise just after I start running a V8. I'm averaging 17.5mpg (yes I'm lead footed) which led to a £500 fuel bill last month.
I'm now looking at getting a boring but vaguely economic car to run alongside it as the money saved in fuel should cover all the extra expenses of a second car.
Engine is stock for now but hoping next year I can let it breathe a bit better. Gains of 100hp are pretty common for an NA setup, which would suit me. Another 250hp possible if I pop a supercharger on but I don't feel the need to liquify my rear tyres.
It's a pretty reasonable suggestion, though I'm not sure the bin files contain all the necessary data to accurately create a vehicle. The torque curve, for example, I think we used some acceleration data to work back from. I'm not sure if I'll ever do another update though, and while I'd like to rewrite at some point, time is very much against me.
The process is not automated. There was never an expectation of mods, I used this once for the default cars and never looked at it again. You may need to do some maths to get the rest of the values that VHPA needs. Weight distribution is reported directly in LFS though.
Go to File, User Vehicles, Save Vehicle Data. Once saved, press Ctrl-A to bring up the list of vehicles loaded on start-up. From there, find your freshly saved vehicle file and add to the list so it will always be present in VHPA.
LFS used to support exporting data dumps to give me all the information I needed to model a car in VHPA. Scawen added this feature at my request back in 2006 but I forget the key combination to trigger it now. The files format (extension: BIN) is not even listed in the manual: https://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/File_Formats
I've not tested with the latest versions of LFS to see if that is still present and working for modded vehicles. VHPA will not need updating though until the new tyre physics come out, at which point I would need to update the hardcoded tyre data.
I'm not sure if I'll be doing that when the time comes, it's been so long since I wrote this, I'd need to install a virtual machine just to install an old operating system (XP) necessary to load the ancient version of Visual Studio that lets me program VB6. I'd love to rewrite the program in a more flexible way but really can't see me having the time for that.
Just seen this, please you posted here as I disconnected from him on Facebook in a big clear out years ago. I think I did only meet him in person the once but I quickly warmed to him; handsome, approachable and charismatic. I believe he organised the first LFS UK meet which led to so many more and thus all those good times with so many of you. We all have those memories as his legacy.
A great character from the sim racing world. Gone but not forgotten.
The worrying thing is I'm far more ancient than my G25.
Good to see some old faces in this thread. I'm literally twice the age compared to when I signed up and have fond memories, but that's mostly all it feels. I even replaced my Live for Speed engraved hip flask this week, it was finally too battered to be useable. It got me through many nights out in my twenties!
It is to help you tune setups by offering numerical analysis to give further insight into the settings and how they combine to influence vehicle handling. The learning curve is a little steep but it's much more powerful than simple staring at lists of parameters and using trial and error. The idea is you can predict the changes you are making so you'll make adjustments much closer to what you want to get in the first iteration, and you'll also be aware of side effects.
The original plan for the Tesla vehicles was a two speed gearbox, but this was changed to two different fixed gears running at the same time, possible due to the multiple engine layout.