I think Flotch covered most of it, I just wanted to add that I have driven a FWD car with an aftermarket diff- a Peloquin to be exact, and it being a gear-type (or Torsen) differential, it behaves much like an open differential under coasting and only starts to act when under power. This type of differential is not modeled in LFS (yet) so the two types we have are probably not the best choice for a FWD car. That being said, my "fastest" setups for the FWD cars are almost always the locked diff. Like Flotch said, it makes the initial turn-in more difficult but braking is much more stable and you can lay on the power very early in the corner.

This also shows some of the flaws in the tire model, especially driving the UF1000 which only has an open diff and very low power, you can still spin the inside front on a turn for about a mile under power which is not realistic at all.

Gaboteam, you are the man! Thank you for taking the initiative to do this, even if the devs won't\can't use it right now, maybe it can be used as an add-on later if a future update allows user-created tracks. (which would avoid licensing issues)

Although I have mentioned it before, I would happily pay for a proper nurburgring if licensing cost is an issue.

Do you happen to have any images you can share of your creation? I understand if you want to keep it on the down-low for now..

People have already done amazing things with layouts, having track editing tools would really take LFS to the next level with some user created content.

Apparently Codemasters really screwed up Dirt4, so now's the time for LFS to step up and grab some of the rally sim market, lol.

Seriously though, I think LFS would feel better than RBR for rally racing if there was a proper rally track and comparable car with the current physics as they are.

Keep up the good work guys.

Brendan

I can hope, right? Worth seeing to the end, there are some great slow-motion shots.



Sorry if everyone has seen this video before but damn it looks like a blast.

Brendan

Quote from Flotch :

Something close to RBR for dirt

Or like Dirt Rally.

Brendan

Stage-rally and gravel-only tracks- yes!

I'd also happily pay for a proper Nordschleife.

Brendan

Quote from Scawen :

Test Patch 0.6K23 is available with many improvements!
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/88821

Wow you guys have been cranking them out lately, nice work to all!

Brendan

Happily purchased my S3 License, still think you guys are doing amazing work. I really look forward to future content. Rockingham looks fantastic as well. Still really hoping for some staged rally action, and of course Nordschleife Nürburgring.

Thanks guys for your hard work and keeping LFS going.

Quote from roadrash17 :

That sucker pumps out 320+ BHP

And one more:

Ford Crown Victoria (interceptor edition)

And I'd still pass both of those all day in my VW. Even more so if we come to a turn. :P

Brendan

My guess would be quicker- should be easier to put the power down in the corners, even with less overall lateral grip per tire, if all 4 tires are working better (instead of basically 2 like we have now) corner exit should be quite a bit faster.


But I'm just guessing.

Brendan

Quote from Electrik Kar :

So yeah, will be curious to see how it all goes. Are physics still LFS's big drawcard? Are the hardcore that hardcore that a new physics model is all they need to feel the renewel of the sim? Will the update generate enough excitement among the newest players to carry things forward? Or will it just get nasty again?

Stay tuned!

Well, for me, the Physics were the big initial draw. I didn't care too much that the tracks or cars were fictional. The community was great and I had some really good, white-knuckle races online. I liked the tracks, and the rally-x variations too, I did a lot of hotlapping as well. I also especially liked the autocorss layout feature, as there isn't a sim out there that can match that. Auto-x is a very real form of motorsport that virtually anyone with a drivers license can do. It's truly "grassroots" racing at it's best, and I am really glad that it is possible in LFS. Though I will admit, I never had the patience to do a layout myself. :P

I'm kinda on the fence about new content. I don't really think there needs to be new cars except for a couple key slots to fill, the only additional tracks that I would like to see would be a couple real ones, or nordschleife. (if it was in the game I'd probably never leave the house again!) Some Hillclimb and Point-to Point (aka rally) tracks would be exactly what the game needs though, we have enough road courses and variations of those road courses.

Since the online community of LFS has degraded, (any old-timer would agree with that) I found myself hotlapping a lot. Which brings to attention some of the minor annoyances of the physics. Instead of hotlapping on LFS, I switched to RBR and GTL, both games have their issues as well, but RBR is by far the best solo racing there is, playing LFS afterwards feels pretty bland. I like GTL for the real tracks (and some good add-on tracks) and the unique mix of cars. If you could combine RBR, LFS, and GTL together, you'd have the perfect sim.

I'll keep waiting though. I haven't gone anywhere yet.

Brendan

That really is great news. Thanks so much for the continued work, I never lost faith! I'm glad you guys are caring about the core of what made LFS what it is- the physics.

My assumption is that with 4 tires doing the work instead of 2, the cars will be a lot more stable- even the LX cars and Raceabout!

Man, I guess I gotta get busy finishing my DIY wheel/pedals/shifter now!!!

Brendan

I like multi-car classes. It lets the strengths of some cars shine in some tracks, while other tracks they won't do so well. If the setup system was a little more limited, I think that would naturally even out the classes a bit more since extreme setups to negate a car's weaknesses will no longer be an option.

It doesn't fit LFS's game model right now, but having different cars with different strengths and weaknesses would really make a difference in multi-race and multi-track championships. Obviously if people are running an online race over and over at one track they will naturally pick the fastest car.

Sorta like right now, I'm going through the Career mode on GTLegends, something I never did when I first got the game. I picked the 914 in the 70's GT challenge, a series of 6 races with 8 laps each. The first race was at Monza, and I got pretty much killed by the Corvette, Capri and Pantera since most of the track is about top-speed. But the next race at Hockenheim I pretty much cleaned them up with the 914 since it can carry more corner speed. I like racing different cars. That's part of the reason why I dont play LFS online anymore. After you filter through 90% of the servers that are drift or cruise or demolition derby, the rest are all people running GTR cars. Boring.

Brendan

Wait for the "rally pack" guys. They announced it long ago. Expect some point-to point and hillclimb style tracks. I imagine it won't happen until S3 though. For multiplayer they could do it the same way they do real rallies- staggered starts. If you catch up to someone, then it's their job to get out of your way. :P

Brendan

Quick reply: Is it perfect? Nope. But it still feels pretty good. It's pointless to compare LFS's grip to another sim- frankly, any other sim will do it a completely different way so of course there will be a lot of differences.

What I've noticed, (and I've played LFS for a LONG time now) is the interaction with longitudinal grip. That's the part that just isn't right. Lateral grip, without a lot of other influences, works pretty darn good- all of the cars keep lateral G-forces very close to what a real-life car can do. Both with slicks and road tires. But the problem arises when longitudinal grip comes into play. Coming closer to the edge of grip either under accelleration or braking throws the lateral grip completely off- in an unrealistic way. An easy example:

The UF1. Low-powered, open differential, narrow tires. Easy to compare to a lot of real life "normal-people" cars. I had at one time a 1984 VW scirocco- very similar to hp/weight ratio of the UF1 and it had narrow, low-performance tires. Drive the UF1 hard, like in an auto-x situation, and the tires just spin and spin and spin all day long. Or do a drag-race style launch with it, and it will spin the tires easily for a very long time. My Scirocco could spin the tires pretty easily but doing a "drag race" style launch, it would spin the tires through most of 1st gear but it would also accelerate pretty quickly and have full grip by the time you were ready to shift to 2nd. The Scirocco was fun to auto-x, and even in 2nd gear out of a really tight turn, the inside tire would at the most just chirp a bit under full throttle. And the suspension was unmodified so there was a lot more body roll than what the UF1 in LFS would have.

This shows up in the more powerful RWD cars as having an extreme lack of lateral grip when in reality the lateral grip is fine until you either apply braking pressure or throttle input. Even the Raceabout, which is hated by most people on here, is capable of a lot of cornering forces, but the moment you touch the throttle the car gets out of shape.

I know LFS follows the "traction circle" method (at least the last time I heard so it did) for grip levels in tires, but in reality the traction circle does not always apply- that is, many times the "circle" is not actually a circle, sometimes it's a trapezoid or a square. :P

I'll also say that I'm happy that LFS has come this far. I'm not worried either, I'm confident that the grip issue will come around eventually.

Brendan

Quote from spyxter :

In Europe we have nifty turbodiesels with a plenty of torque and only the fraction of fuel consumption of big V8's so... :P

Hear hear! Currently swapping a TDI into a VW Scirocco.

Brendan

Glad I found this! I'll give it a try in the next day or so.

IIRC, a couple years ago, the rear camber was limited to 1.5 degrees positive or negative- not sure if it was a limitation of a live rear axle or a NASCAR rule, and it may have changed since the onset of the Car of Tomorrow. From what I have observed, they use a lot of rear camber on the ovals but not a whole lot of rear camber on the road courses.

About tire compounds, they use varying compounds at each track, though Goodyear supplies the tires and the teams cannot choose what compound they will run. Makes re-creating them in a sim a bit difficult, but I would imagine they don't vary a whole lot between the major track catagories; IE, normal "cookie-cutter" speedway, super-speedway, short track, and road course. It was pretty normal to use very high pressures on the right-rear tire for the ovals and very low pressures on the left-front on the flatter tracks. I've also seen them talk about tire temperatures in the 200-degree F range at the extreme.

Of course, the oval cars are much different than the road-course cars- the oval cars have as much weight as possible on the left side. Even shifting the engine to the left side by several inches is common. I don't think the oval cars use a rear swaybar but the road course versions sometimes do. If you watch the road course races, many times the inside-front wheel will lift coming out of a sharp turn- so they must run pretty soft rear-ends even for the road courses. Like with any live-axle car, under heavy breaking and downshifting, the rear-end will tend to hop on you which means you will more than likely swap ends when entering the turn.

That's about all I know. I used to really be in to NASCAR but not as much any more. Sorry if I am re-posting previous information or if it's all stuff you already knew. I'll give your mod a try here soon and let you know how it feels. Thanks for your work though!!

Brendan

Quote from mtucker :

I'd love to play RBR's Joux Plane in LFS with an XRT or LX6 etc, would be amazing.

Yeah it would!! That route always made my palms sweat. I loved running it flat-out with the MG.

Brendan

Quote from Dajmin :

I'd still love to see point-to-point rally tracks in LFS and cars to fit.

There's not really much point having WRC-spec cars for track racing, but it'd be nice for both rallycross and any future rally tracks.

I guess that will be coming with the proposed "rallypack" that is yet to be determined. That was the main factor of me buying LFS. Though I have not heard any mention of it in a long while.

My understanding was the rallypack will have a couple rally-prepped cars, a couple of point-to-point tracks and a couple hillclimb style tracks.

I'm guessing the multi-player part will take more work than the actual track building, since there isn't a timed-interval start system yet. Frankly, I wouldn't care about multiplayer with the rallypack.

I think the last I heard the rallypack was not going to be released until S2 was done, but don't quote me on that, I'm too lazy to search.

Brendan

I also think they work the way they should, at least in the way the vehicles behave. I've driven a street/strip Camaro once, had a fully locked rear differential. When you were driving down the road normally, you didnt even notice. The only time it became evident was when you were going VERY slow around a tight turn- ie. 15 mph in a parking lot. Then, and only then would the back end 'hop' a bit and there was obvious drivetrain strain going on. For FWD, I dunno, I've never driven one with a locked diff. But in LFS, locked diffs in FWD cars usually understeer badly and will only turn once you get back on the power, and there is that "heavyness" felt in the Force Feedback, which feels right to me. The only issue is that in real life, I'm sure a FWD car with a locked diff would eat up driveshafts unless they were specially made, heavy duty units.

With Radio Controlled cars, I have locked up the front differential on my Xmod and use a very loose rear differential, as I noticed with the rear locked, the car would become very loose during cornering. We did race on a very slick surface though, and the track did not have any tight turns so this could be random behaviour compared to what everyone else is getting.

And Nascar- I had the oppurtunity to ask one of Dale Earnheardt's crew guys some questions several years ago when they had one of his cars on display at my college- and I asked about differentials. He said that on most long ovals, they used a "detroit locker" style diff, where it was locked under power but open during coasting, and on shorter ovals (a mile or less) and road courses they used a clutch-style lsd, as on short ovals, inner-rear tire wear was a concern. But that was nearly 10 years ago so the rules could have changed.

So what does all that mean for LFS? Who knows. I'd personally like to see mechanical failures implemented- as one person said, most road cars arent made to race and therefore have differentials to aid in longevity and drivability of the cars, some racing cars do it for the same reason, as many race teams in all sorts of different motorsports dont have the budget to replace a $1500 rear axle every week.

Brendan

Glad this hasnt turned into a flamewar. (yet!) Some good arguments here. I personally really like driving the RB4 a lot, I used it probably the most of any of the cars in S1 and while not as much in S2, it's a joy to drive. But it's true, it is under-tyred compared to the other cars in the class, and it would be nice to have a lower peak torque curve and a stronger mid-range. (i.e. quicker spooling turbo?) Mainly to take advantage of the AWD system. Not having a 6th gear does hurt it in S2, but none of the other cars in the class have it so it seems fair. But, the main way I was competitive in S1 with the RB4 was to have a stupid-low 1st gear and floor it off the line and get ahead early. Now in S2, it's nearly impossible to do that and still have gears that are close enough to keep the car in the powerband.

Now, about setups, I've thought of this quite a bit, and I think it would be a good idea to "lock" the setups down a bit on the road cars. Maybe have a soft, medium, and hard base setting, where the spring and shock dampening are locked down, and have adjustable swaybar and camber settings only. (well, and steering lock and tyre pressue too) Rally settings are a bit more complicated, and more adjustment should obviously be needed there.

But, I've said it before and I'll say it again, the RB4 is a poor rally car currently. It's too heavy and does not have enough power to be competitive. It is the easiest car to drive in the dirt however, but what is dissapointing is that you spend a while making a set, and your confidence level goes up and you're thinking "hey, this set is Quick!" then you go online and get beat by 5 seconds by an FXO. Oh well. :P I would really like to see with the fabled "rally pack" is a handful of rally-prepped cars- not just WRC-style but an S1600 class and maybe even a "stock" class with modified suspension. For sure twin-spring suspension, dual valving (normal and quick dampening settings) and geometry-corrected for higher ride-height settings. First, though, are proper rally tracks where the car's performance on tarmac should not determine if it wins or not... :P

Brendan

I'll add my 2 cents in. My LFS playing time has gone WAY down from what it was a year ago. My main problem is that I cannot find any decent servers online. The top 5 or 10 hits EVERY TIME are all drift servers- usually mixed in with "jump" or "stunt" servers, and the other 10 or so in the top 20 are almost always FO8/F1 Ovals. So that leaves me with like 5 servers with a ping less than 350- already off to a bad start. Then I usually bounce between these 5 servers, (most of which dont have anybody there) and either get frustrated by other players or get bored and quit. The other day I got bitched out by someone using the BF1 on Blackwood Rally because I bumped into him slightly in the dirt section (since he was going thirty-five miles per hour and I was humming along at 80)- what the hell? Last I heard, slicks dont work too well on gravel! Then on another rally server at FB, I started winning a lot of races with the FZ, so of course some asshat starts using the FXR and rams me off the track in the first turn. So I make some comment like "nice driving ****" and what does he do? Votes to kick me off the server, and EVERYONE COMPLETES THE VOTES!!!! I have not been back online since. I dont know, maybe I need to join a league or something so I can actually race online and maybe learn a few things instead of worrying about what some fool is going to do. I KNOW I didnt have nearly as many problems like this a year ago.

Brendan

It's all in the car really. If I shift my Camaro at 6000 rpms in 1st, I'm going 53 mph. :P But, going 60 mph in 5th is barely turning 1800 rpms. My VW Scirocco on the other hand, redline in 1st gear (6600 rpms) is 32 mph, in 2nd, 52 mph. And at 60 in 5th, it's buzzing along at nearly 3400 rpms. With gearing that low, I can start the VW in 2nd all day long. I usually do, unless I'm going uphill or I'm trying to blow some chump away at a stoplight. I have even started it rolling in 3rd if I'm pointing downhill. My Camaro is nearly impossible to start in any gear other than first.

With the UF, since it's a 4-speed, I usually gear 1st for the slowest turn of the track, and park 4th gear at wherever the top speed is on that track. Have to make good use of the gears that are there. On the UFR, I'll even gear 1st REALLY low, again, so I can use 1st on the slow turns of the track. With most of the other cars that have six gears, I only use 1st for starts and pits. Now for auto-x, that's a different story, and I usually use "realistic" gearing for that since many times a low 1st gear is needed, especially on tight layouts.

Brendan

Dont forget, also been proven that women tend to have better reaction times than men do. That's gotta count for something on the racetrack.

Brendan