Truly excellent posts and attitude, JeffR! :up:

Don't mind the occasional ad hominem attack - on the net, people usually type far faster than they can think rationally, which means they have to rely exclusively on preconceived notions and prejudice for the intellectual part. Happens to the best of us, I know it happened to me.

Read: Tristan, you're way off the mark.

The attached video file (xvid, zip'ed only because of forum restrictions) shows me coming out of turn one at Lime Rock Park a bit too eagerly. Sadly, I can't add an attachment to convey to you what the force feedback feels like, so you'll have to make do with my description.

FF in rF (heh) is very well done: the steering goes light at the correct times, and the rear wheels regain traction with a nice, satisfying snap (you can just notice a tiny flick* in the vid). In LFS, the steering only goes light when you lock the wheels under braking (linear grip gone), but large to extreme slip-angles still produce the same "the wheels should be pointing there!" force feedback, which is odd. The transition from grip to sliding in the lateral dimension is obviously wrong in LFS. Any improvement here would vastly improve the sim.

I find getting out of slide like this actually a bit more difficult in rF than in LFS. This may be because the FF keeps telling you where to point the wheels in LFS - or perhaps it's because I've played LFS a lot more than rF so far.

The replays in rF don't seem to have smoke or skidmarks. On the upside, you can go back and forth in time and there are basic editing controls.


----
(*) Here, I avoided the term "jerk" because some of you undoubtedly would have wanted to ask "What? You mean the driver?" (j/k)

Graphics-wise, I'm looking forward to this. One direct link. Finally the superb texture quality that is needed to replace the original "mixed bag" ones.

I've been playing rF for a while now and really like it. (I have to laugh out load every time I see somebody whining about this or that not being exactly like they wanted it.) The physics model is like a cross between older ISI engines and GPL, which means that the flaws (IMO) of the older ISI stuff are mostly gone, and the driving feel has become nice and believable. It's not revolutionary at all, but it gets the job done.

I'm sure that rF doesn't even come close to LFS or nK Pro in terms of what's actually calculated, but as a completed package, it's nicely put together - there are no annoying flaws in the physics engine at all, which is more then you can say about LFS S2 in its present alpha state.

Frankly, I don't understand why people are being so defensive around here. It sounds as if some of you are trying incredibly hard to find fault with rF no matter what. I think that approach is totally unnecessary; I think LFS will very likely be superior to rFactor in terms of physics before long and I'm very glad I bought S2 to be a part of the process in a small, tiny way. (I do wish Scawen would talk a bit more freely about the physics. E.g., I still don't know if LFS calculates tire response dynamically or not, but I digress.) Likewise, I'm glad I've got rF because it's a nice, mostly finished product.

They're both great!
:grouphug:

LOL, one person complains that the career mode is arcadish, and the other that it can be bypassed if you don't like it... :rolleyes:

I got it and I'm pretty impressed; the handling of the cars is excellent, much better than the MP demo. I think I will play this one a lot...

edit: Hm, size limit for picture attachments (my "world record" as I was the first to finish a flying lap )- I thought it would just get a thumbnail link.

Last edited by Silly, Wed 31 Aug 2005, 22:31.

Though they weren't really the first ones to make that mistake. Testing the S2 alpha demo as S2 full on the other hand, that's pretty impressively lousy! I mean, gaming journalists should be somewhat accustomed to the concepts of "demo" versus "full game" and "you have to pay/enter cd key or whatever for the full game you know".

And calling the LFS community [whatever it was he said], that's borderline dangerously foolish.

Nice to hear about the interview. :up:

Last edited by Silly, Sat 27 Aug 2005, 22:25.

I really don't care what you want to call it, but I call it a mistakenly given target. Obviously, you can simply call it 'a mistake', too, if you want.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

or what will be changed..
Is there any info??

Quote from www.liveforspeed.net :

there will be updates to physics, car models, track scenery, and refinement of features, between the Alpha and Final releases.

So basically nothing is cast in stone. I would welcome more info too (especially on the physics front), but I bet the devs are loath to give detailed target dates and stuff after xmas 04, and who would blame them?

Well I did a few hundred laps in the MP demo. I like it, especially the sound. On the downside the physics engine was not nearly good enough to keep me thrilled for long because it's just very simplified, like an old muscle car, it's fine in straight line, but that's about it.

So I'm looking forward to the full game as the new full physics engine is supposedly pretty good. I want it to be good - I have been wishing for a *moddable* sim with very good physics for a while, but so far I haven't joined in with the 'are we there yet' crowd at RSC for lack of evidence. I want to see some nice long (not gimmicky or AI-only) vids of rF.

TBH, the ASS review sounded a bit like the reviewers received a whiff of meth everytime they depressed the accelerator.

Quote from Tege :

Yes like Bob said the RAs default set is as close to real as I could get it. ... That setup that the default in LFS imitates is the setup used on the track and it's easy to drive and you can use it on the normal roads too.

It's easy to drive IRL? That is very good to know. So, given Bob's analysis that attributes very aggressive handling characteristics to the RA (wasn't that sort of a design goal?), is it safe to say that even an aggressively tuned car is much easier to drive than it is in LFS S2P?

Quote :

I'll make changes to the default set after the physics patch is ready and I have more kms on the real car.

Sounds excellent. Is Scawen using real world data to tune the physics model then?

Duration of dirt adhesion is fine, loss of grip is hard to tell if it's realistic for road tires, mostly because I think the road tires aren't convincing to begin with. It's a great feature though.

They are doing rallyX with slicks, tpa?! Wow, that's kinda cool. "Knobbly" tires in LFS when in the real world people get to use cut-up slicks...

Is Lible maybe thinking of autoX? -the kind of mistake I would like to make if I *really* had to. Beats losing car keys any day.

Oh, Bob, don't waste your time criticizing the setup ESPECIALLY if you haven't driven the result... It's well documented that even with your 'road going' setups or Niels' equally well-inpired 'real' setups, the big problem with LFS remains the tire physics in the sim!

Nothing wrong with that from a devolepment point of view though. It makes a lot of sense IMO that Scawen decided to tackle the finer points of the tire model only after suspension and dif modelling -- those can be checked against published data much more easily, but the tire model will need more tinkering. So this way round is the most time-efficient way to go about it.

But for now, it's like Stefano Casillo said:

Quote :

If one would have to come up with a sort of "ladder" to indicate what is the most important element in a sim and how big is the contribuition of that element on the overall feeling then it would look something like:

1) Tyre math model - 80%

This is THE most important element in a car simulation, remember it is the only contact with the road and the main source of every force acting on the car. The implementation could go from a sad "no tyre modeling at all", still typical in arcade games, where the car behaviour is mapped against a series of predefined curves.. like to say, if the car is going at speed X then it car rotate around its center at speed Y. This is usually refered to by the racing community as "central pivot problem". Going up in complexity there could be a 2 point (or bycicle) model, where the car is simulated and simplified into a 2 wheels veichle, where each virtual wheel is responsable for an "axle". This was common in early racing sims. Then you have the full 4 contact points with each wheel simulated separatelly and generating separate forces. From there, you can have a good or bad model, but once that's right, you've nailed 80% of your sim's general feel. In other words, let's say you come up with an amazing 5 arm multilink suspension in real time but your tyre math model sucks, then your sim will suck as well, the suspension improvement won't save a bad tyre model. This is the same for wings and every other part of the sim.

The highlighted part reminds me of when the clutch-pack dif was added to the sim and the devs said it would help with RWD handling. Maybe a bit, but it didn't save the incomplete tire model. Same with downforce.

Really great stuff.