1
2Also remember that F1 tires have grooves that cut the contact patch area almost in half. The FOX and FO8 have slicks that should give better low-speed grip.
I think the BF1 currently has plenty of grip. You can get 2.0gs in low-speed corners and up to 5gs in fast corners.
Edit: I checked some data again and these lateral accel numbers seem about perfect.
-1
I think the BF1 currently has plenty of grip. You can get 2.0gs in low-speed corners and up to 5gs in fast corners.
Edit: I checked some data again and these lateral accel numbers seem about perfect.
-1
Last edited by petrichor, .
What does this question have to do with tire data? Do you *want* softer tires or not? It's a matter of opinion. Not all racing tires are hard as bricks.
C'mon, peanut gallery, give me some helpful comments.
Neither of you has addressed my post. When even the softest tire can last *two* full fuel runs in most cars, that is crazy. What is the point of having an R4 tire, then?
Yes and yes. I've done plenty of 60+ lap races on R2s in the BF1. The car runs out of fuel long before the tires give up the ghost. And yes I'm running competitive times.
Modern tires can be as hard as you want, but spec racing series seem to prefer softer tires because it requires more pitting that jumbles up the running order. Notice that the F1 cars haven't even been able to run the softest compound much this year because they are wearing too quickly.
Sorry, mods, I clicked on the wrong forum. Can this be moved to Improvement Suggestions?
Thanks!
Thanks!
Tires are too durable.
Does anyone else agree that the tires are too durable in this game? The softest tires, which IMO should be shot after a few hotlaps, will last a moderately long race distance. They even get better with wear because of the cooling/heating effects.
I'd like to see a soft tire that will give R1-R2 levels of grip but wear down much more rapidly. I'd like to see people actually using R4 tires in long races. I never see them used for anything right now. And running the soft tires never puts you at risk of a blowout. You basically have to do a burnout for 30 sec to get a blowout.
Also, the tire models have high peak slip angles, which would further accelerate tire wear.
Anyway, making the tires wear more seems like an easy change to make and should not affect any other parts of the physics and would add another strategic dimension to longer races.
I'd like to see a soft tire that will give R1-R2 levels of grip but wear down much more rapidly. I'd like to see people actually using R4 tires in long races. I never see them used for anything right now. And running the soft tires never puts you at risk of a blowout. You basically have to do a burnout for 30 sec to get a blowout.
Also, the tire models have high peak slip angles, which would further accelerate tire wear.
Anyway, making the tires wear more seems like an easy change to make and should not affect any other parts of the physics and would add another strategic dimension to longer races.
Two race summaries now and still no mention of OMC? 
We may not be German, but we are second in the championship.
We may not be German, but we are second in the championship.Here's my attempt at the BF1. I tried to match the '07 Ferrari engine note, since it is the cleanest and probably the easiest to match. The other engines have a lot more of a metallic ring to them that I can't reproduce with the allowed settings.
Decreasing parallel steer a bit will help midcorner understeer. Midcorner is usually the point where the front wheels are turned the most, and decreasing parallel steer will decrease front tire scrubbing and give you less understeer.
Probably 10-20% will be plenty, but I haven't driven your set yet and can't for another week (don't have my LFS computer).
Probably 10-20% will be plenty, but I haven't driven your set yet and can't for another week (don't have my LFS computer).
I feel sorry for them running those Bridgestones. The cars are so twitchy it looks like an ISI sim. 
Whas is the front ARB bug? That would explain why I see a lot of sets with ARB rates that are 3x as high as the front spring rates.
Yes, ride height does need to be adjusted to handle curbs, if necessary. LFS has tons of evil curbs where there is a sharp edge on one side or the curb is really high. If you catch the car body on those you go airborne. Cool, but not fast.
I think the setup guides out there do a nice job of explaining brakes, and it takes a lot of experience before a racer can use brakes as a turn-in aid. It also takes a good setup to withstand the slight entry oversteer without wearing out the rear tires or completely spinning out. Strangely enough, that is another reason to forgo toe out, since the rear brake bias will turn the car faster (in my opinion) than toe out, and toe out will just make the car twitchy while you're trying to whip it into the corner with the brakes. I think the tight turns on Westhill are a good example of where this technique is fast.
Yes, ride height does need to be adjusted to handle curbs, if necessary. LFS has tons of evil curbs where there is a sharp edge on one side or the curb is really high. If you catch the car body on those you go airborne. Cool, but not fast.
I think the setup guides out there do a nice job of explaining brakes, and it takes a lot of experience before a racer can use brakes as a turn-in aid. It also takes a good setup to withstand the slight entry oversteer without wearing out the rear tires or completely spinning out. Strangely enough, that is another reason to forgo toe out, since the rear brake bias will turn the car faster (in my opinion) than toe out, and toe out will just make the car twitchy while you're trying to whip it into the corner with the brakes. I think the tight turns on Westhill are a good example of where this technique is fast.
How do you know that the setups listed are the actual setups used? Just curious.
I suspect that the weird settings on some inferno sets are compensating for quirks in the driver's style. In any case, I'm not here to question WR sets, since they obviously found out how to make the sim cars fast, but to give beginners and the doomed and lost a baseline for setups, so that they can narrow down possible settings are start making progress. Looking at WR sets to learn how to setup a race car is like looking at Picasso to learn how to draw a stick figure.
I suspect that the weird settings on some inferno sets are compensating for quirks in the driver's style. In any case, I'm not here to question WR sets, since they obviously found out how to make the sim cars fast, but to give beginners and the doomed and lost a baseline for setups, so that they can narrow down possible settings are start making progress. Looking at WR sets to learn how to setup a race car is like looking at Picasso to learn how to draw a stick figure.
General principles for good setups
I keep seeing sets that I download from inferno and that other people give me that have weird settings, so I thought I'd make a list of often overlooked things that good sets should have, in my opinion. I'm not a famous setup maker, but I get rave reviews from my sets that I give people. I'm also a PhD astrophysicist, so I have some physics knowledge.
1. Ride heights should be high enough to not bottom out on the straights. Cars with downforce will be pushed down on the fast sections and will actually bottom out before you hear the scraping sound. The only way to know your bottoming out is to notice a top speed decrease. Set your ride height high then lower it until you start to lose speed on the straights, then raise it back up to just above that.
2. Ride heights should usually be lower in the front than in the back. For now, using a lower ride height on the heavier end is a good way to get grip, but when LFS starts including ground-effect aero, we will need the front lower than the rear to get that downforce. So make your sets realistic now, and the physics patch that fixes that will reward you.
2. Front toe-out is highly overrated. Toe out in fast sweeping corners will scrub off speed, and since LFS has a parallel steer setting, always use that not quite realistic, but very effective). Use 100% parallel steer unless you are understeery in tight corners, in which case you decrease it until you have a good balance. In general, parallel wheels are a good compromise between fast corners and slow corners. Also front toe-out heats the inner tire edges and prevents you from running higher camber, which can hurt front grip.
3. Choose soft tires and high pressures over hard tires and low pressures. At most tracks, the softest slicks will last an entire fuel stint as long as they have high pressures. Once the tires start to wear they will cool down so don't worry about a bit of overheating. If you have massive overheating, like red everywhere, then switch to a harder compound. Brown patches in the F9 display are OK, but more than a few laps of red is bad.
4. The distance between gear ratios should decrease as you go to higher gears. For example, so if you set 6th and 5th to be 1.00 and 1.05, respectively, then 4th-1st should be 1.15, 1.35, 1.75, 2.55, respectively. Notice that the gears go up by 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8. The difference is being doubled each time. In a perfect world, you'd set the ratios with a computer and an engine dyno graph, but this gets you close. You can then tweak the ratios to avoid upshifting 20 ft before your braking zone and such.
5. Maximum downforce is usually not the fastest. Since most LFS tracks have long straights, you lose a lot of time in a high drag, high downforce configuration. Plus, more downforce causes more tire wear and heating and can sometimes keep you from running softer tires.
6. Spring rates should be roughly proportional to the percentage of weight on each wheel. If you want neutral handling over bumps and curbs, your suspension frequency needs to be similar on the front and back. This usually means that the end with more weight needs stiffer springs, since the frequency is proportional to the square root of the spring rate divided by the mass on the wheel. This is modified a bit by the suspension geometry and the lever arm effect, but for most cars this works fine. So a GTR car with a 40/60 front/rear distribution should start with 120 kN/m springs on the rear and 80 kN/m springs on the front as a baseline. Then tweak to remedy handling problems.
7. Front and rear downforce should have similar levels, with slightly more on the rear. If you car is neutrally balanced at low speeds, then you should keep it that way at high speeds. This means having the downforce on each end stay equal. I often see too much rear wing, which makes cars massively understeery at high speeds. Also equal downforce levels keep the ride height where you want it. At little excess rear downforce is good for stability, since cars are inherently unstable at high speeds, but don't overdo it. For most cars, the rear wing slider should never be equal to or further right than the front wing slider.
Let the discussion begin ...
1. Ride heights should be high enough to not bottom out on the straights. Cars with downforce will be pushed down on the fast sections and will actually bottom out before you hear the scraping sound. The only way to know your bottoming out is to notice a top speed decrease. Set your ride height high then lower it until you start to lose speed on the straights, then raise it back up to just above that.
2. Ride heights should usually be lower in the front than in the back. For now, using a lower ride height on the heavier end is a good way to get grip, but when LFS starts including ground-effect aero, we will need the front lower than the rear to get that downforce. So make your sets realistic now, and the physics patch that fixes that will reward you.
2. Front toe-out is highly overrated. Toe out in fast sweeping corners will scrub off speed, and since LFS has a parallel steer setting, always use that not quite realistic, but very effective). Use 100% parallel steer unless you are understeery in tight corners, in which case you decrease it until you have a good balance. In general, parallel wheels are a good compromise between fast corners and slow corners. Also front toe-out heats the inner tire edges and prevents you from running higher camber, which can hurt front grip.
3. Choose soft tires and high pressures over hard tires and low pressures. At most tracks, the softest slicks will last an entire fuel stint as long as they have high pressures. Once the tires start to wear they will cool down so don't worry about a bit of overheating. If you have massive overheating, like red everywhere, then switch to a harder compound. Brown patches in the F9 display are OK, but more than a few laps of red is bad.
4. The distance between gear ratios should decrease as you go to higher gears. For example, so if you set 6th and 5th to be 1.00 and 1.05, respectively, then 4th-1st should be 1.15, 1.35, 1.75, 2.55, respectively. Notice that the gears go up by 0.05, 0.1, 0.2, 0.4, and 0.8. The difference is being doubled each time. In a perfect world, you'd set the ratios with a computer and an engine dyno graph, but this gets you close. You can then tweak the ratios to avoid upshifting 20 ft before your braking zone and such.
5. Maximum downforce is usually not the fastest. Since most LFS tracks have long straights, you lose a lot of time in a high drag, high downforce configuration. Plus, more downforce causes more tire wear and heating and can sometimes keep you from running softer tires.
6. Spring rates should be roughly proportional to the percentage of weight on each wheel. If you want neutral handling over bumps and curbs, your suspension frequency needs to be similar on the front and back. This usually means that the end with more weight needs stiffer springs, since the frequency is proportional to the square root of the spring rate divided by the mass on the wheel. This is modified a bit by the suspension geometry and the lever arm effect, but for most cars this works fine. So a GTR car with a 40/60 front/rear distribution should start with 120 kN/m springs on the rear and 80 kN/m springs on the front as a baseline. Then tweak to remedy handling problems.
7. Front and rear downforce should have similar levels, with slightly more on the rear. If you car is neutrally balanced at low speeds, then you should keep it that way at high speeds. This means having the downforce on each end stay equal. I often see too much rear wing, which makes cars massively understeery at high speeds. Also equal downforce levels keep the ride height where you want it. At little excess rear downforce is good for stability, since cars are inherently unstable at high speeds, but don't overdo it. For most cars, the rear wing slider should never be equal to or further right than the front wing slider.
Let the discussion begin ...
Last edited by petrichor, .
UF1 = "Ugly F1" right? Or is it "Ultimate F1"?
FWIW, I love the little cars, too. Guess I'm just another LFS fanboi.
Or is it "Ultimate F1"?FWIW, I love the little cars, too. Guess I'm just another LFS fanboi.
I love the BF1 because I like racing against the best. If you can find a group of people who are fast in it, you will have awesome and very demanding races. This does require joining a league, though.
At some point you have a realization that it can do so much more than you've been expecting from it, and then you're fast. New racers need to find this limit *and* have a good setup, or they'll be wrecking. A bad BF1 setup is really bad, since things get fubar so fast. My advice to newbies in the BF1 is to use the default setup until you know exactly what you don't like about it, because the default set can get you very close to the WR without creating a wreck fest, while the hotlap setups are too unstable for multiplayer racing.
At some point you have a realization that it can do so much more than you've been expecting from it, and then you're fast. New racers need to find this limit *and* have a good setup, or they'll be wrecking. A bad BF1 setup is really bad, since things get fubar so fast. My advice to newbies in the BF1 is to use the default setup until you know exactly what you don't like about it, because the default set can get you very close to the WR without creating a wreck fest, while the hotlap setups are too unstable for multiplayer racing.
So that seems to require much higher roll stiffness than I'd like on fast tracks like WE, because the differences in camber characteristics cause a balance change between the slow and fast corners.
This is all stemming from a problem I'm having in keeping the inner tire edges cool while running the camber I want. The suspension travel on WE is so large that you get ginormous cambers in the fast corners like T1-4, thus heating the inside edges a lot. If you reduce static camber to compensate, you're losing a lot of grip in the slow important corners, like the final hairpin. It looks like stiffer springs and ARBs are doing the trick because they are keeping the camber sane everywhere.
This is all stemming from a problem I'm having in keeping the inner tire edges cool while running the camber I want. The suspension travel on WE is so large that you get ginormous cambers in the fast corners like T1-4, thus heating the inside edges a lot. If you reduce static camber to compensate, you're losing a lot of grip in the slow important corners, like the final hairpin. It looks like stiffer springs and ARBs are doing the trick because they are keeping the camber sane everywhere.
If you're happy with the car's balance, decrease the right-side pressures. Lower pressure will keep them at the same temps as the left-side tires while taking less load. This is the standard fix for setups at tracks that favor one side. In general, lower pressures lead to increased temps and wear and better mechanical grip at low speeds.
BF1 camber gain
I've noticed using f1perfview that the rear suspension on my BF1 setups doesn't gain camber with lateral tire loading as quickly as the front does (plot lateral tire force vs. camber gain). If you look at the suspension on the setup screen, the front suspension has shorter upper arms, while the rear suspension has shorter lower arms. I suspect this is the cause. Do you guys concur? Could it be something else?
I don't have much to add except there is a large luck component in hotlapping and a small luck component in long races when doing race pace.
I think a good measure of driver skill is the variance in laptimes over a long race. Someone who puts in very fast times (but not the fastest) that are very consistent is likely a better driver with a worse setup than a driver who does the fastest lap but has very unconsistent laps. To be consistent you need reference points for everything, very similar controller movement, and a good feel for how the car changes as it burns off fuel and wears down tires. Consistency also builds trust from the racers next to you, leading to close and clean racing.
Now too much consistency is also bad because you're not still trying to improve, so you should still be improving your bad corners during a long race. And a consistent driver better be running among the fastest, or they just aren't trying hard enough.
I think a good measure of driver skill is the variance in laptimes over a long race. Someone who puts in very fast times (but not the fastest) that are very consistent is likely a better driver with a worse setup than a driver who does the fastest lap but has very unconsistent laps. To be consistent you need reference points for everything, very similar controller movement, and a good feel for how the car changes as it burns off fuel and wears down tires. Consistency also builds trust from the racers next to you, leading to close and clean racing.
Now too much consistency is also bad because you're not still trying to improve, so you should still be improving your bad corners during a long race. And a consistent driver better be running among the fastest, or they just aren't trying hard enough.
I've never found drifting/sliding to be faster in LFS, and it shouldn't be in real life. The tires provide maximum grip with a certain amount of slippage of the contact patch, and when you go past this grip declines making cornering speeds slower. You may have an understeery setup that needs the slide to get pointed correctly and are gaining time there.
You can test this on a skidpad or AutoX course. Tweak a setup until it is neutral then accelerate while turning. Then hit F9 and watch the lateral G display at the bottom. It will rise until you break loose. You'll be surprised how much grip you can actually get without breaking loose. I always watch the F9 G display when learning a new track. I know the capability of the cars, and that helps me maximize my driving without the seat-of-the-pants feel.
Sorry, forgot to say I was using the BF1. I gave my AI probably 50 laps to train.
My AI never avoid me. Maybe I'm just an easy target.
Exercise to learn how to overtake cleanly
So I decided to train my AI on BLGP Reversed, one of the worst tracks in the game for overtaking IMO, since most braking zones are on curves. Once the AI got to a decent time (~1:00), the game was on! I start last on the grid and try to overtake all 11 of them in a 10-lap race.
The AI of course don't care one whit about you, so you have to overtake in tricky braking zones without disturbing the AI's line. Brake too early and they ram your rear; brake too late and you slide wide and they bump you into the dirt. Makes great practice IMO for racing on servers with aggressive and/or inexperienced drivers.
Maybe you disagree, but hey I found a use for the AI, so
.
The AI of course don't care one whit about you, so you have to overtake in tricky braking zones without disturbing the AI's line. Brake too early and they ram your rear; brake too late and you slide wide and they bump you into the dirt. Makes great practice IMO for racing on servers with aggressive and/or inexperienced drivers.
Maybe you disagree, but hey I found a use for the AI, so
.I drive the BF1 whenever a non-oval server is running and have found plenty of clean racers out there. Lag is certainly an issue, but keeping your distance until a planned passing maneuver works fine. You can't ride the tail of a BF1 and not hit it at some point when the driver ahead brakes 10 ft earlier than last lap. I find that BF1 drivers, once they can control the beast, are the most respectful and mature ones out there IME.
Oh, and I've had a BF1 race so close that I was only able to pass during a pit stop. Now that's real fun.
Oh, and I've had a BF1 race so close that I was only able to pass during a pit stop.
Now that's real fun.I didn't say "just tweak" -- I said "tweak." Go learn something about punctuation and quotations.
My point is that it is close to the RA design. And, yes, I do know about 3-d modelling, but I don't know how LFS does it. Changing the model could be as simple as adding and subtracting vertices and moving a few things around.
But I can already see that this car will never make it because the LFS community has too many quacks who think that EVs are worse than combustion vehicles or who don't care about the environment.
They have an FAQ here: http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/faqs.php
The batteries are supposed to be recycleable and the equivalent efficiency is explained in detail in their whitepaper:
http://www.teslamotors.com/med ... 1stCenturyElectricCar.pdf
The top speed isn't much different than the other LFS road cars.
They also have a Solar Option, where you pay for solar-generated electricity to be fed into the power grid by a third party, thus offsetting the power your roadster uses.
Edit: Oh, the price is rumored to be around $100k.
The batteries are supposed to be recycleable and the equivalent efficiency is explained in detail in their whitepaper:
http://www.teslamotors.com/med ... 1stCenturyElectricCar.pdf
The top speed isn't much different than the other LFS road cars.
They also have a Solar Option, where you pay for solar-generated electricity to be fed into the power grid by a third party, thus offsetting the power your roadster uses.
Edit: Oh, the price is rumored to be around $100k.
I forgot to add: only two forward gears. Could make for some interesting racing. No fuel strategies, for one thing.
Could make for some interesting racing. No fuel strategies, for one thing.1
2FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG