I agree there. I have some Toyo T1S's on my MX-5 and I hardly ever brake for corners! Usually take it fairly easy on the straights and then maintain speed or even speed up for twisty sections, as that's where all the fun is for me. I do have a blast now and then on straight bits where it's safe to do so, but usually cruise along at 50-60mph and then have my fun in the corners. My friend and I do a nice half hour run of twisty roads now and then, and last time we counted, I think I only used the brakes 3 times.
Btw, my next set of tyres will definitely be of the same variety as yours Tristan...minimum grip for maximum fun. That's what I had before the Toyos and although they are fun, I think I enjoy playing around at the limit at slightly more sane speeds. Even with crappy tyres the Miata has more than enough grip. Like you mentioned Dennis, even your scion was too fast to be driven flat out on the street... Makes me want a Lotus/Westfield 11 Lots of low speed fun to be had in one of those....
Nice video. The high-contrast look that you get from filming the screen versus doing a direct video capture makes the scene look more realistic, I think. I might go back and start playing around with the contrast settings in my video card driver to see how it looks in-game.
You're probably already aware of this but you can save replays of your sessions to file and play them back whenever you want. This means that you don't have to worry about filming yourself in real-time as you can always go back and replay any interesting moments you want to capture on your video cam later.
Glad you're enjoying the game. Don't be shy, come online. That's where all the fun is!
i figured there's a way to save the playback but haven't looked for it so no at this point i don't know how. i really haven't spent much time with lfs yet - just trying to see what it's about. haven't touched setups or any of that stuff. to me doing the videotape was the easiest because i already have the whole process down. i'm sure after learning lfs better i'll be able to do more with it. so far i've been trying to figure out if it's worth the effort and the verdict is a definite YES! but, again, i have to juggle many priorities....
Press 2 and it asks you for a name for the replay. You can chose to watch it under replays on the main menu screen or open it from your spr/mpr folder.
I tried to do this, for the more realistic spread of brightness and colour (I'd prefer some clipping and some compression rather than pure compression) but nvidia removed the possibility of individual game colour profiles a while back
When composing files for a movie I found it all looked much better with the levels tweaked substantially. I guess an in game contrast option, or hd lighting, would be the optimum solution
Press V while watching a replay - this will cycle through the views as it does while racing.
EDIT: By the way, you can also get some telemetry out of LFS - while watching a single player replay press escape and click on "Output lap data", then let the replay run until the end of the next lap (ie. the telemetry is for the lap after the lap you are watching when you select "output lap data"). Then you can analyse this data by opening the .raf file created in [LFSfolder]\data\raf\ using f1prefview. You can also do this with replays downloaded from LFSworld and compare your pace to the WR pace.
If you press the "2" button on you keyboard you can save the last Replay. While watching a Replay you can press "V" to change views and then you also get the in-car view one.
You said that you still have some problems feeling when the car breaks out, especially with rear wheel drive cars. You have to compensate the lack of G-Forces with the Sound and the Vision, and when you didnt do much Sim Racing before it takes some time to get used to that.
I'm sure with more experience you will see and hear when the car is about to break out, for the beginning you might want to drive threw critical corners in a gear higher to prevent any Wheelspin when accelerating out of a corner. Don't hesitate asking whatever questions you have about LFS and Sim Racing in general.
To what Race Tracks did you take your DP1 car on by the way?
i spent some time playing with FZ50GTR on south city long track. definitely have a much harder time with RWD than FWD for the moment. was able to get in a couple 1:46 laps (whenever i could complete a lap without crashing, which still isn't very often ) but it's a handful. the car in the sim does throttle-steer just like in rl so it's a matter of me getting used to it. again it's proving educational because it's making me closely examine what i do, when and why. getting the FSAE car under 2:00 took some doing too. cool stuff. i love the variety of cars and tracks in LFS, and i haven't even tried rallycross yet. some hillclimbs would be really cool!
the dp1 has only run on a local kart track and PIR (http://www.portlandraceway.com). looking forward to doing more testing soon, now that track season is starting back up again here
Doing cone slalom and powersliding will teach feel of car. I started practising so that I took some spot at bottom of wind screen and checked from there slide was going to end or not etc. that helped to iron sim feel in pretty well.
Best is to slide slalom cones there will be slide grip slide and you will learn to rely to sound and image, don't trust force feedback, at least with dfp it comes behind, I hear that with G25 it is much better, but I believe when I have tested in person, until then I recommend to not to trust force feedback
One trick is then to not catch slide completely with wheel, but keep it sliding and let slide slowly die away, burns tires but it is less likely that car meets wall.
Of course everyone has their own methods, one just have to find what suits to himself.
my goal is to still keep it relevant to rl. based on what i've seen so far the sim has very accurate car behavior so what i'm trying to do is figure out which clues i should use so that it helps my rl driving rather than just learning to drive the sim. at this point i think that's very doable. i believe the sim could be a useful training tool for drivers in the off-season or just between track days, especially as far as predicting what the car will do goes. we'll see.
Give the LX4 a spin, that's probably the most entertaining car to throttle-steer. It does take some practice and skill though. Here's a great bunch of LX4 setups I've made.
There are always alot of different opinions for Sim Racing-beginners but I would recommend to take an easy car for the moment and learn to drive stable and consistant around easy tracks (for example Blackwood GP). Take your time, do not push the car, and try to get 10-20 laps in without crashing or spinning, good laptimes will come later.
By the way there are alot of real drivers who do regularly Sim Racing for practise and preparations for the next Track. Jaques Villeneuve only knew the Australian Track from a Computer Sim, and when he came to F1 as a Rookie in his first Race he drove on the Pole immediately, he never was at the track before or in a F1 car, he only knew the Track from the Sim.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. even has his own NASCAR Sim Racing league where he regularly drives, Montoya, Ryan Newman, Carl Edwards, there are alot of examples for real Racers using Sims on a regular bases for practise.
Just last year when Villeneuve was driving in a BMW M5 around the Nürburgring Nordschleife he said during the drive that he feels a little uncomfortable driving the last part of the track, because from the Videogame when he is doing Hotlapping he always restarts the lap when he makes a mistake, therefore he knows the first parts of the Track very good , but he doesnt see the last part of the track that often :-) Anyone using GPL knows exactly what he means
By the way, you should also consider buying NASCAR Racing 2003 from Papyrus/Vivendi, it is another excellent Simulation just like LFS, and you can drive the Portland Track in that Sim.
LFS has taught me quite a lot about vehicle dynamics over the years. It made the transision to a light RWD miata from a pickup a non issue. I was throttle steering the little thing on the first autox practice I attended like I had been doing it all my life.
I've just tried this and I think its the single best thing I've downloaded for LFS yet.. One of the main problems I've had is locking the wheels up under braking and not had a clue it had happened until I realised I wasn't going to make the corner.
DP, I hope LFS is still enjoyable for you, while preparing everything for the current track season.
I was wondering if you have had a go in either of the LX cars. If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on them, especially compared to your megabusa. From watching your track videos of the car, the megabusa 'appears' to be less razor edge balancing act than it sometimes is in LFS. Granted, setup/reality-vs-reset-mentality/"seat-of-the-pants"/etc. obviously plays a large part.
[ASIDE] Caterhams/Lotus 7's/Westfields have been a dream car of mine for years, in fact they were the main factor in my purchasing LFS several years ago. The power/weight ratios and simplicity of design are hugely appealing to me.
Despite my ~6'2" height, I still continue to research the various clone makers, with goals of building one someday (Caterham's proportionaly larger SV version would be pretty outrageously expensive to import and build). [/ASIDE]
If you have a spare moment, check out http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=85. It's the "Post your LFS rig" Thread, where users share what pc and racing hardware they use. Including a pic is always nice. For you:
Dell Dimension XXXX with XXX P4, XXX RAM, XXXX Video Card
Tinie-weenie speakers
G25
and a Big Honkin' Screen (~47" LCD?)
yes, i think LFS will be vey useful. my current strategy is to get familiar with a couple cars and tracks and get to a 'plateu' in terms of laptimes, then download a couple of the world record replays and see where the gap in lap times comes from. certainly something to be learned there. for example, on city long track in UF GTR i'm pretty much stuck at 1:53 flat for now but the record is 1:38 i think. so my guess is that it's not just a matter of refining a few points here or there but a fairly fundamental difference in approach. i haven't looked at the wr replay yet but once i do it will be interesting to see what i discover.
so far UF GTR is probably my favorite car of the bunch, it feels a lot like a real-life mini. i've only tried the LXs briefly, without touching the setups, and my initial impression is that the stock suspension setups are quite soft which makes them pretty hard to control. but again this is only an initial impression without much analysis so take it as such. the megabusa had 'race suspension' from westfield - adjustable nitron shocks and fairly heavy springs (not sure of the rates i'm ashamed to admit). i had it set up with a lot of rebound damping so it was very planted, kind of felt like a 'wet rag' in a way - in a good way, that is. no tendency to bounce or overshoot the inputs, just does what you tell it to and no more. it had a fair bit of toe out at the front (2mm total?) and about 1mm per side toe in at the rear. also a/r bars at both ends. total weight was 1050 lbs with half tank of fuel (no driver). it was a very quick car. turbulence would get NASTY above 110 mph though, seriously knocked my helmet around. the guy who bought is is 6'2" and it was a challenge to get him to fit. but he did. if you build a kit you could make some mods to ensure you fit in it. there is an outfit in BC, canada, that puts hayabusa motors in caterhams with large frame. i think the cost is around $50K-ish but that may have changed since i last looked.
I can confidently say that this is still an issue of car/track knowledge and not yet being accustomed to LFS. Setup changes could help you get faster if they eliminate a certain trait that absolutely kills your speed, but generally speaking you're still too far away from a laptime where setup analysis would yield usable results. For example, I just tried my first ever two laps on SO4/UFR with the default hard track setup, and I managed a 1:44 on my first flying lap - driving one handed with the G25 wheel to the left of my keyboard, that is
It just takes some time till you learn to "think LFS". Because no matter how you look at it, racing LFS is still vastly different from the real thing - being fast in LFS has not all that much to do with being fast in real racing.
Anyhow, even if you reach a real barrier, at the current state of development I'd be wary of analysing LFS' WR setups. Most of them exploit physics inaccuracies or the fact that damage is far from being finished in LFS. I very much doubt fast setups in real life all run on the softest tyres possible with a locked differential.
definitely (on all counts), and therein lies the challenge in analysis - to separate what's LFS-specific and what is generally applicable. this is the kind of stuff i really enjoy figuring out just like in looking at RL datalogs, one has to keep in mind the context and limitations in order to make the data useful. in some ways i may not want to get TOO good at LFS if it means acquiring habits that are counter-productive in RL. whether that's actually a real concern or an imagined one it's too early for me to tell, but i look forward to learning more.
also of note that hotlapping (which is mostly what i do) is quite different from racing. in the former you essentially have the track to yourself and can make full use of it, whereas in racing there is interaction with other racers, a lot of strategy and a battle of will to some degree there are skills that are common to both but i think overall the two endeavours are different enough as to be treated separately. perhaps it's a personality trait but my preference is for hotlaps, so far - both in RL and in sim. that may change... or not.
DP, slightly off the LFS topic, are you planning on doing any autocrossing or hillclimbs as part of DP1 development? It obviously seems secondary to track testing, but these would be the logical places where the production DP1 could be used in competition.
both a/x and hillclimb would be great competition venues for the car once it's done (h/c especially, what with power/weight and traction), but as development tools they are far from ideal. you get very little tracktime per event and only see the course a couple times so a huge portion of performance is determined by driver's ability to quickly figure out the course and navigate it. track testing on the other hand is repeatable and provides a lot of seat time. the track becomes a non-factor because it's a given and so the testing can focus on how the car behaves. it is also easy to experiment with different lines/strategies from one lap to the next and immediately see the results in datalogs.
) but it's a handful. the car in the sim does throttle-steer just like in rl so it's a matter of me getting used to it. again it's proving educational because it's making me closely examine what i do, when and why. getting the FSAE car under 2:00 took some doing too. cool stuff. i love the variety of cars and tracks in LFS, and i haven't even tried rallycross yet. some hillclimbs would be really cool!