Even though this thread is quite old, I'm going to bump it. I was playing LFS the other day and there was a wreck ahead of me. Cars were sliding sideways but there was virtually no smoke at all from the locked tires. This really detracted from the immersion of the game because instead of thinking "where can I cleanly get through" I was thinking "why can I see so well"?
I think three things need to be addressed:
1) The tires need to produce a LOT more smoke, when under the proper conditions. When a car locks up coming into the corner, smoke should be pouring off the tire, as it does in real life.
2) The smoke needs to stay around a lot longer. Even with wind turned off, smoke disappears after a few seconds. In real life tire smoke hangs around, even with cars driving through it at over 100mph, and even if it's fairly windy.
3) The behavior needs changed so that smoke is not produced when it shouldn't be. For instance, if I lock my tire going into a corner, every time that section of tire touches the ground a small puff of smoke comes off. It needs to be coded so that if the tire is turning at the same (or very nearly the same) speed as the pavement is going underneath, no smoke is generated.
I think it's important to address the last issue first, since otherwise you'll get a lot of smoke when you should have none (where as right now you get a little smoke when you should have none, and a little smoke when you should have a lot).