why not including a simulation of ground effect?, the GTRs an Formulas would use it, am i wrong?

That's what the undertray uses, except that in its current form, it's not affected by ride height.

You're kidding right? It IS affected by ride height, just in the wrong direction....

Quote from Nick_ll :

You're kidding right? It IS affected by ride height, just in the wrong direction....

Change ride height, then go to the Downforces section and see if anything changed...

I was making reference to the front ride height bug.....

Quote from Nick_ll :

I was making reference to the front ride height bug.....

I believe the bug you're talking about has nothing to do with ground effect, which is NOT simulated in LFS.

In LFS, if the car is tilted backwards, downforce pushes the car slightly forwards instead of directly downwads like it should. At least that's the explanation I've heard on the forums.

Well, Forbin talked about the undertray and the resulting ground effect, which is indeed not affected by rideheight. And yes, there is the front rideheight bug, but I wouldn't call it "in the wrong direction". It's a bug caused by simplification, not because of any miscalculations / logic errors.

Quote from Colin_Chapman :

why not including a simulation of ground effect?, the GTRs an Formulas would use it, am i wrong?

Colin Chapman requesting for ground effects simulation...hehe
Didn't he 'discover' ground effects ?! That Lotus 78 if i remember right ?

LOL no - pilots knew about it long before Chapman knew of it. But Chapman put it to use on racing cars first.

The ground effects caused by a seal around a car are no longer aloud, it is only the diffuser and shape inside the sidepod as well as other details such as radiators mounted to create a venturi effect.

Ground effect is great for creating downforce and in reality is not affected so much by slipstreaming another car as the wings are. Acutally there's another problem with it in lfs, but anyway, what I'm really posting to say is that I agree that ground effect really needs to be sorted out by S3 because it'd make the GTR class cars much more interesting. Also the ground effect disapears altogether when the bottom of the car touches the ground, so all those with very low setups (that scrape sometimes scrape the ground) be warned when they fix the aero bugs and problems.

None of the LFS era cars will have full ground effects, they were ruled out in the early 90s due to the danger of cars bottoming out, they now have to run with an undertray designed to keep a large surface of the chassis from touching the track. The ride height has also been bumped up reducing the amount of ground effects, for them to be effective there has to be an almost non-existant space between the road and the car, now they run with about 40mm of ride height, and I don't believe anyone has found a way of running trick suspension which lowers at speed since the 80s.

Just think, 956s round the 'ring, really bottoming out must have been one hell of a ride

EDIT: just thought it probably would be possible to set the FOX/FO8 up with ground effects setups even though it's not simulated, to make it realistic the minimum ride height will have to be increased.

Ok let's not call it ground effect then if that's not what it is.

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/diffuser.htm

Quote from Nick_ll :

Ok let's not call it ground effect then if that's not what it is.

http://www.mulsannescorner.com/diffuser.htm

I never meant to say that the diffuser/undertray did not create a ground effect of course they do. It's just that current ride height regulations make it impossible to gain the true ground effects that were around in the 70/80s.

I'll be happy when running a high nose setup around the oval makes the car backflip. Don't think I've ever seen that on any of the NASCAR games, so would be a racesim first.

Quote from ajp71 :

I never meant to say that the diffuser/undertray did not create a ground effect of course they do. It's just that current ride height regulations make it impossible to gain the true ground effects that were around in the 70/80s.

You are reffering mainly to F1 here though right? You seem to be talking about the ban on ground effects in F1. They now run a plank underside in F1 as per the regs, but not all race cars run a plank. Sideskirts were originally designed to aid ground effect downforce and similar devices still exist on some race cars, though not in F1.

Ok so we don't have sideskirts in LFS, but that everyone noticed already I believe....so the real question is: do the diffusers/flat bottoms generate any downforce in LFS, and if so: are they doing it properly. Cause I know for a fact that the graphical representation of the GTR cars, the way the diffusers are modeled in 3D on them wouldn't work. Of course the graphics are not necessarily following the physics, so do they work?

@Bob: I'll gladly prove you wrong here. In F1C I did manage to flip a LMP, more than once, always on the same spot of the track. So the ISI engine can do it.

Quote from Nick_ll :

Ok so we don't have sideskirts in LFS, but that everyone noticed already I believe....so the real question is: do the diffusers/flat bottoms generate any downforce in LFS,

yes.

Quote :

and if so: are they doing it properly.

no.

the downforce of the whole underbody is represented by one force, that acts on the car's COG - it is visible in forces view in-game

the underbody downforce currently varies only with speed... to make it more realistic, it should also increase when decreasing ride height...
..and it should be at least separated to two forces, front and rear...

Or have the force able to move forwards and backwards along the length of the car to simulate the center of pressure - even better than having the downforce split into two arbitrary values.

Quote from Gunn :

You are reffering mainly to F1 here though right? You seem to be talking about the ban on ground effects in F1. They now run a plank underside in F1 as per the regs, but not all race cars run a plank. Sideskirts were originally designed to aid ground effect downforce and similar devices still exist on some race cars, though not in F1.

Which series still run with full ground effects in big single seaters? Nearly all the others are single make (including F3000/FO8) so I'd have thought they'd have followed the FIA policies. Maybe IRL/CART run with full ground effects? The other place where there are almost no regulations is hillclimbing, but I'd guess Goulds/Pillbeams have not been designed to achieve ground effects due to the high chance of bottoming out.

As for sportscars I have no idea but my guess would be that full ground effects may not have been out lawed thanks to the relative freedom in chassis design and the simple fact that 3G and 800 kg of car sounds pretty impressive. What can the FO8 pull at speed?