Still could use macros for auto-blip and auto-cut, if not included in iRacing. Even if it doesn't make the cars faster, it would sound more realistic.
When did I ever mention wanting to be as fast as the best drivers? For me, it's not about gaining an unfair advantage or faster lap times, it's related to the amount of time and effort I want to put into a game. In some NFS games (especially 2008's Undercover), using a digital controller is faster than an analog controller, but I have no desire to steer a car by rapidly tapping buttons. I did it once 7 years ago to create a replay of a fast lap for the Corvette in High Stakes, just to demonstrate the advantage before it became well known. Even though I "honed" my tapping "skills" in the process of making that replay, I never did that again, even though my lap times wouldn't be as fast.
Who said heel n toe (=autoblip) doesn't affect laptimes?
The car is more stable, less chance of locking, better line through the corner, lower tyre temperatures, and so on. Basically there are two reasons why we do heel n toe, and the other is the fun of being able to do it right. That fun you clearly can't feel if there's a script doing it for you, so only one reason is left.
BTW the discussion could go on because there are a lot of people who deliberately do not want to use their clutch pedal - turning heel and toe into easy stuff.
It's the same thing, can't you see?
You put time and effort in a game certainly because it's fun but also because you get a reward which is your improvents.
Every time a shortcut is taken, a driver'll be able to equal or outperform an opponent that has more experience and is not using the shortcut. Of course you can't do a WR just by using tricks and exploit no question about that (BTW when I used 'you' in these few posts I was not always addressing you personally - I've not even took a look at your laptimes, because the scope of this discussion goes beyond the quickness of you and me)
As soon as certain tricks and exploits are found, their usage spreads because nobody(*) likes to eat the dust of an inferior driver on a regular basis. If the developers do naff about it, the end result is the sim turns into a caricature of itself, something that is not a sim and at the same time lacks the immediateness and cleanliness of an arcade (e.g. look at TrackMania, there used to be cheaters -and there are still some- but the only thing they could boost was their rank in the ladder, certainly not their laptimes)
(*) well almost.. there are people who will still race just with what they got, but we are a small minority. Take a look at the hotlap ladder if you need a paramount example of all of this.
For real racing cars, which use dog gears, the clutch isn't needed, so drivers have the option to left foot brake and right foot blip (if the cockpit layout allows it). I thought I already posted about this. For both a racing game and a real car, you need a pedal layout that's throttle blip friendly with the right foot.
Some people shift with the clutch, some people shift without ... downshifting ... All you've got to do, basically, is burp the throttle
Except I just posted that I choose not to use digital steering on any game, even if that digital steering is faster on some of the games.
But quite often, the WR's in racing games are done using exploits. A common one is using a rewards brake bias and then using throttle and brake at the same time to vary the braking bias. In the case of iRacing, the cars brake faster when using this method, so it's commonly used.
Not great, other than trying out the FBMW, I haven't been online with LFS in a long while. Most of my time online was during the S1 days. However when I do put the effort in on any racing game, I'm generally 5% to 7% slower than the WR times at most tracks, depending on the game. My GPL Rank is -12, most of which is due to an 8:15.323 at Norschleife (I wanted to join the under 500 second "club"). I could probably dedicate the rest of my life in to sim racing and yet, I'd doubt I would be truly competitive against the "aliens", Roland Ehnstrom, Greger Huttu, Greg Stewart, ... Then again what percentage of the 5,000+ runners in a typical marathon are competitive?
As I said the scope of this discussion IMO is beyond you and me. You might be the fairest person in the world, macro clutches should disappear anyway.
Regarding blipping in cars with sequential transmission, it's way easier - auto blip is most useful in cars w/manuals as it allows easy heel n toeing.
I'm confused by your remark on left foot braking - it can be used (and it is used) IRL, even on cars with manuals (although it's easier to do on a sequential). If you're interested there was a thread floating around some time ago with a couple nice videos about it.
That was a reference to iRacing. In iRacing, straight line braking distances are shorter if you use a rearwards brake bias and then use brake and throttle at the same time than if you use a less rewards bias and use brake only. Some have stated that GPL had a similar issue, but it affects iRacing more. This has been discussed in a series of posts at RAS (rec.autos.simulators). I don't rent iRacing, so I have no personal experience.
I don't know if there are any similar exploits in the current version of LFS.
Link to thread via google groups below, quotes from the first post in italics:
I think it's as bad as any exploited setup in any previous sim - GPL, rFactor, or whatever.
I got a new setup for free that gained 0.4 seconds. (1:06.8 down to 1:06.4 on his initial run with new setup) The car just slows down more quickly with a ton of throttle on top of braking if you use an extremely rearward brake bias.
Link to thread via google groups:
As I mentioned before exploits have been around since the hey days of GPL.
In the case of LFS, one of the exploits in an older version was to set the front end high and rear end low because a bug in the aerodynamics caused downforce to be relative to the car body instead of perpendicular to the direction the car was traveling, so the downforce acted at thrust. This was fixed, and it's just an example.
Back to the braking with throttle on exploit, it affects both the Papy engine (GPL, NR2003, iRacing), and the ISI engine (EA's F1 series, GTR series, rFactor), two completely different physics engines, which is surprising. Comments about exploits in various racing sims have been posted over the years at RSC (race sim central), if it ever gets back up and if it archived those old threads, it may still have them.
The arcade exploits are even more bizarre, generally due to giving digital (steering) controllers or keyboards some form of advantage. In the case of NFS Undercover, they decided to give cars more accleration after a wall collision, but apparently using the handbrake triggers this "recovery" mode, and a car can quickly reach top speed after a few turns using the handbrake (better than using the nitrous in the game). Someone made a video of a tier 3 car (2 stages below the top tier) quickly reaching it's top speed of 340kph after 3 shots of "handbrake".
In spite of the huge advantage of the digital controller, most players, including myself, that are using analog controllers will not switch to digital controllers, but instead simply wait for the next NFS to be released and hope that it doesn't have the same bug. Plus players can always go back and play previous versions that don't have these quirks.
That's very interesting, thanks for linking to that Jeff. I've been busy trying to understand setups better so I haven't read the entire thread yet.
First thought that springs to mind, the setup he's talking about, it's a whole different set from the one he usually races with, so we don't know if the 0.4 secs he gained were only justified by a different brake balance.
Would be interested in those links if you have them handy.