Voila, the solution to danger on the roads of today - a basic intelligence test as part of the driving examinations.
Should be part of S2 licencing conditions, actually. :rolleyes:
This is rapidly confirming my belief that those who use automatic gearboxes are not drivers, merely motorists.
Having messed around in LFS a bit, I can now say that the FO8 can be made to move on the starter motor, but only with full throttle. I suppose battery wear simulation is another thing to go on the Big List of Stuff To Add, then...
I had, of course, forgotten that we were talking about massive, torquey V8s with batteries bigger than a UPS. Maybe it serves some purpose, then.
I said it could be done, theoretically, not that it was advisable or practical
I do recall a Panoz being laboured back to the pits on the starter motor during the 24 Heures du Mans, though, so it's not entirely unheard of. How the car actually coped with that, I've no idea, nor do I know how close it was to the pits when the driver resorted to the starter-motor, but since we have no battery simulation in LFS, I guess it's good that the stalling physics seem to disallow this technique now anyway.
Actually, I haven't really tested it at length, but it's certainly a hell of a lot harder to do than it used to be
This can be done in almost all real-life race cars, so why should it be disallowed in LFS?
For the record, I've never even heard of this feature, and, as has already been said, it looks to be nothing more than manufacturer arse-covering against lawsuits from the United States only - as no other country has such an obsession with making money out of their own mistakes.
Even then, though, I must admit I can't see the point of this system at all. If you turn over the starter motor without the clutch in, the engine is almost guaranteed to stall - if it starts at all - whatever road car you're in. Especially if the throttle pedal's been left alone. I can't think of a single car that could cope with such an action. If you were on a steep downhill incline, then it's possible that the engine could fire properly, but you'd already be rolling since you had the clutch pedal in... And if you'd put the brakes on, you wouldn't have needed the system to stop yourself moving.
Can anyone shed any light on this at all? :rolleyes:
Basically, most Europeans (by which I mean those living on the metric European mainland) do not have a good impression of miles per hour, and most British people do not have a good feel for metres per second...
In conclusion, the unit should probably be an option. Perhaps, for online use, a server-side setting so that it's the same for everyone racing?
This is still off the original topic, but that one seems to have been done over anyway :rolleyes:
It'd be nice if people read threads they were posting in from time to time.
Unfortunate as it is, I have to back up col's point: LFS absolutely cannot know where your eyes are focusing, nor (currently) can it simulate having two eyes looking from different perspectives. This means that having, say, a crack in your windscreen would cause a line down the 'screen that you could never, ever avoid - whereas in real life, whichever eye's view was less impeded by that crack would automatically take dominance over the other eye, which could not see a given object so easily. LFS cannot simulate this, so this aspect of the simulation would always be unrealistic - and that's a compromise I doubt ScaViEr is willing to make.
Oh, I meant that having to back up that particular point was unfortunate, not generally having to back up col
I knew there was some reason for it, I just failed to remember at the time.
Living in a predominantly imperial-unit country, like me, that will be the case. But looking at the LFSW racer/country distribution chart, we are greatly outnumbered by more metric racers, so I suppose that's why ScaViEr decided on kilometres per hour instead:
Windspeed always used to be measured in knots, and I have still seen it quoted in knots for flying and gliding (where everything else is always knots anyway), but far more common here these days is miles per hour, and everywhere else seems to use metres per second. Perhaps I've not been paying much attention to European things, but I don't think I've seen it quoted in kilometres per hour. Making the default the most common one, which does seem to be m/s, seems about right.
Although having it as a choice could cause a few inconveniences as far as talking about it is concerned, seeing as we're only told the windspeed once in the whole race, and so quick conversions would be tricky.
I reckon the reason ScaViEr has given us very inspecific wind settings is that it's a bloody inspecific thing in the real world, and that's at the best of times. At least our wind doesn't change every five minutes. But more than that, if we had easy-to-tweak wind levels, rigging up a high wind ideal for fast laps would be a bit too simple.
I think he was referring more to the rest of the post, I have no idea what the hell he's on about either!
have it blue for water
Not that helpful if you have cold tyres
The issue would be that you already have an indicator on that part of the tyres, what if you have wet and dirty tyres? Could get a bit hard to distinguish what's what.
You know what, I was thinking exactly the same thing, because doing it at Blackwood came into my mind first. It'd be fun on the start-finish 'straight' there!
Actually, single-seater drivers often do wave other cars through if the situation arises, but this is because they don't have indicators to convey messages. If you're in a tintop, use your indicators to show your intentions to the guy behind you, but I do think a waving animation for single-seaters only would be nice.
And you could press left and right together for a victory celebration too
No, nothing is actually final, but there is definitely that prospect. I think the proposal was actually for P2 cars to be closed as well, but how likely that is I'm not sure. Probably not very, although the P1 plans seem pretty certain.
Something that could have saved a lot of thread space...
either im dumb or im blind but i cant actually see Le Man Car in that list
... Prototypes
The latter. A Le Mans car, in your view, means a Le Mans Prototype, often abbreviated to LMP. And that's on the list under 'hard to judge general opinion'.
CTRA's X-System does indeed have an automatic fuel calculator which uses both online fuel use databases and, I think, the CTRA's own database, for every track and car on the system.
This also has the issue of popular skin packs needing to be in the racer's own LFSW skin upload folder if they want to use them online, apart from the team skin problems.
There's a really easy way around this... Change the name of the skin you want to upload
This is post 1 of this thread.
Scawen included the FXR ( FXO GTR ). The WIKI posts are obviously outdated or most of us must have misunderstood Scawens very first post.
My immediate thought about that is that Scawen doesn't want the FXR to be left too far behind, and so taking the 20kg of ballast out is to match up with the XRR and FZR also losing ballast - in effect, trying to keep the balance between the FXR and the other two more or less equal to how it was before.
IMO there shouldnt be a 'learner' car in any class [...] currently its a case of do you want to come last or race with people.
I do agree with you here, and personally I don't think that the fastest (although I wouldn't want to call it 'main', as a lot of people prefer TBOs) class should be burdened with a car for new drivers. Basically, it seems that the quicker drivers are having a third car taken away from them by the needs of the slower drivers. But, as I said, this does come from the main LFS website, the one not open to public editing:
The FXO GTR is a great car for somebody just getting used to the extra power offered by the GTR cars or for somebody who just wants to have some fun in the GTR class, but if you want wins and don't like long races you have to move to one of the rear-wheel drive GTR cars.
Whether this description outdated or not, I don't know (the statistics are), which is why Scawen filling us in on his intentions for the GTR class could save a lot of pointless debate.
we need changes such as reduced engine size and reduced horsepower to really make a difference
We might get a smaller, higher-strung engine to lower the torque, but lower power isn't going to happen - if the power limit for the series these cars are designed around is 490bhp, all of the cars are sure as hell going to have 490bhp, or close enough to make no difference.
Infact, im comparing qualifing type laps, what the FZR & FXR *can* do, ignoring the fact that to get to 37 laps the FXR needs to bolt on harder tyres making it only slower.
Just a quick note, the FXR that was using R4/R3s in that race was obviously using 0/1 throttle and braking, which means you could probably get the car to cope with R3/R3s over 20 laps or so.
The rest of your post, particularly the scenario with the FXR/FZR race, seems quite accurate. However, it is worth bearing in mind that the FXR is not supposed to be able to compete with the FZR, or indeed the XRR, and is designed as an easier introduction to the power and speed of the GTR class, so that new GTR drivers can cope with the cars in a race situation more easily. The FXR is not meant to be as fast as the other GTRs, and so arguing over class balancing to make the FXR and FZR even is somewhat pointless. Balancing the FZR with the XRR is the point Scawen wants to get at, I think, and the gearbox is the way forward in this one.
So, has anyone run comparisons between the XRR and FZR? Unfortunately I have next to no experience in the XRR myself.
Just to back up what I've said about the FXR:
The FXO GTR is the easiest of the GTR cars to drive, thanks to its stable handling and four-wheel drive. Unfortunately it's also the slowest over a single lap. In the hands of a skilled driver it can usually beat most comers, but even the best FXO GTR driver can't catch a well-driven FZ50 GTR or XR GTR in a sprint race. In endurance races the playing field is leveled somewhat, as the FXO GTR is easier on its tires than the other two GTR cars and has superior fuel economy. Ultimately the FXO GTR is a great car for somebody just getting used to the extra power offered by the GTR cars or for somebody who just wants to have some fun in the GTR class, but if you want wins and don't like long races you have to move to one of the rear-wheel drive GTR cars.
It [The XRR] likes to eat FXO GTRs for breakfast, so watch out.
The second quote, and much of the first, can be found on the main LFS site as well as the Wiki
I get the feeling that this close matching between the aerodynamics of the cars is to make balancing them a more simple task, with fewer variables.
It may change, but then again, it's a possibility that the cars were designed with a ficticious series in mind which dicates the lift/drag ratios the car should have with zero wing angle, by making the three cars use different undertrays to compensate for the differences in their bodies' aerodynamic properties - so the very close aerodynamics might be here to stay.
As for tyres on these cars, having run a 20-lap race at AS6, I found that - with my driving style - the FZR was perfectly capable of regulating an R3/R3 tyre setup to an optimum temperature while still going noticeably faster than an FXR which needed an R4/R3 configuration to keep the fronts cool enough to last the race. Having said that, the FXR was being raced by a keyboard driver, so all this really tells us is that the FZR is wearing tyres quite evenly and not at all harshly. In short, the combination of weight distribution and drive to the front is making the FXR far harder on front tyres than the FZR.
It's still debatable whether or not the lower fuel range of the FZR makes up for this - the FZR is getting through roughly 135% of the fuel the FXR does over a given distance, making the FXR's fuel range at AS6 37 laps against the FZR's 27. Personally, I reckon the FZR's fuel consumption is helping to pull it back in line with the other cars in longer races due to the increased pitstops, and in shorter ones due to the increased weight. There's a more subtle balancing method for you
Really? I've never had any trouble one-handedly adjusting settings on the straights, or even in long corners. If you're using a keyboard, it should be even easier on the straights, because you don't have force feedback pulling your car around to worry about
I'm in agreement with JTbo, the clutch is a bit strong in most cars - particularly the LX6.
But to take a general view on the clutch thing, what controller are you using, kABLiuks? Anyway:
At least ninety per cent (72% of statistics are made up on the spur of the moment, including both of those) of LFS drivers don't have a variable clutch with which to control the car, and so their clutch input is either on or off. If you take a 'normal' road car up to 6000rpm in reality and then sidestep the clutch - which is what you're doing, without a variable clutch input - it is going to hate you for it. Just as changing gear without releasing the throttle: have you ever seen anyone do this in real life, except as a one-off mistake? That's because it has a tendancy to annihilate clutches.
Another point is that LFS is not simulating clutch wear, just clutch temperature. So if you stop, or drive easier, to let it cool down again, you're no worse off. It's not meant to simulate permanent clutch damage, just heating, and if you're trying to tell me that your clutch doesn't heat up considerably when you sidestep the pedal at full throttle, I'd like to hear what car you drive