Quote from Jianju :

I want to build a system that will allow me to push myself beyond the limit without breaking my neck and/or trashing a $60K+ sportscar.

no matter what you build: you will not be able to feel anything more than 1 G.

... and even average roadcars brake harder than 1 G. (i think it's 4.5 in F1... yummy!!!)

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

I see what you're trying to accomplish with this thread, but can't you just use Bob's Gear Ratio Calculator to get to the same conclusions as you did?

damn, now that you say it...

As I just LOVE the XFG - being a hothatch - I did some tests today in order to find out what modifications would slow it down most.

Yeah sorry, despite the title I can't really tell you what makes it faster but I can soothe you with this: Unless you go totally freaky you won't really slow it down with your tweaking. I'm taling about acceleration on a straight and topspeed here.


1. TOPSPEEDS
1.1. Tyre Pressure
----------------

Tested on Kyoto Ring, the topspeeds of two similar setups only different by tyre pressure (almost non vs. fully inflated) were 190 kph (high press) against 186 (low press). As you may never want to run on either of these, this difference can be necleted on other than highspeed-tracks (even there I think).

1.2. Camber
------------

I ran on fully inflated tyres. Once with close to 0° camber on every wheel, once with all I got (negative): no camber 190 kph, full camber 191 kph (less contact area). Kind of obvious, but as you see it's also necletable. The difference even decreases with decreasing tyre pressure.

1.3. Track
----------

Actually I thought heavy "track-ing" of 0.9° on both axles should be THE speed-killer. Nope. NO difference to 0°. Compared with low and high tyre-pressures. Hello???

1.4. Gearing
-----------

You can't really go too tall, only too short.



2. ACCELERATION
2.1 Tyre Pressure, Camber, Track
--------------------------------

Ok, here I went wild: I did all the no-nos for acceleration: low tyre-pressure, extreme camber and track compared to high tyre-pressure, no camber, 0° track.
I did 3 runs for both settings on the drag-strip. The times were always identical to the first decimal. The spread of second decimals was more bound to chance than to the setups.

Then I thought: Well, the low tyre-pressure might support a good start... so I inflated the tyres of the no-no setup - with no effect.

Any combination would give me that time around 16.5.

Given the fact that you hit a speed of around 150 kph after 16.5 seconds, all those settings have no real effect on your speed on the straight.

2.2 Gearing
-----------

Obviously you can choose your 1st too long and you won't have a nice start, or too short and you wasted power. The fifth can also be too short, seldom too long.
But what about the steps? Or the number of gears? Would the XFG be faster with a 6-speed-box?
No.

Did you ever think "hey, why is this guy accelerating just as quickly as me although I have these super-short gearing??"

The XFG (and the UF1000 - and I think even the FOX) appear to have this ultra flat power-curve. Don't believe it? Here's the proof:

I virtually tore out 2 of the XFG's gears - leaves 3 gears (another proof that this 1.3 litre hatchback has a power-curve of a muscle-car). I set the 3rd gear of my "3speed-XFG" to the same ratio as the 1st of the 5speed, the 5ths were the same, the gear(s) between (only 1 in the 3speed compared to 3 in the 5speed) reasonably spaced. I also built myself a 4speed-XFG in a similar way.

Then I accelerated all of them to something like 170 kph, "fraps-ed" it and compared it in a video-editing program.

For the results see the attached table.

So now, what do we learn? Yes, the XFG's power-curve is not THAT realistic and you might not lose a race because of a shitty gearbox-setup.


Hopes this was a bit informative or at least entertaining. I found it at least surprising... although I expected it - otherwise I wouldn't have done it.

wow. that should be implanted in the actual version. even racing "against" you own ghost might improve your driving style.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_Bremgarten
To be honest i only know it from plodding around it in GPL, it's a great track though.
Anyway, i saw your so called "pun" in the other thread about the greatest marque in motoring, my beloved Maserati, so i'm keeping a weary eye on you buddy

ah, bremgarten bern, not bremgarten argovia, that's a different story. now I even remember hearing of it before.

hey, the maserati pun wasn't aimed against maserati... I LOVE italian cars, although maserati is not on top of the list.


smoke from the exhaust? this always worries me unless it's winter or the engine has just been started. we're not talking 'bout diesels here, right?

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

So the vibrant () community, accessible online races, quantity of organised events and stats web server hold no value to you whatsoever?

of course that is a certain value. but you don't pay your x-times 12£ for that.
that's like buying an (overpriced) car - let's say a Masturbati (*) - and then seeing the benefit of it in the ability to join Masturbati-clubs and have Masturbati-weekends and Masturbati-meetings and so on.
is that the Masturbati-company's achievement? don't think so.


(*) fictional name just for illustration.

Quote from AndroidXP :

What I absolutely don't understand is people throwing a hissy fit about the outrageously large amount of money that is £12. Come on, that's the average cost of one night out with your friends, with the difference that LFS provides fun for years and doesn't end with a hangover. I guess actually paying for software is still a new concept to some guys out there, explaining why amounts you otherwise don't think a second about spending suddenly are a huge problem.

don't start like that with me - you don't know anything about how and on what I spend my money. I don't compare the price to one night out because it's a completely different thing. I compare the price to what I get for it: a racing game that looks like 2002 and has exactly NOTHING but a decent physics-engine.
... for 24£ so far. that's pricey, my friend, considering the fact that you can get other racing games which look and sound better and are only a bit less realistic physics-wise for less than that because they're outdated.

and then there's another point of view: the relation of the devs' efforts and costs to the game price. 3 people, no business infrastructur except for the internet-site, no license-costs, no advertising, no packing, no disc-production...

all things other companies have to pay for.

and then you imply LFS is cheap, or what?


But I don't blame the devs - it's perfectly ok to decrease the production-costs. I just think a very large part of the community wears rose-tinted glasses.

hmmm.... so the next serious improvement will be S3 and cost another 12£???

hey, I sell my license too.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

looks like public roads, is that Bremgarten

... ha. I couldn't believe you we're talking about that town just a couple of miles down the road from here.
Has there ever been some racing? Wonder where.


Do you guys really want sparks in LFS?
I'd rather have sky-rocketing GTs in reality, doing funny flips (I expected them around 5:45 in the clip).

naaah, just kidding.

+1

Quote from BlueFlame :

You can go just as fast as other cars but use half as much RPM, with twice as much torque.

aaaahhhhh.... yeah. which gives you exactly the same output-torque (torque on the wheel, or "power that is actually relevant"). so what's the point?

the best thing about diesels (turbo-diesels that is... the non-turbos are completely worthless) is their dumbo-proof power-curve (which is being incorrectly referred to as "lots of torque" by most people). even without being in the right gear you always have a reasonable amount of output-torque... unless you drop below the the point where the turbo starts to work - quite like a petrol turbo.
so for the average driver this is ok (i'm not going to talk about how harmful diesel or petrol is for the environment or human health because science is still not sure yet), whereas in sportive cars diesels are inappropriate, as - thanks to gearing - it is easier to get high output-torque from a petrol-engine. add a turbo there and the diesel looks WAY lame.

the r10 is nothing of a proof that diesels are better than petrol-engine. it's just a damn expensive promotion for diesel-engines.

I thought the XR-whatevers are representatives of older (as mentioned maybe 80's) cars, you know. these good old days of on-off turbos, nothing like "1.8 T" that doesn't even have anything close to 100 hp/liter and whose behavior is so unexciting that any fool can drive it on a snowy road and you wouldn't even guess a turbo if it wasn't for the "T" on the tailgate.

hey, if you don't like the XRT, choose another car. oh, you've only got 3. naaaah, I'm being rude.

I think you look at the XRT in a wrong way. I believe the turbo-behavior is meant to be shitty for the reasons above. I wouldn't want to depend on this car, but I still think it's fun to drive once in a while.

Oh, I'm posting in the Improvement-forum... shouldn't do that. It's soooo useless.

Quote from dropin_biking :

I just fired up LFS, went on BL1 with 49kph winds, with the XFG, hardtrack setup, hit 199kmph on the straight, it IS posible.
/end of wonders
~Bryan~

ahahaha. but you DO notice WHERE on the track the other guy hit 199 compared to your 199???

I know... this thread has to be closed

hmmm... of course I don't KNOW why their opinions differ that much, but I think it has to do with their experience with simulations.
I think if you don't have gaming/sim experience at all, you're more likely not to find a certain sim very realistic among other things for the most obvious reasons: pedal-feel, steering-lock, G-forces, FOV.
Imagine Fangio testing LFS... . I think he'd say it's complete crap.
A person used to the obvious limitation of a PC-based simulation will not even care about these. It gets second nature, somehow. However, it is not like in reality.
We're used to these limitations, so we can make somekind of link to the real thing, and we can enjoy the things that are modeled pretty damn well (like LFS's physics engine... with exceptions).
Maybe Glock is more of a simmer than Heidfeld. Therefore the fairly different opinons.

I still think that Heidfeld's rating has more value. Because - to put it simple - if the game was extremely close to reality, the best real driver should be the best sim-driver even without the tiniest bit of practice with the sim.
So if the general opinion is "Heidfeld hasn't practised enough" then that's an indication of the sim not being too realistic.

I hope you understand what I mean. Kind of hard to explain this in a foreign language.

This all reminds me of the late 80's, when I was playing Test Drive with a digital joystick.
"Hey Dad, you wanna drive the Lamborghini?"
But Dad couldn't drive at all.
With a very realistic sim, Dad should have been better than lil' Kiddo right from the start, even if 10-year-old Kiddo had been practising for some days.
Would this be the case with LFS? I do not really think so.

Quote from Vykos69 :

if you put the fact in, that he had a setup which turns his car into quite an arcaderacer, then you could have another look at it

ha. think about that: if you can make a setup that turns your car into an arcade-racer, it's not realistc.
or the other way round: if you could setup your real car that it behaves like an arcade-racer, arcade-handling would not be unrealistic anymore.

There are two or more posts saying something like "he just says it's far from reality because he didn't engage himself with it enough / played seriously"

think about it. that's ridiculous. I mean, he even drove the real "BF1" - so if it doesn't feel exactly the same, it's not realistic. I know it's hard, but that's the way life is.
you might say it's only because of the FOV and accelerating forces, but I believe that Heidfeld is smart enough to not judge the realism only by these.

Nevertheless, of all the racing games / sims I played, LFS comes closest to reality... of course I can only say so for XFG, FXO and maybe XGT - I've never driven any openwheelers or top-end sportscars in real life.

But being CLOSEST doesn't mean being CLOSE. as well as being less accurate as LFS doesn't mean being totally off the track... which leads me to NFS. I don't like the tuning, I don't like the bodykits, the decals, the tribals and finally the NOS... but hey, take a hothatch, leave it as it is and roam the city. it does NOT behave that unrealistically. the basics are there.
Same goes for Gran Tourismo - I used to LOVE that sim. But again, the more you tune, the farther away from reality you get. But the basic handling is not that bad. It was the first sim I played that gave me an impression of how a streetcar behaves on the limits.

Last thing, "I would like to be a racer in RL". I do not understand people playing LFS and not being interested in cars, either. But it's ok. I don't care for what reasons people play certain games (as long as it's not to spoil the others' fun by ramming them in T1 :razz. I play games like that as a substitute. If I had a racetrack in my yard (if I had a yard at all, haha) and a lot of money for all the materials needed, I surely wouldn't play LFS. I think even if only fuel, tyres and car-parts and -services were cheaper I wouldn't play LFS . So yes, it's not gaming and sitting in front of a PC I love, it's driving a car. If it's vice versa for anyone - that's perfectly ok.

Quote from al heeley :

Basically your only constructive comment is that the crash physics

If you want to hang me for this thread being a discussion about the general handling of suggestions rather than a suggestion itself, be my guest.

Quote from al heeley :

I fail to see your improvement suggestion in this post.

It implies that you can't improve LFS if you don't change it.

Quote from BBO@BSR :

Most people just don't want LFS to be moddable for everyone because then we would get a lot of crappy stuff like in all the others games.

I'm not talking about mods - I don't care about them. I'm talking about real additions, made by the devs. Maybe even features that are cool in other games. But exactly this seems to be a reason not to add them, like other games are not LFS (~ sim) and taking some of their features will make LFS worse or some superstition like that.

Quote :

Anyway none of us have really influence of that.
It's all in Scawen's hands and it good like it is.

So why this forum? To have the buyers BELIEVE they have a direct influence on future versions / patches? ... in addition to the physics-engine.

Quote from Mike85 :

Nobody mentioned mods. He mentioned additions to the game. New features. And there are many people who are against any new addition. Thats interesting

Yep. Basically that's what I meant.

You know what's so funny about this?

"You don't need bars (or radar or whatever). Just map a key to look left/right... bla bla bla... noobs have to learn... bla bla... that's racing / realistic."

Var1 / Reality:
- You can see your opponent racing beside you even if you still look in front of you (as mentioned: FOV ~ 180°)
- If there's nothing, you can keep your eyes on the track.
- If there IS anything, you can quickly turn your head to check it out closer.

Var2 / LFS so far:
- You have a big blind area around you.
- You first have to check IF there is anything at all to your left or right (good fun before the first few turns).
- You have to push buttons to "turn your head" to a preset angle, which distracts you completely from what's going on in front of you. That's especially cool when you're really close to the one that's in front of you.

Var3 / Bars or "radar":
- You have a big blind area around you.
- IF there's something around you, it shows on a small screen within your FOV.
- depending on the design of the "helper", you would only have to turn your head for the sake of immersion.

I don't say Var3 is the way it has to be. I just ask: is Var2 really closer to Var1 than Var3 is??

... but there seems to be a serious "no additions, please"-attitude going on.

Ok, LFS is already so fully loaded with cool stuff like a brilliant physics-engine (except for crashes), and low cpu-usage, and ... er... hmmm... er... did I mention the physics-engine... and, you know that... hmmm...

Really, objectively you don't get THAT much bang for the bucks. But appart from that I don't really understand what you are affraid of.

Do you think the devs will add spinners before they fix the hilarious aerobatic-shows caused by hitting the wall with 30mph?

Do you fear an onrush of newbies coming over from NFS because LFS has some eye-candy too?

I really don't understand why someone could be against new content that can be turned off / left unused anyway.

"A muscle-car? I don't like that. Don't implant it."

+1

I just thought about a mini-rader instead of bars.
No, you don't have this in real life. But sometimes in games or "simulation" you have to compensate.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

You don't have in Flight Simulator arrows on the sky telling you that the airport is on the left, do you?

In Combat Flight Simulator you have a cone that tells you where your locked target is... and a mini-screen that shows all the enemies around you. And we're talking about WWII here.
Is it unrealistic? Yes. But try to spot your moving target using your coolie-hat. Ridiculous. I know what I'm talking about - I've played sims like that.
It has some downsides, but it does not harm the immersion - CFS is the proof.

In the end it helps you not GETTING rammed. If you don't like it, turn it off.

and oh, I feel so immersed when looking in front of me and see the guy racing beside me and the world passing by sideways. come on!

Quote from Mithras :

Love it. Simply love it.

SUGGESION: There should be a way to download all the skins at once, at their maximum resolution

yeah. or a subscription. every new skin is directly emailed to you.

*sarcasm off*

hmm... we have 26 different number-plates. and the one for the front isn't the same as the one for the rear.

I really think up/downloading skins bigger than 400kb / 1024x1024 has only one purpose: editing the downloaded skin... which is most probably not what they're meant for.

+111

I usually try to skin my cars myself, but this is a great site, dude!!

Who's this Dr. Gonzo? Brilliant work. The UFs look so sweet...

... und dem Berti sein Manta wollte ich auch schon machen .

Quote from LFSn00b :

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=27132

may I say that - in this case - the search sucks?

Quote from Xpowaspa :

and, They could just be part of the main skin files too...

thought about that too - it's probably the most ovious way. the downside is, you'd have to add the plate to every single skin... which is a bit nasty if you have 10 skins and you want to change your plate sometime. and what's with the standard skins and colors?

Quote from Ian.H :

The laws here regarding number plates are _very_ strict..

You can make your plates yourself in the UK, right? So do not talk about strictness .