I think it would be best to use one of the "back heavy" cars like XRG, XRT or FZ50 are best for showing off the excellent physics of the cars. While the FBM and other such cars are certainly nice, they don't give the same "wow" feeling of realism right away IMO.

I'm going to learn blipping after Christmas. For now I'm still playing X10 because of league races. I have the G25. I've noticed that some players have their pedals "upside down", mounted on the wall or something, but I've never seen precisely how they do it.. anyone got a linky or some tips? Is it much better than the normal way?

Quote from Zachary Zoomy :

the best version in my opinion was the never released 0.3F. it included the LX8 GTR! it was origonaly for beta testers only but it leaked onto the internet. I've been tring to find it and no such luck.

I saw a video of it on youtube. (or, it says a LX6 with LX8 specs..?) Anyway, here it is: Click Awesome!

Photoshop is for loosers, real men use Paint.

Quote from Glenn67 :

I got one of Bobs old road going sets for the XRG and modded it abit for how I think a RL standard street car would be. Changed gear ratios even more than Bob had and fiddled with the suspension slightly to what I think would be a common settings for a street car

The end result is attatched try it and let me know what you think.

XRG_Road Going.set

I tried it on South City Chicane Route, and it felt really awesome! Good job! I never tried a road going set before, but it was really fun to just drive around in the sunset, looking at the great work the devs have put down on this track. I really liked the FFB your set gives -- feels just right IMO. I'll use it for some laps like that when I need to relax after a race!

It's art! :spin:

It doesn't bother me as I don't use it, but I think it kind of goes against all the other things they've done to add more realism...

Speaking of consistency..

I have the same experience. Could it be that the AI drivers get 5% more power than we do, to allow them to be more competitive? Or it could just be that they're simply very very good, in which case I say congrats to the developers!

With the new car on SO Chicane the AI drives at 1:08, while I'm still at 1:10.. I only drove 10 laps or so though with that car, so I know I can improve a lot, but it's still impressive by the AI!

You have my sword... I mean signature!

Quote from CSU1 :

& get ready for all the 'help!my speedo has been stolen!!!' threads:rolleyes:
:uglyhamme

Heh, I think there will be quite a lot of discussion about this.. At first I missed it, because I've been using the speedometer actively not to adjust my driving, but to see if I'm improving from one lap to another. You know, "can I manage to stay above 120 kph through this curve?" That sort of thing. That way I added small milestones for me to take down one by one, in addition to just the split times.

It's not that I won't be able to drive just as good without a digital speedometer, but IMO it takes away some of the fun.

Other than that, I absolutely love the patch so far! The AI is significantly improved. I just arranged a "track day" for myself and 12 AI "buddies" on Aston Historic in practice mode, with fast cars, slow cars and myself in the middle. Then I pressed shift-f to remove all the clutter on my screen, waited for the AI drivers to pull of, and then I drove. It really added to the fun to have to check your mirrors and be aware of other drivers even when practicing -- after all, in real life you rarely have the whole track to yourself.

Quote from andy29 :

Downloaded it... extracted it... ran it... can't unlock. So close yet so far :chairfall

Same problem here..

So.. it's recommended to do a clean install of LFS for trying out the test patch? All it says in the official thread is that we "need to unlock again".

While I'd love to try it out, I don't want to mess up my current install..

I took the XRG for a quick spin on the carpark, and I was hooked. Went straight online and purchased the S2 licence after that!

I've been driving the FXR for a few days now, and when I switched back to the LX4 and XRT I really noticed how "dead" these felt around the center compared to the FXR. So it's definitely setup related, or maybe it's just supposed to be like this with these cars, like BBT said. I think I'll try to play around with the setups a little and see if I can get rid of it though.

IMO sensitivity around the center is very important, becuase this is where you can pick up the first warning signs that you're about to loose your rear or whatever. It's not a big problem, by any means, but I like to strive for perfection.

Quote from Linsen :

I tried Bob's road going setups last night and noticed that the dead-zone-like feel is almost entirely gone with those. So it obviously is a largely setup related issue. Although, I wonder if my rL steering wheel would feel the same if I ran an LFS race setup on my Clio.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try them out! Any particular cars you tried?

À propos this; I wonder which approach is better. Consistency first, then speed, or speed before consistency? I'm kind of torn on this one.. in one way it's good to do it step by step, learning the track, getting familiar with the car and the handling before pushing it to the extreme, but on the other hand there's no use getting consistent if you are too careful and don't know how far you can go..

I prefer the first approach, though. But every now and then if I feel I'm not getting any progress I'll do a lap where I really push it to the limits (and sometimes, inevitably, beyond.. ) to see if I can "surprise myself" by driving faster than I thought possible.

As for concentration: I find that if I catch myself daydreaming, chances are I'm slacking off, loosing my consentration and soon I'll be off the tarmac. But I guess different people have different approaches.

Thanks for the advice guys! I just finished the race. Placed 2nd, no mistakes + new pb, so all in all a very good race for me.

And I think I learnt something: before the race I considered either doing as Bob said and move more power to the rear tyres, but I tried it a few laps and thought it altered the handling of the car too much. So instead I used the R4s on the front tires. I kept an eye on the tire temps, and they were fine, until around 15-25 laps or so when the temp really dropped. I know it's supposed to, and now I experienced it first hand too. So in retrospect I think I should have used R3 instead of R4 on my front tires, but R2 worked fine on the rear ones.

Here's the graph from the manual:



So: all in all a great day -- I learnt stuff about setups, and I had a good racing experience.

Thanks Garph and Bob! Sounds like reasonable advice, I'll play around with it and see.

Quote from Garph :

For example, I did a 20 lap race in the XFR at Westhill, first I tried R3's but they just heated up way to much, I increased the tire pressure at the front but that had little to no effect, a little less grip, more movement and so more heat in the end.

I tried increasing the pressure too, but I had the same experience as you. Sounds like you gain some, you lose some.

OK, I think I need some advice. I'm going to participate in a 30-lap race on Westhill tonight, and I'm using the FXR. So far I've mostly been practicing hotlaps, racing maybe 5 laps in a row. (best hotlap offline being 1:33,89) This morning however I did 10 laps, and I noticed that my front tires got ridiculously hot, even without sliding too much.

This was with R2-tyres. So I changed to R4 in front and kept the R2 at the rear, and that seemed to work temperature wise, keeping them all in the green region. But when I went to the pits I noticed that my front wheels got changed, meaning that they must have been more than 30% worn by then, which is not good..

I'd really like to learn more about what I can do to avoid tyres heating up too much and wearing too quickly. Does anyone have a few tips to what settings I should change to reduce wear and keep the temps down? And what pressures should I use for R2, R3 and R4 respectively?

Thanks!

Jeez, dude, what did you do to this set?? I had a quick go, but within a minute I left the room screaming and with at least 20 less hairs on my head.

Quote from bbman :

Try setting the Overall force higher than 100% in the Profiler... Somebody discovered that Logitech deliberately weakened the forces around the center and by going over 100%, you turn that off...

Thanks, I'll give that a go! I think it's set to 101% or thereabouts now, I'll try tweaking it a little.

Quote from Linsen :

2. I can't seem to get rid of the rather limp feeling around the centre. Steering feels very light and unresponsive for a few degrees around the centre, almost as if there was a deadzone, which I don't have set.

Agreed. I switched from a MOMO to a G25 recently, and I think the MOMO was more twitchy and "alive" around the centre, whereas the G25 feels kind of limp for a few degrees. It's hard to explain.. it's as if the momo was able to pick up the tiny vibrations around the centre better than the g25. Anyone else experienced this?

Other than that, I think the FFB is awesome, and I can't see much room for improvement honestly. I think it's the smoothness of the tracks which is the main problem.

Quote from MAGGOT :

Old habits die hard :P In either case... tomorrow be me last day.

You lucky git. One more week here. Can't wait for the new car! Since it is relatively slow, I guess this will be a good place to start for someone who hasn't got much open wheel experience yet.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Quote from gnomie :

Have the developers ever talked about including real tracks in the game? Just curious..

I can see you're new here...

I am indeed.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

They have apparently been offered free licensing for a real track before (I think it was Mondello Park? Nikimere mentioned it and I don't think there are any other race tracks in Ireland ) in return for some LFS licenses to run simulators at the circuit, and they declined the offer. People still ask for real circuits in the Improvement Suggestions forum regularly, but they're not going to get them.

OK, I see. Like I said, I don't really care too much if the tracks are real or not. I can't see myself moving to another sim in the foreseeable future, so therefore the argument that "real tracks makes it easier to go from one sim to another" doesn't really apply to me.

Happy birthday, and thanks for making this great game!