Since there's some confusion about this, just wanted to clear it up.
Which is point of this method as stated in the title of this thread, using "induced understeer to counter lift throttle oversteer", allowing a car to slow down (via tire scrub and/or trail braking with a rearwards effective brake bias (due to engine braking)) while still turning in. It's only intended to be used between corner entry and corner apex.
Normal countersteering should be used between corner apex and corner exit, since here the goal is to accelerate, and the driver can just reduce throttle and countersteer to correct for excessive throttle input.
The other time induced understeer can be used is as a preventive measure on some non-downforce cars in a very high speed full throttle turn, where the fronts are only turned in just a bit extra to settle down a oversteer prone car into a 4 wheel squirm (not quite a drift).
The limitation of a 3 person development team is going to result in slow progress once a certain level of content is achieved, which is where we're at now.
Flat spots occur when the wheels are stopped. In an oversteer or understeer situation, the wheels are still rotating. There's excessive wear and heat on the tires, but it's all around the tread, not in a single spot. In the case of the 1967 Formula One cars modeled in Grand Prix Legends, a set of tires would last an entire race, (also they carried enough fuel for the entire race, so no pit stops).
On a side note, talk about a car mod. The rear wheel drive Clio V6 Sport has the engine where the rear seats would in a normal front wheel drive Clio.
The issue is if you need to slow down and or turn as well as correct the oversteer to keep from running out of track. Countersteering reduces the lateral force at the front tires, so the car turns less and decelerates less than it would with induced understeer. If you brake while countersteering, the pavement applies a backwards, off centered force on the sideways car, worsening the oversteer.
Induced understeer increases tire scrub at the front, resulting in some braking effect, slowing a car down, perhaps enough to make the turn. Also braking can be done if the tires are turned inwards sufficiently to keep the front end washed out even due to the weight transfer from braking.
The point of the induced understeer is that the fronts have much more excessive slip angle than the rears, and should end up with less lateral grip, washing the front end out, correcting the oversteer, while slowing the car a bit. This is best shown in that LX6 video in the right turn at Blackwood where the car is going fast enough to clearly see the transition from oversteer into understeer.
Depends on the car and/or the game. In real life, the reason given was that some non-downforce cars turned poorly unless setup with some oversteer, and lift throttle oversteer had to be balanced with induced understeer during corner entry. Also in high speed flat out (full throttle) turns, a bit of induced understeer would stabilize the car into a 4 wheel "squirm" (not quite a full drift).
Back to racing games, induced understeer during corner entry is a common method used in Grand Prix Legends, especially for right foot brakers. The coast side of the differential is setup a bit loose for lift throttle (engine braking) induced oversteer. The driver brakes before corner entry, then moves his right foot back to the throttle, entering the turn faster than normal. Using induced understeer inputs, combined with lift throttle inputs, the driver controls the rate of turn in and deceleration as the car approaches the corner apex. Because of the large slip angles of the cars in Grand Prix Legends, it's more obvious what is going on.
With GPL, induced understeer can be used to improve lap times. For other games, it may only be a recovery method as opposed to a deliberate method. It works with the LX6 in LFS, and just about any car in GTR2, but I don't know if it could be used to improve lap times the way it does in GPL.
Note that EA is also releasing NFS World Online, so this means that NFS Shift can be more realistic. NFS Shift will only be implemented on two high end consoles and the PC, and the promise is that it won't be ported but co-developed on the different platforms.
In terms of realism, EA has huge resources, both people (something like 20 ex-GTR guys in addition to the existing EA staff), and budget, to make a realistic sim if they want to. The current story is that they'll make a new physics engine for Shift. In the Marc DeVellis interview regarding Undercover, it was mentioned that there are over 400 parameters in the car physics model, and this for an arcade game. With these type of resources, the game could turn out to be very good.
First ProStreet and now Undercover. The cars have so much grip and power it seem more like driving star wars swoop racers than cars. Undercover also has magic nitrous that also increases downforce, making cornering speeds just that much faster. Undercover cars go faster than the game can render the background objects in time. Anyway, a couple of videos, the pace is really fast in the tight stuff.
They made a patch to fix up some stutter issues, which I would only get when using fraps to capture during live play to make these videos. The only noticable difference in video quality from the above video is that shadows are rendered sooner (I set shadows to high).
The idea is to stop the induced understeer at some point before corner apex in the slowing down case. In the high speed turn, heavy throttle, squirrely car case, the tires are only turned in a bit inwards more than normal, so that an oversteer turns the front tires even more, bascially the throttle is floored, so the only input left is steering. The goal is to maintain a bit of a 4 wheel drift by steering inwards just a bit. The drivers that do this state there's no sudden transition into heavy grip if they relax on the front tires, because the fronts are already turned in a bit for even normal cornering.
There's always some slip angle on all 4 tires in a turn, and normally the front tires have a bit more slip angle than the rears, at least on a rear wheel drive car. (When was the last time you took a turn with the steering centered so same slip angle for all 4 tires?). The induced understeer is just adding a bit more slip angle at the fronts so that they go before the rears do. In a high downforce car, there's a rearwards bias in the downforce to reduced oversteer tendency in high speed turns (as mentioned before).
That's because the driver almost sits on top of the rear axle, and the front axle is in front of the engine, and the body and frame work are larger at the rear end. It's got that skinny little nose with the "bicycle" wheels at the front and a wider back end (the Caterham SV and CSR are wider than the older Super 7's).
An example movie with more subtle steering inputs, from Grand Prix Legends. My web host has put a cap on download speed per connection, so it will take about 50 seconds before the video starts streaming. It's a dual view video and in the bottom screen you get a clear view of the steering (and apparent drift) angle of the car. After the second hairpin, Greg Stewart (the driver in this video), makes two right turns with a lot of counter-steering, then on the high speed right hand turn the fronts are kept a bit inwards. It's difficult to see the small amount of induced understeer during corner entry, I don't know if Greg was a left foot braker. On the very last turn, another fast right hander, a bit of induced understeering is used.
Again note that induced understeer is used in the real world on some classes of race cars (squirrely non-downforce cars). I recall a comment about some spec class racing with "evil mid-engined Clio's", where the car had to be make oversteery to get through the slow turns well, but required some induced understeer during corner entry and high speed turns where heavy throttle is required just to maintain speed.
Also the video in my first post was an extreme example. Real usage is much subtler, as noted in the gpl video here.
Note this is a technique for rear wheel drive cars.
Preventive usage: in real life racing, some cars get better lap times when setup to be a bit oversteery in faster turns or under lift throttle. To stabilize these cars in the situations where the cars are prone to oversteer, the drivers will steer inwards a bit past maximum grip so if the rear end get loose, the front end will washout transitioning the car into a 4 wheel drift instead of spinning. Few real race cars need this, but I have corresponded via email with a few drivers that do this.
Lift throttle oversteer recovery usage: if a car looses the rear end due to engine braking, normal counter-steering can only be used if the oversteer is caught before it gets too far, and the brakes can't be used while counter-steering (this will make the oversteer worse). If the oversteer is more severe, or braking is needed, then steering inwards hard will usually wash out the front end, allowing the car to recover, slowing it down more, and allowing usage of the brakes. If nothing else, at least you go off track facing forwards.
High speed flat out turns (such as ovals): keeping the fronts tires turned inwards just a bit beyond optimal can stabilize a car under full throttle in a high speed turn on a non-downforce car. (Most downforce cars have relatively more rear downforce to prevent high speed oversteer, since the snap oversteer in a high speed, high g turn in such cars is virtually unrecoverable).
Normal countersteering: Note for corner exit under throttle, normal counsteering is used. Easing off the throttle here will increase the grip on the rear tires.
How many racing games are there where induced understeer works? The ones I know of are Grand Prix Legends, LFS with certain cars, and GTR2 with most cars. In the case of Grand Prix Legends, you could enter turns faster, and modulate the throttle and steering inputs to slow the car down while turning inwards for the corner apex, an alternative to trail braking that made it easier control speed and attitude during a turn. In the case of Grand Prix Legends, cornering feels more like a controlled drift because of the high slip angles involved with the racing tires on those 1967 Formula 1 cars.
The poll is asking how any here use induced understeer?
I don't think the point of the OP was about the graphics of NFS specifically, but how graphics of other games in general versus LFS have evolved in the last 5 1/2 years since July 2003 (release of S1), this would include other sim-oriented racing games.
As I posted before, Synetic was able to realease a series of fairly large content racing games about every two years with a total staff of 8 people. That's no where near iRacing staffing or costs.
It wasn't a reference to LFS, just a general comment. The original GTR was at one end of the spectrum with it's all or nothing grip, the tendency for cars to always spin 180 degrees with any amount of oversteer. GTR Evolution is near the other end of the spectrum in terms of forgiving physics.
My point was that the grip doesn't have to be increased to compensate for the lack of feel, but rather how the loss of grip is modeled. In real life, some tires, such a bias ply racing slicks, are much more forgiving than a street performanc radial tires. Radial racing slicks are being designed to be more forgiving than the early designs.
From the dictionary section of the web site below. The other related factor is the drop off in grip that occurs if the tire is pushed beyond the optimum. For bias ply tires, this tends to be a smooth transition that can be corrected, while with radial tires, the transition can be quite abrupt causing the car to loose control all at once.
They wouldn't have to hire many more people, even 2 or more additional programmers would help quite a lot.
Synetic has (had?) only 8 people, and managed to release a series of racing games. I liked their Mercedes Benz World Racing and World Racing 2 games. Both of have a very large amount of content (cars, tracks, fully driveable 3d lanscapes).
I recall parking lot skating under icy conditions, but not on dry roads. Using a rope on the back bumper would change this to parking lot skiing, which I only saw once. My only parking lot skiing was on a skateboard while holding a rope being towed by a small motorcycle. The motorcycle would go slow, but by maneuvering side to side, speed could be built up, just like real skiing. You can probably find a few videos of guys road skating behind a motorcycle using steel plated shoes to generate sparks, generally done for show at drag racing events.
Recent Pontiac cars were mostly just sibling cars to their Chevy equivalents, with just a body change if even that. The Trans-Am and Camaro were virtually identical underneath, with only the body styling different. I preferred the Trans-Am's look, but I was in a small minority as these never sold as well as the Camaro's and sales for both paled in comparason to that of the Ford Mustang.
Unlike Ford + Lincoln, Honda + Acrua, Nissan + Infinity, Toyota + Lexus, the Pontiac label was a middle tier level, stuck in the middle between Chevy + Cadillac, eventually ending up as a redundant level to the Chevy label. I'm surprised that Buick, the other "middle tier" GM car, isn't going away also. Chrysler + Dodge are also redudant.
The grip doesn't have to be exagerated to compensate for the fact that you can't 'feel' the car, but a grip model that is more forgiving would help. It's still my opinion that some diversions from reality will result in a better sim oriented racing game, so I'm not a member of the harder is more realistic club.
Regardless of the quality of the physics in LFS, the rate of progress, especially the last year or so, seems relatively slow, especially if you consider the advancement of PC games in general since 2003 (S1 was released in July 2003), as opposed to just racing games.
One concern is the small target audience for sim-oriented racing games. The big companies, like EA, could make a good racing game simulator, but as noted by Simbin above, there isn't much of a market. iRacing's big expenditure on a sim-oriented racing game will probably be proof of the small target audience for sim-oriented racing games regardless of content. My guestimate was and still is that iRacing's business model will not survive for much more than 3 years, unless the founder is willing to plow money into a losing cause. They could try selling the game instead of renting it, but I don't think this would help and would only occur when the online aspect is virtually shut down.
My concern about the slow pace of LFS is that by the time S3 final is released (2010, 2011?), it will seem visually antiquated in comparason to other games, even if its physics is great, mostly because of the 3 person staff.
If you just can't wait, the VW Sirrocco is a tier 4 car in NFS Undercover (meaning it's only slightly faster than a real Formula 1 car as opposed to tier 1 car which is twice as fast). So the NFS haters can consider these to be cartoons:
So are the players, at least the old timers like me.
From back in 2007:
I think of LFS as unique type of game. It's not really competing with the other racing sims or racing games, although there is some overlap with the players. It still has up to 1000 players online at peak times, far more than other racing games as far as I know.
I'm suprised by the number of players still active online with LFS. As mentioned in my old post, having played computer games, including racing games (and simulations) since 1997, it's no longer the thrill it was and I don't spend that much time with any particular game any more. I read the same thing from the older sim web sites, like Team Redline, waiting for the "next new thing", playing it for a while when it shows up, and waiting again.
So maybe it's some of us "aging" as well as LFS.
Getting back on topic, the aging of LFS, I don't recall when I made my first 2009 for S3 release prediction, it was 2 to 3 years ago, but it now it seems optimistic instead of far fetched as it did when I first mentioned this.
In the mean time the only new thing is iRacing, but last I read, the active membership hovers around 6000, a tiny amount compared to sales of most racing games, getting a lot of press for such a tiny audience.
GTR Evolution fixed the tire scrub sound issue in ISI games. I've read good things about the power and glory mod for GTR 2.
The last rFactor patch was back in December 2007, so the only thing going on there are the mods and when there are a bazillion mods, going to a bazillion + 1 mods doesn't seem that interesting anymore. There are a few good mods for this game. I don't know if or when there will be an rFactor 2.
Codemasters, makers of the Toca Race Driver series (games not true sims) has released Grid (I don't know how well this did), and plans to make a Formula 1 game.
EA continues with the NFS series, but it's my opinion that interest in racing games in general peaked during 2006 and has declined since then. NFS Underground 2 and Most Wanted sold about 9 million copies. Carbon and ProStreet a bit over 5 million copies each. I don't know how sales of Undercover have gone. ProStreet and Undercover have made the cars too fast to seem like car racing games any more, but it's still fun. EA plans to release 3 different "NFS" games this year, leveraging off existing stuff. World Online will be Windows only and will use some combination of the streets and tracks from Most Wanted and Carbon. NFS Shift will be multi-platform, and apparently will use some combination of ProStreet and ISI stuff (some former GTR2 developers are involved). The 3rd one is some low end console game with the name NFS slapped on it.
I haven't heard much about any new console based racing games. I don't own a console so I don't follow those very much.
Getting back to LFS aging, it's like a long story, and the pace has seemed a bit slow this last year, and I'm wanting to see the next chapter, but I think we've known it was going to be slow with just 3 people working on it.