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JeffR
S2 licensed
Since there's some confusion about this, just wanted to clear it up.

Quote from kaynd :used just as a slowing down while turning teqnique

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).
JeffR
S2 licensed
RC gliders here. There's a slope site with a nice view not too far away from my home:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUVRUMc7DP8&fmt=22
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from Juls :It is rather like building a castle.

While others build sky-scrapers.

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from DHRammstein :I wouldn't use the "technique", because it would severely damage tires, flat spots.

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).

Quote from JeffR :Spec class racing with "evil mid-engined Clio's"

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Clio_V6_Renault_Sport
Last edited by JeffR, .
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from andy_bonjon :Now this is where this technique confuses me.... clearly regaining grip at the rear isnt an option and as people have said the only thing left is steering. So in order to reduce grip at the front there are two options:

a) a normal counter steer technique - only a few degrees of steering in the opposite direction before the slip angle of the tyres is reduced sufficiently so that the lateral force from the front and rear tyres is balanced and grip regained.

b) the 'understeer' technique - turning the wheel further raises slip angle above what is optimum and therefore lateral force decreases and the tyres begin sliding. However, no matter how much steering input you apply and therefore however much the tyres are sliding, there will still be a lateral force keep the front end turning.

So WHY would you CHOOSE to turn the wheel a lot - say 180° minimum to achieve the same affect of turning the wheel maybe 5° or 10° maximum for ANY type of oversteer situation???

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.

Quote :with this understeer technique you cant do that. even if you apply full lock to give the front tyres the biggest slip angle possible and they are sliding across the road, they're STILL going to have a lateral force on them accelerating them towards the corner and that's not going to help regain control at the rear.

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.

Quote from RevengeR :I was wondering why people need such a difficult technique?

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
Perhaps a better description of this method would be induced all wheel drift via steering inwards inputs in addition to throttle inputs.
NFS Undercover - cars or swoop racers?
JeffR
S2 licensed
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.

http://jeffareid.net/nfsuc/nuceoeccx.wmv

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).

http://jeffareid.net/nfsuc/nucsbbccx.wmv
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from JeffR :An example movie with more subtle steering inputs, from Grand Prix Legends (Greg Stewart is the driver in this video)

Re-encoded the video, this one will stream right away:

http://jeffareid.net/gpl/gplrngss.wmv
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from kaynd :This under steer induction by turning more really doesn’t seem to float my boat… Yes it makes sense… you steer more in order to go way past the front tire’s optimum slip angle. But what happens when you return the wheel to the center while exiting a corner?

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).
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from NightShift :
LX6 Weight dist:
48.0 F 52.0 R

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.

http://jeffareid.net/gpl/gplrngs.wmv

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.
Last edited by JeffR, .
Induced understeer to counter lift throttle oversteer?
JeffR
S2 licensed
First a video showing extreme usage, just to demonstrate the technique, not how it should be used, from an old version of LFS:

http://jeffareid.net/lfs/lx6.wmv

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?
Last edited by JeffR, .
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from Tim_J_23 :Comparing an action-arcade-racing game to a Racing simulator. ... And graphics, sure if you want to play NFS with some "good graphics".

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
I still like the looks of the Caterham, even it it is antiquated:

http://www.caterham.co.uk
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from bbman :The only way to get noticeably faster is to go a lot bigger - and then we are at iRacing money.

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from JeffR :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.

Quote from bbman :Ey? It's pretty widely acknowledged (even by utter fanboys) that losing grip in LfS it too LINEAR, thus too forgiving... Why the hell would you deliberately make it worse?

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.

https://www.hoosiertire.com/rrtire.htm
JeffR
S2 licensed
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).
JeffR
S2 licensed
Old but very good movie, "Three Days of the Condor" may be sorted as "3 days of the condor" in a video rental store.
JeffR
S2 licensed
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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from tristancliffe :Nope. Less ice feeling these days than there has ever been. It's only because you can't 'feel' the car, and is the same in all sims that don't artificially give 200% more grip than you should have to compensate.

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
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.
Last edited by JeffR, .
JeffR
S2 licensed
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:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBoKQdz6JXk&fmt=18

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx6PFIytALM&fmt=18
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from jrs_4500 :I loved LFS, but compared to the other racing games out there, it's getting really old.

So are the players, at least the old timers like me.

From back in 2007:

Quote from ajp71 :Is it just me or have SimBin just admited to the fact they've gone down the arcade route?

Quote from JeffR :Simbin is right, the market for sim-oriented racing games on PC's is very small. PC gaming seems to have shrunk quite a bit. What use to fill up 2 or 3 rows at Best Buy (a USA chain store) now fits on 1 row. Price of GTR2 with GTLegends, $20 (USA), price of Race07, also $20 (USA). Price of Need for Speed PC games when first released, $35 to $40 (USA).

There's a good chance that gaming, PC or console, may lose it's popularity over the next few years since the newness of gaming is long gone. I'm wondering what will be out there by the time LFS S3 is finalized, which I'm still predicting to be sometime in 2009 (a date that seems closer to reality than it did when I first predicted this).

As far as most of the racing sims, the only arcade aspect seems to be the amount of assists available in particular games. My main complaint about ISI games is that the replays don't include any tire scrub sounds, and even in "full" mode, still seem to be missing something.

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.
JeffR
S2 licensed
Quote from JeffR :This one looks nice:

small_car.wmv


Here's another:

another_small_car.wmv
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG