Hi there.
First of all thanks for the patch and great work. Definitly a step towards the right direction (realism).
Love how the F1 car is done, eventhough I don't like OW as much as "real" cars *g*

I love street cars. The small ones that are driven on demo servers. And there I can compare to the real world, because I am driving mine sometimes to the limit. But I didn't drive a F1 car yet.

The problem with tyres which still remains is the longitudinal behaviour as written in your progress report.
The way tyres behave under acceleration and braking. Its simply still wrong.

The FWD car on street tyres (GTI) accelerates best when pushing the petal to the metal. With hard spinning wheels it still manages a 7.13 and ace in training. You don't need any feeling whereas IRL you have to be careful with the throttle in a FWD car, if you wanna go off fast.
Same goes for braking. Locked wheels may be damaged while braking, but they still provide the shortest braking way, which is again wrong.

And because everything is calculated the same way, the ingame physics way, cornering behaviour can't be true this way, because longitudinal behaviour is also important for cornering. The correct grip behaviour of spinning or locked wheels is important for everything.

The RWD cars are better now, but still FZ50 without TC or RA are much more dangerous and difficult to drive than comparable cars in RL (like Porsche e.g.)

I also noticed, that it is very hard to get your car drifting by suddenly take away throttle. You can go fast in a corner and than full throttle, no throttle, full throttle. The car won't begin to drift because of the transfer of weight. If it really starts to drift, then because its a RWD car and got to much power full throttle on the rear wheels and make them spin. Not because weight was transfered away from the back. So its very hard to do that with a fwd car.

(EDIT: this may be the result of setup and is perhabs no fault of wrong physics)

In my oppinion rFactor still is more believable in the result of simulating street cars. No matter how they do it and even if they just readout data and don't calculate anything.

I really hope that tyre physics isn't supposed to be finished for a while. I hope there will be further improvements in the next patch regarding spinning and locked longitudinal behaviour.
This would also make starts and braking much more interessting. At the moment starts with street cars are boring because of this problem and because there is no free start at all.
And braking wrong with locked wheels isn't punished as hard as it should be (in RL you would slide off course ...)

Have fun with the new patch all
RIP

Last edited by RIP2004, Fri, 21 Apr 2006 19:29.

Quote from cannonfodder :

The update talks about fixes for situations where there should be more grip, but not sutiations where there should be less grip. Are the FWD cars still going to get fast race starts when they spin the tires?

First thing to test after trying to drive a rwd car with street tires
I really hope it is gonna fixed with this patch. Would make starts much more interessting ...

Another exploit would be full throttle at the start with road cars. It doesn't matter for WR, but you can get the best possible time in a drag race or training with weak FWD cars for example. No engine cut on upshift. Full throttle and just change gear if light is on.

It does how however matter drastically for the start in a race. Try it with FXO street, GTI, GT and so on ... best start possible.

Thats true. Thats why I don't like force feedback generally. The Feedback in a real car is WAY more and very different. The feedback from the wheel in all games I played now is a joke compared to the real thing
But apart from feedback you may simulate the behaviour of the car as realistic as possible. It will be always harder to drive a simulated car, than driving it for real in terms of control, because of the lack of feedback. But then you have the advantage of not fighting against g-forces This helps perhabs a bit to concentrate on the driving itself ...

Some thoughts of me about LFS and rFactor in terms of simulation. Perhabs a bit harsh, but as I write I like LFS for a lot of things and I think it has the biggest theoretical potential, but I am not sure if it can be achieved in 100 years with just one programmer ...

http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=240639&page=6 Post 138 and a few below ...

Last edited by RIP2004, Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:57.

Well, thats no real argument. The feeling takes a while. If I play a lot of LFS, rFactor feels strange. But it is the sameway around. If I play a lot rFactor, LFS feels more like flying over the street. There are a lot of things that make LFS feel more like a computer game to me. And I can name them. Less feelable bumps and rev pointer directly and lagfree connected to throttle e.g.

So unless you name things that cause that feeling thats no argument. Some people even say Need for Speed Underground feels more realistic than LFS or rFactor

I hope Scawen does a great job with the next physics patch. Meanwhile I could recommend rFactor. It doesn't have the physics flaws. At least not that much as LFS at the moment. There the simple road going cars are a lot more controllable.

@brainBT I have the same car (Astra Coupé) and you are right with all the points. I think (hope) it will be fixed in LFS. Until then I play my recommendation which feels a lot more like an Astra Coupé physics

Quote from tristancliffe :

The revs in each gear are the same no matter if you flat shift or lift shift, so it makes no difference to the power band. Revs and Speed are a FIXED relationship (clutch and wheel slip permitting)

Of course, flat shifting is slightly quicker, so you'll less speed as you'll spend less time off the throttle, but this is only gonna be about 50rpm - not much really.

Think of the clutch. If you shift up rev in next gear has to be lower, because as you say Revs and Speed have a fixed relationship.

This difference between the revs of the engine and the revs of the wheels (gearbox) has to be equalized before engine torque can be transferred properly to the wheels. Thats exactly the task of the clutch. If you put your foot off the throttle while shifting, rev will decrease naturally because there is no connection and no throttle. Therefore rev difference between engine and wheels is lower when next gear gets in. Therefore clutch hasn't that much slip, because it hasn't that much difference to equalize.

If you stay on the throttle you even increase or stay at full revs. Difference between engine revs and revs in next gear is a big gap. This gap has to be closed by the clutch which slips as it tries to equalize full revs to the revs of the correct speed in next gear.
If the clutch slips it can't transfer full torque because it partly gets lost in the slippling clutch.
Your engine torque energy then is used to heat up clutch and not to accelerate the wheels/car.

I watched a lot of videos about that stuff. Watch Walther Röhrl accelerate a Porsche 911. He has a little start rev. Leaves the throttle like it is when he disengages the clutch. Only then, when foot is fully off the clutch he puts the foot on the throttle to the floor. Before clutch is disengaged it can't handle full throttle power.

Thats why it isn't faster in most cars. I don't know about Dragster gearboxes, but we are talking about street cars or usual race cars. Either they have a sequential gear box which cuts ignition automatically or you have to do that manually.

Flat shifting isn't faster as proper use of clutch/throttle in a road car, except for a turbo perhabs. (because of pressure)

If you leave throttle while shifting with clutch rev will go up to the limiter. Next gear and then clutch will slip a bit before torque can be used to accelerate the car. Perhabs its faster with a real good racing or dragster clutch, but not in a road going car with usual clutch, because it won't be able to get the torque on the street while bringing rev to the rev of next gear.

It wouldn't be faster, it would heat up the clutch and damage it. An overheated clutch doesn't work that good