On Motorways / Freeways / major highways, there's a lot of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) traffic. I think in USA you call them tractor/trailers?
Anyway, in UK, an HGV vehicle can be just north of 47 tonnes (51+ tons USA).
You can just imagine how much wear and tear that puts on a road surface with heavy vehicles doing 50mph or more.
You'll notice in areas where these trucks do heavy breaking, it's not unusual to see the tarmac rippling, where the surface gets dragged forward under the heavy load.
Or, when you have a small pot hole, not only does this get bigger and bigger, but because of the truck suspension bouncing, you get a line of holes after the pot hole, and these then get bigger, and this continues, till, eventually, the authorities repair the road.
For track design, they're not expecting 40+ ton trucks to be racing round the circuit, lap after lap, chewing up the track, although they may have to think about Formula 1 cars, as they have so much grip, they can lift welded drain covers off the track.
I'd imagine, track designers and operators are mainly thinking about having a smooth a surface as possible, laid in as close to one strip as possible, so they don't have to deal with expansion joints, which as a bike user, you'll know these can be as bad as ice when they get wet.
For Bahrain, they used very low tolerance asphalt, constructed with a modified polymer bitumen with very strong gravel, because of the intense heat. Gravel they used came from UK - see HERE.
If you want to see (somewhat) how the track is laid down, have a look at this video on the Zandvoort circuit upgrade.
Do you mean when designing track surface within LFS, or designing surfaces for real tracks?
In LFS, there seems to be only 3 type of surfaces, and therefore 3 different grip levels depending on what you are driving on.
Asphalt: Track, road and Autocross
Grass and mud: both Rallycross and offroad
Concrete: Concrete slabs used in Autocross design
In real life, although most tracks are asphalt, there can be huge difference in types used, from fine grain to very course grain. And these change, not only with use (eg wear and amount of tyre rubber being laid down), but how much bitumen / oil seeps out due to age, heat, etc.
And some tracks have used diamond cutters to mark up the track to get more friction / grip.
Also. In real life, if it rains, best to stay off painted track lines; especially track borders.
So, if LFS (eventually) simulates rain, will lines be given a lower grip co-efficient compared to the track surface?
According to your user profile, your are using a GeForce4 MX 4000, which was probably ok in 2003, when it was launched, but would be almost useless for anything with any half decent graphics in the last 10 years, especially as the card only supports DirectX 7.0.
There's no reason why the developers should support anything that old. It's like asking Microsoft to keep supporting Windows 3.1, considering they stopped supporting Win7 early last year.
Couple of years ago, LFS may have been able to run on a computer equivalent to a potato, but you're trying to run the game on a fossalized goat turd.
Found this on eBay, which explains what others think of MX4000.
Basic because little in the way of street furniture, but there is arrow and countdown markers where required, and track is divided into 4 sectors using 3 checkpoints to split the sectors.
The route is between armco barriers.
I tried few laps, and one of my best (no penalties!) was a 1:20.63 in an XFG, using keys.
I've included the set I used if anyone wants to try.
If anyone interested, (and who would be?), the way I made this layout (don't always use this method), was to create a route by laying down 16x16 slabs in straight lines and curves, then driving round, changing route as I did laps (especially if I fell off the slab going round a bend). Once I'd done a few laps, went into overhead view to look at slabs and my skid marks, which gave me good idea of where track should be, then placed tyres to show where I should place barriers. Once tyres placed to give me inside and outside track limits, done more laps seeing if I could keep between tyre barriers, and moved tyres where I thought applicable. Once I had track potentially as I wanted it, I replaced tyres and slabs with armco fencing until I'd done full circuit. Then I added couple small ramps, signage and tyres in barriers.
Tyres in barriers to stop people using armco as bumper rails to help get round the turns. You can still use them, but because layout is Autocross rather than race, lap time will increase everytime you hit a tyre.
So driving imprecision will count as time penalties!
Last edited by sinanju, .
Reason : Duplicate Image
The track is (very) approx 1.79 miles / 2,878 m long. Measured by me trying to stay in middle of track; NOT taking the racing line.
Overhead View
My best time in XFG using keyboard, was a 2:08 dead.
There are 2 layouts. One for hotlapping, and the other with 8 start positions for a race. Lap number will have to be changed for race, and if you need more start positions, then they're easy enough to add.
If hotlapping, watch out for the tyres, as if you hit them, they will add to your time. Driving precision may be better than speed.
There are a couple of very very tight turns, plus the section just before the finish line that you should watch out for.
According to the LFS Manual, which can be found at https://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/Cars
XF GTi (XFG) - Front-wheel drive hatchback, similar to sporty hatchbacks such as the Peugeot 106 Rallye/Citroen AX GTi
Because it's an Industrial Estate, not a race track
And the route also has pedestrian crossings, cellular masts and a speed camera, which are other things that you would likely find in any Industrial Estate.
The main issue is that because you made the layout, and probably did good few laps trying it out, is that you know where the corners are and where they go. For everyone else, it's a case of guesswork and having good memory.
Use the turn and countdown marker boards. These type of boards are used in real tracks, where it's mainly professional race drivers using the tracks, so they're not some sort of 'cheat'.
Corners - very hard to make smooth turn corners. However, for outside of turn, there's no reason why you can't overlap fences, armco, barriers, etc, to get smoother turn ...
Your turn on left; mine on right.
And armco can be overlapped in a straight line. And if you use the Z function, nothing to stop you putting armco above other armco to get higher, and sometimes more realistic barrier.
Other than these (hopefully helpful) hints, the layout was fine
Great to see that you've discovered the Autocross feature, and that you can now make your own layouts
Some feedback on your layout, and on any future layouts.
Do you want to just place objects, or do you want to your layout to look like it would in real life?
In real life, there would be a duty of care, so lots of health & safety considerations.
Normally, you wouldn't start in middle of a street - especially when there's a large car park area nearby. The one to the right of your start point is great - off camber, and you can't quite see the road you have to turn into.
When you have pavements and lamp-posts, why place objects and signs on road, when you can use verges and lamp-posts and street signs?
Use more signs - especially for turns. You designed layout so you know which way to turn. From experience, people just load layout then drive. So therefore get lost, and bit frustrated.
Also, where you have a section where you can build up speed, followed by a turn, best to have countdown markers. It gives warning about big braking needed. Even a single marker is useful.
You were missing a barrier to stop people entering industrial car park on right hand side just before your waypoint.
I would have made spacing between your tyre barriers you used for chicane/slalom a bit bigger. You may have specified using MRT, but people will try other cars, and your chicane is bit tight.