Quote from Jakg :

ps - try pitspotter, it might help!

wadizzit

There have been several overtaking/visibility suggestions, but here is mine:

So, yesterday I'm on AC Club in the FOX still in heavy traffic as we are approaching the S/F line on lap 1. I'm on the right side of the track with a car coming up on my right side that I can see approaching in my mirror. I do a quick right-look, see nobody, and so move right to protect the inside (we are past the S/F at this point). Turns out, he did have overlap on me and by the time I move over he was pretty much right up beside me (per viewing the replay). As such, I foced him into the grass (for which he repaid me by sending me spinning). The entier time, I can see his car in my side view mirrors, but didn't know he was that close.

Suggestion: As a car overlaps another car, the overtaking car starts to move through the side view mirror. So, as nose overlaps, the nose is no longer visible in the side view mirror. As half the car overlaps, then only the back half of teh car is visible in the side view mirror. Etc.

The problem here, was that the right-look did not show me his car when he was only partially overlapping me and his entire car was in my side-view mirror. As such, I nearly crashed him out and he did crash me out.

Just a thought.

All these NASCAR discussions got me thinking about the nature of oval racing (one high speed sweeper after another) which got me thinking about the difficulty of taking high speed sweepers in a low downforce car which got me thinking about difficult corners in general which led to the question of which corner or corner combination would be considered the most difficult in LFS.

So, what is considered the most difficult corner or corner combination of the LFS tracks? Its likely different depending upon the car, but for each type of car what would that be?

Discuss.

Quote from i30i3i3y :

+1

Took me a while to understand the F12 menu and what it meant by fuel load at pit stop. I assumed the percentage (percentage of tank capacity) was what was added on top of what's already in the tank, seemed like the logical thing to do. Only to find it fills the tank upto that percentage and I ran out of fuel a few yards before the line.

The system in place now is counter intuitive. You're more likely to say 'add x amount to my tank' than 'fill my tank upto x amount'. The latter requires unnecessary calculations.

its really best to have both systems, whcih i believe was teh original suggestion.

Real time, mid race replays avaialble to admins who can then assess penalties or do immediate bans would go a long way to curb irresponsible behavior. IRL, stewards assess penalities as the race progresses. The same capability atted to LFS would allow less drastic penalties while still maintianing control. The current system is the equivalent of giving a soccer (football, for you Euro types ) ref no whistle and only red cards for penalties.

Quote from 510N3D :

I just have noticed, Spinjack, what is 4 wheel "steering", sounds strange and reminds me on monster trucks 4WheelDrive is what i know but i think theres another language barrier ?!

ok, googled:

http://www.mazda.com.au/articleZone.asp?articleZoneID=91

or this one

http://www.frazier.co.uk/5d4ws.jpg

Not to hijack the thread, but it looked like the rear wheel was angled outward. So the rear wheels where steering as well. Though not so pronounced in the larger image, it still appears as if the rear wheel on the car is toeing out quite a bit.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I dont really care what the website says about the cars, tbh I dont care about marketing proseif there's one thing i've never listened too its marketting/adverts. Call me a communist if you will, but when somebody starts marketting they're either lying or explaining a shortcoming with spin, they're never telling the truth and they're never dealing with the small print.

:biggrinfl

"Its not a bug, its a feature."

Quote from 510N3D :

@ Nutter: hmmk, whatever


@mrodgers, asymetric tires are only 1 part of the cake, you need at least a asymetric suspension to compensate the forces that appears with these settings from my point of view and after all the Tests i have made. I tried to get faster or gain more control by playing around with the tires but either i could not find a optimal setup or its true that the suspension as described above is needed as well.

[FM]^Evensis ak sturje had nice settings with the older patch (FO8) and i think he sticked with the new patch and BF1 as well but he is not faster with this, i think. At least i tried these settings as well but i could not find any differences even if i tried to change my line while going more agressive into turns and stuff.

Im kind of sad about the fact that im not a pro at this technically stuff so most of the time i can only guess or do practice thats all. But i thank LFS and Nascar Series for bringing me forward on this

OT: Is the car in your Avatar supposed to have 4 wheel steering?

Quote from Jakg :

not as of yet im afraid, although different tyres on different sides could be handy for circuit racing

I must have been thinking of something else. *cough*GTR*cough*

Though, there are some settings that are asymmetrical, aren't there? Tire pressures or something?

Direct from the LFS website (bolding mine):

FXO - The FXO GTR is a great car for somebody just getting used to the extra power offered by the GTR cars or for somebody who just wants to have some fun in the GTR class, but if you want wins and don't like long races you have to move to one of the rear-wheel drive GTR cars.

XRR - Is the XR GT Turbo not man enough for you? Slicks, wings, silly power and an angry face, this car has had the works done to it. Nobody knows what the LFS tuning division did to the turbocharger to get double the power out of the engine, but it works, and we are forever thankful. It likes to eat FXO GTRs for breakfast, so watch out.

FZR - This is what happens when a not-so-sane person looks at the FZ50 and says "Mmm, nice, but could do with a bit more power." 130bhp more to be exact. Like the XR GTR, it was given slicks, downforce, gorgeous looks and lightened, but just ended up better.

Quote from Crazy Harry :

different suspension settings for left/right side and so on.....

I thought S2 had this?

Quote from Funnybear :

I've just been reading the stats on the Website for the GT cars and to be fair The Devs make no bones about the fact the cars are unbalanced. In fact they positivily embrace it.

The FXO is the beginner GT. It ain't going to win races (Their words)

The XRR is better and faster.

But the FZR is better and faster still.

Having read all that I realised that these cars are designed to be this way. Which harks back to my point that they are different cars. Which is the whole point. The FXO was never meant to be competative as it's a stepping stone to the faster GT's.

Which again leads me too that if you want a fair race go one make. I really don't see the problem in doind that and why this percieved unbalanced car thing is such a contested topic . . .

I thought the idea was to move up through the classes. Not move up within a class (at least that's how it works IRL). Sounds like that in reality, we don't have a GTR class. We have an FXO class, and an XRR class, and an FZR class. Which is fine, if that's the case. But lets call it what it is, then.

It would be nice to here from the Dev's what they had in mind for these cars.

There are a lot of very intelligent "guesses" in this thread, but knowing for sure might answer a lot of questions. For example; based upon some of the comments in this tread, it sounds like the XRR might have been intented to be a bit more tricky to setup but once set up properly was a fast car.

Some feedback from LFS would be good, in any case.

Quote from -wes- :

Each car should be faster than the others at some of the tracks, I like the idea of the xrr being the speed king with the fzr good at mid-high speed twisty bits.
The fxr is left with short tight tracks where acceleration matters.

This is the way is should be, though it appears that the FZR dominates on all tracks.


XRR Rules!!! :headbang:

Quote from tristancliffe :

And, if your leaning heavily on the outside rear tyre (say exiting a corner), and put that wheel on the grass, you are going to exit stage backwards. It happens in real life too - grass + rear tyre + hard cornering = spin.

Agreed.

But take any powerful car out to a grassy field, stop, put in first gear, front wheels straight ahead, and them floor it. What happens? Nothing. The car doesn't move much at all. In LFS, that exact sequence results in donuts. And if there is any steering angle at all, its much much worse.

Watch during IRL races when cars leave the track and get into the grass. Assuming the car isn't damaged, they are spinning the rears like mad trying to get some speed back as they return to the track. Do they snap around? Are the drivers having to struggle to keep the car under control even at partial throttle? No.

That the grass is slippery is not the problem. Its that it is so incredibly hard to control the car on grass is the problem. IRL (and on other sims for that matter) you can floor the throttle and NOT suddenly do a donut. The car may move a bit sideways, but not much and not suddenly, especially if the front wheels are straight. Its the lack of control that is unrealistic.

Quote from keiran :

I doubt they'll ever be such a thing as a `track editor`. Even with the tools you are going to most likely need to know how to 3D model.

I don't want to see mods in LFS unless theres a system in place. It will destroy the pick up and play of public racing.

Keiran

Check out Unreal Tournament's map editor. It works very well with 3D representations without the user needing to know how to model in 3D. It's basically a WYSIWYG editor. Pretty cool.

Its not the slippery that's the problem. Its the snap oversteer. Racing slicks don't work well on grass but the propensity for the cars to swap ends on the grass is very unrealistic (and very frustrating).

Quote from Jakg :

because you'd get version mismatch, where the only server running mod x is using version 3.2x, when you have 3.3f, and the download site is down after an hour of googling

This isn't as big a deal as you would think. Battlefield 1942 had a Desert Combat mod that was amazing and not "officially" supported. Aircraft, vehicles, personnel, all custom. You always had to have the correct version of both 142 and the DC mod. It was a bit frustrating at times, but overall it made for great gaming. There were many other mods for 1942, but very few people used them because they sucked (and therefore didn't stay around long).

The players regulate the mods by simply avoiding the ones that suck and by diligently utilizing the ones that are well executed. Usually, the servers were up to date because they wouldn't get any players otherwise.

The authors of the best mods would typcially get a pre-release version of the base game's latest update so that the mod could be tested and updated as well.

Quote from Becky Rose :

That's a nice car, but there's no price tag on the site and it doesn't look like they have any non-US distributors yet, in fact, it doesn't look like they have many US distributors yet.

AFAIK, $350k in the U.S.

Realistic: No
Annoying because of overuse: Yes
Should people simply pay attention to who is around: Yes


Now for the reality.

1) People often DON'T pay close enough attention.
2) Getting wrecked out of a race is much much more annoying than a horn happy driver.
3) People often use the "didn't know you were there" excuse to justify deliberately wrecking another racer.

There are aspects of sims that make them inherently unrealistic. These aspects can be used to improve the experience or to worsen the experience.

The cars are free and fully repaired simply by hitting shift+s. How realistic is that? Its not. At all. And the result is little respect for in game property (ie, the car).

So, for lack of common courtesy and respect, for lack of driver awareness, and for the existence of human pettiness, I suggest putting a horn back onto the Formula cars.

Quote from Gentlefoot :

If someone spammed at me:

"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"

"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"

I would tell them to "STFU, if you think you need to do that you clearly haven't raced me before."

It wasn't at me, but at another driver. Still very annoying. I politely asked him not do do that anymore.

Reinstall the horn in the formula cars. Though not entirely realistic, neither is the way many people drive on public servers. The horn is a great "hey, i'm right here next to you" signal.

Happened last night on Redline. One of teh drivers started doing the message spamming:

"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"
"BLUE FLAG - Get off the racing line!"

"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"
"Blue FLAG - Get out of the way!!!!"

...or something along those lines. Very distracting. Very rude.

Drivers moving off line to let a faster car pass is a courtesy thing, not a hard and fast rule. Most F1 drivers take a wide line when MS, Kimi, or FA come through because it is the 'gentleman' thing to do.

I've read a couple driving books and they all pretty much agree on the concept of passing slower cars. The slow cars constitute a modification in the track and therefore a modification in the proper racing line. The overtaking car should alter their line to account for the 'obstacle' that has altered the track.


Edit: Another problem. I'm going down the long straight on Blackwood drafting a slower car. He pulls right and so I slide left up next to him. Just as we reach the braking point, he comes back across the track right into me which tosses me into the sand. Very annoying. Ther reason I bring this up is because the Blue Flag issue is a symptom of a larger issue: A lack of common courtesy on the public servers.

Last edited by Spinjack, Wed 23 Aug 2006, 14:26.

How do you do driver changes (assuming the team is not all in the same physical location)?