The online racing simulator
"catch-up"/"rubberbanding" feature
Hello again,

I've posted in plugin section but it looks impossible to do

I have a new idea to make online race full of fair fights

I think more your are far away in first place, more you get low power to be caught with ease by the other. I think for LAN party with people not so used to drive, to get them stay together and reduce skill difference between drivers.

What do you think?

Also it could be adding more people in the car dynamically to add weight

Thanks!!!
Interesting, although definitely not for realism... but hey, I give +1 for this.
possibly good idea for lan party or single player but defeats the objective of improving and becoming better than others for online racing
Quote from bishtop :possibly good idea for lan party or single player but defeats the objective of improving and becoming better than others for online racing

how so?
The, further behind you are the faster your NOS booster charges lol... If your X seconds from lead, you don't get any.
Quote from rapapar :What do you think?

Alright because you asked: Its not an arcade game and/or something for losers or grannies.
Quote from SimulatorRental.com :The, further behind you are the faster your NOS booster charges lol... If your X seconds from lead, you don't get any.

could be a solution, but it's even more a best thing if the one in front stay in front even with less power, it lets a chance to win if he continues to challenge himselft Smile
Quote from cargame.nl :Alright because you asked: Its not an arcade game and/or something for losers or grannies.

We all are a loser for someone else lol
man, we play videogame, what do you expect? lol
I think rubberbanding wouldn't really fit a game like LFS. It works for games that aren't trying to be realistic, but it won't feel right to have cars magically get faster or slower in a racing simulator.
There's also the fact that it'd drastically change how the cars behave. One moment your car's driving like normal, then you get passed and suddenly there's more torque going to the drive wheels, the weight transfer is all different, you get wheelspin more easily, and your car's settings don't fit at all. If you end up in last place, you now have a whole lot more power but your tires, brakes and setup are still the same. That's just going to make things even harder, because you're suddenly driving a completely different car at that point.

This really wouldn't make things easier for the slower drivers. It'd just make things really confusing for them. Having the car's performance change literally all the time will be nearly impossible to get used to.

Dynamically adding weight to the cars isn't a good idea either. You're not simply slowing the cars down by doing that; you're also drastically increasing braking distances, bringing cornering speeds down, increasing tire wear, changing the forces acting on the suspension, and seriously changing the weight transfer and rotational inertia of the car. Again, this would also lead to the car feeling completely different literally every other moment, and would be impossible to get used to.

If you're trying to find a way to bridge the gap between faster and slower drivers, dynamically changing anything about the car is not the right way to do it. It'd only ruin things for everyone.
You can add ballast. Have a quali round, see how good people are, assign ballast and voila, done.
Even if this simulator is tend to make as realistic as possible... why to limit certain aspects of something else, regardless of being it realistic or not...

Same thing goes for every simulator game as well.

If this game goes like as you think it should be, then I suggest to delete completely fictional cars and only able to drive with cockpit view... and no restarts or disconnections.
Quote from UnknownMaster21 :how so?

Because where is the realism in what is proposed , people put time and effort into learning to improve their racing and this is a lazy way bypassing any skill . It would no longer be a racing simulator. Its the wanting to be a winner and beat those ahead that gives us the drive(no pun) to improve
If instead all we need to do is wait until the leader starts to lose power to catch up then there is no need to improve anymore and just wait for the faster racer to make the odd mistake to beat him even though we can be driving like crap
you are thinking it that side... end of discussion then.
Like I explained earlier, this really wouldn't make it easier for beginners. Learning car control is already very hard. It'll be even harder when the car drives completely different all the time.

Just imagine. You're trying to follow a faster driver around a turn, then you get a power increase mid-corner, the car's balance gets disrupted, and you either spin out or understeer off the track. It would be very confusing, and it wouldn't be fun. No one could properly adjust to this. And there are many other ways something like this could ruin someone's lap. It won't help slower drivers. It'll only make things worse for them.

A lot of racing games don't give the players rubberbanding simply because it doesn't work very well, especially when the driving physics are complex. Sometimes they give rubberbanding to AI drivers only, but even they can't properly handle it at times.
I do think it would be nice to make things less difficult for beginners, but I don't think rubberbanding is the answer.
It still would be penalising someone for being better, it is something you would expect in NFS, remember we all started of as a beginner and only got to the stages we are at now due to hard work and not giving up without the need to use something as a crutch
I would view this, as an alternative "game" within a game. Something to turn off, something that is just there for goofing around, not racing. Something draw kids in to this particular piece of software.


Just like if a big soccer ball and goals where added to play car-soccer, or if there was a demo derby type track, or the big loop-loop autocross track, the autocross stunt tracks, or… sigh... cruising.


Kids/newbies need to learn how to control the car, un-crash them selves, avoid crashes, brake, etc... before they can even get around the track at a pace that matters. So having little "extra-games" like this wouldn't really hurt so much. But, slowing down the lead car is just wrong, thus why I proposed a nitrous booster type method, which would stop working as you get a few car lengths/seconds from the lead car, this distance and how much speed it adds, could be input variables.
It could work well in lan racing with friends or single player against AI racing, but within online multiplayer it would be unfair and be a classic definition of what a cheat achieves with someone having an unfair advantage over another even if they happen to be the losing player
I wouldn't like it myself, but that's the beauty of InSim - we get to add things along these lines per server, without needing it programmed in by Scawen.

I think people sell LFS short a little when they consider it only for serious racing. It's a racing simulator by design, but that necessarily entails simulating a car. The racing part is, looking from a step back, 'just' a layer of organisation on top of the car simulator. It's a convenience that is not strictly necessary to achieve the basic aim of racing cars.

I love serious racing (I consider my LFS time as training, rather than playing - I gave up the guitar for it), but I also love various types of what can only be considered goofing around in a car. (Hence the PiranMOTO range of servers: there's plenty of serious servers out there with standard tracks, so mine are all there to fill in gaps. Some serious racing on layouts, some games, and some in-between).

Long story short: If I had a disposable car and a large patch of tarmac in real life, I know I wouldn't just be training with it, I would also spend some time hooning about. If I could play tag in my car without destroying it, myself and my friends, I would do so in an instant. LFS gives me the chance Smile

Quote from SimulatorRental.com :Just like if a big soccer ball and goals where added to play car-soccer, or if there was a demo derby type track, or the big loop-loop autocross track, the autocross stunt tracks, or… sigh... cruising.

Until such time as a soccer ball is added, people have been using a volunteer 'ball' in a UF1 Big grin
Quote from SimulatorRental.com :
Just like if a big soccer ball and goals where added to play car-soccer, or if there was a demo derby type track, or the big loop-loop autocross track, the autocross stunt tracks, or… sigh... cruising.

You've excatly write what I want to say Big grin
LFS does have the right features and feeling for extra fun like car-soccer and i think autocross is one of its strengths, i could never imagine such features working as well in a.c or pcars.
A terrible idea in my opinion. Use intake restrictions instead.

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG