Quote from bbman :

I don't think we need such a complex menu just for pitting... I mean yes, setting tire change for front and rear seperately would be really handy and the damage might be one day, but I don't think we need three sliders and a bunch of equations for the fuel... I always found the fuel system we have now completely sufficient...

I kind agree and disagree. With the current system I'm in trouble if I need to pit earlier or later when I was going to because then I'll have too much or too little fuel in my tank when I leave the pits. In real life the team on the pits makes the decision on how much fuel is put into the car but in LFS the driver has to do the calculations and then use the F12 to make it happen. I think LFS could do this easily

I think that the system in my pic looks a bit messy because there is a 3 stop strategy shown as an example - with just one stop I think the system would look quite clear, or? I like the fact that LFS would calculate the fuel for me, so if I needed to pit 5 or even 10 laps earlier than planned I had nothing to worry (if the tank was big enough), but with the current system it isquite hard to handle such situations

I can see where you're coming from and I have to agree, it would prevent some miscalculations... However, I don't think the safety margin (just add a bit more to the overall fuel consumption) and different tire wear setups for each stop are needed, that would make it a bit easier, but keeping it very adjustable at the same time... I'd rather like to see dedicated "mechanics" on the server, who are able to change the live values and change the pit strategy, if needed (and teamed up to a/various driver/s)...

Just two questions: How would you flag setups so that you can filter them out? And what does that D I W means next to the tire change setup?

Quote from bbman :

I can see where you're coming from and I have to agree, it would prevent some miscalculations... However, I don't think the safety margin (just add a bit more to the overall fuel consumption) and different tire wear setups for each stop are needed, that would make it a bit easier, but keeping it very adjustable at the same time... I'd rather like to see dedicated "mechanics" on the server, who are able to change the live values and change the pit strategy, if needed (and teamed up to a/various driver/s)...

Just two questions: How would you flag setups so that you can filter them out? And what does that D I W means next to the tire change setup?

Yes, the safety margin could go, but being a dedicated mechanic... not my dream job Those "different tire wear setups for each stop" need more thinking as different tires may need different pressures and there is no way to do it now...

Setups are filtered by prefixes. For example a setup is "BMW SAUBER_RACE_S.set". This setup name has no prefixes (just the car name prefix) so it it shown only under misc setups (setup filter setting). If the name was "FORMULA V8_FE4_test2.set" it would be shown under Fern bay setups (setup filter setting).

If you wanted, you could set a setup as a favourite and then it would have that blue ball next to the setup's name. That blue ball is to tell you that the setup is good, chosen by you. Then there is the white ball, which means "show always". So, when ever you are driving the FO8 and are going through the setups, you will always see these "show always" setups no matter what your setup filtering options are or whatever track you're on

I was thinking that when you press that ""New setup" -button, LFS would suggest the correct prefix to you by adding the correct prefix for you in the front of the new setup name. So when you are naming the setup, LFS had already put the fe4 in front of the name, but the fe4 is shown to you and if you don't want it, you could just take it off with backspacing

D, I and W mean dry, intermeadiate and wet = they basically the same as R1, R2 and R3, just different tire types. This system needs more work, because I'd like it to be posible to set the tire pressures differently for each tire and tire type, as I said earlier

Quote from Hyperactive :

I kind agree and disagree. With the current system I'm in trouble if I need to pit earlier or later when I was going to because then I'll have too much or too little fuel in my tank when I leave the pits. In real life the team on the pits makes the decision on how much fuel is put into the car but in LFS the driver has to do the calculations and then use the F12 to make it happen. I think LFS could do this easily

I think that the system in my pic looks a bit messy because there is a 3 stop strategy shown as an example - with just one stop I think the system would look quite clear, or? I like the fact that LFS would calculate the fuel for me, so if I needed to pit 5 or even 10 laps earlier than planned I had nothing to worry (if the tank was big enough), but with the current system it isquite hard to handle such situations

How would it work if you want to do a short middle stint, but had originally planned a longer stint? How would LFS know that you want 3 seconds less fuel at that pitstop than before. In short, there isn't. I don't think there is a viable way of sorting pit stratagies other than spending a couple of minutes pre-race, and by allowing you to increment fuel at pitstop in 1lap (of current %) jumps.

Or have I misunderstood again

Quote from Hyperactive :

Added the speed slider (Bob's idea, iirc) on the "Views" sub menu on the left. I think it should be shown with all cars, and it should not be part of setup settings because it does not change anything in the car. The speed slider can be used with the forces view or suspension view to show forces on certain speed or suspension travel etc.. I was thinking about adding similar yaw and pitch sliders there as well, but would those be needed or used?

would that slider apply downforce and force a recalculation of the drag values shown in the aero menu ?

Quote from tristancliffe :

How would it work if you want to do a short middle stint, but had originally planned a longer stint? How would LFS know that you want 3 seconds less fuel at that pitstop than before. In short, there isn't. I don't think there is a viable way of sorting pit stratagies other than spending a couple of minutes pre-race, and by allowing you to increment fuel at pitstop in 1lap (of current %) jumps.

Or have I misunderstood again

Yes. I think you did

Let's look at the 3-stop example in the screenie, you can see that there is a userdefined fuel amount for the first 2 pistops (=the amount of fuel that is in the tank when the user leaves the pits) but the third one is not user defined (directly). So if you (look at the pic) want to make a shorter 2nd stint instead of the using all the 55%, you will enter the pits with more fuel in your tank. Now,later on it is your 3rd pitstop and LFS does the calculations on how much fuel you need to have to finish the race. The total amount is set by user to 190%, so LFS looks how much fuel you have already used, let's say 110% (if you were to do it as planned you would have used about little less than 140%). Now this 110% minus the full amount 190% = 80% plus the safety margin of 5 == 85%.

So when you leave the pits for the 3rd time you have enough fuel to finish the race without needing to do any adjustments through F12.

If you wanted the adjust the 2nd pitstop refueling amount before 2nd pitstop, you could safely do it through the F12 menu. But you wouldn't need to adjust the 3rd pitstop at all because LFS always does it for you.

Of course there is the chance that if you pit way too early, you would need to take more than 100% fuel on 3rd stop. This could be also avoided by that LFS would start automatically increasing the 2nd pitstop fuel amount when the 3rd reaches 100%.

To add confusion, I'd like the fuel setup in laps rather than percentages, but LFS doesn't know how much fuel per lap. And if some value is shown by LFS it needs to have some kind of safety margin because on longer tracks the deviation can be many 0.1%s. And those 0.1%s would then in tun multiply when you were doing 20 or even 30 laps stints. But I'd like to think this a bit more because something simple and useful is there to be found

EDIT:What I wanted with this system is that the user would still decide the strategy but LFS would make it sure that you have enough fuel to finish.

Quote from Shotglass :

would that slider apply downforce and force a recalculation of the drag values shown in the aero menu ?

Yes (you mean the numerical force values?).

Quote from Hyperactive :

EDIT:What I wanted with this system is that the user would still decide the strategy but LFS would make it sure that you have enough fuel to finish.

Which shouldn't be too hard to implement in some shape or form, although it would take away the smiles you sometimes get when someone runs out of fuel on the last corner!!!

Quote from Chris_Kerry :

Which shouldn't be too hard to implement in some shape or form, although it would take away the smiles you sometimes get when someone runs out of fuel on the last corner!!!

But I'm sure that there is a lot of hidden anger behind those smiles

Quote from Hyperactive :

Yes (you mean the numerical force values?).

i mean those values in the aero tab with the speed slider
atm that slider doesnt actually add the df you set and its not pitch dependant either

Quote from Shotglass :

i mean those values in the aero tab with the speed slider
atm that slider doesnt actually add the df you set and its not pitch dependant either

I haven't (yet, at least) done the aero tab. In the pics I have moved the slider under the "views" because the slider doesn't change anything in the setup. And because I have moved the slider on different place, you can put the slider to, say, 100m/s () and then look at the suspension view or force view and see how things change in the suspension etc..

If you think that I still didn't get it = I want screenshots

+10000000000

We also need script commands for dynamic tactics or whatever it's called

I.E.

/fwing
/rwing
/comp
/frpres
/frcamb
/fueladd

and

/farb
/rarb
/brkb

Should be nice and self explanatory.

Oki, another update:

* Added "Aero" -button to the "Views" -menu. It toggles on/off the forces created by the car's wings.

* Improved the "Pitting" -setup submenu:
Tires, fuel and misc now on their own "pages" instead of one messy page:
Fuel:
Basically works the same as before (explained previously)
Added option to use Laps/percentages/litres as base of fuel consumption.
Added user option to input the fuel consumption per lap value (which is needed to to use Laps as base of fuel amount)
Tires:
Tire strategy uses the user input pitstop number which is taken from the "Fuel" page.
Possibility to have different tires and wear limits per each pitstop.
Tire pressures are taken from tire setup screen and if user wants to use 2 (or more) different tire types in race, each tyre types must be set up individually for desired tire pressures
Misc:
Basically contains just damage fixing options. This will be more important when various damage types are improved in LFS. Atm LFS don't have aerodynamic damage at all (wings missing or bent).

* New "Aero" -setup submenu:
Added "Grille tape" option (=radiator opening).
Weight bias front/rear
Weight left/right
Wedge (left/right)

What do you think? What and how are Formulas set up nowadays? There must be more than just wing angles...?

EDIT: small layout improvement (misc/fuel/tires -buttons moved next to each other instead of being stacked vertically)

Jeez. Busy. Intimidating even. Good though.

Waaaay to busy imho. I like the selection of information. It's just way too cluttered. Setups scare me as they are now This would put me totally off.

Well, I had nothing to do today so I decided to practise my psp skills. First I tried to make a good skin for the masterskinnerz competition but my skills kinda "lack" something called quality, so I left the skin to dust and decided to do something else with psp. So I did few LFS screenies . And I am planning to do all the setup menus with the F9-F12 menus

(no pics this time )

Another update ():

* Added new submenu to the left side: "Even info":
Basically includes information of the current online event, like laps, road and air temperatures (and wheather, for S3 :tilt

* Added "Diffs" setup submenu:
As an example I have tried to show the possible setup options needed for active differentials (eletro-hydraulic differential). I copied this pretty much straight from RBR, but some thing could be tweaked for simpler layout. And active diffs probably have variable preloads... I know it looks plain scary but it is only for cars that have active diffs (=rallycars and BF1 basically which have it setup-able).

* Added "Brakes / TC" setup submenu:
Added more brake related options
Removed the precise braking torque slider, because even in F1 they don't have this. Something like adjustable brake disc diameter could do the same, or...?
Added "programmable" modes for brakes and TC. By programmable I mean that user has 3 options to set up the brakes and TC and when sitting in car user could switch from one mdoe to other while driving. User could rename these modes by right-clicking them. As example I have "renamed" the 3rd braking mode to "uphill1" and the 3rd TC mode to "Name1". 3 options because I don't think there is really isn't need for more and these are probably most useful for hotlapping and long races because the user can change these simply by pressing a button on keyboard or controller. Binding these to buttons would require some outgauge/scripting etc. extrawork...

* Added "Suspension" setup submenu, which is divided into two sections:
Dampers
All damper related options (fast/slow, bump/rebump, asymmetric/symmetric and fast bump threshold speeds)
Also "Critical damping value" is calculated (from spring settings) and shown here.
Springs
I changed this a bit from what it is in current version:
Added "packers"
"Motion range" calculated and shown
"Spring frequensies" calculated and displayed.
And noticed a "mistake". Asymmetric roll bars (will be fixed)
I think (not very sure) that F1 cars have 3rd spring/damper system for the front suspension, but adding it would require support from the physics. Does the 3rd spring/damper add anything special why it should be there?

Btw. I took a look at RBR's setup options and almost fell off the chair.

And TAA, what do you exactly mean by scattered? Setup browsing options are all on the up-right corner, viewing options are on the left and setup setting on the bottom. If you have a suggestion or you think that something is just wrong, please tell. I'm not easily offended This is to everyone else too, please tell me if you think something should be done differently, because I'd like to make these as well as possible (because otherwise there is no point of making them at all imho).

Please, c&c

EDIT: updated the springs view :o

Feck. Looks like heaven for me.

Niiiiiiice. Should be in V actually.

Quote from duke_toaster :

Niiiiiiice. Should be in V actually.

This isn't 100% possible, because V would be an incompatible patch then (because of new suspension and diff features).

Quote from AndroidXP :

This isn't 100% possible, because V would be an incompatible patch then (because of new suspension and diff features).

well a few of those features could be implemented in v without making it incompatible

like the suspension frequencies ... cirtical damping ... asymmetric suspension settings etc
actually most could be implemented without making the patch incompatible just as long as replays with old setups automaticaly set the new values accordingly (like 0 preload for the diffs or fast damper settings exactly the same a slow dampers)

That's why I said "not 100%"

Woah... I think some people, like Bob, would gualify that as setup porn. We already have tire porn in LFS, and now this...oh my, what a filty little software Looking excelent, lots of buttons to play with. I hope we could have something like that

Quote from Hyperactive :

But I'm sure that there is a lot of hidden anger behind those smiles

Plenty

EDIT: Just seen new screenshots...WOW!

4 way dampers, asymetric spring setups, active electronic diffs and customizable brake ducts. A racer's/setup engineer's dream. And the F-1 car should use a third spring in the rear. It's standard practice in current F-1 cars.

I would recommend the addition of non-linear springs and helper springs too, which would both comply with current racing practice and allow LFS to simulate modern rallycars properly. The active diff would be a major boon especially for the 4WDs.

Another step towards realism.