To the OP: You need to be running the latest Patch X version of LFS S2 then use your unlock code to unlock the S1 content. Always use the latest S2 version to get the latest physics etc, but your unlock code will only let you access the S1 content eg cars/tracks within. Just to clarify

A few things worth mentioning and asking.
Which wheel are you using , what settings are applied in the the control panel and what settings you have applied in LFS ?
Also try adjusting your FOV using the 5/6 keys to get a setting your comfortable with.
oh and welcome to live for speed

Quote from choxaway :

I realise work is being done on upgrading the A1

We apologise for any inconvenience caused, but you may experience delays between Doncaster and Wetherby.

Quote from choxaway :

For now I'll just have to deal with the A1's concrete fast cars and hope things improve with later patches.

The concrete is a temporary surface, and yes, it will improve when we've finished the patches.

I was doing some tests with the gti car and if you go 20kmph and pull the handbrake the car goes much longer than my real life similar car..
And I was watching some videos of lfs gtr cars and they seem to slide to much, I mean people sliding them trough every corner and I never see that in reality and it is pretty hard for real life drivers to recover them from a slide.
Wtcc cars seem easier to control in a slide but fia gt seem harder

Kev: excellent

Quote from fakeman :

I was doing some tests with the gti car and if you go 20kmph and pull the handbrake the car goes much longer than my real life similar car..

Well, the handbrake is not so realistic, but why would you use it anyway in a race? It's a such irelevant option to even bother making it realistic..

And don't mumble about GTR cars if you didn't tried them, you can't drift with them, you can recover from some really small slides but the big ones are in most cases a 90 degree spin...

Quote from AndroidXP :

How is learning a tyre brand's characteristics any different from learning what a certain setup option does? So they would be LFS specific to some extent, but what is so bad about that?

Any other setting (camber, toe, suspension, diff etc) works like it works in real life. Tyre brands would have artifical characteristics with no relation to real life. That's no better than 1, 2 and 3 type values. The ideal situation is that you can setup the car in LFS if you know how to setup one in RL.

Quote :

Besides that, the whole current setup system is also LFS specific, or have you ever seen qualifying setups IRL being anywhere close to the current locked-diff-everywhere WR setups?

That's more to do with LFS being game and physical inaccuracies. It's not intended behaviour.

Also I still want to emphasize that there is not really any good reasons why tyre brands would need to have differences. They do in real life, but the way you could choose the tyres differs so much that it would introduce a bunch of problems.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Well, the handbrake is not so realistic, but why would you use it anyway in a race? It's a such irelevant option to even bother making it realistic..

And don't mumble about GTR cars if you didn't tried them, you can't drift with them, you can recover from some really small slides but the big ones are in most cases a 90 degree spin...

Why do you think that handbrake is somehow disconnected from the physics engine..
It just tells the engine to engage rear breaks on the car, the tires quickly lock because they lose grip and car inertia keeps it going and and it slides to much at that slow speed..

Quote from fakeman :

Why do you think that handbrake is somehow disconnected from the physics engine..
It just tells the engine to engage rear breaks on the car, the tires quickly lock because they lose grip and car inertia keeps it going and and it slides to much at that slow speed..

Well, i don't know how it works, but it's not a secret that LFS and every other sim have some isues with the low speed grip..

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Well, i don't know how it works, but it's not a secret that LFS and every other sim have some isues with the low speed grip..

AFAIK the grip formula (pacejka based atleast) starts to behave oddly at low speeds (division by 0). So at low speeds another, not so good formula is usually used.

The "handbrake physics" currently lack the squatting of the car's rear, thus the rear wheels have a bit less traction then they ought to. However, all that's really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Hi there.

Most of the usual points have been mentioned. It is right, that you don't have the correct impression of speed because of the lack of perfect graphics and forces on your body.
And setups do a lot too.

BUT it is still interesting, that a lot of people, who have RL experience mention this "ice" feeling of road cars. Its still the impression I get too. I move a road car sometimes at the limit and over the limit till ESP catches it again
And you have a lot of grip on street tyres with a usual car.

A part of it will be because of the factors mentioned above. But I am absolutley sure, that there are still some main things wrong with tyre physics.
In other games, which grip more but don't simulate as much things as LFS does, the grip sometimes feel alright (rFactor, GTR2) and people don't complain about icy/wet feeling, eventhough the g forces there are also as correct as in LFS.

I am really looking forward to the next update. Scawen mentioned, that he is aware of the longitudinal bug.
Cars accelerate way to good with heavy spinning wheels. This has a huge impact on tyre physics in my oppinion.

It will not only affect starts in the way, that full throttle starters get away pretty good in comparison to real life, where bad wheel spin results in a bad slow start.

It also affects the grip in corners a lot. Locked differentials with bad spinning wheels are very fast in LFS. In real life its not always the best way to have fully locked differentials.

If a FWD car is in a hard corner and accelerates hard, the spinning wheel will still have a bit more traction than in reality and therefore it understeers less.
The other way around a RWD car with hard spinning wheels will spin faster, because the rear tires grip a lot more while spinning and therefore are pushing against the instable back of the car. => spin.
In real life the spinning wheels would lose a lot of longitudinal force and therefore wouldn't push as hard at the back. It would get into sliding and oversteering a bit slower.

Just a few examples of what I could think of. There are several other situations which are affected as well. So balancing tyre physics a bit more and removing this bug with high longitudinal grip will affect driving in LFS a lot. We'll see if scawen fixes it and what problems remain after that.

Greetings
RIP

Quote from AndroidXP :

The "handbrake physics" currently lack the squatting of the car's rear, thus the rear wheels have a bit less traction then they ought to. However, all that's really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

squating would only happen in the fwds with the current suspensions assigned to the cars

Quote from RIP2004 :

BUT it is still interesting, that a lot of people, who have RL experience mention this "ice" feeling of road cars. Its still the impression I get too. I move a road car sometimes at the limit and over the limit till ESP catches it again
And you have a lot of grip on street tyres with a usual car.

in the car i drive daily (punto) i get a very very similar icy floating feeling as i do in lfs if i approach the limit on underinflated tyres (like we use in lfs)

a lot of that floating comes down to the tyres in lfs havin a comparably low cornering stiffness partly from havin lfsish lateral curves but mostly from being used with a good 1 bar less than you normally find on a car

Well it differs a lot between different cars.

I drove a usual Opel Vectra A (Vauxhall) with about 90 HP before. And it was a bit less grippier, but I still had the impression of a bit better grip than in LFS.

Now I drive a Opel Astra Coupé with about 150 hp. It has a sports suspension and is a bit more towards sports. Its still no real sports car, but there is a lot of difference in corners. I tested it often in corners I know blind, where there is a lot space and no other people, that can get in danger and I still was afraid to push it harder. It grips so well. So it took a bit of time, until I got it to the limit.
A real sports car has even a higher limit I am not really sure how much I would dare to get it to
But even my "slowish" car is very hard to get to this very last limit, which occurs in lfs quite often. The cars in LFS are mostly a bit more sports cars

It is not really comparable to a simulation at the PC, but it is much harder to get out of control in a real car in dry condition. You have to really steer brutally fast ... and even than my car is really really stable.

Just let someone drive a slow round in LFS, who drives for real ... he certainly will have an accident or at least spin in a RWD, even if he/she isn't pushing really, but just driving slow.
RWD cars aren't that bad by far in reality. I also drive a 180 hp RWD Omega from time to time. And it will understeer at the limit, wobbling around with the soft suspension But still grips better and won't by far spin as fast as in LFS, which is for sure also a lot because of different setups and ESP Systems.

In LFS even at low speed a rwd oversteers sometimes. Its hard to reproduce, but just try the FZ50 with very soft accelerations and careful steering.
I tweaked everything in setup. Open differential, traction control on and very high, even different tyres in front and back. And still it is a dangerous car, whereas a porsche 911 happens to be driven by old people, unexperienced women etc. and won't crash, until really pushed hard.

EDIT: btw. I think that the cars with slicks grip quite realistic, eventhough I really can't compare that to RL experience. But it just feels right. But some people who have real slick experience still describe rl slick grip higher ...

I think you should try LFS in a motion simulator. You can't feel any G-forces when you are sitting in an office chair. Lot of people say that they've pushed their cars really hard but none of them measured the forces in any way to back it up with evidence. Most people doesn't realise how much they depend on seat of pants feedback.

Quote from RIP2004 :

Well it differs a lot between different cars.

I drove a usual Opel Vectra A (Vauxhall) with about 90 HP before. And it was a bit less grippier, but I still had the impression of a bit better grip than in LFS.

...

I used to have a Vectra A (built 1990) it was tuned (not much just barely) 2.0l engine 4 cylindre 150 hp and with a sport kit (susp and exahaust etc) and I must admit it was the best gripping car that I used to have. Right now I'm driving a 2005 Seat Leon FR with 180 hp, 1.8l Turbo engine and though it's faster then the old Vectra I don't get this "gripping" sensation I had on the Opel. The Leon is reallly LFS like in some sort (it's more or less what I feel with the XFG although the car isn't as powerfull) and the old Vectra is more or less what the "old", unhandicapped FXO was, something like an Uebercar.

As I said it differs a lot with the car.

I think it isn't really bad with the FWD cars. They feel pretty well. But cars like the FZ50 feel quite wrong ... don't you think?

The LFS RWD cars can be made to have horrendous understeer, Bob's road sets will give you a fair idea of what a fairly neutral road set is actually like. In LFS the car setup in road cars and lack of chassis flex mean they are far closer to production racing cars than road cars. The stiffness, full race suspension and very tight (often locked) diffs all make a big difference. In a road car you normally opt for softer springs meaning you end up with a far less agile car with slightly more grip, the lack of stiffness and willingness to change direction is the big difference, the grip is a negligible difference on the road. Of course on the road one can never be truly driving at the limit of the car, no matter how well you know a road and car you have to prepare for the unexpected, and that usually means completely uncommitted into corners. Look at the actual cornering speeds of your real road cars and LFS, by grip I think most people are thinking of how the car is behaving at the limit, not where that limit is.

Quote from RIP2004 :

Just let someone drive a slow round in LFS, who drives for real ... he certainly will have an accident or at least spin in a RWD, even if he/she isn't pushing really, but just driving slow.
RWD cars aren't that bad by far in reality. I also drive a 180 hp RWD Omega from time to time. And it will understeer at the limit, wobbling around with the soft suspension But still grips better and won't by far spin as fast as in LFS, which is for sure also a lot because of different setups and ESP Systems.

That's all about not having the buttfeel for the cars in LFS. In RL you would feel a starting slide easily and could react accordingly. But in LFS you only have the audio, visual and forces from the steering rack. All of these things tell you when the car is sliding, but they all tell you that too late. It's already too late to react when you get the cue in LFS.
That's why the AI is so good at correcting slides, because it has superhuman reflexes and it detects even the slightest slides, because it gets the info straigth from the physics engine.
Also the as said the tyre physics don't work as well at slow speeds.

everyone complains about the lack of handling in lfs but i bet then didn't adjust there driving tool ( e.g wheel, game pad or keyboard ) to suitthere style of driving even when they do remember This Is a Simulator Not Real Life

Quote from RIP2004 :

As I said it differs a lot with the car.

I think it isn't really bad with the FWD cars. They feel pretty well. But cars like the FZ50 feel quite wrong ... don't you think?

Well, I've only driven one Porsche in my life - and it was an old 911 (89 IIRC). It could be made to understeer pretty easily, but it wasn't mine so I didn't push it beyond the initial understeer tendency...

But with the engine sitting in the rear, once you shift some (even more) weight to the rear with your right foot - I can't fathom such a car NOT understeering like mad until you mash it hard enough to swing the rear around. 996s are notorious for their understeer until you really mash them too, and the AWD is electronic so I wouldn't blame it as it only sends power to the front when needed. Of course, 911s and their cousins are also just as well known for hanging their asses out under power, which I find easy in LFS too. So, to be honest I don't know what else I would expect from the FZ50 - initial understeer easily attainable, followed by oversteer with a heavy foot... Seems pretty reasonable to me!

Edit: In my wimpy passenger car, around roundabouts, and in the mountains, that "floaty" feeling is really easily noticeable - sometimes accompanied by sqealing, sometimes not depending on the surface of the ashphalt. It seems like a fundamentally simple thought process to me: tires generate their maximum grip at a certain slip ratio, and therefore when the tires are gripping the most (read: at the car's limit) there is slip taking place and the car will be moving around enough for you to notice.

Whilst surely (again) LFS tires are not perfect, 99.9% of the "discussions" that arise are simply due to just not realizing how fast you're going, plain and simple. Watch the G meter and see. Look at some telemetry data. Use an FOV that better represents how sharp the corners actually are (wide FOVs absolutely obliterate the sense of cornering speed). Try the cutout method - use a 19" (or whatever size screen you use) cutout in a piece of cardboard and holding it the same distance in front of your face in a real car (preferrably as a passenger) and note that inside that box it looks you're barely moving!

If a vehicle in a sim mathematically generates 1G of grip, then it's up to your brain to train yourself to the stimulus the sim gives you, not the other way around. No one complains of not "feeling the altitude" in FSX/Xplane, because you have to rely on other stimuli since there is no depth perception. LFS, or any other sim for that matter, is never going to feel empirically correct to everyone because not everyone is interpreting the output in the same fashion.

I still find it funny when people say I drive my car IRL and it has loads more grip. NO PRODUCTION road car will be setup to have an oversteer bias, the brake bias will not be as aggresive and 99% of the time will be on an open diff. To compare you really need to compare with a setup like Bobs road.

The other major factor is the view most use. Turn off steer look so the visuals are locked forward and most of the ice feel goes and is instantly replaced with snappy tyres that are violent when they gain and lose grip.

The real key factor though is FEAR. In real life you go into slip and your reaction most of the time will be to correct ASAP. As you have feeling in your body you are able to react lightning fast so the car is not out of shape too far.

In LFS by the time you have heard the scrub sounds or felt what is going on in the FF on your wheel you are already far slower in your reaction that you would have been IRL. Also as there is no risk involved fear does not limit you in the same way as it would IRL.

No, LFS is not perfect BUT that said LFS is not that far off with the FWD cars being closest. Every car I have driven gets a little "liquid/ice" in feeling far enough from the circle of grip.

Quote from Woz :

replaced with snappy tyres that are violent when they gain and lose grip.

well tbh i dont find the tyres in lfs to be particularly snappy and most of it imho comes down to underinflation (high peak slip angles) and relatively smooth peaks

Quote from Shotglass :

well tbh i dont find the tyres in lfs to be particularly snappy and most of it imho comes down to underinflation (high peak slip angles) and relatively smooth peaks

Change your view so that it does not look with steer angle and then you will notice the snap more

Quote from Woz :

Change your view so that it does not look with steer angle and then you will notice the snap more

i never ever used any steer look and for a while now ive also completely disabled any gforce view shifts