Glad you tried it Shotglass,
My main gripe with LFS is how easy you get power oversteer. While no expert, I believe that is kinda wrong. I didn't really do anything in parcitular to the Corvette car behaviour, they're just tyres that pull 0.985G laterally and about 1.1 longitudinallyish. There is a fair amount of longitudinal drop off as well. But indeed, its quite planted. I must say in 2nd gear if I combine a little lateral weight transfer with the push of the right foot, it certainly comes around..
I find the car quite sluggish and heavy in feel. I also find it a little lacking in 'attitude changes' when you let go of the throttle or when you steer 'more and more' on a skidpad.. The G force stays nearly identical when you do that and a bit of power overcomes the extra resistance. That feels odd, I expect to loose more lateral G when I have 30degs of lock on where 6 gets me optimal lateral g, or at least expect the friction to slow the car more.
So yes in general the reaction of the car to inputs is a bit muted though that is territory where I wouldn't really claim to know how it should exactly 'feel'. The data is as realistic as I can get it and for now this is how it handles. Once I start aiming for certain driving characteristics I'll leave the 'real data' path and then it just becomes a random car. So its either pretty real, or it isn't because of the data that feeds it, or it isn't because of the non perfect physics engine..
What I do like is the patience you must have. On a track like Barcelona, if you want to do consistent 2:06 laps, you have to be quite smooth on and off the controls and when you reach the limit sometimes (as you do with those laptimes) I find the car somewhere near neutral, slight understeer, slight oversteer and often 4 wheels sliding at the same time. Then I'm really not making big angles slides but nursing the car around this 'zone' of understeer/neutral/oversteer. That is what I like best. I do that with 18degs of lock and my wheel calibrated about 550 degrees.
In LFS I find it hard to drive in that 'zone' as it feels so small. I.e. you enter 'too much understeer' or ' too much oversteer' very quickly and this neutral zone requires VEEEEEEERY precise inputs. Then slightly too much inputs and you're catching a big slide. I find LFS hotlaps to look so odd at times. Driven near perfection but you know that a few degrees of extra wheel lock would have caused a big slide, or 0.2seconds sooner on the gas would have. In the C6 doing this wrong tends to get the car going wrong on 4 wheels a bit instead of having to be so ready to fight a big one.
This is dangerous territory to talk about, but I would be surprised if cars near the limit are so sensitive and will enter 'big trouble' as easily as it happens in LFS. The C6 announces big trouble and it requires fairly big stupidity and on purpose behaviour to really get into big trouble, even when doing quickish laps. Considering the relatively moderate real life track day casualty rate, I simply assume it might be somewhat more realistic than LFS in this regard.
The main gripe with the corvette is that tyres simply don't seem to have enough preference to stay in the 'rolling' direction, going sideways with zero lock versus appying perfect opposite lock doesn't change the yaw of the car enough. Opposite lock works, for sure, but just as the skidpad ''turn more and more'' without loosing grip or speed, opposite lock seems to be like that as well. When you apply perfect opposite lock (front tyres rolling exactly where the car is going) I simply expect that to be about 20x less lateral resistance compared to the tyres pointing straight, say at 25 degrees of where the car is heading.
Ah well.. a perfect world it ain't
If you ever go back to driving it i'd suggest trying the normal and sticky tyres at Barcelona and also at Road Atlanta.
http://rapidshare.com/files/51466266/RoadAtlanta_Beta3.rar (beta, texture detail needs to be at 'max' or sky looks odd)
Of course the usual applies, tripple check you get high framerates, no vsync, render ahead lowered, no dodgy low speed steering overrides, no dodgy head look, speed sensitivity etc etc etc but with you I believe the settings are probably fine