The online racing simulator
Will have to give you that one Vain
My only issue is how does a game give a player feedback from what is happening at the rear end of a rear wheel drive car? How do you know how much throttle you can apply?

Why is it that in real life, I can spin both rear tires at take off and can easily keep the car pointed straight, but it's so difficult to do with LFS, expecially in the LX6 which seems to be the worst case rear wheel drive car in LFS?

Champ cars (and the former CART) racing cars often exit the pits with both rear tires spinning, while maneuvering the car out of the pits and onto pit lane; they are able to steer the car with both rear wheels spinning and not lose control, and these cars have no traction control.

In my opinion, if a game has an unrealistic response to rear wheel spin, then traction control assist should be allowed until the problem is fixed.
No, it's simple because you can't feel the forces through your seat. Drive your car suspended above the seat and see if it's as easy? I bet it's not.

Any idiot can control wheelspin in a rear wheel drive car from a standstill, but in LFS you have to use common sense, FFB, visual and aural feedback. Most of the time I manage it. Less frequently in the FO8, but they don't spin the wheel so much from a standstill...
Quote from JeffR :My only issue is how does a game give a player feedback from what is happening at the rear end of a rear wheel drive car? How do you know how much throttle you can apply?

Depends on the car - the more powerful it is, try keep wheelspin to the absolute minimium (so alot of modulation) as you will get it anyway. With the less powerful one you can plant your foot more (much less modulation) but it's all about throttle modulation, for me it just comes down to experimenting a bit and practise. Like tristian says in a sim you don't have the "seat of pants O'meter" so you have to predict some situations from experience - LFS is very pridictable when you become familiar with it.
Quote :Any idiot can control wheelspin in a rear wheel drive car from a standstill

So why not in LFS?
Because you can't feel the g-forces on your bum or with your inner ear. In real life you feel the sideslip of oversteer WAY WAY WAY before you feel it in the steering, see it with your eyes, or hear it via the tyre noise.

Although LFS's tyre model is partly to blame, but we know that, and we know it'll be improved in the near future. But there is NO sim that will feel right without g-forces. Until there is some way to really simulate the forces on your body (Force Dynamics comes closest, but it's only 1g sustained, perhaps 3 or 4 instantaneously, and the forces are wrong there anyway - when you accelerate in real life the seat pushes into your back, with motion simulators the seat moves away from you - completely the wrong way round but enough to fool you a bit) there's not going to be a solution. Sure you can wrap up the short comings by having traction control, ABS, yaw control, automatic pilot etc, but that's not fixing the problem it's just hiding it under false aids. And besides, I like knowing that it's me that braked perfectly, hit the apex at exactly the right point and speed, controlled the oversteer on the way out and got a pb split time. Having the sim help you isn't gonna make it any more satisfying.

Most people say that sims last a few months on their hard drive at best, simply because it's either too hard or too unrewarding, and LFS doesn't suffer from this. It's easy to go within a few seconds of WR, and each tenth you get quicker really feels like you earnt it - hence you come back for more. Driver aids won't make that any better...
Quote from JeffR :So why not in LFS?

TBH I've never really had that much of a problem in LFS and it does baffal me a little why some do... maybe post a replay and a setup that you use then we might see what is the problem, although I think it will just come down to excess throttle application IRL if you want wheel spin with control (as in champ cars leaving the pits) I'm fairly certain they don't just plant their foot to the metal
Quote :I'm fairly certain they don't just plant their foot to the metal

If not, it's pretty close to it. They aren't trying to get an optimal launch, they're trying to keep rpms high to prevent a hot engine from stalling. 1st gear is probably set to redline somewhere between 85mph and 100mph depending on the track.
Quote :TBH I've never really had that much of a problem in LFS

Try to do a full throttle launch in the FO8, you pick the setup with a reasonably tall first gear (like around 80mph). As previously posted, any idiot can do this in real life, but with LFS's FO8, it's virtually impossible.
In the case of the FO8, perhaps once the tyre and aero bugs have been worked out we won't need ABS or TC to drive that twitchy bugger..as for ABS/TC in other cars like the big GTRs it wouldn't trouble me too much, as long as those features were used in comparative RL racing comps.
The FOX doesn't need either imho. I think once the tyres and aero are sorted that car will be even more fun to drive than it is now
Quote from tristancliffe :(Force Dynamics comes closest, but it's only 1g sustained,

No. It can not exert sustained acceleration. To feel any kind of acceleration on yourself, you need to MOVE.

There is a device, tho, which messes with your cochlea in your inner ear, by varying pressure, which makes you feel acceleration. Dunno who makes it and if it is going to be released to the public.
Quote from JeffR :If not, it's pretty close to it. They aren't trying to get an optimal launch, they're trying to keep rpms high to prevent a hot engine from stalling. 1st gear is probably set to redline somewhere between 85mph and 100mph depending on the track.

Yes but if you just stuck your foot straight to the floor in a F1 car, champ car or any other car with similar power to wieght ratios the RPM will be bouncing off the rev limiter in like 0.01 of a sec and I'm pretty sure it would be a handfull to control

A proper launch technique would be to bring the RPM upto a predetermined level (say 7000 -8000 RPM) and hold it there. When the clutch is dropped continue holding the throttle at that same level (don't floor it) until the tyres get grip and then push the throttle smoothly the rest of the way to the floor . I'm by no means an expert in the fo8 or similar cars but that should be a technique that works resaonably well. To some one observing externally that still might seem like the driver is just flooring it, but it is far from it... by throttle modulation I mean varying your throttle amount to maintain a desired RPM
Lay on your back with your feet straight up in the air. 1g
No.
You are not correct.
You are feeling 1g acceleration in that case. And without any motion.
Last time I checked gravity is 1g, so therefore lying on your back is 1g (but of course you'll lack the feeling of weight towards the seat).

As for champ cars and FO8#s spinning too easily, sure it's a bit too difficult, but I bet they rarely use full throttle for get aways - they can modulate the throttle much more precisesly against revs and clutch position due to feeling the forces.
I doubt any idiot could floor a F3000/GP2 car and control it all the way to 100mph like people try to do in LFS. But I can jump in a Miata, a Caterham, an Elise, a Diablo SV etc and control sustained full throttle wheelspin for quite a long time, but there comes a point where either a tank-slapper develops or the car just grips and goes. Knowing when the lift and when to countersteer comes mostly with the feeling that is lacking in all sims.

If you want to tell me it takes skill to control wheelspin at road speeds when you're expecting it I can't believe you. Oversteer is a very natural thing to deal with when your ready for it. Just any one in an oversteery go-kart and they drift round corners all day long. Sure they'll spin but only when it catches them out and does something they're not ready for. Countersteering is a natural reaction. Wheelspinning from a standstill on purpose you know you're gonna get a bit of oversteer and you control it without thinking about it.
you guys are both wrong... so very wrong... you do NOT feel acceleration if you do not move. what you DO feel is the pressure from the floor on your back, considering you are lying with your back on the floor.

you do NOT feel acceleration.
Yes you do - gravity is an acceleration, and hence you do feel it. But you ALSO feel the force the floor exerts stopping you from accelerating. One is overall, the other is over the surface of your back.

If you don't feel acceleration lying on your back with your feet in the air, why do your legs get tired?
Quote from B2B@300 :Yes but if you just stuck your foot straight to the floor in a F1 car, champ car or any other car with similar power to weight ratios the RPM will be bouncing off the rev limiter in like 0.01 of a sec and I'm pretty sure it would be a handfull to control

A fuel dragster funny car has a much higher power to weight ratio and these are launched at full throttle all the time. If the clutch is set too tight, you get wheel spin, and yet most of the time, the cars don't get sideways. Getting back to CART cars, they sometimes hit the rev-limiter coming out of the pits. These cars can at least be "aimed" with the rear tires spinning, unlike the FO8 of LFS, which is way down on power by comparason, yet much less controllable with the rear tires spinning. Just for show, there are guys who see how long they can spin the wheels on a car, most of them can go through an entire 1/4 mile run with the rear tires spinning, ending up well over 100mph.
Quote from tristancliffe :Yes you do - gravity is an acceleration, and hence you do feel it. But you ALSO feel the force the floor exerts stopping you from accelerating. One is overall, the other is over the surface of your back.

If you don't feel acceleration lying on your back with your feet in the air, why do your legs get tired?

I'm sorry, Tristan, but for once you're wrong. You're confusing gravitational acceleration and gravitational force. When you're lying flat on your back nothing is moving and nothing is accelerating (relative to the Earth, the way most movements in everyday life are defined. Of course you're accelerating towards the centers of the Earth, Sun, Galaxy and Universe but let's leave them out of this, shall we? ).

When you're lying still, the sum of all forces (gravitational and normal from the floor) is 0, so acceleration is 0 too. A =F/M. 0/M = 0.
But to your inner ear you'll still feel like your accerating. Okay, maybe not on the floor.

Consider the Force Dynamics rig. If it goes vertical, so your are lying on your back your brain can be deceived into thinking your are accelerating at 1g. Same with side to side. Doesn't matter if your moving or not, your ears will still feel the acceleration, even if it doesn't actually exist.

It's the entire basis of motion simulation - tricking your inner ear by moving gravities direction whilst giving you an image of a flat track...
no. the cochlea can understand gravity pull much like a hollow ball with some liquid in it. it does not accelerate, yet it always has the liquid at the bottom. the cochlea does not understand orientation using acceleration.


no, the machine can not trick you into thinking that you are accelerating FORWARD.
if you are in a car and you accelerate, there is a sum of two forces that you feel.
the one is the one force on your bottom from the chair and the other is the back of the seat. summed up, these two are larger than what you will ever feel sitting in a force dynamics seat. It can change the orientation but it can't make you feel acceleration.

when you stand you get tired because the human body has losses, pretty much like all machinery.

Open a physics book, sheesh
#99 - Vain
Come on, you're talking like your a greek oracle trying to produce as much confusion as possible.
What you want to say in clear words:

The force dynamics seat simulates accelerations of exactly 1g (the acceleration of your body). In the real world you feel the downwards acceleration or 1g plus the acceleration the car poses on you, f.e. 0.5g, in the sum sqrt(1g²+0,5g²) = 1.12g which is obiously unequal to the simulated acceleration of the force dynamics seat.

Vain
I am sorry, english is not my native language. it was not my intention to confuse anyone.

what do you mean "simulates accelerations of exactly 1g" ?
how can you simulate an acceleration? i mean... acceleration is defined as the rate of change of velocity: how do you define "simulation" in this case?

the FD seat just tries to trick you into thinking that you are accelerating forward by tilting the seat backwards so that you feel pressure on your back.

that, is not "simulation".

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG