The online racing simulator
Car damage in LFS explained
(76 posts, started )
BRILLIANT! helped alot of my friends and even me i been racing for ages now and didnt even know the engine damage in detail

sticky for ever!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, the engine damage is fairly accurate, I tried this out myself and the cars which incurred little to no damage rather than just over cooking the engine actually lost grip with the road. The reason being the engine had the power/weight to overcome the friction coefficient between the tyre and the road. The fact that these are RWD cars merely adds to the effect as the weight is transferred to the front wheels as it slows. The UF1, FXO and XFG which seem to take the most damage are relatively low power to weight ratio vehicles and are FWD, meaning the tyres not only grip the road far more than the stopping power of the engine, but as the car slows down the grip factor increases.

A couple of factors I would like to see make it into LFS (although possibly not for a while) is clutch wear, especially on the heavier engined cars, and coolant overheating.
WOW, that must have taken some time to do. Thanks very much.
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(SpikeyMarcoD) DELETED by SpikeyMarcoD
There are at least a couple errors in there.

1) the control arms cannon stretch, they can only be shortened.
2) flatspots do change the radius of the tire at the point of the flatspot (been discussed before, along with how LFS's way of handling this is a bit "odd" as a result of it only being possible for one of the 48 segments to be on the ground at a given point in time, so the tire jumps up and down sharply or just skips that segment entirely), however, as stated, this usually does not cause any damage to the suspension (although I think if there's a big enough jump it could)
Quote from Forbin :There are at least a couple errors in there.

1) the control arms cannon stretch, they can only be shortened.
2) flatspots do change the radius of the tire at the point of the flatspot (been discussed before, along with how LFS's way of handling this is a bit "odd" as a result of it only being possible for one of the 48 segments to be on the ground at a given point in time, so the tire jumps up and down sharply or just skips that segment entirely), however, as stated, this usually does not cause any damage to the suspension (although I think if there's a big enough jump it could)

Thanks for noticing, will be fixed
#31 - zxt
Very nice post. Very helpful for noobs and pros alike.
#32 - J.B.
Does anyone know what the safe range for the engine is, where zero damage will be done? Is it the rev limiter or the end of the red range?

Also, are the shift lights on the FBM power based or rpm based?

EDIT: Just checked the second question myself: 1 red light is 8500 rpm, 3 red lights are 9000 rpm, 4 is the limiter (9200ish) and five is about 100 rpm more. The special power based shift light on the rpm overlay doesn't activate. So if you're a proper nerd you need to calculate and memorize the optimum shift points for every gear for the FBM.
I haven't tested where the limit is when the engine starts taking damage but I'd guess that it is past the rev limiter. Like under braking when shifting too early the revs go too high. I think you can leave the engine running against the rev limiter for ages without any damage, but haven't tested so it is just an assumption... That's the way it was before the patch and iirc all that was changed is the addition of rev limiters...
Thanks for the explanation, now I'll be more careful while driving. I've had numerous clutch overheating and now I know how to fix it.

Thanks
now that the REV limiter is on all car, and for cruising during 2 hour at the rev limiter I can say that engine DO NOT TAKE damage if you hit the rev limiter, anything beyond the rev limiter will damage it.

so you can from now on shift without raising your feet and it will be okay!
Quote from Mazink :now that the REV limiter is on all car, and for cruising during 2 hour at the rev limiter I can say that engine DO NOT TAKE damage if you hit the rev limiter, anything beyond the rev limiter will damage it.

so you can from now on shift without raising your feet and it will be okay!

That would melt the cluth very fast. :bananadea
I think you meant ''so you can from now shift anytime you want''
or seomthing like that :something
no, I shift with pedal to the floor without clutch assist and my clutch don't get warmer than the 1/8 of the bar
I use button clutch.
Quote from filur :I drove each car using [default] or [hard track] down the drag strip until hitting high revs in top gear (or running out of drag strip), dropped into 1st and held the car straight, after letting the car slow down i tried to drive back to the start and gathered some "damage ratings", totaled meaning the car could no longer move under its own power.
  • UF1 - totaled
  • XFG - heavy
  • XRG - very light
  • RB4 - very heavy
  • FXO - extreme
  • XRT - moderate+
  • LX4 - moderate
  • LX6 - light
  • RAC - very light
  • FZ5 - ~none
  • UFR - heavy
  • XFR - heavy
  • MRT - very light
  • FOX - light
  • FO8 - very light
  • BF1 - ~none
  • FXR - totaled
  • XRR - totaled
  • FZR - ~none
Engine fix (twice!) in 0 seconds, online / in race.

I know this is an old topic but were do i put the file attached to this quoted statement?
anyone know how u get the the thing that how hot the clutch is and how trashed care anyone help pls
Quote from skolekaj :anyone know how u get the the thing that how hot the clutch is and how trashed care anyone help pls

Function keys F9 and F10 will give you info on the tyres and the suspension respectively. The clutch bar is displayed in both of them in the bottom left corner.
Quote from obsolum :Function keys F9 and F10 will give you info on the tyres and the suspension respectively. The clutch bar is displayed in both of them in the bottom left corner.

thanks for helping
with regard to the body damage, I have never known fully how to interperate the information available to know if the actual chassis can be damaged or not, but i know it can bend the wheels and reduce the whole visual width of the car, and makes the car handle and behave in such a way that you would think the chassis is trashed, making the car "crab" or tip over completely,i once got hit over the rear wheel so hard in an xfg that the distance between the rear wheels was no more than about a foot (300mm) or so and making it tip over every corner. i will add some pictures/replays of what happens on the banger racing servers and how it affects the car.
I hope the original sterter of this thread doesnt mind me adding to this thread, as i hope to be helpful!

Ok, i have done some screenshots of damage that i have incurred in an XFG, i thought it would be easier to just put the images up, rather than people having to trawl through multiple replays with 15 odd cars to find the relavent bits.

I have labelled the files as follows,

body damage stage1 = cosmetic damage; a few scuffs and dented bodywork, doesnt affect the handling of the car at all.

body damage stage2 = worse body damage, together with damage to one or more wheels, causing the car to bounce when under power or when steering, and/or causing the car to "crab" ie. requiring the driver (you!) to steer slightly in one direction to keep the car in a straight line. This is hard at speed, as when you ease off the power or brake the crabbing effect will nearly always change, throwing the car in a different direction. This can cause your car to snake as its so easy to over correct in this uncertian situation and once the snaking starts, it is very difficult to gain control again. Personally, If i havent regained control after 2 snakes then i tend to brake and pray that i am still on my wheels when i come to a standstill! This is because the damage has altered the geomatry of the car, causing the wheels to be pointing in interesting directions. It will be possible to limp to the pits in this situation but as mentioned above, the car will be significantly harder to control at higher speeds and going fast will almost certianly cause snaking and a big crash!!

body damage stage3 = seriously damaged car, Bodywork wrecked, wheels at hideous angles, it is not good! In the top 2 images you can see that the rear wheels are very close together indeed. I took a corner at 20mph and rolled myself over because the car geometry is seriously altered in this situation. I did no less than 3 rollovers in this race, one on each corner as i luckily landed on my wheels due to my low speed, until i clipped a barrier on the 4th attempt and spent the rest of the race on my roof, as you can see!
In the bottom images all 4 wheels were not where they should have been and the car was literally disabled, all i could do was sit on the spot and wheelspin forever. both front wheels were simply bouncing up and down and the rear ones were wrecked as well. Luckily, someone hepfully tipped me over before i died of old age trying to move!


I hope i have added a helpul insight and once again, sorry for hijacking this thread, although i believe it is on topic.
Attached images
Body damage stage1.jpg
body damage stage2.jpg
Body damage stage3.jpg
"Currently the transmission can't break at all"
Fix that :P i ruin transmissions easy
Quote from Echo51 :"Currently the transmission can't break at all"
Fix that :P i ruin transmissions easy

That's the clutch you ruin.
#46 - Riel
Quote from danthebangerboy :I hope the original sterter of this thread doesnt mind me adding to this thread, as i hope to be helpful!

Ok, i have done some screenshots of damage that i have incurred in an XFG, i thought it would be easier to just put the images up, rather than people having to trawl through multiple replays with 15 odd cars to find the relavent bits.

I have labelled the files as follows,

body damage stage1 = cosmetic damage; a few scuffs and dented bodywork, doesnt affect the handling of the car at all.

body damage stage2 = worse body damage, together with damage to one or more wheels, causing the car to bounce when under power or when steering, and/or causing the car to "crab" ie. requiring the driver (you!) to steer slightly in one direction to keep the car in a straight line. This is hard at speed, as when you ease off the power or brake the crabbing effect will nearly always change, throwing the car in a different direction. This can cause your car to snake as its so easy to over correct in this uncertian situation and once the snaking starts, it is very difficult to gain control again. Personally, If i havent regained control after 2 snakes then i tend to brake and pray that i am still on my wheels when i come to a standstill! This is because the damage has altered the geomatry of the car, causing the wheels to be pointing in interesting directions. It will be possible to limp to the pits in this situation but as mentioned above, the car will be significantly harder to control at higher speeds and going fast will almost certianly cause snaking and a big crash!!

body damage stage3 = seriously damaged car, Bodywork wrecked, wheels at hideous angles, it is not good! In the top 2 images you can see that the rear wheels are very close together indeed. I took a corner at 20mph and rolled myself over because the car geometry is seriously altered in this situation. I did no less than 3 rollovers in this race, one on each corner as i luckily landed on my wheels due to my low speed, until i clipped a barrier on the 4th attempt and spent the rest of the race on my roof, as you can see!
In the bottom images all 4 wheels were not where they should have been and the car was literally disabled, all i could do was sit on the spot and wheelspin forever. both front wheels were simply bouncing up and down and the rear ones were wrecked as well. Luckily, someone hepfully tipped me over before i died of old age trying to move!


I hope i have added a helpul insight and once again, sorry for hijacking this thread, although i believe it is on topic.

True.
Sometimes geometry damages is NOT seen at suspension bars! I have seen several times, that car behaves very weird, but nothing to see at f10.
Quote from Riel :True.
Sometimes geometry damages is NOT seen at suspension bars! I have seen several times, that car behaves very weird, but nothing to see at f10.

Actually I think there's tons of space in F11 to give a short summary on what grade of alteration the chassis-geometry has reached. Maybe together with a user-friendly "box-assist advice" like "better come in soon" OR "you can keep on battling, not too serious" OR "Not even a real scratch, keep your eyes on the road!"

... or something like that. Wouldn't take too much of coding, I guess
Quote from Hyperactive :Updated 3.1.-08

Another know-it-all post from me I tried to search this stuff from the various manuals and wikis and found pretty much nothing. So it is the goddamn time to do something about it


What is car damage?

In real life your car can get damaged in three ways. One is that you hit an object and get mechanical damage. The second is that you overuse the car, ie. overrev the engine or shift gears without enough finesse. The third is that there is something wrong with the parts, and it won't be able to take the stress and breaks sooner or later. Manufacturing and designing errors are good examples of this. Quite similar to this is the normal wear of the parts. Even if there are no errors in the part, it still won't last forever. The best and only example of this in LFS are the tires.

While LFS is very realistic in terms of tire physics and suspension simulation, the car damage has got less attention in the last updates, if not got tweaked down a little bit. LFS does simulate deformation of suspension parts effecting to the geometry (= tires get bent into interesting angles) but the whole system is still wip (Work In Progress). The wip part shows in that the suspension parts can't simply break in to two; generally, the parts just get shorter, even the carbon fibre ones. LFS has also engine damage modelled so one needs to be careful not to damage the engine by misuse. The effect of engine damage is quite minimal, however, and in some cars you can shift quite recklessly without any visible or audible damage to the engine or transmission. Currently the transmission can't break at all, but engine damage is there. Cars are fitted with rev limited so it is harder to damage the engine with a bad upshift.


Car damage in LFS

I have attached some pictures to this post to show what kind of damage you can get and what it means and how LFS shows it. These pictures are attached below the text and can be enlarged by clicking on them. You should pay special attention towards these pictures while they are discussed below. There are information in the pictures that otherwise may not get noticed or is hard to explain in plain text

Let's start with engine damage.

This is quite easy as currently a broken engine in LFS means that the engine simply loses power. A broken engine can be heard from the peculiar sound it makes, it sounds a bit like "popcorn". This is the most recognizable way of how engine damage is implemented in LFS. You can check this by yourself by accelerating the to higher speed and the quickly shifting back to lower gear. As a result you have a car with damaged engine. The engine can't be totally killed with this method, even if the said method is quite a dramatic one. The engine state doesn't deteriorate after there is some damage if you stay below the safe rev ranges, so you can still drive the car without fear of DNF.

Losing power may not be an issue on short pickup races but when the races get longer, with the possible driver changes, it gets more attention. The main reason for this is that you are driving longer stints which, in turn, means that even small amounts of engine damage can have noticeable effect on you total race time because the small time penalty gets multiplied over large number of laps. Engine damage can not be fixed on a pitstop. This probably the single most biggest improvement from Y patch. Before Y the engine damage was repaired immediatelly while in pits.

The most probable situations where engine damage can occur when you are shifting down quickly while braking and when accelerating out from the corners - things you do all the time in LFS. When accelerating and upshifting it is important that you lift the throttle to prevent the revs getting too high. On some cars this kind of overrevving will cause engine damage, on some cars it won't (as much or at all). Keeping the throttle on while upshifting has, however, a performance bonus in turbo engine cars and this can be seen as some kind of trade-off between speed gain in short term and consistency in long term. There is no fatal race-ending damage so sometimes a risk is more than worth it. Especially when you are not paying for the damages in real life cash.

Below are listed the how the cars get damaged by revving the engine too high (thanks filur :


Running out of fuel doesn't damage the engine, but will stall it. You need to start the engine after more fuel has been added, if you made it to the pits. Starting the car is done by pressing the "i" key twice, i for ignition. First off and then on again. LFS car cockpits do have gauges for engine oil temp (for example) but at the moment they are not working. So they tell nothing to you about the car at the moment. The turbo pressure gauge does work but engine damage has no effect on this which is to tell that turbos can't get damaged.


Clutch damage

The clutch can overheat and this is shown with CT ("clutch temperature") bar on F9/10 screens. Basically, the more slip - the more heat and more heat = less torque transfered and again = more slip. In normal state the CT bar is grey and when damaged the bar changes red.

Clutch overheating can be somewhat avoided by keeping the engine revs on reasonable levels while shifting. Shifting to higher gear means that the engine revs need to drop certain amount of rpm for minimal slip in the clutch. When changing to lower gear the engine needs to rev up and the vehicle needs to slow down for the speeds to match. Otherwise the clutch has to slip which causes it to heat up. The slip is what causes the clutch to heat and misuse of the clutch will make the clutch to eventually burn out. It is not possible to repair clutch on pitstop.


Suspension damage

LFS suspension is based on bars that can get longer or shorter, depending on the forces and impacts imposed to them. LFS can give you somewhat precise information about suspension damage through the F10 menu. If you press F10 you will see 4 bars per tire describing the damage attributes in graphical form. Let's look at the LX6's F10 view. (attachment 1) It reads UPR, LWR and TOE. There is no text linked to the vertical bar - yet. UPR stands for upper suspension arm, LWR for lower suspension arm and TOE is simply toe-in or toe-out.

This view won't give you any numerical data, but it can show easily what has happened to your suspension. If all bars are light gray, it means that the suspension is 100% fit and operational. If you see any red bars, they mean that the particular part is totally broken. (Red bars can also be interpreted as collapsed suspension components. Term collapsed is used later on.). There are in-between stages as well, and these are shown in orange color. Basically they tell you how broken/collapsed the particular part (spring/damper or bars) is or that the part isn't actually broken, it has just changed its attributes due to collision and/or impact. If we still look at the front left suspension info on F10, we see that the UPR is totally broken as is the LWR too. The TOE tells us that the tire is not pointing to the right direction plus it is damaged but still operational. This can be also noticed from how the car handles and drives.

But basically the red doesn't mean that the part is totally collapsed, in fact it is quite operational in terms of "it's still there". The color just tells us that the part has been elongated/shortened too much, or incase of a spring/damper, the state of the component is collapsed. This is most obvious when you look at the vertical bar. If it was red, the suspension would no longer have any resistance for motion (shoch absorbers) or travel (springs). In clearest form, the tire can move freely up and down without any force stopping or slowing it from doing so. If the vertical bar has orange section, it means that suspension travel has been reduced due to suspension damage. In current state the damage just edits the suspension components' properties, mainly length (rigid parts like bars and joints).

However you find that not all cars in LFS have this advanced suspension type. Cars using MacPherson struts (UF1 front suspension) won't obviously have upper suspension arms and cars with trailing arm suspension (UF1 rear suspension) won't have neither in LFS. In attachment 2 you can see how an MRT5 race car and UFR race car differ in this.


Tire damage

Each tire of the cars in LFS does have 48 sampling points for heat and wear, divided into three rows. Eventually that means that you can end up with flatspotted tire/s if you aren't cautious with your driving style. Flatspots in LFS are parts of the tire surfaces which are hotter than the tire surface next to them. Hotter tires have less grip in LFS, after you go over certain temperatures. How are these linked then? Well, because the flatspotted part is hotter than the surrounding, it is more likely that when you next time lock the wheel under braking it will stop rotating at the same position, making the flatspot even more dangerous. Flatspots also change the tire radius and the form of the tire which results in less grip, shorter tire life and puts more stress to the suspension components. Flatspots can be noticed by looking at your F9 menu while keeping the car in motion, and by looking at the specific tire temp readouts i your F9/10 menus. You'll see that the flatspotted part will blink in red color while the tire is rotating. The red color means that the flatspot is still hot.

After the flatspot has cooled down it has normal grip, like the rest of the tire. However, the the parts of the tire surfaces which have been flatspotted have less rubber, so these flatspots usually cause tire blowups later in race due to wear. In the third attachment I have shown LFS tire data (F9 menu) just before a tire blowup and after it. Notice the front left tire has still some tread on it but hard braking causes too great forces for the tire, resulting tire failure.


Body damage

In LFS the car body damage is all visual. It does not alter the aerodynamics of the car nor would it twist the chassis either. So the tire angles and suspension geometries stay uneffected. Wings and other aerodynamic devices are uneffected as well. Basically chassis damage has no effect on gameplay. The only effect of body damage is that the car body can twist into quite interesting shapes which can make it hard to see out from inside the car.


(no longer updated as of 11.1.2009 by me)

Thank you .......
dod you REALLY have to quote that!?!?!?
Quote from Hyperactive :

The most probable situations where engine damage can occur when you are shifting down quickly while braking and when accelerating out from the corners - things you do all the time in LFS. When accelerating and upshifting it is important that you lift the throttle to prevent the revs getting too high. On some cars this kind of overrevving will cause engine damage, on some cars it won't (as much or at all). Keeping the throttle on while upshifting has, however, a performance bonus in turbo engine cars and this can be seen as some kind of trade-off between speed gain in short term and consistency in long term. There is no fatal race-ending damage so sometimes a risk is more than worth it. Especially when you are not paying for the damages in real life cash.

To add, real life engines are quite hardy. There are many professional drivers who frequently abuse their engine. The most common form of abuse being downshifting just before they actually start braking. This can usually put 10 or 11k on the engine meant for 9.5k. Most of them do this every few laps, many do it every lap, some do it more than once per lap. If LFS is accurate, a little bit of over-revving shouldn't hurt anything if done somewhat infrequently.

Personally, I always power shift on starts into 1st (from neutral) and 2nd gear and maybe 3rd if I feel like I'm going too slow. A power shift is simply holding the accelerator while shifting gears in a normal H-pattern gearbox. It adds flywheel torque to your launch, evident by the tire noise that results. I can get away with it without burning the clutch too bad because I didn't start the race by duck-walking in 1st, I started from neutral. If I duck-walked the clutch and accelerator, I'd definitely be too hot to do it on a good launch, and I'd only use it when I get a really bad start.

Car damage in LFS explained
(76 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG