Why on earth would you want to race, or even drive normally, an automatic car? I thought they were designed for 80 year olds and disabled people who can't operate a third pedal.

What a ridiculous argument this is.

Since most of you have no idea what you are talking about, I will clear some things up.

The anti-lock braking system is designed to help the driver maintain steering control under maximum braking by preventing the wheels from locking from excessive brake pressure in emergency situations. It is not designed to make you stop faster. Although on some surfaces, this is a side effect of the system. I won't go into specifics but it's all about forces, rolling and sliding friction, etc etc. On a dry asphalt road you'll stop faster with locked wheels. On a very wet asphalt road you'll stop faster with ABS. On ice you will stop faster with ABS. On very loose gravel, snow, mud etc, you will stop faster with locked wheels, and on these particular surfaces it will take what seems like a lifetime to stop with ABS.

Simply put, ABS is there to help you brake really hard and steer at the same time. It's not to stop you faster.

Yes ABS does work in reverse. But I don't see the need for it to. If you find yourself in a situation where you are going backwards fast enough to warrant the use of ABS then you've severly messed up somewhere, and in such a situation, locked wheels would probably help you more than ABS. Remember, ABS helps you brake and steer. If you're going backwards at 50mph, why on earth would you need to steer? You'd want to stop as fast as possible, and if you're in a spin, ABS will not help.

And the system does of course have its limits, as I found out the hard way when I may have taken a corner too fast on a country lane, I went into a spin and ABS could do nothing to help me, only the wall that I hit could stop me then. Situations like that are where you want ESP, to prevent the spin in the first place.

My car is 10 years old and the ABS works in reverse. Don't ask me how I know this, it's a long story.

Quote from legoflamb :

wow! your power assist on your brakes are extremely strong, If it is true that your brake pedal in your car is "lighter" to push in than your accelerator. If you had no power brakes you would have to muscle the brakes just to come to a quick stop.

The "light" brake pedal feeling is caused by the brake booster (power assist) when the brake pads have yet to make firm contact with the rotor, as there is probably some expansion of the brake lines when the cylinder is compressed. The brake booster dulls the feeling so it is hard to tell if the pads have made contact with the rotor yet However, the pads are still touching the rotor, so if you quickly close the space (zero contact to firm contact) to the rotor there will be a shorter impulse causing the, aforementioned "wheel headbutt."

It's nothing to do with the servo brake assistance at all. After you are driving for a while, your left foot becomes accustomed to the pressure required to press the clutch pedal, and your right foot becomes accustomed to the pressure required to press the accelerator. They require very different amounts of pressure, and going from pressing a heavy clutch pedal to pressing a very light brake pedal, there's no wonder why a lot of people end up headbutting the wheel when they first try it, as the press the brake pedal far too hard.

Quote from AjRose :

I'm surprised how many people actually right foot brake..

Have you never driven a real car? I played LFS on a G25 and was practising left foot braking (after seeing this demonstration video: http://dl.haymarket.streamuk.c ... 007/Left_foot_braking.mp4) and it worked quite well, as you are still powering through the corner and you get good traction on the exit.

I tried it in my real car once late at night though, and was very surprised when I managed to stop the car in the middle of the road when I was merely trying to slow the car down while cornering using the left foot braking technique. You'd be surprised at how light the brake pedal is compared to the accelerator, and how your right foot is used to pressing the accelerator (heavy) whereas your left foot is used to pressing the clutch and brake (light).

By the way I practised it a lot and I'm quite good at it now, you just got to remember to be really soft on the brakes with your left foot or you'll be headbutting the steering wheel constantly, just like the guy says in the above video. I've also mastered clutchless gear changes

Hi all, just got a few questions, as I am curious.

1) Will the "throttle blip on downshift" and "throttle cut on upshift" options make a re-appearance in any future versions of LFS? I drive in sequential and they were invaluable driver aids, not to mention I'm pretty sure that a lot of modern race cars with sequential gearboxes will cut throttle on upshift too...and I'm also pretty sure that some Ferrari's with the flappy paddle boxes will blip on downshift.

2) Traction control - why is it on the FZ5 but not the FZR? The FZR is much more unmanageable than the FZ5, especially when you accelerate just a little too much around a corner. In fact, why is it not on all cars? My own car is not a race car at all, in fact it's a 75bhp fire-breathing front wheel drive monster, but it still has traction control.

3) ABS - as above. This should be an option on some/all cars, if not on all servers then at least cruise servers? Also, I race with a gamepad and the brake button is not proportional - it's either on or off. I can either set the brake balance low so it doesn't lock, but then it takes forever to slow down. Or I can set it high and just lock up all four, and have no steering control. Cadence braking does not seem to work very well either.

4) Brakes / TC settings - can anyone explain what the two different settings for traction control in LFS actually mean? The minimum speed and minimum allowed slip? Thanks.

5) Not really LFS related, but I've just been reading a thread on here about burnouts where some guy mentions revving the pants out of his car in neutral and then dropping it into drive, and some other crap about overdrive too. I kinda agreed with a member who didn't have a clue with "overdrive" was, I've never heard of it either. Then the OP said about how difficult is it to find a used car with manual gears...that's a bit stupid isn't it? None of my friends drive auto cars, in fact nobody I know does. I hired a car once to drive to London and they gave me the keys, I jumped in and realised it was an auto, I didn't have a clue how to drive it but I gave it a shot anyway, then gave up when I couldn't figure out how to get it in gear, and got them to give me a manual car.

Last edited by janipewter, Tue, 2 Sep 2008 03:55.

Quote from Impreza WRX :

In real life, road cars with manual gearboxes have a little safety switch. The car will not engage the starter unless you push the clutch. Even if you are in Neutral.

It would be a little cherry on top to have the road cars in LFS do the same thing, where to start the car "Press I" you have to hold in the clutch.

The only car I have ever seen where you have to depress the clutch in order to start it is the new Toyota Yaris.

My car will start as long as it's in neutral, you don't have to have the clutch it, and it is the same in every other car (over 20) I have ever driven.

Quote from Gil07 :

janipewter - Why is it that you have difficulties with a gamepad and others don't? Do you have less fingers?

Because I have no proportionality on any of the buttons.

Yes but I've already paid £24 for the game...I'm not prepared to pay £150 for something else which is required to play it.

Soon enough I bet they will make it so you have to buy an LFS adapter for your G25 so you can play on S2 servers. Which will probably cost another £50.

Upshifting = terrible with controller. Downshifting = even worse due to the fact that I don't have a proportional clutch.

Back in X, using sequential gearbox with auto clutch, throttle blip and throttle cut, was teh shit. Now it is just shit.

Well well. I see everyone here is having a bash at the devs re. the new update. So here is mine.

LFS was a good racing sim, infact it was the best. Notice the use of the word 'was' there. that is purposeful.

Don't get me wrong, a lot of the changes in patch Y are good. However, I really struggle to see the reason why the following 3 changes were made:

Quote :

Gear change auto throttle cut and blip options removed

Removed digital speedo option - now depends on type of car

Right there alone, the 3 best features of the game have been removed.

I play mostly on cruise servers, in 3rd person view and I use a gamepad, so I'm at a big disadvantage now.

It seems that the game is now heavily biased towards those with racing wheels and you may as well not play the game if you don't have a G25.

What the ****.

You're wrong, every game I've played which has controller support, the analogue buttons have worked on. It's just the proportionality which some games have problems with.

It's not a crude controller lol :P

It's actually a Sony PS2 controller and I know for a fact that all of the D-pad buttons have proportionality but there are very few PC games detect and utilise it (I think NFS is the only one I've found so far).

As for motoric skills, yes I am a noob and have only been playing for 3 days, and this is by far the most realistic racing game I've ever played.

What does brake assist actually do? I thought it might be a bit like ABS, but when observing the wheels under maximum braking the wheels spend more time locked than it does spinning (which sort of defeats the whole object of ABS doesn't it?).

The reason I ask is because I thought it would help me with braking at corners, because currently this is where I'm doing badly (having to brake down to a third of my speed to corner, since I can't brake while turning and LFS doesn't detect that my controller has proportionality in the buttons (so it sees a light press as just a full press meaning I can't brake slightly, same happens with the accelerator so I wheelspin a lot).

Last edited by janipewter, Sat, 6 Oct 2007 11:26.

Ah just had a look at that. I'm a newbie still and playing with a joypad. Hopefully soon I will get a G25, it looks awesome.

I think ABS and EBD would be a good idea though, especially for people who aren't experts with brake balancing etc.

to get ABS on your car? I don't want to lock my wheels when braking too hard in corners.

Thanks!

Corsa Elegance 1.2 16v 5door 2003 model