Another vote for the Quattro, and all utterly mental rally cars. In my mind, a race car engine should sound like giant hornets trapped inside a burning fireworks factory--I don't want my engine to sing, I want it to sound like it's going to explode at any second with the sheer extremity of what it's being demanded to do. And that wastegate noise that the Quattro and a few other cars have--I have no idea what causes them to sound that way but I love it.
But I'm also very fond of the BMW M1Procar. More of a "pure" engine sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGMlkNnRKQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJSt5GFM4hg
But I'm also very fond of the BMW M1Procar. More of a "pure" engine sound.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGMlkNnRKQk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJSt5GFM4hg
I honestly don't know how detailed LFS simulation is, but in the real world you'd want to use relatively high tire pressure (though too high can also hurt your economy). Also, excluding factors like the ECU changing the fuel/air mixture, engines run more efficiently at fully open throttle than at partial throttle. High camber angles might also reduce rolling resistance.
Set toe angles to zero, and use fully non-parallel steering to avoid tire scrub. An open diff would be wise too.
Depending on what car you are using, you should also also minimize downforce.
Suspension should be soft springs, soft dampers, hard roll bars. What you want to do is minimize body movement, since any energy the car puts into moving the body is wasted from moving the car forward, though honestly this is a pretty minimal effect. Soft springs and dampers will minimize movement from bumps (though what body movement you do get will continue for a while from being underdamped), while hard roll bars will minimize body roll in turns. Unfortunately, these settings will make the car hard to control, so don't go overboard or you will just lose too much speed trying to corner effectively.
Honestly I think tweaking the suspension will cause more losses from bad handling than you save from reduced body movement. I'd just go with a slightly soft but good-handling setup and leave it at that.
Set toe angles to zero, and use fully non-parallel steering to avoid tire scrub. An open diff would be wise too.
Depending on what car you are using, you should also also minimize downforce.
Suspension should be soft springs, soft dampers, hard roll bars. What you want to do is minimize body movement, since any energy the car puts into moving the body is wasted from moving the car forward, though honestly this is a pretty minimal effect. Soft springs and dampers will minimize movement from bumps (though what body movement you do get will continue for a while from being underdamped), while hard roll bars will minimize body roll in turns. Unfortunately, these settings will make the car hard to control, so don't go overboard or you will just lose too much speed trying to corner effectively.
Honestly I think tweaking the suspension will cause more losses from bad handling than you save from reduced body movement. I'd just go with a slightly soft but good-handling setup and leave it at that.
Logitech driving force power supply
Greetings all. I recently picked up an old Logitech Driving Force steering wheel at a garage sale, but it didn't have a power supply. Does anyone know what what the specs are so I can supply (ha ha) my own?
WRC or SCORE Class 1 Unlimited. The latter mostly because it's the closest thing in the racing world to a truly no-rules racing class.
I'm not sure really. I'm not a great driver, but once I got the hang of it I was turning laps at around 30 seconds in the LX4. I'm sure that could be dropped a fair amount, but since it's such a short track major improvements would still be small time differences. I would guess a truly skilled lap might get 28 seconds.
Probably wise. The original version was smaller, and it was totally undriveable. The problem is the two 270-degree turns--even now, you have to be sure to get a good line, or you'll hit the wall just due to the minimum turning radius of the cars.
Granted, if you drift it gymkhana-style, this is less of a problem, though I haven't driven the track enough to tell which method is faster. I will say that it's a ton of fun with the LX4, set up with stiff roll bars and really low gear ratios for power-on oversteer.
Labyrinth
A short, compact, tight autocross track, good for the smaller cars like MRT, UF1, and LX4. The layout looks a little confusing, but it's not bad actually driving it.
You should make a zipped pack of all of them, for those of us that want them all. 
Do you have "auto select gears" turned on?
Which will make the car extremely unstable and prone to oversteer. That may be your problem--you want toe-in, not toe-out.
Meh. Chassis setup may have had something to do with it, but I've had a beef with that part of the wikipedia article for a long time. Lotta de Salvatore doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to aerodynamics, and I'm almost positive the correct top speed with the wing is 224, not 242--but for the life of me, I can't find where I heard this. I thought Clarkson said what it was in some episode or another, but I can't find it.
I've always felt bad about that video. I have this sneaking suspicion that it was one of those rallies where the organizers hand out the pace notes and don't allow recce, and they mad a big mistake on that corner. It seems odd for so many cars to be going that much too fast, that consistently, on an otherwise unremarkable flat left-hander.
Personally, I think Blackwood's hairpin/double chicane complex is one of the better turns in LFS. The multiple turns and the need to have the highest exit speed as possible means great strategy and skill are required, and it's tremendously satisfying when you get it right and go flying out onto the long straight.
Yes, it's copy protection, one that's very notorious for being extremely difficult to remove (does not automatically uninstall when you remove the game, and most conventional attempts to remove it either don't work or result in a computer so badly mangled the operating system has to be reinstalled). The company does provide their own uninstall program, but you have to go looking for it.
In addition, it is widely believed to cause various instability problems and degradations to computer speed, as well as catastrophic failure of certain DVD and CD drives. We're talking permanent hardware damage, you have to buy a new drive.
As for why they put it on Nations, that's a question many people asked. But they did. It doesn't really do anything for nations, as you said it's a free game, but installing Nations installs Starforce.
Anyway, I'm thrilled that the Steam version ditches this piece of suspect software.
Ferrari F40? Unless I'm misinterpreting the perspective...
Here's hoping the lose the stupid Starforce protection. I would buy Nations and Sunrise, but I'm not putting that crap on my hard drive.
I feel obligated to be a spoilsport and point out the explosion in that picture is obviously photoshopped in.
Looking forward to the game though. I've always wanted to play through I76 since playing a demo for about 5 minutes ages ago, and can never find a copy of it
Looking forward to the game though. I've always wanted to play through I76 since playing a demo for about 5 minutes ages ago, and can never find a copy of it
I'm pretty sure that's lag, not a LOD problem.
I would actually highly recommend training on the UFR, at least as soon as you can handle it. Keeping the front tire temps in control is an excellent way to learn throttle control without worrying too much about spinning out all the time.
Differences in track width act like differences in roll bar stiffness. A narrower track width on one end will cause that end to roll more, so...
In the case of a car with narrower track at the rear (most common), the rear rolls more than the front, so it lifts the inside front tire, and transfers the weight to the outside rear tire. Net result is more grip at the rear, and a tendency to understeer, just like if the rear roll bar was softer than the front roll bar.
In the case of a car with narrower track at the rear (most common), the rear rolls more than the front, so it lifts the inside front tire, and transfers the weight to the outside rear tire. Net result is more grip at the rear, and a tendency to understeer, just like if the rear roll bar was softer than the front roll bar.
Brake balance is "live" too.
Spring hardness is a very tricky subject. Beyond "it feels right", which is what you've done, any sort of scientific approach gets complicated fast. Start by reading Bob Smith's Advanced Setup Guide, and if you want to know more, search for "suspension frequency" in this forum. You may want to try his setup analyser too, found here.
Toe settings close to zero will reduce wear. Adjusting your Ackerman (parallel steer) may help the front tires, but this would be limited on Westhill since most of the corners are large radius.
I don't know about dampers. I can see how extreme damper settings could increase wear, so logically the "correct" settings could decrease wear, up to a point.
Diff settings can affect wear, but again this is limited on a fast course like Westhill. Mostly it's the balance between high locking=tires scrub in sharp turns, vs. low locking=one wheel can spin under throttle or lock up under braking. And of course a fully locked diff will have extreme tire wear.
Of course, the biggest thing you can do is change your driving style. Being gentle with the brakes and throttle will have a much greater effect than any of these adjustments.
Without seeing you actual set, that's all I can say. What car are you using?
I don't know about dampers. I can see how extreme damper settings could increase wear, so logically the "correct" settings could decrease wear, up to a point.
Diff settings can affect wear, but again this is limited on a fast course like Westhill. Mostly it's the balance between high locking=tires scrub in sharp turns, vs. low locking=one wheel can spin under throttle or lock up under braking. And of course a fully locked diff will have extreme tire wear.
Of course, the biggest thing you can do is change your driving style. Being gentle with the brakes and throttle will have a much greater effect than any of these adjustments.
Without seeing you actual set, that's all I can say. What car are you using?
Googling suggests the band might be Ann Beretta. But they don't seem to have any songs about zombies or being buried alive.
Haven't you ever heard of an uninterruptable power supply? Keeping continuous power to something, even through the loss of the main power source, is a trivial problem. Every modern hospital in the world has this installed for the whole building, and every large internet server does too.
NASCAR runs night races all the time. Keeping the lights on is not a problem. The only unusual thing here is that it's an F1 race, which normally isn't run at night.
Well, there is the military. Anyway, you're right, racing applications would spur more research.
The problem is the limited rate at which the batteries can be recharged. While the motor can easily extract nearly 100% of the braking energy, you can't put it back into the batteries that quickly. Gentle braking doesn't produce energy very quickly, and so you can use all of it to recharge the batteries, but hard braking will exceed the maximum recharge rate and you have to throw it away. Many hybrid cars have meters to show this--and believe me, it's not hard to exceed the 100% regenerative braking threshold.
Since race vehicles effectively always brake as hard as possible, regenerative braking would only ever recover a fraction of the energy expended.
The batteries will probably weigh several hundred pounds. They can be made easy-access, but it's hard to move that much weight quickly. Granted, the pit crews can certainly move those tires around pretty fast...
Well, as you said, racing teams can throw a lot of money at a problem. Research probably would lead to vast improvements in all areas. I'm not opposed to the idea of an electric F1 (a new class of course, not a replacement), I just think that the teams probably wouldn't go for it unless it was part of the rules.
So much for totally unregulated.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG