Quote from Clownpaint :

A second or two gap in speed almost always boils down to one thing.

That is what part of your mind you are using to drive.

What I see so often is people saying "Why can't I get anywhere near the WR?" then they get advice, and go and consciously think and try to do it. They improve slightly, but it never transforms them. That's because they have to stop driving with the conscious mind and dig into the subconscious.

Once you want every thousandth of a second to count, thinking about what you are doing is too slow, you have to know what is going to happen before it does (eg. reacting to slides in sync with them, not as you feel it then deciding how to control it). It requires driving without thinking about driving. I hope that makes sense.

I try to drive like that, but it's hard to focus sometimes when I've got people coming in and asking me questions and traffic outside making lots of noise.

The jist of my post is: Once you are controlling slides and reacting to every bump by instinct, not thought, then you can spend your thinking energy on perfecting your lines and how to set someone up for an overtake etc.

It's like having two minds, the subconscious driving the car and the conscious planning pit strategy, overtakes and racing line. Rally drivers never think about the river dance they are doing on the pedals, they just do it!

When you can do that naturally (it takes some time to do it without making yourself do it) WR's get closer and closer.

It's easy for someone to say "use this technique" but as long as you are thinking about using it, you won't be using it to it's full potential. Often people can get advice on a bunch of corners and driving a lap becomes like remembering all the pieces of a patch work quilt "right, here I do this, there I do that". That's no use. You have to know what is fast so that you never have to think about it. I studied WR laps and ripped off what they were doing in many cases. After a while you just know, and that's when you will pump in the times.

EDIT: I'd also drop the clutch if I were you and use shifter paddles, if you want to gain some more time.

Very well put.

yea clownpaint is 100% right, i say u get to a stage where u can 'watch yourself' drivin but that counts more in real life than in LFS coz LFS is on a screen anyway lol

i am also curious of fast guys and My best time are still3-4 seconds off the WR types...like when I race the CORE guys...ugh
sometimes i can stay clean and cathc up and pass when they wreck... but3-4 seconds is HUGE
i have spectated them live and there is a lot of scrubbing and squeling going on, when i get those noises, it is drastic over steer and speed losss, or understeer and speed loss-missed apex.
I try to keep the chirps up but not the skids...so how is it they drive like this and seemingly never lose the speed I do?
or when I do follow the line and keep up they seem to accelerate away like 10% better- why is that (could it be my MOMO racing?) i have it calibrated and all too?
or do I just suck?

Quote from GT Touring :

i have spectated them live and there is a lot of scrubbing and squeling going on, when i get those noises, it is drastic over steer and speed losss, or understeer and speed loss-missed apex.

You have been arround quite some time so im guessing you know what a good line, brake points and apex speeds should be so that just leaves car balancing skills mid corner.

Think about wheel load for each wheel as you are going through a corner, and either use throttle or steering input to correct the loading on the tyres to maintain maximum overall grip through the appex of the corner...

Quote from Glenn67 :

or do I just suck?

I get a similar feeling whenever I race I think I know what my problem is and that is steering too much.
What I've been trying to look at is the steering range I use compared to others and I find that I kinda overdo it.
Accelerating away out of a corner I just loose speed, because my tyre angle is all wrong.

So I know what I do wrong, but seem to be unable to really correct it consistently :P

That said, it means I indeed do suck

it might be that you're overcompensating with your steering wheel, which also causes weight to shift to places where it shouldn't go.
Just pick a braking point, and a steering point, and keep the car stable (come of the brake softly, and come on to the throttle softly).

Quote from AeoIus :

I get a similar feeling whenever I race I think I know what my problem is and that is steering too much.
What I've been trying to look at is the steering range I use compared to others and I find that I kinda overdo it.
Accelerating away out of a corner I just loose speed, because my tyre angle is all wrong.

Setting up your controller so it feels natural to you and enables you to be acurate and consistent with your steering inputs is critical in LFS.

I can't say there is one correct way that all fast drivers use, because there isn't, but you have to find settings that achieve the above goals.

For me on a momo that means in the logitek profiler I have all the axis set to maximum sensitivity and in LFS I have linear steering with no dead zones and Analog Steer Smooth set to 0.0. Also I use only moderate to low force feed back.

When I used an xbox controller I used similar settings with just the Analog Steer Smooth setting changed to 0.2 and changed the steering lock in all my sets to 16deg.

A lot of people often have the problem of excessively steering in corners, infact on most tracks you would be able to drive the track at race speed with steering lock set to 9deg the remaining steering lock is just for the pits or if you spin

One of the secrets of going fast is to keep steering inputs to a minimum, the more you have to steer the more chance there is of making an error. To help in steering always look to were you want to go not at were you are, if you are approaching your braking point you should start to look towards the appex (use your peripheral vision to sight the braking point). Same with the appex, as you aproach it don't stare at it, look towards the outside of the track were you want to be when you exit the corner. If you make a habit of doing this you will find you need less steering inputs as you can judge the trajector of the car better and don't tend to over compensate.

i'm always 2 seconds off a WR, no in hotlaping, in Mult.., only relax.. while driving.... im 2 secs off by relaxing and not hot laping, imagine if i do hotlaps.............

Quote from chanoman315 :

i'm always 2 seconds off a WR, no in hotlaping, in Mult.., only relax.. while driving.... im 2 secs off by relaxing and not hot laping, imagine if i do hotlaps.............

If you do hotlaps you'll probably be always out the road xD

Quote from chanoman315 :

i'm always 2 seconds off a WR, no in hotlaping, in Mult.., only relax.. while driving.... im 2 secs off by relaxing and not hot laping, imagine if i do hotlaps.............

... you'd still be nowhere near a WR, that's for sure...

Former F1 driver J.J. Lehto put it nice when he was commentating the Australian GP. He said that if you make even a slight mistake in a corner then you have to drive the corner twice, and driving it twice is not fast.

Well.. I'm mentally exhausted!
Reading this thread from beginning to end is just pure gold for a completely talentless paint scrubber such as myself.
I'm a GTL bloke and only bought the S1 license as a 'need a holiday' break from my countless disappointments in trying to get 'fast' with that sim. You chaps have given me a serious amount of food for thought ... most excellent thread!

Cheers
Peter

I've been away from LFS for a year, so i never knew this thread existed until you bumped it Peter. Thanks bud, you've given me a perfect opportunity to take the piss out of Kev now.

Kev......World Record :hihi::Kick_Can_

Actually, i better go check the stats just incase he did actually manage it



(sorry, couldn't resist)


[Edit] Just read through the whole thread and i got to say it's a great read. Even if you didn't manage a WR yourself Kev you certainly inspired a fair few future WR holders to knuckle down and really improve their driving and speed. There's some priceless advice from Biggie in here, and hopefully a few more newbies can read it and really learn how to drive like a pro. So for that i take my hat off to you for being brave enough to start this thread knowing you'd be in for a fair bit of stick from arseholes like me.

Quote from mehmet ersen :

Hi im new here, Just wanted to say:

GO ON KEV YOU CAN DO IT! focus ^_^

have you considered paying more attention to the mental aspect of driving?.
sometimes we can restrict ourselves through subconscious block's or negative energy. when you first approached the world record and got within 1.5 seconds, that felt good right? but mabye when you realized that progress would be difficult this negative energy crept in. I believe it can stop us from thinking or acting dynamically because we have already subcontiously accepted defeat.

If you do get a WR don't go changing on us, ok buddy, if you start riding around in hummers wearing fur coats, with like 4 or 5 ho's in the trunk, sippin on high octane, people may get jealous, keep it reel Kev. good luck!

WTFROFLAMO!!!!!!!!!!1
and.......28th September 2007, 20:59. MASSIVE!!BUMP!

he deleted his post lol.

Is Kev even still driving?

Quote from N I K I :

Is Kev even still driving?

Kev's accelerator has gone all scratchy and untrustworthy, unfortunately.

And Kev's too busy buying musical instruments to buy another wheel.

And no I never got a WR, not for lack of trying, purely lack of talent.

Edit: Bugger, just noticed I deleted all my posts in this thread during that crazy purge period I went through. Sorry to anyone reading it now.

i really do not want to advertise, but being slow myself i want it to be a nice person and help a fellow slow person prove we are fast

PM me please

maybe you could hook up your effects pedals and use those for lfs
might give you some interesting results

Quote from thisnameistaken :

As some of you may be aware, the fact that I'm not very good at LFS has become something of a running joke around here (which I don't really mind), but this thread made me decide to try my very best (which in the past hasn't been anything like good enough ) to drive a car super-duper fast like the super-duper fast guys do.

I decided to concentrate on one combo for the night and try to get within a second of the world record. I get bored easily so I picked the LX4 at SO Long to keep my concentration up, and I did close to 100 laps. My best time was a 1:51.150, which is exactly 1.5 seconds off the current WR - not bad at all for me.

So I decided to change my goal a bit - I'm going to try to beat the current world record. *cue riotous laughter* So obviously I'm going to need some (lots of) help (possibly psychiatric), and if any of you are feeling kind or bored enough, this is how you can help (in ascending order of helpfulness):

1) Watch lap three of the attached replay and tell me where you think I'm losing this 1.5 seconds. Is there something obviously bad about the way I'm driving? Are there corners that I drive especially badly? When comparing my lap to the WR at LFSWorld I'm losing pretty much the same amount of time in each sector, so I think it must be a general bad driving thing.

2) Try the attached setup and tell me if/why it's not good enough - it's almost the same as the SO1R set at SetupField credited to Biohazard. I think I'm pretty happy with the balance of the car, but the only thing I really need to preserve is the stability when turning in and coming off the brakes - I'm useless at dealing with cars that want to change ends when turning and braking.

3) Explain how I can use replay analysers to work these things out for myself. I've got F1PerfView and AnalyseForSpeed installed, but I haven't a clue how to use any of this data to improve my lap or my setup. This would be especially helpful - I suppose it's like the teaching the man to fish thing (I've always been crap at fishing too, but I'm not all that desperate to improve my fishing abilities, so please disregard the fishing proverb analogy).

Any help much appreciated!

Personally, I think that you have to be concentrated. The psychology is very important in the world of the races.

Little by little, and with the experience, you will experience an improvement as pilot.

To do a WR is very nice, but to win a race is nicer still

Quote from Shotglass :

maybe you could hook up your effects pedals and use those for lfs
might give you some interesting results

accelerator input through a big muff or a wahwah sounds tempting

anyone ever tried playing LFS via Guitar hero guitar?

im trying to come up with a remotely sensible control setup for this but i keep returning to one that requires a whole rock band set of controllers
you could have the guy at the drums make the noises of the gearbox mechanics and also the choice of gear through the different drums the guy with the mic could be the engine (also adds the interesting layer of cooperation where the drops in engine revs have to be syncronised with the drummers gearshifts otherwise the gearbox wont disengage) and the position the guitar is held in could be the steering input

Well I've got two +/- 5v expression pedals (one 100k pot, one 25k) but I'd need a spring under the toe or something. And a USB to TRS jack cable or something? Heh.

Nah it's not going to happen. I'm too busy trying to figure out how humans can play double basses anyway.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I'm too busy trying to figure out how humans can play double basses anyway.

OT: can't you just finger pluck it like an electric bass?

Quote from bunder9999 :

OT: can't you just finger pluck it like an electric bass?

Yeah, or you can bow it, or slap it. Pizz playing technique is different to playing bass guitar though, and the left arm technique is very different. Basically I'm trying to do this properly because if I don't I'll probably give myself tendonitis and not be able to play anything. And I'm usually a total hack so the discipline is hard for me.

It's fun though, so persevering is easy.

so the whole world record thing is done with

i was going to try to help you with that set problem you were having (turning left to right was unstable :really