If we are going to get technical, I was thinking today about the aero in LFS. As far as I'm aware, the drag is constant no matter what angle (horizontal) you are travelling through the air. So if you were doing a 90 degree slide, there is no more air drag than moving straight through the air.

Now in reality the side profile of a car could well twice the size (if not more) of the front profile, and is obviously going to be less aerodynamic too (though by what extent I'm not sure), but for the sake of example lets say this increases the CdA by a factor of 3.

Wouldn't this make a large difference to high speed slide recovery if the aero was effectively pushing the rear back into line? I realise this would make little difference at low speed or for low angle slides, but perhaps it would help make the large angle slides a little more controllable (which is where it becomes more difficult than reality).

Any thoughts?

Quote from Bob Smith :

If we are going to get technical, I was thinking today about the aero in LFS. As far as I'm aware, the drag is constant no matter what angle (horizontal) you are travelling through the air. So if you were doing a 90 degree slide, there is no more air drag than moving straight through the air.

Now in reality the side profile of a car could well twice the size (if not more) of the front profile, and is obviously going to be less aerodynamic too (though by what extent I'm not sure), but for the sake of example lets say this increases the CdA by a factor of 3.

Wouldn't this make a large difference to high speed slide recovery if the aero was effectively pushing the rear back into line? I realise this would make little difference at low speed or for low angle slides, but perhaps it would help make the large angle slides a little more controllable (which is where it becomes more difficult than reality).

Any thoughts?

Great point! Hopefully Scawen throws this in in the next physics update.

Quote from Bob Smith :

If we are going to get technical, I was thinking today about the aero in LFS. As far as I'm aware, the drag is constant no matter what angle (horizontal) you are travelling through the air. So if you were doing a 90 degree slide, there is no more air drag than moving straight through the air.

Now in reality the side profile of a car could well twice the size (if not more) of the front profile, and is obviously going to be less aerodynamic too (though by what extent I'm not sure), but for the sake of example lets say this increases the CdA by a factor of 3.

Wouldn't this make a large difference to high speed slide recovery if the aero was effectively pushing the rear back into line? I realise this would make little difference at low speed or for low angle slides, but perhaps it would help make the large angle slides a little more controllable (which is where it becomes more difficult than reality).

Any thoughts?

Link, not directly about the matter, but

It wouldn't triple. Because:
* the wings are not directly in the airflow-> less dowforce
* sure the car going sideways would have more drag but the center dot (if you convert the pressure to single pointing force, placed directly affecting a single dot) would be in the middle of the area going against airflow. And the "dot" moves very rapidly and a lot affected by the air flows direction, density and pressure etc..
* it is very car shape dependant. If the windscreen (simplified example) is very close to the nose, indirect wind, aero pressure would turn the car away from its path. And a car having it's windshield at the back will get the indirectional aero forces so that they actually stabilize he car, like in LX4 the indirect force will try to straighten the car while in a truck the effect is the opposite..

But don't take my word on this, most of this what I just wrote is based on on my logical thinking.

Hmmm, yes the yaw of real cars (mainly Formula cars tbh) does affect the downforce of the cars and really encourages, if not forces a smooth driving style. If this was modelled in LFS (amongst many other things) it might change the quickest driving styles quite a lot (which tend to run a fair bit of neutral oversteer on corner exit).

Quote from Hyperactive :

Link, not directly about the matter, but

Excellent read.

Regards what I said, I was more thinking about the road cars anyway. I think downforce loss with slip angles is something else that doesn't seem to be modelled in LFS (though I could be wrong there), so should make those cars much harder to correct once over the limit.