rec.autos.simulators

probably because lfs users/fans etc all go to the official forum and
have been for quite some time !

http://www.lfsforum.net/

this thread was locked at 2164 posts in less than a week

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=6400

avatars had to be switched off because of high traffic concerns

Tango

Because of it being the best at communicating the virtual car to the driver
and of where the difficulty with regard to going fast is at.

LFS is the easiest sim to pick up for people with sim- and real life
experience alike, but going really quick poses the same sort of difficulty
as in real life. All a matter of driving a very well defined ideal line
around the circuit and managing the weight transfer within your vehicle to
perfection. IMO LFS has, to a certain extend (more on that later). always
portrayed this "a minute to pick up, a lifetime to master"-notion.

As I've been saying since day one of my involvement here, a lot of people
who drive sims seem to think the harder actually getting the virtual car
around the track is, the more realistic the sim. This is a false
proposition. In my limited experience, operating racecars is extremely easy
compared to road cars (it needs to be, given the speed the control actions
need to be delivered at). Getting them around the racetrack faster than the
next guy is the hard part, which, IMO, LFS models beautifully.

Racing is a skill which could be learned given infinate funds and the
ability to be invulnerable, which is why only the truly gifted make it in
real life. As far as this goes LFS is the only sim which respects this
aspect. There are serveral guys which I (with superior "sim" experience) can
dominate in the virtual arena, but have no hope of matching in a real life
racing situation. The same goes for LFS: drivers who are simply no match for
me in just about any sim (be it Papyrus or ISI) are more than a match around
its tracks in any car.

Before a particular style of driving combined with using setups which
exploited certain parts of the model resulted in being proficient at LFS by
treating it more as a game than as a sim, but first evidence suggests this
is no longer the case. Hence my statement and the feeling of finally being
on equal terms with those who adapted to LFS in favour of other sims.

You're just being delusional here. There is nothing elite in taking to
something which doesn't come natural to a racing driver.

Compared to what? -there's a couple of things in rFactor with regard to
lighting which add to the experience, but this aspect fades to
insignificance with regard to the way the driver has to compensate for the
actual "lay of the land" with regard to his car.

Err...what?

It's functional and far richer than what one would hear in RL.

Nothing matches the "in yer face" crispness of LFS. There is no way anyone
would be able to stay ahead of the road going cars without it.

It's a fact of life current F1 cars accelerate and decellerate at a
ridiculess rate compared to what the average human brain can cope with.
Which is why computer aided gizmos are required to free up CPU cycles in the
modern day F1 driver's head. Again, I think the LFS Sauber is not that much
"off".

Who cares about what RSC forum dwellers think? They've never been on a par
with RAS opinion and never will.

Compared to LFS S2 patch T, GPL and its mods are a game.

I know I made changes to the way the game handles this aspect way back when,
but I don't remember exactly what I did. I'm sure, however, the game is
fully configurable in this aspect and any gripes are due to the user not
giving it due time and attendion.

I used to treat it this way too: despite the fact it did several things very
right indeed , LFS S2 Q simply  favoured "the gamer" too much to warrant any
real interest on my behalf. To my mind, this patch has changed everything. I
have gained five-fold what the hotlapper has gained with this release and
that's before I've begun to appy myself and release all my simulation
experience upon these lowlifes. It's payback time as far as I'm concerned
(and having nagging concerns lifted adds to the fun factor for myself as
well).

To be honest there's a number of things which still need to be done.
Blocking messages should block messages, period, instead of just leaving out
what other users type. Similarly, the way in which the game remembers a
mistimed shift with all aides off untill revs match or the clutch is fully
disengaged needs to be removed. When a driver mistimes a shift that should
be that. Try again and be more "in tune" about it next time, you buffoon. As
it is, I'm catching myself driving what is representing a modern day racing
car as a pre-selector gearbox Vanwall (I drive LFS in way which I consider
"proper", BTW, i.e. "manually" operated clutch, right foot braking,
heel-toe, correct steering angle lock-to-lock with my DFP, etc... where
applicable).

Overall LFS S2 patch T retains what was good about LFS all along, while to a
large extend plugging the holes hotlappers were exploiting up 'till now and
therefore, with it's highly configurable and almost bulletproof online plqy,
should be, IMO, considered king of the crop for the time being. Until the
fFactor community manages to chuck out something complete and consistent, at
any rate.

Jan.
=----

A licenced car leading to more exposure, leading to licenced tracks, leading
to....

Ok, a bit rosy specced, but not that farfetched.

Jan.
=---

NR2003, F1C99-02 with RH2004 mod, GTR, GTLegends.

Or arcade games like NFS:Most Wanted.

<snip>

Jan,
How do you rate the features of LFS for supporting league competitions, both
online and offline? I mean reporting of results, enforcement of rules etc.

Bart

For offline hotlapping the rules the game enforces are pretty strict. Even
something as harmless as running off the end of a kerb and twitching the car
sideways on the dirt invalidates a lap in some cases. For online racing
pitspeed is enforced to a ridiculous level as well and tyre stacks are in
put in position to guard against extreme cutting (once these are run over,
it takes some time to get them back, tho'). Some sections on some tracks
overstep the line with regard creating the possibility for using more than
"all of the track and then some", which irks me (Aston GP rev., e.g. has a
bit where one can enter a fast turn with the car completely the other side
of the kerb on the outside of the racing surface (there's this kind of
concrete tile which allows grass to grow through to guard against people
killing themselves if they run wide when the track is used in the normal
direction put down there).

There are tools which extract data from replays, but qualifying data is not
stored in a race replay (even when one doesn't do a "laglap" to make sure
everyone's ready when the race is started). Here's an example (link will
wrap):

http://www.vrl-simracing.be/exports/BE-NL%20LFS/BE-NL_race2server2/24...

It is also possible for league owners to tap into the data stored at
LFSWorld. One request every 4 seconds is free, or one can take out a premium
account to access the data directly at a small cost per request. The VRL
league pre-qualifying tool Sywix uses this option.

http://timpreza.proboards12.com/index.cgi?board=LFS&action=display&th...

Overall we (the VRL) rated LFS (pre-patch) as the most complete and league
friendly sim over GTR, GTL and rFactor and thus decided to organise a
championship. About 30 drivers are involved, of which about 25 compete on a
regular basis.

Jan.
=---

Thanks Jan!

I have spun more race cars on a corporate day out than 25 years normal
car driving - simply because I could go hell for leather - I didn't
deliberately spin them though!

I ventured online for a quick FOX race around South City. The overriding
feeling was the amount of lift off oversteer and the ease at holding
drifts. It was as if oversteer was on tap and just by the amount of lift
I could rear end steer to avoid understeering off and with the right
amount of right foot could avoid spinning. I still feel concerned this
easy drifting method could be employed in pretty much any car even more
easily than GPL which was criticised for too similar to a rally style
for open wheel track racing. Having said that I wasn't particularly
quick having zero practice with LFS, the cars and the tracks for a long
time, but the other guys were holding huge drifts. Hardly conclusive but
certainly my initial observation.

NetKar Pro has far more subtle lift off oversteer and is more likely to
be provoked to tuck in under braking. In LFS lifting completely on a
fast bend invokes huge amounts of oversteer.

I gave it a more extended go last night. I will confess I hadn't run lfs
since updating my graphics card so I didn't have a profile set up for it
so I was ruuning minimal AA/AF etc. It looks a lot better now but still
not up to GT Legends or NetKar Pro for me.

The***pits really are poor especially compared with GTL and the
community produced GPL***pits, they really contribute to the arcade
game feel.

I guess simulated modern F1 just doesn't appeal to me any more
regardless of sim

I should spend more time with it but the overall atmosphere of the sim
doesn't seem to be working for me. Maybe a wheel to wheel online race
with some similar paced drivers might do it - picking it up after god
know how many months and launching straight into an online race (cos the
ai is truly bad) is not a real test.

I just need to extend the days by a few hours...

Cheers
Tony