Formula Braking Lights

[djart]

I'd like to ask why it was chosen for the formula cars not to include a braking light at the rear.

F1 cars do have a light at the rear, right ?

And despite reality, in a multiplayer game with all the lag and stuff, it might be important to actually have an extra visual indicator that the man in front of you is braking.

[tristancliffe]

Nope - no F1 car (which we don't have anyway) has a rear brake light. Or F3000. Or F Renault.

What they have is a low visibility light - watch the Belgium GP to see it.

[LRB_Aly]

It's not only a low visibility light (that has to be turned on in wet/rain conditions) but also a light that shows if the rev limiter is on. You can see it every time when a car drives through the pits.

[tristancliffe]

Yes yes yes, but that's not the point. It's not a brake light, even though Ferrari testing brake lights at Monza and Spa two or three years ago (and some other teams during private testing). But they were abandoned, as they didn't help, and were too slow to react.

Just brake when you see the car in front getting bigger :P

[LRB_Aly]

Well i hope that most people brake before the car in front of them is getting bigger, otherwise we would see a Sato-Schumacher like crash all the time :)

[AndroidXP]

Well, in reality it's easier because you have actual depth perception. Just judging from the car getting bigger is doable but much slower in my experience. You could also try to drive with one eye closed IRL sometime too :magnify:

[tristancliffe]

I was kidding!!!

methinks people take my comments too seriously sometimes.

I did drive one-eyed not so long ago, when I had my little operation on my eye. It was very bizarre driving like that, having to move my head much more to gain any depth perception. Fortunately I knew the roads well, so my brain was able to fill in the gaps. I wouldn't like to drive an unknown road, or at high speeds with one eye though.

[DratsaB]

I'd like to ask why it was chosen for the formula cars not to include a braking light at the rear.

F1 cars do have a light at the rear, right ?

And despite reality, in a multiplayer game with all the lag and stuff, it might be important to actually have an extra visual indicator that the man in front of you is braking.

i like this idea, I mean, real f class racing cars dont have a horn :) . I think it would help with preventing online accidents

[LRB_Aly]

Driving cautiously when you're behind someone would also help, and i think it's more the problem of this. Most driversdrive to aggressively behind someone, and if you're right behind someone and he brakes you most probably crash into him because you're reaction time isn't fast enough. Even brake lights wouldn't help there.

[tristancliffe]

i like this idea, I mean, real f class racing cars dont have a horn :) . I think it would help with preventing online accidents

How would it help? You still have the lag effect, so at the same point you see them brake, you'd see the light come on, which is often 20m too late. Have you noticed how people still crash into the back of people in the cars WITH brake lights? They do not really help crash avoidance.

And the horns are only on the race cars because the horn is not car specific - it's just a universal horn. In time I'm sure Scawen will adjust the code so that only certain cars have a horn*


*nearly wrote 'The horn' :S

[Vendetta]

Whenever im close behind a car and im entering a turn that involves heavy braking, i tend to move a bit to the site so im not directly behind them incase they brake early.

[LRB_Aly]

Whenever im close behind a car and im entering a turn that involves heavy braking, i tend to move a bit to the site so im not directly behind them incase they brake early.

And that's the right thing to do, but many poeples are not so cautious. And then brake lights will not help.

[mkinnov8]

For once, never thought i'd see the day, I agree with tristan, brake lights on the single seaters....nah! keep the realism, lets not dumb it down any.

Brake lights on these cars would not reduce the online crashes, probably in my case it would cause more, as I might be attracted to the light and crash!

(that was a joke by the way)!

[Eldanor]

Oh, I replied here for another thread :(

Now that the post is sent I will edit it. Talking about the brake lights... crap, I have nothing to say about brake lights... maybe the could break when crashing?

BTW, I also think they're not needed in formulas.

[ColeusRattus]

For once, never thought i'd see the day, I agree with tristan, brake lights on the single seaters....nah! keep the realism, lets not dumb it down any.

Brake lights on these cars would not reduce the online crashes, probably in my case it would cause more, as I might be attracted to the light and crash!

(that was a joke by the way)!

Heck, if we'd remove the breaklights from he XFG, I think there would be no measurable rise in accidents for braking too late... as I crashed in a single race twice the same guy with working brakine lights :D

[tristancliffe]

For once, never thought i'd see the day, I agree with tristan, brake lights on the single seaters....nah! keep the realism, lets not dumb it down any.

Brake lights on these cars would not reduce the online crashes, probably in my case it would cause more, as I might be attracted to the light and crash!

(that was a joke by the way)!

Heh Heh!!! I'm not THAT bad am I? Glad to know that I am slowly making sense to a few people here. I'm just one of those people that want LFS to be the perfect sim, not an easily accessibly game...

[sinbad]

Heh Heh!!! I'm not THAT bad am I? Glad to know that I am slowly making sense to a few people here. I'm just one of those people that want LFS to be the perfect sim, not an easily accessibly game...

The perfect sim with car football of course :)

[tristancliffe]

LOL

I'd forgotten about my suggestion about that. It was made in a moment of weakness, after a jolly good episode of Top Gear.

Hmmmmmm, not sure if I really want that in LFS now. There are other games more suitable to stuff like that. But, having said that, LFS would do it better than anyone else :D

[DratsaB]

I see what your saying, the inclussion of brake lights would only stop accidents in very specific situations. I guess i was just thinking of the times on Kyoto Ring in the FO8 when the lag makes cars do strange things at the start, some times you cant tell if a car has stopped because of lag (and will spring forward momentarily) or if hes braking to avoid going into the back of a slower starter in front (no lag). For that sort of situation a brake light would help. But an overal better fix would be removing the warping that occurs at the start of a 20 car race.

[tristancliffe]

I don't know how LFS's netcode works, but this lag at the start is a problem

It's because the race starts, and you begin to accelerate. At the same time the other person begins to accelerate, and the 'message' saying so leaves his PC. A few ms later, it reaches your computer, and you see that jerk. It's only a tenth of a second or so most of the time, and you learn to ignore it. The problem arises when they haven't accelerated, and you've wasted 1 out of 4 tenths of a second avoidance. Take reactions into account, and you often have a crash.

Now, if LFS could somehow prioritise the packets on the grid, say for the first 3 to 5 seconds on the race, then it would cure it.
LFS knows who is on the grid, and where they are in relation to you. If LFS could realise that the person behind you, and person next to you are the most likely to cause an incident, and direct your packets to them directly (or more directly), and you recieve the packets of those on the row in front at a higher than normal priority.

Firstly - I don't know how doable this is
Secondly - I don't know if LFS already does this (I suspect not).

Does it sound plausible?

[ajp71]

I could write a nice little rant, but I can't be bothered, we do not need brake lights, horns, neon lights, tinted windscreens or this thread.

[Gunn]

Moving this to the suggestions board since this is not a bug.

[DeXteRrBDN]

imagine a 100ms lag, so you see the red light 100ms late. Now, you are 300ms late to react and brake, you have been half a second later on brakes, so you'll crash everytime with the car infront. We have to learn to anticipate the brake point of our track mates, and brake lights rather help to avoid crashes

[Madman_CZ]

lol.....

brake lights on f1 cars!!! whats next!! :pillepall

[dUmAsS]

ferrari used the rear light as a brake light once ;)

[djart]

Uerm, there are many times that I see someone in front of me braking too early
or too late or normally.

It doesn't matter which one. I've been many times in a situation where I wished there were brake lights on the formula, and many times in a situation with other cars with brake lights that I have made various last-seconds decisions only by looking the brake lights of the front car.

Decisions like blocking the wheels, breaking earlier than personal braking point or later, or even go out of the line past the man in front (even out of track) to avoid a massive accident, or events in a straight line where the front driver is loosing it and presses all the pedals together.

Again, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that since it's a multiplayer game with all kinds of gamers (newbies, pros, wreckers, etc etc ...) an extra visual indicator despite the lag can always come in handy.

I vote for realism, myself. But since it's called F08 and not F1 or F3000 or whatever else, we can add on it whatever we want :) It simulates the driving feel and behaviour of a generic formula car and since it doesn't race in F1GP, it can follow different rules than FIA :P

[sinbad]

You make a fair case. Not sure the FIA would approve of the car-reset key either, or the blatant disregard for driver safety with the omission of seat-belts, among other things. My "point" is that they (the devs) aren't exactly following real-racing rules, procedures, regulations etc etc to the letter, there are shortcuts and compromises to make things easier or simpler, so it's not that unreasonable to ask for other things that "might" improve the experience (for some).

I'd rather we go the other way, and move further away from things like the current qualifying procedure of "spawning" everyone in the session at the end of the middle sector, and the car-reset key, and the live tyre-temps/dirt indicators and suspension information and, and, and..... but that's just me.