Perhaps this is a setup issue? I'm not saying you're wrong, just wanted to make sure you've considered the possibility.

Yes i have tried different setups. I am saying though that the car is too easy to control when in the middle of a slide. If you watch a real onboard clip of an F1 driver losing the rear, they have to frantically play with the steering wheel to correct it, as the car suddenly loses all stability.

If you mean that i should try with less rear wing so i have less rear grip, the car slides more often, but is still controllable easily with a simple correction.

I think I know what you're getting at. It's the point at which the car reaches the edge of the envelope and very suddenly 'snaps' into a slide or spin, very little warning or chance to correct, steer into the spin or recover the situation. LFS has now a more gradual feel to the edge of the envelope which is more forgiving and recoverable, which makes the game more playable.

i've seen f1 cars slide around and recover. also the tire skids are like that so that we can tell when grip is being lost. irl you can feel it through your seat. f1 cars dont handle like they are on rails

here's a vid of schumi throwing his ferrari around a corner at imola a few days
ago
http://rapidshare.de/files/18937332/tires.avi.html
the change from "grip to no grip to grip" is a bit too gradual sometimes...

heck.. when i slide mine, my arms are going everywhere to get it back which i do... i mean sometimes its easy, sometimes its just.. well.. i lost it, thats when i spin out, and it usually happens really quickly and im on my way, otherwise i have to make quick reactions..

Quote from al heeley :

I think I know what you're getting at. It's the point at which the car reaches the edge of the envelope and very suddenly 'snaps' into a slide or spin, very little warning or chance to correct, steer into the spin or recover the situation. LFS has now a more gradual feel to the edge of the envelope which is more forgiving and recoverable, which makes the game more playable.

Yes that is exactly what i mean. I do understand that LFS has to be slightly more forgiving, as in a computer game you have less feedback and feel from the car, but it is much easier to catch the BF1 car in LFS than say in F1C. But if they want to provide the most realistic physics, then that does not mean forgiving physics.

As for your comment "Gabkicks", an F1 car is obviously not going to drive like on rails when going over large curbs at imola.

Weren't there a lot opf complaints when S2 first came out, that the new higher powered rear wheel drive cars were just a bit too unforgiving? Maybe they've swung back a little too far the other way now. Me, I like more grip. Makes it easier for me to stay on!

Al, the problem that has been fixed seems more related to the seperation of lateral and longitudinal forces - when this was wrong the cars would slide too easily under throttle, this is great now. But the 'sliding' and 'static' type friction differences that are what Dave is talking about don't seem to have changed much. The tyres seem to bite a little harder, but still quite 'gently' compared to real cars.

I think that the game should have cars for all skill levels. So it is ok for most cars apart from BF1 to have the new forgiving physics. However, the BF1 car is a simulation of a F1 car, and should therefore be challenging to drive. If people cant cope with a difficult car like the BF1 car should be, then there are other more forgiving cars in the game. Then if they improve they should be able to cope with a more challenging BF1 car.

Edit: So for the BF1 the friction difference between 'sliding' and 'static', should be greater, for a more realistic drive.

Also bear in mind that part of the problem is the wings. Right now they work at the speed the car is going, even if it's doing it sideways. Thus at 180mph you have the same downforce sideways as you do going forwards. But a real F1 car is much more yaw (and pitch) sensitive, so any yaw massively reduces the tyre grip - maybe it's more this than the tyres being 'wrong' or too forgiving. Also the underbody ground effect isn't modelled completely, so the car won't lose downforce as it bottoms out or goes too high. Combine the two and I'm pretty certain it'll be a much harder beast to control.

Maybe for now just put S2Q tyres on it

+1 grip

I'd actually like more grip in 2nd gear in the BF1. At the double-apex hairpin at KY GP you really have to nurse it and it's quite precarious (you can't even accelerate a tiny tiny bit because you'll lose it), especially considering that you can practically chuck it through almost every other corner on the track up to that point...having said that I'm in the 1.49 club so I guess I'm not doing too bad.
So anyway, the old grip thingy seems to still be there, but I'm glad it's not as severe as it was
The BF1 was such a lovely surprise though, I haven't tested any of the other cars yet

Quote from tristancliffe :

Also bear in mind that part of the problem is the wings. Right now they work at the speed the car is going, even if it's doing it sideways. Thus at 180mph you have the same downforce sideways as you do going forwards. But a real F1 car is much more yaw (and pitch) sensitive, so any yaw massively reduces the tyre grip - maybe it's more this than the tyres being 'wrong' or too forgiving. Also the underbody ground effect isn't modelled completely, so the car won't lose downforce as it bottoms out or goes too high. Combine the two and I'm pretty certain it'll be a much harder beast to control.

Maybe for now just put S2Q tyres on it

I never thought of that. That certainly makes sense. I assume that you are saying that an F1 car has max downforce when facing the direction of travel, but when it is no longer quite facing the direction of travel (sideways) , there is a significant loss of grip and stability.

you loose downforce as you go sideways? because when going backwards, you have... no downforce.. ..still.. we need lift when going backwards ARG!

(i've tested it when forbin was doing the whole lift thing going upside down off a ramp.. i found out that downforce decreases to nothing from sideways to being completely backwards)

Quote from tristancliffe :

Also bear in mind that part of the problem is the wings. Right now they work at the speed the car is going, even if it's doing it sideways. Thus at 180mph you have the same downforce sideways as you do going forwards. But a real F1 car is much more yaw (and pitch) sensitive, so any yaw massively reduces the tyre grip - maybe it's more this than the tyres being 'wrong' or too forgiving. Also the underbody ground effect isn't modelled completely, so the car won't lose downforce as it bottoms out or goes too high. Combine the two and I'm pretty certain it'll be a much harder beast to control.

Maybe for now just put S2Q tyres on it

I asked about this a few days ago, someone tested and said downforce drops to 0 when sideways...

Quote from al heeley :

I think I know what you're getting at. It's the point at which the car reaches the edge of the envelope and very suddenly 'snaps' into a slide or spin, very little warning or chance to correct, steer into the spin or recover the situation. LFS has now a more gradual feel to the edge of the envelope which is more forgiving and recoverable, which makes the game more playable.

I haven't done alot of BF1 driving since the patch was released, but while practising on AS Grand Touring I had a few occurances of that type of 'snap' exactly.There are a couple of high speed esses (?) in the latter part of sector 2 where this happened to me a few times - a very sudden loss of grip and before you know it the rear end is gone and your futile attempts at correction only end up making the situation worse

I guess it could be attributed to something else though, I honestly dont know.

I have had both moments that were easy to catch and those where lightning fast reflexes were barely enough to save a spin. Perhaps the ragged edge is just a little further away than people expect?

IRL F1 cars are set up to go as fast as possible for that given track and conditions. They don't set them up to be nice and comfy to drive and easy to control in a spin. In LFS many racers are not hitting WR times in their BF1 perhaps because they are not set up to go that fast. Once you engineer a very fast setup for the BF1 I find that it is indeed harder to catch a spin, or at least faster reflexes are required. I have also experienced fishtailing when barely saving a spin, which also was quite a handful to control.

It's hard to sit here and say "an F1 car is this, an F1 car is that" without having had the experience of driving one, but many people who have driven one say that they found it surprisingly easy, but very scary under brakes due to the enormous braking power and resulting G forces.

Other factors effecting spins in F1 include the condition of the track. Marbles of rubber, carbon fiber debris, dust and gravel all await the driver who strays offline, and in a spin situation this is often all it takes to make the rear end overtake the front. We don't have these things modelled into LFS but I strongly suspect we will in future as it has been discussed before at length.

I think people are focusing too much on trying to find fault with the existing version when really there are many factors that may be considered yet. I would urge racers to try tweaking those sets to see how fast they can make this thing go. It certainly has its fickle moments when pushed hard.
I notice many people using a fair bit of downforce, in real F1 they use only the minimum they think they can get away with, there is no comfort zone. On circuits with a lot of straight track it is not uncommon to reduce the amount of downforce so much that cornering is very difficult. There is always some compromise of course and in LFS I think many of us dial a lot of compromise into our setups.

Yes, sometimes the BF1 seems a bit easy to catch, but I can't say I feel any major issues really with how it is working.

Okay, so perhaps LFS does model the loss of downforce with yaw. My bad. Can anyone get some rough figures for the drop off? Cos I'd say it's too linear, and needs to lose much more downforce much earlier. Real F1 cars stuggle with more than something like 7 degrees of yaw.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Okay, so perhaps LFS does model the loss of downforce with yaw. My bad. Can anyone get some rough figures for the drop off? Cos I'd say it's too linear, and needs to lose much more downforce much earlier. Real F1 cars stuggle with more than something like 7 degrees of yaw.

Even if the LFS model does have loss of downforce with yaw, I doubt they modelled the slide's different effect on the front and rear wings correctly. Surely the rear wing would loose a lot more because most of the air doesn't even hit it at this point, whilst the front wing is still producing a reasonable amount of downforce. This would make the car more unstable when modelled. Also remember that the F1 car is on grooved slicks. This is the problem with full-on slicks and slides. The whoe tyre thread twists, rather than in seperate parts which is what makes full-on slicks less forgiving than grooved slicks.

Quote from Gunn :

... It's hard to sit here and say "an F1 car is this, an F1 car is that" without having had the experience of driving one, but many people who have driven one say that they found it surprisingly easy, but very scary under brakes due to the enormous braking power and resulting G forces....

Yes, people do find driving an F1 car relatively easy, that is until they have reached the limits of the cars grip, when a real F1 car becomes very difficult and sensitive. That is how F1 tyres differ to road tyres, because road tyres give more consistant levels of grip when sliding and when not sliding, whereas F1 tyres suddenly let go in a big way.

Quote from DaveWS :

Yes, people do find driving an F1 car relatively easy, that is until they have reached the limits of the cars grip, when a real F1 car becomes very difficult and sensitive. That is how F1 tyres differ to road tyres, because road tyres give more consistant levels of grip when sliding and when not sliding, whereas F1 tyres suddenly let go in a big way.

I just explained to you why the grooved slicks make a big difference there. Grip recovery with grooved slicks is much easier - still not as easy as road tyres but its not in LFS either.

Its much more difficult to twist a tyre like |____________| that back in line
than a tyre split into 3 pieces like so |___||___||___|
Go and try the FO8 and you'll see that while you can correct slides, you have to be on the ball a lot more than with the BF1. Also remember that the BF1 has throttle control to limit the longitudinal slip of the rear tyres while you are catching the slide because if you had high lateral and longitudinal slip, you'd have a much harder time.

But its the tyre compund of an F1 tyre which gives most grip when its not sliding, and much less when sliding. Thats why an F1 car should have a much larger stopping distance when the wheels lock up.

Quote from DaveWS :

But its the tyre compund of an F1 tyre which gives most grip when its not sliding, and much less when sliding. Thats why an F1 car should have a much larger stopping distance when the wheels lock up.

Who said we get more grip while sliding? Martin Brundle actually said that it is best to slide juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust a little tiny bit, that's when you get the fastest time - 3-5% side-slip. And, I agree with you about the stopping distance - while it is currently greater when the wheels are not locked, it should be much much worse when they are.

Yes a tiny tiny bit a slide does give maximum grip, because the compound is so soft, that a tiny slide stretches the tyre across the tarmac, giving a larger contact.

Imagine stretching an elastic band, lots of tension until it suddenly snaps

This behavious has nothing to do with the compound - all tyres, indeed all rubbery things, generate maximum 'grip' with a small slip ratio. When you accelerate you always have wheelspin, but it's best if the slip ratio is less than 5%. Same with braking and turning.

The soft compound just decides how much ultimate grip there is, and the operating temperature range (in a simplified world, at least).