Yeah, that's frustrating. Even within stock road cars there's so much variety in OEM tires that one car might be ahead of another based purely on the tire. How much quicker is a CSL than a standard M3, and how much is down to the tires? Makes comparisons difficult.

At autocross the other day was a WRX STI with the plate WRX STI.

Ooh, it's goooorgeous! Isn't it lovely! GOOOORGEOUS!

My mum's has that socket too, and it does look very nice, but there must be a way to plug it in via the HD cables and get that extra bit of resolution! I've got the dual-type cable with the regular RGB and then the three cables for HD that you can switch between.

Quote from Mattesa :

I try to read posts with their respective accents, but I just can't.

If you do try that again, please try to do mine in a slightly Canadianized English accent as I moved here when I was 16...

Quote from breadfan :

They did but not with a Zonda, it was rather some japanese car, but I'm not sure about that. And Jezza did it much faster ingame iirc.

It was with a Honda NSX at Laguna Seca. I think he was on sports tires in the game with more grip than the street tires the real life car was on, but regardless I think any comparisons between real life and games needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Even if the laptimes were similar, that says nothing about the driving experience. Still interesting though!

I haven't tried that but I have been trying to hook it up to my mum's HD LCD TV. On the side of the TV there is an input but it's not the HD input. I have the proper cable but I can't find anywhere to plug it into the TV! I can't find an HD input on the HD DVD player or anything either. I'm such a noob.

Btw, nice skin Quicksilver!

Quote from Winkel :

He even missed a gear once Yeah, lovely driving ... But I`d look like this -> when driving it

Yeah, I wonder how the owner of the car looked while watching it being driven! A little nervous maybe!

Quote from tristancliffe :

Have all the alternative interests you like. I just wonder why you (and you along as far as I can remember) insist on posting topics about American Racing.

Can't you just have an American Racing thread, and repost in that?

Tristan, can't you just have an "I'm so great and I know better than everyone else thread" so you don't have to go to the trouble of letting everyone know that in as many threads as you can?

Mine is "Autoxer". I haven't been connected lately though as I need to get an internet connection down to the basement!

I am still having fun on Forza, mostly with RWD road cars. I can't get a skyline setup to do anything other than understeer for some reason, so I'm just sticking to RWD mostly! Probably the diff setup or something.

I did a test with a stock Renault Clio V6 at Tsukuba Short to test tire compounds (stock wheel width):

Stock: 47.8 seconds
Street: 47.0 seconds (-0.8s)
Sport: 46.6 seconds (-1.2s)
Race: 45.8 seconds (-2s)

I did a dozen or so laps with each compound, and also went back to them a second time to try and improve, so I'm fairly happy that they're representative of my ability right now. I'm sure you'd see even larger differences in times in a car that is struggling for traction under acceleration out of low speed corners. Well I'm in the mood for testing, I wonder what to do next... hmm Any suggestions?

Quote from evo magazine :

The Porsche Carrera GT is no longer the fastest production supercar around the Nürburgring Nordschleife. That honour now rests with Italian supercar builder Pagani after Nordschleife expert Marc Basseng drove a road-going Zonda F Clubsport around the challenging 12.9-mile lap in just 7:27.82, eclipsing the Porsche’s unofficial record by almost 4sec.

Although domiciled in Modena, Pagani founder Horacio Pagani is Argentinean by birth, and the Zonda F’s lap record attempt was his way of celebrating the 50th anniversary of Fangio’s greatest race victory, in the 1957 German GP, which, of course, was held on the original Nordschleife.

The car – loaned back to Pagani for the record attempt by a very loyal and trusting customer! – was completely standard, and therefore fully homologated.

evo was granted exclusive access to the record-breaking lap, and
you can read the full story, together with our own unique tribute to Fangio’s legendary race win, in next month’s issue, on sale 14th November.

You can find a link to the video from here www.7-28.net

If you're looking just to use your images online, any number of megapixels will be fine. If you want to print...I print and have some pictures on the wall that are 11x14 inches and that's with a 6 megapixel D70. So don't be enticed into a camera purely because it has more than 6 megapixels (although a lot of them do now!) if you're not going to print larger than around 11x14.

Other than that, I am not sure really. I don't even use half the features on my D70 and I'm able to get some landscapes I'm really happy with (I've attached a couple). I think a lot of the extra features you get with the pricier cameras give you a larger advantage if you shoot a lot of action photography or something of that sort. For instance, shooting 10 frames per second is super cool, but not much help if you're doing landscapes!

I think the D40 or D40X (depending on what you decide regarding resolution needs) would suit you well, or a similar model from Canon.

Last edited by Michael Denham, Tue, 6 Nov 2007 22:45.

I do a lot of landscapes with my D70 and I'd say all you need apart from the kit lens to get you going are a polarizing filter and a decent tripod (both mentioned above!). I like lenses with stabilizing features, but if I'm going out to take landscapes, I absolutely always take my tripod. Some shots require shutter speeds of more than a second and a tripod is the only way to get that kind of shot with any sharpness. I would be frustrated if I had a potentially really good shot that I couldn't get because I didn't have my tripod.

As far as which camera goes, I would suggest what others have, just try a few and see what feels most comfortable to you. They're all going to be great for what you want to do, so it just comes down to what you like the most. For example, when I was looking a few years ago, there was a pentax that was the lightest and smallest DSLR available at the time. I thought this was great, but when I went to look at one, it was too small for my hands and not at all comfortable. I tried holding the D70 and it fit perfectly. Once I found a few I liked, I went back home and tried to decide which would work best for me.

I think you did the right thing, but maybe get some more practice offline with the wheel and driving with cold tires and then get back out there. There's definitely less grip with cold tires but not all that much. Just experiment offline and see what you can get away with so you'll be more prepared for the first lap when you're online again.

Enjoy the wheel!

Yes, I have. Only been there once but I have done a couple of dozen laps. It looks pretty on FM2, but it just doesn't feel as good to me as GT4. For example, Hatzenbach 2 and 3 just don't feel that tight in FM2, and I don't feel that a good line is as crucial in FM2 as in GT4 or IRL.

G25 support would be great for FM2, definitely. Fortunately I'm surviving with the gamepad at least, I like the analog triggers for accelerator and brake.

I just bought a 360 and Forza 2 last week, and I'm really happy with it so far. I've played the GT series up to 4 and now made the switch to xbox, so it's interesting to see the differences. I like that there are no licence tests, and instead you get to do the more advanced races by completing the early races. Some of the early races on the fictional circuit with loads of combos get a bit repetitive, but once you get moved on a bit that's better. The menu organization is really clean and simple and it feels like it's all been thought through really well. There are loads of options for car customization and I really like that you can change the paint etc too. I love the drivetrain swaps. As for handling I'm finding the steering a bit twitchy with the pad but overall it feels good and changes to setup seem to do what you want! Lots of fun so far The only thing I'm a bit disappointed with is that the 'Ring is not as accurately modeled as in GT4, but I still have my PS2 so I can always go back to GT4 for some 'Ring lapping if I feel the need. Some of the corners just don't feel as tight as IRL and it just doesn't feel right like GT4. But FM2 is so much fun regardless that I'm not even bothered about driving the 'Ring whereas that's about all I did on GT4.

Well, that was a crappy post with a bunch of unorganized random thoughts about FM2. Really liking it so far though

I am not sure how McLaren will do next year, whether Alonso's input on the car was helping it's pace more than Hamilton will be able to do next year, possibly at the #1 driver. I think Ferrari will get back in the groove next year and try and keep what they have started going. Although, as usual, the FIA has made a few changes again for '08 so it'll be interesting to see how the teams and drivers adapt....I say Kimi for '08 drivers champion though.

Regarding Alonso's more agressive inputs...it was interesting to see what happened when the single set of tires for a race rule was put in place. He smoothed out his very agressive input on turn-in, to be a bit kinder to the tires now that they had to last the whole race (I assume that is why he made this change to his driving style). Once we came back to having tire changes, he started being more agressive on corner entry again. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has noticed this, but it's something interesting to consider regarding driving style!

Another thing that was discussed one of the previous times this came up was the fact that the road tires in LFS are quite high-profile, and likely have fairly soft sidewalls compared to some of the sporty low-profile tires you'd likely see on cars lapping on tracks in real life.

I liked it, nice work. The only thing I found was I didn't like (apart from some of the grammar, but that's been covered...) is that you gave it away a bit early by saying "If only I bothered to check the dash for that little red light in the corner." I would rather not know anything is wrong, because then you are feeling the same emotions as the people in the car. As it were, we knew the guys in the car were having a good time, but as a reader we're concerned. What do you think?

I came into this thread to read about the F1 race, not arguments over grammar. You guys may think it's not a problem but some of us actually want to read posts about F1 without having to sift through a lot of OT stuff...

Another good thread! I autox my car, and I have spent some time talking to Frank Secondary, the guy who designed the Kumho V710s we run. We've chatted about tire temps and camber quite a bit and the conclusion we've usually come to is that it's far from an exact science, he knows the theory, but he doesn't have the answers, and that you just have to test and do what works. This pretty much fits in with what you've mentioned you've tried on the skidpad, Todd. For autox, Frank suggested that for the road cars most of us are running, more camber is almost always a good thing. Most of us run 2-3 degrees and he said we could go more than that (assuming our cars are not camber limited...with stock ride height I can't get more than 1 at the front and 2 at the back on my car!). There is little concern with losing braking performance because so much of it is cornering and transitions in autox of course. The main thing I got from chatting with him is that you just need to test things and do what works.

I've tried rolling around at low speeds driving economically before and found I got much higher mpg than I would expect in some cars. But I guess as long as LFS is doing a reasonable job with the mpg while racing it's ok.

unparalleled aerodynamic modeling

Quote from DrDNA :

Yep, its reputation as a woman's car is so annoying considering what an incredible package it is.

Bah, it doesn't bother me. Just makes it all the worse for everyone else when they get beaten by a 'girls car' or 'hairdressers car'.