The blue stuff is the bars of the cage, dude! I'll get a few newer shots now that he's out of the cage a lot.

One of my baby hooded rats. He's called Pinky, and is about 6weeks when this shot was taken. His brother is still not very tame, but he's getting out more now, so he'll get there!

Dang! Being in the back of that bus can't have been fun!
Anybody know where this is? Seems there's maybe a feature of the road that make vehicles lose control like that, and inexperienced drivers overcompensating.

Just to defent GT4 slightly, you should have taken the 1.8L miata with all aids off for a spin on Deep forest. With a wheel. At least it's better...

As for the Plasma, well.. I've been saying it for years.

Although the PS2 was probably wired up with composite video signal, and the TV set up with factory settings. A plasma can look decent with some tweaking. Factory settings are always too harsh.

I'd still get the LCD, though!

I drive a turbo car, and I have a boost gauge. Problem is, the turbo is running about idle, as the engine is tax-restricted to hell and back. So my turbine is almost constantly in it's linear range, and not very useful for this discussion. If someone could send me a new ECU, I'd be happy to show you how it behaves...

With the K3 turbo being so small, I can get full ECU-allowed boost (.55 Bar) from 1400 rpm. If I go WOT at 1800rpm, I have full boost in about 2 seconds, but the boost build pretty fast in the beginning, and slower as I approach full boost. At higher rpm the boost hits full very fast, less than half a second, so it's hard to make out just how the curve is. I'd go film it, but it's dark out so it'd probably just be a blurred mess.

Edit: I've been looking at the turbo behaviour in LFS a little closer and made a few observations. It seems to me turbo spool time is a direct function of throttle position and rpm, and very linear. In real life the low exhaust pressure at low rpm would inhibit any rapid spool, which in turn inhibit a rapid increase in exhaust pressure, making the whole process pretty slow, which is the essence of turbo-lag in the first place.
The other cars seem more natural to me, but they have the power- peak really really high in the rpm band. But then they are race cars, and suppsed to have pointy torque curves.

Last edited by atledreier, Tue 10 Jan 2006, 20:34.

On my engine, a VW 1.8T, the boost buildup is incredibly rapid at low pressures, and gradually ease into it's stable position. I believe this is a function of the ECU, as it controls the wastegate on this engine. This turbo (K3) can easily put out double the boost it's allowed by the ECU, and thus the buildup should be virtually instant. The fact that the K3 turbine is tiny does not affect the overall behaviour of the boost buildup, other than being faster overall. I believe if the ECU left the turbine and wastegate on their own, I'd see the accelerating buildup BBT was expecting.

Having said that, I somehow doupt Scawen has coded in ECU-controlled curves for the wastegate position like VW does. Thus I have no idea why the RAC does this, I only know that it can and does happen in real life.

I have this with AA at 8x. Everything other than 8x and it's fine. I haven't tried the transparency AA thing, though. 81.95 fixes a lot of stuff in other games for me, I haven't got around to trying this yet.

My TIR4 just works, and it works great! Enhanced mode and it is awesome. Now get coding on that 6DOF, Scawen!

I've tried so many times to like Racer, but I end up tweakign some car to have 1000hp and play around with it instead. I like the idea of tweaking specs to get cars to handle good, and have tried that myself. Good fun for a bit, but gets old pretty fast...

My shifter is all good. I use it so much I wear it out and have to swap springs in it wuite a bit, so I'm trying to figure out a different solution to that.

I work in a hifi store, and we have a system for showing our customers how much the sound of their TVs suck.

We have a TV with decent sound, play it fairly loud with some music DVD, and leave it. We have a button with a big 'Press here' sign, and when the customers press it, the sound in the TV cuts out, and we have a small hifi system playing the same audio for 10 seconds, then switch back to the tv's audio. Initially, you hear the hifi audio is better, but it's only when it cuts back to the TV's sound you hear just how bad that sucks. That's the real kicker.

Much the same with LFS vs Racer carfeel. You get used to the LFS way, then struggle with racer for a while, not really noticing how bad it is until you get back into LFS. Then you realize just how awesome LFS is. A-B-A tests are excellent in that respect. I regularly get off LFS for periods, because I know it will feel sooo good when I get back in it.

Ok, I got it running, but it don't seem to respond to anything. I have tried the '/insim 29999' thing too. Is this port the port the server is running at, or some local port insim use? All other variables are default. I am running teh 'debug' flag as well, but I see no debugging info anywhere...

Edit: Figured it out. I had mistyped the port number! :doh:

Last edited by atledreier, Tue 6 Dec 2005, 17:28.

I'm probably making a fool of myself here, but I can't seem to make it work. I type /insim 29999 in my server chat to activate insim, right? And then I run lfslapper.exe, and the console flash up on screen, and disappear immediately. I can see there's some text in the console, but it's way to fast for me to read anything. Any clues?

Edit: I use the precompiled v2.1, XP pro and .Net

If you use just the +, without any preceding carname, it should be taken as an addition.

I admit I haven't read the entire section, so don't kill me if this has been brought up before.

As a server admin I change the car selection on a server quite often. Some weird combinations arise, and they can be a pain in the ... to type in. And if you're gonna change one car, you have to type the whole thing again. Would it be possible to be able to add and subtract from the current selection by using + and -?

An example: We have allowed LX4, LX6, RAC and FZ50 by typing /cars lx4+lrf. If we want to race the gti and GT as well, we have to type /cars xfg+xrg+lx4+lrf. So, what if we want to go all rwd? We have to type /cars xrg+lx4+lrf. I think it would be simpler to just type /cars -xfg. And to add the MRT, just type /cars +mrt. Simple, efficient, fast, easy to remember.

So +CARNAME to add to current selection, -CARNAME to remove from selection.

Comments?

Impressive!

I tried setting v-sync on, and turning the limiting off. I have set screen refresh to 75Hz, and it pretty much stay there. Looks smoother at steady 75fps than when I let it run unlimited at 100+. Online I have no fps issues, so I'm leaving it at v-synced, unlimited fps for now.

Quote from AndroidXP :

@MadCat:
Nah, the idea behind limiting the fps is to minimize the jumping of the fps. A steady 50 fps is better than the fps jumping between 60 and 120, because you will notice the difference, even if its only subconscious.

Exactly. That's why I use a value of 40. It's fast enough for me, and all that waiting allow my system to breathe easier. I know my system can pump out more fps, but I really don't see the point. I'm not faster, but constant fps is easier on my eyes, so I use it.

Apparently something has happened to the limiter thingy, cause it's working like a charm now. I might try upping it to 60 and see what happens. And the v-sync/triplebuffer thing sounds interesting. But isn't it necessarily a multiple of your screen res, then? So if I'm running 85Hz refresh, I get either 85, 42.5, 28 ... ? Cause if my system can't get a frame done in time, it will have to wait a whole scan cycle before it's allowed to draw the frame? Is that where triple buffering comes in? What does triple buffering do, anyway? I know double buffering, but triple seems redundant to me. I'll go and do some tests now.

Well I run everything pretty much ma.... Oh, sorry!

To the point: I find that playing with minimum sleep can help on a single core cpu. Finding the balance between background tasks and LFS. What it should be depends on your system.

On a multicore system, limiting frames is an option I find appealing, but I have never ben able to get that particular setting to work as expected. In rFactor I have limited my fps to 40 and it never ever drop below. That's awesome, and I'd like the same for LFS. If I set the limiter to 40 fps, I get a very 'jerky' game, where framerate is anything but smooth. Even though my system is capable of putting out 100+ fps most of the time, and very seldom drop into the 60s, locking at 40 let me see anything from 20 to 80fps, but with sudden changes in framerate, which is even worse than low fps.

I have experimented a bit, trying to find the bottleneck, and it's definetly CPU and/or RAM. Crancking gfx settings as high as they would go and even using two screens hadly dent the fps*, but put a few AI in the mix, and even the most high-end system is brought to it's knees. No wonder most developers fudge the AI....

One can only hope I get the fps limiter working someday, as a stable framerate is preferred over high framerate any day (as long as the stable fps is acceptable, of course. No good having stable 25fps.)

*
Amd Athlon 64X2 4200+ @ 2675
Abit KN8
XFX 7800GTX
1Gb twinMOS PC3200
3200x1200, 8AA, 16AF, high quality in drivers, all maxed ingame. Online 70+fps.
800x600, 0AA, 0AF, normal quality in drivers, all but HVS turned off, back of the grid, 12 AI, 25fps going into turn 1 on Blackwood.

Congrats! from Grown Up racing Union!

Slarty, you have PM....

It was a 'Rockfire USB Smarttraveller'

The axis on it are really low resolution, like 4bit or something, but it's ok for handbrake or clutch if you can adapt it mechanically. Or ever viewcontrol. Not that I need it with my TrackIR4 in the mail..

In the GURU server, anyone can ask for help from a GURU member. I'd skip racing to help a new guy any day, as would most GURU members, I think.

Edit: I can easily setup a dedicated training server if there is interest. Let me know!

I have optic fibre, 10Mbit up, 10Mbit down. Very reliable, and I usually clock the connection at 12Mbit+ either way. I have digital TV and 2-channel IP telephone on the same fibre. Unlimited phone usage, no traffic restrictions and 100Mb webspace. All this for approx. 127Euro per month.
This is in Norway, btw.

I kinda like having the new guys up front. The races usually end up in the same or even worse mess than if it started with the experienced drivers up front. Why? Because many so-called experienced drivers feel they have a god given right to jam their way through the field before the first lap is over, just because they can do the lap 2 seconds faster. If I'm in a field where I'm more experienced, I love the challenge of passing the other drivers, working my way through the field, not ramming through. Ok, I won't set a new PB that race, but who cares if I'm having fun, right?

IMO, what separates a noob from a newbie is the willingness to learn and accept the opinions and advice from more experienced drivers. I give advice as often as I can, and if my advice makes some new guys get a new PB, it really makes my day!

I started GURU (Grown Up Racing Union, www.grownupracing.com) for this very reason. If any GURU member are online there, feel free to ask them anything.