There could be other scenarios, like if the setup is on a read-only media. In general, I'd think it should be considered an LFS issue, as it's LFS itself which imports the file and expects the result to be writable (apparently) but doesn't take steps to ensure it.
Thanks. It worked, but I'm seeing much less servers that I usually see.
For non-private and non-empty, I see 6 (expectedly grayed out) S3 servers, and 8 other servers (both demo and S2).
And another question, should it be possible to hide servers which I'm not allowed to enter? (S3 servers with S2 license) if yes, how?
This is purely guessing, but here it goes:
IMO they do want LFS to keep developing, but bumped into some technical/life/whatever stuff which slowed progress enough such that it had lost its momentum.
If they find the energies and motivation etc to progress it further, then they will. Otherwise, it will just "live" as long as they maintain the master server and as long as users are using it.
It's not that they don't have the intention to work on it further IMO, it's just that it doesn't happen - which is why it wasn't declared "dead".
So best thing to do is just keep on with your life regardless of LFS, and if some new version/content/whatever comes along at some day, enjoy it if you're still around.
IMO they do want LFS to keep developing, but bumped into some technical/life/whatever stuff which slowed progress enough such that it had lost its momentum.
If they find the energies and motivation etc to progress it further, then they will. Otherwise, it will just "live" as long as they maintain the master server and as long as users are using it.
It's not that they don't have the intention to work on it further IMO, it's just that it doesn't happen - which is why it wasn't declared "dead".
So best thing to do is just keep on with your life regardless of LFS, and if some new version/content/whatever comes along at some day, enjoy it if you're still around.
Indeed, no one could argue that expectations were created, even if an official release date was never given (but it was pretty clear at some stages that new release should arrive in the range of weeks or at least months).
I do honestly believe that they did intend to release the stuff back then, and since then, and probably they still do.
However, life cannot always go as planned, stuff changes priorities, resources change, etc. They still keep the servers alive without any stream of income which I'm aware of, and I still think they want to release new stuff. I'd certainly like that as well.
Will it ever happen? maybe yes, maybe not. That's how it is right now. As long as the servers are still alive, and people can enjoy them (though personally I haven't raced for more than a year, but still visit the forum once in a while), no one is forced to stay. Bitching about it won't help anyone, and won't change anything - it's been done enough over the past few years.
I do hope new stuff will be released at some stage, however. LFS is IMO still one of the better and more unique simulators out there.
But I've stopped holding my breath...
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Glad to see LFS being worked on 
It smells like a driver issue to me. I'd suggest installing the latest GFX drivers for your system.
Hmm... sometimes people don't notice the message (especially newbies), I always send 3-4 times in a row to make sure the other guy got the message. Never got anyone annoyed by it... on the contrary...
Not sure it's worth putting time into fine tuning it, but just thought I'd make the other side heard too.
Keep up the good work
Got it, thanks. If I want to still use older replays (some go pretty long back), can I still have the older lfs.exe file at the same folder as the new? or would I have to keeps the pre/post z35 installs in different folders?
[edit]
Oops, must have misread that one, my apologies. Anyway, I do follow your progress updates, and I find them quite interesting
[edit]
Oops, must have misread that one, my apologies. Anyway, I do follow your progress updates, and I find them quite interesting
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Thanks. Could you please specify then what exactly is going to break (backward compatibility wise)?
Scawen, if I understand correctly, your next patch would be an incompatible one? with the incompatibility mostly due to some layout stuff and custom objects? What exactly is the nature of this incompatibility? Replays? WRs? It seems the recent collision changes, while affecting physics to a degree, do not break compatibility, which is nice.
Is this patch going to be promoted as an official update eventually? If yes, would that be smart to break backward compatibility for reasons other than a physics update or meaningful tracks updates?
Is this patch going to be promoted as an official update eventually? If yes, would that be smart to break backward compatibility for reasons other than a physics update or meaningful tracks updates?
First, these are tires and not a brick wall (though a brick wall might be nice too), so your car will behave normally when hitting them.
Second, a car that hits these tires at full speed will mostly lose control there anyway, so instead of car and tires all over the place, there will only be a car.
It's a major "pileup" point anyway, so less scattered tires on the road can only improve the situation there.
I know what I'm talking about, I got enough experience on this track.
Scawen, while you're at minor layout/objects issues, could some tires barriers become "non movable"? either as a concrete barrier, or still as tires, but just don't let them scatter when hit?
The specific barrier I had in mind is the last tires barrier before the main straight at the exit of AS3 chicane.
The thing is that this specific chicane is already notorious because you have to commit to your line to be fast through it, but the smallest of miscalculation, and the tires get hit, and everyone following you is having to cope with sometimes impossible situations of tires all over the road, when you're at 180KPH with very little margin to maneuver around them, if at all.
This specific barrier, because it's tendency to scatter the tires, and it's location, mostly hurts the drivers following the one who hit the tires, and it's even more annoying when the one who hit the barrier is a backmarker driving just in front of your nose.
So, if these tires can be "connected" together, and to the wall while you're at it, I think it'll improve the situation at this chicane greatly...
The specific barrier I had in mind is the last tires barrier before the main straight at the exit of AS3 chicane.
The thing is that this specific chicane is already notorious because you have to commit to your line to be fast through it, but the smallest of miscalculation, and the tires get hit, and everyone following you is having to cope with sometimes impossible situations of tires all over the road, when you're at 180KPH with very little margin to maneuver around them, if at all.
This specific barrier, because it's tendency to scatter the tires, and it's location, mostly hurts the drivers following the one who hit the tires, and it's even more annoying when the one who hit the barrier is a backmarker driving just in front of your nose.
So, if these tires can be "connected" together, and to the wall while you're at it, I think it'll improve the situation at this chicane greatly...
Take 10 minutes to read this thread. I think it has the info you seek.
Perhaps the solution, if allowing vote-ban, is to make it only last a day or so? Later an admin can review the ban (hopefully with auo-saved replay after such successful vote-ban) and decide if the act requires a longer ban?
Actually, I've read some more about D3D in Virtualbox. It seem they actually incorporated the wineD3D solution I mentioned earlier, but in a sort of unofficial way.
After windows in installed, one still needs to install the official DirectX, but then, instead of installing wineD3D, copy the same files (possibly slightly more adapted to virtualbox) from their guest-additions CD image to the system32 folder.
Using this solution, I also got around 20-60+(!!) FPS and without graphical glitches, but at lowest visual settings and low-res graphics. Most of the time it's on 30-50 FPS. It's better, but still around 3x-10x slower than LFS running native on the same system.
But it is better
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This probably requires a topic of it's own, but it seems a bit complex to me. Why the ICS, 2nd VM(LAN) and 2nd XP(LAN)?
Again, I'm not a network guru, but I think you can probably do with a VM most of the things that you can do with a dedicated machine on your network. Especially if you have a dedicated NIC for the VM, but possibly with bridged connection as well.
Beyond that, I usually try not creating a too complex setup, so my advice at such cased would be limited
I'm definitely not a network guru, but I think it's incorrect. The VM can take control over a specific NIC if you assign it to, and use it as it's own, or even "piggyback" your main/single NIC in a bridged connection (the VM software installs special driver into the host), at which case the router (if you have one) actually sees 2 different NICs, each with it's own MAC address, assigns each it's own IP etc, which practically results in the VM being an autonomous network entity as far as the rest of the network is concerned.
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You define the maximum amount of RAM the VM uses. It can use much less than the max. The CPU is shared when needed, so imagine running the additional application on your host machine, it'll be similar. Overheads can be relatively low, depending on your CPU features.
Just give it a go, might be worth it.
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You don't need to pay for a license these days. The latest free VMware Player lets you create and manage VMs, but apparently lacks some enterprise features, although it's perfectly enough for home/testing scenarios.
However, I don't like VMware. I've used it in the past, but recent versions of Virtualbox are as good as vmware for me, and [arguably] better in their host integration (seamless/unity modes). And vbox is OSS, so VBox it is for me.
I do believe VMware has better hardware acceleration though, but I didn't try it with LFS.
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LFS runs in Virtualbox
Tried just for the fun of it, and it works.
Here's the setup:
Host: E8400/4G/GTX260/XP32-SP3
Virtualbox: Version 3.1.2
Guest: Windows 7 Ultimate 32
Although Win7 should include DirectX by default, IIRC LFS wouldn't run, and so I've downloaded and installed the latest DirectX 9.x.
LFS would now run, but way too slow (1 fps or less). I guess it Does Direct3D in pure software due to missing proper [virtual] hardware drivers.
Virtualbox does support (if enabled) 3D acceleration via OpenGL. So OpenGL commands on the guest are redirected to the Host hardware acceleration layer. As such, OpenGL games (such as Half-Life 1) run perfectly well on this setup and in full speed (60FPS), but not so with DirectX games.
Here comes the Wine project for help. It has a translation layer that converts Direct3D to OpenGL commands, and they have precompiled binaries for windows too. If installed on this setup (guest), it then redirects the guest Direct3D commands to the guest OpenGL, which translates into the Host's OpenGL hardware accelerated layer using Virtualbox own translation layer. So it works.
I got around 10 FPS in cockpit view of an open wheeler, and around 20 FPS in wheels view. Some world textures are a bit messed, but not too bad. I didn't try to play though, just connected to an online server and watched for a while.
Here's how it looks:
Interesting
Here's the setup:
Host: E8400/4G/GTX260/XP32-SP3
Virtualbox: Version 3.1.2
Guest: Windows 7 Ultimate 32
Although Win7 should include DirectX by default, IIRC LFS wouldn't run, and so I've downloaded and installed the latest DirectX 9.x.
LFS would now run, but way too slow (1 fps or less). I guess it Does Direct3D in pure software due to missing proper [virtual] hardware drivers.
Virtualbox does support (if enabled) 3D acceleration via OpenGL. So OpenGL commands on the guest are redirected to the Host hardware acceleration layer. As such, OpenGL games (such as Half-Life 1) run perfectly well on this setup and in full speed (60FPS), but not so with DirectX games.
Here comes the Wine project for help. It has a translation layer that converts Direct3D to OpenGL commands, and they have precompiled binaries for windows too. If installed on this setup (guest), it then redirects the guest Direct3D commands to the guest OpenGL, which translates into the Host's OpenGL hardware accelerated layer using Virtualbox own translation layer. So it works.
I got around 10 FPS in cockpit view of an open wheeler, and around 20 FPS in wheels view. Some world textures are a bit messed, but not too bad. I didn't try to play though, just connected to an online server and watched for a while.
Here's how it looks:
Interesting
It's not wrong, just not always the optimal line.
E.g., low HP cars tend to need a smoother line to keep corner speed because they don't have much acceleration to use on corner exit. OTOH, strong cars often use later apex, or "square the corner" lines because they're hard to control in full-throttle during a turn. With these cars you can brake later and stronger, point the car at the exit and then floor the gas for a relatively straight line acceleration. Many times it would be faster for those cars.
Generally speaking, the correct line is the one at which you can floor the throttle the earliest and keep it there till the next turn, and not necessarily a fixed function of the track geometry. Although similar for most cars, it can be slightly different according to the characteristics of the car.
That being said, the slight variations of the line is something you adapt to over time as your experience grows with various cars. For beginners though, and especially ones who are clueless about race lines, the '4' line can be of great assistance IMO, especially when they have a BLUE FLAG sign and they need to keep off the racing line
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I wonder what does the server's stats say, and how different it is, if at all, from the poll results...
Just a quick report
Z19 had flickers at areas on which the desktop had transparent widgets (calendar etc).
Z19_3 didn't have this issue
XP/SP3/GTX260+/E8400
Z19 had flickers at areas on which the desktop had transparent widgets (calendar etc).
Z19_3 didn't have this issue
XP/SP3/GTX260+/E8400
Fair enough. I do understand and appreciate your efforts in listening to users and managing bugs, I'm a developer/maintainer of several projects too and so I happen to be in a similar position often.
I understand it's tedious to see bugs re-submitted, especially by the same eager user (the latter could probably be eliminated with my previous suggestion), but people still like feedback, even minimal, and so I also offer a possible solution:
Do you think it would be possible to keep a locked thread listing your current *public* checklist/buglist regarding the currently discussed release (and possibly open bugs/issues from previous releases too)? This way people wouldn't have to wade through hundreds of posts (as was in Z15 and others) before they post a bug, and I imagine it would also help reduce resubmissions in general and will make everyone happier.. less posts, more order, etc...
Even better, if you use a bug tracking system, you can occasionally export such report (possibly manually removing entries not for public consumption) and thus you wouldn't even have to manage this locked thread manually.. export, copy, done. Or even do so automatically periodically..
Anyway, just my $0.02
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