Fern Bay Black, Aston Historic/GP and Kyoto GP are long. Not 13 miles long, but still, they take time to master. especially with every car

But yes, I'd like to see a very long track too on lfs )

lol, excellent thread

Quote from slik660 :

great idea how doI get a snapshot of my desktop onto this message box ?

press the "Print Screen" button (usually above the "insert" key). then open paint (or a better image converter like irfanview) paste, and save as jpg.

Quote from ORION :

Blobby Volley
Day of the Tentacle
Tower of GOO
Hidden source

ready for a blobby volley online challange?
/me wonders how the netcode compares with LFS over the internet

Quote from R3DMAN :

i used to play alot of different games once..

but now i stick to just a couple

Call Of Duty :UO
LFS S2 Alpha
FarCry

FarCry was pretty cool to complete. great game

Just installed Psychonauts lately. Looks quite fun to play with but I've only played it very little so far. Before that I've played the Splinter Cell series. quite good.

that was actually a pretty good report thx for keeping us informed...

Thanks for your replies.

@bobvanvliet: yes, a mechanical solution is possible, however, I was suggesting to add a software-filter for such cases. It's the same as the spikes of the analog steer, but it should be simpler to filter imho. just ignore clicks which happens right after previous click from the same button, inside a configurable time-slot duration.

@2WDinNZ: thanks. I found out myself already about taking off the center cap, openning the 4 screws and pulling the wheel out (i saw the screws below too, and it hangs on a wire). I didn't continue openning these bottom screws, but I'll have a go now.

re: more primitive than you think: hehe, yeh, i know lol. on top (below??) my computer science education i'm also an electronics technician (not that i use that skill too much), so, i've seen instruments open before. not as shiny as they look from outside

thx again.
avih.

@Scawen: so, would it be possible to smooth button imputs?

Hi.
I have a MS Sidewinder FF USB wheel, and lately the left paddle started to occasionally produce 2 clicks instead of one when i use it. Since it's assigned to downshift, it has quite a devestating effect when i downshift to 2nd gear instead of 3rd (instant spin). If it happens even once in a race, the race is usually over, especially if it's a tight battle for 1st place.

So, I was wondering if it would be possible to "smooth" the button inputs more or less the same way that the analog steer can be smoothed.

On a side note, I was wondering if anyone ever opened up a sidewinder wheel. I tried openning it (removing about 20 or so screws), but the base would still not come off. has anyone got any tips for that?

thanks,
avih

welcome. did u have any plans other than LFS for the rest of your life? forget them

I bought a practically new MS Sidewinder FF usb on eBay for less than $35, and i'm very satisfied with it. Worth checking.

I have another issue with pitspotter (1.1b). after about an hour or so of playing, lfs "sort of" hangs. i.e. it nearly freezes, sound goes into a loop (intervals of about 5s or so) and after a while it crashes. tried to bring up task manager, and pitspotter is not taking exessive resources. lfs takes about 130M ram. it never happened without pitspotter running. it happened to me few times already with pitspotter running.

[edit]
forgot to mention. after it happens, i get an error when running lfs (can't initialize graphics), it runs again only after reboot.
[/edit]

and, pitspotter is so helpfull. excellent addon

ps.
my pc spec: Asus MB, nForce 2 chipset, A XP 2500+, onboard realtek sound chip, 1G ram, FX5600 ultra 128M (@ 1600x1200), Win XP pro, SP1, sidewinder ff usb wheel.

Last edited by avih, Sun 28 Aug 2005, 23:30.

might be a faulty ram stick, or just underperforming with your specific MOBO. Since LFS has quite harsh requirements from the ram/MOBO, any fault in the ram, or OC MOBO may cause issues with LFS.

Try using different combos of 2x 512M sticks and see if you could pinpoint the problematic stick.

well, there was an official "teaser" that said, iirc, comming 2005 ... that doesn't leave more than a few months

what a great movie very proffesional. although the last scene just before the credits looks so illegal (hope he isn't a minor).

very very well done clip

great sets bob. i really like them to explore a new track/car combo

just had few laps there. i managed 1.56.00 with bob's "easy race" set. 1.7%/lap fuel.

[edit]
oops was driving UF1... ignore this post.
[/edit]

check out the CRC rules as a start. IMHO, they're good enough. Or, you might wanna go with the BTCC style racing. check out the forum.

for me tab or shift-tab always works, however, i also find it a nice feature to be able to focus on the leader, maybe even change camera view to allow best view of the "action". i.e. if there's a close battle for 1st place, put the camera in cockpit view of the 2nd car, etc. basicaly, put the camea and view according to where the important action is. if 1st place is leading by far, and there's a tight battle for 2nd, put the camera there, etc.

so: "best action" camera, "leader" camera, "costom" camera (custom is manually using tab as we do now). would be a great feature. hey, it can even replace FTV as a screensaver

Quote from colcob :

That makes perfect sense, but all you've shown is that the spring equilibrium point is lower, which I agree with completely. What you've just worked through sheds no light on the issue of amplitude at all.


Okay, I'll try explaining it a different way. Please try and answer this riddle.

In system A, gravity = 9.8 m/s. When the mass is moving downwards on the spring, it is being accelerated by both the spring force and gravity, after it passes spring natural length is is being decellerated by spring force and accelerated by gravity, so its decelleration = g - spring decelleration, and maximum amplitude is reached when this force decellerates the mass to zero velocity.

In system B gravity = 19.6 m/s. As it passes zero point, it will have a higher velocity, as the downward force on it is greater. Yet you claim that it will decellerate to rest in the same distance as in System A, despite it having a higher velocity, and being decellerated at a lower rate due to the increased downward G force.

So the question is, where does the mystery force come from?

hehe, this turns out quite interesting. Maybe it's due to different initial assumptions and different perspective on what variables to consider and when.

So, I must admitt that your description seems logical, and I find it hard to invalidate it when following your steps. So perhaps you could solve the mystery following this new description along with the image:

the left spring represents the initial state of a mass on a spring without any forces. The right side represents the initial state when a constant force is applied.

Now, what I ment earlier, was that the total forces at any given point on the left spring around X0 are identical to these of the right spring around X1 (simple calculation of the sum of the forces the spring produce along with the constant external force on the axis of motion). Since the mass on both springs is identical, and the total forces around the relevant pivot point are identical as long as you're not on the edges of the spring's range, they MUST behave exactly the same around their relevant pivot point.

So, if you now apply the same force F0 for duration dT on both springs independantly (simulate a bump withoput taking into account the elevation of the car etc), they will aquire the same initial evergy and with only the total forces that affect them identical relative to their initial position, they will move exactly the same except for the x displacement.

So basicaly, a mass on a spring + constant force is identical to a mass on a spring without external forces, with the same K, but with different "Zero" point.

does this explains my oppinion better?

ps.
the numbers (-2 -1... 2) on both sides represent the total force on the mass along the axis of motion.

Last edited by avih, Wed 24 Aug 2005, 00:19.

Ok, I hope I'll be ok with the explanation.

1. The movement of the mass is only affected by the forces upon the mass at any given point (which affects the acceleration, etc).
2. Gravity affects the mass with constant force of F=m*g ( --> dependent on the mass)
3. downforce adds constant force (independent of the mass)
4. Gravity + constant force (per fixed mass) produce a single constant combined force that does not change during the movement of the mass.
5. if you combine the forces that "work" on the mass at any given point (i.e. adding the spring forces along with the gravity/downforce), you see that the result is exactly as if you've lowered the spring equilibrium point. The new equilibrium point is where K*x= g*m+F --> x= (g*m + F)/K where x is the displacement of the new equilibrium point relative to that of a no-external-forces point, g is gravitational constant, K is the spring's stiffness factor and F is the downforce.

I hope what I said makes any sense

Ok, after little further investigation of this subject, I can declare that, under ideal (*) conditions:

1. constant downforce IS equivalent to greater gravity.
2. Any amount of gravity does NOT affect neither frequency NOR amplitude of the motion.
3. Therefore, the only thing that does change with the presence of downforce is the center of gravity, which is getting lower by additional F/K, where F is the downforce and K is the spring's stiffness factor.

(*) ideal conditions means that through the whole amplitude of the vertical motion, the spring stays at its linear-response range. This is not at all guarenteed under real conditions. If the introduction of additional downforce (or any other force caused by hitting a bump etc) causes the spring to get near the edge of it's range, then the motion gains "distortions" due to the non-linear response of the spring, and is no longer a simple harmonic motion. I think it's beyond me to calculate the motion in such cases

Without going back into physics calculations, I'd say that downforce is equivalent to stronger gravitation (as long as the downforce doesn't change due to speed changes). I.e. constant force pointing down. IMHO, it will reduce the amplitude but not the frequency.

Here's an quote from here

Quote :

Mass on a Spring

The mass m is free to move back and forth along the frictionless surface shown in the diagram. We define the variable x to be displacement from the equilibrium position x = 0, with displacement to the right being considered positive.

(1) The spring provides a restoring force that accelerates the mass M, the relationship among force, mass, and accelleration being described by the famous Newtonian equation F = Ma.

(2) The force provided by the spring is proportional to the displacement of the mass from its equilibrium position: F = -kx, where the spring constant k is a measure of the spring's stiffness and the negative sign indicates that the force is always in the restoring direction -- opposite to the direction of displacement. Notice that a spring constant has dimensions of (mass)/(time2).

(3) The period of oscillation T of a mass on a spring is given by the equation

T=2*PI*sqrt(m/k)

We note that k is independent of M, and that T depends on M but is independent of the amplitude of the oscillations and independent of any gravitational acceleration (the latter turns out to be true even if the mass is hanging vertically from the spring). The frequency of oscillation, of course, is just f = 1/T.

It does look weird. The only thing i can think of is that due to some lag issue, your LFS client application deduced that another car hit you (right front??) and then split second later, when another network packet was recieved, the car "jumped" back to it's correct position.

IIRC, I had a similar issue (aston-national, breaking straight before last chicane). I'll see if i had a replay of that.

Still strange.

My old faithful bike was a BMW F650 (98) which i used 7 yeard, and I just bought a new Suzuki DL650... still in run-in :/

Last edited by avih, Sat 20 Aug 2005, 16:06.