That new screenshot looks very good, almost photoreal, yet at the same time it's got a very obvious Papyrus look and feel about it. Of all the sims currently in the pipeline, iRacing seems to me to hold the most potential to be the bridge into the next generation of racing games.

Sure, I'll have a go Niels. I've been revisiting GTR2 and rFactor recently to see if my opinion of them has changed in the last several months and would be interested to see how your Corvette feels in-game. Where can I download it from?

At low FOV angles (i.e. less than 35°), the rear-view mirrors are clipped under hard braking. Pillars are similarly affected.

I've tested this using several different cars (FXO, LX4, XFR) and each exhibits the same behaviour.

I am using a 1g forward shift setting of 0.036m.

Quote from SKaREO :

I'm surprised we should even have to pay for something so simple.

The fee is to cover the additional server-side storage and bandwidth costs which would be required to store and serve high-res skins.

Honestly? I think it looks ridiculous.

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I've installed the Motec data acquisition plug-in which Niels recommended and used it to have a look at the telemetry for a similar skid also in the Lupo.

As the attached screengrab of the Motec telemetry shows, it's actually the front left which is skidding, not the rear left as I initially supposed looking at the replay.

Assuming that I am reading the telemetry correctly, what appears to be happening is that as the car rolls into the corner, the left side tyres become unloaded. The Lupo is a front-wheel drive car and as I hit the throttle, the relatively unloaded front left spins and slips until it becomes loaded again as the car exits the corner.

edit: Niels, to answer your question about why I posted this here, there are a few reasons. Among them:
- this is where I normally post about all things racing sim related;
- I've been reading this forum long enough to know whose opinions can be trusted at face value;
- history has shown that there is a lot of experience and expertise among the forum members here;
- if I had posted at an rFactor-oriented board, chances are that the thread would have eventually erupted into a flame war.

Last edited by BuddhaBing, Sat 5 May 2007, 02:27. Reason : answer to niels

Can someone please explain why the inside rear tyre of the car in the following video skids while cornering relatively hard: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GSD8SL13

Note that the left rear wheel skids twice in the video: once briefly under braking at the entry to the corner and one long skid under acceleration when exiting the corner.

Thanks.

I have my fingers crossed for this one. I'm relieved that they have chosen to move away from ISI's dynamics and graphics engines which I feel crippled their previous titles. However, SimBin's most recent title, Race:WTCC, which they did in-house after the Blimey! Games team split away, makes me question whether SimBin are capable of producing high-quality, high-fidelity products by themselves or whether all of the worthwhile aspects of GTR/GTL/GTR2 were actually the work of the Blimey! Games team.

The new technology sounds great (doesn't it always?); whether it delivers, we'll have to wait and see. I hope so. Racing sims have been languishing in the ISI doldrums for too long; it'll be nice for there to be some competition on the scene.

LFS Patch U was released one year ago today. U was basically patch T - which introduced the new tyre and aero physics improvements along with the improved Aston and BF1 - with bug fixes. Has it been a year already? Time's a strange thing; in some ways, it doesn't seem that a whole year could have passed since then, and yet, in others, it all seems to have happened a long time ago, certainly longer than a year. I can't help but wonder what LFS will be like this time next year?

http://www.simhq.com/_motorsports3/motorsports_107a.html

Agree, disagree, want to comment? SimHQ is soliciting feedback on the article here.

Whatever floats your boat. You don't need to justify the ways in which you choose to have fun to others. By the same token, you can't expect others to agree with you. To each their own. The fact that professional oval racing exists and that there are specialized oval racing series and tracks should be enough to convince any reasonable person that oval racing has its place. Whether others consider it a lesser form of racing than track racing shouldn't really matter, should it? All that matters is whether you have fun.

Welcome to LFS!

As others have said, the majority of LFS players are in Europe so online player numbers tend to peak during the evening in Europe and tend to fall to their low point during the evening in North America. However, you can find good, fun racing on the STCC servers throughout the day. I can't recommend the STCC servers highly enough.

Quote from Scawen :

There are as many pit starts as grid slots (32 in most places). If you find anywhere that is not the case, please report it, that would be a serious issue.

SO Classic, Long and Town all appear to have 30 pit slots, assuming that there are no pit slots in the pit-lane itself.

I'm not sure how pit slots are counted in SO Sprint1 and Sprint2 but assuming that they correspond to the parking spots painted on the tarmac, they have 24 and 20 respectively.

It would be nice to find 32 players to test each of the track configs. Any volunteers?

From an article today on the BBC news web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6589301.stm), the Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK is offering a £500 prize if you can solve a mathematics problem set as a pre-entrance qualification exam for prospective university students in China.

Here's the link to the Royal Society of Chemistry's webpage: http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/New ... ses/2007/ChineseMaths.asp

The contest closes at noon GMT on Friday, April 27, 2007.

A question re: qualifying sessions starting from the pits. Given that there are a limited number of pit stalls/boxes on some track configs, there can be a situation where there are more players in a session than there are available pit boxes. What happens in this case? Are some players locked out of the qualifying session until a pit box becomes available? Do several players start from the same pit box (possible collision problem here)? Will more pit boxes be added to these track configs?

Following Linsen's lead, I deleted the existing KNW files in my W and W9 installs and then ran a 7-lap race on Blackwood GP using a field of LX4s in each version. The fastest lap by an AI in W9 was 0.7 seconds faster than in W (1:30.2 vs 1:30.9). However, the distribution of laptimes in W was more or less evenly spread between 1:30.9 and 1:32.7 whereas the AI in W9 skewed more towards the high 1:31.x and into the 1:32.x range. At least in this particular case, the AI in W9 and W had roughly similar average laptimes overall even though the fastest individual laptime in W9 was faster than in W.

One sample is not sufficient to form definitive conclusions from but it does look as though my initial impression that the AI being faster in W9 was likely mistaken.

I swear that I was bumped and nudged less by the AI in the W9 session than in W though.

Does anyone else think that the AI have improved noticeably in test patch W9, both in terms of their performance and their ability to stay on the track? There is no mention of AI improvements in the change log and I haven't done any rigourous comparisons so I may be experiencing a placebo effect but I get the impression that the AI in the test patch has improved. They still run off the road and/or into my car occasionally but it seems to happen less frequently and they also seem to be able to put in faster laptimes, albeit still several seconds a lap slower than a real person. I wonder, could the addition of the clutch pack diff preload be affecting the AI's performance also?

If you're on the west coast and normally play at night, the number of people online can be fairly small. Whereas at peak hours in Europe there can be 1000+ people online, that number can fall to as low as 40-50 during the evening in the Americas. Fortunately, a handful of servers, notably the STCC bronze and copper servers, almost always have enough people for some good online racing even during the lean times.

From way, way back, Pole Position for the ZX Spectrum 48K. Geoff Crammond's F1GP really captured my imagination back when a 486DX w/ 4MB of RAM was considered a cutting edge machine. Then came GP2, one of the first games to make me consider upgrading my system to play. Finally, Grand Prix Legends ushered in the modern era of racing simulations.

Wow is right. Now I'm faced with a dilemma: can I sneak another couple of LCD monitors into the house without my wife noticing?

Sounds like this in LFS would be enough to make me want to just sit in the pits and soak in the sights and sounds of a race.
http://www.farzadsf1gallery.com/f1_sounds/brm_v16.mp3

Quote from Becky Rose :

As mentioned earlier in the thread there would be no licencing fee for Snetterton.

Not true. See post #50 in this thread. I contacted MotorSport Vision Ltd, who own and manage Snetterton and several other well-known circuits in the UK, and asked about licensing requirements for the use of a 3D likeness of their tracks. They charge a £10,000 per venue licensing fee for each circuit plus additional fees to access the track for photography, surveying and so on.

Here's the relevant text from their email response: "Thank you for the enquiry regarding licensing the IP for MSV group of circuits. To licence our circuits we require a one off payment of £10,000 plus VAT for each venue for each game produced (multiple platforms permitted). In addition should you require access to the circuit to photograph, film or measure we require payment of the standard track hire fee for each day required."

Just came across this - the opening sequence of Fuji TV's F1 coverage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w66YjCLRs1M

Makes the insipid ITV flag-waving, Coulthard as Bond intro look positively classy in comparison.

Quote from Linsen :

... do you guys really think that the LFS-Sauber feels good/realistic? Of course, hardly anybody will be able to compare it to it's rL counterpart, but I'm finding it hard to imagine that what we have here is even close to what a modern F1 is like. I could be wrong, but for me it really falls far behind anything else in LFS.

I agree, it's my least favourite of all the cars in LFS at the moment largely because it doesn't feel convincing*.

*standard disclaimer: I've never driven an F1 car so this is based entirely on subjective impressions.

Out of curiousity, I contacted Silverstone Circuits Ltd and MotorSport Vision Ltd, the owners of Silverstone and Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Snetterton, Cadwell Park and Bedford Autodrome respectively, and asked whether they required any licensing agreements and/or fees to use the 3D likeness of their tracks in a software application.

There is a £35-45,000 licensing fee required for the use of the Silverstone circuit and a £10,000 per venue fee for each of the circuits owned by MotorSport Vision Ltd. Additional track hire fees would be assessed for access to the track for photography, surveying and so on.

So, there you have it.