So what about when your lag bar is rising, but there is no visible lag, you see the other racers, they see you , you can chat, but you know you will be disconnected soon, because that ol' bar is rising, if you're lucky, you get a 'Replay stash space recovered' otherwise, its disco dancing time - yet again... !! ... should change my tag to Travolta - I spend so much time in LFS disco'ing

/me sings "I'm too sexy for my connection..."

Quote from mrodgers :

[off-topic] Just to note, it has to do with police chases so that the person can not disconnect on-track to evade police. The reasoning is because there is a bank you can rob and when there are a bunch of folks robbing and few cops chasing them, it would be more difficult to go the "ban cheater" route due to the number of players being chased.[/off-topic]

All very interesting, But surely that would be better dealt with using a set of rules and having mods enforce them ?
So one rule would be that if you diconnect while attempting to evade the police, you will be penalised.
This gives folks a chance to hand themselves in if they see their lag bar rising and fear the are about to get disconnected...

Still no reason to randomly penalise players because of their ISP (or the servers ).
I'm glad City Driving is not somthing that attracts me
It's bad enough getting disconnected from a race without also having extra punishment.

Col

Quote from dude56 :

...(For those who are not aware, the Caribbean Cruise servers use an economy system, and you must buy cars. If you pit, leave, or spectate without being inside a pit box, you lose your car...

Well thats crap isn't it - I woudn't consider using a server with such idiotic rules... why don't they(Caribbean Cruise) fix their system so as not to penalise people for connection issues that are just as likely to be caused by the server as the client.

Quote :

....all I experience is a brief lag spike. PLEASE consider fixing the netcode. Thank you.

I've had connection problems for the last week or two, It usually involves my connection bar rising slowly for maybe about 10 seconds, after which I get disconnected - this is a well known problem and sounds like whats happening to you. It's nothing to do with brief (< 1 sec) lag spikes... Scawen has been aware of this issue for a long time and it seems as though it is some sort of Internet issue to do with packet loss and connection quality. Someone discovered that with his ISP, his high bandwidth low ping DSL connection was very problematic, while using the same ISP through a dial up 56k modem worked fine (apart from the crappy ping)....
So this problem is most likely due to money grabbing DSL providers signing up more people than their system can cope with... Some are starting to provide 'premium' gamer accounts and letting their standard account quality slide even more....
Of course, these issues are going to keep getting worse not better as more people get broadband, packet loss is not an issue for Web browsing and downloading, so the ISPs don't care

One thing that I don't understand though is that the connection 'lag' bar is rising, and I know that in maybe 8 secs I will be disconnected, while at the same time, I'm racing happily with no lag, and I'm not lagging to others... it maybe some other type of packet that the game wants related to chat... or the master server that is the issue...

EDIT:
hmmm would it be possible to update the LFS system so that packets that are not related to gameplay (eg. chat related packets, or other houskeeping related info) get a much longer timeout than the car position packets ? (or maybe can be reported as not recieved rather than causing a disconnection ?



Col

Last edited by col, Wed 16 May 2007, 13:48.

+1

I'm not sure its related, but I just had an interesting wrong track experience.

I went in to spectator mode and BL1, then used SHIFT+F4 to go to window mode and opened a second instance of LFS so I could view a replay (previous BL1 race)
When I had finished, I closed my second instance of LFS and returned to the original one to find that the track had changed, but my local LFS had not loaded the new track (AS3 I think) so the other cars were flying around madly in space - I didn't try leaving spectator mode to join a race.

I wonder if this is a different bug related to a track change while there is a second LFS instance running, or If it is the same bug and is due possibly to having the track change while some other windows app has focus...

Quote from Cr!t!calDrift :

col, if you read the whole topic, maybe you could understand that i'm done discussing that. Next time see if the whole topic is still the same as it first started, because honestly, I was done with the whole defence of this topic.

I don't care in the slightest if you are done or not - it is irrelevant.

This is a public forum, and this thread is also public, anyone who has an opinion on the contents of the thread is free to express it as long as they stay within the forum rules.

Quote :

The things you said about me being a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover (I have never seen any of those movies), choob, and console kiddy was just immature.

So i think that you were the mistaken one here.. *shrug*

hmm, maybe you should pay more attention at school ?
If you read my post again, you will see that I don't say anything about you being a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover or console kiddy.
I do however imply that the 'improvements' that you want are the kind of thing that would please a D0r1ftorzzzz00111111, FnF Lover or console kiddy
If you want to read anything else into my post that is your choice, but don't start misrepresenting me...
I did call you a 'choob' though, oops apologies for that - good Scottish word though

Quote from mrodgers :

I agree with those who has mentioned they see it abused in the future.

After thinking about this I doubt think it would be abused heavily. Anyone who really wants to prevent new drivers with low lap count can already do that pretty easily (I would imagine) using insim. Also, there seem to me to be plenty of good servers run by intelligent teams who welcome new drivers as long as their attitude is good.
I can imagine some mickey taking though...

Quote :

I've seen noobs with 10000 laps on their stats....

hehe, a few days solid of Oval/BF1 then

Quote from DriftStar :

If you don't have anything good to say, don't post.

I think maybe you should practice what you preach

Quote from Cr!t!calDrift :

Hm? Well guess what. **** you bud.

......

Thanks anyways, but they don't give a shit anyways. I have a ****ing reputation here that people seem to hang on to.

Reputations once earned are hard to shake... you don't seem to be making any effort to change yours, in fact sometimes it seems like you are doing your utmost to reinforce it

Quote :

And it's not that the cars are repetitive, but I mean, LFS doesn't seem to have enough...well style. It just makes the game seem low budget. And, well, improving, things (such as wind, rain, fog, snow) would be nice too.

LFS has bags of style - it's just not _your_ kind of style !
From the start there have been loads of nice unique little touches - like the wind and having those huge windmills to show the direction and strength....
Tyre deformation - the way these cars move has more style than every other 'sim' put together... and you see, thats what LFS is about - it has subtle details that make the racing better, not brash vulgar unrealistic shiny SFX and ugly annoying superfluous menu animations that appeal to F'n'F crowd, D0r1ftorzzzz00111111 and console kiddies but do nothing for the racing experience.

As far as weather is concerned, in the past Scavier have suggested that it will be added in some future version. I believe that it will, but I also think that Scawen will not throw together some hack job that looks ok but doesn't behave in a realistic manner, so we will porobably be waiting for quite a while. However, when it does come it will be most excellent.

Quote :

Sure, the s2 license might be a bit more exciting, but still, does that mean when I buy s2, there will be some little video or something to let the game look better?

How could a video make the game look better? the last thing I want when I'm racing is a damn video - you want a video, why not go to youtube YA CHOOB.

Quote :

And there is more than one post telling me to buy s2.

And thats hardly surprising really.

Col

Quote from DieKolkrabe :

It gets a +1/-1 from me

Why?

Because the scheme is all very well and good, but what about people with licenses older than one month who aren't quick?

DK

There's nothing wrong with being slow... the problems are

not being in control of the car
not knowing the rules of conduct
ignoring blue flags
pulling out of pits into traffic
drifting in a race server
doing 'stunts' in a race server
barging into turns
parking on track
joining mid race and racing the leaders
etc.

all these things may be done by a newbie without them realising that they are unacceptable... but if they really are a newbie, then it's better to educate them than to alienate them IMO.

It would be a shame if some servers used a script to auto deny Rookies, but that would be better than allowing them in then flaming them and banning them.

Quote from jtr99 :

+1!

I can't tell you how often I used to do this in GPL, even (especially) when racing the AI.

Mooning also welcome, but that would just be icing on the cake.

hehe, exactly what I was about to post.... jump onto the bonnet and moon at all the losers

I suppose with the fist key, if you hit a super combo of other keys, you could get the middle finger as well for when passing those annoying back markers

hehe, but seriously:

I wonder if something like this might be a useful feature (assuming its possible - maybe even with insim ?)

If switched on in the server, it could put a red (R) for rookie after the names of any racers who's licence is less than 1 month old...

That way its easier to see if a bad driver is just an idiot, or if they are just new to the game... So it would be easier to decide wether to try and help them, or just to kick them

It also gives faster racers and idea of who to watch out for on track - give extra room, expect early braking etc...

I don't remember ever seeing anyone kicked, banned or even flamed for being a keyboard or mouse driver...
(at least not since ancient history when Scawen removed the keyboard helper code that made keyboard the fastest way to drive)
Mostly folks are flamed and banned for causing crashes, and making idiotic moves during a race...
If you join a server and cause mayhem, "It's not my fault, I'm using keyboard" is not going to be a valid excuse

If there are newbies (as opposed to noobs) joining a server, and having trouble, I would suggest that part of the admins job is to try and help them by explaining the basic rules and etiquette...
Any time someone new joins there is a point at which they will:
#1 get some help from an experienced LFSer, have some fun and join the community
or
#2 get flamed and leave with a bad taste in their mouth, never to come back - telling everyone who asks how crap LFS is
or
#3 get flamed and get angry and go on a wrecking spree

I would suggest that #1 is the preferable option, and it is the responsibility of the experienced racers and the server Admins to ensure that this happens as often as possible
It doesn't take much, and you gain bags of respect for doing it !!

Quote from evilgeek :

neural nets are good for pattern recognition, but terrible at everything else, and they would require way too much cpu power to be useful in lfs.

Yep, you really need to reorganize your 'problem domain' into a 'pattern' that fits with the Neural net approach...

One area where Neural Nets might be very useful for LFS is in the Networking code... as a way of more accurately predicting where a car should be in the event of one or more dropped packets.... or predicting when certain cars are more likely lag and working a little harder on those cars prior to that time

But at the end of the day, you shouldn't try to find a problem for your solution - always be looking for a solution to your problems instead .

I'm sure that Scawen asseses many different options and chooses the best ones depending on many factors. Techniques like Neural nets and fuzzy logic are well known and relatively simple to implement, so I reckon he will at least have considered them in cases where they may be applicable.

Most situations in the context of a complex real time simulation require something much 'cheaper' though

My understanding is that the OP was suggesting Neural nets to simulate the engines - not for the AI

Quote from z3r0c00l :

Just a thought -
......
Application -
I was thinking this may be especially useful for simulating engines - where a mathmatical algorithm may prove a close but oversmooth representation of engine behavior, a Neural Net may be trained to give a the correct outputs of all the simulated factors (power/torque production, fuel consumption, heat ouput, stress on components) by the use of training sets with real telemetary as the target results for the end nodes, and backproporgation of the node connection weights via a readily available algorithm.

The thing is that you have to train a net for each system it is trying to understand... for your engine net, there would be little point in basing its training on a simulation (better to just use the sim direct). So you have to get some engines and rig up a whole bunch of sensors to gather data before you can teach the nets....

So, what about when you decide you want to update the xrt becasue the turbo class is unbalanced... you decide to give it an extra 80hp... oh dear, you will have to wire up a new real engine to your test rig and run all your tests to collect data to re-teach your neural net... oops.

Or what about when you want to include very obscure/expensive/unavailable engines ? or what about when you cannot licence real stuff so want to use 'fantasy' engines - build them from scratch?

Unfortunately, you are always going to get into situations where your net doesn't 'understand' what to do... (unless your data collection phase runs many real engines to detructions in all the different ways they can be destroyed )... so its starting to sound more and more like a fancy version of the 'canned effects' approach to sim with an engine based on data tables and all the problems that that brings...

Unfortunately Neural networks are another one of those areas that _can be_ incredibly powerful... so when you first start to understand the basics, you think WOW and get loads of far fetched ideas about how you can apply them to solve all the worlds problems ... as always though, the devil is in the details


Col

Quote from Electrik Kar :

Having too many AI's on track kills FPS for me. I wonder if there are more opportunities for optimisation here? I'm definately CPU bound - average fps stays the same when using either vanilla (w/ no skins) or heavily texture modified versions (tracks/interior/skins). Actually, tbo- i was getting maybe 1 or 2 extra frames with 4 cars in vanilla mode (55 fps average). ...

Fortunately, LFS is an online sim, so you don't need to run with 20 AIs.
The problem with AIs is that your local LFS has to calculate all the physics for every car in every physics update. In an online race this is not the case - your machine only needs to do proper physics calcs for you and the few cars nearest to you - the rest can all be optimised by using position information from the server... so a grid of 20 online players _should_ be much more efficient than a grid full of AIs.

Have you tried this and compared fps between online and an offline grid with the same number of cars ?

cheers

Col

Interesting discussion.

I think there is something that has been ignored so far.

The market sector for LFS is NOT the same as that for most PC and console games !
It has been shown many times that a significant percentage of LFS users are older people who have financial responsibilities such as car, family, mortgage. Many of these folks are not 'gamers' and cannot justify regularly updating their system just for a 'game' (however good).

(There are also many licenced racers from less afluent countries where a high end PC system is definately a luxury)

Scavier obviously understand this which is why they have made sure from the outset that LFS works well on low end and older systems.

whats more LFS doesn't 'need' cutting edge graphics, its appeal is in its physics, the LFS community and a great online experience - none of which depend on graphics.

I expect I will need to update my system when(if) S3 alphas start appearing as I imagine there will be some graphic updates at that point, but until then I hope to keep my rusty old sack of grinding fan bearings and dusty IDE connectors going.

FWIW, I can usually have a good race, the only times things get bad are T1 incidents with a large field, and on tracks where too many physics objects can be 'activated' at the same time eg. the stcc Fern Bay club chicane.

System is
Athlon XP1800+
Nvidia GeForce 6600
average mem and HD speed for the age

Quote from CSU1 :

Let's play the imagine game...
Imagine ...
close your eye's..
Imagine you are in the car sitting in pit lane....
Now you are in the car holding the wheel in your hands,
you begin to turn the wheel....
you feel it in your hands turning normally.The first thing you notice is that the wheel is not turning in sequence with the one in your clasp."Making your hardware specific/synchronised to the one on da screen yo'

Lets play a different imagine game:

Imagine you are in a race car, your hands are on the wheel. As you turn the wheel you notice in astonishment that just infront of the wheel you are grasping, between you and the windscreen of the car, there is another wheel !? yes ANOTHER WHEEL !!! What's more, there seem to be two odd looking arms floating ghostlike with their hands grasping this second wheel.....

I don't know why the OP is worried about the second 'ghost' wheel matching the rotations of his 'primary' wheel - the idea of having a second 'ghost' wheel at all seems faintly rediculous to me - one of the first things I did when I started playing LFS back in 2002 was switch off the silly wheel and arms visuals - I have my own wheel and My own arms TYVM

Col

I think he looks more like a young Bruce Dickenson!

(Btw Scawen, I reckon all that LFS really needs is......






















.... a little more cowbell)

With the UF1000, maybe the fact that body flex is not modelled in LFS makes it impossible to have realistic variation between hard top and convertible anyway. So it makes sense just to have it as a cosmetic only choice.
(these being stock road cars, hard top version would be more rigid, so handling would be better and setups easier to fine tune)

Quote from AlienT. :

I am new to this game and forum, I find it amazing how many people seem to flame others for really no apparent reason, the poor chap was just posting asking for some advise.......

smallish rant over

Unfortunately, the OP has generated quite a bit of ill feeling towards himself by starting/stoking drifter vs 'gripper' agro threads... he often attemts to restart this pointless debate, and I reckon everyone is getting sick of it/him
(there's also his irrational, vehement defense of long term demo racers to consider)
So I guess there are plenty folks on the forum who are looking for any chance to take a swipe at the guy

Quote from mrodgers :

Awe, come on guys! You guys have it up to 27 posts already!

Here we go, ready, set.........

Drifting is racing!

GO!

Hehehehehe!

MWAHAhahahahahah

Quote from undertech :

I've got a problem where I try to use as little steering lock as possible, yet I can get nowhere the degree of yaw that the fast people get with the same lock at the same speed. But when I introduce more lock so I can avoid running out onto the dirt, the tires immediately begin to scrub badly, and it takes some time of full throttle before speed begins to climb again. I use the default RACE_S or hard track setups. Would a better setup really improve handling that much?

First of all, before you compare the behaviour of other cars to yours, you should be using the same setup (or at least similar)... cornering is where different setups have the most impact...

Next you need to make sure you are using a good line through the corner... if the other guys are using the whole width of the track and clipping the apex, while you are taking a narrower entry and missing the apex, they will get through much faster than you...

Once you have a comparable setup and a good line, the rest is down to technique... try googling the phrases "traction budget" and "traction circle"...
It is very important not to unsettle the car when approaching a corner e.g. if you brake later, you have to brake harder, so there is faster weight transfor to the front tyres causing them to wash out more easily giving you understeer... try braking a little earlier, and more progressively...
On hairpins, sometimes the opposite is true, you need to learn techniques that intentionally unsettle the car so you can get the rear to swing out.. "scandinavian flick"... or e.g. in xrt using changedowns at the right moment to make the rears break away...
Then of course there is "trail braking" this is something else to read up on, once mastered, it will give you an advantage at most corners over other drivers who cannot do it (well)....

Basically it is a combination of working out a good line, carefully controlling the weight transfer of the car and managing your traction budget.

good luck

Col

too many feature requests being posted and discussed