Regarding the inability to find a decent pickup race...

There IS pickup racing happening in LFS - on the demo servers. Why there and not on the licensed servers? Demo users generally don't have any leagues to practice for. And unless the name of the server has a drifting reference in it, chances are nearly 100% that there's a 4-10 lap race happening there.

If you use the in-game server browser for licensed servers, you have no idea if the 5 people on are spectating, qualifying, running a 5 lap race, or running a 3 hour race.

My suggestion: have the in-game server browser report the status of what's happening on the server (i.e. lap 2 of 6 or 10 minutes remaining in qualifying) in addition to how many people are on.

Many times I've seen 5-7 people on a server that sounded interesting, something like LFRs at South City, only to join and find that they were practicing for a league race or working on hotlap setups. It's fine that people do that (I do it too), but I'd rather not have to join the server to find that out.

And about the point of more content = better pickup racing. It's actually the opposite. Again look at the demo servers. Everyone knows the limited combos there so the learning curve is small.

I'm having a similar problem. I can't run LFS on my Atari 2600. Devs, please fix it.



j/k of course

I've been picking Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors off the library shelves nearly at random and run across some great authors, well IMO.

Joe Haldeman -
Forever War, Forever Peace, Forever Free, The Guardian, Camoflauge, The Accidental Time Machine. All very enjoyable.

I also found the Fools' Gold trilogy by Jude Fisher (never heard of her before that) to be really well done.

Before that, I did the Foundation series from Asimov. He was way ahead of his contemporaries in terms of scientific understanding.

I had a similar problem after I upgraded my video card. I thought it was faulty, but then I realized what the problem was.

The fan on the new video card plugged into the power supply, which the old one did not. I was using a power supply that barely cranked out enough juice to run the system, especially after adding the new power-hungry video card. Then I realized that the PC was rebooting every time the electric space heater (on the same circuit) turned on. The extra draw on the circuit was enough to make the PC reboot.

Initially I turned off the heater and froze while racing, then I upgraded the power supply and fixed the problem.

Hope that helps!

Hello Rallycross fans and S1 licensed racers!

There have numerous threads in the past about people's frustration with finding a populated rallycross server.
There are also been a few threads by S1 racers who are frustrated with the lack of populated S1 servers, other than one server, which is so populated that it's full much of the time. Scavier have requested that people run servers as S1 if they only use S1 content.

With that in mind, Stars and Stripes Sim Racing (S3R) is providing a public S1 Rallycross server. This server, hosted by 500 Servers, has many features not found on other servers, including: [tongue-in-cheek]
- A state-of-the-art SMTP-based reporting system - email us a replay to report wreckers
- Weekly track and car rotation system - we'll log in on Monday and switch the combo
- Complete statistics available from every race - on lfsworld.net
- Ground-breaking user-controlled restart function - shift-R
- Enhanced scoring system - each time you finish a race, write down your finishing position and put it on your fridge
[/tongue-in-cheek]

Ok enough of that. The goal is to provide a place for clean rallycross racers, both S1 and S2, to enjoy some friendly competition. The car choice will alternate by week between the XFG and the RB4. The tracks will change weekly between the 6 rallycross choices that LFS has available.

Please join us on the S3R S1 Rallycross server (S3Racing C) - clean racing on a dirty track!

Last edited by Danke, Tue 5 Feb 2008, 14:10.

The most important thing for me in a racing sim is that there's someone to race against online. I was worried that LFS would lose its already smallish user base in US timezones when iRacing came out.

With this pricing scheme, I'm not so worried anymore. With that kind of pricing, I'd say more than 50% of the target audience (sim racers we assume) can't or won't buy it. If you can only ever find five fellow millionaires online, it doesn't matter if it has the best physics and every real car and track ever made.

Proposed name: iRacingByMyself

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

It wasn't mine, it was my Mom coffee (required a supervisor who's 25+ and holds valid licence for first year of driving). It has changed my perspective on my shitty LFS driving style though atleast. (You cannot left foot brake, and heel+toe is a bad idea)

Atleast I didn't hit any shopping carts which were stray and in plentyful quantities, although I have the usual teenage symptom of paying attention to the bit of road that's 5 feet in front of you, rather than looking far ahead.

Don't forget to hit your "BLUE FLAG FFS!!!!!!!" macro when you get behind someone who's going too slow.

Quote from lerts :

i just had to change nationality to be correct

as i understand if i buy a vocheur ill be sent a paper to my adress and if the other option i get a password in my email, is that correct?

When I bought a voucher for someone else it sent me an email with the voucher info in it.

Quote from lerts :

i was sent a really bad girl to test the new hardware and it turned out amazingly well

I think I saw that in a magazine once

Database administrator.

used to be
I M SLO

now it's
S-O-PHOB

To comment on the "chase cam gives you an unfair advantage" stance...

I used to use chase cam because that was what I had done in other games, and it was the only way I could "feel" what the back end of the car was doing. But, since the chase cam in LFS doesn't have a mirror and doesn't let you look right and left, I was loosing time being too careful not to bump into people I couldn't see - either behind me or to the side.

So I decided to switch to the "wheels only" view (not cockpit due to lots of the reasons that others have stated in the thread, i.e. my real windshield is bigger than 17" diagonal, etc, etc, etc) so I didn't have to tiptoe around traffic. After a few months, I was actually faster than I had been in chase cam. I found that the biggest adjustment was relearning all of the braking and turn in points from another angle.

I can see how chase cam would help if you've never seen the track before, but c'mon, I'm pretty sure the first turn at Aston National is a right-hand sweeper! It just looks different (not better!) from higher up.

I'm glad I don't use chase cam anymore because I can be more aggressive in traffic. If someone wants to use it and can use their Spidey sense to know where other cars are, great! If someone wants to run a forced cockpit view server, I'll either adjust or go somewhere else.

Quote from sgt.flippy :

If you mean england by that island, it's off the coast of The Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark... Just a little part is off the coast of France, but that's the only country Americans ever heard off

We're also taught that there are only 3 countries in Europe. France, Germany, and DenmaSwedNorwAustriBelSpaItaly.

I guess I just picked France because of the chunnel.

It's really not the OP's fault, it's the American education system. Here in history class, we're taught that the British Empire folded after the American Revolution. Now there are just some uninhabited islands off the coast of France.

Just kidding of course.

Great work, take some time off and enjoy the rest of the year!

I'll set a reminder for myself to start another "LFS: Nothing new for a long time!" thread in two weeks

Thanks for the confirmation, Stu! I guess I could have just posted in the team forum then...

I'll check out that 28" LCD. I could always add an HD tuner card, but then LFS would get jealous that I'm using its PC for something else.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Sometimes I sacrifice speed for realism (most of time actually), and use three pedals, h-shifter, realistic (ish) setups etc. Other times I want a fast paced, speed orientated arrangement, where all the cars are paddle shifted, I left foot brake (no clutch), and use any setup 'exploit' to my advantage.

I am more likely to run the latter in a league or competition.

I figure I'm in competition every time I log onto a server, so I use whatever is fastest, whether it's (pre-x30) flatshifting, locked diffs, etc.

The CTRA system doesn't award points for "the most realistic driver". I'm hoping patch Y will punish infidels (like me!) who have been flatshifting, but as long as it makes me faster and I can finish races, I'll do it.

Ok, one exception, I won't switch my driver to the other side of the car depending on the "handed-ness" of the course. I guess that makes me something of a hypocrite.

I'm also thinking of somewhere between a 26 and 32 inch HDTV for a monitor/TV.

Seems like most HDTVs under 50" are 720p and have 8ms refresh rates. Is that really good enough for LFS and occasional normal PC use? (emailing about LFS, for example!)

You'd think my pixels would double in size if I get 2x the monitor size and don't significantly increase the resolution.

Awesome vid. 10/10!

Quote from Cue-Ball :

As for the rallycross races, they seem to be pretty much ruined by the clutch overheating using the X33 system, as many people here will attest. Not even the AI and their perfect shifting technique can go more than a few laps on any of the rallycross tracks. I personally haven't tried rallycross in X35.

I think the rallycross problem is almost exclusive to the XFG. I got 5 XRG AIs to finish a 15 lap race on the same lap as me in X33.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

...

You're a braver man than I.

I agree that the XFG clutch is very weak, but I'm willing to accept that as a limitation of the car (it's not my favorite car). Maybe the XFG factory was skimping on parts that year?

Quote from Barn :

Good,
so now WE have established that the XFG clutch is faulty, can we please get the damn thing fixed,lol

some people actually like to do more than 4 laps in bl2.....................................

http://www.airattack.co.uk/clu ... topic&p=315366#315366

I didn't say it was faulty. I said it overheats when you do things to it that you wouldn't do to your own car. How it reacts to abuse compared a real clutch in an underpowered FWD car - I don't want to kill my real clutch to find out.

I was able to complete 15 laps of BL2 in an XFG without roasting the clutch simply by feathering it during upshifts and when landing from jumps and bumps.

I was withholding judgment until I got my 90 degree view back. Now I'm in.

The clutch heat introduces a new dimension - now you have to be nice to your car or it won't last. I'm anxiously awaiting brake heat and fade now.

Quote from JTbo :

Haven't found to clutch being a problem on LX cars on tarmac really, with autoclutch it is easy to slip it a lot and there is slipping if clutch bar has even a little visible.

XFG on gravel is much worse, you can't keep throttle floored on single gear at gravel sections and I don't mean jumps.

I did some testing this morning with both XFG and XRG on BL Rallycross. The XFG clutch does indeed heat up pretty fast there, faster than the XRG does for sure. I found a couple of things that really make it cook.

- Flooring the gas between shifts. If you feather onto the gas between shifts you're fine. FWIW, I don't floor it between shifts in my "real XFG" (Mazda hatchback) either, for the same reason.

- Standing on the gas when going from a lower friction surface to a higher friction surface (i.e. from dirt to tarmac or from air to dirt). Not that I get airborne IRL, but I do feather the gas when going from snow to tarmac, for example. Again, feathering the gas keeps the clutch cooler.

It's not just the big jumps where that's an issue. There are plenty of little bumps that get one or more wheels off the ground temporarily.

The XRG will eventually heat up the clutch from the same situations described above, but not as fast as the XFG. I'm not sure if the clutch is weaker in the XFG or it's a symptom of being FWD.

If it gives the XRG an advantage over the XFG on Rallycross, I'm all for it.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Yeah, I think it's just a texture rather than a preview of dynamic filth.

When I'm surfing for filth, I'm looking for dynamic filth.

Oh, you mean the dirt... nevermind.