I as listening to Radio 4 this morning and the World service last night and apart from the fact the France will only send 200 peacekeepers into Lebanon which kinda reinforces my earlier comment about France not joining in (Kinda), I was interested to note that the israely Government is under investigation by the countries own judicairy over sleaze allegations along with the head of the armed forces being under investigation for corruption. I might have got the exact facts a bit wrong but I'm in the general ball park.

I can't remeber what else was said, it was late last night and I was half asleep this morning and I don't have time to run through Aunties website to check the facts. So I will just have to rely on sweeping generalisations and half baked comments. A bit like the governments in question.

Can I just say . . . Wow!!!

I've just skimmed through this thread and although having not watched the vids and not read the longer posts as deeply as I should have I am amazed at the considered and above all educated posts that have been written here.

From what I can gather the latest is the cease fire but as is the want of the media, no bombs, no news. I will troll back through this thread when time permits and I can get sound working on this damn machine again. I am looking forward to being eduacted.

Hankstar, you truly have my respect for being a red crosser and the fact that we have had an israely giving us the 'other' side of the story as well is truly amazing.

I will return with a more considered post once I have taken on board what has been said.

My faith in true debating has been restored.

Thanks guys.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Most sets I've seen are generally very over-damped. So I'm not surprised softening the damping helps putting the power down.

Sometimes my first racing setup advice that is . . . soften your springs.

Maybe alright for an alien on hotlapping duty but for Joe Bloggs having the car stiffer than a vicar in an all girls convent just doesn't help.

IT's all about wieght transfer. Too much understeer? Too much wieght staying on the rear. Too much over steer? Too much weight transfering to the front. But is it under braking, cornering or accelerating. Change a damper setting for braking balance and you upset the exit. Oh, what to do, what to do.

Don't forget though, you don't just have bump settings, you also have rebound settings. I raced the FZR predominatly and that responded very well to adjusting the rebound dampers as much if not more than the bump dampers. The FZR needs a setup that can keep that big arse in a straight line and I found under braking having a high rebound damper setting on the rear allowed the rear to balance against the need for the front to 'duck' to allow effective braking.

Learn to fell your motor vehicle. Whilst testing allow the car to repond to your inputs without you correcting as you would in a race, then you can adjust any 'bad' traits out and balance your car correctly.

It does strike me sometimes that when racing the WR sets you are constantly fighting the car for control. While racing, especially longer distances, requires sets that almost allow the car to drive itself. You need to look after it and for that you need setup sympathies otherwise you will always find yourself outclassed.

It doesn't take long to learn how to setup. So I wold reccomend anyone to give it a try and learn.

Right. Ready for this?

My housemates Laptop has gone into meltdown. It was fine last week but then my housemate took it away for a few days (Allowed, it is hers afterall) and it's come back knackered. It starts, then halfway through the windows load it goes to a BSOD which sais it's in an infinite loop at G3SNP or something like that. It doesn't stay around long enough for me to read it properly. It then restarts, goes to safe mode at which point I load up Safe mode with networking and this is where I am now.

So, I back date thingy to a few days ago when I knew it was working fine and guess what after an hour of watching a little bar crawl it's way across the screen it restarts as per normal. Everything fine cool and dandy.

But then . . . windows wants to update. Bells are ringing. I wonder, me thinks. I let it update itself this time and guess what next time it starts, BSOD. Same infinite loop thing again. So I go through the whole process again all at 2.00am in the morning because I have an Email to send before a deadline and low and behold it works again. So, Triumphant I think thats it. I turn of the autoupdate. Haha, I say, that'll get you. But no. Come down this morning, turn on the beast from hell and BSOD, same infinite loop. Safe mode with networking again. What else I cry plaintivily into the ether. Oh foul beast from the depths of the firey hell itself, what else must you plague me with. I do a virus check, I back thingy again and again, works great the first time I run the machine and then it goes right back to BSOD. I can't work it out.

(Apparently, according to my housemates B/F's housemate with whom I'm working with at the moment (I will be testing you afterwards) they left the computer on all night without sending it to sleep and on a duvet which was ont he sofa. He said it was so hot in the morning when he came down that he cold hardly touch it.)

So. What is wrong with this ere laptop, has it cooked itself or is it a software issue? Do you reckon I can fix it? It's just confusing me how it can work fine the first time and then only work in safve mode the next time. Can't figure it.

Help me. Or rather help my housemate. Actually help me because I'm going to get the blame whether it was my fault or not.

What are your thoughts LFS community?

I moused from the start. Brake, throttle and steer on the mouse and gears on the K/B. Doing the gears onthe K/B meant I had one hand fairly free to do the whole F12/F11 and hot key chat thing. I was predominatly a FZR racer. Mainly because I saw it as a challenge. Someone once told me that you can't mouse the FZR, I think a 1.41.57 AST. NAT and a 2.13.74 KY GP LONG kinda shows that you can . . . . There are so many things you can do to be able to 'aid' you in your mousing. Some that have already been mentioned, but;

In windows, bring down your mouse speed and take of any acceleration you might have optioned. LFS takes it's mouse settings from windows.

Reduce steer centre reduction as much as you can. This again makes your steering inputs less severe as it takes off any wheel turning acceleration. (Also reducing the steering rack in the car setup will give you more control)

Race in Cockpit view (I would have thought that was a given) you need to see the steering wheel to judge turing input.

Take off any throttle and brake help you have on, it just gets in the way of you being able to set up your car correctly.

Which brings me too setting up, don't be afraid to change your setup. You can make the car far more sympathetic to mouse inputs if you change a few bits and peices on the car.


For starters, if you find exiting corners difficult with putting the power down with your digital input then there are a number of things you can look at. Lengthen the gear ratios for any given situation, spinning up in second exiting a slow hairpin then lengthen that gear untill you gain some control back. Increase the toe-in, I ran the FZR between 2-4 degrees, this will again increase the power on grip you have on corner exit. Soften the suspension, if you inherit setups from other racers then they will probable be wheel users, they can run their suspension alot harder than you will find comfortable. So try reducing the overall hardness to give you a softer feel. This allows the car to move around more and you have more margin for digital inputs to move around with. Er, anything else for power on . . . . . . reduction in tyre pressures, again the harder the pressure the more the car will figit and squirm, not good for mousing. Soften the pressures and the car can settle and allow some leeway with the digital inputs.

Braking. . . . I found that by having the front suspension set soft and lower tyre pressure (Although less so with the new patch) you can get away with alot more brake power than you think. The gears are also critical in helping you brake, if you are using an auto box I have one word . . .DON'T!! A small note about the tyre pressures though, try and keep the pressure front and rear as near as possible to each other. Have to much of a dyscrepancy and it can seriously effect the handling characturistics, tyre wear, temperatures and many other things. I notable found that having the rear pressures higher than the front would seriously unbalance the car on braking, making the rear bounce around and step out. Also dont be afraid to ramp up the downforce, it's a great settler for the car paricularily when you are playing with setups. Once you have things sorted you can slowly reduce the downforce untill you are on the edge again but then by then you will be adjusting everything else again.

These are just a few things that I took on board and worked into the car. Made me very competative but I also knew I would always struggle against wheel users, but I could still give them a run for their money.

I am a wholehearted exponant of making your own sets. I will preach it from the highest curbstones and shout it to my racing brethren.

To some of you it may seem like you are taking steps backwards but my friends it takes you time to get your groove. It takes mistakes to move yourself forward. It takes slower lap times, bad lines and missed brake points for you to fully realise your potential. You may get called slow, you may face ridicule and derision but my friends, you will have the last laugh. It may come upon you gradually, or it may appear suddenly but soon, and for the rest of your racing career you will be guiding lights; you will be the steady; the true and the first.

But enough of that shit.

LFS takes real life influences to make the cars handle like they do in real life and in that respect you need to take real life considerations into account. You need to learn why the cars move and handle like they do. What happens when you decrease downforce, or soften the rear suspension or change the the ARB's. But the only way you will learn that is by reading the material and actually changing the car's setup. What you are striving for is a good 'base' setup that reflects your driving style and the needs of the race and the track. There is so much to explore, so much to learn. To err is human, to not learn from your mistakes is just plain stupid.

Lol. Well at least you are gentlemanly enough not to rip into me for degrading your english skills. I understood the last post just fine. . .

It can get frustrating at times but the more you do it the more you learn.

Likewise I think setting up your own car is all part of LFS. I also think you will never get to your full potential as a driver unless you learn how to adjust and work with your own sets.

So hear hear to working it out yourself.

I have noooooo idea what either one of them does, did, will do, won't do, can't do, try's to do, cook dinner with, won't cook dinner with, throws dinner at, eats dinner, throws up dinner . . . . . where did I get dinner from?

Ok. Ok. I'm going for Bluray because at least I've kinda heard about that.


Dijon or wholegrain?

I ask you, you ask me. Can't be bothered with the whole picture thing. I prefer the -insert high thinking diatribe about how grand and lovely the english language is and how this kind of mind games is good for the soul. Etc. Etc.- thing.


Neighbours or home and away.

You have to play with the settings, you will never learn otherwise.

Make a new set up file and called it experimental. (This was my trick. I had my race setup and my experimental) Any thing that I 'm not sure about or didnt' want to implement into my race set without thorough testing went onto the 'experimental' setup. I would play with the Diffs, the gear ratios, everything that I didn't understand or wanted to know how its effects the car I would mess about in experimental. Even go racing with experimental just to see what happens. Anything that I liked, or worked would get transplanted into my race setup. But even then that thing might change the dynamics of my race setup so I would have to run tests and change that setup too. But the system worked quite well for me.

I also had a different setup for each track, but thats for a bit further down the line when you are comfortable with setting up yourself. You can't use an Aston setup on South City and get the most from the car. So many fundemental differences that you have to take into account.

But again. Thats all part of the fun.

Last edited by Funnybear, Thu 10 Aug 2006, 13:11.

Stone him?

I think we shold bring back public humiliation. Make him walk down the street with a sign around his neck proclaiming him to be a cheater. How much longer do you think someone would keep cheating if they new everyone (In RL) knew what he was?

I'm struggling a bit with this one too.

Ideas anyone? Possible a language thing. You know what these canadians can be like sometimes. Particularily them that hails from the southern eastern bit who think them selves french.

Oh it's gotta be anyday.

Jade Goody or Nicole Richie.

And the crowd goes wild!!!

I am sure that once LFS is considered to be finished then any new updates could well have an extra charge placed on them, particularily if they incorporate new tracks and cars. But LFS isn't finished yet. It's work in progress. The Dev's arn't going to spend a hell of a lot of time making new tracks and cars untill they got the actuall simulation where they want it.

It wouldn't matter where you put the chassis. The chassis could sit 100 foot up in the air and LFS could still get it's data from it. So long as points of information (In a real car the bushs that hold the suspension to the chassis) are connected to the chassis and the suspension in one way or another and that that information passed between them is the correct information then the chassis could be racing around on the moon for all LFS cares.

And the backbone method could and would communicate chassis flex in a perfectly adequate way. But, and you'll like this but, if it can be determined that LFS's engine can cope with a more complex chassis structure then so be bit. But advance beyond the backbone and the complexity will rise exponentially. From a system that has 6 moments of rotation to one that will be having to cope with over a hundred and will you be able to taste the difference? I wouldn't have thought the difference would be readily apparent to anything but the most stringent testing.

But anyway, if Lord Scawen was implementing chassis flex anytime soon then I'm sure that the starting point would be a simple model, i.e. the backbone and he too would then work upwards from that if he felt that you needed too.

But as the clever people here are tyring to determine can LFS handle the frequency that chassis flex needs to be sampled at.

Untill thats determined then alot of this talk is moot.

Gotta be Slash


Margeret Thatcher or Margaret Beckett?

Was that supposed to be paradoxical?

Big boobs are small or big boobs or small?

I shall go with the latter.

BIG BOOBS. Nothing like a women with curves. I like to feel I'm hugging something more than a skeleton with skin on.

Do you trim or keep a forest?

Quote from Hyperactive :

Btw. if you use that very basic ("backbone") model, how does it react when the car is cornering on max grip with constant speed (driving a circle with constant speed - static situation)? How do the outer front wheel change its camber angles? Now think any real car and say that they do even remotely the same thing.

Mate. I'm not really sure what your trying to bring to this discussion. The original topic was along the lines of 'would chassis flex be noticable enough to warrent inclusion into LFS and/or if so how difficult would it be and to what level of realism'

I think that everyone agrees that to simulate a full chassis for each car would be too resource intensive. It just can't be done at this moment in time.

What seems to be possible is a very simplistic model that will 'simulate' what we are looking for. A given amount of flex, rotation and longitudinal bending. Sure it's not a true facsimile of a racing car's chassis but as pointed out above there isn't much in LFS that is made like a real world car. What is important is that the effect is implemented in a manner that reflects real life. No car in LFS has a real world conterpart (apart from thingy and the F1 wotsit), so nobody knows how these vehicles should react per se. But what can be noticed is if they feel like they should. If a simple backbone chassis model gets across the feeling that is required then a simple backbone model is perfectly adequate for our needs here.

It's all well and good to be able to say that LFS models a realistic chassis, but if you can't tell the difference between that chassis and a simplistic version then why waste the resources.

And in response to your last point, how does the tyre change it's camber angle now whilst it's just attached to a point in space? Just connect that point to a chassis model, ask the suspension to take inputs from both directions and bam, a working chassis / suspension interaction system. A very simplistic view I know, but one that shouldn't need to much work to get to operate properly. (He say's).

As the non techy here and possible a grounding influence, I would not be looking for ultra realism in chassis simulation, it's fine just to know that there is a system in place working in the best way it can to add to my online driving experiance. We have Chassis Flex in real life, LFS has chassis flex, it can't by definition operate in the same way, but it's there and I can play a better game for it. It's not nessesarily what LFS delievers that makes it realistic, it's the processes and the way it delivers the goods that make it what it is.

It would just add to the whole amazing world of LFS. Imagine having to adjust all your setups because you found out that the reason you can't get the BF1 to go around that high speed corner without bouncing 10 foot sideways is because the chassis is bottoming out. It adds a whole new area to take into account.


Cool.

You may want to get as much accuracy out of any chassis flex simulation mate but untill it can be determined that LFS can actually cope and deliever a comprehensive and detailed ouput of chassis flex then surely the simple backbone method will give enough responses for any layman racer to get some benefit.

It's all well and good making yourself perfectly clear but if by implementing full chassis flex you take up a vast amount of resources then what is the point.

Like I have said already, go beyond the 'simple' get the idea across method where do you stop?

Can you design and engineer a fully working chassis for the FZR? Factor in all the different materials spring rates, work out the loading deflection accuratly and make it work using the minimum of resources.

Better off starting simple, the backbone, and working from there. Get the frequencies sorted and if all that works then you can add in more components. It's more than adequate to get the general point across.

It'll give you everything you expect, twist, grounding out, and flex. The given values are adjusted for each vehicle to give appropriate reactions. I would be happy with that.

Too hot. I can handle that. Don't do cold.


Red or yellow ( on a proper car like a Lambo)

Was listening to radio 4 this morning and they where talking about the athletics and doping. A chap from the testing authority was on and he was saying that 17 athletes have missed everyone of their one hour slots (They get one a day for a week) and 3 have missed their second chance slots. That's all they get. After that they are out for failure to provide a sample.

Stirred.

Red wine or white wine?