Well it would be good I suppose to have better stats, (I'm more interested in the % race finishes than anything else to be honest), but I don't really worry about them. After all I've seen first hand the behaviour of some drivers that have great stats and to say they're dirty would be an understatement. I've also noticed that a fair few of the permanently or temporarily banned members also have "above average" stats, so it's clear that they may be quick but have absolutely no manners or race craft.
To me this proves that actually the stats system as it works at the moment doesn't give any true indication of how clean (or good) a racer someone is, just that they are quicker than "the pack" and able to stay away from the pitfalls that may entail.
I'll be the first to admit that my stats are pretty poor and that no matter what they don't seem to improve. That's because I'm just not that great at this game.
I'm not a big game player, (even when i was a teen I didn't spend much time playing games), and sometimes on LFS I have bad days where I just can't get in to the groove. I put it down to not very good judgement and the occasional incident which I'll admit to being my fault. But the point being, I never intend to ram someone or spin them off the road, I try my best to avoid contact where I can. A fair bit of the problem is also that I drive in real life and LFS is nothing like driving a real car, so all my instincitive driving behaviour isn't brought in to play because there is none of the feedback that you get from actually being in a car drivng down the road. Notably a true sense of speed or danger, or any g forces or seat of the pants judgement. I rely on these things when driving in real life. The FF through the wheel in LFS just isn't enough feedback for me so I find it nearly impossible to actually judge where "the limit" is for the cars in the game. I'm either someway under it, (hence my mid pack pace), or someway over it, (hence my poor stats).
But none of it bothers me really, I just use LFS to pass the time and as a break from job hunting.
It's because he's used to thinking in terms of the current car products available, where generally speaking top speed comes as a by product of acceleration and vice versa, (of course there are exceptions such as the Elise et al). The buying public have been brainwashed in to aspiring towards products with needlessly high top speeds and by the available products where to have "fast" mid-range acceleration you need a car with a high top speed. This behaviour is to a large extent a product of how combustion engines develop power. An Electric motor however works in a competely different way it has maximum torque from zero revs so esentially the mid range acceleration becomes entirely about gearing not about what revs your doing in combination with gears. In this respect the Tesla has midrange acceleration only very powerful petrol engined cars can dream of:
"Our top-gear acceleration measured 2.3 seconds for the 30-to-50- and 50-to-70-mph intervals. The Tesla’s 4.6-second total for the two tests bests that of a Mercedes-Benz CLK63 AMG Black Series, which was our 2007 champion in this measure of instant responsiveness."
http://www.caranddriver.com/re ... _tesla_roadster_road_test
Ahh yes I think I remember that !
Join the club, exactly the position I'm in. It's easy for the fast guys they can just run off in to the distance and keep out of it all. Us mere mortals have to deal with the rammers and last minute up the inside dive bombers ruining our races and chances of getting points. As well as ruining our stats of course
I can't be bothered to go out and take a picture, especially as it's pitch black out there. But I drive one of these, (only in dark blue):
Leon Cupra 1.8 20V Turbo
It's not stupidly fast , (0-60 in 7.5), but most people don't expect it's pace, (especially 3 Series BMW drivers), because it looks so ordinary.
Leon Cupra 1.8 20V Turbo
It's not stupidly fast , (0-60 in 7.5), but most people don't expect it's pace, (especially 3 Series BMW drivers), because it looks so ordinary.
Wow I'm famous !
Seriously though, this is the reason I stay off the servers most of the time when they're very popular. I've found that once there's more than about 8 people in a race it's almost impossible to get a clean race. Of course there are times when this doesn't happen but as general rule of thumb it's pretty good.
My ISP is also messing me around at the moment and I keep getting disconnected during "peak" hours.
So for the reasons above I pretty much restrict most of my time on the servers to am/early afternoon during the weekdays.
+1 for that from me too. Seen a definite drop in quality of racing since it was opened up.
Well this will be the real test of that. Best way to look at it is this:
Try and keep it going and just accept that if it doesn't work out then it wasn't to be, but if it does then that's a good sign for the future.
Yup I've been there, done that. Moved 200 miles away from home to go to uni.
You're going to be fine. For a start there will be the people in your classes that you can potentially make friends with. Quite a few of them are likely to be in a similar situation as you, so they'll be looking to meet friends too.
As far as supporting yourself is concerned. Do you have an income from somewhere? your parents going to help out? or some kind of grant/loan from somewhere? If not then I suppose you'll have to try and find a job. But the college/school should be able to point you in the right direction for that in terms of where to look at least. Either way the thing you'll need to learn is to budget your money, it's really not that hard it just means working out what you need to spend on food/transport/books etc and only spending what's left over on having fun.
Lack of respect
I've noticed an increasingly worrying trend on the CTRA servers. Something I would call Demo mentality behaviour. That being the increasing habit of people voting to restart or end race whilst others are still racing, just because they crashed out or don't like the circuit. It's begining to get really annoying, the worst thing is even the better drivers are starting to do it. They aren't in the lead so they vote restart. I think this is completely unacceptable behaviour and it's something I thought I'd escaped from by driving on the CTRA servers, and to be honest it has been fine up until recently.
I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed specifically in the rules. I for one don't want to race on servers where everyone votes to restart just because half the field gets caught up in a crash. That's just tough IMO, if CTRA wants to position itself as a real racing simulator server then it needs to stamp out this behaviour IMO. If you crash out in a real race or get involved in a crash, (even if it's not your fault), you don't have the option to restart or choose another track you just have to deal with it as part of racing.
I think this is an issue that needs to be addressed specifically in the rules. I for one don't want to race on servers where everyone votes to restart just because half the field gets caught up in a crash. That's just tough IMO, if CTRA wants to position itself as a real racing simulator server then it needs to stamp out this behaviour IMO. If you crash out in a real race or get involved in a crash, (even if it's not your fault), you don't have the option to restart or choose another track you just have to deal with it as part of racing.
Nothing wrong with being a learner, everyone had to be once.
Just as long as you don't start modding your restricted moped/125 to get that extra 3 mph out of it.
One of the funniest things I ever read in a motorcycle magazine was the editors response to some poor 17 old learner who had written in asking if it was true that swapping the cogs on the gearbox of his 125zyz thingy from one with x teeth to one with y teeth could make it do 80mph, because his mates had said it would.
well the Editor was getting cheesed off by the endless letters asking similar questions about restricted 12hp 125s & 50cc mopeds so he wrote back saying (paraphrased).
"actually the 125xyz is good for 124mph... if you push it off the edge of a cliff. Stop wasting your time and money and spend it on passing your test and getting a real motorcycle!"
Personally I prefer a bit of mud....(but then that's the drummer in me).
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=og3qsy4pCaw&fmt=18
hmmm... well not my favourite kind of music I admit but at least it takes some talent to produce it. Take you a good 4-5 years to get good enough to play that, whereas most of the other stuff you could walk in to a studio today and come out 1 hour later with a CD in your hand. Total talentless sh!te.
My absolute most hated music is RnB. Not only can not a single "artist" sing but they can't even create any music without stealing other peoples creativity. For christ sake they can't even name the genre anything orginal, they stole that too (ie R&B) !!
Especially when they stick their helmets on the tops of their heads like they do... brings new meaning to the term d*ckhead
Only other games I've played at all this year, (and that was only because I was extremely bored), were PS2 games:
Guitar Hero, God of War II & Prince of Persia
Guitar Hero was just a bit of stupid fun but I actually found God of War to be quite addictive. I'm not a fan of pure shoot-em-ups and so the extra skill based stuff you need to do in God of War really added to the fun. Also the PS2 version of Prince of Persia was pretty good too for similar reasons. It's not just about having to kill stuff.
Guitar Hero, God of War II & Prince of Persia
Guitar Hero was just a bit of stupid fun but I actually found God of War to be quite addictive. I'm not a fan of pure shoot-em-ups and so the extra skill based stuff you need to do in God of War really added to the fun. Also the PS2 version of Prince of Persia was pretty good too for similar reasons. It's not just about having to kill stuff.
Well for starters they are supposed to make it easier to catch terrorists and illegal immigrants, (because of course these people wouldn't be able to fake an ID card right??), and secondly it's the compulsion part that a lot of people object to. Supposedly you won't have to carry them with you all the time, so what's the point??? Apart from effectively making it a criminal offence not to be able to prove who you are? Animal Farm, 1984, 1939-1945 anyone??
We have perfectly adequate forms of identity in this country to prove our identity in every legitmate thing we may want to achieve. The only people that have any issues are the policeman on the street when he suspects you may have done something wrong. So in typical knee jerk reaction, the government proposes legislation to make the polices job easier, after all it's not as if the poor dears jobs aren't hard enough already right, with all that investigating and basic police work they might need to do? Wouldn't want them to have too hard a job of it and go around killing innocent people on the tube now would we?? (as opposed to taking a piss against a tree).
Last edited by gezmoor, .
Yeah right. If everyone thought like that about development we'd all still be driving these:
http://www.musclecarclub.com/o ... mages/ford-model-t-1a.jpg
Well I won't be buying it then.
That's a big improvement. Oddly enough the higher res version plays much quicker too, (probably lower server load).
Combine that with this...
http://www.ted.com/index.php/t ... kthrough_touchscreen.html
and you would have a real breakthrough in PC interfaces.
Personaly I can't wait.
Minimalist..
Only genuine complete (non-composite) picture of the Earth without terminator from space. Taken in 1972 by one of the Apollo 17 Mission Astronauts on their return to Earth.
Only genuine complete (non-composite) picture of the Earth without terminator from space. Taken in 1972 by one of the Apollo 17 Mission Astronauts on their return to Earth.
Your dad looks familiar.. You sure he isn't someone well known??
OK if we're doing this level of claims...
a) Been on the same track, at the same time as John Reynolds (not racing obviously) - you're probably all bored of that one huh?
b) John Barnes was couple of years above me at secondary school
c) David Milliband was in the year below me at school and was in the same classes as a good freind of mine.
and best of all
d) I once completely blanked the Iron Maiden drummer at a musical instrument show, (and I was a big IM fan at the time !!). I walked right up to and past him because I didn't recognise him in the flesh, didn't realise until later who he was when I saw him performing a masterclass at the show and It clicked why he had looked at me so expectantly when I walked up to him. He must have been expecting me to ask him for his autograph !!
Last edited by gezmoor, .
This is quite common on forums in my experience. It's a common tendency for some of the so called "regulars" to feel that somehow because they've contributed a lot to a forum over a period of time that some how they get kind of "privileges" and feel that they can say what they like to others, particularly so called "noobs".
To be honest I think this forum is kind of average in that regard. I've certainly seen a lot lot worse forums in terms of bullying, flaming and just generally unacceptable posting. I have to say though I have also seen one or two far better forum atmospheres. They all have one thing in common and that is a complete ban on posting any topics relating to politics, religion as well as any kind of flaming or personal insults etc. Any such threads/posts get deleted as soon as they're seen and the poster gets a polite warning to not do it again. Of course there are sometimes complaints about dictatorial moderating but it seems to work very well. Amazing really as one of the forums in question is frequented by the kind of people oft regarded as being bonehead kuckle draggers by the general public.
Actually it's not that difficult. Admittedly it is awkward at first but after a few drives in a "left hand" , (meaning the wheel is on the left), drive car it gets easier and by the time you've done maybe a total of 3-4 hours in one it pretty much becomes second nature.
Actually I don't buy in to that myth at all. At least not from the perspective of the "it's because we're free" argument.
However, it is a stated fact that the majority of Muslims around the world live in states that denounce a lot of the western worlds liberal ideals. Now if you want to argue about the strength with which individual muslims might disagree with our way of life then that's obviously a product of how moderate they are. I deliberately chose moderate as opposed to extremist because I honestly believe that an average muslim, (taken from the entire world population of muslims), disagrees with some of our ways of life quite strongly. That's not to say that they would ever consider doing anything against us for that belief, (as long as we don't try to impose it on them that is).
Obviously it's a given that the vast majority of muslims that live in the west are what could be considered "liberal" muslims otherwise they wouldn't be able to tolerate living here. The vast majority of muslims however live in compeletely different societies to our own with very fundamentaly different views on life to our own, (take the concept of decency as an example).
I'm not trying to simplify the belief system of the islamic world but it is incontrovertable that there are irreconcileable differences between us on some beliefs as to how we should live our lives.
By the way, I am in no way singleing out muslims in this regard. In fact I see it more to do with the issue of strongly held religious beliefs. In much the same way as many Christians have views that are diametrically and fundamentally opposed to liberal, humanist thinking.
Just in case my position gets misconstued I want to state that I consider myself a Humanist.
In case anyone doesn't know what that means the definition is here:
http://www.iheu.org/amsterdamdeclaration
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG