Hmmm interesting.

I get lock ups on occasion too. It also only seems to happen when playing LFS. I also have an Nvidia 8600GT card.

What OS are you running? wouldn't be Vista would it?

I've no idea if it's just a conicidence, and I've no idea why it happens. I've looked through all of the event logs and all I can ever find is a generic "window recovered from an unexpected shutdown" which doesn't lead to any info on the MS support site either.

Quote from 510N3D :

Ok here are just a few questions i’d like to ask into the “complainers” direction.

• When did you joined LFS? (demo, forum, licenced right away, it doesnt matter)
  

• Have you ever considered and even understood the facts that are basically responsible for the rather slow progress lately? (http://insidesimracing.blip.tv ... iganOfLFSInterview436.flv
  

• When exactly did you got bored and perhaps, why in particulary?
  

[Examples]

• Do you think that your motivation went away because you've used the game quite excessively or maybe even for the exact opposite reason?
  

• Or do you think that it never really was your thing after all, no matter what kind of variation you’ve tried?
  

• Was perhaps the lack or even the superior number of good competition the reason?
  

• Have you tried a lot of variations the game offers or where you basically just doing one thing? (hotlapping, curcuit track/ rally racing, oval racing, cruising, drifting or drag racing et cetera (in no particular order )
  

[/Examples]

• Do you think that any significantly changes will bring you back to LFS or even bring back the joy from how it was at the beginning?
  

• In addition to the previous one, do you think that it could be possible or must a requirement to reach a certain stage with LFS once again so that you can enjoy it just like in the beginning?
  

• Do you have still faith in the project and ScaViEr, or do you just follow and believe into yours and/ or others assumptions?
  

• Are these question of any help in any way, perhaps to bring more transparency into your personal situation and maybe even this particual problem?
  

All perfectly valid points. However the real issue as I see it is that nothing exists in a vacuum. LFS is a product and it will always be compared with other products, those of the same type, (ie racing sims), and those that compete to attract you away from that type, (pretty much any game). So irrespective of how good the fundamentals are it just can't afford to stand still development wise, as you can rest assured that the competition won't be standing still.

I come back to my point about the graphics. Just how many of you ever play 2D games? I grew up in the DOS games era and there were a few games I used to just love, but no matter how involving their gameplay was I just couldn't bear to play them now as they are just so dated in comparison with "modern" 3D games. Eventually there will come a point where no matter how realistic the physics engine in LFS is, the immersion will be lost because the visual interface will look so unrealistic in comparison with other products, eg imagine VR games become the norm, will you still think a 2D screen representation of a 3D world will seem "realistic" to anyone then?

Just to clarify, I'm using graphics as an example. The point is valid for any aspect of the games development, content, physics engine etc

Quote from tristancliffe :

Did you set the gearing to a realistic level, and is the engine torque comparible?

Stop talking sense !

Quote from SamH :

The other view is that right now, Britain could do with a bit of something positive to focus on. We don't have a good economy and all the food prices are going up, none of us can afford our mortgages all of a sudden and we're worry about losing our jobs. Some predictions have us topping 3 million unemployed before we see an up-turn. We're turning into a nanny state and we feel like we're suffocating thanks to a left-wing big brother government that would like nothing but to brand us with some indelible mark for easy identification, like cattle. Hamilton represents something that is GOOD about Britain. It may just be a veneer but that's not what's important. With Hamilton comes the implication that Brits are good for something. It is a powerful and valuable illusion, especially at a time like this.

20 years ago, it was inconceivable that a black guy could achieve a position at the pinnacle of motorsports. My generation grew up learning and/or knowing that racism was a bad thing, but forced to grow up with it anyway. We were an intermediary generation.. aware of bad things and tasked with changing them. Hamilton represents an aspect of that struggle for freedom from an archaic, ignorant and paranoia-exploiting political undercurrent - the same national socialist movement that Germany suffered from in the 30s was a genuine and tangible threat to Britain from the mid 60s to the late 70s. Hamilton in many ways represents victory over that racist mentality and, to those of us who remember those times, he represents an aspect of progression for British society. It's something that I imagine would be difficult for a young person to perceive today (and it's why I didn't bore you with it initially), but to me it's very poignant. Not Hamilton as an individual per sey, but an ideal and a measure of how far we've come so far, collectively, as a nation.

Perhaps it would only make sense to someone else about my age who was as politically active as I was in their youth and who REMEMBERS how things were, I dunno.

Sorry to pull up an old thread, but I just read this post and wanted to say I hear ya !!

Quote from NightShift :

If we're going to play XF vs XR, the latter lacks the snappy feeling. Not only the XF is more straightforward to drive, but faster through the corners and the high revving engine sounds and feels more sporty than the XR.

Don't get me wrong, I like the XR but it felt like a boat rather then a car for quite some time... I've started to develop a relationship with the thing just recently

Pretty much sums up my feelings for the two cars, except the "I like the XR" bit. I hate it, and for exactly the reason you stated. It just wallows all over the place, understeers in to a corner and then wants to swing its rear around no matter what kind of throttle you have mid corner. I once made a joke about having to use a jib and tiller to drive the thing and nothing has changed my mind about it since.

Quote from anttt69 :

I can see lots of those new front wings being broken off in T1 incidents, in fact it will be almost impossible to overtake without clipping the other car with your over sized front wing.

Yeah especialy if your initials are LH

I'd love to see AC Cobra or maybe TVR Tuscan racing series in LFS

Quote from Rotareneg :

Wow, that sentence ends in a great piece of fail... someone needs to point him to the Ideal gas law.

Actually it's not entirely incorrect. Whilst it's not the moisture per se that is causing the pressure increase the humidity of the air does have an affect on how much the pressure increases due to a temperature increase in the air.

It comes down to the value of R in the equation you link to.
There are two forms of Gas constant, Universal (Ru) and Specific (Rs), and they have the following relationship:

Rs = Ru / M

Where M is is the molecular weight of the gas in question.

If you look up the values of R for water vapour (Rw) and dry air (Ra) you get

Rw = 461.5
Ra = 287

Now obviously air isn't pure water vapour, but then neither is it ever dry (as per the definition ie containing no water vapour at all), so real air is always somewhere in between. The actual value will depend on the Relative Humidity (RH) of the air in question. So although in practice it's only a small variation the RH of air will affect the pressure of the air at a given temperature.

Quote :

Also, rubber does not behave like metals and other more "normal" solids in regards to heat and compression:

http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/HOMEEXPTS/rubberband.html

and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber#Elasticity

Not quite sure of your point here. It's patently clear that the tread pattern on a tyre has a direct affect on the temperature generation within the tyre. This has been proven by emprical data taken by tyre manufacturers and they put a lot of research and effort in to the design of tread block size/pattern because of it. Whether this is due to the intrinsic properties of the rubber itself or some other mechanism is moot to the point the author in the quote is making. It's a well understood fact that the more the tread blocks move around they quicker they heat up, which is what the quoted was stating.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

They did a thing on 5th Gear a while ago, I think it was mid 2006. They had a drag race between a Honda F1 car, a Fireblade BSB or WSB spec (Around 210bhp iirc) and a Honda Powerboat. The F1 car had much better grip and therefore blitzed the bike in a drag race.

I saw that too. I always thought that it wasn't quite a fair comparison. The F1 car had traction control the fireblade obviously didn't. Would have been a much fairer comparison to compare the Honda F1 car with the motorcycle F1 equivilent ie Honda MotoGP bike, (which has traction control in the lower gears). I think the result would have been closer if they had.

However, not a lot that could be done with the bikes ultimate problem though, that of it lifting the front wheel under acceleration. But then to counter that the F1 car wouldn't be able to put down all that power either without all the aero keeping it stuck to the ground. So those kinds of comparisons aren't really ever truely like with like.

Also reminds me of a Top Gear comparison they did between a Fireblade and a Honda Civic Type-R. They went to a lot of trouble to give the impression that they were doing a fair test, (by getting nial mackenzie no less to ride the bike IIRC), but in the end it was clearly BS. There is no way on earth that a 200bhp production road car is ever going to beat a 170bhp production sports motorcycle around a track. The bike just doesn't give away enough cornering speed to the car for the car to ever be able to make up for complete lack of comparative straight line speed.

Last edited by gezmoor, Mon 17 Nov 2008, 21:10.

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

And then of course there is he issue of the driver that is added to the bike so in more realistic terms its:

Honda Honda RC211V (2005) - 240Bhp+ @ 148+70 Kg - 1100 Bhp/Tonne

Ah yes of course. But then of course you only have about a tenth of the contact patch of an F1 car.

Oh and I forgot to add - most MotoGP riders are closer to 60Kg (if that).

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

It would be a pointless competition now anyway, Rossi would just destroy everyone.

True. The man (just) is a phenomenom. A truely unparalleled career in any motorsport AFAIK.

Quote from robt :

He might be a racing motorbike novice, but hes had actual bikese for years. remember reading an article from back in 1994 where he alrady had a small collection of ducati's.

Maybe this will put it in to perspective:

Road Bike:
Ducati 998 SPS (1998) - 123 BHP @ 190 Kg - 647Bhp/Tonne
Ducati 999R (2005) - 150 Bhp @ 181Kg - 829 Bhp/Tonne

MotoGP
Ducati Desmosedici GP5 (2005) - 230 BHP+ @ 148Kg - 1554 Bhp/Tonne
Honda Honda RC211V (2005) - 240Bhp+ @ 148Kg - 1621 Bhp/Tonne


Thats over twice the power to weight ratio. MotoGP bikes are so powerful these days that they have to be power restricted in the lower gears in order to be even remotely ridable.

For comparison:

McLaren F1 (Road Car) - 627 Bhp @ 1,140 Kg - 550 Bhp/Tonne

I think it's just a case of familiarity.. For most people at least it is probably the combo they are most competant on due to having driven it on the Demo before getting an S2 license.

I have to say though that my tin top is the UF-BR. It's also the one I'm consistantly most competitive in on, (relatively speaking). Which I guess says a lot about my driving ability, ie underpowered car with load of grip.

Quote from zeugnimod :

The devs said that they don't want to actively market LFS before it is finished, IIRC.

Well then it's a catch 22 situation. Without new people becoming aware of its existence LFS will not continue to bring in enough money to continue its development. Without development, ulitmately it won't attract enough new people who want to pay for it as it slowly becomes more and more dated compared with modern games on the market.

Without development, (eventually), you get no revenue stream, without revenue you get no development.

Point being, even what few competitors LFS has are catching up in the areas that LFS always had the advantage, (ie the physics). Once other sims surpass LFS in terms of physics, there is only so far that being "cheap" will attract people to the game as it continues to get dated compared to the competition. Put it this way, would you pay for LFS if it had CGA graphics even if it did have a perfect physics model? I would suggest only a very small minority of people would, (even of those interested in driving sims), let alone the general game playing public.

Much as I think LFS is rewarding to play and I don't begrudge a single penny I paid for it, I still feel that eventually it will just fade away and die.

Why? well most products do ultimately of course, but also because I don't feel it's being suficiently marketed to keep the influx of new users required to really make it become a solid final product. It's all well and good the devs saying they are happy with the pace of development but ultimately it's just too slow getting to final product status IMO. If it remains like this, eventually it's current user base will just get bored and move on, (new sims are being released all the time), and the devs will loose their revenue stream and development will ultimately grind to a halt.

That said, IF the devs manage to pull off a release of a final product in the near future that gets great reviews, they may well finally hit the jackpot and see sales rocket.

But, all products have their day and then fade away and even if LFS does manage to be a commercial success, ultimately that will happen to LFS too.

Quote from pacesetter :

Well because Schuey dominated F1 in this decade, we arent gonna get loads of World champ's

Exactly my point. Much as I admire Schuey's talent, he kinda made F1 boring with regards to who was going to be the next WDC.

You guys are funny. Since when has F1 car design, (or any single seater for that matter), ever been asthetically pleasing??? It's 100% about function. Always has been, always will be and always should be IMO.

Well the guy has exceptional "seat of the pants" feel, (probably one of the best ever F1 drivers in that sense), and that is required in spades to be a fast motorcycle rider. Whether he can cut it at anything above national level only time will tell, (assuming he's even interested that is which doesn't seem to be the case). Just don't underestimate the talent required to acheive these kind of lap times on ANY incarnation of MotoGP bike !

http://www.crash.net/motorspor ... s_-_on_a_motogp_bike.html

Having said that his times are WAY off the pace in real race terms, (and given that these days WSBs are probably more of a handful than MotoGP bikes), but for an almost complete motorcycling novice to just jump on such a machine and be able to push it even a little without falling off is one heck of an acheivement.

So all in all this milleniums seasons have been pretty poor and lacking high quality competitition by comparison

Quote from dadge :

"Subaru is a subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries.......
"
(source: http://www.scouk.net/subaru-im ... y-of-the-subaru-impreza// )
i suppose it could of been worse, they could of start making tractors......lamborghini anyone?

The point being??

Most motor vehicle manufacturers have a similar history.

hmm.. and pray tell what's so special about that particular car??

All I see is a powerful car being slid around a lot. Pretty much any powerful car can be made to do all that in the hands of the right driver.

Reminds me of a video I saw of Schumacher driving some american muscle car around a track... He had it under complete control at all times at all kinds of angles even when going off the tarmac on to the grass. It's driver skill not a great car that allows that to be done.

Quote from 5haz :

Still doesn't make it acceptable.

Obviously.

But my point was purely about what does and doesn't constitute a criminal offense.

There is a world of difference, in my eyes at least, between saying something or acting in some way that some people find offensive and commiting a criminal act.

As Voltaire once said: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

I've always maintained that it is "intent" that is important not how something is perceived. If somebody does something that didn't intend to offend but ended up causing offense to somebody else, then to my mind the worst they can be accused of is bad taste/lack of tact. Even if these supporters were intending to be offensive to hamilton as a black person, what of it? There is a gulf of difference between expressing offensive views and actually causing harm to someone because of belief in those views. Don't be naieve enough to believe that just because a couple of idiots paint their faces black that we're in danger of regressing back to the dark days of slavery, because it's just not going to happen. Stupidity isn't a criminal offense, and I would fear for any society that chose to make it one. We should be shaking our heads with pity for those people over the whole situation and moving on, not expressing indignant outrage over it. I fear the term racist has grown to become all encompasing and hence the true horror of its meaning has been diminished. Hitler was a racist, members of the KKK are racists, people that are willing to oppress, beat, maim and kill others just because of a difference in skin colour are racists. There is a chasm of difference between true racism and bigoted prejudice as expressed by some idiotic sports supporters.

Quote from Rdcranno :

Did they nick the guys in spain who painted their faces?

For what exactly?

It's not illegal to be racist. At least it isn't in the UK and as far as I know it isn't anywhere else in the world either. It is illegal however, to incite racial hatred. But having seen what the spectators were doing in Spain I think it would be impossible to hang that accusation on them.

Much as some people would like it to be otherwise, just causing offense to another person is not a criminal offence, (not in the western world at least).

Quote from Intrepid :

He only lost a championship that he should never have been in contention with in the first place in Brazil. Took it well? He shouldn't have had a chance to take anything well!

Interesting statistic:

Discounting races where either driver DNF'd, average points scored per race for 2008 are as follows:


Hamilton: 5.76
Massa : 6.06

Read in to that what you will.

Or if we just discount non finishes due to reliability:

Hamilton: 5.76
Massa: 5.70

First race of the season Massa's engine gave way. He was almost certain to have picked up 5 points at least from that race.

Would seem to me that ulitmately Massa lost the championship in Australia.

Looking at the last 1/3 of the season (last 6 races) to try and predict any potential form for next season brings up some intersting stats:

Points per race:

Alonso: 6.33
Massa: 3.83
Hamilton: 3.66
Raikonnen: 3.00
Kubica: 2.83


I know it's not necessarily any indication, but it does appear that Alonso was on competitive terms. Next year might turn out to be very interesting indeed.

Last edited by gezmoor, Fri 7 Nov 2008, 22:03.

What I find humorous about all this "there is a conspiracy against Maclaren" stuff is this. IMO Maclaren shouldn't even be in this season. After having gotten their hands on stolen technical secrets from another team I don't see how anyone can say they haven't gained advantage that they wouldn't have had otherwise. It's oh so simple to retort, "ah but as long as they don't use the bits they got plans for it's ok", to which I would say, "your showing a complete lack of knowlege about how an inteligent mind works". ie once any competetant technical guy has seen plans/details of technical improvements there is no way to remove that information from their brain and therefore no way to remove their ability not to use it in some way. It's all about ideas at this level not actual implementation. So to all you conspirators I say this....

Just be thankful Maclaren are even allowed to race this season. Because to my mind after such a patent breaking of F1 laws, (in a way that hits at the very core of sportsmanship), I think the only valid penalty should have been a seasons ban for the team.