Another couple of tweaks.

I've changed the gravel slightly to blend better, (grasspit and gravel files), and if anyone prefers red stripped curbs use the curbs file.

Quote from Falcon140 :

Top notch work here man. I really like it. If you can finish up that road, you got my download.

Thanks.

It's all done now and in the zip file attached to my sig, (assuming the link is still working). I've touched up other little bits and pieces, (the bridge/walls/pit lane road etc), and included them in the zip file too.
It's all subtle stuff just intended to create an overall feel rather than any dramatic changes. Only thing I'm in two minds about is the "damp" patches on the road, I might remove them as they look a bit too regular to be realistic IMO.

Anyway any further feed back would be appreciated.

Quote from Intrepid :

..... But no one questions the skill, and ability of Kimi in 2007 to win the WDC.

I don't believe anyone here is taking anything away from Hamilton with regards to his skill and ability. It's patently clear that Hamilton is a very good driver. So are all of the F1 drivers, anyone that believes otherwise is just naieve in the extreme. All of what you say is true, but non of it is anything more than we should expect from a driver in the highest level of car racing in the world. That's the whole point I believe. Hamilton is to be judged by comparison with his peers not by the standard of lesser drivers in lesser formuae. In this context, is he an exceptionally talented F1 driver? Personally, I don't believe so. He's certainly one of the top F1 drivers, but I don't see anything exceptional yet. He is clearly in at the least equal best car in F1 and has been matched in terms of pace by his team mate on several occasions.

Lets be honest about it, if Schumacher or Senna where in the same car, does anyone believe they wouldn't be clearly in the lead of the championship having won or placed second in all of the races? So far the person that Hamiltons F1 career most closely represents is that of Jacques Villeneuve who placed second in his first year, (just like Hamilton), and then went on to win 7 races the next year and take the championship title, (only time will tell for Hamilton). Did anyone ever compare Villeneuve with Senna? Of course not.

Quote :

I am not as pro-Hamilton anti-rest as you seem to try and make out. I am not blinded by my own ego when it comes to deciding who is or isn't good. Alonso, who I thought was a jerk, is rapidly becoming more favourable in my opinion.

I'm not anti-Hamilton either. I am however very anti all the sycophantic Hamilton hype. But then it's not surprising, we do it every time any of our drivers show the slightest bit of competence in F1. But I draw the line at having Hamiltons face in the credits of all the F1 coverage and all the commentators wetting themselves over him. At least not at this stage of his career and performance, it's just not warranted as yet in my opinion. He needs to win his first championship at least before we can start idolising him.

I'd agree with all of the above. I too get this, days where I'm just on it, (like you a relative thing ), and others when I just can't drive for toffee. I think it's down to two things:


a) Concentration/Focus
b) Biology - as stigpt alludes to.


Concentration/Focus -
There are all sorts of things that can affect your concentration and focus, so many things can distract. Being quick is about being in the zone, where the rest of the world just fades away and everything is tuned in to driving. The track just seems to flow and you do most stuff unconciously.

Biology -
There are simply just times of the day and days where you're body just isn't capable of the same levels of concentration and focus. All sorts of things affect it: Time, how much sleep you've had, when did you last eat and what did you eat, (carbs feed the brain - low blood sugar levels are very bad for concentration), and all sorts of other things contribute to being able to focus on what's in front of you.

Of course learning braking points, corner entries etc etc are all important, but if you're conciously having to think about this as you drive you're not going to be the quickest you can be. It's when it all becomes instinctive that you set your best times, and this requires being in the zone. I actually disagree with hyperactive to an extent. The best drivers do drive by feel, they just know from experience when/where to brake, how to enter the corner etc. They're not conciously thinking about it when they do it, they just do it.

I see it very simply. As far as credit for winning races is concerned it comes down to this:

a) Driver can take credit for anything he does/doesn't do on the track.
b) Team takes credit for everything else.

So where does that leave Hamiltons win??

Well he crashed, and put himself a few places back. After that he at best matched the pace of the other quicker drivers. So that's an average, (maybe a bit above average) performance marred by a fairly fundamental mistake. That's got to score less than 5/10.

The team however, took a gamble and it paid off in that Hamilton didn't need to pit just to change tyres, as did the majority of the rest of the field. Team performance 8/10.

Conclusion. The team won the race not Hamiltons drive. If he hadn't had the good fortune, of his teams decision, to be able to make the tyre swap at the same time as fuel up for the last stint he would most likely have finished 4th at best, possibly even 5th.

There was one other contributing factor, which no one seemed to comment on on the day. That was the fact that the race was unduely held up behind the safety car for several more laps than it should have been as two drivers refused to unlap themselves. This significantly reduced the chances of the top drivers to gain on and overtake Hamilton, and also ensured that the race didn't go the full distance. Guess what teams those two drivers belonged to. Yep the same teams as the two front runners. Concidence? You decide.

I like F1 but its not my favorite. Those would be:

a) Any motorcycle racing - it's just more exciting than cars sorry.
b) Touring car championships - again because of the close racing.

Nascar? hmm sorry I don't get it. Go round and round mostly in a parade until someone messes up.

Quote from Wolfgang Amadeus :

I've improved my lap times on BL rally over the last few months. I have also learned to cope with the first bend carnage. I often emerge from the first bend well-placed. However, I'm sometimes not the fastest driver on the track, and the advantage I have gained is sometimes lost later on. I'm finding, increasingly, that faster drivers are forcing their way past by bumping, nudging, or sideswiping, rather than waiting for an opportunity to pass cleanly. I've been told today that it's rally and I should expect it(!), and I've even been told to "respect the speed" of a faster driver, when all I am doing is defending my position. There is surely more to racing than simply driving fast, bullying others out of the way and forcing a way past?

Sounds like the usual excuse to me. I'm betting the person that said that will behave in exactly the same way on tarmac. Far too many people with this attitude in LFS unfortunately. They seem to think that being fast gives them a god given right to pass you and win. They're usually the ones that say "its just a game" too. I sometimes wonder if any of these people have ever watched racing on TV let alone actually ever driven a car.

Oh and yes, there is a lot more to racing than just driving fast. Look at how many guys in F1, (and other motorsports), are capable of setting fast times in qualifying. Then when it comes to the race and being conistant etc they drop right down the field.

Edited to add - The sport their talking about is stock car racing NOT rally. The only motorsport where contact is allowed is stock car racing. All other forms of motorsport are strictly non contact. Although of course the occasional mild bump does occur but it's not condoned in any way.

Last edited by gezmoor, Fri 30 May 2008, 15:36.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

netstat -n -b

Forgot about that.

Do the command above. It will give you a rather long list whilst connected to LFS. When you actually log on to a server, one of them should have the State = Established. This is probably the IP address of the server you're logged on to. Use that IP address to do a Ping as I mentioned before and look for any dropped packets or very long times.

Edited to add - actually whether you get a long list of IP addresses depends on when you do the command. If you wait a bit after connecting to the server in question you should get only a couple of lines above where it says LFS.EXE the one that is Established is the one you wan to use.

Wont be the ports being blocked anyway. If they were you'd never be able to connect initially. Sounds like dropped packets or high latentcy to me.

I've no idea how you'd find out what the server IP addresses are but if you can open a command prompt window and type in:

ping -t xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where xxx.xxx etc is the server IP)

let it run for a couple of minutes and see if you get any high numbers or any lack of numbers being shown. To end it just do <cntrl> + C

Ok here's my first attempt at road.

If you look carefully you should be able so see some damp patches and also the hills in the background are slightly less green.

Let me know what you think.

Quote from JasonJ :

No, it's not against the rules to mess about with textures.

Try making the road darker or something to give it that wet/colder look.

Ok I'll give that a go, if I can work out which files they are.

I'd be happy to attach the files here, (assuming it's allowed), but I'm making the changes to a Patch Y20 test install that I have on my PC. Not sure if all the file names are the same as a couple are called xxxTEST.dds etc

Quote from Stefani24 :

doesnt look bad, now the grass texture and the road, and u have a beautiful blackwood.

I did the grass, though admittedly it's subtle. If you look closely you'll see it's a bit different. Colour wise that is, I'm not good enough to actually change the texture !

What do you suggest for the road?

First off this is just a bit of fun. I was a bit bored and thought I'd mess around with Gimp.

Anyway, take a look at the two pics see if you can spot the difference.

I couldn't work out which files were for the main trees otherwise I would have done them too.

Ps - I hope doing this kind of thing isn't against the rules. If it is can a mod remove the attachments.


Texture pack now available for download here:

Blackwood Autumn Pack.zip

I take no responsibility for it messing up your LFS install. The textures work fine on my PC but it's on a Patch Y20 install so I've no idea if they will mess up a Patch Y installation.

Last edited by gezmoor, Fri 30 May 2008, 15:59.

Quote from AndroidXP :

How about, not at all? AA/AF is not forced, you know...

Well it appears to be. At least in my experience you turn it on just to try it out and then it refuses to turn off again.

That's under Vista with the latest nvidia drivers (1175.16).

I have to say that since starting to play LFS I've become much more sensitive to what my car is doing in real life. Things that I never really noticed before such as the delay between turning the wheel and the car actually starting to turn, the transfer of weight (or rather the the time it takes) etc.

I believe in this way, LFS has helped me to become a smoother driver on the road.

8600 GT here. I've never had any of the problems stated in this thread so far. Only issue I've had is with the AA etc not working in CP with 169.xx drivers.

Having said that I tried patch Y20 and set the AA to max in that and ever since I've not been able to get rid of AA in LFS, even though I have two installs on my PC, Patch Y and Y20. Both now have AA no matter what I try. I actually saw a similar thing in patch Y18 with the 169.xx drivers but put it down to a driver glitch because of that known AA bug in those drivers. As far as I'm aware though the latest drivers dont have that issue, so I'm beggining to suspect the way AA is set in LFS is global.

Either way, I'm not too impressed.

Quote from duke_toaster :

FO8 is good how it is, there's Euroseries 3000 which uses F3000 machinery IRL. A GP2-style car would be nice, but there would be little difference. If we want a new slicks + wings single seater, either a ChampCar or IRL type thing would probably be more unique.

True, however it was purely because they were so similar that I thought of the swap. A bit of a case of something for nothing was what I was thinking. Won't really make any difference to people already playing the game, but might make a difference to whom it attracts.

I agree an american style Indy car would be interesting too.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Why does it need to be 'up to date'? Is a F3000 clone not good enough? Which year of GP2 car would you prefer, and will you complain when they change the mirror design and LFS still uses the sidepod mounted mirrors...?

Just race. Everyone has the same beautifully handling car, so have fun. The 'age' of the car doesn't matter a jot.

Any real reason to take such a confrontational attitude?

Firstly, I'm not complaining. I'm just opening up a discussion. There is a huge difference.
Secondly, I'm not suggesting a pedanticly exact replica, just a tweak which will make the F08 in to a generic GP2 car.
Thirdly and lastly, why does it matter? Well probably because to attract new purchasers you have to have a relatively modern looking product, (unless you're specifically aiming at the retro market). GP2 is current, it's even on mainstream TV, F3000 isn't, (and never was as far as I'm aware). Given that it's such a minor change to the specs of the car, I wouldn't have thought it would be such a big deal for the significant increase in saleability it would give LFS as a product.

Other than that I couldn't care less whether its a F3000 or GP2 clone, I'd enjoy driving either just as much. I'm just trying to give back a little to a game I enjoy by making a constructive suggestion.

As per title.

A little modding could easlily turn the F08 in to a GP2 clone.

Both V8, GP2 is 600bhp rather than 450 and 4ltr rather than 3ltr.

Apart from that they're both 6 speed, have no electronic aids etc

GP2 car specs: http://www.gp2series.com/en//w ... idegp2/about-gp2/our-car/

A small change that might help bring the game a little more up to date? Thoughts?

Ok fair points the request system is open to abuse, I had thought of that but I thought I'd throw it open for debate anyway.

Of course if you ask for a set you should be ready to save it, but the problem is timing. Even if you're prepared, you have no control over whether the other person spectates or disconnects immediately or maybe the race starts and then you loose the set that was sent.
Even if you are sitting there waiting for it, as has been said already you may not get one so you're sitting there staring at the text waiting for a "sent setup" message that may never appear.

I still think the best solution is an auto save system where the set is actually sent when the text says it is and is automatically saved. I don't see the point of making things less user freindly when there is a way of preventing it being so with no negative impact.

Quote from i_MAXIBON :

a couple of pages late but can i just say


HAHAHA "more sophisticated colours"



i need another wine. great work on the everything as usual please feel encouraged despite the "sophisticated aesthetic critique" being "offered"

The day I insult your point of view on aesthetics, (or anything else for that matter), is the day you have the right to insult mine.

Just ran Y20, (as a separate install from patch Y), and set the AA and AF settings to max. All seems to work fine but .... then I switched back to Patch Y, the AA settings (and presumably the AF), are still applied, even though before running patch Y20 there was no AA.

Even restarting the computer doesn't get Patch Y back without AA. Even resetting my global driver settings in the nvidia control panel doesn't restore the AA back to default in patch Y either.

How can this be? Makes me a little concerned about how LFS has altered my graphics drivers.

Running Vista Home Premium with 1175.16 WHQL drivers

Edit - Even setting the AA and AF back to none in patch Y20 doesn't turn them off, (either for Y20 or Y) !!


Totally different issue.

The mapped buttons in my Wheel profiler don't work in Patch Y20. If I start the profiler then start patch Y seperately, (ie not from the profiler), everything works fine. If I do exactly the same thing and run Y20 the buttons I've mapped to shift+P, Shift+J, Shift+R and Shift+S don't work. I haven't checked all the buttons but it would seem only the wheel, pedals and gear shift paddles are working, (as these are directly mapped in the controller options in LFS). So looks like Y20 is not talking to the wheel profiler software maybe?

Last edited by gezmoor, Thu 22 May 2008, 21:12.

Quote from morpha :

FYI a right-click equals ten left-clicks
€: and you can enter exact values by right-clicking the slider

I guess that's a classic case of RTFM then huh?

Ok well problem solved, case closed.

Thanks.

Currently when you want to change a value in a set, (eg rebound damping or gearing), you have to keep clicking to change it.

My suggestion is that if you click and hold down the mouse button the setting value starts to scroll.

For example if you want to change 1st gear from 2.030 to 3.125, you can use the slider which brings it roughly close but then you have to click the pointer at either end of the slider, (usually around 10-30 times), to get the exact value you want. I think it would be better if once you get approximately there using the slider you can hold down the pointer and the value will just increase or decrease automatically in what ever the increment value is for that particular setting, (eg gearing would be 0.001).

Thoughts?

Simple idea really.

Don't loose the set that someone has sent you when they/you go to spectate or pit etc.

It would be better if you could receive a set at any time. At the moment you have to be in pits or race and so do they. If either of you go to spectate or a new race starts etc you loose the set they sent and have to ask for it again. I'm assuming this is because the set isn't actually sent until you get to the "save" point.
It would be better if the set were actually sent to your pc and automatically saved with their name at the time they send it to you. Then when you go to the pit you will find it there whatever happens "in game", at which time you can rename it as you please. I don't really see the purpose of having to manually "pick up" sets that have been sent.

Another way of doing it might be to have a "request setup" (RS) next to the driver name on the connections list. This will pop up a request on their screen telling them who's reqesting and they can choose to send, deny. This will pop up text on the requesters screen saying "<driver> denied request" or "setup received from <driver>"