Quote from STROBE :

The only problem is... I don't play it anymore. Oh, I've tried. I stopped playing regularly in (I think) Nov 2008, and in November or December this year I set my wheel up again, thinking a year's abstinence would've re-ignited my fire.

But it didn't.

I didn't recognise any of the servers, other than the always-reliable (and superbly clean) Dead Men Racing, but that isn't always populated. I didn't recognise any of the racers, the regular names I used to see when I was racing actively weren't to be seen. Worst of all, it felt as though everyone around me was a complete liability based on some of the racecraft I saw. Instead of relishing a battle when side-by-side with someone, I would find myself dreading getting too close to someone. I didn't know them, I didn't trust them, regardless of how fast they were or what team colours they were dressed in.

Interesting post, I have been through this experience myself more than once in LFS over the years. In deed it is the whole pick up racing thing with people you know that has always been the x factor in LFS for me. Not tied into a league but not racing with strangers.

My first experiences were jumping onto the SRT server (which later became Team400) with the numerous friendly characters around at that time. It is teams that run and admin public pick up servers that have provided the fantastic racing environments in LFS over the years. The reality is there is still servers out there that do provide those environments but they don't stay static, it takes a lot of dedication, time and effort to run such servers and as a consequence they wane and die over time but others come along and replace them.

This though makes it quite difficult for a returning old player to find a place to fit in as he has these reference points which were established after months (probably even years) of LFS time, and is hoping to fit right back in with minimal effort. The reality is though to get back some of that early magic you have to more than likely put in several months of effort to find and develop a group of guys you race with regularly again, and this can be frustrating for an experienced player.

Quote from Mango Juice :

But surely faster development would most likely be more profit. Especially since LFS isn't incredibly popular, quicker development would guarantee more profit.

Not really, iRacing has had huge dollars and big teams thrown at it, yet at the times I'm on it isn't substantially busier than LFS was up until recently.
The primary difference is that iRacing does not give you the freedom of choice that LFS does and therefore more effectively concentrates racers.

The paradox is that it is the freedom of choice that has always attracted me to LFS which may be a part of it's undoing.

LFS in many ways is a much more finished and polished product than iRacing. Neither sim is perfect and both could be much better than the other with what I see as finishing touches. I don't think the race is over between sims just yet, but the next year will be decisive I think.

Event organisers need to be held to a higher account than the drivers imo.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Stunning reflexes! He didn't have time to be terrified, he just carried on controlling the car in a rational way. Very impressive!

When something like that happens though that is what your brain does automatically, everything goes into ultra slow motion and you react calmly and rationally, it's only afterwards you go sh!t that was close

I've had several similar incidents with live stock and wild life at various points in my life, the worst was coming around a bend at 3am in the morning at 130+ km/h in a remote section of highway which passes through cattle station country in a suziki vitara to find a dozen cows asleep on the road and off to the verge. I had no time to come to a stop and decided instantly that there might be just enough room to weave through them and that skidding might make them startle and move so I didn't jump on the anchors and instead weaved my way through them. There was no time for panic until after it was all over, the human mind has a powerful survival mechanism kick in under such circumstances

Their forum is http://proracingroom.com/phpbb3/index.php be patient about getting a reply though as they don't frequent it often

Yes I do see were your going with this and (from a none programmers point of view) don't see any reason why you wouldn't see some success with that route. I guess what I was trying to say is that from a human player point of view I suspect that AI base on a different method would most likely still end up lifeless and unrewarding to race against. As it is the fallible human aspect of racing that makes racing racing.

[edit]I guess how you implement the human fallibility aspect is what will make the difference to whether the AI is believable or not which is why I was musing about reading data (accuracy of measurement), interpreting data (knowing what to do) and reacting to data (whether or not reacting in a timely manner is possible) in a general sense. [/edit]

Last edited by Glenn67, Tue 8 Dec 2009, 15:08. Reason : didn't see above post before posting :p

Quote from jtw62074 :

Try using slip angles, rpm, position, and whatever else you can get directly at first.

Quote from blackbird04217 :

But if someone came and answered my question, "The AI needs to know about physics because. . ."

Are you assuming that humans aren't constantly interpreting physics data when they are driving or playing sport, etc? Because as humans we have very good equipment for interpreting our physical world with surprising accuracy when highly practised.

For example accomplished machine operators are able to judge the size of small gaps within a few thousands of an inch, a veteran grocer is able to estimate by feel within a few grams how much a bunch of bananas weigh, an accomplished golfer is able to judge very accurately the amount of force required along with an appropriate trajectory of the ball to get a hole in one allowing for wind, temperature, humidity and distance among other things. Likewise an experienced sniper can hit a target from a long distance allowing for similar factors. A highly tuned ear of a veteran sound technician can isolate one frequency out of thousands in a concert or recording situation and make the necessary adjustments to improve the sound quality. A prize winning photographer is able to asses a scene and compose a shot of a life time. The human body and mind can be trained to extraordinary levels of accuracy.

Effectively the whole human body is a bunch of sensors constantly receiving all manner of data that our central massively parallel computer is continually interpreting and then re-interpreting. So in my mind it is not a question of weather an AI should have physics data as input but that the physics input should be scaled in accuracy depending on the knowledge and experience of the AI, as it would be for humans. Also the other major flaw that humans have over AI is that our emotions can cloud or effect how we interpret the data we receive. Which is the very thing that makes racing what it is, if it wasn't for this one aspect racing would be entirely frustrating and unrewarding!

So an AI's ability to interpret data accurately also needs to vary in real time depending on what's happening around them and also on there current confidence level, etc. I.e in a race as a human you can start out with a quite optimism which if luck goes your way might build to supreme confidence, then if something happens to rattle your cage your confidence might be shattered for a number of laps before building again to quite optimism towards the end of the race. Using that as an example of a drivers emotional state at different stages in the race, you will also notice that is closely linked to how accurately we are perceiving the physics of our world at each stage. In the quite optimism stage we are most likely judging distance and our reaction times are about average or slightly above our competitors, when we are supremely confident is when we feel like the car and our body are one and everything just has a natural flow and feels like we have ample time to read, interpret and react to any situation. On the other hand when our cage has been rattled we find our "racing mind" is being distracted by questioning thoughts of what we know, have my tyres gone off too much? did my suspension get damaged? I don't think I can go as fast as the other guy and I don't know why! When this happens we feel like the signals our body is receiving are out of sync with how the car is reacting and we find ourselves struggling to read, interpret and react to situations as they arise.

So in my mind it's not the data that the AI use that needs to be scrutinised so much as the way that data is read then interpreted and finally acted upon to make it more human like.

Circumstance similar happened to my wife many years ago with an unmarked police car, she actually was afraid it was some idiot that could be out to harm her. She tried slowing down, etc which didn't work and then decided to speed up to get away from the potential danger. Again on empty dual lane roads late at night as soon as she got above 10km/h over the speed limit the flashing lights came on and she was pulled over and given a ticket! When my wife got home she was still shaken by the thought it could have been someone out to harm her. This was from two young cops, their training really should cover rules of engagement with the public in unmarked cars that take into account how the public might perceive the situation if they act with intent without making it clear that they are police. We were very young at the time so didn't pursue it, if it happened now I'd definitely consider it.

Wow I just went and checked out iRacing website out of curiosity and the first thing that caught my eye was a news article about Wyatt Gooden taking out the VW TDI Cup serries with Modoff a close second

I remember meeting Gooden when he first got into LFS some 4 or 5 years ago and telling him he would be faster than me in no time Well sure enough it didn't take him and Modoff long to be super quick, to see him go on and now get the opportunity to a real life drive through winning an iRacing serries brings a smile to my dial Well done WGooden and Modoff best of luck to the both of you in your futures

Quote from Matrixi :

How about sorting out the physics engine so those unrealistic setups would become awkward to drive like they would be in real life, instead of overcoming the physics problem with limited setups?

That's my preference also and is what we will be edging towards with the new physics arriving here soon.

But I think we will still be some way off from where I hope we will be one day. The most needed enhancement in physics going forward is to get away from the perfect static environmental physics we currently have. Particularly important imo is dynamic rubberised racing line that can also be set like wind atm, variable marbles and dirt off the racing line, track temperature variation in real time along with differences in shaded and sunny positions, changing light conditions both from time of day and moving cloud cover, rain, etc...

Having said all that though I do want to see the option for limited set ups in the road cars for one main reason, it would be a good entry point for new players as they can feel confident that others are running similar set ups to what they have and can learn how to make set up changes at a basic level rather than be thrown into the deep end.

Last edited by Glenn67, Wed 2 Dec 2009, 01:34.

It is caused by diff settings and was very noticeable before pre-load was introduced.

You can influence this behaviour by tweaking either or both coast locking and pre-load. Although the effect can actually be used to advantage. I generally prefer a more open coast and pre-load setting over a tight coast setting especially in longer races because it protects you from over revving and damaging your engine if you down shift a bit too soon.

Quote from Napalm Candy :

Ok, now search for a Formula1 Video and see the tyre deformation and compare to BF1

If you can't see any difference I don't know what think...

Don't forget one of the main side effects of the 'current' physics is that it looks very likely that the outside tyres in a turn are able too take more load than they should, which would naturally equate to more tyre flex.

We can be fairly certain that 'tyre load sensitivity' is one of the key areas that Scawen has/is working on in the new physics.

Also as much as we go on about LFS physics tyre design within LFS, they would still be a rather simple and unrefined tyre compared to even performance tyres in real life let alone formula 1 tyres, much like the new ESP in the VW will be a much simpler version of the real thing

Last edited by Glenn67, Sun 29 Nov 2009, 23:34.

Some more info to add (from another thread) which I think might be related.

Quote from Napalm Candy :

With no test patch forum I post here.

I have a problem/bug and is doing a full screen in Win7 some times only I see a black screen (I'm using 3 screens with TH2GO 3840x1024), if I press shift+F9 it go to full screen I see the main menu and instantly it go to windows desktop again, if I click on the LFS icon on the task bar, again go to LFS and return to windows desktop.

Is strange because I restart LFS 2 times and no changes in the problem, only I can saw LFS in windowed mode (with shift+F4) so I the cam to record, first I put on english language and then I put the 3840x1024 and.. all run fine again. So the problem it is not the language because when I was writing this I test again and I had the same problem when push shift+F9. The only way to restore it with Shift+F4 and the put the rigth resolution.

That's the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOxPuKnuhc

What I made in the video was... I click on full screen TH2GO resolution, go to black screen, I press shift+F4, then another low resolution (1 monitor) show for a teenth LFS on screen an minimize automacaly to windows task bar, I click on the task bar icon, and again show for a teenth and minimize again, again I click on icon and speedy shift+F4, click on the full screen TH2GO resolution and works.

The problem is now I can't do fullscreen only works in windowed mode. I have a nVidia 8800GT with the lastest drivers and W7 32-bit. The problem was become after Z25~Z28 and it is randomize (like in the video), sometimes works sometimes no...

Quote from Glenn67 :

In graphics options set 'Full Scene Antialiasing' to none then try again.

If that fixes it it could be the same problem I and others are having at higher resolutions with TH2G and Win 7.

Quote from Napalm Candy :

Thanks, thats solved the problem I put AAx4 (I got AAx8) and run fine

In graphics options set 'Full Scene Antialiasing' to none then try again.

If that fixes it it could be the same problem I and others are having at higher resolutions with TH2G and Win 7.

Quote from Gimpster :

Just who are you calling an "Old Timer"?

Well anyone that had LFS between 2002 and late 2003 is definitely old timers in LFS terms even if their age is 20 and lets see you are 37 and had LFS also in the 2002 - 2003 bracket so your definitely an old timer

I myself only started out in LFS in early 2004 so I am only just scrapping into that bracket of old timers by the slimiest of margins, so taking that into account with my age of 42 I reckon in LFS terms I'm about your age or possibly even younger than you you old fart

Quote from Mp3 Astra :

Poor TBOs, they get so tired so easily

Yeah I'm hoping the new physics improvements will freshen up those poor tbo's a bit myself

Quote from pearcy_2k7 :

ajp you need to seriously stop brown nosing or whatever your trying to do, i only ever see you post after tristan and that's either to copy what he's already said or back him up in a discussion hes having with someone, its getting really tiring...

Posts like yours are more tiring tbo :rolleyes:

Quote from danowat :

Obviously you care enough to post that ya tool

And I care

The more people that play LFS regularly the better, and if you can encourage experienced people back to make up that number all the better

So I can whole heartedly say that I hope future improvements in LFS do bring back many many old timers

Set up restrictions have been discussed many times over the years, I'm certain Scawen has taken on board those discussions (he says as much in the first post) and will implement a system that fits and works well with LFS keeping in mind LFS intended audience and the current LFS community. Although as always you will not be able to keep everyone happy

More info at following post by Scawen:

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1316239#post1316239

Snip from post...

Quote from Scawen :

unlimited setups - we will not take away that ability. The idea is that it will be a host option. Maybe the default will be limited setups and the option will be "Allow extreme setups" or maybe the other way round.

Anyway the important thing is there will be hosts you can join with limited setups. For most road cars that would be very limited (like : tyre pressure and toe). For LRF cars there would be some extra adjustments (like damping and anti-roll bars). Racing cars would allow a lot more adjustments. Other hosts would allow extreme setups. Possibly the extreme setups could one day go further than they do now.

Last edited by Glenn67, Fri 27 Nov 2009, 01:24.

Quote from Dygear :

I have a 2003 Hyundai Elantra (Try not to laugh to hard), and it's road performance his gradually degrading with time, I'm looking for something that will help it out over all.

Replace the shockies with slightly heavier duty ones, replace all your suspension bushes with better quality ones and check all suspension related nuts and bolts are tightened to spec that along with the above mentioned brake fliud, pads and tyres.

Quote from Mr_0ddball :

i have no unlocks left...

You get allocated new unlocks regularly and additionally Scawen did say that enough unlocks would be available to cover the situation as explained on the Z28 download post irc

Really looking forward to a test drive and having to adjust set-ups and driving style to the new physics, which is always the most fun times in LFS for me

Thanks for the report.

PS - AI improvements would be great also, there is a one thing that bugs me with the AI at the moment (other than the obvious bugs) it is that when you position your car on their inside on the exit of a corner (sometimes even on the entry and often mid corner also) they pretty much stop in their tracks rather than race you.
If the AI detect they are being squeezed and there is not enough racing room then perhaps just a momentary lift off of the throttle is sufficient. At the moment it is too easy to overtake the AI in this circumstance as they drop too far behind and are then not in a position to race you any further.

Also AI being more human like would make it much more interesting i.e. their driving ability fluctuates during a race depending on their own ability rating, the length of a race, being under pressure, trying to catch an opponent, etc.

Quote from Scawen :

It could be an LFS bug or a drivers / DirectX bug. Although the other games work, it's possible there is a bug in the DirectX8 implementation.

I don't know how to find out exactly what is wrong but we could try a few things :

1) Does LFS work in a smaller 3 screen mode?
2) What about on a wide desktop? Try stretching or maximising an LFS window instead of going full screen.
3) What about a lower memory mode, like 16 bit instead of 32 - and try a 16 bit Z-buffer.
4) Does it crash in all screens, such as the entry screen, or only in-game?

Which LFS version are you using? Patch Z or Test Patch Z15?

Just to add to this, as above everything worked fine with XP SP3. I have changed no hardware but have done a clean install of Windows 7 64bit and installed all the latest versions of drivers software for nvidia GTX260 (191.07) and TH2G (1.0.0.6) also installed a clean full version of LFS S2 Z25.

I get the exact same symptoms as atledreier in all circumstances he has described.

1) Does LFS work in a smaller 3 screen mode? (Yes AA works in all modes 3840x1024 32bit and below and works at 5040x1050 32 bit without AA)
2) What about on a wide desktop? Try stretching or maximising an LFS window instead of going full screen. (AA works at 5040x1050 32 bit when LFS is in windowed mode and stretched across three screens)
3) What about a lower memory mode, like 16 bit instead of 32 - and try a 16 bit Z-buffer. (Going 16 bit Z-buffer doesn't help, 16 bit 5040x1050 is not an available option to try)
4) Does it crash in all screens, such as the entry screen, or only in-game? (It crashes in all screens including the entry screen when enabling AA)

Note: I can enable AA manually from within the Nvidia control panel ok.

Quote :

Version=1
EventType=APPCRASH
EventTime=129030281304878501
ReportType=2
Consent=1
UploadTime=129030281306098571
ReportIdentifier=b019e61d-d44e-11de-8a00-00248c8581ba
IntegratorReportIdentifier=b019e61c-d44e-11de-8a00-00248c8581ba
WOW64=1
Response.type=4
Sig[0].Name=Application Name
Sig[0].Value=LFS.exe
Sig[1].Name=Application Version
Sig[1].Value=0.0.0.0
Sig[2].Name=Application Timestamp
Sig[2].Value=4ae878e7
Sig[3].Name=Fault Module Name
Sig[3].Value=d3d8.dll
Sig[4].Name=Fault Module Version
Sig[4].Value=6.1.7600.16385
Sig[5].Name=Fault Module Timestamp
Sig[5].Value=4a5bd9a7
Sig[6].Name=Exception Code
Sig[6].Value=c0000005
Sig[7].Name=Exception Offset
Sig[7].Value=0004bf62
DynamicSig[1].Name=OS Version
DynamicSig[1].Value=6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
DynamicSig[2].Name=Locale ID
DynamicSig[2].Value=3081
DynamicSig[22].Name=Additional Information 1
DynamicSig[22].Value=4709
DynamicSig[23].Name=Additional Information 2
DynamicSig[23].Value=4709938665fa84e3ff99c8cbe11223bb
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DynamicSig[24].Value=05f4
DynamicSig[25].Name=Additional Information 4
DynamicSig[25].Value=05f442b71746d20c505b558ad13d7ce5
UI[2]=C:\Program Files (x86)\LFS\LFS.exe
UI[3]=LFS.exe has stopped working
UI[4]=Windows can check online for a solution to the problem.
UI[5]=Check online for a solution and close the program
UI[6]=Check online for a solution later and close the program
UI[7]=Close the program
LoadedModule[0]=C:\Program Files (x86)\LFS\LFS.exe
LoadedModule[1]=C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ntdll.dll
LoadedModule[2]=C:\Windows\syswow64\kernel32.dll
LoadedModule[3]=C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
LoadedModule[4]=C:\Windows\syswow64\USER32.dll
LoadedModule[5]=C:\Windows\syswow64\GDI32.dll
LoadedModule[6]=C:\Windows\syswow64\LPK.dll
LoadedModule[7]=C:\Windows\syswow64\USP10.dll
LoadedModule[8]=C:\Windows\syswow64\msvcrt.dll
LoadedModule[9]=C:\Windows\syswow64\ADVAPI32.dll
LoadedModule[10]=C:\Windows\SysWOW64\sechost.dll
LoadedModule[11]=C:\Windows\syswow64\RPCRT4.dll
LoadedModule[12]=C:\Windows\syswow64\SspiCli.dll
LoadedModule[13]=C:\Windows\syswow64\CRYPTBASE.dll
LoadedModule[14]=C:\Windows\system32\WINMM.dll
LoadedModule[15]=C:\Windows\syswow64\WS2_32.dll
LoadedModule[16]=C:\Windows\syswow64\NSI.dll
LoadedModule[17]=C:\Windows\system32\DINPUT8.dll
LoadedModule[18]=C:\Windows\system32\DSOUND.dll
LoadedModule[19]=C:\Windows\syswow64\ole32.dll
LoadedModule[20]=C:\Windows\system32\POWRPROF.dll
LoadedModule[21]=C:\Windows\syswow64\SETUPAPI.dll
LoadedModule[22]=C:\Windows\syswow64\CFGMGR32.dll
LoadedModule[23]=C:\Windows\syswow64\OLEAUT32.dll
LoadedModule[24]=C:\Windows\syswow64\DEVOBJ.dll
LoadedModule[25]=C:\Windows\syswow64\IMM32.dll
LoadedModule[26]=C:\Windows\syswow64\MSCTF.dll
LoadedModule[27]=C:\Windows\system32\d3d8.dll
LoadedModule[28]=C:\Windows\system32\VERSION.dll
LoadedModule[29]=C:\Windows\system32\d3d8thk.dll
LoadedModule[30]=C:\Windows\system32\dwmapi.dll
LoadedModule[31]=C:\Windows\system32\uxtheme.dll
LoadedModule[32]=C:\Windows\syswow64\SHELL32.dll
LoadedModule[33]=C:\Windows\syswow64\SHLWAPI.dll
LoadedModule[34]=C:\Windows\system32\nvapi.dll
LoadedModule[35]=C:\Windows\syswow64\WINTRUST.dll
LoadedModule[36]=C:\Windows\syswow64\CRYPT32.dll
LoadedModule[37]=C:\Windows\syswow64\MSASN1.dll
LoadedModule[38]=C:\Program Files (x86)\Matrox Graphics\PowerDesk\Matrox.PDesk.Hooks.dll
LoadedModule[39]=C:\Windows\syswow64\PSAPI.DLL
LoadedModule[40]=C:\Windows\system32\MSIMG32.dll
LoadedModule[41]=C:\Windows\system32\WTSAPI32.dll
LoadedModule[42]=C:\Windows\system32\newdev.dll
LoadedModule[43]=C:\Windows\system32\devrtl.DLL
LoadedModule[44]=C:\Windows\system32\profapi.dll
LoadedModule[45]=C:\Windows\system32\nvd3dum.dll
LoadedModule[46]=C:\Windows\system32\HID.DLL
LoadedModule[47]=C:\Windows\syswow64\CLBCatQ.DLL
LoadedModule[48]=C:\Windows\System32\MMDevApi.dll
LoadedModule[49]=C:\Windows\System32\PROPSYS.dll
LoadedModule[50]=C:\Windows\system32\AUDIOSES.DLL
LoadedModule[51]=C:\Windows\system32\avrt.dll
FriendlyEventName=Stopped working
ConsentKey=APPCRASH
AppName=LFS.exe
AppPath=C:\Program Files (x86)\LFS\LFS.exe

Main machine for LFS has been Win XP Pro since 2004 now SP3, secondary machine Ubuntu 9.10.

Voted for Win 7 as I'm about to upgrade main machine to Win 7 Pro 64 bit - the disk is sitting on my desk waiting for me to get off my ass I avoided the whole Vista life cycle but now will upgrade to Seven as I need to stay at least semi in touch with what's happening for supporting work PCs lol.

Quote from LRB_Aly :

Plain Z or Z25? Actually I installed a fresh Z copy 2 weeks ago. Still had the problem, bur gonna try again. Back in a minute

P.S. Nope same in fresh Z install

Sounds to me like an ISP problem, I had a similar problem a few weeks ago (but not the same) in that I suddenly couldn't connect to anything LFS. The forums, main site or the master server. It took my ISP the best part of a week to track down the problem and resolve it. I've learnt from experience that if you haven't changed anything since the last time you know it has worked then it will be almost 100% certain that it's an ISP problem

Quote from tristancliffe :

How many days/weeks until this car 'company' is never heard of again?

Haha

I don't think the guy making these cars cares if its a success or not he is having too much fun

Some various vids of skelta.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2U9mvb_2MU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pskvFZhM9h4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBccpQnEPm0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HUlyER-T50

http://www.skelta.com.au/

Last edited by Glenn67, Tue 10 Nov 2009, 13:45.