Troy is Swiss, isn't he? If so, and he joins, get ready to get your asses kicked! (If his LFS driving is anything to go by)

Sounds like a lot of fun, events like this. Actually I've never tried karting myself. Gotta do something about that some day.

I can't answer that of course, but I've found it pretty useful to download a setup from Setupfield or elsewhere, and then tweak it to be somewhere around half way between that and Bob's setup. If you play around with it you might get a pretty decent one.

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

Well compared to 6 months ago there are many more racers than before. When patch y came out LFS hit a new record of 1800 people online at once, small when compared to MMO's but for any type of racing game I don't think you will ever find a larger number.

For comparison, how are the figures for rFactor? Do they have a smaller or larger online community?

Quote from March Hare :

Well I for one am going to go increase the amount of online racers.
Want to join me on CTRA Race 2?

Sure! I'll be there in about three hours. Got some stuff that needs doing first.

On topic: as a n00b, I can't see myself getting tired of the content of the game as it is now for at least a couple of years. There are so many cars to learn, so many tracks.. but I can defnitely see that for the veterans, a new track would be nice. However, I think that if the devs have to choose between new tracks and physics improvements, I think they should definitely go with the latter, because it will benefit everyone in the community. The veterans will have to learn the game again (kind of), bringing it extra longevity for them, and the n00bs will find the game even more appealing than it already is.

That looks amazing! It's pretty impressive that it can be as good as that with only 1 LED. I mean, three I can understand, but only 1?

I can somewhat understand that it's hard to get the directional stability of the car right when using FreeTrack. But are you sure that it's not just a steep learning curve, and that once you've practiced enough with it you'll get comfortable? Sounds to me that given enough practice it can be a pretty useful tool.

I'm going to visit my brother later this week, and I'll ask if I can borrow his 1-LED reading lamp thingy. Will report back here when I've tried it.

What are MHR benchmarks?

I love your cap!

I'll see what I can find. I think my brother might have one of those LED reading lamp thingies laying around. I'll ask him.

Thanks!

Yep, I meant shift!

Any luck, Racerjon?

Process lines? Do you mean the Windows bar with the Start-menu icon on it? If so, your window is probably not maximized. Try pressing Alt+F4 or Alt+4 in LFS. (can't remember which... I hope it's correct)

If it doesn't work, post again.

Hm.. I see. It would be very nice to try it out, though, and see for myself.

What LED system did you use? I'm having trouble getting my bike lamp to work, even though I've followed the manual. Maybe my webcam has an IR filter..

Yet another reason to play LFS instead of GTR2!

Quote from [RF]-art555 :

It works with one LED just fine for me. One LED might be even more accurate at measuring basic movements as the site says.

Now real question: Who really finds it usefull in LFS. To me its too hard to get used to. I use around 80* FOV and I was going to use it just for glances on the mirrors, but its too difficult to get used for me

Does your 1 LED setup work such that when you look to the side and then look straight ahead again, you're looking straight ahead in the car again? The problem for me was that it wouldn't keep up with my head movement.

Can you explain why you find it difficult to use? I guess it might be difficult to put into words, but it would be nice..

Wow, this program sounds promising!! I downlaoded it and tried it. However...

Quote from Takumi_lfs :

I'm having problems with 1 led.

I can see it moving but the head of the program also in game doesnt move the way i want.

in-short

Any suggestions?

... I have the same problem. I'm using an old bike lamp. I've covered all but one of the LEDs with black tape, so that shouldn't be a problem. I've also installed the setup file above. However, in game, It only partially works.. for instance, if I look to the left it will work, but then when I look straight ahead again it doesn't align properly. Quite annoying.

I'm thinking it might be because I'm only using 1 LED? Unfortunately I don't have a soldering iron.. I guess I need to be creative and figure out a way.

Quote from HVS5b :

Excellent, I know what I'm doing for the next few evenings then

Seems like you're not the only one -- right now there's 22 people online!! I had a few drinks tonight, so I'm afraid I won't join, but I'll be there tomorrow night! Seems like Race 2 is cured!

Two things I can think of:

1) are you using AA and AF? These can lower performance quite a bit. Try adjusting them a little.
2) as for the 1-2 second stuttering: might want to increase the priority of LFS in task manager, in case it's some other process that's using a lot of processor cycles every now and then.

Quote from The Moose :

+1
I'd say increase the number of tracks for each server.

The lack of tracks in LFS is what is keeping my interest low at the moment.

The lack of tracks for each CTRA server is even more of a problem.

OK, fair enough. I'm just trying to figure a way of getting more people to race on Race 2 instead of just everyone congregating on Race 1. I think a new approach might be in order, but I'm not sure what.. Surely the population of racers with Silver+ should be big enough to have a decent bunch of racers on Race 2 as well?

Quote from atlantian :

wait, do you stop your front wheels or rear wheels in trail braking?

Hm.. maybe I used the term wrong.. anyway, I do the following when approaching hairpins/acute turns at high speed:

• Approach a corner and apply full brakes while following a straight line
  
• Ease off brakes a little as I approach apex, but still braking quite a lot. This causes more vertical loading on the front wheels, which gives better traction and hence I can turn more/faster. The rear wheels will be slipping slightly (but not spinning out), as the rear end of the car wants to keep going along the straight line.
  
• Once the front of the car is pointing where I want, I countersteer (straighten up the car) while gently applying throttle.
  

In the XFG/XRT this works pretty well. I normally use 66-69% brake bias to get this effect.

I don't know, but it feels like I can go faster with this technique as I can approach a turn at higher speed and exit with the same speed, or maybe also faster.

Quote from samjh :

Speed is important, but speed without consistency won't get you anywhere but a gravel trap.

In the tight corners, I like to use trail braking, with quite a lot of braking force on my rear wheels. This makes it easier to point the car in the direction I want to go early, so I can come back to full throttle earlier. (I'm using this in the XRG/XRT)

Rear wheel drive FTW!

It's not supposed to be something you carry around, though. It's supposed to be like an external hard drive -- you hook it up when you're at home, thus giving you the same graphics performance as a desktop. I think it's a good idea!

Quote from james_bskt :

ha! i said to my mate last week they should make something like that, external bits for laptops such as graphics or RAM and he said i was being ridiculus. can you say which companies are working on it so i can back up my argument (and hopes)

Found it! ASUS has already released one such product, actually: Here's a link. Uses external PCI-E for connection.

Quote from word. :

Set the Logitech profiler to 720 degrees
Set LFS in game settings to 720 degrees
Set wheel turn compensation to 1.0


This will give you 1:1 matching for all the cars, but you will only get FFB stops at 720 degrees

This is what I use. Could someone tell me the main advantage of using less degrees of rotation? Does the wheel get significantly quicker/stronger, or do you just use it to make it easier to catch a spin and control the car?

What about reducing the number of tracks? At least for me, it's a bit overwhelming to have to learn so many tracks. I need to practice offline before I join the server, and since the applet that's supposed to show how long it is till server change doesn't work properly (as explained in the other thread) it's kind of hard. If there were fewer tracks to choose from we could learn them all by heart offline first, eliminating the problem.

Quote from Dajmin :

I reckon bare minimum based on my experiences...

1.5Ghz CPU / 512Mb RAM / 128Mb GeForce 5

That CPU would absolutely die with a full field of AIs on-screen though, and I suspect it wouldn't like a cockpit view of a full grid either.

Ranking CPUs in terms of GHz only doesn't really work any more though.. a 1,5 GHz Pentium M would be far better than a Pentium 4 running at the same frequency (just like a 3,2 GHz Pentium 4 would be absolutely owned by a 2,4 GHz Core2Duo even in applications using only one core)

About the GPUs for laptops: Several companies are working with ways of connecting external GPUs to a laptop. So that you'd have an integrated graphis solution in the PC itself, and then when you got back home you could hook it up to an external graphics solution (kind of like a portable hard drive). I don't know when it's coming out on the market, though, but I know they're working on it.

Quote from CasseBent :

This does bring up an important subject. Do conjoined triplets have to pay for separate licenses?

Can't believe I didn't spot this comment before. I just laughed hard!