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Hallen
S3 licensed
I agree that there are a lot of challenging corners out there. To me, there is a difference between Challenging, and Dangerous. The corners that Becky talks about are dangerous in that in order to go fast over them, you have to take a line that would never be used in the real world and if you don't hit them just perfect, you wreck.

I prefer corners that are challenging to get right and if you don't, you lose time and possibly wreck, but can also be taken reasonably fast if you don't get it just perfect.

Aston National turn 1 to me is a cool corner. It is tough to get it perfect. You always feel you could get just a bit more out of that corner. The last turn on WE1 is very similar. I like both of these corners in both directions because of that.

I don't like some of the chicanes, like FE Club R on the back ~straight and the chicane on KY3 coming off the oval section. I consider these dangerous corners. People take unreasonable lines over those curbs that will work 7 times out of 10, but will wreck you the rest of the time. In order to be fast on those tracks, you have to drive that way (lines that would never be used in real life). I prefer chicanes like the revised Blackwood chicane, possibly the chicane on the back-side of WE1 and some others where you take some curb to be fast but not a lot, and requires skill and throttle control instead of random chance to be fast.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from SpaceMarineITA :Last thing about RF:

after 1.150 patch, rf evolved a lot from hallen point of view in the last page.

FF is now better, and cars are more comunicative.
In a certain sense it seems less permissive on errors, infact when i play rf and then return to lfs i feel to drive a bit more clean, quite less aggressive (not faster eh).

However if u are a good driver on rf or lfs you are good on the other too.
Only thing that you need a lot more on rf then lfs is a good setup making experience

Nope, I am using the 1.150 version and have also tried the BMW Sauber.

There are things about the game that I know I don't like because there is no description of what things mean and what type of car each is, etc. This is a learning problem on my part, but rF should make it more intuitive and easier to figure out. I am no computer dummy, but I have as of yet figured out what "digital rate" means for a controller setup. Most of the cars are undriveable if you use 720° or even worse at 900° with a DFP. I am still twiddling with the FF and controller settings trying to find something I like.

It does not change the fact that you still can't feel what the car is doing very well and the car's reactions seem somewhat "canned". Please don't get me wrong, it is still much better than a lot of games out there, it just isn't to my tastes as far as the physics and interface goes.
Hallen
S3 licensed
I have not attempted rFactor online, but I do own a copy and have raced it quite a bit at home. I can tell you that car setups are very different than LFS and there are some annoying quirks in their physics. You need a much more powerful GPU and computer to get decent frame rates out of rFactor as compared to LFS. The sound is really, really bad. Tire scrub and squeal is very uncommunicative. The engine sounds are really bad samples that don't tell you squat about what the car is doing.

All the cars will understeer with just a slight turn of the wheel when you are at anything above 30mph. You really can't dial this out of the cars with setup. You can make the cars oversteer, but only when you don't want them to. It is almost like weight shift is not modeled in the sim.

The reason I have it is because I do occasionally want to drive on tracks that exist in the real world and because I am playing around a bit with track modding. rFactor does offer this capability. There are a lot of bad tracks out there, and some really odd mods, but there are some pretty good ones too. Overall, as compared to older EA games, rFactor is better, but it still comes nowhere close to the driving experience you get in LFS. rFactor can be fun, but it is also frustrating because the cars just don't behave like you expect them to. The AI are far better in rFactor as compared to LFS though.

I have tried the nKPro demo, and found it felt and drives very much like rFactor. The sound is even worse in nK Pro. I also had some trouble with frame rates.

So, sorry for not being able to tell you about online use... I really should try it out there too.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Sorry about the point and spray comment I guess I should read more carefully.

A lot of the older FFB wheels use a belt between the motor and the steering wheel. Your belt could be just plain worn out so it slips causing this strange lack of FFB consistency. If you are running some Sidewinder application to control the wheel settings, try turning it off and only use the control panel settings and LFS settings... just an idea, it might not help.

The brake locking thing is something I struggle with on several cars. It is worse on the GTR type cars than the street cars. Basically, the wheels stop turning because of the amount of brake pressure, you don't really hear the lockup, but since you don't have the clutch in, it basically kills the engine. Since the engine doesn't really shut off, the affect is your RPMs drop considerably. When you release the brake , the RPMs are still low for the speed you are going, so the rear wheels stay locked for a while because of engine braking. It can be very hard to deal with. Again, try reducing the amount of rear brake bias and overall braking amount. It should clear it up mostly.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Lets not get off topic on how the tires look when worn. That is a completely different topic.

I do agree that it would be nice to balance the classes. But it is not going to be simple. I think I understand what Gimpster is saying, reduce some of the variables so that balancing can happen more easily. With that, I would agree. However, I think by doing this, you will greatly reduce the unique feel of each car. Sure, FWD and RWD difference will be there, but I bet you will lose some of the unique feel of the cars. I love the different feel in the cars and would like to keep as much of that as possible.

A lot of real racing series use different methods to balance cars. Weight restrictions, inlet air restrictors to reduce HP (but generally not a HP limit), fender flair size, wheel size, displacement limits on engines... only complete spec series use HP limits per say. ALMS or LMS uses weight limits, air restrictors, and other things that preserve the unique aspects of each car, whilst trying to make it possible for all car types to be competitive. We have more of a controlled environment so we can balance classes without having to lose the unique feel of each car. A XR GT should be heavier than a XF GTi. The HP output should be different. That is what makes the cars unique and more like the real world. What I am afraid your suggestion would lead to is a single car class that just happens to have FWD, RWD and AWD options with different shapes, but no real character differences in the feel of the cars.

The issue I have with the tires revolves around wear rates and temp.
With R2 tires, in most cases it is almost impossible to wear them out. You reach an overtemperature condition long before you wear the tires out. The temperature gets to the point where they are undriveable. It might be that we all drive the cars too hard and slide them around too much compared to the real world. However, as it sits now, R2's are really only good for qualifying runs or a couple of hotlaps before they are so hot, you can't drive on them. This seems unreasonable to me. R2's should be really good for 2 laps, then drop in grip a lot and then hold steady over the next x laps until nearing the end of the available tread, they start trailing off again quickly. This should be associated with the tread remaining, not just a function of temperature like we have now. If you don't overdrive the R2's during a race, you can keep the temps down, but then you are as slow if not slower then the cars running R3 tires. There just seems to be something wrong with this.

Second, I think excess camber should not necessarily cause overtemp on the inside patch after a lap like it does. However, after a few laps, you should definitely see a lot more wear on the inside patch compared to the rest of the tire. Yes, it should be hotter too, but not overtemp (unless you are spinning tires or sliding a lot).

My point is that real tires should not be going to an overtemp condition so easily.
For the road type tires, we have a bit of a problem. They don't wear very fast... just like real life. You can run a 50 lap race at BL and you should still have tread left. However, road tires will get hot easier and become undriveable if you do try and overdrive the tires. I don't think we see this enough with the road tires. Club racers often use the same tires for several races, or even a whole season. I doubt we could model this in LFS, which is OK, but we should do something about the heating.

So, I guess the tires come down to the issues of the race tires overheating too quickly or easily and not wearing quickly enough, and the road tires not overheating enough when being over-driven.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from alland44 :It`s not about piracy. It`s all about freedom.

I have got 2 windows 3.0 - 1 Win 95 - 3 Win 98 and 2 Xp licenses. Bougth fair and square. Bill Gates wants to control the computers of the world, that`s the simple answer to that. Every two years, one have to buy a new OS, from this greedy company. I`m feed up with this way of capitalism, and if that is what americans have to show the world, they can step down as "ruler of the world" because you have failed 100%

What you americans call capitalism, I call GREED ! As simple as that

lol, you're funny
Nobody is forcing you to buy any of this stuff. You get it because you want something out of it, either entertainment, communications, or because you want to make money with it. If you want better stuff in the future (and not too distance future) you have to pay for it. It is the nature of the beast that older technology does not play well with newer technology. You can't make everything backwards compatible.

I don't know enough about DRM to have much of an opinion on it yet other to say that I don't like the idea of software telling me what I can and cannot do with my computer. If I want something, I buy it. I don't share it and I don't give it to other people. Having said that, you don't own the software or the music you buy. You own a license to use the product. I can understand wanting to protect your products from piracy, especially if you sell to a relatively small community. LFS does a good job of this. However, I cannot support invasive systems that won't allow me to use my computer the way I want to use it.

LFS Graphics are good now. However, it is not perfect. You can still tell you are looking at computer generated graphics. Some day, it might get hard to distinguish from computer generated graphics and real life. I don't want more eye candy now at the expense of other features. However, especially for a racing game, there are some things that just make it better. Much, much higher resolutions would help. Being able to see things more clearly, at a much longer distance would help. You can't really do that now with what we have technically, not even with DX10. Continual improvement is important, but each step needs to be carefully evaluated based on the goals for what you want to accomplish.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from DanneDA :I have some questions regarding the FFB in LFS.

1. Should the wheel have the same resistance in the wheel when turning at 5 % and at 200 %? Mine does this. However the resistance isn't the same when used, sometimes it's light, sometimes it's heavy.

You contradict yourself there. I am not sure what you are asking. The FFB will react to the drivers' input and the physics affecting the car. You will feel differences in resistance throughout the spectrum depending on what is happening.

Quote from DanneDA :
2. When getting oversteer, should the wheel lose nearly all resistance when trying to correct the oversteer? Mine does this too.

Depends a bit on the car and the settings, but generally, yes. The steering should get a bit lighter when you are understeering.

Quote from DanneDA :
3. When reversing should the wheel go to full lock when only slightly turning the wheel? Seen the pattern? Yeah, mine does this too.

Probably not. What are your settings? Typically, in LFS you should set the FFB overall amont to where you like it, both in the wheel settings and in LFS. Set the spring effect and damping to 0. Most people say to leave the centering spring on, but set to 0.

Quote from DanneDA :
And a final question:

How would I go about to clean my wheel without canned air?

Uh, just point and spray?

Quote from DanneDA :Oh and before I forget,

Is it reasonable for a car to lose all revs when braking without locking the wheels and still going 70 kph+?

This has nothing to do with FFB. It seems that the brakes can completely lock the drivetrain without locking the wheels, or there is a bug where the wheels are locked, but not squeeling, I am not sure which it is. Anyway, try reducing the brake amount you have set for the car or moving the brake bias further forward (or rearward on a FWD car). This seems to mostly happen with the LSD diff on the higher powered cars, so you might try the locked diff.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from deggis :If your fps goes up and down e.g. from 30 to 100, it looks jerky. When you limit it to e.g. 76 it looks smoother because the difference between the highest and lowest value is smaller.

Hmmm, that may be true, but the main reason to limit FPS is your refresh rate of your monitor. Any higher of a frame rate might lead to some jerky frames, but that is because the frames are skiped by the monitor. If you can keep your frames at about the same speed as your refresh rate on your monitor, you won't be doing a bunch of unnecessary GPU work. The high speed GPU's are great for keeping things smooth up until turn 1 and for being able to run with max everything, but if your monitor is set at a 75Hz refresh rate, turn on V-sync and your GPU will match your screen frequency. Anything more than that is just cool to see.... wow! 150FPS!!!! But it ain't really doing you any good that way.

I run 75FPS pretty much all the time. I will get dips on a full grid, but not too bad. 3GHz Pentium, ATI X700 GPU, 2.5GB RAM.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from Jakg :i dont know why i say lag, it is like the whole game locks up for a fraction of a secodn

I see that from time to time at random intervals, but it happens off line mostly. I think it has something to do with another app, like my email program doing something that sucks up cycle times. It is not lag, but stuttering. Make sure that he doesn't have some process running all the time that decides to kick in while LFS is running. I am thinking about something like the SETI program or instant messenger or virus software.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from GTR_Yuni :Well, I did do chores but I never got jackshiz...

Sure you do get stuff for your choresillepall . Lets see...
A place to sleep
A bed
A pillow
Food... lots and lots of food
Free cable TV
Rides to the park or baseball game
I bet your parents even let you take showers at their place
Laundry service (or maybe just access to a free washer machine)
Need I go on?

Suck it up. You get everything else for free. Do some extra chores. Ask Dad if he will pay you $5 or $10 bucks to wash the cars (do a good job). Or maybe Mom will pay you to clean the bathrooms (everybody hates that job [especially if you have a little brother with bad aim]). In other words, earn it, and you will enjoy it that much more and maybe you will impress your Dad
Hallen
S3 licensed
+1
I am having more problems with this now with the U# patches than I used to with older versions. Now that could be because the wheel is getting worse, or LFS has become more sensitive to it. It's probably the wheel. Yet I know several other racers who have problems with this and it seems that a simple short sleep after each gear change would solve the problem. But what do I know?

My skips are pretty much always just one extra gear and mostly on gear up, not gear down.

Quote from DanneDA :Scawen,

Would it be possible in a compatible patch to add a delay for the next shift so that it wouldn't double shift? I am having major problems with this right now. I went from 2nd gear to 5th with 1 press of my shift button.

I'm out of money so I can't buy a new wheel... so it would be great if something like this could be implented...

Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from DEVIL 007 :Jesus.....are you really serious.... .Have you ever heard about V-sync off?

You still only get 60FPS On your display if you have a refresh rate of 60Hz, that is my understanding anyway. Read this:

http://www.neoseeker.com/Hardware/faqs/kb/10,42.html
Vsync should only be disabled when benchmarking so that the videocard and processor are not being limited by the display. Frame rates will appear higher with vsync off but the amount of information displayed is limited by your monitor in that instance. A monitor with an 85 Hz refresh rate will only display 85 frames per second even if the videocard is rendering 400 frames a second. The visual quality may decline as a result also because some frames could be skipped as a result of excess rendering so the interpolation between the first frame and the next frame displayed could be off resulting in 'tearing' or jerkiness.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Thanks for making me laugh guys. You see, I AM the Dad. My son (who is 18 and I get to kick out of my house soon ), is always on the computer playing (usually) WoW. I tell him, 5 minutes, then it is your brother's turn. A few minutes later there is a major fight out in the living room between the two... and it interupts my nice LFS race
Hallen
S3 licensed
Another reason you see people wanting locked diffs is because they don't want "one-wheel drive" like you get with an open diff. So, having a preference, and depending on the car and the track, welding an open diff to be a locked diff would make sense. You will have two wheels driving you off a corner instead of one.

I think another reason an LSD is preferred for racing IRL, is that if your inner driven wheel is spinning faster than it needs to becaue of a locked diff, you are needlessly using up some of your traction budget. Sure, inside wheels are less loaded, but they still contribute to the total traction budget.

LSD's are a compromise, trying to take the best of a locked diff for having two wheel drive coming off of corners, with the best of an open diff for cornering and driveline health. As with most compromises, there are problems but overall it works.

In LFS, LSD's seem a bit quirky, so that may be another reason people are using locked diffs. Under braking, you get that problem where the engine bogs down, which causes the driven wheels to lock once your release the brake because your engine revs are too low. Plus, there is no preload...
Hallen
S3 licensed
To answer your initial question, yes, I think the track widths are realistic. I think Aston is similar to current F1 tracks (for the most part)
Also, if you take the track in Portland for example. It's front straight is very wide because it doubles as a drag strip. The rest of the track is quite narrow. The point is different tracks will have different widths.

Part of the issue might be that you, like me, see most of the racing on TV or from the stands. That makes tracks look more narrow than they are.

Have you ever, gotten out of your car and walked across a major, multi-lane road? Doesn't that road look way bigger when you are on foot than in your car? I think this is a similar effect when watching from the sidelines.

More objects close to the track definitely elevate the sensation of speed. That is true in any situation, the closer the objects, the more you notice the speed.
I wouldn't mind more objects close to the track, but only where they make sense. I don't want to see stuff just to add to the sensation at speed. For me, I end up blocking out every thing but the track, my next turn in or braking point, and the other cars. The stuff on the sidelines I just ignore. It probably does add to the sense of speed, but I pretty much block it out.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from PLAYLIFE :Jakg was referring to earlier posts in this thread by Static:

That's how you read it, but not how I do. I read it as a Jakg either not reading the thread or just being argumentative


Quote from PLAYLIFE : Hallen, I guess you made a mistake of not reading the thread and not understanding the conversation. Just to finish it of like you did:
:pillepall Subject closed.Big grin

:pillepall
You should read the thread. Jakg kept repeating himself even after Static X applologized. Like I said, we all make mistakes, what more did Jakg want him to do?
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from St4Lk3R :hi there. here is a link to "Szwei", hosted by ocrana.racing.

http://www.ocrana.de/index.php ... ategory&filecatid=170

I have gone to the OCR site a number of times to download files, but I never see a download link or button. There is only one link, and it takes me back to the OCR home page...
What am I missing?
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from Jakg :the problem is you keep trying to blame other people when we can all see what happened!

Jeeesh, back off dude. He didn't blame other people, he said he made a mistake. He was just explaining his state of mind at the time.
We've all been there. Had a bunch of wreckers ruining races all day, you get a bit touchy about any contact with another car. The ban was uncalled for, Static-x agreed that he made a mistake, and fixed it. What more can you do?
Well, unless of course YOU never make mistakes, then feel free to keep rubbing the salt in.illepall Subject closed.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from thisnameistaken :Of course they are, that's the best bit. When I get one of the Formulas over 100mph I know I'm in safe territory, but when I get the LX6 over 100mph I know the slightest bump is going to upset it - that's what's fun about it!

The RAC and FZ5, admittedly, I don't drive online, but I have had fun with them offline and can see myself driving them more in future.

Off Topic
That is your set, not the car. I found the LX6 to be plenty stable at higher speeds. KY2 on the oval section you can stay flat out the whole way around.

On Topic
Any other rear wheel car would be great. Something in the range of the FXR would be great.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Train them for a while with low fuel. Then put full tanks in and watch them overshoot every corner.
I think they said it above. The AI drivers can't correct for changing conditions too well. Plus, the default line they drive on some tracks is just not right and any small change they go off.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from joen :Mouth to mouth advertising is the most effective marketing tool there is I found out about LFS through a topic on a tech forum I visit.
So go tell all your friends and spam forums kids

Word of mouth is currently the most effective thing for LFS, but it is not the most effective in general. Pretty much by definition, it is one person talking to one person. Effective would be one entity (magazine, commercial, website) that talks to many people.

Word of mouth is more powerful because you get a sense of belonging and more confidence when you are talking to a friend or a knowledgeable person.
Hallen
S3 licensed
I would agree that text delimiters make sense and make the code easier to read.
How else are you going to do conditional statments like

If x=1 say hello else say goodbye

and for that matter, if you do variables, would you have to delimit them with a /?

/If /x=1 /say hello /else /say goodbye

I also think that with a simple editor environment where keywords and commands are highlighted like in most dev environments, the / delimiter becomes redundant. It makes perfect sense in the text box to break out of chat mode and into script or command mode.

I'm sorry, but I have never written a scripting language, so I can't think of any situation where not having the / would be a problem.

SpeedScript is my vote for the script name
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from Gunn :Yes ITV gets purchased, but they don't show anything except for highlights and the race, then the podium and interviews in English. Instead we'll be stuck with re-runs of bloody NCIS or some other generic rubbish.

Yes, built in to LFS or into the dedi version I would like race and season management options. Or alternatively, a seperate application that gathered the info and processed it into a file that could be used to set up a race, throughout a season, and have the results collected and accumulated.

I don't know where you are, but both practice and full qualifying does get shown in the US and Canada. I think it is a great show and the back marker teams also get air time.
The extra time on the track does very little for the better teams. The extra telemetry gained in those sessions is minimal. Plus, the faster teams don't do hardly any track time in the first session, and as little as possible in the second. The slower teams spend the full 15 minutes in both if possible.
The only way a faster team does not make the final grid is if they get blocked by a slower car. This has happened, but you have to blame the team for that. They should be setting up their hot laps for the driver to try and insure a clear track. This problem also occurred with the original qualifying format. The only format that does not have this problem is the single lap system.
I think Becky hit the nail on the head, the fuel credit system is the problem. Let them run what they want, that is my opinion. But the league is trying to force the cars to be on the track for the majority of the time. In the old system, cars would just sit in the garage until the last possible moment, and then go out. This system insures that the cars are on the track.
If they got rid of the stupid two race rule for the engines, you would see even more cars on track because then they wouldn't be worried about the 10 slot penalty for replacing an engine.
Totally off topic, sorry
Hallen
S3 licensed
Quote from S14 DRIFT :As probably many others too, the worry of being bombarded with "spam" bans would come across of a worry.
I myself have aslo been banned in the past (not complaining because nothing can be done) for reasons 1) that have not been explained and 2) for not doing anything that anyone else would complain about.
Freinds could become irresponsibe and set up a "player banning barricade" - Where people who really dislike someone would pass the word on to their freinds who own/run/admin other servers.
People would then be banned for fun, leading to a 30 day ban for no problem.
I know, this occurnce will be rare, It is possible
IMO, people should have a new way of banning, something like "Mani-Admin" for Counter Strike Source, Where they press ban > Player > Whoevever > Reason > Bad Langauge + Replay auto saved to that of whoever being banned and the server operator, so irresposible bans can be combabted, and stopped.

Your situation described above can't happen. My server participates in the Wrecker Barricade system. If you get banned from a server, and your actions are reported via the system, and I ban you from my server while you are not on it, the ban will NOT get recorded by the dev's system. You could (and probably will) get banned by 20 or 30 servers all while you are offline, but these bans won't be recorded in the dev's system.

The only way you are going to get the warning and the 30 day ban is if you get banned from a server while you are on that server. You then have to go to another server and get banned again... do this multiple times in a short period. You will really have to go out of your way to have this happen, and if it does happen, the 30 day global ban is probably deserved.

I can tell you that if I see deliberate wrecking from a Wrecker Barricade report, you will get a very long ban on our servers. It has to be blatant and intentional. Bad driving won't get you a long ban automatically, but wrecking will.
Hallen
S3 licensed
Here is some more video to support the single point of contact issue.

This curb is a bit different. You can see the lip on this curb.

It makes it look like the car is nervous or something

Watch near the end where I try to drive out of it. Pretty funny.

PS, Use shift-U to get the best view.
Last edited by Hallen, .
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG