You probably have it right there with the contact patch. But there is something wrong with the curb too. The picture shows both rear wheels off the ground. That happened while I backed over the curb at very slow speeds. The curb seems to be much higher than it is shown. It also happens on either side of the curb, front or back. It is not something that is isolated to the back side of the curb like it is for the Blackwood chicane.

However, if what you describe is true, it basically makes the XRR undriveable on KY3. You can't compete with that car unless you take some curb in the chicane. Every time you take some curb there, your suspension gets damaged. It becomes significant after just a few laps.

The chicane coming off the oval section has some very strange behavior.
The suspension of the car gets damage even if you go over the curb very slowly. There seems to be an invisible bump or raised curb on part of this section that makes the car bounce way up. Watch the replay and you will see the car hopping all over the place when driven very slowly over this section. Also notice that the suspension gets damaged while doing this.

I am with ayrton on this one. Many people have no frame of reference to understand a zip file, folders, double clicking and so forth. Saying simple things like "double click on the exe to run", means absolutly nothing to them. "Extract to a fold of your choice" also has no meaning.

A simple installer would be nice for those people, but Becky's comments are spot on. Just the choice of what to download is confusing. Then all the AOHELL users who can't download an exe anyway...

I think a set of graphics and very simple, step by step instructions written for the computing challenged on the main LFS site would be the best way to go for now. Avoid comments like "Create a target directory". Just show the steps. Open My Computer by double clicking on this icon...

Another thought would be for LFS to prompt you to install a desktop icon on first run. This would help some people a little bit.

I have done technical support over the phone. It is very difficult because you can't see what they are doing and they will lie to you. They say they did it, but did something else... very frustrating.

I love the install the way it is. No registry crap, no rebooting, I can keep older versions intact easily... it is great. But I have been using computers for a very long time.

Quote from JeffR :

Last I read it was about 850hp, but this may change from season to season, as it's mostly about much boost is allowed (via the spec waste gate which also controls the push to pass). Rpms are limited by spec to 8500rpm. I think Honda also makes engines for Champ cars.

Nope, 750HP and they are Cosworth engines. Honda supplies IRL which is a completely different league. The different nose cones went away with the open wheel split, unless IRL still uses them. I don't watch IRL much because it is boring and they only do about 2 road courses a year, the rest is ovals.

http://www.champcarworldseries.com/Tech/ChampCar_Specs.asp

Quote from col :

heh, oversteer when releasing the brake is very useful, but you have to learn how . If brake too late and too heavy, or you're not smooth coming off the pedal, and turning the car, you can lose the tail - especially if you are driving a 'fast' setup.
First try altering your driving - brake a little earlier, and stightly less heavily, start releasing the brake earlier, but much slower - ideally you will only have completely released the brake just as you want to start increasing the gas
another thing is in a corner that you find too twitchy, try keeping a little throttle through the turn (just a touch, to keep the car balanced).

If you're still having problems, you can reduce the trailbrake oversteer effect with dampers: Front rebound +, Rear bump -
(one click each, and test - this will also add corner exit oversteer, so be careful)
(Make sure you're not locking a rear - try brake balance more forward)

Or make the whole car more understeery with sway bars and/or shock adjustments (will slow you down)

Thanks for the tips. I do about a 1:34.4 around Blackwood in the GTi. Some sets, this effect is really bad, and if you are aggressive with your trail braking, you will have the rear step out. Yes, braking earlier and being very gentle coming off the gas helps, but you can't always to that in a race.

I found the MacEST set is very nice. It exhibits some of this tendency, but it is advantageous rather than unpredictable. So, a good set will fix this tendency without being so understeery, that it is not fast.

First of all, a CHAMP car would be great fun. Sure, it is another open wheeler, but can you really have too many? (rhetorical, you don't need to answer that)

CHAMP cars are spec built cars for the most part with Cosworth engines. They have NO driver aids at all. They do have a push to pass button that gives them an extra 75hp and is time limited. Gee, kind of makes you wonder where A1GP got the idea. They push about 700hp. Quite a lot of car to handle.

They do still do two ovals a year, mostly for historical sake because they used to do them when CART existed. Personally, I wish they would get rid of them.

As for George, you are really just being a 'gator. You don't like oval racing. Fine. We get the point. And I suppose just because George doesn't like it, then it must be shallow. Nice Ad Hoc logic there pal. I offer this opinion. ALL racing is shallow. It is a waste of valuable resources and money that could be better spent feeding the world's poor.

I think you could label another form of racing with a word too. F1 is BORING. Sure they turn left and right, but since the only passing that gets done happens in the pits, it surely indicates that the drivers have no talent.

Just to make things clear. I don't watch much oval racing and I love F1. I love ALMS and I like CHAMP car. But that does not mean that WRC is shallow because I don't (can't in the US) follow it.

I'm obviously bored tonight, doing the laundry. As for vanilla ice cream; there is a lot to be said for the purity and the subtle nuances of the different types. You have to really know your vanilla to appreciate the finer qualities. To get the most out of the experience, you have to do your homework, test and retest, get to know it better than your mother knows you. Adding nuts and chocolate provides nothing but a distraction from the perfection.

Quote from NotAnIllusion :

It happens to me frequently, mostly when trail braking, braking a little for a corner isn't a problem, it's when I come off the brakes the tail steps out immediately.

Yep, that is the situation. I have heard of an explanation for the physics of the behavior, but I don't have it happen on RWD cars and I have driven some sets that reduce the tendency. I was hoping somebody would have an idea. I have already tried moving the brake bias back further to the rear, I have it a 77% right now (GTi), but it has not helping much, if any.

The only thing I find to be a problem for me is the massive oversteer when you are letting off the brakes going into a corner. The rear just snaps around. I find this behavior difficult to drive with and I am not sure how to cure it. I think some drivers use this behavior to their advantage.
Even the Race_S set has this "feature".

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Looks like the race is around 5:00pm PST. Way too early for US West Coast people to play. I'm not even home from work by then.

We start practice and qual at about 5pm, but don't actually start the race until 6pm or 6:30 pm Pacific time. They mostly try to do that in honor of me and another team memeber who are on the west coast. I am in Oregon the other is in BC.

The events can be really fun and are very casual. Unfortunately, I will have a conflict this summer because of softball games on Wednesday nights

Quote from JohnPenn :

HI how can I send replays to nassa admin.
Another great race night ruined by 1 person

cheers
John

Send me a pm and I will get you an email address. We need to setup a permenant email address for this purpose.
Thanks

Remember, we are talking about deliberate attempt to crash other cars. A good example happened on our servers two weeks ago. Two drivers would crash cars in turn 1 of SO Classic. Then they would park in the middle of the chicane and wait for the cars to come back around. The parked nose to tail to insure that they blocked the entire road in a place where you couldn't see them until too late.

They did this in two separate races and it was actually hard for the racers to determine that it was actually wreckers.

With the MPR evidence, we banned the two drivers. We also forwarded the MPR's to Team CCUK via their website.

I think this is the best way to deal with it. There are accidents and stupidity, but then there are blatant, deliberate attempts to disrupt races. In the obvious cases, a group of Admins can easily decide for themselves who to ban and who not to. They are our servers and we can ban who we want, but we want good evidence first.

The harder we make it for wreckers to get their rocks off, the fewer there will be. But it is like trying to kill ants, you can get a few, but there are always more to follow.

As another thought, if LFS World kept a record of how many bans a driver has received, and made that public, then there would be another method for tracking the blatant wreckers. Sure, lots of people have received unwarranted bans, and a few bans on your record probably means nothing, but if you have 10+ bans in a short time, it probably means something. LFS does not have to take action with this information, but admins can if they choose to.

Quote from J.B. :

The track modelling doesn't seem to be very precise though even though the guy in the video says something about GPS data.

I always get a giggle when somebody says they used GPS data to accurately model something.
This is something I know more than a little about. GPS data can be mm level accurate, but it takes a lot of knowledge, time and effort. GPS positions can be plus or minus 30 meter accuracy too if you just use a standard receiver with no corrections.

You also have to stitch things together correctly and if you don't know what you are doing, then the results are not good.

So, just saying you have "GPS" data, does not mean that anything will necessarily be accurate.

Quote from Hankstar :

Hallen, I certainly appreciate the skill involved in golf as I've tried it a bit and sucked really, really bad However I still find it dull as heck to watch

I reckon you'd love the V8s - 5.7L V8s, 32 cars (two makes only - Ford & Holden four-door RWD family sedans) at about 1500kg & 600+hp each, all driven by very skilled pilots going hammer & tongs, nose to tail for the entire race, all capable of 300+kph (given enough room). Some rounds are made of 2 or 3 races which can test driver and machine pretty well. Throw in the 500km endurance races (and the Bathurst 1000) and you have a pretty sweet racing series.
Congratulations - now you're less ignorant

lol, Oh I have watched enough of it to appreciate the racing aspect. But it isn't just about the on-track action. I would have to follow the series for a year or so before I got excited about it. The problem is, we only see a few of the races here and they are all shown tape delayed, often by months, so it is tough to get into here on the top side of the globe.

If you are interested in driving the other cars too, then look for NASSA by 500Servers. We often have Wednesday evening fun races. We are also supporters of The Original LFS League and the North American League.

I will check out the SimFIA stuff and see if I can fit it into my schedule. Sounds like fun, but it will be tough with the BF1, it is a lot of car.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

So people who don't like F1 are not intellectual or technical?

Don't take it that way. To be ignorant is not the same as being stupid. Ignorant means you lack information. There is a lot going on with F1 from the drivers, teams, technical, rules, etc. If you don't get into a lot of the off camera stuff, it is harder to enjoy the sport. Watching golf is a prime example. If you have never played, you can't appreciate the skill it takes to make those shots. It is a thing of beauty and can be riveting.

I love F1. I think BTCC is fun, but it is more like bumper cars than racing (just my opinion). I prefer ALMS. Super fast and technical prototypes, cool sports cars, great drivers, and lots of action. I also like the SPEED World Challenge. Very cool stock cars racing. I have never gotten into the Aussie V8 series. I don't know the tracks or the drivers and I have lots of other racing to watch, so I don't try to get into it much. I am sure I would enjoy it if I took the time to get to know the series. You see, I am ignorant about it

I doubt the BF1 will increase the number of people who like F1. I think it will increase their respect for the drivers or the cars, but it won't make the sport exciting for them.

Quote from BrandonAGr :

I think the timer at the end of the cockpit cam video shows 59.0. And it looked wet out there, so probably could drop a good amount of time.

Well, the red light was flashing and this usually indicates the rain traction program is enabled. But it looked like he had the normal dry weather racing tires on to me. They may have put the rain program on so he could keep the car on the track?

Quote from Woz :

Oval racing is very different to other forms of racing. Just watch a bit of NASCAR to see what I mean.

Cars are almost always near flatout and the racing is bumper to bumper and side to side at times. To be able to race at these speeds and this close you have to drive in a different way.

When you have cars very close you should hold your line through a corner. The car behind is the one trying to pass. It is their responsibility not to hit you BUT it is also your responsibility not to do something unexpected, like change line. When the cars are always as close to the edge at this speed you have to drive in a different way. This is why NASCAR has spotters that tell the driver where people are in relation to them on the track.

Oval is about drafting, team plans. Do you bet on a yellow flag and wait for it to pit or do you really need to pit which will cost you more laps while sat in the pit lane.

Hmmm, not really. Maybe the races you see are all the restrictor plate races on the super speedways? On the short tracks like Martinsville or Bristol, they are only on full throttle for a short period. They use the brakes heavily and actually do trail brake into the corners. There really is no drafting involved. It is all about mechanical grip and track position. Of course 43 cars on a mile long track is pretty insane, but that is NASCAR. The rest of your comments are spot on

Quote from Becky Rose :

The day the world salutes one flag will be a great day indeed*.

*Depending upon the colour of the flag.

DOH!

lol, well red, white and blue of course.
Hmmmm, how many flags are there with those colors?

Quote from wE1l :

Er...I mean what is an International foot? It sounds to me that both the English foot and the International foot is used in the U.S.

The standard used by pretty much everybody is the "International" foot. The "US Survey foot" was based off an older standard and is slightly different. It only comes up because many of the land surveys done in the US are based off of the older definition of the foot... Painful, isn't it?illepall

I was in the military for a lot of years. We used metric units for all distance calculations. For example, I used to know that at 90 KIAS (Knotts Indicated Air Speed) that I was doing 3 Klicks (Kilometers) per minute. All our maps were metric.

Quote from wE1l :

Don't Americans use imperial standard for one's height? Like five six, or six two. What gauges do you use in America, MPH or KPH?

Yes, I am 6' 2" as an example. We use MPH for all cars, but KPH is also listed on all of them too.

We use pound (lbs) for weight instead of Kilos, and gallons for fluid (which is different than European gallons).

For the majority of 'Mericans, there is only one system. But we do call it "Imperial".
However, when you ask about feet, depending on who you talk to, you might get the question of which "feet"? US Survey foot, or International foot. They are different. illepall
Then we could get into the Texas Vara. A unit of measurements that is exactly 1/3 of 100 feet. Talk about a pain to use, lol.

Personally, I wish we would just switch to metric. I work in a field were measurements are critical and using multiple systems causes a bunch of errors and complications.

I use Imperial in LFS. I don't like KPH because there is too many ticks per unit so to speak. A MPH analog gauge is readable, a KPH guage is hard to read.

Quote from BWX232 :

I'd much rather see Pixel shader 2.0 (direct X9) features for LFS than higher res textures.. So if there is a choice for spending time on higher res textures or updating the game for DX9... that s a no brainier.

Yes, that is what I would rather see too.

I love this quote...

"It MUST be optimised as a racing simulator, not a screen shot generator."
Scawen

Quote from gishuk :

thats stupid

whats the point of racing if you cant take a fair defensive line?

For the most part, I agree with you. And in reality, drivers definitely do hug the low line to defend in most of the oval racing that I see.

Part of the problem here is the KY Oval is a "Super Speedway". You don't have to lift the loud pedal for any of the corners in any of the cars. This puts the race down to drafting. Drafting races are a completely different turkey as compared to smaller ovals. If somebody gets a draft on you, they are going to pass, there is nothing you can do about it. If you try to block, you will cause an accident.

I don't blame you for having a go with a substitute driver, but I personally think the concept should be made against the rules.

There are too many variables: is the sub driver way faster or way slower? Does the sub know the racing rules? Do they know to spectate if they flip? Do they know what a blue flag is? Is the league driver just claiming to be unavailable to drive and is really just substituting a ringer to gain more points? (Tez, I am NOT saying this was the case with you.)

Plus, this is really an individual event even though there are team and national standings.

Here is the key: A real driver won't get points if somebody else drives for them in any real racing series that I am aware of. So a substitute driver should not be allowed.

Teams can substitute drivers to get points towards a constructors or team championship, but drivers don't work the same way.

On ovals with cars with exactly the same power, drafting is key. An overtaking car will draft you, then pop out to pass. If you then change your line to let them by, chances are, you just changed your line right into their line.

Defending the lower line is perfectly acceptable, if your are fighting for position, otherwise keep clear. The faster car is going to want to take the apex or the lower line through the corner if possible. This is one time when you do change your line, but only because the other car has already come up beside you in the corner.

The oval can be fun for a while. It is a different style of racing and not all road racing rules are relevant. It is not my favorite form of racing so I don't spend much time there.