Quote from mickyc30 :

[ snip ]

Edit 3: i fixed the white stuff around the lights, then when i did a render with a grey background, i got the white bit above? after than line its all white? any ideas?
Thanks Michael

Due to a white background (set in the Environment settings) and a grey ground plane.. a horizon will always be created at some point unless you position the camera higher and angle it more towards the gorund so that you don' t see the background area any more.

Might be some useful stuff here too for some ideas



Regards,

Ian

Quote from mcgas001 :

I dont know if this is true, but i also read that the test is changing slightly too. There are adding night driving and motorway driving. ill try get a source(sure it was newspaper)..


E: Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pag ... 34149&in_page_id=1770

This would be a great addition IMO. I've lost count how many times I've been bowling down the M25 / A41 on the way to work and someone pull out to overtake. It appears that if you're lucky, they'll check their mirrors, but 99% of the time, fail to _read_ what's in the mirror. Just because they're poodling along at 50mph possibly reaching 55mph for the overtaking maneuvers (although highly unlikely) doesn't mean that everyone is and by the time you flash your lights, it's too late and time to stamp on the brakes. When they _finally_ decide they're going to pull back into their original lane (if 3 lanes available, this will _always_ be the middle one ) they look out their window offering hand gestures

I did a separate single lesson after I'd passed my test which took me out on the M4 at ~19:00 (January) which served both purposes, although the M4 was a little quieter back then.

I wish they'd drum into people what the national speed limit means too. It doesn't mean 40mph

My entire test was "read that number plate 20" away over there".. 20 mins driving about, 5 questions from the highway code (of which I got the first, obvious one wrong) and got told "congratulations Mr.H"



Regards,

Ian

Quote from the_angry_angel :

You might be interested in looking at RentACoder.com Dygear. It's usually full of crap jobs, with poor pay, but there might be something interesting in there every now and then.

I've picked up jobs there in the past, when times have been iffy, and not had too much of a problem. You do need to cherry pick your clients though

Been there, done that.. can't compete with people from the East who will happily work for a coffee bean or 2. I actually scored more contracts by answering people's posts in the likes of alt.comp.php than I ever did though that shitty rent-a-coder site. Obviously YMMV.

Mental note made that I must also advertise my services here.. I just need to generate a bigger list of things I can do first.

Pretty sad to see this sort of thing here though.. stinks of desperation, like all spam-runs



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Bogey Jammer :

[ snip ]

There are some black patches on the body. I've already removed ones by sharping some edges, but how did the 3dsmax gurus to remove them completely? By adding some polys on "too-sharp" smooth edges?

Smoothing groups.

Don't know how this is controlled in blender, but in 3DS, it's just a case of selecting 1 (or more) of 32 buttons.

The problem is that the groups don't get exported 100% from CMX->* and it ultimately tries to smooth some areas that shouldn't be due to certain angles.

If blender doesn't have smoothing groups, you'll need to select certain polys and detach them as elements to create a sharp edge and to break the smoothing. The XR* cars in particular suffer from a lot of this. Also gets monotonous fixing it over all cars, but worth it in the long run



Regards,

Ian

10m sounds fine. If it's too much, you can coil some up. Buy a 5m one and need 6m, and you're up that creek without a paddle

Can't say I've seen single cable extensions before. Most applications have a left / right channel, hence them being twinned.. 90% of my female / female joins are twins too.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Dajmin :

Ah, but you see it's getting harder

heh, not really.. that was just an example

In reality, unless Scawen wanted to piss a lot of people off, a temp file can only be located in a small number of dirs.. I wouldn't expect (or be happy) to find it written to my Adobe Photoshop dir for a silly example. FileMon would just make it quicker

"Useless discussion" (not meant derogatory) really. For example, ISI offer encrypted meshes for mods (that apparently has unwanted side effects according to their lame excuse for eventually not including this as planned in the MAS tool) yet that has been stripped and models are still being ripped. Granted, now we are talking about things away from n00b fingers, but just generally in regards to the topic. Heck, closer to home.. even LFS' main encryption has been broken (or at least, worked around) with cracks / keygens available.. again just another example of something you can warrant including protection for, but has been ultimately "useless" like all protection systems (although it does keep the wanabee h4><0rz (read: script kiddies) at bay).



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Dajmin :

That's one way. But then it could be buried as a temp file somewhere

SysInternals 'FileMon' would sort that minor niggle out



Regards,

Ian

It's an 'RCA' connection. Somewhere like Maplin would be useful I guess.. and can buy connectors and cable separately and build the cable to the length you require if you want to be "perfect" about it.. they're simple to connect, just strip the cable and solder to the 2 pins inside.

Either that, or you can pick up pre-made cables from most electrical places (Dixons etc) or car audio shops.

Also you'll want female / female RCA connectors (easiest to find in component shops like Maplin for a couple of quid) to enable you to chain standard RCA leads together for extensions.

It's a standard connection for most amps and such, both in house and in car.



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Tue, 11 Mar 2008 07:18.

Quote from drifter92 :

[ snip ]

And why shouldnt i get a respectful answer

The answer's in both your nickname and your topic

Also looks like I was pretty close with my original response. Amazing how many of you skidders want to be taken seriously, yet 95% of you post like you have and, well, pretty much make yourself come across as a twat.. how the hell is anyone going to take people seriously with that kind of IQ 'nd typn lk dis'.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from March Hare :

Ian, we have to give the guy some slack. He doesn't know how to drive a car with a manual transmission.

Atleast my car (A mk 3 Golf Variant) slows down more rapidly by using engine braking. The hand-brake only locks the rear wheels and then it's skidding time. No matter what the weather, be it dry or wet or snow or ice.
Now my previous car (-84 Saab 900) had the hand brake act on the FRONT wheels. Yes the actual wheels on the front. The ones that turn. Even it slowed down more with engine braking.

You might want to use the hand brake to actually stop but for slowing down the engine is much better.

I didn't know (some) Saabs came with handbrakes on the front wheels. I've serviced a few shitroens that had it.

I know in my E30 the engine braking (especially 1st and 2nd gears) is really quite strong, enough to make you lunge forward in the seat if you're not wearing a belt. As you say, problem with the handbrake is it really doesn't take much to go from rolling to locked up state and once you hit the latter, it really is guesswork as to what will happen next.. I'd sooner see what I'm about to hit than it be a complete surprise if it came to the crunch and it was inevitable.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from mrodgers :

Oh, I see. As we all know, cars are definitely different outside of the US. Indeed engine braking will completely stop your car coming up to an intersection with 2 cars stopped ahead, crossing traffic, cars stopped on the other side, and pedestrians and storefronts on the side of you. I had no idea engine braking will stop a car in sufficient time if you have NO hydrolic braking in UK/Europe.

Why have a braking system at all if you can just come to a complete stop with engine braking?

Much better to try to steer your way through all of that rather then using the handbrake to actually attempt to stop.

Hammering down through the gears rapidly would slow the car down quite considerably.. and then you have a choice to make.. do you damage your gearbox, or risk running into something.... I'd sooner slam it into first and all but stand it on its nose than perhaps hit 4 cars in front of me, or god forbid, a kid or the likes.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from mrodgers :

So, when the main pedal brakes go out for some unknown reason, you would rather run straight into something rather than ease on the handbrake?

Yes, I have had to use the "e-brake" to keep from running through the stopped car up ahead when my brakelines blew a hole and my brake pedal was as floppy as taking the pedal spring out of your PC wheel controller.

I've had brakes fail when one of the front wheels had rubbed its way clean through the brake pipe (don't ask).. and only noticed this while coming off of a road at 85mph heading towards a roundabout at the end of the sliproad as it was fine previous.... again, the handbrake was the last thing (actually, it simply didn't) to enter my head... I went down through the gears, was able to get a quick glimpse of what was about and then actually hit the throttle to make sure I got into the gap I'd seen.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from TAYLOR-MANIA :

Emergency brake aka handbrake.

You've gotta be shittin' me!? The handbrake is the _last_ think I'd think of using in an emergency when thinking about braking.

That pretty much says it all.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from drifter92 :

what do u meen by that

Your reply explains exactly what he means

But let me spell it out for you anyway:


Skidders == Stupid



Regards,

Ian

WTF's an 'e-brake'!?



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Woz :

[ snip ]

However you look at it. Coffee is known to be hot because you use hot water to make it. I never understeed WHY they had to label it hot.

[ snip ]

heh, like bags of peanuts labelled with 'may contain traces of nuts' and the funniest I came across was Nitol (sleeping tablets) that had a label saying 'may cause drowsiness'.. I damn well hope so!



Regards,

Ian

Quote from titanLS :

I've increased the steering lock already, but it just makes things worse unless I'm steering AWAY from the slide. This happens with all mods and original ISI cars.

This is a major flaw in the ISI physics unfortunately that dates back at least to F1C and probably before where it feels like once you go past about 10 degrees, an invisible pole extrudes from under the car and you pivot on that and no amount of counter steering (actually makes it worse) or anything else will allow you to catch the slide.

There are a few mods around that are better at feeling normal, but I think there's something amiss in the core code that no modding can correct (I'm not a physics guru by any stretch of the imagination, but did some modding for a while).

Silly question, have you tried setting the FFB slider in rF to a negative value? I don't know why, but Momos / Logitech wheels require a negative value, else they'll pull the wheel in the direction you turn rather than push. It won't cure the physics issue, but it makes things a little more natural feeling.

I haven't touched rF in a while (although I do need to complete the 'stang mod I've been working on thanks to Scott Stockton for allowing me to use his model) so not too clued up on what's good and what's not so good currently.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from eXSsnl :

You guys are lovely, I hope to race with you all once. I really do!

I'm actually a very clean racer, IMO.. no one's ever complained when I've raced them anyway. Never been a pro, but when I worked as a kart mechanic back in my teens, I learnt all about race etiquette.. but by you blasting a 'blue flag' message, which I'd personally already be aware of your presence, I'd assume you'd be thinking I'm an idiot on the track, thus, you will pay the price for your wrong assumption. Give me a chance to assess my surroundings (which would be way before you were close enough to pass anyway) and there'd be no problem at all, and I'd give you all the room you needed.

It's called respect for fellow racers



Regards,

Ian

Word of advice.. do some research on various companies before you signup for any hosting, especially if you end up hosting with a US company as they're often cheaper than UK hosts (registering a domain name is a different story.. I've personally used DomainSite for years for all my domains, but registering a domain isn't the same as hosting the DNS for a domain, which blacklisting will also cause you problems).

You'll need to do some research on spam activity for certain hosts. Checking the likes of google groups will be useful as some are blacklisted due to simply not caring, cluelessness or being paid backhanders by spammers etc and have a habit of juggling their spammer customers among many IPs, which you might end up being hosted on that's blacklisted before you start, which if for example, you had a forum that mailed info to people like most forums do, mails may not get through. http://www.spamhaus.org/ is also another good reference for ISPs that are worth steering clear of.

The cheapest deal isn't always the best deal



Regards,

Ian

Last edited by Ian.H, Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:43.

Quote from eXSsnl :

Actually, when I see a slower driver up ahead I say "Blue flag let me pass please :: Blue flag let me pass please" once or twice to prevent accidents.

[ snip ]

And if you did that to me, I'd make damn sure I stayed in your way and cost you a position, if you were lucky enough for me not to take you out of the race entirely.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

What I meant was cars SOLD in America. Those same cars sold in the UK might not have those systems, but all cars SOLD in America.

Then I suggest you say what you mean. I doubt many here are mind readers



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

I think you failed to realize that we had already come to the decision that I was talking about AMERICAN cars and not EUROPEAN cars. Please read the whole thread if you're going to jump in and start calling people out.

Huh!? Read what you posted above... here, I'll help you, as you clearly have comprehension difficulties:

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

It's not just American cars though... they ALL have it (this INCLUDES Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, etc...) My dad's last two AWD Audis have both had traction control.

All 3 of the 'includes' you mention here are European cars, not American cars... the mind boggles.

Rests, your honour, case, etc etc.



Regards,

Ian

Quote from RAM0011 :

Moderator,

Please Lock this thread

There is NO NOS-MOD !

Why do people post messages like this? Seriously, in what way does a thread being left open, affect anyone? It's not like someone broke your window and it's now cold.

You remind me of too many kids back when I was at school..... "teeeaaaacchherrrrrrr... so-and-so's doing thiiiiiiiiissssssssss'

To brag about his illiteracy looking at his post

Funny how many (most?) of the skidder's posts are of similar educational caliber... ironic?



Regards,

Ian

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

It's not just American cars though... they ALL have it (this INCLUDES Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, etc...) My dad's last two AWD Audis have both had traction control.

I guess you failed to realise that an E30 is a model of BMW, of which, as I stated already, I don't have TC anywhere near the damn thing.. and very grateful for that.. ironically, neither did my previous car.. a Mercedes 300TE.. so please, look up the definition of 'ALL'.. I think you'll find you haven't grasped the concept of the word.. much like people's confusion with 'want' and 'need'.



Regards,

Ian