ATI 3850 and 3870 are out now too. Quick summary of 3870 (vs 8800 GT):

-bit cheaper
-bit slower
-almost identical load power consumption
-much less idle power consumption
-full VC-1 and AVC decoding (8800 GT only has AVC)
-Directx 10.1 (8800 GT has 10.0)
-no more XT, GT, GTS, LE, WTF, FU, HJGGF naming scheme, yay!

Good stuff, I always said the previous "high end" cards were rubbish, now they're obsolete.

I hate it when they don't tell you what tyres were used. Who were those brits again who keep claiming to have the NS lap record although they use slicks?

Regarding temperatures it's on the surface that they don't cool fast enough. Maybe the effect of the varying air speed isn't modelled?

EDIT: you can get an example of real life tyre surface temps if you download i2 pro from the motec website. There's a sample file included but I don't know what car that is.

Last edited by J.B., Thu 8 Nov 2007, 23:01.

Thx for the info. Certainly gives a good idea of what combined forces should look like and sounds as if the source is a real testing rig. I wonder if these kind of graphs could be created for other sims, LFS doesn't seem to be looking too bad.

Maybe you can find out the name and author?

Quote from z3r0c00l :

The combined braking and cornering, and accelerating and cornering graphs should look like this apparently...

Where's that from? Thats the closest thing I've ever seen to a full description of a tyre. Ready to create some LFS graphs Android?

Not quite sure about that. An F1 brakes at 5 G but isn't five times as long as an MRT so weight transfer would also be a big factor there. But that does ignore other factors of course.

Anyway maybe I'll try driving all cars for a bit with open diffs and without trail braking to see if I can get a better understanding of my "too tail happy turn in" feeling. Someday

Nice pics. I heard the ISS is now one of the brightest objects in the sky, because of the new solar panels. I'll have to give that tracker a try.

Yeah, using the brakes to make the car tail happy (to help turn in) is how I understand the concept of trail braking. In LFS however the brakes are used to stop the tail hapiness. It's most obvious in the MRT, just try driving it with an open diff. You'll see that you can turn in at a much higher speed if you trail brake. If you don't trail brake you just spin.

I still don't get it. Why do say the brake balance gets shifted backwards while the driver gets off the brakes? The decreasing brake pressure shouldn't change the brake balance.

EDIT: I guess you mean that the total normal force balance moves towards the rear. True, but doesn't that support my claim that LFS cars are too loose on turn-in?

Quote from Shotglass :

i dont think they actually need it per se
id say its either that engine braking has too much of an effect or more likely we can abuse the engines too much by downshifting rapidly to help with trailbraking

i suppose a real engine would give up in a cloud of smoke after 2 corners of lfs downshifting

Hmm, gave it a thought. So by doing the fast and early LFS-machine-gun-downshifting the brake balance is shifted towards the rear and then after that, when the car is actually turning into the corner, the balance goes back to the front. In reality I think you'd want the opposite. More towards the front initially because of the higher downforce and then back to help the car turn in.

I still feel that the LFS typical diff and brake settings are a workaround to a physics problem although I don't know exactly what. The cars just seem too tail happy on turn in without these tweaks.

Heph and tristan:
Yeah, I'm not 100% positive about the details of the value I mentioned earlier. But I had a look at some RAF data for the FOX and the normal tyre loads under braking are around 65-66%. If you add in tyre load sensitivity the optimal braking balance would be a bit further back than that.

Anyway, I'd still be interested in some comments about my self proclaimed "realistic" setups. For me personally they feel a lot more natural than typical LFS sets. The one attached was good enough for pole and win in OWRL Div B2 with about 20 min practice but I'd love to know what's possible in the hands of a WR driver. Or what someone with RL experience like tristan thinks about the handling.

Quote from Shotglass :

isnt that short clip just the technique weve been talking about ? catching oversteer by locking the front wheels

Agree. And race cars don't have the forward bias of a road going Elise. That's why I asked earlier for a clip of a racing driver doing something like that in a real race car.

This brings up a question that IMO hasn't been considered enough: Why do LFS cars need so much forward brake bias and so much diff coast locking? (A typical brake balance value for a Formula Renault might be around 55%, in LFS some WR sets have up to 70% + locked diff).

A while ago I posted some thoughts on the issue but no one replied.

Thx, I found a short clip here. . Looks interesting, would you say it's worth ordering even if you don't a real car to apply the techniques yourself?

BTW if you want to cut part of a DVD the best way is to first save the VOB files to HD using DVD Decrypter and then cutting using Videoredo or Virtualdub.

Just did a quick batch conversion of about 20 LFS skins. As expected the lossless PNG format is two to four times as big as the lossy JPG files. So it should be obvious why JPG is used for skin downloads. In fact JPG would have no reason to exist if there was a lossless format that was smaller, as claimed by the OP.

EDIT: just tried one of your comics Dalek. PNG really was smaller than JPG. So I understand your idea, but it doesn't seem to work for LFS skins.

Last edited by J.B., Sun 4 Nov 2007, 00:50.

Wow, I wonder what that will do to his career. He's probably convinced that any team he goes to will automagically become a front runner. But in reality if he isn't competing for wins next year it will be fair to say that Hamilton more or less destroyed his career. Not many go from top to midfield and back.

And I don't like the idea that Hamilton may not be challenged anymore. The worst thing about Schumacher was that he never had a decent team mate that he could be compared to. Who is there apart from Alonso that can partner Hamilton? I don't think Rosberg wants to take the risk but who knows. Apart from that there's Sutil, who is a good friend of Hamilton and got quite used to getting thrashed by him in F3 Euro.

Price seems a bit too high to be called a real bargain (250€) but finally we have a current generation card that isn't completely ridiculous in terms price, power, heat, noise.

And it can decode AVC! (all the other 8800 can't). Looks like still no VC-1 decode though so I guess waiting for ATI Radeon HD 38xx might be good idea for people who want a card for gaming and HD decoding.

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

...by the way, how do you measure your wattage? Do you have an APC or something?

Looks something like this and cost about 10 €, so if I fully power down my PC every night from now on it will be payed off in about 3 years. Further tests have shown that other devices such as TVs, DVD players etc. are also in the 5 - 10 W range in off/standby so it doesn't seem that unusual.

USB mouse (wireless) and printer (off) were connected, maybe that accounts for a part. Switching the switch on the back of the PSU makes the measurement go to 0 W.

Just measured with a cheap plastic measuring thingy I bought a while ago.

Windows desktop: 90 W
S3: 9 W
PC Off: 7 W

That means the PC needs roughly 10€ per year just for being plugged in, and using S3 doesn't have any significant effect.

But the real question is wtf is the PSU using 7 W switched off? I know it's not much but it's still a waste.

OK, did it myself.

S1:
Useless, shuts off Video and HDs, everything else keeps running. Happens when you click on Standby when shutting down.

S3:
Turns off everything including fans, keeps everything in RAM, PC just sits there. Needs to be activated in BIOS (labeled "Suspend to RAM (STR)" in my case) and Windows Power Management must NOT be set to "Desktop", otherwise fans will stay on. Entered like S1, by clicking Standby.

S4:
Hibernate mode, pretty crap, slow, needs lots of HD space and crashes on my machine. Doesn't need any power though so good for Laptops. Needs to be activated in Windows Power Management. Enter by holding shift before clicking the Standby button.

So I'll be using S3 for a while and see how I like it. Has anyone measured how many Watts it pulls from the Wall Socket?

Quote from pb32000 :

I have to say I really didn't think Oblivions graphics were that good. I found it ran unnecessarily slowly for how it actually looked, and tbh really disappointed me.

Yeah, I guess there is some personal preference involved. For example I thought Bioshock looked horrible while it was being hyped like crazy by everyone.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

As long as the locations are varied enough (which should happen as you get closer to the asteroid and things slowly turn from a tropoical paradise into a frozen tropical paradise) I don't have a problem with that in the slightest.

Will all the levels be outside on the island? Or are there going to be other locations?

If it works in real life then show me one video clip of a racing driver using it to correct oversteer.

I used to use this technique sometimes in LFS but it doesn't work anymore for me since the diff preload allows me to use more realistic brake balance.

Can someone post a quick summary of how to activate each S mode? Which ones need BIOS settings, registry settings etc? (Win XP)

Which one is the mode where even the PSU fan is supposed to stop? I remember trying it a few years ago only to find that the fans didn't stop and that my TV card remote would stop working.

Albert 1 was an AMD x86 cluster that they only used for about a year because getting Intel as a sponsor meant they had to replace it with Albert 2 made of Intel x86 cores. Wonder what happend to Albert 1. Sold? Gathering dust? Still in use with hidden AMD badges?

IMO using LFB to catch oversteer only works in LFS because the setups all have unrealistically far forward brake balance.