Quote from sinbad :

have another argument with Tristancliffe.

Actually this is a secret ploy to give the developers a bit more incentive to do the next release, so us bored players will have something better to do than post here.

I was considering this game, but then I heard they removed the auto-blip and auto-cut assists from the tank.

Quote from AndroidXP :

You should join the "I completely misunderstood Tristan's thread title club".

I looked for that thread, and I did a web search, but I couldn't find it. Anyway, in classic sense of "point and counterpoint" (I loved the Saturday Night live parodies of this old program, Jane you ignorant sl*t ...), I felt this thread was needed.

Someone had to start this thread.

I pretend it's real life and practice reloading my weapon of choice for the day, while driving with my knees (I live near Los Angeles). Although I'll admit that using the quick loader plastic tabs that let you load all 6 bullets at once in a pistol seems like cheating. Looks like I'll be ready for Need For Speed Undercover now.

2001 busa:

busa.jpg

Some trial 0 to 100 mph runs on a partially closed road:

busa.wmv

You left out the part where iRacing's high rent business model fails, and sells out to Electronic Arts, which releases Need For Speed - Nascar Undergound, the premise of which is the fans of Nascar come to their senses (they sober up), Nascar bites the dust, forcing the teams to go into undergound racing, using questionably street legalized of their race cars (ok, they just add real headlights to replace the painted on ones).

Events include drag and road racing, drifts, and of course since it's NFS, police pursuits, but I don't know if it will include any weapons other than the cars. As a side competition, the Nascar guys can hone their post race fist fighting skills in the Nascar sponsored version of mixed martial arts.

I've seen similar threads at various forums, both sim and arcade racers, and RAS (rec.autos.simulators newsgroup). In my opinion, overall interest in online racing started to diminish in late 2005, except for a slight blip caused by the release of Race Driver 3 in early 2006. Sim racing players are waiting for the next new game to come out, then play it for a while, and the boredom factor kicks in sooner with each cycle, because the games are so similar.

Grand Prix Legends, the wheels and other parts come flying off the cars in a bad crash.

I use in car view or sometimes a LFS force like view (no car, just the tires, to see the track and tires better). I've tried chase view, but I don't pick up the car's responses to steering inputs quick enough, and I end up overcontrolling the car with laggy control inputs.

However, it's my belief that for any racing game, that a chase like view, probably just showing the 4 tires, and perhaps slightly higher, is going to produce the best lap times by an expert chase view driver. The analogy for this would be driving a remote control car, with an on board view versus an external view.

Since there are no forces to feel, a good chase view, perhaps with exaggerated yaw effects (yaw that can be seen in the chase view as opposed to yawing the chase view itself), would compensate for the lack of these forces.

Most racing games use audio based "assists", such as exaggerated tire scrub and squeal sounds to help with the game, in spite of the fact that these sounds aren't realistic. The same type of logic would apply with visual "assists" (like smoke from the rear tires to indicate how close to the limits they were, or LFS's force view), but these would be best implemented with a chase like view.

If the goal was the fastest lap times in a racing game, regardless of the physics, then visual "assists" would produce faster lap times. However, it wouldn't seem as realistic. It would be like driving a remote control car (which in essence is a better analogy to racing games than driving a real cars, since there are no acceleration based forces to be felt in a remote control car or a racing game car).

A real Z06 has stability control to prevent / reduce spins but still allow a lot of oversteer. Normally this is turned on by testers when running hot laps. I'm not sure how formal racing events deal with the stability control of the Z06. The Z06 also has traction control which does a nice job of displaying that it's activated while the tires are spinning like crazy. The traction control doesn't work well because it just retards spark instead of cutting fuel, which seems strange, because the rev-limiter and the torque limiter in the ECU's progammming do cut fuel. The torque limiter is there to protect the drive train and isn't selectable. Drag racers mention that they can sense the torque limiter cutting fuel on a speed shift from 1st to 2nd gear when using drag racing slicks.

There's also some ECU interference with lift throttle control inputs, which is very noticable at lower rpms in 1st gear (or in neutral). This is one of the things that guys who reprogram the ECU's usually get rid of.

Power on the Z06 can be bumped to around 540hp or so with a Killer Bee intake snorkel and filter replacement and ECU dyno tune (about 470 rear wheel horsepower), without any exhaust or other mods.

I don't know if the rFactor mod models the stock Z06 ECU.

No problems here. I run at 1600x1200x85hz, no AA, filtering set to 16x. I set fraps to capture at 1/2 size, at 30fps, which is what the fps drops to when I start a capture. Note that fraps uses video card hardware to do the 1/2 size reduction. I'm running the current 0.5Z version of LFS.

If you try to do a full capture at a high resolution, the drive bandwidth may be exceeded, and this could slow down the fps.

I grabbed the world record run for BMW F1 at Blackwood replay from LFS World, captured and converted it to .wmv file. Here is a link to the video:

http://jeffareid.net/lfs/lfsbwf1.wmv

System specs:
Intel Core 2 X6800 - 2.93ghz
Intel D975XBX motherboard, two raid controllers, Intel ICH7R and Silicon Image 3114.
2GB 4-4-4-10 667mhz ddr2 ram.
ATI HD2900XT video card.
SoundBlaster X-Fi Plantinum.
2 SATA Hitachi TK 250GB drives striped on Intel raid controller.
2 SATA Hitachi TK 250GB drives striped on Silicon image raid controller.
1 PATA 200GB (boot only).
1 HP 940 dvd writer.

Last edited by JeffR, Mon 28 Jul 2008, 19:07.

Quote from lerts :

Jeff have you got any link to this kind of hologram if is viewable on a monitor?

Youtube has some videos, start here and look for related ones. Thsi is a "classic" style hologram. I've read that they can do "color" holograms, but not sure if the same thing as classic film based holograms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-hvdcsuMz4&fmt=18

Projecting an adjustable image on a spinning mirror can generate a 3d image:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2VusJwGTQQ&fmt=18

Last edited by JeffR, Sun 27 Jul 2008, 12:19.

Quote from BAMBO :

The drifter would be the figure skaters.

Ice dancers would be a better analogy. However, syncrhonized swimming rates up there also as an analogy to drifting.

There are few activities that seem to appeal to almost everyone. The rest of them have a limited audience, although some activities have much more limited appeal than others. For example, how popular are sim-oriented racing games compared to first person shooters? How popular is any game versus posting in forums like this one?

Depth perception occurs because the brain can see two different images and convert them into a single 3 dimensional "mental" image. In the case of stereograms, the angle between the viewers eyes is increased so that the focus point (where the view lines cross) is at a point further away than the actual stereogram image. The horizontally adjacent images are similar enough that the brain interprets them as two views of the same image, producing a depth perception effect. Note that if the stereogram is rotated to vertical, the effect doesn't work, it relies on the horizontal spacing to create the depth effect.

Holograms are actual interference patterns, producing a more realistic 3 dimensional image. As with stereograms, the viewer has to focus beyond the actual hologram surface in order to see the image, although it's much easier to do with holograms. In addition, the image remains 3 dimensional regardless of the orientation of the hologram. The viewer actually sees the virtual images from a near infinite number of positions (depending on grain density of image). For example, the top of a hologram could be an image from above a table's surface, while the bottom of the same hologram would be an image from below the table surface, with a smooth transition as the image is moved vertically.

It might help if some of the posters in this thread paid more attention to the OP:

Quote :

supernatural kind of flying, the kinda thing superman does.

Since this is supernatural flying, then the laws of physics don't apply. You can make up any rules you want. Superman could also "fly" faster than the speed of light in order to travel backwards in time.

It would help if a moderator could change the title of this thread to "My Theory On Supernatural Flight".

Last edited by JeffR, Fri 25 Jul 2008, 07:49.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Try training yourself to release the clutch a smidgen faster/earlier or go on the throttle a little later than now, so that you only start applying throttle after the clutch has done its work of slowing down the flywheel.

In real life cars setup for racing, this can actually be worse on the drive train, because if you wait just a bit too long, there's an initial engine braking shock to drivetrain, followed by an engine power shock to the drive train, no to mention it could cause loss of traction at the driven tires. In a racing situation, either the stock clutch can handle some throttle during shifts, or the clutch is replaced with one that can handle this, if the racer plans on being competitive with the car.

I feel that the time spent implementing the clutch burning in LFS would have been better spent on other aspects of the game. Since auto-cut and auto-blip with auto-clutch would have made clutch burning moot, those features were removed, and now the players that have controllers that can use shifting macros have an even more unfair advantage over those that don't.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

The ZR1 is such an awesome car. It is infinitely better then the Nissan GT-R, because unlike the GT-R, the Corvette actually lets you drive without the aid of some computer.

The ZR1 has computer controlled active suspension, with user selectable settings, touring for a smoother ride, and sport for aggressive driving. Both the ZR1 and the Z06 have user selectable traction (engine ECU) and stability (individual wheel braking) control.

Quote from TURKISHPOWER :

I think you have wrong ideas because corvette and Nissan GT-R are different cars ,each car has different engine type and powers and the most important thing corvette is rear wheel drive and the GT-R is all wheel drive.If you are driving a GT-R and dont want to drive aid systems yo can close it ,you have no any dependence. Corvette has ''American Muscle'' but Nissan GT-R(especially GT-R 34) has Japanese intelligence .My choice is GT-R.

The ZR1 does have active suspension, but it's a $100+K (USA) car.

I'm not sure what you mean by American Muscle, but power is power regardless of how you get it, and the ZR1, with 638hp (a now official number) at 3350lbs, is going to be a lot faster than the 480hp, 3800lb GTR. The Z06 is lighter still, at 3150 lbs, making it lighter than a Subaru WRX GTI, or a Holden Commodore (even the V6 Holden).

The 505hp, 7.0 liter, V8 engine in a Z06 is lighter than the 480hp, 3.6 liter, turbo charged flat 6 in a Porsche 911 Turbo. The Porsche 911 GT2 makes 530hp, and at 3175lbs, only weighs a bit more than the Z06, and has the best power to weight ratio of the 911's, but it's a $200K car, almost doulbe the 638hp ZR1.

Depending on where you live, a reasonable option is go-karts that you rent. Even the indoor tracks can be fun. The cornering forces are high, well over 1 g, about as much or more than most non-downforce racing cars. Most go-kart tracks are setup so spins won't result in damage, so the drivers can push the karts much harder than they would a full sized car.

Combine that with the fact that each new GTR tested by a magazine seem to be slower than the previous GTR's tested as the cars get closer to an actual production car.

Then again, a 2 car comparason isn't excactly fair. The GTR appears that it will sell for a bit less than a Corvette Z06, with ball park peformance (lastest test shows 0 to 60mph in 4.1 seconds for GTR, 3.8 seconds for the Z06, both numbers could be faster but it's a relative comparason).

It's difficult to know if active suspension will allow a 3800 pound car to peform on a track similar to the ZR1 (3400 lbs), or the lighter still Z06 (3150lbs). However the Ford GT, at 3500lbs, is close to the weight of a GTR, and it's 550hp is enough help it keep up with the Z06.

The best normal looking track car is the Koenigsegg CCX, 806hp, 2600lbs. The fastest street legal track car is probably the Radical SR8, but it's missing stuff that most cars have, like a roof, doors, ... However, the Radical SR8's will spend a lot of time on tracks, while the CCX will just spend time collecting dust between cleanings.

Quote :

paradox

You're confusing visual angle with the apparent visual angle provided by a telescope. Although a telescope or microscope makes images large, it doesn't make the object larger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_angle

Quote :

There's no way you can see everything at once, though.

Just need the combination of a fish eye lens and mirror, or any method that reduces a full spherical view into one that can be viewed by the eye, for example compression a full spherical view into virtual visual angle of 90 degrees. There would be an issue with objects jumping across from one edge of the view to the other.

Last edited by JeffR, Fri 11 Jul 2008, 03:12.

As linked to already, Microsoft's Visual Studio Express is free. One issue is that there's no windows.h or the windows library, so you're stuck with C++ code and not C based windows code. The standard template library (which is actually code that is included with your code at compile time, not a true library) is included though.

As far as learning goes, assembly might be good place to start, but not for an entire semester. A few days just to get an idea of how a computer works is enough. The first few programs you write for learning purposes aren't going to have a lot of functionality.

As far as Windows GUI code goes, most programmers will just start with existing code and modify it as needed, as opposed to writing stuff from scratch.

Honorable mention, Lindsay Bukingham (guitar, not the singing):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwGQKuUeQC8&fmt=18

Here's an example of real world, low cost, customization that not only improved the looks of a Nissan Sentra, it improved it's 1/4 mile performance by over 2 seconds!

http://www.daleholley.com/nissan.htm

Yes, it's an old article, but a few here may not have seen it before.

Also, although LFS may be more realistic, it's apparenty that cute Romanian chicks dig the guys with NFS style tuned up 1.3 liter econoboxes. This site includes some good action videos:

http://www.prostreetromania.ro/prostreet.htm

Quote from andyb1982 :

The drivers with the most skill who find optimal setups win on this game.

I thought it was the drivers who use a mouse that win on this game (look at the mouse thread).