This was really cool. No preparation, nobody knows the combo, just do few laps and race. Of course, we know the tracks, have some setups, just be careful, don't do anything stupid and figure out things as you go. Fun.

A few dirty pics.

Thank you.

Yes indeed, it was a great season and great experience racing in two classes. This way one can truly appreciate special form of GT racing, which for me always looks like a mix of actual racing and a long journey at high speed, in grand style, in lots of traffic, with delicate balance of pushing hard but being sensible and aware of all kinds of situations one can be caught in on the way. Only now, when we were actually in it, we can really see why it is called Grand Touring.

Thank you Scoop, and everybody else who helped made it happen, and to all drivers we had pleasure of racing with on the track. Specially in GT2 class where races were incredibly close with Ocrana, and particulary SERT with countless passing and repassing lap after lap, race after race, with GT1 cars flying past us while we were trying to draft eachother.

Season is over, but we're gonna see more of this as part of MoE supoort series, where more people will experience this new form of racing for most, and have great fun like we had.

WR's are not important here, Russ was just referring to the fast/good drivers, I think, and didn't really expres it correctly.

It is generally known who are the very best racers in LFS, and I and many others surely would like to see them all together in one league. Interest would easily be great for that. I really hope some reputable organization like ESL could do that on international level, but since it hasn't been done so far its obviously very difficult.

Sorry, for the moment I forgot Fujitsu Siemens Racing Challenge which was actually just exactly that, and final races were probably the best I've ever seen. Big sponsor, big international competition, no entry fee, great (and lucky) deal. Vykos, do it again!

If it would be in demo, then only 6 cars would be a reasonable number. 7th would be race admin, and other 4 slots would be used for driver changes. Ok, maybe 7 cars could work too. But the biggest problem are disconnects and counting all the completed laps together for which you need a tracker program like all the organisers of 24h races did before. It would be interesting to see it in demo. It's difficult to organize, it's ridiculous, but why not. All 3 cars on track at the same time of course.

BTW, next 24h race is scheduled for 13-14th January as part of the Masters of Endurance season. Maybe theres another one planned sooner but I didn't hear about it so far.

Then go to www.owrl.de

Races are with FOX for division B and FO8 in division A on Saturdays 20:00 CEST. New season will begin in few weeks, but according to their rules all new people have to start in division B (FOX), unless you win the preseason race on august 26th.

Same as Sidi, I use 270 with 0 wtc all the time. I wanted to use more and I did try realistic lock only in first day when I got the wheel, but the FF motor has just too much resistance and its SO noisy when turning the wheel fast that instead of fighting the car I just keep fighting the motor which is not really fun (nor realistic), too much extra resistance on top of useful FF. Small lock works perfectly because DFP is very very precise, and its also smooth and quiet in that small range.

We have 3 hour races in 2 classes in LFS GT, 2nd class being XFR and UFR and we are very equal. UFR is the same or slightly better in braking, acceleration and cornering, and XFR is little faster at the end of longer straights which makes it pretty much equal overall. 1 hour stints for both cars are no problem at all (R3 or sometimes even R2 on the front), in fact we changed only front tyres sometimes, but we have not been brave enough to try 1h 30minutes stint in either of the cars, so we can't tell for sure which car is better on the tyres, though we suspect UFR is. Theres a new season in Czech league going on now that uses this class, so that could be looked too. I didn't follow it, maybe Chaos could give us a little report.

Being the lighter and more nimble car I prefer UFR, same thing for XFG. Its just more fun to toss around smaller and lighter car. XRG is there for those who really hate FWD and those people usually can handle it just fine and be perfectly competitive. Sure, some tracks favour one car, some another, but overall these classes are well balanced and no car is obvious winner, there's a car for each different prefference. Difficulty in handling is also driver's choice.

I'm 100% sure that none of the fast drivers would ever THINK of using any cheat. It would be noticed and whatever reputation he had before would be gone in a second. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

I do think that the UFR and XR GT are way underused though. Neither of these cars can compete with the other cars in their class on most tracks.

I'm getting very tired about this common misconception. Just take a look at (proper) WRs and league results, or just try to actually race them fully and you'll see that these two are the best balanced classes in LFS.

Quote from Krutch :

I have to say sorry to #2 Cyber as I pushed them around once. That was quite stupid. My fault. Sorry!

Nah its ok. That was in turn 5 I think, which like any place in Weshtill is tricky to get past. In fast corners difference between classes in speed is quite big, and track turns alot so its tricky to choose which way to go. One FZR just went past me on the right on outside and I thought you would too, but you though I'd hold the line to let you go on inside before the fast chicane. My line maybe wasn't so clear, we both kinda panicked a little, I heard you let off the gas few times not being sure where to go. Its very tricky. And we were lucky to get away with it with just a spin and 2-3 secs lost, which actually just made my tyres nicely warm and made the race with SERT even more interesting and close. It was great battle in the first stint.

In general I always keep my line in GT2 cars and let GT1s choose their way around which is the safest way to do these things. Sometimes though I go little wide by mistake and let them inside, sometimes I panic as they approach so fast and let them inside, but most of the time I don't do that, I just stick to my line and make them wait till we pass the chicane or corner. It all depends on the exact moment when they catch me (straight, braking zone, corner), so it can't always be only one way to do it. Turns 1 and 2 in Weshtill are good example. If GT1 is right behind as we start T1 then I let him to the right as we exit T1 and he can take best line for T2, but if he's few meters back I go to the right before T2 and make him go inside for T2. Needs a bit of improvisation, although the second way it more predictable I think.

This is the biggest challenge in LFS GT, and even if positions get spread out a lot during the race there's always passing going on on almost every lap and have to be alert all the time. Fun, and great experience.

Also right click on any arrow and it changes the value by 10 instead of by 1. Works for setting laps too for example.

Or even better, make a new key to call for gaps. Because gaps stay on the screen for few seconds only, and if I'm in some twisty section of the track at that time its really not a good idea to look at the numbers, so a key to press on the next straight to show the last gaps would be more useful.

Even more simple would be an option for those gaps to stay on the positions screen untill the next split (untill the cars in front cross the next split point where they would dissapear, and gaps for cars behind would just be updated when they cross next split) so that we could remove the F9 display off the screen and see the gaps at any conventient time. I hope you understand what I mean.

One other thing I noticed about the gaps is in endurance racing. When taking over after two hours of racing for example (connected to the server at that point and continuing the race) gaps don't get shown anymore. Now, I'd have to double check all this, as I think admins of the race, who were present on the server all the time, were able to see gaps for us, but we couldn't. Needs more investigating, but maybe others noticed this problem too, so I brought it up.

Yeah, only thing that wasn't great is that Fireball doesn't really know the people well enough yet, so he talks about everybody rather genericaly. For example MJanosh was a big suprise to me to see him qualify so high up in pool1. But this will get better with every next race Fireball comments, and hanging around with people on IRC and forums, and team websites and whatnot would help him. Also another thing is that he takes too many breaks (and doesn't wanna tell us why). At least on one occasion he left the view from Jonesy's car just as he was attacking Prophet during that break so it was still great to watch without comentator.

Other than that, OLFSLtv is just amazing. He manipulates the views greatly and makes the race looks even more exciting (the pool1 race itself was very exciting on its own). He screams and comments on every event on track which is a great quality for a commentator. I was gonna suggest guest interviews via TeamSpeak like Mika Radmer does on GamerFM, but then OLFSL races are not long enough for this, and theres action from start to finish, no time for relaxed talking. Still it would be nice to get somebody after the race "on air". Also, using the #OLFSL IRC channel on GameSurge would improve interaction a lot. So far its mostly been empty which is a shame.

Ok another thing. Music in previous radio casts was MUCH better than yesterday. Actually I don't think music is needed at all during the races. With all the excitement nobody is paying attention to it anyway.

Who said UFR can't keep up. We just finished 3h LFS GT race at Kyoto Long, and both cars turned to be quite even.



Not only here, but also in previous races in Blackwood and SO Long.

UFR FTW

What I'm saying is the curbs that are usually used as part of the track, like in this case. We drive with 4 wheels on the curb and NOT hit the speedbump. By your deffinition that still means cutting.

YES!!!

And for selfish reasons I'd love a 256kbs stream or even a bit less, cause thats maximum for my connection (and still for many more people). But I wouldn't mind more if stream is gonna be available for download like it is on Gamer-FM, I always watch those later since they are 384kbs.

Scoop, problem is your deffinition of cutting. What is black stuff????

Well, we're already driving around the yellow-blue speedbumps to avoid damage, and if we miss few times and actually go over them we get a little damage but its still ok. We pay the price when car doesn't behave perfectly anymore and we get longer pitstop to repair that. So I don't think we need any more worries than that. Rule #3 means we have to worry about keeping wheels on the tarmac and fear how Scoop will interprete that (and also fear not to roll over like Vain said, though I haven't experienced that in that chicane in UFR).

Quote from Scoop :

3 - In the chicanes keep at least 1 wheel on the black stuff or u will be penalised with a DT

Hm, so now we have to learn to drive that chicane again, 16 hours before the race. It will be stressful having to be careful about going 1cm wider on every lap since the penalty can loose us the race. And what if we do it by mistake? That one is not an easy corner to get it right. It would be very difficult for you to watch every driver on every lap for that and make quick judgements for each of the thousand and more cases (~70 laps times 16 cars). It's ridiculous!

Besides, cutting that chicane too much already penalizes us. In 1 hour long stint damage to suspension if cutting builds up quite a lot.

You really should've posted this rule earlier and think it through more thoroughly before making it.

One other thing we noticed today: driver can use shift-S to pit and he'd be given another chance to try again from the start while others can only wait.

Also, once happened that new player connected just as another crossed the line and system didn't have a chance to put him to spectate, and untill he doesn't do it himself all others can do is nothing but curse him if he behaves like an idiot by staying on track. And another idiot thing to do it keep joining the race when its not his turn, system keeps putting him to spectate but he keeps joining and prevents the real one than should join to join. (eventually he got bored though)

Cool.

I guess I spotted a little "bug". When my time has come I joined the race and there was a message: restarting race in 3 seconds. Then another player connected just as race started to restart and race didn't restart because of that. I guess I should've restarted manually then?

Well, I've seen that "Could not load settings - using default" sometimes, but since it was rare, I can't remember when and why exactly its shown. Somewhere around the point of switchig cars and tracks but I really didn't pay attention to anything specific, maybe the sets for two cars had the same name, I dunno. It doesn't bother me at all though, because I have to choose the right setup anyway.

Is there any way to hear the recording of the commentary for pool1? Did somebody record it by any chance?