It says Kyoto on the AA web site. I'm rubbish at both so it makes little difference

Well that was fun, pleased to get a podium finish more by luck than judgment! 25 minutes certainly makes your arms and feet ache though, I should probably visit the gym sometime soon. Hope to be able to get along next week.

I've put myself down to join, I've not done any league races before so I wanted to see how I get on with making sure I get all the domestic arrangements sorted out to be on-line at the appropriate time. I think Thursdays and Sundays from 8.30pm are usually both OK for me so it looks positive!

Quote from Gentlefoot :

Often you don't really know the full circumstances of the incident so it's best not to say anything to the driver either. He may have been rammed himself before he hit you. Unless you watch a replay and can see someone has actually rammed you intentionaly it's probably best not to say anything.

Hear hear, I was effed at yesterday on CTRA by a guy who chose to blame the person that took him out rather than the instigator of the crash. In the heat of the moment some people rush to judgment. Best to stay cool, select first gear and rejoin, assuming your car is still driveable. You'll probably find the other guy in the hedge round the next corner. Also you can see when you arrive on a server, if there are lots of accusations flying around in the chat, that relationships between some drivers are "somewhat strained" (to put it mildly) and hence stress levels are likely to be high, which can in turn lead to more shunts as the red mist descends, so take extra care and give everyone lots of space.

I think I had to pay for John Cleese. He's getting a bit samey now after a few months use. I see you can now get "the real" Mr T which might be a laugh. There's a free Dalek voice as well but it sounds like it was done with a Yorkshire accent which was surprising as I thought the Daleks came from much farther away than that.

I was always an ardent map-user, maps were my thing since I was at school, but earlier this year decided to take up a special offer on a Tom Tom ONE as I had a lot of solo driving to unfamiliar places coming up. I have to say I don't regret getting one, although I still keep a paper map handy just in case, I rarely need to pull over to read it, I just go where John Cleese tells me. I found a better route locally using a "B" road to somewhere I go regularly that I hadn't even considered; the Tom Tom said it was quickest and it certainly beat my original just using "A" roads by several minutes. I also have the traffic receiver which can be useful if it finds a valid delay on your route, and the speed camera add-on which is pretty much a must-have, along with the "nag" sound for when you are going faster than the speed limit. My only gripes are that it only remembers favourite destinations, not routes, it would be quicker if you could ask it do give you the same route it gave you last week rather than recalculating. A lot of the road speed limits are wrong so you get nagged over 30 in a 60 limit for example. And I'd like to see a "most economical" route option in these days of costly petrol. Some of the Tom Toms now have this "smart routes" feature that will give you a different route at different times of day to avoid traffic though, which is a step in the right direction. All in all pretty good.

I'm sorely tempted to enter but Saturday night at 8pm is a really bad time slot for me, too much going on in the house, kids going to bed and so on, plus I know already some coming Saturdays we are already booked up with other things. If it was a Sunday night through to Thursday night with a 10pm (UK) start I'd be there though.

In my LFS World pages I'm not seeing the fastest laps for the races I've competed in (only if I go through the list of times at the bottom of each set of race details), should I be able to? According to my CTRA stats I have set a couple of fastest laps and I wanted to find out which races they were in. Seems like there is an empty column in the main results table.

Surviving Turn 1 carnage is critical, letting a few cars past if I'm near the back of the grid often works out in my favour, but if you're further up the field it's not really possible and it's more a case of drive with care and hope for good luck. Depending on the Turn 1 outcome, I then see each race largely as a series of duels for the next position ahead. Sometimes an outbreak of angry chat followed by a reduction in your race position by 1 or 2 shows that someone ahead has done you a favour, which is always nice of them. After a while in the game you build a mental list of who's ultra-quick and you just let them through, others who are on a par with you and you could have a good tussle with, and then there are those who crash a lot or are easily hassled into letting you through. Ultimate aim to finish the race in one piece after a clean race, maybe having beaten someone you never finished ahead of before, which gives plenty of satisfaction. A win or podium (rare in my case) are the icing on the cake and a nice surprise after a good race but I rarely expect either.

I was also thinking about this, but having a split chat - I occasionally play Guild Wars where there are several chat streams, one for the local area, one for the team you are currently grouped with, one for trading and so on. You can toggle any or all of them off at any time with a single click. In LFS we could have a chat stream for racers (just for the key-mapped smilies and "good pass" stuff), another for the spectators (to comment on the race and ask for setups for the next one), and maybe a third for system/insim messages.

Does anyone find their real life road driving helps or hinders their LFS performance? If you've had your confidence knocked by making some silly error on the public road, having some bloke shout at you for pulling out in front of him or whatever, if you play LFS that evening you might perhaps subconsciously be more cautious? Or perhaps you beat a guy in a BMW away from the lights in your Citroen 2CV so you now feel a bit more gung-ho. For me I think it works a little bit the other way, I found myself braking later or clipping a kerb a couple of times in my real car and thinking "I'm sure I never used to do that..."

Ah, that looks just the job - thanks!

Edit: Been trying it out this afternoon, and it's great, other than that it obscures the virtual mirror if you put it at the top, and the virtual dashboard if you put it at the bottom, so I will have to do without one of those. Otherwise a great little add-on.

Last edited by modelmotorracing, Sat 14 Jun 2008, 15:06.

I drive mostly with the race positions in the bottom right corner so I know who I am chasing and who is the next guy behind me. However this means I can't also have my tyre and suspension information. Is there any way this arrangement could be improved? For example, an option to reduce the field list to just the guys ahead and behind (and time differences) to give more screen room to have the other items displayed as well. Or alternatively an option for an on-screen message when there is significant damage or wear to affect the handling of a car (I understand wing damage is purely cosmetic but I guess at some future point it may not be). If I'm trying to recover to the track, car damage I may not be aware of because my hands are too full grappling with the wheel to press F10 as well, can affect my ability to return safely. An instant message from a "virtual spotter" to tell me the reason I'm having trouble regaining control is not because I'm on the grass but because the suspension is shot would help me make the right decision, stop grappling and go and spectate.

Well I've only been here a short while but I feel sure I would have been here much longer had I known about LFS earlier. I'm a long-time racing fan, I watch F1, Indycar, A1 on TV, go to races when I can, also race Scalextric, and am also a keen online multiplayer gamer (Guild Wars etc.) and am on the internet every day for work so it's one of life's great mysteries that I only discovered LFS purely by chance, from a passing mention by someone in a Hattrick football forum a couple of months ago. Still I'm here now!

I recently had problems with dropped connections on a Netgear (DG834G) router, contacted my ISP and they told me to upgrade the router firmware, there was a new patch released in April which prevents these dropouts - that might be the solution. The firmware upgrade is a free download from netgear.com's support section.