Just like to mention that Windowblinds uses less memory & CPU time than the standard theme engine. From memory the standard theme when loaded into memory is around 4.5mb, windowblinds ones can be larger than this but good clean ones tend to stick under 1mb. I remeber seeing a performance comparison that showed WB used less resources to re-draw a window and that sort of thing as well (unless using directX affects and the like, ala vista affects).

thisnameistaken, the reason I skin applications is because I have to look at them all day and different shades of grey get a tad boring, there are some really nice, clean, uncluttered skins for apps including WB out there, you just gotta look.

Does the CPU fan spin up okay?

If the power supply is dying but not dead yet switch to onboard video (if possible) and disconnect all optical/SATA drives from the PSU, this might let the motherboard power up. If it does, take it from there re-connecting devices until it stops working again. Also if you have a multimeter check the output of the -5, -12v lines, if the PSU is failing the -5, -12v rails will be very low.

You say you've re-set the cmos? Via the pins near the battery? On most motherboards you can also restore factory settings by holding down "INSERT" before it reaches POST, but this doesn't work in all secarnio's.

Are the optical drives definately set to master/secondary? Or both to CS.

Last time I had this problem, the hard disk had a fault, and would only boot if set to CS and not master, this was causing it to not reach POST. I don't know if its the same for SATA but worth checking. I've also had this problem when the graphics card is faulty. Last thing I can think of is see if there's any goo around the capacitor bank near the CPU, its not that uncommon for one or two of these to start leaking after long use which causes bad problems.

Its up on the site, time for some fun

Just gave it a blast - so many memories Its easy to see why this simulation is addictive, even way back then you could clearly see the potential it had - and even such an old version IMO feels nicer than a lot of racing games these days.

Is it just me, or was the A.I smarter back then compared to S2?

Milton Keynes, England - its quite nice here, for a city.

Too many, I used to hate forums, but I guess you have to learn to live with them.

LFSforum (I visit daily but am not very active)
UltimateRC
RaceChat
RC Zone
RC-Monster
Slashdot
OSNews
BBC

Last 3 aren't forums, but I visit them just as often so I included them anyway. When I wanna kill even more time I open Ebay, there's no limit to how much unproductive time you can spend there.

Very tempting, i live only 18 miles or 40 mins from it. Never been there before though.

I waiting so long for THIS? I want my £24 and months of waiting back, now! I'm back off to rfactor, least it has better physics.

This is torture at its worst, the longer the wait the more features there are (that we know about), but I want to play it now Ah well, time to set lfs.net as my homepage for the next 20 days.

But the tyre sidewalls do look good..as does the visual updates in the pics, good work

In my experience a Sempron of e.g. 2800 will not perform close to an AthlonXP 2800+. It would be closer to An Athlon 2200-2600, depending on what your doing with it. In some tests, my Athlon 2000 with a mild overclock will outperform a Sempron 2800. Thus the new mobo/cpu combo your thinking of will absolutely own your current one, and if the mobo is good you should be able to clock it quite far.

I have the settings cranked as high as they'll go, I did on my old car pretty much as well, I was just curious if there's anything I should adjust. At 1024x768x32 with 8xAF/4xAA it doesn't drop below 40fps on the startline, and averages 60-70fps. Pretty happy, I think my crappy processor (athlon 2000) is the weak link now though.

Damn it, I hate waiting, its even worse when you know the date your waiting for, I reckon its likely to be an updated Westhill with a new config.

I've just ripped out my pretty retro Radeon 9600 and replaced it with a shiny slightly less retro Geforce 6600GT (oh how I love using an NV again). I have LFS setup and tweaked for my Radeon, are the best settings to use for my Nvidia the same as what its set to for my Radeon? With regards to vertex shading, that sort of thing. I noticed the "haze" affect affects frame rate, and yet going up to 4xAA/8xAF didn't touch it, guess something else in my system is the weak link now. Average framerate has just about doubled, love it

Cheers.

Maybe if things like the AI could be left open for plugins which would let the community help develop the game, and if a plugin becomes good enough make it offical and ship it as part of the package. Means eventually you should get a good AI, but its one less thing for the developers to do.

Reinstalling the game should fix it, and I believe there's a starforce reinstaller on their site somewhere which should also do the job.

Just a small rant, I hate starforce more than I thought possible to hate a peice of software, it has the unique ability to make me want to break stuff in just a few seconds. When I spend my money on a game I want it to WORK, not go through some b**lshit copyprotection that half the time doesn't work right. E.g. Trackmania, great game - one of my favourites, I purchased a legal copy, and yet I use a pirate copy. Why? None of that starforce rubbish. It really screws around that much sometimes.

Anyway back on topic, I'd hold out for NetKar Pro definately, it looks worth the wait, I've still not purchased rFactor because I only race online, and it doesn't seem like a good platform for that.

No problems here - Radeon 9600, latest ATI drivers.

If I'm perfectly honest with you, I regretted buying S1, and even more so S2. Now whenever I boot the computer up I only play LFS, and my even my PS2 gathers dust thanks to LFS. I find it a lot harder to have fun in offline racing, no matter how good the AI.

Damn you Live For Speed!

I always thought it was a film

I will handle the blue flag differently based on if I'm in a long race and being lapped, or I joined mid-race. If I join mid-race, I will if necessary pit, run myself off the track, anything to prevent interfering with the person(s) lapping me.

If I'm being lapped in a long race, I won't fight them for it. If they're a lot faster than me I will go wide at the first opportunity and let them by, if I'm close to their pace I will wait for them to be close enough to safely lap without me loosing much time, and without them loosing any. Blue flag to me does not mean screw your own race for them, it means let them by without a fight when the time comes. In part of the track - 1st chicane at BL GP for instance, you end up slowing them down more if you change your line halfway through, than if you just go through normal and let them by when its safe to.

Just my opinion, I agree it all comes down to common sense really.

It has a GT4 logo and was released basically for that game, I'd say that makes it designed for it, doesn't necessarily mean the technology used was designed for GT4, just the unit as a whole.

I don't disagree with your suggestion, but I don't drive in a racing simulation to drive like I do IRL, I drive in a sim to push my limits that bit further, and as skill goes, I push that bit harder too. A better damage model that is maybe more realistic would be very nice, but there's a point where you have to realise LFS can't be a perfect sim, like being able to warp to pits, if you couldn't do this I think it would take away from the gameplay more than it would add.

Problems arise when people don't know their limit, and this first corner mentality like you say. I would like to have a damage model in LFS where I have to care about the car (in particular engine damage) more so than now, but how it is now isn't that bad. Take the UF1 around SO classic, you start to fear clipping the walls as you go through the chicane and in T1.

I tried the momo-fix this morning and it seemd to reduce but not eliminate the problem. The second mono-fix they released refuses to work with a DFP.

So instead I phoned up Logitech, and they're sending me a nice shiny new one (again), but this time asked me to cut the USB and power plug off and return to them..hmm maybe I can re-wire it and use for a spare Anyone got a pin-out for the dfp's usb plug? I'm allowed to keep the pedals intact as a spare, eternally grateful of them for that because i've had them open and modified too much to send them back I have to give Logitech an A+ for service on this one.

Does mean your screwed if you didn't buy it from a proper shop though, I purchased mine off a shop on ebay that wasn't too helpful. When I went directly to Logitech, first time around they said sod off and go through the shop you brought it from, second time around I think I ended up speaking to their US dept (I phoned out of UK office hours), who got me a replacement from The Netherlands within 48hrs, now thats impressive.

If you still have the option of returning the wheel..Logitech give the momo and DFP a 2 year warranty right?

I have calibration lock off, still have problems. I make it a habbit of depressing each pedal and rotating the wheel every time I start LFS, have to do it for the PS2 as well. I had problems with the pedals as well, but fixed them a few months ago and not had a problem since. Logitech actually sent me a replacement wheel/pedal set when I contacted them, so I fixed the old ones and gave them to a friend, now the new wheel has this even more annoying problem

I've started getting a similar problem last couple of days, my DFP calibrates itself, I fire up LFS and go into a game, but with the wheel perfectly centered the car veers to the right (when i pull up the tyre temps screen it says its going to the right by 0.08 or something). I've tried re-setting LFS calibration and re-booting the computer, to no avail. Is the above patch designed to fix this sort of problem?

Only solution I've found so far is to use DXTweak to adjust the center point by about 300 units to the right, this makes it track straight again but I didn't pay so much for a wheel to have to bodge it so would like to find the cause of the problem and the correct solution.