Aww, congratulations! Looks really cute.

Wonder who she inherited that hair from?

Quote from Victor :

For me it's not so much the karting event that's the event, i'm looking forward to the drive up there too! So why take a boat And if i go through the south of England, then i can pay a visit to some people as well.

If i wouldn't have to go alone, i would drive all around europe, just for fun. I enjoy every second behind the wheel, even if i'm in a jam

http://vic.lfs.net/pics/350z_1.jpg

Very nice. One of the directors at my work used to have a 350Z, they look even better in the flesh than in photos imo.

If you want to make a point of the driving, I'd still recommend the boat, and use the driving time you've saved to instead take a trip up north to the borders and Scotland, then come back down the west coast and through the lake district towards the ferry for the Isle of Man. Much more interesting than sitting on the A1 coming up from the south. I've had the dubious pleasure of having to do the Newcastle-London drive a few times recently, and, well, I'd be stunned if there's anyone that can actually get any pleasure from it.

Although I guess a 350Z is a good antidote to the awful roads and traffic and speed cameras.

Quote from mrodgers :

I have seen some fantastic HDR photographs. HDR can really bring out the detail in some late evening shots.

Tbh, I doubt many people would dispute that. HDR is an excellent tool when used to enhance an image, not create an image.

Quote from mrodgers :

HDR does not equal cartoony photographs. HDR equals bringing out and lighting the detail in shadows while not blowing out the detail in the light.

Also true, but it's a bit like saying that glamour photography is classy. This is also true as technically, glamour photography can be all about the beauty and figure and form, but upon hearing the word "glamour", most people just think "tits, arse, sex appeal". In much the same way that for many (most?) people, HDR automatically leads the to create overcooked fake looking images.

I'm not sure what's more comedic/pathetic.

The young, new, naive, unworldly kids arguing on the internet

or

The adult self-proclaimed real life worldly hard guy arguing on the internet.


My money's on the latter.

Quote from harjun :

how the hell is it gonna accellerate?

Well Concorde didn't seem to have too much of a problem accelerating with it's turbojet engines...

Quote from Jakg :

God I love HDR!

I don't...

Quote from Don :

i hate that kind of "hdr", 90% of the hdr photos on the internets are heavily overdone and ugly (imho ofcourse)

Wooo, glad I'm not the only one. Imo, that kind of HDR/tonemapping is the photographic equivalent of a Hummer H2 with neons and spinners. Lots of bling, but too showy and not enough substance.

It's all a matter of taste of course, but it makes me wonder when you get some shots with massively overcooked HDR or other PP, and people love them.

Has nobody heard of graduated ND filters?

Quote from Victor :

well see if you go from Holland to Sunderland via the chunnel, then those 3-4 hours is peanuts

Unless you really want to spend several hours sitting in heavy traffic around London and in the south east, I'd suggest getting the ferry (DFDS Seaways) from Amsterdam to Newcastle. I've just checked and it's quoting only £86 for a one-way trip in August at the moment (don't know when you'll be going back, but a return will be better value, obviously).

(EDIT) oops, I tell a lie, that was the passenger only price. £173 once you add a vehicle.

Last edited by STROBE, Thu, 3 Apr 2008 20:02.

Perfect gear ratios for what? Driving flat out for miles in a straight line?

-1

No, we don't need top speed courses, huge long runways, or anything else similar. What are you going to do with it once you've maxed each car? And how many minutes of entertainment will that provide in exchange for the hours spent building the environment (time that could be spent building proper tracks & environments)?

Quote from Stang70Fastback :

Very rarely. Most homes have a fake brick facade and that's it.

But... why? Cheapness? Availability of raw materials? A wooden house just seems archaic when everything is built of brick and stone here. We have badly built houses too - my flat doesn't have a single right angle anywhere in it, and my parents' house built in the 1960s is the same. But isn't a wooden house a little bit of a fire risk?

Quote from Panda X :

Why are some of you bashing him? It's stupid to bash him because of what he likes.

I'm no expert on GT, but I think they're bashing because he claimed the physics and realism were better than LFS and rFactor.

Which, let's face it, is a bashable (and hilarious) offence. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure which is a mainstream game and which is a sim. Nothing wrong with mainstream games - until you try and claim they're more realistic than sims.

Quote from Glenn67 :

The best way to reward safe driving is make the sim more realistic (better damage modeling, dynamic track conditions, racing line, better tyre modeling in regard to wear and damage due to misuse, etc)

I agree.

Two words: radiator damage. It'll transform online play and imho should be the top priority to be introduced.

Quote from Dajmin :

However, I still think a reputation system like forums or Xbox Live has would be good.
You have a good race with someone, you vote them up. You have a bad experience with someone, you vote them down. Servers can be set up to automatically block people with a repuation above or below a certain level.

Sounds like a bad idea to me, as any such system could be open to abuse. We already have/had retards racing each other constantly over 2 laps on the oval to be at the top of the LFSW statistics. Far better to let the physics and reality of the simulation sort the good guys from the bad.

Quote from Woz :

Actually, most of what is required is already in place. There is already a dynamic darker path that builds up during a race based on the most used area of the track.

Problem is, that dynamic visual rubber path is unique to each user. A fresh install of LFS has clean tracks, and the most frequent racers probably have corners with jet black streaks around them.

So the server would have to send the rubber path to the client each time you connected. And then what happens if two different servers are running different classes that put rubber down on slightly different lines or in slightly different places? You could have two servers running (eg) AS2 but each with subtle but significant differences. Yet, aren't they supposed to be the same track? Should one AS2 not drive the same as AS2 on another server? So, maybe the rubber file should be global and retrieved from the master/LFSW server? Or would it be preferable to keep it unique to each server?

Not meaning to piss on your suggestion here - I'd love to see a dynamic grip line and marbles introduced too - just providing some food for thought.

Come to think of it, if dynamic track conditions were combined with dynamic weather, I guess it would make sense for each server to have it's own rubber file. If ServerX is running AS2 with the weather permanently set to "hot and dry", it should have much more grip/rubber laid down than ServerY which is set to "typically wet/changeable sh*t English weather" and would be quite a green track in comparison. So another question is, how do you convey this information to the player? A real driver would surely have some idea of what state the track was in and what the weather had been like recently before they even step in the car.

I really can't believe that so many people are unable/unwilling to cough up a deposit and commit to going. I can't commit for health reasons (namely that I damaged my knee cartilage in the gym and don't yet know when or how it's going to be fixed) - so I guess kettles shouldn't meet pots - but c'mon guys it's not that expensive or time consuming. £60 karting + petrol + a shared room of some sort + beer money = bargain weekend away.

Quote from jahvetti02 :

EDIT: I switched off the web traffic scanning from F-Secure's real time scanning settings. LFS seems more happy now.

Yep, thanks for that. I did the same and could connect to several populated servers as I choose.

I guess for F-Secure's "web traffic scanning" it should actually read "random UDP packet blocker"

Quote from The General Lee :

They do have adverts on the Beeb, but not interrupting ad breaks.

Dunno what you're smoking , but the Beeb doesn't have any adverts. It's not allowed to. The likes of BBC America is different, afaik, as it is part of the BBC's commercial arm which doesn't fall under the BBC charter (I think), and thus isn't funded by licence money, and must be self-sustaining.

Quote from Lateralus :

I was really disappointed when I watched Melbourne FP1 to see that ITV had kept that terrible "Lift Me Up" song and a very similar intro theme. It's just awful. Snakes crawling on bared shoulders, what the hell? Seems like they tried to make the whole presentation look as ridiculous as possible.

I think it's supposed to be a James Bond inspired way of making it glamorous and sexy. I have to agree it doesn't really work.

I also have to agree that getting Melissa Theriaux to present would be a win for everyone. It seems unlikely though. But F1 is supposed to be glamorous and sexy (which it generally is, have you seen the women strolling around behind Steve "Rigid" Rider and Mark Blundell in the paddock?!), so I've no objections to the selection of any new female presenters being chosen on the basis of them being eye candy.

Last edited by STROBE, Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:24.

Yup, I'm only going to say the same as everyone else is saying:

Stop the cock, bring Brundle over, and it's great news all round!

Hope you're not right Sam about the FIA forcing Brundle out. Why do they want everything so sterilised and controlled? Some of Brundle's grid walks and cheeky questions were the most interesting thing in F1 in some recent years. If you're right, no doubt it'll be part of the small print of the Beeb's contract that they don't employ Brundle.

Quote from horrgakx :

See here too...

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=40544

And curiously enough, I'm using F-Secure too...

Will give it a poke tonight and see if I need to fire off a complaint to them.

Yes I'm sure. CTRA was just an example.

I've switched on network debug in Y14, and when it's waiting for guest info, it's flooding the screen with "UDP: send again".

Now why wouldn't my UDP packets be getting through?

This is getting wierder.

I switched to my test installation of LFS (i.e. version Y14). It was locked, and in demo mode I've just connected to half a dozen demo servers with no problems at all - connected straight away, like it used to.

I unlocked this version of LFS and tried to connect to CTRA1, and failed with the "waiting for guest info" problem. Switched back to demo mode, and now couldn't connect to anything there either.

First time I go online for several months, with a new computer, and I get the dreaded "waiting for guest info" followed by "did not receive guest info. Lost connection to host".

LFS is allowed in both directions by my software firewall.
I've rebooted the router.
It's a fresh, full download of LFS S2Y.
On the rare occasion I can connect, pings are good. I don't appear to have a problem with latency or dropped packets on my internet connection. Nothing else I've used my connection for has so much as hiccuped.

Curious things:
- Clicking "back" on the multiplayer screen (going from the screen with options to set skin downloads and browse servserlist or join specific host, going to the LFS main menu) produces a noticeable delay. I don't remember it being like this in the past.
- Going back to the main menu and then back into multiplayer seems to increase the chances of being able to connect.
- Empty servers are easier to connect to than populated servers.

Any ideas? It's driving me up the wall, and given my previous history with a perfectly good connection and no other system issues, it's looking like an LFS-specific issue.

Woohoo, in-game FSAA controls! Thanks Scawen!

Just had a quick test in XFG around Blackwood (my test version of LFS isn't unlocked) and the in-game FSAA controls work a treat. Superb - no more faffing around with the crappy nvidia control panel!

I was unable to notice any performance drop, FPS was maxed out at ~260 regardless of my graphical settings.

Still couldn't tell any difference between the AF settings though. Could anyone post some full-size screenies to show LFS with and without full AF? Mine looks fine, I'm not noticing textures blurring anywhere, so I'm just wondering whether mine is somehow fixed on or off.

Curiously, switching on 8×FSAA causes my gfx card fan to spin up. It's an 8800GT, which has a rather noisy cooler. Fortunately, I've got a Thermalright HR-03 GT waiting to go on it. I thought it odd though, as I was under the impression LFS was generally CPU-bound and didn't come close to even slightly taxing modern gfx cards. I guess the extra work of FSAA makes enough of a difference though to need more fan speed.

Quote from Joe_R :

P.S. this is for my school homework

Your homework is to ask a bunch of people on the internet a vague question about Las Vegas?

Quote from srdsprinter :

That's what I was thinking when Kimi was hounding him, but even after that he kept doing it. It just looked peculiar.

It's usually for airflow into the airbox, I believe. Maybe the Honda engine is affected more than the others by thin/hot air?