If you were an american, you would be really rich right now!

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I never use more than 240deg, anyway.

I heard a rumor that in S3, the LFS devs might remove this "driving aid" and force everyone to use a wheel that matches the car... :boing:

I'm thinking about saving up for the ECCI multi-turn wheel. I currently have a perfectly fine (and fairly new) G25. Once you start buying high end stuff, it's hard to stop

The things I like about it:

• Unlike most mass market FFB wheels, you can mount any size wheel without worrying about messing up FFB because it doesn't use FFB.
  
• Since there's no FFB motors to burn out, this thing will probably last forever.
  
• It can take abuse....

The things I'm worried about:

• Will I miss FFB?
  
• With no FFB and no centering spring, will I have issues recovering the car if it gets a little sideways? (I'm pretty bad at this in real life anyway!).
  
• Will I get annoyed changing the max rotation all the time?
  
• There's a few other wheels in development that look promising!

The things I don't like about it:

• Changing the wheel rotation is a 30 minute process involving hand tools. While I expected it to be a little more difficult than an FFB wheel like the G25 where it's point and click, I was expecting it to be more like a 5 minute job.

So... what do you guys think of the wheel?

Quote from Becky Rose :

I wouldnt want a wheel that turns more than 270. I never take my hands off the wheel when i'm racing, i've only driven one race car with a wheel that went lock to lock with me moving my arms (a BMW) and I crashed that! So there is definately a market for 270 degree turn wheels.

hah! Taking the easy way out huh..? That's exactly why I want a wheel that turns > 1000 degrees - so that when I finally start doing track days in my road car I'll already have practice catching slides with a wheel that turns realistically.

P.S. Darin thanks for the info!

oh man... now the whole world is going to see all my wrecks...

good thing I wasn't in this round!

Anyone down for an LFS meet up at Deals Gap? haha. I've been wanting to go there for so long... It's pretty damn far from NY though... and I'm still running on Blizzaks!

Thanks Darin.

I enjoyed the review as usual, but I was hoping to hear more in depth info.

For example...

• How it compared to other wheels. You stated it used belts and gears for FFB. Was the FFB smoother than a G25? How about the Porsche wheel?

• How was the sequential shifter? It looks like the sequential shifter can be detached or extended from the wheel.

• It looked like you had to be pretty careful using the paddle shifters, it seems like this could be more annoying than a useful feature. Can you accidentally downshift or upshift twice?

Here's some random thoughts from me.

• The pedals didn't look natural in either the default configuration or the way you reconfigured it.

• LFS needs more than 270 degrees.

• I'm not sure how well velcro would work on my carpet

Quote from Tisza :

Umm... i'd stick to the old 2d if anyone tried this, pls post!

They do list some locations where you can demo it here:

http://iz3d.com/t-neexperienceit.aspx

I'm in NY but I don't feel like driving into the city just to test a monitor

My fear is that using this daily would screw up my eyes... but this seems like it would be pretty cool in conjunction with a head tracking system.

It can also be used as an ordinary 2D monitor.

Cool. Wish we could do something like that in the US. What did you guys think of the force dynamics system ?

I think it has more to do with adapting to the sense of speed which is why most people go into the turns too fast.

Those other games have a bunch of canned effects to increase the sense of speed.

Quote from Glenn67 :

I can think of a great way to test but will need a few hundred thousand to pull it off

Take a FBMW to a skid pad, setup a PC with LFS and FBMW at skid pad. Setup sensors on the real FBMW for steering, throttle, brake, etc which send the same inputs back to the game test drive real car which will also control LFS at same time then compare.

Any lotto winners out there

even if u could do that, the surface temperature and grip available would be different amongst many other factors im guessing.

Hi all,

I just received a newegg promo for this monitor. I've never heard of it before. It's a 22" monitor with two panels - one in front and one behind it to produce a stereo 3D image when used with the glasses in DX8-DX9 games. Live For Speed is listed as a compatible game. Has anyone tried it?

http://iz3d.com/t-22monitor.aspx

It's $700 - newegg promo is $600.

Quote from Gil07 :

Really? My sources say otherwise...

Not sure who the poster was and I'm failing to find the post now But I remember reading it in the General Discussion forum...

Quote from sam93 :

No, it's just a little joke, because it is mainly classes as a womans car and when you see I see a man drive on I say that, because it is normally a girls car. Why be ashamed to drive it, if you like the car you can drive it.

I believe studies over here show more women drive V6 mustangs than miatas, not only in sheer numbers, but percentage of male vs female buyers as well. The same people who class it as a "women's car" are the same people driving real women's cars....

Quote from Math1js :

MX5 model from 1980 is pure awesome (besides that, its cheap) but the new MX5 aint that pretty :-/

damn I need to get a 1980 MX-5. Is it like a pre-prototype edition?

All we have in the states is the 1990 model (released in 89), which for the most part went relatively unchanged mechanically through 2005, and the new chubby redesign released as an 06 model.

Quote from Neblaivas :

Hello there, I have problem ...well at first (at patch x) i used manual without any problem (and played quite passive) and did a break for lfs(rl,too much WoW) and came back on y and till now i use auto shifting and dunno. I tried manual now and im faster from constant low 1:15 to mid 1:14 (i know it's faster) if im not making mistakes (miss shift,too fast shifting at braking...) but in racing whole shifting is too distracting and it just feels weird,so what i should do to use manual better without distraction?

It doesn't get much easier than paddle shifters and autoclutch. Using an h-shifter with clutch for road cars is much more challenging and one mis-shift may cost you the race in some of these short sprint races! Real racing is hard!

jtbo, I agree with you but the problem still remains. A large projector would be best suited with a large FOV and the image would be really distorted regardless of the screen size as Juls stated.

I wish I was more in the know about projectors. Like, what's the technical reason why we can't have a really wide aspect ratio projector like 16:3 (the equivalent of three 16:9 monitors linked together). It's so simple to make a good DIY screen for projectors...

Quote from vixer :

I think the best would be a virtual helmet (around 1600x1200) with a head tracking device on x1 acceleration .

hmmm... u could just strap a monitor to a helmet and you'd be all set....

Quote from Glenn67 :

Well if your refering to the formula bmw ingame then I'd say it would be pretty accurate (Scawen did a hole day of testing in a real one)

Driving a real car is always going to be different to a sim (controls are different and g-forces) but a sim will give you a head start if your new to racing I believe.

There was someone who posted here a month or two ago that stated the Formula BMW felt very different from the real car.

I believe akhenaph was referring to the MRT though.

hi.. check out the unofficial addons forum. IMHO, making an NA car sound like a turbo is just as silly in the virtual world as in real life The full version (S2) has several turbo cars.

As far as the carbon fiber hood, that's probably just a skin.

I've always wanted to drive one of these. They're about 100-200lbs lighter than a 2nd gen miata. According to wikipedia, a 6 speed sequential is standard in the australian market - which can be either a good or bad thing... I'd personally probably prefer a normal h-shifter.

<rant>
That wikipedia article is freaking terrible. Here's a quote:

"The Techno Pro Spirit MR-S was also the first car to be able to beat Tsuchiya's champion AE86 in its own grounds, the touge."

Who CARES!@%
</rant>


Before buying I'd test drive a 99-04 mx-5 to see how it compares. You might prefer the g/b on the miata and the extra storage space will come in handy. Parts and maintenance on the mx-5 are pretty low as well.

If you combine this idea with a FFB gear shift and FFB pedals, you can have a Player Piano type racing rig I'm not exactly sure what the point would be, but it would certainly look cool in your living room.

Am I the only person that thinks ball bearing turbo's avatar looks like Scawen?

Anyway, congratulations!