Some OLT Racing Server goodness. Can't decide which is better.
8xAA, 16xAF, 512² skins, original Aston textures.

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Think of it this way: With the penalties the FZR now handles with an empty tank as it did before with a full tank. Yes, of course it is a bit more clumsy, especially if your old setup's spring rates were calculated with the wrong sprung mass. I wonder where the added mass will be put in patch X. Either in the front, which will increase moment of inertia, or in the rear, which will worsen the front/rear weight distribution.

@TBO:
Currently it's a bit difficult to see the balancing of the TBO class since the XRT is so popular in W9+. The FXO is the least popular car now. Only seldomly someone chooses it who can really drive it on the limit. That's why the FXO seldomly scores the quickest laptimes though it happens once in a while.
Right now I can't see any car as too superior or too inferior. After patch X has settled and we know the new WR times we can perhaps change the hp figures by one or two for patch Y.

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Quote from farcar :

I agree. Very nice audio/visual journeyof motorsport goodness.
I think it would have been further enhanced by some occasional external shots.
Like Climb Dance:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ib3Q0C07dVo

I always like knowing what's happening outside the car too.

And I for one hate those external shots that completely brake the onboard-video. i.e. I'm very unhappy with my video in the first post in this thread because I had to switch to an external camera at one point. Totally disrupts the experience.
...Everyone to his taste I guess.

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Nice racing today.

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Quote from boosterfire :

I'm not saying he doesn't care what we think. I'm saying he doesn't bother telling us what he's working on, and that, whatever anybody can come up with, is not a good marketing strategy.

From the S1 days we know that Eric's progress leads Scawen's releases by months to years. The FOX was ready way before S2's release.
If you'd look into Eric's PC today you'd propably find many cars that won't be released within the next few years. Some day the devs tested the kart-class in LFS, and I'm sure Eric came up with something so they could look at the bike-car-class Scawen implemented for testing. There are propably also car-parts around that will be necessary once the damage model is improved. A LMP car must also be in some stage of development since groundeffect will come some day.
That doesn't mean we'll see any of this within a reasonable timeframe. A concept-drawing of the FOX would've been misleading in 2003. A screenshot of Eric's current work would be misleading now.

That said, I'd like teaser-shots like before S2. Just to know what's coming within the next two months.

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Pandora never worked for me.
Started with a song, it switched to something I liked, it then switched to something I didn't like, it then switched to something I didn't like at all, it then switched to something horrible, and got worse, and worse. As often as I tried, it only moved away from what style I originally wanted. It's frustrating to start out with RHCP - Can't Stop and end up with Britney Spears after 20 bad songs...

Maybe it's because I don't identify with bands, but certain songs. i.e. I like some RHCP songs, but don't like others. Perhaps it gets confused with that.

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Nice video. Thanks for posting. :go:

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TBO is about perfect now.
The RB4 is the best deal on tarmac tracks since it starts well, isn't too difficult to drive and does decent times, but the margins to TBO and FXO are really close. The FXO doesn't work properly in 5 minute races due to it's problems off the line, but once at race pace it's up there with the other cars. A FWD just won't win a 5-minute race. That's a drive-train issue.

I won't say much about GTR class though. I'm not good enough with it to make a statement.

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Great skin. But I'm not a fan of faked brand badges. It's just not an Audi. Have you considered removing the Audi badges and putting a replacement there?
Here's an old non-anti-aliased picture of an example of a rebranded car design.

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I can run LFS pretty well on my laptop, a 1.73 Pentium IV M with shared-memory graphics.
I reduce resolution to 640x480x16, texture size to half (important!) with the LOD sliders to 0.0, multiplayer draw distance around 100 meters, and disabled skin-downloading. That works pretty well up to a couple of cars. Just for driving around on demo-servers with my laptop during a lecture at the university.
I hope that helps you to get your LFS-fix until you can effort an upgrade.

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I have no interest in high res skins.
When I drive tin-tops I don't even download helmet-skins at all. Skins aren't eye-candy for me, they provide identifyability.

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I agree about the 'total time' line. It was rather unnecessary in normal races.
I don't agree on the 'best' line though. Right now I have to drive to the finish line to find out my best time. That means the ideal time isn't displayed when I want to view it.
I know that the new design is more streamlined and better from a pro-user point of view, but while racing I'd like the interface to be static and predictable. e.g. I still manually ctrl+tab to the result board, even if I want to view it directly after the finish line, because ctrl+tab is always the same. I can do it any time and regardless of the situation. It's an 'if'-construction fewer in my head.
I hope you get what I'm going at. Streamlining the interface is nice, but in racing I mostly want the GUI to be very simple. Not beautiful and small, but mostly simple.
The new changes are acceptable and don't need to be reversed. I'd just like to voice that point of view.

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If the FZR was indeed hit too hard by the penalties I'd like to suggest to remove some weight (please suggest!) from it's weight penalty and increase it's fuel capacity by a certain amount (please suggest!).
The ideal situation would be where the FZR can take 0.1 or 0.2 a lap from the XRR with an empty tank, but looses 0.1 to 0.2 with a full tank.
There is quite some GTR practice going on. I didn't read the times, but I guess with those numbers you could make a good picture of the current empty-tank performance of the cars.

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Stuff to do in Berlin:
...Catch a train to a nicer city.

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The is pretty much off the wall but:
The ability to replay specific sounds locally when specific lines are crossed. In other words: A digital copilot for our autocross-stages.

I use the autocross-feature exclusively to make rally-like stages, so it's natural I would like such a feature.

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I did that after the first drop in fps and could maintain a proper fps number through turn 1 in the following races. But the point is: My PC is at it's limit with the current graphics in a full grid.

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Quote from duke_toaster :

It's good that it's a street circuit BUT why does Spain need 2 GPs when Germany has lost its second, so has Italy.

GPs cost too much money. Please move F1 far away from any circuit I know and rather spend the money on proper races.
I'd much rather see more Nordschleife-races than even more money thrown out of the window just to accomodate those FIA-lunatics. Each GP is lost money. And for what?

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I always wonder how many say they could handle better graphics.
With my Nvidia Geforce 7900 GS/1Gb DDR2/E6400 I did struggle when driving into T1 in a 32 cars grid. The fps were barely over 30. I consider that the lowest acceptable framerate and so I'd say no, I wouldn't be able to handle better graphics.
Did I configure something wrong?

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Quote from XCNuse :

If you want to be a good skinner, the first thing you can learn is to get away from vinyls

Don't talk him out of it. Cheap vinyls are a great "This driver has no clue"-designator and are of assistance to all other drivers.

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The Fiat 126p reminded me a lot of the Porsche/VW EA266 (the car that was to become the Golf before it became a lot too expensive). It has a mid engine beneath the rear seats (a lying 4 cylinder), rear wheel drive and was planned for a wide range of performance-figures. The EA 266 was supposed to go from a economic 60hp Beatle-successor under the VW badge (aka UF1 competitor) to a Porsche branded 200hp coupe (aka UFR competitor).

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Quote from ayrton senna 87 :

that move where the guy came back on the track after braking too late was totally fair, the guy that got pushed sideways slightly should have knew he was coming back on track....

That may be true when a couple of 16 year olds have a go at karting on some parking lot with cones but not in any civilized motorsports competition.
@Jakg: He means Pailler's move against Szabo from round 6 that was reviewed in the round 7 broadcast.

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Thanks for sharing that info. Much appreciated.

Then I wonder why flatspotting doesn't work properly.
I know that by locking the tyres up for 2-3 seconds semi-slicks used in club racing can easily be flatspotted to a degree that they need to be replaced or they'd destroy the suspension within an hour of driving.
Either something about the surface temperatures and wear is wrong or the suspension damage model isn't capable of reproducing the proper effects. I wonder what kind of damage accumulation calculation Scawen uses...

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Hello.

LFS's tyre physics assume that the tyre behaves as 16*3 blocks of rubber (or whatever the number was, not important here) that go from the top of the tyre-surface to the end of the usable tread.
This is a proper assumption for typical tyre operation. The tyre temperature and wear behaves properly when driving normally.
When locking the tyre this doesn't work well though. When a real tyre locks a very thin top layer of the tread heats excessively and melts away within a second, creating a flat spot. In LFS the complete tread-section has to heat until it starts melting. That's why it is so difficult to flat-spot an LFS tyre.
Since increasing the number of tyre sections isn't sensful (the double amount of sections would still suffer from the problem to a certain degree) LFS should make assumptions about the temperatures in the topmost layer of the tread which could then be used to model proper wear.

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Some more pointers about using scripts to map the indicator-buttons to the wheelbuttons can be found here.

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@Quietus:
Wether an inferno-set can be turned into a race setup depends on the set.
Some hotlapping-sets are merely normal sets with rediculously low tyre pressure and excessive camer. Others are abominations to the god of vehicle dynamics and drive about as well as a monster-truck around a slalom-track.
After trying out a couple of sets you quickly get to know those set-authors that make sets you like and learn to filter out the others.

I personally always drive the same set everywhere. I only adjust the final drive and every other setting I feel like changing. That doesn't make me the quickest driver on the server, but I like the process.

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