Quote from nihil :

the chiseling, narcissistic scumbags who planned the war did so without even the vaguest form of realistic exit strategy.

They did. It's the elections in November. They can let the Democrats clean up the mess, whilst criticizing them for chickening out of Iraq.

Vulcan? What Vulcan? Isn't the Sopwith Camel good enough? Hmpff!

Quote from xaotik :

There's no ethics in it and there are no points of satisfaction or grudges between animals - it's as is it, clean, to the point and for the moment. And usually (if not always) it's a direct matter of survival. There's no sense of justice or morals. Quite contrary to humans.

Dogs have ethics too, if you define ethics as "group norms that tell you how to behave towards fellow beings". A dog is a social animal and must learn the rules of the pack when it grows up. And apes have been observed to be nice to animals of other species, such as a wounded bird.

Quote from Psymonhilly :

all iraq is is a money making scheme to keep USA afloat seems there economy is failing.

The US economy is failing because of Iraq, not despite. Some Yanks make a good profit out of Iraq, but the nation as a whole doesn't.

Quote from joen :

You know, some people just are this moralless and moronic by nature. I´m sure these nutcases were trash at home too.
[...]
I would never be capable of doing this...never. No, I´ve never been in a war situation, but I just know that I could never be transformed into something like these retards.

War ****s up your mind, not your heart.

It's comforting to believe there is sharp distinction between the morally good people (which includes oneself) and the bad guys, and that the good folks will never, under any circumstances, cross that line. Then you can safely push cases like these aside. Call the soldiers psychopaths, say they should be put behind bars, and carry on.

But there is much evidence to the contrary. Examples: Milgram's experiment, the Stanford prison experiment, and the complete societies of Germany, Rwanda and Cambodia at some point in history.

@ Anyone raising his voice in anger about those poor dogs: Fine. Great. Have you asked yourself how the meat in this evening's meal was treated when it was a live animal?

(And yes, I think it's sick what they did in the videos. I'm sure those soldiers were nice, decent guys back at home. That's what a war does to people. It's sick, but not half as sick as Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, or My Lai, to name a few.)

Quote from Hankstar :

The thing is - soldiers don't start wars, politicians do. It's the politicians who start wars I have a problem with.

It's not so much the politicians I have problems with. It's the mindless civilians who vote for them and go on bleating "support our troops". If they really care about those boys they should get them out of the war asap.

Study the replay of the fastest mouse-driven hotlap from LFSW.

Quote from Gekkibi :

This should be interesting enough...

Wasn't the half-a-Ferrari posted earlier?

Quote from Rish :

Winner

Thanks.

First person to post a good picture for the next round gets to choose the winner.

Danowat, why do you ask this question? What makes you "want to enjoy" playing LFS more than it actually does?

Do you feel you owe it to anybody to keep on playing?
Do you miss the times when LFS was a big thrill?

It's your own time. Do what gives you the most fun/fulfillment.

It's yellow and blue*, and if you get one in your eye, you die. What is it?

An intercity train.

*: You may need to adapt the colours to local conditions.

Quote from Tommy Cooper :

On the other hand... I've got four fingers and a thumb.

In LRA I calculate the G forces by differentiating the position: this results in the center of the turn circle, and the lateral and longitudinal forces on the CoG. These need to be corrected for the slip angle of the car's body, using the forward vector and right vector.

To calculate the center of the turn circle at time T, LRA takes the position at <T - 0.05s> and <T + 0.05s> (formula). This also "averages out" some noise.


Your approach (calculating the G forces from the tyre forces) had crossed my mind, but I didn't follow that route, because:

1. It will give wrong results for the longitudinal force, because you need to subtract the force from air resistance -- which isn't in the RAF data. (At top speed the force on the wheels is pretty high, but acceleration is zero.) For the lateral force you should get a similar error, but smaller, because lateral drag will be very low, if LFS models this at all.

2. The tyre forces have big spikes when the wheel touches a kerb or bounces on the road surface. I expect the G forces derived from that will also be "spikey."

(I never tried it, though.)

If you want a good test for your calculations, use a RAF file from a lap at the Kyoto Oval. The banked turns there are an extra complication.

Last edited by wsinda, Sat 1 Mar 2008, 22:48.

WWF reports: real cause of Panda's near-extinction is reckless driving.

Sales rep: Our new model has a hi-res camera, 50 Gig RAM, MP3, text messaging, LFS pre-installed, a built-in microwave, aaannd... Lessee... Oh yes, you can even make the car go round the bend.

Hmm...

In the RAF format docs it says

(Why are the fields out of sequence?)

LRA, my replay analyser, reads the data in the order

So the lateral force should be at offset 8. At offset 12 you'll find the longitudinal force.
If you load the file into F1PerfView or LRA you can check for yourself. Or you can post your RAF file here.

EDIT: Beaten by w126!

When I wanted to create an account at RSC, my first attempts failed because the name already existed. I was in a hurry, so I used the name of the account I had back at the University.

It was at the dept. of maths (wiskunde) and computer science (informatica); the last two characters are my RL initials -- the admins were Un*x guys and had a fixed way of naming accounts. Not very readable, but it does give you a unique ID.

When I moved to LFS I kept the name, because it had become a net identity. Guess I'm stuck to it now.

Quote from w126 :

The order of wheel data is: FL, FR, RL, RR

Unfortunately, this is not true for all cars. For FWDs you get the rear wheels first (RL, RR, FL, FR). AWD cars are like RWDs.

The correct way to determine it is to read the X and Y position of each wheel from the static wheel info block. If X < 0 then it's a left wheel, if Y < 0 then it's a rear wheel.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Just read this if you want a good laugh at people exaggerate about racing games (because of course, just the other day we had a new 16TB server installed, purely for photos... :really, and yet remain clueless as to which games are realistic or even what makes a car game realisitic.

Not to mention that he claims to be a long-time Ferrari fan, yet he can't tell Jody Scheckter from Jacky Ickx:

Quote from Mark Cale :

I was supporting Ferrari when they weren't winning world championships. It took them 21 years to win a world championship from when Jackie Ickx last won it for them, which was just a few years after Niki Lauda.

Quote from 5haz :

Ok I think this one wins

Thanks.

Anybody got a good picture for the new round? Post one, and you can choose the winner.

Many racers underestimate the danger of airborne champagne corks.

Quote from mcintyrej :

I think the community should come together, make a list of top priority things that need fixing, for example the way a red and white barrier sends you into space. Just the stuff that really makes it not a simulation at the moment.

Once those are fixed and we have the core game to what is a very realistic simulator, we can start addressing the minor bugs.

So you expect the devs to publish the source code and all other resource files? So they should make the results of many years of work, and the source of their income, available for anyone (including competitors)?

And then you think that some smart guys in the community -- experts in car physics, games programming and 3D modeling -- will step forward, take a good look at the stuff, and solve the problems? C'mon...

Scawen, Eric and Victor are very good at what they do. If these problems were simple to solve, they'd have done so a long time ago.

Oh, fercrissake!

Quote from orange101 :

In the new version of live for speed the should get back the turbo car

Buy a license. You've been evaluating LFS for over a year; plenty of time to save up.

Quote :

make it you are able to change the time of day

Dynamic tracks won't be in LFS until S3.

Quote :

they should still see if they are able to make the proper automatic trany for if you just wont to cruse a round before you go and race.

LFS is for racing, and no race car has an automatic gearbox. The auto-shift is there to help newbies on the learning curve to good racing.

Quote from SamH :

That's an even smaller niche market than I'd considered

...

They talk about catering only for a niche market, but on their Partners page they quote PC-gaming demographic statistics for leverage.

The multiplayer part is for a niche market, but it's only one half of the equation. The other half, the part that should make the business case, are the spectators.

Picture a cross between Victor's LFS Remote, Becky's STCC movies, and a live race on TV. A race where spectators can choose the camera position, and get expert commentary. With professional drivers and a NASCAR-size audience. And a matching advertising income for the guys who run the show.

Quote from SamH :

The bottom line, for me, is value for money. If I buy into iRacing, how much of the money that I'm investing is actually going to be translated into something that I will directly benefit from in the sim

If you run a RL racing car, and race on the tracks modeled in iRacing, you'll get loads of value. iRacing could save you a whole day of testing on the track, because it enables you to you tweak your car's setup at home. (IF iRacing lives up to the ambitions of its makers.) The money you saved that way will easily outweigh the cost of a decent simracing rig plus the iRacing subscription fee.

Quote from DrDNA :

Think about it - have you ever been sad or angry enough to literally want to mow down crowds of people you didn't know?

Yes. Well, not personally, but I know someone who had this urge, back when she had a severe mental illness. The fact that all other people appeared to live happily while she had been suffering for so long made her very angry. (BTW, I'm married to her and I love her deeply.)

I believe there are many people, in all countries, who feel this way. Some of them live in a country where they can get the means to do it. Some of those may give in to the urge. The example set by others also counts; it's hard to be original when you are depressed.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

I hope these gunmen burn in hell.

They may have felt like they were living in hell before they died.

Many folks would stop racing every now and then, to shout insults at the people of nearby planet rFactor and at the guys in the SimBin constellation (not to mention the weirdos inhabiting the faraway Arcade galaxy).