I never really minded James Allen until the French GP, when Alonso and MS were having a wee bit of showman ship and racing each other in qually he had the audacity to exclaim that they shouldn't be doing that and that the stewards would have a chat with them. Every single spectator and every person that enjoys motorsport (I'm sure) thought that this is what they wanted to see and more of it! Now my opinion is firmly set that he does not actually know what racing is and probably would not enjoy it if he saw it. Martin Brundle should (IMHO) be put in charge of production for the ITV F1 coverage. He is a car nut, loves and understands racing and has a genuine passion for all that is motorsport. He is even fairly level headed about his patriotic duty and will happily support DC if he happens to do well. Something alot of other commentators fail to do. Out with the bullshit 'glamour' of F1 and bring back the wheel to wheel racing I remember when the red and white McLarens, blue and yellow Williams and red Ferraris remembered that they were there to RACE.

Predictions for tomorrow, Button FTW?

I originally posted the '107% rule' as a guide, i didn't mean it to be taken as a literal rule. I think that if I was racing on a server where everyone was hovering around 2-3 sec a lap faster than me I'd probably leave. But that is my choice. Like I said a ban is harsh but you do have to consider the fact that your actions have an impact on the other players.

IMHO a slow/practicing racer should try and do so in thier own time or on quiet servers. Unless you purposely set your server up to have the GTRs and the XFG on the track (or some other silly combo) then it would be expected that you'd try and find folk that are roughly the same level as you.

Can you imagine anyone getting kicked from CS:Source after being headshotted 20 times in a row? No, why? They'd have got bored and left to find a better balanced server. We all know that racing has a 'pureist' element to it that you can have fun when it is just you, the car and the track. But if that is the only factor you are taking from it then do it alone.

the 107% rule applies here, if you aren't capable of racing at 107% of the AVERAGE lap time set by other folk, get off the server because you will (or probably will) ruin the race, inadvertantly I might add. I practice offline and only come online to race. If folk are way faster than me then it becomes obvious that you are going to spoil some of thier fun. Chances are you are taking bad lines through corners which force the following car(s) to do some serious negotiating to get by cleanly.

I have raced with folk who were 5-10sec slower on BL1 rev, approaching the near flat out (in the demo car) downhill right left sbends the back marker braked then steered into his normal line, fine, in his mirrors I was a dot so you can understand his surprise when he found my car embedded in his drivers side door, the closing speed was just too great and with him braking I thought he was letting me through. Turns out he thought that being bizzarly wide was a good approach and felt he needed to be in 1-2nd for that corner, where I'd be taking it in 4th.

A ban is harsh but I'd probably have asked you to leave if you were upsetting the other racers.

Note: I do not mean to imply that you WERE doing any of the above, just that if you did I can see thier point of view.

I was confronted with blue flags for the first time in a recent race meet, the leader was about 2 sec a lap faster, however the track was southcity so pretty tough to pass at the best of times. When the bleu flag originally showed he was far too far behind to make even the craziest of overtakes so I let him catch up, by the end of the lap he was close enough that on the exit of the last corner he'd have a good run down the straight, I pulled off the racing line allowing him to get a better exit and blended my throttle out toward the end of the straight so he could see me in his mirror and know that I wasn't about to dive down his inside. The next car quickly came to a "blue flag" distance but never closed so I never did anything to help them by. They were never in a position to make a pass without me losing a massive amount of time waiting on the outside of a corner for them to pass or something. I never blocked them I just continued to race.

If I'm lapping you I wouldn't expect you to jump out the way, but equally if you see me making a move down your inside I'd expect you to yeild, even if under normall racing you'd give me the squeeze. I also think that any and all lapped cars do not have the right to unlap themselves unless the car that lapped them has just had an accident or whatnot.

There is some sound advice here. i have found similar issues getting to 107% of WR in hotlapping or qually situations. In the races I have I've found that other drivers regularly get thier best time in a one lap special. I simply cannot commit on a single lap so generally get a poor grid slot, only to find that my race pace is good enough to move me up several places. If you are consistantly able to get a lap time then you are ready to learn about car setups. Start reading the forums for setup advice and pick a car to tune, when you get a car dialled in to your unique style I'm sure your lap time will come down a bundle. Then you'll need to re-learn where the limits are and do it again, and again and again.

Consistancy wins the championship, luck/bravery might get you a fast lap but it is unlikely to win a race.

Am I the only one to switch between sims to check how my performance improves? I tried GPL recenly and smashed my records for Spa and Watkins Glen, still not WR or anything but taking chunks out of my old times that were damn hard to repeat at the time.

Meh, sorry again for dropping, my friend came round during the sprint race and was a bit too much of a distraction in the second (hence the spin - quit). I shall try and make sure everyone knows to stay away for the next race. It was fun holding up frost for a while, i'd like to say we were racing but IRL you'd have been by me long before you were in the game - hence when I came a cropper against the wall I let you through rather than continue to hold you up and ruin your race - you've no idea how much of a smile it put on my face to watch you tear off and set the, then, fastest lap of the race. I suspect by the middle of the race my rears would have been cooked but other than that it was good.

EDIT - Yeah just watched the replay, in future, when I'm leaving a cars width on the apex with someone clearly faster behind me it's me telling you I'll yeild if you take a stab. There were about 2 instances per lap where I was sure you'd take a dive down the inside but you never did. With the south city circuit I'm pretty sure that I (or most anybody else) could hold anybody up for at least the majority of the race (pit stops excluded). But that's not as much fun as letting them through cleanly then trying to catch them.

This attitude will not last mind, this is my first year racing online and I want it to be as clean as possible, so I get invited back . Next year, I'll be out to win, clean, fast but no yeilds.

Last edited by yegadoyai, Fri, 21 Jul 2006 01:16.

no worries, I suck at tintops anyway. I trust the racing was good and I'll see you all next week.

I thought that was the defaut password as it was a different password for round 4.

Tried to log on for the qually but the server was passworded, you never mailed me the possword so I couldn't join.

I can understand the concept of running a setup where 100% brake pedal movement gives you a lockup on all four corners. But a locked wheel provides less grip on any surface. Coming from GPL I always had my setup able to lock all four corners to 'teach' me to respect the brake and not over use it. I find that most setups in LFS do not have enough 'bite' with thier braking and I have to adjust it so that I 'could' lock the wheels at about 75-80% pedal movement. The only thing I can think of is to induce a slide, either understeer or oversteer, but I can't think how either of those would avert disaster as you'd lose more control than you gain. Perhaps he has seen too many accidents where the driver has locked his brakes and has been fortunate to escape and put 1 and 1 together to get 3.

I was dropped on lap 11 or 12 for some reason, my internet connection was fine throughout so I don't know what happened. Shame, I got a good start then, after an unfortunate spin, I seemed to be making some ground on the folks ahead. Guess I'll never know.

Ok, major generalisation!

A computer that goes from working to soft rebooting is unlikely to just be suffering from software issues. I'd suggest checking the following:

Make sure all add in cards are seated properly/cables plugged in etc.

Temperature of:
CPU
Graphics Card
Motheboard (just the chips with heatsinks)
Power supply

Disable all overclocking, there is no point testing a system if you OCing.

If, having done all that, you still get the same problem:

Get windows to load as little as possible on startup and try and replicate the error. Albatros 18 is a very simple game and should not really tax any system. If it continues to crash, delete your current video drivers, then use a driver cleaner, THEN install the latest 6.5 Catalysts. Not the beta 6.6 (or have they been released official now?) Regardless, the latest drivers from ATI directly. If you STILL have the problem try to replicate the problem without opengl. If you still have the original Half-Life you can swap renderer to Opengl and D3D, as does Unreal and Unreal Tournament.

What games have you tried in D3D that _do_ work, is it unstable in any other game/scenario?

In regards to your second statement, an Athlon 2600 is actually not that quick, LFS is predominately CPU dependant not graphics card. Your FPS will be limited by your CPU until you upgrade to about a 3000+. My little Sempron 2800 is not a bad performer but I can get drops to <30fps unless I OC it.

On the road I agree that JPM would be responsible for the accident. No question. However this is racing, the same rules do not apply. There is an understanding between drivers that they will all try to get round the track as fast as possible, in genral they will follow the racing line and there numerous guidelines for passing and blocking. At no point does it say that the driver behind should ensure that if the driver in front decides to slow down at a point that is unexpected (the exit of a corner for example) that he should be able to avoid an accident. That would just be silly. The reason I lay the blame on Kimi was because I couldn't see/remember who he was following but yea there was quite a gap from Rubens to the Ferraris/Renaults and he had the most room (no one on the outside only Kimi on the inside and with plenty room) so his unexpected slowing caused Kimi to do likewise leaving Button and Monty with very little room. If monty had not hit Kimi I suspect that button would have still run wide to avoid Kimis car possibly causing a different accident.

@ flippy: nice

Again I will defend a driver who was caught out, not just plain rubbish. If you watch the video you can see that Kimi slows rapidly exiting the left hand part of the corner, just before the TV camera cuts away you can see how fast Button and Monty catch him. The difference being that button has room to his right where as Monty has no where to go but Button and Kimi. Which he did. It was unfotunate but the accident was started by Kimi.

So tempting to put in the obvious post about "being a girl you'll never know what testosterone will do to you". But really can't be bothered. Enough said, girls and boys are different, who brakes last (and gets away with it) is more often down to expeirence rather than hormones.

As an avid cross genre gamer my reaction times are very fast, generally faster than is possible without an amount or error in timing/or good guesswork. This does not mean men have faster reactions. Several tests have showed that professional athletes/racers/gamers etc do not have faster reactions UNLESS they are competing in their chosen sport or have just finished doing so.
I remember a trial for Nigel Mansell to test this theory. They had a large wall covered with lights. The wall was maybe 7' square and the lights were spaced evenly over the surface. The object of the game is to hit the lights as they come on. Due to the size of the board there are lights on your periphery vision. Nigel Mansell tried it and scored a very average reaction time of about .25s However, after a quick blast round the track he tried it again (did something like 2-3 qually laps of Silverstone I think). His reaction times were down to a super human .15s. It has been shown that he simply could not have reacted to the lights and hit them in that time if it was only taking the nerve timing into account. There must have been a certain amount of prediction but the other factor is the 'correct response' part of the brain. If he had to process what he was going to do before doing it, it delays the reaction time a good deal. After his little practice session his body was tuned to responding without the 'awake' brain (conciseness) therefore his reactions were quicker. None of this indicates how there could be a better male/female response time as it well known that males (due to testosterone) are better able to shut off the 'awake' brain and simply rely on reactions (getting into the 'zone' - focusing on a single task to the exclusion of everything else). This is actually why females are better at (or at least are genetically predisposed at being better) sims. In a sim you cannot rely on your reactions as you are not being fed the right information to do so. In a sim it is not about balance and feeling the car, you have to translate the visual and audio stimulus into motion information before reacting. The article detailed that it was due to some left/right brain split that enabled females to do this better. The best drivers are the ones that have enough capacity to allow the reactions to deal with the driving of the car and get the rest of their brain to do the thinking for the race, that is the difference between the Prosts, Sennas, Schumachers of the world and the Coulthards, Trullis and all the others that are quick but not really championship material.

Having said all that the more realistic a sim the easier it is to translate the information into 'feeling' a car. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that they can feel the car slide long before it happens and it feels just like it does on the road. After a couple hours of practice last night I was dizzy when I stopped racing, I'm pretty sure this was down to the lack of movement relative to the perceptual movement of the game.

Anyway, genuinely, I'd be interested in information on reaction times if they have proof that there is a genetic split. Cognitive science was one of the more interesting things at uni.

I don't see what all the JPM bashing is all about, I have followed F1 for a good number of years and frankly if it wasn't for drivers willing to make a push early on it would be a very stagnant race. JPM was completely boxed in, Jenson had plenty of room on the outside and Kimi appeared to have plenty of room aswell. JPM clearly thought he could make it through the corner at the pace he was carrying and yet for some reason (I didn't see any in the replay from Kimis car) Kimi clearly slows down as he comes through the corner. Where was JPM meant to go? Granted it was unfortunate for a good number of drivers but really, if you penalise JPM for this you will virtually stop all racing as you won't be allowed to try and overtake or get alongside someone without written permision from Bernie before hand. Come on, racing incident that's all.

Better reaction times? Since when? I have seen articles that show due to genetics sim racing can favour women (if you want I'll dig around for it) but reaction time is dependant on the cental nervous system, unless you reckon that thier (generally) smaller frame can give them an advantage in synapse response then I can't see how they could 'generally' have a better reaction time than anyone else. Prediction and appropriate response is what a driver really needs, we all react at pretty much the same speed.

hmmm, sounds like it's FZRs then

Are you leaving it open for folk to decide what car they drive? There is a post kicking about somewhere detailing the complete dominance of the FZR(?) anyway the last GTR car. Just like to know which car to practice in for some close racing.

Hi Kim, you gave an open invite to the OCuk guys for this race, does this include anyone taking part in thier summer trophy cup? You might remember me from last night? I'd love to join in, all the experience helps. Oh yeah, what's a lag-lap? No passing to allow all the clients to settle down?

I was under the impression that the 'balance' came from the FZR having a fuel consumption issue. Maybe your races are not long enough?

the monty/rosberg incident was REALLY obvious to anyone that knows racing. Monty is a bit of a hot head and generally has the pace early on to make overtakes while everyone else is judging the pace of the track/car. When he did the same to MS MS took to the grass to avoid the collision as there was not enough space. MS saw the overtake coming and made sure he could continue to race. Rosberg claims not to have seen the move made by Monty and therefore turned in on him, blocking Montys exit (there is NO way monty could avoid Rosbergs car when Rosberg decided to turn in). It was a racing incident caused by Rosbergs lack of awareness/inexperience and Montys desire to be ahead and 'race'. Blame should be aportioned appropriately, Monty should have known better trying a move like that on a rookie and Rosberg should be more aware of the cars around him. If I was Monty I'd be a bit upset but that's racing, if I was Rosberg I'd be embarrassed but clearly I wouldn't tell anyone I was.

If it happened in LFS I wouldn't call for a ban or anything but I would probably ask the person to check thier mirrors more.

I played GPL ALOT before getting LFS and as I have no clutch pedal then I'm a lefty. However I brake with the right foot in real life, but that is mainly because all the cars I've driven are FWD.