I think the FXR personally (mainly because it's the closest looking to an M3), but I guess it depends if the sound system is more suited to the other GTR's.
I tried a Gamepad I bought from GAME but that seems way to sensitive for me. I'll give it another go, but like JasonJ, the stick movement is too quick to drive properly i.e. in a straight line, hence I stuck with the mouse and kb inputs.
Very minor, but has the Keys.pdf document in the docs folder been updated with all the new key combinations? Only, I noticed that SHIFT+A for the sound editor was missing from the Controller/Sound section.
Why not try the UFR and/or XFR against the FXR and XRR for a real challenge. Choose a twisty circuit so the faster cars don't have the advantage on the straights.
I've got Vista RC1 on my laptop and LFS runs fine (apart from some server connection problems which i've had on XP as well, so I don't think these are Vista specific problems).
I've only purchased LFS, rF and recently GTL. Was playing rF quite a bit after I got it and tried many mods, but have recently been playing this a lot less as I saw GTL in the bargan bucket for £8.
The feel on GTL imo is better than rF so far, but it also suffers from that "point of no return" when you spin out. Also, watching the car from TV view is terrible, the car doesn't move realisticlly like it does in LFS, there seems too much shake. In the cockpit it's pretty good though.
Still gone back to LFS though and it's the one sim I've played more than any other PC game I've picked up.
I've got a HP TC4400 Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, Intel 945 GMA, 1GB RAM and Tablet XP SP2 and running a few tests for you I got the following:
Settings:
(hardware vertex is not available as already mentioned above)
high res +mirror
user 0.80
mirror 0.20
dust 1.00
full size textures
full car and helmet skins
z-buffer 24
simple track off
FPS:
15 - 20 back of full grid on SO (AI's - this may have impacted the fps possibly??)
30 - 40 in front
20 - 30 back of full grid on WE (AI's - this may have impacted the fps possibly??)
30 - 40 in front
Even though the 15-20 is low, its still playable. Playing around with these settings e.g. dust and high res setting would give me slightly better performance, but to be honest when you go over 25 - 30fps then the frame rate is pretty smooth anyway so personally I'm not bothered that I don't get 40+ fps.
Hope this helps....
/edit - I just joined SO1 with 8 racers and got 60 fps - FYI
I've just updated from U34 to U35 then U35 to U36 using the auto update feature, which seemed to go ok (both files downloaded and extracted when LFS had closed).
Started a Single Player game on KY1, chose the FZR with a setup - Inferno Valky1239 set, clicked Start and then LFS locked (car stopped spinning) and I couldn't CTRL+ALT+DEL. Had to power off and restart.
Restarted OK, and loaded LFS ok after that. Unfortunately I don't have a crash dump file (unless you know where it's located?).
I think you need to rule out a problem with your machine first. Check the Event Log in XP (Right Click My Computer, Manage, Event Viewer) and see if you're getting red errors against hardware. You'll need to do some googling on the error messages.
Weird, cos I haven't had LFS crash to desktop on me once since I started playing over a year and half ago.
Fantastic slowmo DoN!! Just watching this made me want to fire up LFS!
I think also, that they inspire others to try their hand at LFS video making...it has certainly got me thinking about trying something.
Also, I just took a look at your Timelapse movie - excellent stuff and again great choice of music (I especially like the sunset timelapse, very nice).