The online racing simulator
Hurricane Dean
(86 posts, started )
High winds are high winds who can complain? its the same yes for everyone but the problem is "How many people practice with high winds? I know i dont and High winds makes it more exiting because most people race with No or little wind.

How many people agree with this? i mean sure id like Wet races i infact like racing in the wet let alone im a cyclist so it doesnt count much for a race car but its all for fun, and wind rain dry wet at the end of the day LFS is designed for Fun and i think if you just take a breather settle in, it will all be worth it in the end

And yes that proberly makes no sense but hey its there
I don't mind winds, I actually think they are a lot of fun. The unpredictability and having to cope with that is a blast

Part of the problem is that people are participating on the CTRA servers for points They shouldn't care really. CTRA servers provide consistent racing of a good level with forced restarts which makes the wait for the next race a whole lot less of a bother than on some other servers.

I go there because the server provides fun racing and lots of it. Points are nice, but ultimately do nothing for me. That single race fighting door to door with someone makes LFS fun for me. And the more races I have in the little time available to me for racing, the more that happens and the more I enjoy myself. If I get points, that is a bonus, but definitely not necessary for a good time.

Ah well, that's my look at the world. probably not shared by many
The anti-wind fraternity are coming up with some convincing arguments I have to say. I quite enjoyed the wind the other night but they're right in that you don't get enough feedback about it to be able to judge it very well.
I share your "point" of view.
When you race it is for the sake of it, a win is a bonus but nowhere as rewarding as a good fight. When racing conditions change you get more randomness in the sim and that should in theory make it more a sim than a game, therefore you will have to (re)act more and repeat less.

Not much wind on demo servers... I have to get a license and try CTRA it seems.
I can see exactly where the anti-wind argument is coming from. I agree with it in a way, although I do like to have some wind blowing myself.

Like others, I think low wind is good. Spices things up a bit, keeps you on your toes. High wind just turns it into a lottery.

The reason high wind (i.e. 40+ kph) in LFS is a lottery is the lack of feeling. In a real car on a real track in a strong wind, you would feel the buffeting on the car, or even on your helmet in a single seater, tugging or pushing you a certain way. Trees and grasses would lean and blow in the wind, clouds would be scudding across the sky, tyre smoke would blow noticeably, tiny bits of debris, leaves and litter that are too small to feasibly model would be whipping across the tarmac and through the air.

We have none of this in LFS. As mentioned, it's basically just a set of magnets that at varying corners align themselves to whip you off the track with absolutely no fore-warning or feeling that anything is about to happen.

I like the principle of wind, and I'd like the CTRA to make full use of it, but not until LFS' simulation of it is a lot more realistic (at least a vaguely consistent wind direction between races would be a start), and there's a lot more feeling from it, whether through graphical stimuli or the handling/movement of the car.
Quote from Becky Rose :Spoken like a man who's never raced in
the rain.

You assumption is totally incorrect. I've done many things in my long life and racing tin-tops in my young days in rain is one of them. I just don't feel the need to bang on about it though. Kart racing in rain is a different kettle of fish anyhow because the effects are magnified due to it's small size and weight but even so there's plenty of feedback from the track that you can make decisions upon. Not so with LFS wind. We'll have to see how the rain turns out so no point in speculating about it at this time.
I've done Buckmore park in the rain on the 3hour endurance races many times and its a lot of fun though hairy!

In Formula Ford we had the race stopped a couple of times due to wind actually. Once at Donnington.

My main field was Rally and never had any stopped due to any weather.
#58 - SamH
My only experience of racing in windy conditions is driving a 750Kg Renault 5 GT Turbo over the top of the M62 on a daily basis, two times a day for two years. You'll appreciate that this is actually more experience than all of the rest of you put together

I agree, there are some well-reasoned arguments for reducing the wind for the time being though I, for one, will continue to resist removing it completely. It does add to the experience, just as varying lighting conditions do. Both of these are too important to Becky and I to just drop them. Nope, CTRA isn't a democracy, but it does have ears. We cared what you guys said to us during beta testing, and that's not stopped since. Development is ongoing
I don't think the wind is too far off, it's not 100% but I donno about you but I get blown all over the place in heavy winds. I have to even put more steering input in to counter it in a 2900 pound car. Granted it's minimal but I can see a difference in the wheel position when going strait.

Drivers do have to adjust their driving style when on the track for winds, I don't see a big issue with the winds as they are, maybe the cars get pushed a bit too much with very heavy winds, but we usually dont see that high of wind on the servers.
#60 - Dru
Quote from SamH :My only experience of racing in windy conditions is driving a 750Kg Renault 5 GT Turbo over the top of the M62 on a daily basis, two times a day for two years. You'll appreciate that this is actually more experience than all of the rest of you put together

I agree, there are some well-reasoned arguments for reducing the wind for the time being though I, for one, will continue to resist removing it completely. It does add to the experience, just as varying lighting conditions do. Both of these are too important to Becky and I to just drop them. Nope, CTRA isn't a democracy, but it does have ears. We cared what you guys said to us during beta testing, and that's not stopped since. Development is ongoing

Sam, i don't think anyone is actually for dropping it completely, just knock thew High wind off and make it random between low and no wind......if that is possible.
Quote from Bean0 :Even with the wind, I was seeing people get 15 or so points for the win, with 2nd and 3rd getting between 8 and 5 points depending on laptimes on SS1.

Once you've done 1 or 2 laps you soon get used to it, and it certainly makes for more eventful racing. This is coming from a self confessed FOX n00b, so anyone with a bit of experience in it shouldn't have any problems.

Well this all depends on the direction of the wind. If its on a highspeed straight you can lose seconds so then points are not realisable.
#62 - SamH
Hmm.. I've spoken to Becky briefly about the wind today. It looks like, in one week we had 2 consecutive sessions of high wind during popular hours. This is a rare random situation that's unlikely to be repeated any time soon. Because the high wind stands much less chance of being selected, in the algorythm, I'm told that we'd normally see high winds selected just once in a week of racing.

Given this, I'm not willing to ask Becky to stop the system to re-code Phase 1 to exclude this miniscule chance (wind selection is hard-coded) at this point. I hope you understand the reasoning behind this.

If there's an error in the coding, and high winds are seen more often than intended, please raise a report and choose a replay from that session. You can use my name (SamH) as the person you're reporting. This should get my attention
Quote from SamH :It looks like, in one week we had 2 consecutive sessions of high wind during popular hours.

sry bout that ... couldnt resist
Attached images
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#64 - SamH
hehe! Nice cartoon!
Quote from SamH :If there's an error in the coding, and high winds are seen more often than intended, please raise a report

I can absolutely guarantee that high wind appears more than once a week at the moment. It's more like every day.
(ok maybe not, but it's far more than once a week)
#66 - FL!P
I agree with Moose.
#67 - Dru
Guys, i think that Sams post should read as........

i think they say that the high winds should not appear more than ONCE in a row....rather than only a few times ever a week.
Could the falling over and restarting of the system be screwing with the random factor ?
#69 - SamH
Nope, it won't be. The algorythm is the thing that determines the frequency of particular weather "patterns". Each random choice is made independently of any other random choice. Of course there's no such thing as random where computers are concerned, but the equivalent "randomize" is used, so there's no perceivable pattern. Good thinking though [edit] I know it's good thinking, because it was my first question too [/edit]
I would like to see more windy racing, really spices it up for me

SD.
Quote from SparkyDave :I would like to see more windy racing, really spices it up for me

Weird. For me, it tends to be the spices that produce the windy racing.
I knew it would be you Kev #

I'm the faithful border collie of the forums.
Yet more signature material from Kev
Today I posted this by mistake in a new thread, because the title of this thread is about Dean ...
Quote from -xdream- :Today we had a few races on AS7R with stormy winds. Only one of all the guys racing was able to manage to get a 'good' laptime. But even this guy got only 5 points for his win. All other finished racers got ZERO points ... this were really demotivating people. With wind on it's really hard to get a decent laptime, which finally is needed to get some points at the end of the race.

Maybe it's possible that the X-System is having a bit more tolerance on the laptimes when strange winds blowing around the track?

What I mean is something like this:
if (wind == high) { laptimetogetpoints = laprecord/100*80 }
if (wind == medium) { laptimetogetpoints = laprecord/100*85 }
if (wind == low) { laptimetogetpoints = laprecord/100*90 }
else { laptimetogetpoints = laprecord/100*95 }

I really like the wind on CTRA-Servers and don't want to complain about it. It's giving me the chance to reach the podium, even if I start from last position. But why should I do such a hard race, when I got no points at the end of the race, even if I finish 1st or 2nd.

Hurricane Dean
(86 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG