For some time I've not raced competitively, only every now and then for fun. Since the silence I've become less interested in actual racing - athough I love the LFS community, I couldnt bear to leave So I totally understand your point Pabs

Quote from Pabs(Sco) :

I found a new game to play which is taking up most of my free time (Eve-Online). But I am sure I will reduce my gameplay on that at some point.

Drop by Gallente space and say "hi" Pabs You can find me with the char "theangryangel" (bloodly lack of _ support....*grumble*). My current home is Masalle, Claulenne and Reblier to be exact Although I'll probably be whizzing around a lot mining / rat hunting my arse off whilst I wait for my Megathron. If you need a coupla mil or so for starting out give me a shout, I've only got 88mil or so left, but there will always be some to spare for a fellow LFS'er / IRC'er / coder / whatever

Quote from Hyperactive :

Have you tried joining to empty server and setting the track to something else? I have also over 1000 laps in AS nat with the GTRs and I have decided not to drive it anymore. I have couple of times joined to an empty server and changed the track to AS4R or something little different and sometimes people join, sometimes not. But I bet there are others that are sick of that combo too And FOX at Ky nat is nice combo, I like it a lot...

Been there, done that. Problem is, there is only a handful of people on in the US times. You have 13 servers with connections, 3 or 4 of them someone is just connected but AFK to keep the server up on the list if you have "no empty servers" selected. 3 or 4 are 400+ pings for my dialup. 3 or 4 have 1 or 2 connections just hotlapping; you can connect and vote or ask to race all night and never get a response. Then the final server is AS Nat. I jump on an empty server set to what I want and I just hotlap around for 2 hrs before bed without seeing anyone else.

On a good note, I just got a buddy of mine from work give me a phone call asking why his new wheel isn't working. I've been trying to get him to download LFS for months and months now. He finally did after months of telling me he was going to "this weekend". So, at least in demo, we have 1 more to get hooked in the US . Now I have to get him racing and convince him to buy a license.

Quote from Pabs(Sco) :

I even tried to become a member of the OLFSL crew to keep me in the game

And you're still one of us!

Really sad to see you go.. I hope you'll come back one day.

I suggest you report these idiots to someone, for example OLFSL Admins want to know if someone is deliberately wrecking others on OLFSL servers (we can't do anything on other servers). We had these idiots some time ago, I asked people to send me replays and names (license name as well if possible). I never had to actually do anything besides that, it stopped. I know who these people were, and I had proof, but they started behaving well when they found out I'd ban every one of them.

So, if you see bad behaviour or something like that on our servers, please tell me about it so I can fix it. It kills the fun if there's even one of these imbeciles online.

Atm I'm not aware of any misbehaviour on OLFSL servers, so it seems to work. Try it!

--
Mrs FienDi
The Original LFS League Admin

Quote from Pabs(Sco) :

Thanks for the comments guys..

this is definately not a "I am going for good".

n1Racing is very quiet at the moment and has been for some time. I found a new game to play which is taking up most of my free time (Eve-Online). But I am sure I will reduce my gameplay on that at some point.

hopefully the rest of the n1 members will come back, I would hate to see n1Racing die...our Team Manger is away on Army duties and for the rest I dont really know. A few may have moved to other teams, our forums have been dead lately.

I even tried to become a member of the OLFSL crew to keep me in the game, but with RL commitments on a Sunday I was missing most of the races.


I really love driving sims...infact I can not even driver anyother since I played LFS so I am sure my passion will return...possibly within the new F1 season.


And as Arnie syas...."I'll be back!"

I'm still alive and racing Pabs, have been posting on the forum, but no response, tried to drum up the ranks last week, but everyone was a little lackadaisical, TBH, looks like I am one of the only active members for n1
I had a little spell off before christmas, but my hunger has returned, still not any faster though

Dan,

Quote from mrodgers :

Been there, done that. Problem is, there is only a handful of people on in the US times. You have 13 servers with connections, 3 or 4 of them someone is just connected but AFK to keep the server up on the list if you have "no empty servers" selected. 3 or 4 are 400+ pings for my dialup. 3 or 4 have 1 or 2 connections just hotlapping; you can connect and vote or ask to race all night and never get a response. Then the final server is AS Nat. I jump on an empty server set to what I want and I just hotlap around for 2 hrs before bed without seeing anyone else.

I feel your pain, man. I'm one of the other few US racers and the LFS servers are pretty much deserted whenever I have the chance to play. Luckily I have two friends that are licensed and we manage to get together about once a month for racing (usually on Sundays around 3:00 PST). We were playing about once a week for a while, but other things took priority. Hopefully we can get back into the groove before spring comes along and forces us to go outside for yard work.

Maybe we can get a thread going somewhere for US based racers?

I think I found the solution..........

First go download a copy of Rfactor.

Then play that game for 10 minutes to an hour, whatever makes you makes you hate it more......

Then go back and play Live for Speed, it's that easy!



I just tried that and it works. That game is so bad, when I come back to Live for Speed the physics and FF just blows my mind.........not saying I was bored of this game after 5 months of playing on my free time, but man after trying something else you really do appreciate the work that was put into making a real driving simulator.

Quote from mrodgers :

Over here in the US, it's still that dang AS National in the GTR's. I said on the server recently, I have over 1000 laps there now. Someone said, "dang dude, aren't you tired of it here?" Er, yea, but I don't have much of a choice when other servers all they do is run hour long qualifying with 1 or 2 other connections. AS Nat is still the only one you can get it on with 15 or so other cars.

I thought yankees don't play anything else than FO8 and Oval. Sometimes when I end up on demo servers I usually quit within 5 minutes. It's just horror.

Quote from deggis :

I thought yankees don't play anything else than FO8 and Oval. Sometimes when I end up on demo servers I usually quit within 5 minutes. It's just horror.

Nope, if I want oval racing, I'll load up the sim that was built on oval racing, Nascar Racing 2003. Until LFS car setups have weight bias and staggar, it is lousy at oval racing. A floor-it-until-you-reach-max-speed-then-leave-it-floored oval isn't all that exciting anyways. Give me a half mile oval over a speedway anyday!

Quote from deggis :

Sometimes when I end up on demo servers I usually quit within 5 minutes. It's just horror.

Yep you are right demo certainly can be a horror but it still can give some very good racing if you bump into the right people Fusion svr is normally pretty good and CRC have a server up at the moment, both have admins and normally can get some good races there when it is admined I have some replays from demo some of which represent the worst of LFS and some the best of LFS

Wow I played LFS the other day for the 1st time in like 5 months, then i had to quit, couldnt take it no more. Crappy FF (cant feel understeer and other effects) and the RWD bug where cars spin out way to easy.. especially with slicks. Back to GTL I go

Quote from steve :

Wow I played LFS the other day for the 1st time in like 5 months, then i had to quit, couldnt take it no more. Crappy FF (cant feel understeer and other effects) and the RWD bug where cars spin out way to easy.. especially with slicks. Back to GTL I go

And with GTL's tin can FF you can feel everything the car does? Gimme a break.

Quote from steve :

Wow I played LFS the other day for the 1st time in like 5 months, then i had to quit, couldnt take it no more. Crappy FF (cant feel understeer and other effects) and the RWD bug where cars spin out way to easy.. especially with slicks. Back to GTL I go

I loved the graphics engine in GTL, but 2 things made me uninstall / return it:

* The 'not quite right but can't put my finger on it' physics.
* STARFORCE!

Get this sh!t off my machine. NOW!

Quote from deggis :

And with GTL's tin can FF you can feel everything the car does? Gimme a break.

yep can feel everything

Quote from steve :

Wow I played LFS the other day for the 1st time in like 5 months, then i had to quit, couldnt take it no more. Crappy FF (cant feel understeer and other effects) and the RWD bug where cars spin out way to easy.. especially with slicks. Back to GTL I go

that is strange... i think the force feedback in GTL is crappy.illepall
I feel like comparing lfs's force feedback to gtl is like comparing chocolate to sh*t. if we both supposedly want more realism how can this be?

maybe you didnt have reverse effects enabled in the options? if you dont and have a momo the steering is really heavy and all over.

I got my first FF wheel on Monday, a DFP, and I was expecting, from all the comments on here, that the FF in LFS would be "streets" ahead of GTL.
Boy, they are wrong, as the other poster says, the first thing I notice is that GTL has the light wheel feeling when understeering, and LFS doesnt.
How the FF in LFS is streets ahead I dont know, but I dont believe it is.

Dan,

In LFS, my steering gets light when I understeer, countersteers automatically when the tail gets loose, gives a bit of a jolt when I hit bumps, etc. Yea, the bumps and stuff isn't real strong and hard to feel, but what matters is there. I feel the way the car is acting. In GTL, aside from that wonderful graphics engine running 10-15 FPS at low resolution, directX 7 and all game options at minimum, the FF just feels like effects. It doesn't tell me a thing what the car is doing. It does tell me what the car has done. The front end slides, then the wheel goes light, after the fact. Unlike in LFS where the wheel goes light WHEN the front end slides.

I agree with Mike. My LFS FFB tells me everything I need to know about the car, whilst GTR, GTL and rFactor have poor canned effects that might play 'oversteer' (actually, there isn't on for oversteer, or anything to do with the back of the car) or 'understeer', but they aren't real time, so bear little resemblance to what your car is actually doing.

Regardless of those "facts" LFS, as my hardware is currently setup, which I am prepared to say could be wrong, doesnt do what a REAL car does in regards to understeer feedback.
Whether or not it "tells" you what its doing, or if ISI effects are "canned" is incidental, its still not realistic whichever way you slice it.

Dan,

With current FFB technology it couldn't be 'realistic' even if you made a sim soley for FFB testing... But I personally feel LFS gets closest to reality bearing in mind the limitations of hardware and sim-racing in general.

Of course not, there are 1001 different reasons that it will never give a 100% true representation, but I believe, especially in FWD cars like the FXO, that something as fundemental as FFB behavior during understeer needs to be improved.
Is the FFB in LFS good?, of course, could it be better? again of course.

Dan,

I would have said N2003 has better FF, LFS is good until you start understeering (I prefer it to oversteer) and then it just doesn't feel right.

I don't agree that NR2003 has better FF than LFS, but I do agree that NR2003 has better FF "effects" than all the others disregarding LFS. LFS is the only one giving true feedback (maybe RBR, not sure, never tried it). Other sims have "effects" meaning, the car does this, SO the FF does this. Where in LFS it is the car FF does this BECAUSE the car does this. It is a direct link rather than an "effect" calculated after the fact.

If you cannot feel the suttle FF of driving in LFS, then you simply have too much force and the wheel is covering it up. Too many run with 100% win / 100% LFS forces, so could you tell me the last time you NEEDED both hands on the wheel to turn the sucker?

Another thing with LFS is, with my Momo, there seems to be a lag in FF. It happens to me mostly with a loose rear end (oversteer, can't get over the American terminology) where I can't feel the countersteering forcefeedback until it's too late. A long time ago, someone mentioned the same with his DFP (BMX232, or something was his name). He suggested some different settings in the windows gaming options and it completely fixed it for me. Some others liked it as well, but then most also argued with BMX232 about it. What I run is as follows:

Overall Force strength: 60%
Spring force: 138% <--- this is what gets rid of the force lag for me
damper: 0%
centering spring unchecked and 0%
force in LFS I adjust between usually 35% to 50%

LFS feels absolutely real to me. I feel the forces unloading when the front end give way and get the countersteer force when I loose the back end. Any other sim I've had or tried, if there is understeering "effect" it just turned the forces off. That is not what happens in real life. You do not lose the force in the wheel, it will, I'll say, fluctuate as the front end grip fluctuates. This is what I feel in LFS, where all other sims just reduce the force to nothing. That is where you get that the wheel "gets light" when understeering and isn't true to real life.

I've never driven on a track, but I have logged many many miles of VERY hard driving on the street "racing" with my college buddies in front wheel drive cars. I know what it feels like. I also drive the rwd truck VERY hard both on the street and in the snow, so I know what oversteer feels like. It all DEFINITELY does NOT feel like driving a GTL car. So far, GTL is the WORST force feedback I have felt in a sim. Though I have to say, LFS, NR2003, and GTL are the only "sims" I have tried. The next closest thing I've used is NFS5 (Porsche Unleashed) which isn't a sim at all, merely a game.

Quote from mrodgers :

I end up every few weeks, jumping over to the demo servers and end up having some really good racing there.

Speaking of which, the Clean racers club started a demo server up there.

Myself, (R4R Kringle88) usually admins it for a few hours, I have admined it for over 5 hours once! (Bugger that you're thinking) But it was great, great to get some good, clean, close racing going on in a somewhat, dangerous enviroment.

If you lose your faith in LFS, go away for a bit by all means, but do come back!

Quote from mrodgers :

In LFS, my steering gets light when I understeer, countersteers automatically when the tail gets loose, gives a bit of a jolt when I hit bumps, etc. Yea, the bumps and stuff isn't real strong and hard to feel, but what matters is there. I feel the way the car is acting. In GTL, aside from that wonderful graphics engine running 10-15 FPS at low resolution, directX 7 and all game options at minimum, the FF just feels like effects. It doesn't tell me a thing what the car is doing. It does tell me what the car has done. The front end slides, then the wheel goes light, after the fact. Unlike in LFS where the wheel goes light WHEN the front end slides.

Try using a RWD car and not a FWD car.