I find it very challenging to adjust pit strategy on the fly when driving. For example, I'm planning 1 pit stop for tires and fuel but something goes wrong (i.e. crash). Now, I need to pit but I want damage repaired but no tires and fuel.
It would be nice to have preconfigured pit "setups" that can be named appropriately and/or hotkeyed for easy selection. Kind of like radio presets in the car... press "1" instead of fiddling to try and tune to 97.7MHz.
Quite possibly the first suggestion in years that is original.
I understand completely what the OP is saying. I've had plenty of the opposite experience in leagues where I was set up for pitting on a certain lap, changing certain tires, putting a certain amount of fuel in, to stuff it against a wall or something and need to pit 3 laps earlier. In a league race, it is dangerous to mess around in this situation changing the damage yes/no factor, calculating quickly in your head the change of fuel needed and the changing of the fuel in the menu.
In the mean time you can use a voice control programme such as Pilfius. I'm not sure if you can access the commands in LFS to any great depth. But with a speech to text programme you can have a very simple set of commands such as, pulling up F12 by simply saying "F12", or "Pits", or anything you want really. And change the settings by saying "left" or "right, "up" or "down" etc. It's basically the same as pressing the keys on the keyboard without having to erm, press the keys on the keyboard
It would be even better if we could tap into whichever bit of LFS controls this stuff and programme it so you can say something specific like "change tyres, no fuel, no repair" or "no tyres, fuel 20%, fix damage" and it automatically does it all for you without having to scroll through all the commands.
Just tried that pilfius thingy, and it works ! So far i've two commands, when I say refuel it opens up my F12 menu and adds 10% to the ammount of fuel loaded at the pitstop and then closes the F12 menu. The other one is "deletefuel", which is the opposite of refuel This has a great potential, thx for mentioning it !
Edit: 3 more commands :P - increase/decrease tire change (+- 15%), and Pit Limiter
Well, by the look on your face you certainly seem happy with it
It's good news actually, i never realised you could programme such specific commands into LFS, like setting certain fuel percentages. Can you set specific brake balance and camber percentages too ?
Oh dear, unfortunately i'm a fellow computer dyslexic too
So everything i'm about to say will probably be complete pants, but, what the hell...
If you're using WinXP i think you'll need to download and install the file SpeechSDK51.exe from here http://www.microsoft.com/downl ... 1B4530&displaylang=en (may need to scroll down) If you're running Vista, then your guess is as good as mine
And as far as i know/remember thats all there is to it. Although there is a training programme in it thats definitely worth doing so it gets to know your voice and accent.
Hopefully someone in the know might see this thread and confirm or correct that advice. But i had to download an extra programme to get mine going, and i'm fairly certain it was the one above. But it was a while ago so...?
You can't exactly tell LFS to "set my brake balance 13% to the front", because pilfius can only assign keystrokes to what you are saying. So basically when I say "refuel", it starts the following keystroke - F12 , SHIFT+LEFTARROW ( 10 times, so i get +10% of fuel, the shift is there because i tried it ingame while drivign with mouse and keyboard, and i'm using the arrow keys to accelerate/brake and to change gears, so if you are using a wheel you can just make the keystroke to look like this - F12, rightarrow, rightarrow ... ) and then F12 again at the end, to close the menu. One press of the right arrow is +1% to the fuel, so you can decide what ammount do you want. You can even create multiple commands, so you'll be able to add 1%,5%,10% or any value you specify. The "naming" of the keystroke doesn't have to be connected to the actual function it'll do, so you can go really crazy with it .
About that recognition engine - just download the one from microsoft and then install it. After you start pilfius it'll guide you thru' a setup wizard to set up your microfone. Then you'll have to read aloud a few lines, so the program can adapt to your speech. There's a couple of more texts , and the more you read through the better the program will detect what you are saying. I did the main test and then two others just to be sure it works
Then all you have to do is to create some commands and then fire up the game you want to play. You can add/remove commands even while the game is running ( LFS in windowed mode ).
it would be sweet if the F12 was passworded so that team mates or clan members can make those changes. would be perfect for endurance racing. driver A uses setupX but driver B like his setups a bit overseery. driver B would be able to make these changes and they would be applied when the pit stop/driver swap happens.
I would prefer to have some options, that vocal commands to change them. For instance having 5 customizable options in pits, which would be locked inrace (you could choose which to use in F12) plus one customizable while driving in case of events you didn't forsee. (Like you think your main opponents will change the tires for the two last laps, and you haven't a repair profile that corresponds to this).
That's brilliant, sounds like just about anythings possible.
I use this primarily in ArmA seeing as it's the only way to keep control of your Ai squadies. And if you spend a lot of time programming it you can get to the point where you're almost having a full blown conversation with them .
@Turbo Dad, pleased you got it going I'd definitely recommend going through as many training programmes as possible to get the system tuned to your voice. The quicker it recognises the words you're saying the quicker it is to perform the action. I've trained mine up so now it give out the commands almost instantaneously in ArmA.
Incidently, you can use this to do just about anything. Turn on the lights, switch on the indicators, even look left and right. Basically an key command in any game can be done by talking to it, the only limiting factor is how programmable the game itself is.
If I remember right, didn't the Opera web-browser operate on voice commands? If it could be done to surf, I'm sure integrating using InSim would be a snap with an external program.
