Ouch, I was away during christmas after the warm-up race and now I see it is all over and I am not signed up. I didn't know that there will be another "now for real" sign up so soon :-(

OK, gonna find some other event, bye

I'm signing up for the whole season. I couldn't keep the pace with most of the others but I was enjoying the session a lot...

I'm signing up.

LFS Username: ORBman
Real Name: Martin Mačok (written Macok without diacritic, pronounce Matschok)
InGame Name: M.Macok
Age: 29
Nationality: Czech
Racing History: 2 years of casual (sim)racing
Wheel: G25
Team: none
Interests outside racing: Music, Photography, Humour, Family, Technologies and Society
Occupation: IT Security Consultant, Penetration Tester

Last edited by ORBman, Sat, 13 Dec 2008 21:17. Reason : more info about me

CTRA1 started using BL2 RallyX (+reverse) tracks since the Patch Y. Since CTRA1 is quite popular, it's easy to get 20+ people races on RallyX if you are lucky enough to have a spare time for racing when the track is switched to BL2(R) on CTRA1. (Since I like XRG, I don't like RallyX that much because competing against XFG on RallyX is quite tough... but it's fun, that's for sure :-)

With stock G25 you should probably just start to brake and while still braking press the clutch, downshift to the right gear and when you have reached the speed you wanted to slow down to (you should be at corner entry now), depress the brake pedal, press the gas to match the revs and then declutch. Everything should be as smooth as possible while as fast as possible ;-)

On short races (most races online actually) with RWD cars you can declutch sooner and more aggressively (fe. while you are still braking) to make the car go oversteer (called "shift-lock" in drifting slang). I'm using it to warm up the tyres at the beginning of the race or when I want to have some fun in sharp corners (SO City).

The best you can do is to mod the pedals a bit (search the forum, basicaly you need to pad the clutch and brake pedals) and practice heel&toe downshifting to minimize clutch-in time.

I was into this combo too until I have learned to drive XRG as fast as XFG (though still can't fight the fastests of you) and I love it even more, especially when there are a lot of XFG's humming around me :-)

(On the other side, these cars are a bit slow for this track. Fernstone suits them better IMHO though it would be close to impossible for Demo because it is much harder to cleanly overtake there...)

Quote from Bodhidharmazen :

I do like the physics simulation but not the part about having to be a mechanic to deal with setups, nor dealing with clutches and the rest of the new stuff.

A good racing driver knows what should be changed on the car to have better performance or to better suit the driver's needs. She doesn't have to be a mechanic to actually know how to do it but she should be able to tell the mechanic what to do.

Quote from Lible :

Me joins, altough I'm a bit disappointed about 45degrees only, it's ok in a singleseater, but in road cars you surely can turn your head more.

I hope this particular change won't generate more collisions. In real life, you see what's next to you even when you are not looking there. In LFS, you don't see what's next to you unless you have really wide view angle (which is both ugly and suboptimal for racing, especially for fast cars), so you have to use view buttons. Making it even more harder to look aside doesn't end up in more realism, IMHO.

Overall, I'm joining it too.

Not sure if there is a special server for "low key noobs" :-) but if you behave according to Clean Racing Club rules (see LFS Manual) you are welcome to join _any_ server you want. Neither LX4 nor MRT5 is very popular so you may end up racing against different kind of vehicles (that may be slower which on the other side could compensate you being a newbie). Beware that MRT5 is very small and can be overlooked from some cars easily when you are trying to overtake them (for example). A good idea is to ask the others if they object to you driving MRT5 if they drive something else before pitting out...

Sorry, this thread is very long and I can't read it all and I'm sure it has already been suggested. Just wanted "vote" with my voice.

I would like to race trucks in LFS. I hope there will be some available in S3.

Additionally, I would like to see more modern sport street legal cars too - both low end (not giving an example, but they usually weight much more than the cars we already have) and high end (something like Lamborghini, Masserati or so). I would also like to see some modern turbo diesel racing cars (low rev torque, low rev limit, low consumption, specific sound...) like Seat Leon or Audi R10.

Thank you!

Last edited by ORBman, Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:06.

Lag is not about bandwidth, it is about how long does it take for a single packet to travel the distance (and it could be different for upstream and downstream).

The easiest way to test it is to use the "ping" or "tracert" (traceroute) to get an idea where the packets spends the most time.

I use D600 / 1400MHz / 512MB / Radeon 9000m without any problems (gonna get D630 with nVidia soon, anyway). I use only the drivers provided by Dell (check their website for updates) and G25 wheel (with the latest official driver from Logitech's website).

Some tips:

Run it at 1024x768 with a very low LOD settings and turned off highres textures, set maximal fps to 40. Turn off as many "background" apps as possible (consider turning off resident antivirus scanning during the game and tune down network traffic inspection/analysis if you use some sort of "clever" personal firewall while online).

Sometimes it gets overheating (depends on weather/temperature and time spent in LFS, and more cars -> sooner overheat) - I've bought some freezing boxes (extremely cheap, usually used for travelling - you put them in the same bag as food and it keeps it cool for a long time) that I put into the freezer over the day and I put them under the laptop (the central part is the most important) when I race in LFS in the evening. It cools down the laptop for hours, sometimes it even cools down so much that the fan stops for a while while racing :-)

I've never seen the overheat sooner than after several _minutes_ of intensive racing (like 15-20 minutes) without external cooling and it has never caused a crash but it only runs extremely slow (like 1fps or less). No idea why it does crash for you. I would recommend running memtest86 over the night and giving a spin to Dell Diagnostics boot CD. Also make sure your Windows installation is not broken or ruined by malware.

Last edited by ORBman, Wed, 18 Jul 2007 11:52.

JFYI - Bawbag's setup: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=482953#post482953

Didn't help me much on improving my sucking times, anyway :-)

I have no problems like that with my G25. Try to return it back to the dealer for repair or change.

There is no situation I _feel_ I have the right to push someone off track, never. It is just that I don't feel so guilty if I do it accidentaly when there was no significant overlap on corner entry.

http://www.turnfast.com/tech_driving/driving_passing.shtml

Quote :

Third Rule - if another driver has legitimately placed his car beside yours, leave room for the other car to carry a line through the corner. You don't necessarily have to give him the optimum line, but cutting a car off that results in forcing it off course is poor racing, and if the officials see it as deliberate, you're subject to penalty. Racing is not a roller derby. Eliminating your competition is not one of the objectives.

(And I was really shaking my head when reading "ayrton senna 87"'s opinions... but I don't feel the need to comment on it further because others have already tried enough. But I think it could be fun if we could watch him racing against himself (somebody with the same attitude). I guess the dialog would not be kid safe :-))

Last edited by ORBman, Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:54.

I've had similar experience with freezing/choking (Dell Latitude D600 with Radeon 9000) and I have tracked the issue to the temperature. I've bought two big cooling boxes (these are _very_ cheap) that I have in the freezer through the day and when I want to play LFS in the evening, I just put one under the laptop and the second on the top of it (two places that gets hot when playing LFS) and the problem is solved ;-) ... but I plan to get a better HW for LFS, anyway, because it really needs it

With the default FOV (field of view) it feels like you are going slower than if you would go the same speed in a real car. The lack of experiencing the G-forces contribute to this feeling too. And remember that you should warm up your tyres (and have the right camber) before you can judge the overall grip level. From what I have tested on the skid-pad, the values seems quite OK to me.

On the other side, I'm not so sure about the combined lateral/longitudal grip when braking/accelerating through the corner which could be quite non-trivial to simulate properly (for example, see http://www.racer.nl/reference/pacejka.htm how "magic" it could be ... and even if you have the right engine to simulate all of that, getting the real pacejka coefficients from the vendors or by measuring it yourself is close to impossible).

Quote from Iron :

It gets me angry if I have to back off because the other guy doesn't give room and if I don't back off, we'll crash. So they think 'See! If I drive this way, I'll get rewarded.', because it's always me, who backs off.

I know what you mean but if you always back off you never know if the opponent wasn't just playing a mental game of bluffing the block ... my english sucks but I hope it's clear what I have on my mind. Don't get me wrong: I never do this(*) and I always try to leave a room even if the opponent doesn't push his nose beside me before the corner entry when I feel the one behind me is faster and is obviously going for much higher final position than me. On the other side, sometimes it is hard to check your sides especially when there is someone right in front of you and checking the sides on corner entries may result in ramming the one who is in front of you (if be brakes a little bit harder/sooner).

(*) to be honest, I could think of doing it if it is the last corner before the finish line...

If someone doesn't leave a room for me so I have to back off to avoid the contact I would send him a warning message that he isn't racing cleanly and that the next time he doesn't leave a room I won't back off. If you are attacking from the inside, the chance is that the contact would hurt him a little bit more than you...

Quote from Iron :

I know this sounds harsh, and I'm not even really sure that I mean it, but: If your equipment doesn't allow you to race properly, than you have to do something about it. I could compare it to something like a broken brake pedal. I'm sure if I were telling everybody that I keep ramming them off the track because my brake pedal is faulty, they would tell me to go repair it.

I know what you mean but it is not clear where is the line between the equipment which allows you to race properly and the one that doesn't. I don't have this problem in every T1 just occasionally when there are a lot of cars around me ... and I'm not even sure if the problem is in me or the others when I see strange/chaotic movements of some cars in front of me. I try to back off when I experience this and leave more room in front of me (no russian rulet). I definitely do not feel like that I "keep ramming" ... just that it has already happened to me too and that I have tried to learn from it to minimize the probability of repeating the same mistake again. You can be sure that I was feeling really bad...

Maybe the simulation of collisions could be a little bit "softer" when it detects lagging environment?

Hi,
I've beed organizing a career league for the Racer sim (http://www.setbb.com/rw/) but I've got frustrated by the lack of actively racing members (and I was able to beat almost anyone there). A friend from Hungary told me that I should try LFS and I was hooked the very first time I've raced with it - mainly by the amount of racers that are way faster than me!

You can trust me I will always do my best to race in a clean way (I have read CRC rules two times) and that I will keep trying to get better all the time!

Have a nice day everyone

I think that the best solution is to behave the way you want the others to behave too. Like someone else has already said, everyone can choose to be either part of the problem or part of the solution. Talking about clean racing here in this forum seems futile :-)

I never engage in any kind of "revenge" (because it doesn't make me feel any better and because I definitely don't want someone else seeing me crashing on purpose) other than trying to defeat the person in a totally clean way (which is actually the only thing that makes me feel better).

My way of surviving the races is not getting angry when you are shot down (hey, why let anyone to ruin your day?! take it easy - self-discipline is a way to go) but trying to climb back to the position I deserve and finishing the race in a respectable way. For me, it is almost the same fun as winning itself (which rarely happens because I'm still too new to LFS :-)

Shortly: don't go for a win, go for the racing itself! Take the win as a bonus of having the fun of racing.

I also agree that a lot of T1 wrecking in the crowded races may be due to hardware/lag/framerate/FOV issues because it has happened to me too (sorry!) ... and realizing this may help you in coping with it mentally. Nothing is perfect. Have fun!

Last edited by ORBman, Sat, 23 Jun 2007 20:46.

I got really hooked up on LFS since the very first time I was trying it and while I agree that the positive aspects of online experience by far exceeds the negative ones, I still think that the amount of collisions are still too high to feel like you are "really" racing. On the other side, that's what happens if you allow a bunch of unexperienced racers in lightweight 100+ HP cars ;-)

I agree that damaging the car should result in a little bit more pain for the user than it is now. I like the idea of damaging the cooler when you damage your front (like when you rear-end someone!) and losing the downforce when you damage your front or rear spoiler. I also like the idea of making it a bit harder to use shift+p after heavy crash and then magically pitting out immediately - at least it should really take a longer time than it would to repair/refuel the car during a regular pitstop. From my experience, no mid-race join option helps quite a lot on some Demo servers, maybe something similar - no mid-race pit out _option_ could help a bit too.

Another topic: it is impossible for AI to decide who is the wrecker and who is just a victim (because in many cases it is not clear for a human observer neither) ... and because in many (if not most) cases the collision happens when _both_ racers make a mistake ... on the other side, some statistics may help here (?) ... maybe some well-tuned credit-like system in which you get some number of negative points when participating in a crash and some number of positive points if there is a crash on a track you are racing and you are not involved in it? And some positive points by completing a lap without an incident (more people online - more points)? Just an idea... (I would be surprised if something similar wasn't already discussed in this forum)