Quote from crazyboy232 :

That's my new car (Mazda 3) i bought few days ago. It's looks small but there is a lot of space inside
And the Hyundai Coupe is my old one (Will drive it only when i go back to Bulgaria)

I have a 2016. It is extremely small, too small of a car for how raked they are making the windshields over here. Huge a-pillar holding airbags, can't see past. Center mirror mounted lower in line with your eyes so you can't get away from the soccer mom's and brodozers we have blazing their outrageously brilliant blinding LED lights as well as needing to move around to see through the turns. Have to move around to see to the left around the huge a-pillars to see cars coming in the oncoming lane also. I'm not very tall, but I'm sitting beside the rear of the door frame so I have to get up from my rear end being below knee level when my feet are outside on the ground and slide past the door frame while trying to slide out from under the steering wheel.

Small cars are just too small these days for how they are designing them. I feel like I'm looking out the porthole of a cruise ship trying to see all the while almost pulling out in front of people because as I look around blindspot after blindspot the other car is moving from blindspot to blindspot.

It isn't an issue for most people here in the US because most people can't focus their attention further than as far as they can hold their phone to their face, but for those few of us who still actually drive and operate a motor vehicle, it's dang dangerous to drive. Unfortunately with only 60k miles on it, I still have 100-140k miles to go before I'm ready to get into something else.

Quote from RMachucaA :

+1 old person in here lol.

My favorite LFS racer of all because your setups were nearly perfect for me. Always loved them

Quote from gu3st :

Now I don't even remember how old I am and I nearly have a 1 year old daughter.

😂

Yup, I just happened to notice that, which I didn't when I posted. Congrats! And here I am now with one finishing up her 2nd year of college.


My kids have it much better than I did back then. Bought a decent PC when MSFS was announced, with a 2070super (just before the 3000 series came out.) I want to say when I played LFS, I think I had an ATI Rage 128 if I'm not mistaken, LOL. For S&G's, looked it up, 8 Mb card, LMAO, paired up with a 75 MHz Pentium.

Quote from Bose321 :

Old people here

I've logged in now and then, and even tried to load up LFS a few years ago on the basic laptop. Worked fantastic as I was always one with a garbage PC back when I raced that I would spectate until the grid was set so I could be placed last and sit back and watch the turn 1 carnage at 1 FPS until I could manage to come through. Unfortunately I didn't find anyone actually racing, but the reason for leaving was still going strong, the migration of server users moving to those city servers.

If I'm not mistaken, Gu3st there above, you were 14 years old when I last actually raced on LFS, Ha.

Quote from gu3st :

Sure it's expensive, but that was only really a problem 10 years ago when I was unemployed or making minimum wage. Now that I have a stable and well paying job, $10 a month and $10-15 per piece of content is literally fractions of an hour worth of time spent working. My entire month of enjoyment is covered by an hour of work. Pretty decent return on entertainment value (and it gets cheaper every month as I need to buy less and less content).

Also name another sim where you can end up in a session with active F1 drivers?

Why do I play LFS? Didn't know I was. Last time I played, I raced against this guy quoted and he was 13 years old I think, LOL.

Quote from Keling :

Was that the new Impreza? It's this bad after the Impreza/WRX split?

I have never driven a Subaru before so don't know what any of them are like. I don't know what cars are like outside of the US where the majority drive manual. Over here in the States, all the rage is the crap CVT. You can't buy a Honda in anything but CVT now. Subaru is going that way as well. I was lucky to find one to drive with a manual.

It was a new 2016 model with the 2.0L. It could be a completely different transmission setup outside of the US. As I said, everything is being pushed CVT, thus there isn't any thought going into manuals for over here other than the "specialty" cars such as the WRX/STI or Focus ST/RS kind of cars. It's very sad that we can't buy a car as basic transportation and also enjoy driving the dang things.

I was surprised to see that Mazda went a little with the opposite thought. A manual was only available in the GT model with the 2.5L. It's now offered in every model they have. There wasn't a lot out there available to purchase, but there were a lot more than the 0 within 200 miles of me with the Focus or 1 within 200 miles of me with the Subaru. Just about every Mazda dealer had at least 1 manual available.

Hey all, been a while since I've visited. Enjoying scrolling through the pics back the past couple months. Seems it's become the "Racing Photo Showoff" thread now though.

Still jealous of you guys and your dSLR's. Had to buy a new camera as I sunk mine in the kayak. Can't do dSLR because most of my stuff comes from while riding the bike as that's about all I do any more.

Haven't been here forever. New ride this year with a fresh divorce. Needed the hatch to haul the bicycle around with me. Not easy to find a proper transmission over here so there isn't much to choose from. Just about the only options are the Focus, Impreza, and Mazda3. Couldn't find a Focus with a manual to try out (I do hate the Focus as I have access to an auto sedan.) The Impreza was a complete piece of garbage. Horrid clutch, shifter felt like it was going to break apart in my hand, could barely move between gears, and I was running 60 mph and pressed the throttle to see how well it would pick up if at all. Well, it didn't. Foot was already on the floor. Gutless.

So, ended up with the Mazda3, as basic as I could get. Bike slides easily in the hatch and plenty of room in the back for it. I'm seeing up to 45 mpg at times but I'm mostly getting about 36. Plenty of power though I really miss that turbo. The old Jetta was falling apart.

Hi

I started right as S2 demo was released. I think it was released the day after I found LFS. I didn't buy S1 but did the day S2 full version was released.

Just happen to look up the forum here since I got an email from LFS. My wheel is long ago junk. I still have it, or at least it's still in the basement at my old house. Since I have no reason to have it as it's junk I left it with the ex.

Heck, there's still a Thrustmaster T2 sitting in a box which I used with Indycar Racing 2 before LFS.

No one else?

Water still cold here. Couldn't help myself, itching to try out the boat. Figured I'd skirt around the edge of the water yesterday where it is only about waist deep.

This section is called The Hidden River Canoe Trail. Unfortunately blocked by a downed tree. The park will probably clear it next month when the park is staffed for summer.



Intent was to explore the long fingers that are on the north end of the lake and stay away from the main body. It was very calm though so I rounded the corner towards the swimming beach. After about 2 hours, had to pull up on shore to give the legs a stretch.



Getting out after about 3 hours. Had a blast.

Canoe, kayak, paddle board, rafting, it's all good. It's all the paddling sport.

Hey folks, long time no talk.

Curious of you guys, anyone do any paddling? I'm looking for some conversation. There's not much out there discussion wise on paddling. I'm finding more discussion on other forums than on the few paddling specific forums I've found.

Been wanting to get into a kayak for some time. Finally had this girl attach herself to the top of my car...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yhsye7e8ax90ycs/IMG_20150421_175111.jpg?dl=0

She's not an expensive boat, but picked it up real cheap used. She's 13 foot, kind of an inbetweener of a rec boat and a touring boat. Sealed bulkheads front and rear at less than the price of the garbage pool toy 10 footers they sell at the big box stores around here. Unfortunately water is still way too cold as I don't have cold water gear to wear at the moment. That might come next year.

Anyone else? Those in the UK, I visit Songofthepaddle.com now and then which is a UK based paddling forum. Seems that you guys over there prefer canoes over kayaks. Kayaks are getting more and more popular over here, probably a lot more than canoes on this side.

This month was 20 years at my place of employment. We get a gift every 5 years from a catalog. Previous anniversaries there wasn't much worth even ordering but the catalog seems to have been revamped. For 20 years I snagged a JVC Addixion action cam pretty comparable to GoPro. At my age, I'm not an adrenalin junkie any more, but this will be mounted to the boat. Like my cycling, I'll be more of a get-out-in-nature kind of paddler floating down the calm river and streams and exploring the nooks and crannies of the local lakes on the lookout for bald eagles and such.

Figured we discuss paddling on the bicycle and the RC forum I frequent, may as well strike up a discussion here. Hope to jump back into the photo discussion here with some shots this summer from the water as well.

Hey all, you folks know a lot more than I do about computers, so help me chose which compromise to go with...

First to get out of the way because this seems to be the suggestion with everyone, I am looking for a laptop. There's 4 of us living in a very small house (not your typical rich McMansion living American here that seems to be overabundant on the internet). I have no where to put a desktop. The old one was on a desk in the cold storage basement. Getting it out of the basement to be usable in the winter. The only suggestion I've gotten elsewhere is to get a desktop. I swear everyone in the world is a car salesman twisting around what you are looking for to something completely different. Anyways....

I am looking for just a simple laptop. I don't game. Main purpose is just for paying the bills online. Close secondary purpose would be playing around with photography with very old versions of Photoshop and Lightroom. Anything else it might be used for is pretty unimportant.

I have an eye on a few that I'll list below. They each have a compromise to go with. I am coming from a 2005 (yes, still the same off-the-shelf PC that I started and struggled playing LFS with) running XP that finally took a dump over Christmas. At work, just a week ago we upgraded from XP to Win7, so I am brand new to Win7. Playing around in the stores with 8.1 I really don't want that garbage at all. That said, the Op. system will be a compromise with some of the listed below. Budget is, at the most expensive, $600 is really pushing it (have another cheaper and simpler machine to buy for the kids.) Graphics will be Intel HD4400. Nothing in my price range I can find that would have a decent graphics card. Not looking to game, so not a big deal to me. Hard drives don't matter either. They are all plenty big enough to go along with 2 external drives I'll make out of the drives from the old computer.

HP 350 G1 listed as a business notebook (perhaps not as much bloatware on this?) This is the one I've got my eye on the most.
$600
i5 4200U 1.8GHz
8 Gb RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 7 Pro 64 bit

HP Pavilion 17-f065US
$600
i3 4030U 1.9 GHz
6 Gb RAM
17.3 inch display
Windows 8.1

HP Pavilion 15-p064US
$570
i3 4030U 1.9 GHz
12 Gb RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 8.1 64 bit

Lenovo G50
$550
i7 4510U 2.0 GHz
8GB RAM
15.6 inch display
Windows 8.1

So, you can see I have a choice of only 1 Windows 7 machine available that I've found in my budget. Everything else looks to be a bit better in spec with the processor at least with the GHz speed but would be Windows 8.1.

I know nothing about processors these days other than common sense tells me i3<i5<i7, but the GHz speed specs don't tell me that. AMD seems to be out of reach. Seems AMD processors are typicallly paired up with better specs on other stuff (graphics for instance) putting it out of my budget.

Can you give me a reason to go with a Win 8.1 machine? If you can give me a good reason to forgo Windows 7, the Lenovo i7 machine looks to be the one to go for.

Last edited by mrodgers, Thu, 19 Feb 2015 23:15.

Ah.... wouldn't they be African-British in London rather than African-American?

My kids play this on PC and on their tablets. Just for fooling around, I put Minecraft PE on my tablet. I ended up building a giant underground rail system that the kids like to scoot around in. My youngest is always talking about her "epic builds" so I figured I'd give her an "epic build" of my own. I've been building a full hockey arena, 4 corridor levels to seating areas with team rooms and locker rooms underneath the ice surface. It's been something like 9-10 months since I started it and I open it up now and then in the evening when I'm bored to add to it. I'll have to get some screens and post them if I get a chance. I have no idea how to do a walkthrough video of it on a tablet.

Quote from Chrisuu01 :

I want to cycle on the hills in that 3rd picture.

Imagine how much it'd be to go down those hills.

It's hell. That is 1 mile off in the distance where you can see the house. You can't see the 2 more similar hills down-up and down-up before you reach that house. I don't ride around home often, I'd burn out way too quick. I have no flat where I live. Pic #2 is half a mile from my house so pretty much the beginning of my riding. That's as flat as it gets and pretty much the only flat I see. It is mostly roller coaster like hills as in pic #3. That is the straightest road I could get a good shot of to show the hilly terrain.

I try to ride daily close to work on more rolling hills with only 1 or 2 like this. The climbs are shallower but longer. There's also a ton of old rail road trails like the last 2 around me that are dead flat running deep into the woods or along the river, dirt, crushed limeatone, or paved. I rode 18 miles on the last 2 pics between 2 small towns in the Allegheny National Forest. Saw 3 people the first 5 miles, 2 people the last 5 miles, and felt like the only person left on the planet for the middle 8 being out in the middle of nowhere in bear country.

Haven't yet seen a bear, but more importantly, I'm keeping an eye out for Bigfoot, LOL. He has to come down out of the forest for water sometime

My bike....



And where I ride it....

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Which is funny because I find the clutch in my Jetta (2001) to be pretty decent. I can consistently find the bite point and control it with ease.

I got use to it, sure. I just found it so drastically different than anything I've ever driven. It's like a 5 mile long throw on the clutch pedal.

The throttle lag off idle doesn't help.

Quote from Rappa Z :

My brother's VW Jetta has the most annoying clutch pedal I've ever experienced. The first few cm have almost no resistance, but then there's a sort of 'crest' right around the bite point where it gets really heavy. You have to press harder to get over the 'crest' and then you end up tumbling down the other side as it seemingly loses resistance again.

So you've either got all clutch or no clutch unless you have fantastic coordination and are really focusing on the clutch.

I agree, my Jetta has the 2nd worst clutch of anything I've driven. The first goes to every Ford I've ever driven. Those thoughts are only due to the fact that I've never driven a manual GM. If a GM clutch is anything like the steering and braking systems, then I assume they would come out on top of the worst list.

Dang you people and your amazingly sharp equipment and amazing processing skills. Haven't been here in a while and started riding a bike for exercise lately carrying my still same POS camera now and then. Figured I'd post a few shots, then I look at all the shots here and I don't want to post them, LOL.

Ah well, here are a few from around Pittsburgh, PA riding the bike on the shore trails of the 3 rivers. I live out in the country and ride either on Rails to Trails in the woods along the river or out in the hilly countryside amongst farms and woods out on the road. This was quite a different experience riding.





Not a great shot of the city quality wise with the blue haze covering the buildings.





Overlooking Point State Park from the Fort Duquesne Bridge









Unbelievably loud sitting here on the trail taking this.



Heinz Field, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers, NFL



PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, NBL

You folks over there are lucky. I have 4 phones in the family. I refuse to either pay $250/month for cell phones or pay $700 for each phone not being on a contract. I have to settle for really crappy phones on prepaid, but it only costs me $10 per phone....

This is the best mine does. This is after tweaking settings to get the best image I can. These are as focused as I will get. Only resized them in Lightroom.







Just started riding the bike last year. It's a cheap POS bigbox store bike. New bike coming here in another month and I'd love to do some shooting on my rides. Can't use the wife's camera because it is auto only and as crappy as the cell phone other than it would focus at least something (the wrong thing since I can't control where the focus is) and don't want to ride with a heavy camera hanging around my neck.

Single player... I don't have much time for game playing, thus I am still just exploring and haven't done many of the missions. I'm just exploring around as Franklin while I leave Michael doing whatever he does while I'm Franklin (usually I check and he is sitting in his car somewhere.)

So, question about the safehouse garage. Franklin lives in a dump with his Aunt so he had the funds to pay a car payment on a brand new Dodge Charger (ugly as it is, especially in white.) Found out that there is a Toyota Hilux up in the hills! Hunted that down for Franklin and briefly saw there was rusty beat up ones and clean ones with bull bars and whatnot. Couldn't find a rusty one after first seeing it, so grabbed a clean one. Then upon hunting down a mountain bike to toss in the back, the parking lot near the cable car was full of the non-modded trucks.

So, now Franklin has a beat up old Toyota truck in his garage. How weird is it that he leaves a beat up old truck in the garage while his brand new $30,000 Dodge Charger sits out in the driveway in the ghetto? What happens if I switch it and put the Toyota out in the driveway and the Charger in the garage? I explore the map in the Toyota, but not wanting to lose and have to go find another Toy, I take the Charger when I go on a mission. Will I lose the Toy if I leave it in the driveway and put the Charger in the garage?



Wondering how you all drove around exploring the map, though I imagine most of you are just playing multiplayer now. Did you follow traffic laws and drive around slow while checking out the scenery? I'll give Michael the fast cars since he is rich, while I leave Franklin with the slow unmodified Toyota truck for map exploring. I'm loving just driving around, stopping at the lights in the city (though they are a bit long sometimes, perhaps that is realistic, I don't live anywhere near a big metropolis) while I look around at the buildings and listen to the people. When I get out on the freeways, I'm driving behind all the other cars slowly while checking out the views.

Conversely, my kids go for the fastest cars and drive around at top speed wrecking havoc all over the city. How did you all explore the map?

Also, I'm terrible at remembering the streets and the map, I couldn't do it with IV and just drive around knowing where I needed to go. Thus, this is one reason I am driving around as I would in real traffic and checking out all the visuals, so I can learn the map (IV was too dark and hard to see and always seemed to be night time, thus I never learned much of the street map.) Do you guys who probably play the games for longer durations than I do learn the map just from rushing around the game play or do you intentionally try to learn the map exploring around?

Curios about other folks and stats on the Rockstar Social club, so feel free to add my name, mrodgers83 there. I have no friends on the social club as I don't know any real people in real life who play these games.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Go (cycle) to the S on your map in the middle of the city (you can use the map to set a GPS destination, and it'll tell you road legal routes to get there, although it isn't necessary the quickest way), and it'll start the next mission.

Ah, yeah, sorry, forgot the sarcasm tags. Yeah, I know how to progress. Problem is, I'm too busy roaming around.

Quote from Matrixi :

I'm not sure GTA 5 is a game I'd let children play, atleast without supervision...

The torture event comes up to mind. Heck, that made even a grown man like myself feel a bit uncomfortable, which is rare when it comes to gaming.

I'm not sure what the missions are about. I figure, she's mature enough to watch many of the movies I let her watch as well as TV shows like The Walking Dead, she can handle GTA (she's been playing GTA IV for a very long time.) For the language and such used in the game, it pales in comparison to what I've heard every day when the school bus doors opened up from the very first day of kindergarten. I blushed from some of the stuff I heard coming from the school bus.

And yes, I am there with her to make sure she isn't in the strip club and other scenes such as that. If she comes across something that needs done that I feel is too much, I'll just play it through for her and she can pick it up later. She is more about the roaming around and driving the cars anyways.

Since I'm just playing SP and not online... How the heck do I progress in this game? I've got the first mission done, LOL. Just been riding around on my bicycle in the city and mountain bike in the mountains checking out all the sites. My kids are probably halfway through the game, I haven't even gotten to the point where Franklin and Michael meet up, LOL.

Of course it doesn't help that the kids play after school and get the xBox good and hot so that every time I play in the late evening, it goes into thermal shutdown with me forgetting to save on the phone periodically.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

I honestly found the physics to be fitting to the style of game. They're not as hardcore as GTA4 but considering this game has you driving over random terrain in a world far too hard to memorize easily, it's good that the physics are forgiving to mistakes.

While I don't exactly need LFS physics in a game like this, I would like a good bit more realistic driving. I would describe games tbat drive like this as they stuck a pin straight down in the middle of the car and the car rotates around this pin rather than actually being driven on 4 wheels.

Tone down GTA IV's bouncy incredibly articulate suspension and it would have been great rather than a full replacement driving model.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Mike, you'll need a USB key or external HDD thats >8 GB to play GTA. Basically the USB key will act as a supplemental hard drive for the game data.

Yeah, already been there thinking I could play with disc and didn't know that I had to install. Works just fine now with a 16 gb flash drive. I just read arguements about some patch fixing the driving physics problem and have no idea if mine is patched or not. All I know is, driving sucks and the slidey car cheat thing isn't much of a fix for it, though is a better experience with than without.