I find the whining completely amusing. I've been reading it all day cause I'm stuck for 11 hours at work being sicker than I've ever been in 2 years.

I played WoW for 29 hours straight, so I'm totally sure it can be done to drive for 24 hours. Very hard, but feasible.

(I'll look like a huge nerd for saying this, but it was a dare with my roommate who wanted to see who could play for the longest time straight).

I really want to participate in this event, I'll have to make up a team or something, maybe some local racers will want to participate!

Next step in the sound system would be to have certain sound values kept in your player setup, so cars would have slightly different sounds on the track. Put that in and wow, LFS has another first in the sim world, no?

best hotlapper: me
best racer: me
best coder: me
best contry: me
best sim: me
best hardware: me

I win.

Just wanna point out, with Italians, Spanish racers are the most annoying on the track. I dunno if they all do that in their country, but writing in all caps, and shouting obcenities at other people when they get passed seems to be the norm, on public servers anyway.

For a reason which is pretty simple I have, since early S2 demo, disabled the shift light completely. I never used it. At all. I just shift by sound. Basically, I found myself always looking for that shift light and it distracted me too much from what's going on the track. Seeing how I'm able to be competitive and usually get pretty close to WR times, I guess my shift pattern's not that bad. It's entirely possible to shift by sound.

And when I'm on a very long straight where I accelerate to the car's top speed, I just look at the speedometer and when the numbers start slowing down, it means I have to shift pretty soon if not immediately. It's been a pretty accurate way to do it without the shift light and having to look for it when I'm in heavy traffic.

I was seeing this competition thing as a way to include more people, because you don't need 300 to make a car. On a project, too many is just as bad as not enough. But I can see how the competition veers away from the original idea.

Anyway, this would be interesting. I'd hop in with my notions of architectural design

Just a thought like that. Instead of working on a real car, and then asking the LFS gods to add it in game later, why not just work on a fictional car? I'm sure we've got designers, mechanics, drivers, and motor fans plenty enough to do a car that's pretty well balanced and good looking.

The idea to bring the community together is not a bad idea, and working on a virtual project like that, while basicly being a lot easier to manage than the creation of a real car, Iono, it could almost be made as a contest. Teams of designers making a car, and the 3 best entries being included at some point in the development of LFS or something.

Thoughts?

Logitech Driving Force Pro. Basicly the GT4 PS2 wheel. It's USB and is fully compatible with PCs. It has 900 degrees of rotation, H shifter, and a few other nice features. The best wheel until the G25.

That'd be an idea. Actually, I have no idea if this has been brought up, but since the NA pool of racers is somewhat small, why not just make something like 4 divisions, with cross division races where the grids are separated by general championship standings, leading to a hockey playoffs styled series at the end of a season where the fastest of each division battle it off for a cup?

That way, you get people from the same general timezones and countries racing together, but those grids don't require amazing lap times to enter. Then when you do cross-division races, the faster guys get paired up, and the slower guys get paired up, leading to the fastest of the slowest getting roughly equal points to the slowest of the fastest. At the end of such a season, the slower guys would have a better chance to get in the finals.

Basicly dividing east/west and north/south, you get 4 divisions, and hopefully (provided attendance for each division's around 10 people) you get 40 people racing towards a championship. This way, you get a 4 sided regional challenge, where both the slower and faster guys fight to represent their division on the global championship. It'd be a nice way to merge a canadian only league into a NA league.

I know that it'd be pretty easy to get at least a couple guys from eastern Canada, we get a solid 8 in our Quebec league each 2 weeks, with peak attendance of roughly 15.

Anyway, I'm all for getting more league races, be it global or canadian. But I do like the idea of canadian/regional subdivisions.

I seriously have no idea how rFactor can be considered to have a better physics engine. I actually TRIED driving it. But the cars don't respond at all like I'd expect them to. Just trying to do a quick jerk of the wheel to avoid some crap on the track, the cars respond so slow it's weird. Everything feels heavy.

And to answer to everyone going "omfg LFS needs more content", you know, I think you haven't grasped what racing is about. Racing is about getting faster and faster, and being faster than the people you are racing against. I'd be happy with XFG and XRG, as the racing with excellent drivers is always so much fun.

I'd need only one track, and one car to drive, and it still would be interesting. because racing is only about beating your own limits. Even in RL, racing is about knowing your car, not trashing it, and being a slick driver. You don't ask for more tracks or more content, you just ask to drive shit as fast as possible down whatever track is thrown at you. if I had access to only one circuit, I'd still be there every weekend to burn some rubber.

Setup does have a huge effect, when you're already a fast driver. If you know the car you are driving like your pocket, and also know the racing line, the better your setup is, the better times you will get. That's a given. Just by tweaking tire pressure and wheel camber, I took .75 second off my lap record in preparation for next week's race, and I'm pretty confident with a little bit more tweaking to improve stability and grip, I can take maybe .2 more off of it.

Of course, racing conditions are different, but then again, I discovered you need to clock in around 10 PBs in a short time to grasp the lines and exactly how a track is supposed to be taken. Then it just becomes a matter of refining your driving.

***edit***

I just want to add that if you're racing for more than 15 laps, or roughly half an hour, the faster drivers are those who are putting the most work in their tire setups. That's how I manage to stay in front. I spend two weeks getting the perfect tire setup, so that come race day, I can qualify with my race setup, and clock my race laps as fast as my qualify laps. The people who are qualifying with less durable sets get waaaay slower during the races, and I can keep up the pace from start to finish with incredible lap time stability.

Last edited by Nard, Fri 9 Feb 2007, 03:19.

lol, horrible.

nothing stops you from doing your own modeling for car interiors and texture em yourself. Some people can do it.

Only difference is, no one cares about your custom interior, so does it really matter in the end? It'll only appear on your computer, so all that modeling work would be wasted time.

LFS is a semi-sim. Race car interiors should look like race car interiors, and road cars should have road car interiors.

A good test for people who doubt LFS's sense of speed.

1. Load up Blackwood in the XFR. At the end of the back straight, you're roughly going 220kph. It doesn't feel that fast.

2. Now load up South City Classic. Take the chicane and I dare you to say it doesn't look like you're going hella fast, even if you're almost at half teh speed of the Blackwood straight. Big open circuits like Blackwood, or Westhill, or Aston have a lower sense of speed than South City and Fern Bay because the landmarks are a bit further.

Hehe, I just made the jump from STCC bronze to silver+gold, I was finishing mostly top 3 in the first, now I'm all teh way back to the last spots in the latter. I guess I'll have to practice more and tune my TBO sets.

evO, you don't have it right! The guys splashing at T1 are backmarkers trying to get past midfielders in the first corner. Midfielders take either a very safe but slow inside line, or a completely safe outside line and let everyone smash themselves . If you're a midfielder, but after checking the outside and inside lines you get stuck in the racing line, you pray. Pray for baby jesus to lift you from the imminent chaos.

Oh, and Hankstar, I don't know about you, but being a slower driver and getting the front position is totally awesome. That last league race I won, I ended up in second place behind one of those aliens, but he screwed up and had to pit after 5 laps of 22. Being still in front at the 19th lap, knowing the guys behind are better drivers really makes it awesome. You are hotlapping, but you're hotlapping because you actually cannot let them catch you, not cause you want to increase your gap. THAT is what I discovered is the best fun I ever EVER had racing. At the same time, you're shaking, and the adrenaline makes it hard staying focused, and you're also aware that you need to stay calm, and you count the corners, then think it's only 5 more laps, check your tires, etc. Being in front is really fun.

Last edited by Nard, Tue 23 Jan 2007, 00:34.

Yeah, it happens to me most of the time too. I'm not an extremely fast driver, but I'm not a bad driver altogether. I can hold my own, but usually I end up alone in the midfield, or what happens often, I get in the front because the fast guys touched and spun out, but I have to hold them back, until they can finally get through. That made me develop a strong defensive driving, even if I'm not overly fast.

Great things will happen though, just keep practicing! I won my first league race last thursday (ok, it's a small regional league, but there's at least 3-4 faster drivers than me in there) so there,s hope even for midfielders!

To the OP, we mostly all agree, the damage model could be better. But until forces are actually absorbed somehow in deformation, which doesn't seem to be in at all yet, we won't see much change in how damage is dealt. To me it seems there's some kind of threshold under which certain amount of damage doesn't happen, that's why small contacts usually don't do much damage, but do make your car rebound around as the forces are exchanged but they are not absorbed by body/frame deformation (that's what I guess from experience). Good example is when you go wide and lightly clip a sidewall like at the last turn at Fern Bay Club, if your rear catches the wall, it just bounces back out (usually followed by the front end hitting the wall too) and you're on your way mostly unscarred.

If the crash is bigger though, you get the damage, but you still bounce back almost as much as the small contact. This is different from what you'd see happening in RL, basicly, for the small and bigger crash, you'll get deformation absorbtion before bounce, but for small clips your body will suffer and rebound a bit like we do now, for bigger crashes, you'll have massive deformation, but less rebound than we see right now. Going head on after a straight in a tire wall, the car crumples until it hits the hard limit (Scawen has made some parts of the car completely static and unalterable) but the forces seem to still be completely applied to the harder core of the car without having been reduced in the other parts' deformation.

I guess we might see something better in the future. For S3, I dream of an aerodynamic model that considers each body panel of the cars as a wing exerting some kind of aerodynamic force/effect, and damage to each of those panels affecting the cars' handling. Even better would be the possibility to lose those panels following rubs, crashes, etc., like having a basic aerodynamic model of the car's frame, but with each panel covering and nullifying it until the frame is exposed. But I'm just dreaming here.

Anyway, if you want to see how quickly you can screw up your car, load up a track with ramps, and take two or three high speed jumps, landing hard on your front and you'll see the suspension dies pretty fast. Some cars, like open wheelers, get completely wrecked in about one jump. That kinda backs my idea of a threshold cause in a race, hitting curbs over and over doesn't seem to affect the suspension as fast as it should.

Weeeee! The only suggestion of mine that's losing is Fern Thicket I loved that name

Well yeah, we always try to avoid tapping and general contact, but when the racing is close and the guy in front constantly blocks, sometimes cars get very close together and contact isn't rare at all.

I tend to let people pass and get their position back if I screw up a pass like that and cause em to spin. It's just common sense, first you avoid getting penalties, and second, you are acting like a gentleman. I find it more rewarding on the long run to be courteous and let people pass than gain one or two spots in the span of several races but look like a bastard.

But still, Fox, Kamo has valid opinions. He criticised a movie of mine in the past, but I didn't go all 'omfg stfu' on him. Instead of taking it as an offense, try to see what we tell you and assimilate those notions for your next video. By the way his 'Fox lovers' comment was aimed at the first posts responding to the thread which were clearly your friends telling how you are awesome and how this movie is genius (which was why I watched it in the first place and was bitterly disappointed).

Kamo hosted the movies pit, he watched tons of movies, and quite frankly, most people who have either studied filmmaking or are movie addicts will tell you this video was pretty poorly done. The idea was nice, but even if you had put 500 hours into this, it would still be bad in its current form.

And if you can't take criticism for what it is, then you shouldn't be making movies. Good example, Jos Whedon had a great idea with his 'firefly' series. But even if it was brilliant, FOX network didn't like it at all, and it never even aired a complete season. I guess it even happens to the pros, but he didn't go whining on forums how he was sad and all hurt in his feelings, he just went ahead and made a movie out of it, and went to work on other projects with the reasons why Firefly didn't work in mind.

Vote through. I like the changes, but it would have been better to have this combo in:

Black T color logo + website on sleeve + printed back

Getting rid of the website under the logo on the front and putting it on the sleeve on the printed back design.

OH MY FREAKING GOD!!!!

That was awesome...

Easily wins my heart for the favorite LFS movie spot.

Geez, aside some small flaws I found, and the aparent jagged movements of the cars due to server lag, wow, this is a 9.5+/10 for me.

Oh my, I'm watching it over and over.

I don't like Original Posters like these.

Seriously, hasn't a mod like warned him he was talking about the most evil of evils of the LFS community?

Well, I see 12 unique users responding right here right now in this thread. If it would go public, I'm sure you could easily reach 20 racers with backup drivers in a snap.

Just polish your project and come out with it!