Hi th84, I'll try to catch you and other [noobs] online some time. I don't go to oval servers and I don't like formulas, so you may have gotten filtered out. And I changed my nick again (obviously).

Quote from Speed Soro :

1 - The picture is not from AS-2, but from any other Aston's layout.

You can download the WR for AS-2 and check it out

There are 4 or more that can do 22.x too. You just have to know which server to go to, because most good guys go to the same one/ones, and it's wrecker/noob galore on the rest of them. And most are demo racers. I could be considered one too for all practical purposes, since I bought S2 almost a month ago and I have only 68km online. And I spend 10-20hrs/week online. I still have far more fun on demo servers than on S2 (perhaps if the situation with S2 servers at evenings US Eastern time wasn't just plain sad, I'd be more often on S2, but that's another issue).

Quote from Gentlefoot :

This thing happens IRL too. The most successful competitors in motorsport will search the regs looking for loop holes that could give them an advantage over the competition. This is exactly the same thing in my view.

This example isn't even so bad, on Blackwood GP there are two exploits in the physics and the HLVC, and it's blatantly obvious they should not be allowed. And yet, it will be HLVC ok. I saw a few guys use one of the exploits, but they later removed their hotlaps from lfsworld.
It's a bit hard comparing such physics bugs and HLVC flaws to RL.

I'll just use this topic: in the hotlaps overview the position displayed is never bigger than 255 even if the actual position is. 2-byte integer would sure be an overkill, so perhaps this was a design decision; I just wanted to mention in case it is a bug.

Quote from madmak :

Tell me anyway. Do you think that driving with KS is realistic as much as driving with wheel?

I don't have a wheel (can't fit one to my current desk ), so people who were good with KS and made a move to W are more qualified to answer this.

Quote from madmak :

p.s. now you should attack my 1.23.99 :P

Hm, I would need a LOT more time with KN to do that. 23.x still isn't piece of cake for me even with KS.

Quote from Nick_ll :

- kb: It's soooo impossible to drive I don't even want to know how anyone can be fast with that shit. Surely those who are got absolutely no life at all.....

I don't feel disadvantaged to mouse users much, really. After all, I do have a mouse and an option to use it, but I'm not very good with it.
And you may think I'm full of s*it, but I don't drive all day long. I probably drive much less than a lot of S2 licensed drivers. It's just that 95% of the time I drive the same car on the same track. Look at RudiTurbo e.g., he drove 23.8x although he probably rarely plays that car. And it took me like 2 months to be that good.

Quote from madmak :

I'm sure that skilled drivers racing with KS will not change the controller even for free. I'll not believe in fast racing with keybord w/o help. They are good, because they know how to use that help.

Just for you I drove a couple of laps with XRT@Bl and keyboard no help. The best lap I got was 1.24.88 (I can post .spr if you don't believe me), which is too fast for quite a few guys. At the moment, out of 179 people with a wheel in the charts (I know, not all of them actually have a wheel), only 26 are better than that. If I had more time, I might be able to attack your 1.24.24 pretty soon. KS certainly helps compared to KN, but it ain't exactly like driving on rails. It's not like KS users use wheel for fun, and for hotlapping and serious racing they go: OK, enough of this crap, bring in the mighty keyboard. Besides, try it, if you still think it's so much easier. You know: if you can't beat them, join them.

No-aids-at-all policy isn't being broken just by M/KS users. Most wheel users use things like centre steer reduction etc. And M/KS don't have 0/1 throttle and brake. They're smoothed.

The best guy with mouse is only 0.03s slower than WR. And the only reason I beat him is because he hasn't been playing lately, so I caught up. He was always better than me by a few tenths. Mouse users don't have any stabilization (AFAIK), so he should be clearly disadvantaged to you with a wheel. I'd say a wheel still has a noticeable advantage over M/KS (for XRT@BL), and M is very slightly better than KS. And that's fine with me; wheel is better, but M/KS users can be very competitive too. I base this belief on an unofficial rank for S2 pre-alpha demo. The best mouser was about 20th position, and the best keyboarder was about 30th position, both more than 0.5s off the WR. Back then all the really good guys with wheels played XRT a lot because there were only 3 cars and one track. And the advantage of wheel over M/KS could be clearly seen. And it doesn't feel like I have more help now than before. I guess it works out well for me that the best guys with wheels are probably more interested in new cars and other tracks. And you should be happy that you have only me to beat, because if some of those guys spent a few days driving this track/car combo, they would most likely smoke me, and you wouldn't have KS to blame anymore.