Definitely sounds electrical (that narrows it down...) One of the possibilities could be a dodgy connection.
On my old MR2 which had tons of stupid gran turismo type stuff done to it that makes the car faster and louder but infinitely less reliable and very expensive to maintain and worthless to resell, it went through a phase where when I turned the car on half the electronics - mostly accessories - including the boost controller would simply not power up for a while, then they'd start coming on at random until the car fully warmed up.
Eventually that got tracked down to a ground wire connection where some of the aftermarket electronics had been spliced in by the previous owner that had become loose. When the car was cold, the wires wouldn't touch. As the wires warmed up as the car warmed up they'd expand just that extra bazillionth of a millimeter to start contacting and provide current.
On my old MR2 which had tons of stupid gran turismo type stuff done to it that makes the car faster and louder but infinitely less reliable and very expensive to maintain and worthless to resell, it went through a phase where when I turned the car on half the electronics - mostly accessories - including the boost controller would simply not power up for a while, then they'd start coming on at random until the car fully warmed up.
Eventually that got tracked down to a ground wire connection where some of the aftermarket electronics had been spliced in by the previous owner that had become loose. When the car was cold, the wires wouldn't touch. As the wires warmed up as the car warmed up they'd expand just that extra bazillionth of a millimeter to start contacting and provide current.
Yeah, the Solstice is the bone stock Z0K model, the only thing that makes it a lot faster than those reference times you guys have looked up is that it's running DOT legal (although you wouldn't really want to drive them on the street) race rubber - the Hoosier R6:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/ ... =Hoosier&tireModel=R6
these have at least 30% more grip than normal ultra high performance street tires.
add to the list the ability to actually extract your maximum driving potential intentionally 
that's my downfall, my raw times can vary +/- 1 second between runs and I'm often scratching my head as to why. That's where the really fast guys have an advantage over the rest of us mere mortals.
A setup, once it has the basic raw grip dialed in, is mostly about suiting your driving style as Reppoh says. I tried his setup yesterday, and can see why it's fast, but it totally doesn't suit the way I drive. But it is interesting to try to figure out what's good about different setups and if it's possible to make your own setups better as a result.
that's my downfall, my raw times can vary +/- 1 second between runs and I'm often scratching my head as to why. That's where the really fast guys have an advantage over the rest of us mere mortals.A setup, once it has the basic raw grip dialed in, is mostly about suiting your driving style as Reppoh says. I tried his setup yesterday, and can see why it's fast, but it totally doesn't suit the way I drive. But it is interesting to try to figure out what's good about different setups and if it's possible to make your own setups better as a result.
yeah, it's like bidding for something on eBay - save your best until the last possible moment so the others don't have a chance to chase you down 
Back with the first test server Victor was running for this autocross script stuff last year it actually did show the number of attempts people had done. I'm sure they still track that, they just aren't showing it
I bet some people have 500+ attempts already! and that's just counting the online attempts, not offline practice.Which does actually lead into an interesting discussion: with an near infinite number of attempts allowed it almost isn't "autocross" any more. At real events everyone has as limited fixed number of attempts to get through the course, so the challenge isn't so much who is the fastest driver, but rather, who is the quickest to be the fastest. In US national level events people only get 3 attempts on a course. Imagine if you only had 3 shots at this course
don't hit any cones! analyse the crap out of the course before taking a run! etc.That would be fun to try, have an autocross server where the script only lets you get, say, 10 attempts, and has the save layout button disabled to prevent offline practice.
yeah setups aren't the magic answer, they're just a tool. Yes it's nice to have a good setup, but then all the speed comes from what's between the ears.
Now here's a question that I'm must not be using the right search terms to find any signs of an answer for:
last night I spent some time offline working on my setup, and was easily doing low 10s. So, thinking I was all cool and everything, I went online, and the car just felt greasy and was almost a second slower. Does LFS have different grip levels or something depending on which of the 3 weather conditions are selected? I just want to make sure my offline conditions are the same so I can make a setup properly.
Now here's a question that I'm must not be using the right search terms to find any signs of an answer for:
last night I spent some time offline working on my setup, and was easily doing low 10s. So, thinking I was all cool and everything, I went online, and the car just felt greasy and was almost a second slower. Does LFS have different grip levels or something depending on which of the 3 weather conditions are selected? I just want to make sure my offline conditions are the same so I can make a setup properly.
the solo k9k servers don't run this tool 
we're still stuck with none of the new autox stuff Victor's been playing with. The results quickly fill up all 24 slots and then the server needs to be reset to clear the results out.
Victor - I was thinking a next step for your tool could be to keep track of the best time for each person in each different car, then have filters on the results page for the different types of cars, thus people can use any car a server has available. pretty much similar to LFSWorld's hotlap charts.
This would encourage people to spend the time and effort to drive different kinds of cars. At the moment for instance, there's no reason to try to drive the XR because it's slower than the XFG and won't get times recorded.
we're still stuck with none of the new autox stuff Victor's been playing with. The results quickly fill up all 24 slots and then the server needs to be reset to clear the results out.Victor - I was thinking a next step for your tool could be to keep track of the best time for each person in each different car, then have filters on the results page for the different types of cars, thus people can use any car a server has available. pretty much similar to LFSWorld's hotlap charts.
This would encourage people to spend the time and effort to drive different kinds of cars. At the moment for instance, there's no reason to try to drive the XR because it's slower than the XFG and won't get times recorded.
unless Victor's database keeps track of previous best times achieved, he can't just take your word on a nice fast time to insert - otherwise I'm sure I did a 1.53.99 myself the other night! 
Probably the only fair thing to do if no record is kept to step your time back to is to nuke your time out entirely and then you can just go drive that 1.54.4 anew.
Probably the only fair thing to do if no record is kept to step your time back to is to nuke your time out entirely and then you can just go drive that 1.54.4 anew.I've probably made a few tweaks since I gave you that one, sil3ntwar, but the key one being switching to hybrids. Here's the latest version of it, which I did the 55.7 with. Some people like it, some don't. I don't use first gear other than at the start, but that may not be the fastest technique.
I also have Norbi's setup (don't ask me for it, it's not mine to give away), which is pretty different. But it doesn't make me magically faster, it just feels different. Norbi's just a whole lot better than me
The key to driving either setup fast is exactly the same thing as AndroidXP was just mentioning - not overdriving the car! It's like driving typical 5hp indoor gokarts - any significant sideways sliding makes you slow because the vehicle just doesn't have much acceleration to make up for that speed loss. Make sure you slow enough when a tighter corner comes up. You can often accelerate quite hard and early - if you're not mashing your foot entirely down on the throttle. The throttle is analog, not digital, so take advantage of all those in between positions.
I also have Norbi's setup (don't ask me for it, it's not mine to give away), which is pretty different. But it doesn't make me magically faster, it just feels different. Norbi's just a whole lot better than me
The key to driving either setup fast is exactly the same thing as AndroidXP was just mentioning - not overdriving the car! It's like driving typical 5hp indoor gokarts - any significant sideways sliding makes you slow because the vehicle just doesn't have much acceleration to make up for that speed loss. Make sure you slow enough when a tighter corner comes up. You can often accelerate quite hard and early - if you're not mashing your foot entirely down on the throttle. The throttle is analog, not digital, so take advantage of all those in between positions.
I just thought you were so fast that you were going backwards in time
GT doesn't seem to have the pace to match the GTI unfortunately.
GT doesn't seem to have the pace to match the GTI unfortunately.
the hybrids are faster than the regular road tires? That sounds counterintuitive to me. I only just got to work, and now I want to go home again already so I can try that out
Misko, you got that close to breaking 2 minutes and then let it be? Someone's gotta break 2 mins soon.
I need a better setup. Or maybe I just don't really know how to drive FWD all that well yet (total RWD snob here, lol).
As for a bit of feedback on the process...
it's definitely an interesting idea that you're working on here, Victor. I like the web page listing all the results (and that someone's actually trying to do something for autocross! )
But it feels pretty clunky as a driver on the server, but I guess a lot of the clunkiness is due to having to get LFS to do stuff it wasn't designed to do in the first place, using the scripts and commands via the bot.
The auto-restart each time a person enters is kind of weird. Usually a course will be good to go without needing a restart - unless someone's been an idiot, of course. which is probably why the restart is there.
At real autocrosses, we're usually sending cars off every 20 to 30 seconds. But I think this would be tricky to get working right in LFS because lacking proper built in support you'd need to rely on people to join in the right order, at the right time, and not to go wandering around off course causing problems, etc. One car on course at a time does offer the advantage of allowing everyone to watch what you're doing (for better or worse), but at the disadvantage of having to wait 2+ minutes per person, for often a good 10-15 minutes between runs. Last night I was forgetting the flow of the course and how the car handled while waiting and was just getting worse.
The number of attempts? It appears that that is only counting the number of completed runs? I had a few attempts where I screwed up and crashed, and never finished the run, and they weren't counted. Surely an "attempt" is considered to be any run you start - not just the ones you finish. Can those get counted too?
Can the web page display the times as raw time + penalty time = total time, like how the results show inside of LFS (however that is)? Admittedly this particular course mostly has indestructable barriers, but with courses made of cones it's far more likely that penalties will occur, so it's often good to see the raw time in addition to the total time.
It would be cool to somehow, magically, be able to see replays of the top few people's runs. But I realise this isn't at all likely to happen at all due to the technical requirements of setting that mechanism up.
Someone's gotta break 2 mins soon.I need a better setup. Or maybe I just don't really know how to drive FWD all that well yet (total RWD snob here, lol).
As for a bit of feedback on the process...
it's definitely an interesting idea that you're working on here, Victor. I like the web page listing all the results (and that someone's actually trying to do something for autocross!
)But it feels pretty clunky as a driver on the server, but I guess a lot of the clunkiness is due to having to get LFS to do stuff it wasn't designed to do in the first place, using the scripts and commands via the bot.
The auto-restart each time a person enters is kind of weird. Usually a course will be good to go without needing a restart - unless someone's been an idiot, of course. which is probably why the restart is there.
At real autocrosses, we're usually sending cars off every 20 to 30 seconds. But I think this would be tricky to get working right in LFS because lacking proper built in support you'd need to rely on people to join in the right order, at the right time, and not to go wandering around off course causing problems, etc. One car on course at a time does offer the advantage of allowing everyone to watch what you're doing (for better or worse), but at the disadvantage of having to wait 2+ minutes per person, for often a good 10-15 minutes between runs. Last night I was forgetting the flow of the course and how the car handled while waiting and was just getting worse.
The number of attempts? It appears that that is only counting the number of completed runs? I had a few attempts where I screwed up and crashed, and never finished the run, and they weren't counted. Surely an "attempt" is considered to be any run you start - not just the ones you finish. Can those get counted too?
Can the web page display the times as raw time + penalty time = total time, like how the results show inside of LFS (however that is)? Admittedly this particular course mostly has indestructable barriers, but with courses made of cones it's far more likely that penalties will occur, so it's often good to see the raw time in addition to the total time.
It would be cool to somehow, magically, be able to see replays of the top few people's runs. But I realise this isn't at all likely to happen at all due to the technical requirements of setting that mechanism up.
But when spectating, you still have a current car and setup selected. I'd like to be able to send that setup.
Some possible improvements for autocrossing
I've always loved that LFS supports autocrossing, as that's my real world form of motorsports And I've been doing a fair bit of LFS autocross lately. I have a few ideas/suggestions/bug reports that could help the autocross experience hopefully without being too tricky or time consuming to consider.
- On a multiplayer autocross server, eventually all 24 results slots fill up, and no new people are able to have their results recorded. In autocross mode perhaps the results could simply knock the 24th person off the list and insert a new person into the appropriate place if they manage to do a time fast enough to get into the top 24? That way autocross servers don't become useless once the 24 player limit is reached.
- When in single player mode working on a setup, after I come out of the pits, the replay does not start recording - I'll often pull off a ripper of a lap, which I then can't save because it says it wasn't recording the replay. So I try to remember to hit shift-r right after I exit the pits to get the replay to start recording, but usually forget. Could the replay perhaps actually start recording again automatically after exiting pits?
- When in multiplayer, if I eventually pull off a great fast clean run, there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to save only my latest run to replay, instead it saves the entire multiplayer session up to that point. Is a save-latest-run's-replay-only facility at all feasable?
- How about a faster cone/object reset time in autocross mode? And perhaps also a smaller radius around cars that cause an object to delay resetting. Perhaps half the time/distance as for regular race track purposes. This would represent faster/braver corner workers Also it keeps the course usable even if some dork is zooming around hitting stuff, or if someone has stopped kinda near the course when a cone's down, etc.
- When a server is configured to only allow 2-3 people in the world at a time, it's frustrating when people don't know to spectate and accidentally (or deliberately) go into the pits, eating a slot up. Perhaps shift-s in multiplayer (but not single player) autocross mode could either switch to Spectate instead of Pits, or drop the person into spectator mode before automatically putting them into the garage? I like the idea of the second option, so shift-s still puts the person into the garage - as that's where people expect to end up when they press shift-s. (And then add a keypress shortcut directly to spectator mode!)
- Maybe allow more than just 3 checkpoints during course creation? That's to prevent people from setting false times who figure out where the 3 checkpoints are and then just zoom directly to them to set artificially fast times. How about 256 checkpoints max? Then we could set one for every single gate/cone that a person needs to be within/to one side of.
- When in spectator mode we currently can't send a setup. I don't really see why we can't? Just leave the SS button in the list of current drivers on the server. This would greatly help when wanting to send a setup but without trying to get into the world when the server is limited to only 2-3 people on track at a time.
And I've been doing a fair bit of LFS autocross lately. I have a few ideas/suggestions/bug reports that could help the autocross experience hopefully without being too tricky or time consuming to consider.- On a multiplayer autocross server, eventually all 24 results slots fill up, and no new people are able to have their results recorded. In autocross mode perhaps the results could simply knock the 24th person off the list and insert a new person into the appropriate place if they manage to do a time fast enough to get into the top 24? That way autocross servers don't become useless once the 24 player limit is reached.
- When in single player mode working on a setup, after I come out of the pits, the replay does not start recording - I'll often pull off a ripper of a lap, which I then can't save because it says it wasn't recording the replay. So I try to remember to hit shift-r right after I exit the pits to get the replay to start recording, but usually forget. Could the replay perhaps actually start recording again automatically after exiting pits?
- When in multiplayer, if I eventually pull off a great fast clean run, there doesn't seem to be a convenient way to save only my latest run to replay, instead it saves the entire multiplayer session up to that point. Is a save-latest-run's-replay-only facility at all feasable?
- How about a faster cone/object reset time in autocross mode? And perhaps also a smaller radius around cars that cause an object to delay resetting. Perhaps half the time/distance as for regular race track purposes. This would represent faster/braver corner workers
Also it keeps the course usable even if some dork is zooming around hitting stuff, or if someone has stopped kinda near the course when a cone's down, etc.- When a server is configured to only allow 2-3 people in the world at a time, it's frustrating when people don't know to spectate and accidentally (or deliberately) go into the pits, eating a slot up. Perhaps shift-s in multiplayer (but not single player) autocross mode could either switch to Spectate instead of Pits, or drop the person into spectator mode before automatically putting them into the garage? I like the idea of the second option, so shift-s still puts the person into the garage - as that's where people expect to end up when they press shift-s. (And then add a keypress shortcut directly to spectator mode!)
- Maybe allow more than just 3 checkpoints during course creation? That's to prevent people from setting false times who figure out where the 3 checkpoints are and then just zoom directly to them to set artificially fast times. How about 256 checkpoints max?
Then we could set one for every single gate/cone that a person needs to be within/to one side of.- When in spectator mode we currently can't send a setup. I don't really see why we can't? Just leave the SS button in the list of current drivers on the server. This would greatly help when wanting to send a setup but without trying to get into the world when the server is limited to only 2-3 people on track at a time.
Last edited by GrantR, .
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