Someone else's account? Pfft.

Quote from BlueFlame :

To me, it wouldn't look good anyway, minilites are supposed to be 10-13 inch wheels.

FYP. Minilites only look nice when they're 13s or less. The standard 4.5j 12" offerings are sexy, and adding a deeper offset only makes things better. They're possibly the strongest alloy ever made, mine are ~20 years old now and aside from a tatty top coat, they structurally look new, no scrapes or buckles after years of potholes and kerbing. Not to mention tyres are €35 a corner for Continentals

BBS look nice on the MINI, if it has the big JCW brakes and kit. Le Example. Most Minilite/Superlite replicas look pants when they're that big, and since they're only reps they won't be as strong as the originals. And anybody who knows cars will know they're only reps, since Minilites only go up to 15". Assuming you want bigger than standard steelies of course.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

I've never quite understood why cases like this take so long to resolve. Surely as long as you weren't speeding then it's obviously the other driver's fault? I cant think of a situation where a car should legitamately pull into a main road from a side road into a position where an oncoming car wouldn't be able to stop in time (or would even have to brake significantly at all).

She pulled out turning right across another lane that had stopped traffic. A car flashed her to go out, and she didn't even glance my way. I was braking from ~60 km/h, I started as soon as I saw the nose of her car, but I hit the back left corner as she was halfway turned. The problem was she pulled in 50 yards up the road, as she claimed she didn't notice the crash, even though her rear bumper had disintegrated. Thankfully I took a photo at the time before my car was moved, which showed it stopped in the centre of the road directly across from the junction with two dirty black skidmarks approx 10 metres behind me. Gards were called out, said speed wasn't a factor, took two statements and said it was a civil matter, and fecked off.

She later claimed (presumably after talking to a solicitor) that she was fully turned when the collision occurred, and that I must have been excessively speeding, so it must be my fault. This led to many many weeks of giving statements and showing the damage to assessors, who decided there was no way her car was straightened up when I hit it. And then many more weeks of actually getting the compensation off her insurance company, who decided they weren't accepting liability, on the grounds that their client said not to pay out. A solicitor's letter eventually sorted that out.

What I don't get is that she admitted liability to the Gards at the time, she said "I didn't even look, I didn't see him" in her statement. This is supposedly the one thing you never ever do at the scene and nothing came of it I don't mind that it took so long really, my solicitor added 3 months car rental into the claim for the amount of time the insurance company stalled. I was still driving my car away though

Quote from The Moose :

Driving is a privilege.

Unfortunately not, it's taken as a right nowadays. Here's a recent case where a provisionally licensed driver (who had previously been found guilty of a hit and run, as it happens) struck and killed a pedestrian. Surely worthy of losing the license, maybe a couple of points, possibly a spell in prison? Nah, just a €500 fine. The car behind her saw the pedestrian, and anticipated her stopping, but nope, she didn't brake until she hit the pedestrian. Her defence?

Quote :

In court she accepted there was nothing obscuring her view but added 'I wouldn't have driven into the woman if I'd seen her.'

This is the kind of shit we have on our roads


FWIW:

Stopped by police - Regularly stopped by unmarked traffic corps, simply because of the car, maybe once a fortnight at the moment. Nothing ever comes of these stops, it's just a stop to look at license and insurance.

Use mobile while driving - Yes, I text occasionally. I realise it's illegal and I shouldn't, but it's habit. To my knowledge it hasn't affected my driving so far, it's generally just when I'm stopped in traffic or at the lights or whatever. If I absolutely have to take a call, it goes on loudspeaker and the phone goes on the dash.

Made an insurance claim for an accident (my fault) - Nope

Made an insurance claim for an accident (twasn't me) - Yes, car pulled out in front of me on a main road, needing half a new front end. Found in my favour after many weeks of insurance assessors and solicitors.

Ran a red light in the past 12 months - Yes, regularly if I'm going home in the early hours. Outside of the city where there's maybe two cars an hour, I refuse to wait for a light to change. They should be purely sensor driven when traffic is that quiet.

Driven the wrong way down a one-way-street - No, the only one-ways near me are major inner-city routes. Driving the wrong way down them at any time would be impossible.

Hit a stationary object while parking - Apart from purposely bumping into friends' cars top gear style, nope.

Accidentally clipped a car but kept quiet - Never, I'd always leave a note even if I did.

Take risks (overtaking, fast acceleration) - Overtaking, generally not unless I'm overtaking something painfully slow though. I do quite enjoy putting the boot down off the lights and such occasionally, but I'd hardly class fast acceleration as a risk.

Suffer road rage - Sometimes, if someone purposely drives like an ass.

Speeding - At least once a day, speed limits are in dire need of review in certain places. I'm quite capable of knowing when it's "safe" to speed however. I don't like the term speeding either, going above the speed limit does not mean "speeding". Speeding is travelling too fast for the conditions. Speed limits don't change with traffic, weather and time of day.

Scare others while driving - Passengers, occasionally, if it's a good friend on a deserted road or car park. I also enjoy terrifying pikeys with backfiring however, but they don't count as people per se.

Attempts to pass driving test -1

Number of prangs (i.e. Collisions/crashes) in the past 12 months - None

Sim/non-sim racer before getting a driving licence - LFS for 3 years before I started driving.

Years driven - 3

Quote from DarkTimes :

Not really, except for disassembling library and recompiling it with a couple of changes.

Never occurred to me

Thanks DarkTimes, works a treat now.

Quote from DarkTimes :

It's because IS_NPL.Plate does not end with a NULL character, like normal C-style strings. LFS_External must be popping off the last character of the string somewhere, which is perfectly fine for all other InSim strings (which end with a NULL char), but not for Plate.

That's what I was thinking, I was hoping there might have been a workaround though.

Has anyone else had problems with NPL.Plate? It seems to only hold 7 characters, but LFS sends 8 and InSim defines it as having 8.

=

Hey boosted, can you add dlampkin to the whitelist please?

Thanks

Quote from Shotglass :

obviously all the most talented engineers end up making springs for shitty little aftermarket companies instead of working for car makers that pay 5 times as much or design cars for race teams

So what you're saying is, the standard rubber cones that came with my car in 1994 that doughnut after 7-8,000 miles, provide better handling and reliability than a set of replacement aftermarket springs? Even though the "engineers" deliberately used softer compound rubber on later models to fool people into thinking they were more comfortable, thus ruining the legendary handling of the car and making them an annual consumable?

And I suppose you're also going to say the 12" steelies my car came with in 1994 are better than a nice set of 10" minilites? Even though the suspension geometry hasn't changed (other than softer cones to smooth the ride, but that was Mk6) since the Mk3, which was sold with 10" wheels as standard? The only reason they had to use 12" wheels was the move from front drums to 8.4" discs, which meant most 10" wheels won't clear the callipers. I suppose I should also retrofit drums to the front too, yes, as that's what the suspension geometry was designed for?

Not forgetting the standard speakers the car came with, which were still on the rear parcel shelf when I bought the car, but had been chewed to pieces by some sort of wild animal before I had it. By your logic, these speakers will still sound better than the set of JVC speakers I have installed on a speaker board under the rear seat. And since I can't get the standard speakers the car came with (which aren't made by Rover anyway, they had some cheap Chinese name on them), the silence of having no speakers will sound better than the JVC speakers, since anything aftermarket is wrong.

Oh, and the standard exhaust fitted to my car, a twin box system with cat (which I gather disintegrated some time around 1999, from my stack of receipts), is the most optimal exhaust you can fit to the car? I'm quite interested in why the first thing done to tune a Mini is to replace the standard exhaust and manifold then. And also why racing and hill-climbing Minis with the standard 1275 engine run straight-through exhausts or single box systems. Since the standard exhaust is the best you can fit according to your logic, your logic defies practicality and previous results.

When the manufacturers themselves, the very people you're saying install the most efficient parts they can, make radical changes to the drivetrain without redesigning the geometry, I can't help but think you're full of shit with saying "OEM is best". When I buy an aftermarket component for my car (which I have to anyway, Rover haven't made spares in nigh-on 9 years), I'm paying some engineer to ensure that this component is properly calibrated for and tested on a Mini. Since most of the parts I use on my car will only fit a Mini anyway, one would assume that they are designed as such.

Unless of course you are one of these "talented engineers" you speak of, in which case I'd love to know what manufacturer you work for so that I never have the displeasure of owning such a poorly designed car

Count me in as a maybe please, funds pending I'd love to go, I'd no transport last year

Getting a ferry and taking the car seems to be the sensible option I think, since there's no Ryanair flights from Shannon to anywhere near Newport, and I'm not too keen on getting public transport halfway across the country. It'd give me a chance to stay for a bit longer and do a bit of touring too

I'd also have a spare passenger seat if any other Irish LFS'ers are interested in travelling over too

Should only work for players on track now

I think the trouble with the InSim method, is that if someone ran the app off a cracked LFS, it would report it as being S2.

The LFSWorld method is the safest, but could probably be cheated again by using a proxy to spoof the response the app expects from LFSWorld. The chances of your average demo user (or even someone running a cracked LFS) being able to do this are fairly low though, I'd imagine. You could query for PBs or fuel usage for the user, and parse the car name from each line, and examine it to see if only the demo cars are listed. It's probably safe enough to assume that this user is a demo user then, but there will be false negatives until the license status is added to pubstat...

Quote from Test Driver :

http://www4.pic-upload.de/09.02.10/xqspimrzf3wn.jpg

That's pretty damn accurate actually, but I was committed at that stage

The exhaust noise limit here is stupidly high, 99dB, and it isn't even tested as part of the annual NCT (not yet at least). 90dB is the level emitted from a lawnmower, and that leaves you deafened after mowing for an hour. 99dB is twice as loud as that.

It's stupid really, I can put a complete straight-through pipe on my car and still be well within legal limits, even though I'd be setting off car alarms and breaking windows driving down the street I'd imagine the UK is much the same, we seem to copy everything they do

It "can" be tested by police at the roadside, but I've never heard of it being done, as it's just too impractical. It has to be done in an isolated area, in an open space that won't have any reverberations, away from traffic or other noise sources, the meter has to be 6m (or something similar) away from the rear of the car, and you have to hold the revs at 2k during the test, which the cop is not allowed do. That's far too much hassle for an ordinary plod, when there's a dozen other things they can probably pull you up on if they wanted an excuse to book you.

The problem with driving the p-wagon (:razz like this, is that if a cop has you pegged for a boy racer because of your raspy exhaust note, he'll find any excuse to pull you over, even if you're driving no different than normal. It's well known here, that any white car, or anything that sounds a bit loud, WILL be pulled at every checkpoint they go through, simply because it's generally boy racers that drive them

Quote from DK3X7MJ :

what I really miss in this game is REV LIMITER of course there are programs ,but they are not perfect...

We have a rev limiter. It just doesn't go NING NING NING like a pikey on a scooter

Quote from AcesHigh :

Demo racing where only fun when thats the only choise you had. And it really destroyed alot for me when they merged the demo/s1/s2 filter so that the demoplayers can join s2 servers running for example: bl gl track with GTi class.

It´s an awesome combo now rendered totally useless, and the same thing with BL rallycross and GTi class.

Bring back the filter!!!!!!

Or, set your host to have more than 12 connections. Then demo racers can't join

Quote from Danny LFS :

Fail. :doh:
__________________

[SC]™Forza 3
gray = white. http://super-crew.comze.com/

This signature was hand-made, and may not be copied by other demo racers without my permission!!!

Oh the irony :rolleyes:

Quote from Hezath :

Things may well be quite different over here but I had 200-250 hours before I got my probationary license over here...

Yes, but that's in a country that has a decent driver system. In Ireland (And UK, I believe) you can get a license with literally 0 hours experience, and drive straight home. It's ridiculous how far behind we are, there's none of what you've mentioned examined other than city driving (and towing, if you're sitting a towing test obviously). All I had to do to get my license was do a hill start, a 3-point turn, and drive around a housing estate for 15 mins We're supposed to be getting a new law for a minimum of 10 hours lessons before getting a license, but I haven't seen it yet. So right now, anybody can walk in off the street, pay €10, and drive home

Ridiculously easy to get a license in this country, it's scary the amount of incompetent drivers we have. Back in the 60's, there wasn't even a formal test. If you were on the waiting list for more than a year (the average waiting time was two years), you automatically got a full license. So we now have seniors driving around that have never sat a driving test. And still think they know better than young'uns

I got two lessons before my test, and one was a pretest, so that's two hours of lessons. I did have at least 100 hours behind the wheel by the time I sat the test though, as I was lucky enough to have access to a car every day. It's more than possible to pass a test with little or no formal training, plenty of people have done it. 10 hours is about the normal max people do, most people I know did 5-6 hours of lessons, but there are plenty who've done more than 20 hours too...It depends how confident you are behind the wheel, really, which you won't know until you start driving (not around a carpark, on an actual road, with traffic).

I've the very same open insurance (Quinn also, even the same T&C's were sent to me), but they did tell me that if I'm to drive another car it must have tax and NCT. They also said the cops can ticket me for not displaying valid insurance disks if the owner hasn't insured the car, even though I am covered to drive it Are you sure on the mileage limit? My policy is only about 5 weeks old and it has no limit. I did have to tell them roughly how many miles I'd be doing a year, but I'm not restricted to it.

They're by far the cheapest for young drivers, Quinn's quote for the Mini was a quarter of the one offered by Aviva.

And yes, they're right bastards to pay out, the first thing they did after I was in an accident was write a letter to the other insurance company saying they weren't going to pay out, it blatantly wasn't my fault Not that I'm complaining, it's only TP F+T, I don't have to try and squeeze compensation out of them

Probably not, I've no problem removing the link if I'm asked. The only dodgy thing is the car model used, but I've no download links anywhere

Quote from GhostBR :

Thinking about this I had an idea. Like the BL carpark, but only much much bigger, so we could build a city on it (we would need buildings instead of those white/red barriers). So the game would think it's another huge carparkwith some objects on it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ejLAPPdl-I

It's possible atm, but you're still limited to 512 objects...

Quote from johnnylightning :

Well I can see you all don't read that much. becasue if you did you would know that ghostrider83 said is normial monthly expence was $56 and could get as high as $571. I Know my expence for a website is $0.00 but to have it set up the way I want I pay $10.00 for each month I need it updated. but starting Next Month I will be moving my team to a new site taht's going to cost us $10.00 every year for the domain Name another $15.00 per month for the site hosting. Thats $195.00 per year. Now for my team I'm like ghostrider83 I would like Great skins so I made a contest where the winner would get an S2 voucher or £24.00. as for an insim well I'm sorry I'm also like ghostrider83 and wouldn't use the insim off these forums if my life depended on it (no offence but it *****) so I too will be paying to get an insim for my servers I plan to get in the future.

$15 a month for hosting? I presume you're getting your own dedicated server with full shell access and an LFS server for that? I pay €10 a year for web hosting with 500servers, 4GB package is more than enough for however many team/club/gentlemen's association websites you want to setup. That instantly brings you down to ~$25 a year for running expenses. I'll have my $170 I saved you in cheque form please.

£24 for skins is steep, but if they're top notch quality for all 20 cars, it's not that bad, a step in the right direction from $300 at least.

The free InSim cruise app is indeed quite crap, mainly because the LFS community doesn't seem to like sharing open sourced software. It's intended as a base, not to run out of the box and do exactly what you want (that's why it's free). It's quite clearly written on it exactly what it's for before you download it, so don't complain. There's LFSLapper for a drift server, and Airio for a race server. And your cruise server will always be next to empty, as there's already over 9000 empty ones, with maybe 5 semi-occupied ones. What sets yours apart from the crowd?

The InSim app and skins aren't required operating expenses, you can learn to program or to use photoshop and do them yourself for nothing. Same goes for the web server really, you could set up a cheap server at home (find someone giving away an old desktop and set it up) for naff all and save yourself $180 a year. An LFS server is the only "required" expense, unless you have fast reliable internet at home. And you can rent a 47 slot server for less than £5 a month.

So I really don't see how you consider "anything between $56-$571" per month to be normal running costs. One could manage to run a real racing team on $571 a month

Quote from JPeace :

this is making me laugh quite a bit.

This guy made me smile today