Remember GPL? They kept hotlapping and WR's alive by having a site where your best laptimes for the different tracks were compared, for each of the 7 car types, against what was considered the 'pro-standard'. The aim was to get within about 7% of the pro-time on each car for each circuit. Your score was a combination of your accumulated laptimes for each car and track. This was then put into a table with a load of other players who participated in the handicap system. The goal was to get down to zero or negative overall, which was, for me, very tough. GPL was never so easy and active as LFS for online racing so this offline league played more of a strong role in the community and it worked well. You could download benchmark laps and WR laps to see how the aliens did it. Someone devised a clever spreadsheet where you entered your best laptimes for each track and car then it would show you which car you needed to 'learn' better and which track you were slowest on overall to have the best chance of improving your overall handicap.
For me, it was a great idea, personal targets to try to get within 7% of the pros, then 5% and 3%, at least on a couple of my preferred car types.
Maybe the LFS community has the space for a similar system, we should get the devs to lay down their laptime benchmarks for all the tracks and car combinations and complement the online race leagues with a bit of offline skill development.

In LFS World, click on the S2 Hotlaps icon and then the Ranks tab. This does more or less what you're looking for though I don't find it particularly user friendly and it would have to be tweaked a bit to provide the same sort of utility as GPLRank.

The dynamic ranks in LFS are much more useful than old static types LFS used to use. As mentioned, the is already the MHR that gives you a total time, so I'm not sure what you're actually proposing that we don't already have?

no, you are right ben, i'm just feeling tired and nostalgic, I have never actually known about those extra lfs world stats facilities. GPL rank seemed very straightforward to me at the time but i now have a son who works the vcr or me asnd i guess its time to take a back seat on technology

Below are screenies from GPLrank and LFsworld. I even had to upload few hotlaps to "make the LFSworld show it does what it does"

Some kind of graphical ...graph would be nice although LFSworld already gives quite a lot of info, plus the hotlap spr itself

Maybe the possibility to compare PBs. GPLrank has that (imho very useful) history graph of the total rank, which would be good to have in LFSworld as well. At least for WRs

I think the LFS rank stats would be a lot more useful if they would automatically consider your best laps during a race also instead of the current scheme which only considers hotlaps which you upload.

Is it bad that I re-installed GPL just becuase of this thread?

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Is it bad that I re-installed GPL just becuase of this thread?

Is it bad that I can't find a copy of GPL anywhere?

Yes, becuase it's 9 years old. I had to look on the internet to get my copy about 2 years ago.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Is it bad that I re-installed GPL just becuase of this thread?

Is it bad that I have played the last damn hours lapping at glen in the middle of the night. Al, damn you

Oh, this "oldie" still brings that wide grin on my face. Even with completely random downshifts I'm having a blast

Damn, Al, damn! No sleep...

EDIT: and it seems I'm starting to build my own track too. Al...

EDIT2: download this for a demo: http://www.bhmotorsports.com/GPL/downloads/619, the 2004 demo

I really suck at it :P

For some reason I installed it just 2 days ago. It doesn't like my soundcard so I have to run it with almost no hardware sound acceleration but it's still a blast to drive I actually still have my original CD from 9 years ago, I got it the very month it came out in the US Still no real scratches either, I'm keeping that disc forever

It truly is amazing how fun a 9 year old game can be. I fired it up again and proceeded to take 45 seconds off my PB at the Nurburgring... I'm 3 seconds off the benchmark now, I'll get there this week I'm sure

I'm still crap slow, and I'm even worse with my G25 becuase I expect there to be more of a FFB feel.

That's really odd, with my DFP the force feedback in GPL feels great. Maybe mess around with the profiler settings or something. I just use 100% force feedback strength and 300 degree rotation and it feels fine to me.

I remember playing GPL on my old Force RS and thinking the FF was a little weak, plus it had a habit of getting inverted, in which case it was good that the FF was weak.

Ahhh good old GPL, loaded it up again a few days ago, can't believe I used to be able to drive these monsters

GPL still has it checked GPL rank and my rank is still there after all these years.

http://gplrank.schuerkamp.de/p ... .php?showDetail=1,1,13664

Where do the years go?.

Quote from BuddhaBing :

I think the LFS rank stats would be a lot more useful if they would automatically consider your best laps during a race also instead of the current scheme which only considers hotlaps which you upload.

I'd go along with that.

With that though one could have wind affecting the times, not to mention drafting. Not saying anything's wrong with that, though.

I would really recommend anyone interested in sim racing (I guess that's everyone here) to at least download the GPL 2004 demo and have a go with the 1965 mod which is a lot more user-friendly; lighter cars, more nimble and less powered than the full '67 beasts.
It still remains the definitive racing game for me, I've been playing it on and off for more years than any other game, inc. MS flightsim.

Quote from BuddhaBing :

This does more or less what you're looking for though I don't find it particularly user friendly and it would have to be tweaked a bit to provide the same sort of utility as GPLRank.

I tend to agree (unfortunately). My problem has always been lack of space. I think for the hotlap and ranks pages to work well they require a whole website of their own. There is so much info one can create there, but in current lfsworld, there's just no room. Stuffing more in that window would only make it more user un-friendly.

Quote from 96 GTS :

That's really odd, with my DFP the force feedback in GPL feels great. Maybe mess around with the profiler settings or something. I just use 100% force feedback strength and 300 degree rotation and it feels fine to me.

I dunno, I fired it up again, keeping my 540+normal FFB for LFS settings, and it ran fine. I actually completed a lap of monaco :P

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

I dunno, I fired it up again, keeping my 540+normal FFB for LFS settings, and it ran fine. I actually completed a lap of monaco :P

I just completed a lap at the 'ring :haha:

Only spinned out like 8 times but needed the reset only 7 times

The install and updates went amazingly well, it's all running really sweet now, but so many tracks and add-ons its bewildering. Great to be back in the ol' game again. I really cannot stress enough if any LFS fans out there have not had an hour of so at the wheel of GPL it reaslly is a great experience, but be gentle and patient as it bites back hard.

Hehe, my first lap of the 'Ring in 2.5 years had no spins and was almost a minute faster than my old PB

Maybe playing Forza for hundreds of laps around the ring really does help...

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Is it bad that I can't find a copy of GPL anywhere?

no point buying it, just get the 2004 demo (which has all the patches to make it work on decent computers) then just get all the tracks you want or need from one of the 3 million sites hosting them.