If a yank version of Ralf drives for NASTYOTA euh.. well then it will never work eh!

Hey Sg,

http://www.cadsoft.de/ has a free version, seemingly a popular program.

And MMos gave this link http://www.abacom-online.de/uk/html/sprint-layout.html on rscnet..

I actually have a few offers already! If you'd like to play with the software and actually want a 'real' pcb to build, PM me and I'll be more than happy to send mine in some GIFs..

The people who offered to help me on this seem to be already more deeply into the matter so for the 'real thing' I hope you don't mind I stick to those.

thanks,
Niels

Hey guys,

Mechanical engineer here.. Not as afraid of electronics as some, but still seriously underskilled in this department.. (and others..)..

I have designed a PCB in autocad but the PCB manufacturers want a GERBER file (hope I spelled that correctly).. It is a pretty simple 2 layer (front/back) small board. Small enough to fit the limits of the free version of Eagle PCB software, however after 1 hour of messing with it, I really don't have a trace on the screen yet!

The PCB manufacturer asks 150 euro if they make the GERBER file, which to me can't be more than 1 hour of work, max! I'd happily paypal 50 euro if there happens to be a somewhat experienced PCB guy on these forums!

Ciao!

/Niels

Edit: I copied this post to the RSC DIY section as well

Porsches..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CfiaZUl10k

That driver seems to agree with me that the proper way to drive a porsche is power oversteer..

And I never saw it look so slow and easy as here, its an older model probably with <300hp..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kclhHNlpPY


Now that I'm on a roll, this guy seems to be no Tiff but it looks doable! Note the absolute lack of 'snap back'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wdWAP-UIxk

Look! even a posh italian guy can do some of it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IcmqnlcCmk

Another, well, it looks like he is about 3 feet tall, or the codriver is a giant, but that wouldn't fit in the car so small people can slide a little too, even in a GT3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8J3vWllZl8


I think we saw his fingers before..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi-XI_j8m_w

Tiff I mentioned him sometime before.. Between the useless 'car vs helicopter' crap you will see some smoke.. and its not from the helicopter!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ao1sfJCEBM

He seems to be clearly the best driver of these vids, together with the german test driver of vid nr 1!

Last edited by Niels Heusinkveld, Tue 20 Mar 2007, 02:55. Reason : who needs sleep if you have youtube..

U 8 3 R

With TDU the reported framerates vary a lot.. I run at 640x480 and I could say I get 55..85fps.. Which is true 90% of the time.. But there are times when it drops in the 40s. That is the reason I run at such a low res, to make the *lowest* framerate as high as possible.

Quote :

Nice driving! Is that the xbox360 version?

What are you using for a display? Is that a projector?

looks a little odd because of the zoom I used with the camera. Its PC version on a 20'' TFT :S

For looking around I use the mouse, with a button on the wheel mapped to 'center view'.. It sorta works, but I guess we all should get Track IR'ed up!

as posted elsewhere : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AO0F5sLdVM

aparantly supported in TDU.. Me Likes!

Hehe yeah its a bit of a 'sin'! But the view turns its 'head' which is undrivable, and fps are 10+ lower than in bumper cam mode..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH0DUo_T8r4

A little hardcore mode drivin

I'd say its certainly worth 'trying'. I can play this game in two ways.

1) analog gamepad bit of fun in 'normal' physics mode, doing some missions, races, having a laugh, using the TVout.. So I sit on the sofa, beer next to me, vroom...

2) wheel/pedals mode with 'hardcore' physics, being very very scared!!

I'm not easy to please and playing the 'normal' physics with a wheel is a little odd, but in hardcore mode its 'good' enough. It has forced clutch mode, H shifter support.


It just does some odd things with controller filtering or something.. There is always a good lag on the gas pedal. (blip, wait, VROOM). It also somehow reduces the amount of 'steps' in your controllers response it seems. The odd thing, with the G meter in view, it shows fairly quick response to the gas pedal but the sound happens a bit later.

The 'opponents' also annoy the crap out of me in hardcore mode, I wish it was just me and the traffic..

BTW, the traffic should learn how to drive! Often they don't signal but still make a turn onto a new road. So here I am, waiting in my Zonda, doing the look left/right thing, see a car comming.. It is not indicating so I suppose I have to wait.. Then it suddenly takes the turn! I've also had AI cars indicating the wrong way, or being on the 'turn left' lane and actually taking the right turn.. :O I hope they listen to my horn and see my middle finger...

Edit: Oh, and there is 'motion blur' at high speed, which is a bit tacky but other than probably slowing fps down even more, isn't too distracting

Well Jak, this Hardcore mode is a lot better.. in a very fast car you really have SUCH a speed difference (150+mph vs sometimes a car standing still!) you have to decide what you're going to do the instant you see the traffic..

The Koenigsegg will wheelspin up and until 3rd gear, its a real gentle application of power. Its not UBER realistic but good enough, certainly many times better than the 'normal' physics mode you're playing!

Shame you can't play the game in hardcore mode though, with the savegame 'cheat' you basically did most races it seems. I had a blast in 'unrealistic' mode as well, cruisin, delivering babes, etc..

The best driving and filming in one video. I just thought of that.. we're blessed with Youtube

The hardcore mode (using the 100% savegame) is kind of ok. Thanks for posting! Its on many torrents now as well.. Grip levels seem realish, but it shows some unrealistic aspects, like roads that make cars jump at 60mph where the actual speed limit seems to be 50?

The auto head turning with steering is very very very annoying so its basically 'bumper cam' only for me. That is a bit of a shame, especially with the hardcore physics being 'acceptble', then being basically forced to play in arcade view is kinda worse than it was in 'arcade' mode.

Car dynamics aren't quite sim like, its kinda odd how you can sort of use power to get some sliding happening, but weight transfer whatever you like, that won't break rear grip or make it easier to break grip when used together with some power.. Yet when grip is lossed its lossed big time.

Probably another victim of:
- Hmm we need some physics thingies
- google
- pacejka! great! 60 odd parameters that I don't really understand but we can say we're using a real tyre model!
- aaaah here we have some grip graphs, grip drops to half after you peak, sure yeah!



Still its a fun diversion and I'm lucky enough it doesn't crash much here.

Today most on board soundcards are good enough, even if you use decent speakers. I agree with the Core Duo reccomendations, and indeed something like a 7950GT card if it fits the budget.. perhaps an Ati 1950 pro..

I don't see any real racing sims go to dx10 any time.. .err.. ever (well not in a long time anyway..)

Are you prepared to spend a bit of money making the system quiet or does noise not bother you?

Big talent behind the wheel there!

My google efforts have not lead to any 'hardcore mode unlock' cheat.

I don't know if it would work but TDU saves savegames in 'my documents\Test Drive Unlimited folder. Does anyone here have the required points yet? I don't drive online.. perhaps it would be possible to copy other peoples savegames and select the user in game?

You would earn eternal gratefullness from a handfull of LFS forumers..

My score is lowish too.. 2.8.. But if I had a big house and big garage with some fine noisy rear wheel drive cars? Would I care that my rating was higher? Nope!

I don't know but when you see a tv report on smog in Mexico or LA or some other big city.. It might not do much to heat up the globe, the stuff IS @#$#ed up and evil imo..

This sounds a little like: "Yay its not changing the climate, who cares that its unhealthy for humans! we won!"

Here is a lap from pit out to pit in. I'm really surprised that so little time spent messing around with material that I know little about actually leads to a pretty decent engine sound! Well, without actually having a big V8 to shove microphones down its exhaust pipe.. I quite like it, despite the 'synthed' issues that remain.

Hmm I can make bad physics, poor sounds.. Autocad can export to 3D studio.. I might be able to make a pretty poor 'mod' now..

Yeah still synth, the distortion and some pink/brown noise (brown noise why does that make me chuckle? ) helps, especially at high RPM..

The main thing is CoolEdits tone generator which can generate a base tone, with some added frequencies at selectable loudness. So you can make a triangle 100hz wave, with a 80hz part at 50% volume etc.. Add some high and some low, not forgetting the random clicking of buttons.. (very important if you don't know what you're doing )and it kind of works a little bit! Some ISI 'mods' use the worst clipping sounds I've ever heard. I rather hear poor synth but not clipping sound then..

I hope I can find out how to use this in cough.. ISI sims now, doing a different 'off power' sound and perhaps a few decibells increase from low to high rpm.

If anything its a bit of fun to play with

With LFS having this ''hidden'' sound editor, Todd making his own engine err engines.. I build my own! Well, I can't program.. But for some tweaking with rFactor It would be quite nice if I could make my own sounds!

So I went with some base triangle wave sound of some frequency, and clicked more or less randomly, adding some brown noise, pink noise, little bit of distortion, equalizer.. And I must say.. Its not as bad as I thought!

It is also not very good.. But no 'recorded' samples where used. Ok it is still not very good.. Oh well, I had so much fun that it is now 5am.. So I might as well bother the LFS forum with a quickly thrown together MP3. rFactor integration (and resulting dissapointment) will follow tommorow! :P

PS: Sound is loud! It doesn't.. well.. barely clip anywhere but its still loud.. Carefull with your knob...err volume knob.. I need to go to bed

Last edited by Niels Heusinkveld, Sun 11 Mar 2007, 04:02. Reason : Health and safety

That is very nasty! My c:\ is very empty now.. I'm not aiming to keep stuff there but perhaps a playlist or two where there!

I also overclocked the cpu a bit more, from 1800 to 2500.. now to 2700! Which barely helps of course but 50% overclock feels nice... It seems that when you're doing a race or challange the game decides to drop from 32 to 24fps.. That is at the same roads I drove before so I reallys hould get 32fps. I once had the framerate going in the 20s when I nearly drove into a building.. Alt tabbing in and out restored it to the 30s :O

And I'm not looking at the supermodels polygons, I'm looking at the road.... I saw this icon, stopped and it turned out to be the very realistic scenario of a super model looking for a ride! haha... And I delivered an Enzo and an old Muria (sp) perfectly, which was worth over 200.000 in total; a little odd if you ask me but I'll take the $..

Some of the more annoying things are the view which always turns a little with steering. That is very hard to get used to and makes everything feel even more floaty than it already is! It also seems that they reduce wheel accuracy to something like 256 steps. I don't think I notice any change of direction until the graphical wheel turns a 'step', this step is way greater than the accuracy of my wheel.

Also the brake pedal seems to have been the result of very clever thinking... They probably wanted each car to feel differently on its brakes so they made some weird very progressive / exponential curves for them.. With my loadcell brake its just too weird.. Press 5kg.. nothing press 10kg, siliiiight slow down. press 12kg SCCCREEEEEEEEEEEEETCH

I now run it at 800x600 with 4x AF, solving most of the 'smudged' looks I had.. My 6800GT actually runs at Ultra speeds stable. (well 420 1080 vs the Ultra which is 400/1100) I did some gamepad driving and it was somewhat ok, mostly above 35fps in cockpit.

I'm still not accepting this as err.. acceptable. Far Cry is an old game now but why can I run that at 4x the pixels (1600x1200 high detail) with frames never dropping below 50, often being 70+? Why, at a quarter the pixels and really not THAT special gfx does TDU run at half the framerate? I would probably need to run Far Cry at 2500x1600 to get that!

Anyway, I bought a Z06 505hp. Auto clutch is SLOOOW! So I assigned a button and I can at least shift quickly now.. The game has been stable, not a crash yet. The coastline roads are quite drivable, the mountain stuff indeed doesn't use enough polygons.

Now a way to get hardcore mode physics (which should actually be semi ok for a bit of 'fun') and this could be a somewhat enjoyable ride..

Since it uses 99% cpu regardless of the settings, I found the stuttering to become less when alt-tabbing, control alt delling, and setting the TDU priority to 'above normal'.. Without, even MSN in the background can cause slight stutters.

Odd though, very much CPU *and* gfx limited. Normally when you look at an (empty) sky you see framerate really increase.. here it barely goes above the 'normal driving' framerate.. Yet increasing resolution does slow it down.. So its both cpu and gpu limited.

My cpu scores between the Fx53 and Fx55 in Sisoft Sandra, and I get 5400 3dMark05, which is all quite fair for the specs of my machine. It runs an old version of Netkar Namie at 999fps... :P