The collision detection runs at 100Hz, to be able to cause a problem and go by undetected the car would have to travel more than one whole car length in 1/100th of a second, which is about 2160 km/h (1340 mph).
So the detection is certainly there, the main problem is that a barrier is very small and can be approached from all sides. With a track wall, you have a very definite way of telling what's inside the track and what not, therefore it's very easy to determine which part of the intersecting car is somewhere it doesn't belong. With the barrier it's different - as soon as your car sticks through the barrier you don't even know from which side the car approached. Did it just gently tap one side or was it flung through the barrier rapidly from the other side? Or even, what is a "side"? As a human that's easy to tell, but from the engine point of view that's just a 3D object that could have any shape which may not be intersected.
A different problem is the collision response. Right now it seems to generate a opposing force dependent on how far the object intersects, or something similar. The problem is especially apparent on the tyres; either they have the same response as the rest of the car but since they're running at 2000Hz they add that repellent force 20 times before the normal car physics can even react, or they have an inherent problem due to trying to drive "on the surface", which instantly teleports the tyre contact patch to the topmost surface from the object it is intersecting with (normally the ground).
The only solution I can see (though I have never worked with collisions in a 3D environment) is that the collision response is rewritten substantially. It would need to keep track of the objects previous locations (like 2 or 3 frames) so upon collision it can look back in history and extrapolate the objects relative speeds to generate a proper response, instead of just looking at how far everything intersects. Other cars suddenly teleporting into you (due to lag/prediction errors) are another thing that needs to be solved. Every time a car's position is corrected, the collision response should take that fact into account and make a sanity check with the last known positions, since it's very unlikely that the car to you left suddenly steered into you with very high speed. Though when implementing such a thing you at the same time you have to watch out to keep the sanity checks very subtle. A real high speed crash should not make the system go "well that was unlikely to happen, so it didn't", but instead still generate a proper response.
Nowadays it's even better than it was originally, because the server list is now unified. Demo, S1 and S2 can all race together, the only limitation is the content. As soon as some content/features are enabled on a server that are not available to the "lower" tier, people from this lower license level obviously can't join. When S3 is released it's most likely that Demo, S1 and S2 will still work as they do now. Of course the devs could change the conditions, but I don't see that happening.
Looks nice, but the drawback is that the rubber racing line will have those tread lines, too. Both the racing line and the skid marks share the same texture unfortunately.
I bet if you plug both your nostrils and cease breathing till the desire to do so goes completely away (usually shortly after passing out) that would solve all your problems.
I think the post above yours counts as answer, no?
Also "crap" refers to the amount of effort you put into writing the post, not necessarily the content/thought behind it. However I suggest you take note on Jakg's post and ignore the rest, unless you want to continue transforming my pulling-your-leg post into a full blown dramabomb.
I'm a jaded forum regular feeding on the tears of the uneducated - it's my nature :evil:
Nah really, I'm just adhering to the equivalence principle, which very simplified comes down to write crap = receive crap.
That said, maybe you can coerce Jakg into writing a more detailed analysis other than that you're buying overpriced "junk." He's the forum's hardware ner... expert
That's completely normal for LFS. How strong this is visible depends on the server connectivity and setup, ranging from annoyingly jumpy to almost not noticeable.
It could be solved better, but every solution that removes jumpiness has other issues and drawbacks. The reason it's smooth in rFactor is because the other cars aren't bound to the actual physics. They just float on an interpolated line that roughly corresponds to what the opponent was actually doing. In LFS however the cars all continue to run on the physics engine, travelling along the path that they would've taken from the last received driver input. The jump occurs when the driver has changed his input between packets and drove to a different location than the physics calculated; this error is then corrected by warping the car to its actual position.
This is intentional, to minimise the amount of bug reports coming from an old test patch. Using anything but the newest patch and posting here is a complete waste of (Scawen's) time
Quick answer: Don't bother / impossible / forget it.
Long answer:
I seriously doubt there is such a thing as DX10 working on XP. Maybe something more or less similar was achieved and they used clever wording to make it sound like that but as far as I'm aware there is no DX10 @ XP.
Now, even if it hypothetically were possible, you'd first need two things
1) a DX10 graphics card
2) a LFS version that supports DX10
LFS is currently running in DX7/8 mode, it's not even close to using DX9's or even DX8's full capabilities. Please also consider that DirectX is basically just a collection of functions that programmers can use to render graphics. A newer version gives the programmers more possibilities to render these graphics and makes some special effects run faster due to technical improvements. You cannot simply go "lets use DX10!" - it needs to be implemented by the programmer. Using DX10 doesn't automatically mean better graphics either, it just gives you more possibilities to render better graphics.
A newer DX version is basically like buying a bucket of nicer looking paint and a more efficient brush, but without applying the paint to the wall not a thing will change.
No, you won't have to pay for 1.03. What it means now is that you'll have to pay for a hypothetical 2.0 version, but if nKP continues developing at the current rate you won't ever have to pay this due to our limited ability to age (same goes for LFS S3, sadly )
The nKP website is an out-of-date POS and it still saying the one year thing is just the icing on the cake, really.
^ Though just adding to that, I'm 100% sure shift+f4 has no influence on this bug. It happens when LFS is in window mode, no matter whether it got there with shift+f4 or if it already started up windowed.
Long answer: There have been plenty cases of "it should be out within the next X months" and "it will be out soon", but these are just hollow wishes/daydreams of Jaap "the PR guy" Wagenvoort which never came true as far as I can remember. 1.03 is in development for more than two years now and if you ever find a release estimate or even -date posted somewhere, don't trust it. When it's finally out I'm sure you'll notice it some way or another, but don't waste your time with anticipating the release.
I can reproduce the mouse lock issue, too. Just hit WinKey+D or minimize the game manually and the steering will be locked fully left when returning to LFS. However for me it only breaks when doing this in windowed mode - in fullscreen I can't get it to lock.
Please read it slowly and carefully. Just following the steps one after another might solve your problem, whatever it is. Since I have a feeling it might be related, take special care on everything regarding combined axis
For me it was actually the main reason to stop reading it. Maybe I'd read the occasional LFS dev interview, but I'd rather wait for it to be copy'n'pasted to the forum here.
I still think ASS was a main contributor to the huge failure that nKP was at its release. The hype they generated with their usual BS "this is the best thing ever" speech (which they have, or at least back then had for every sim and especially all the countless physics-worthless rFactor mods, of which only now a select few start to shine due to extensive work (Niels )) made everyone think nKP will be a major player in sim racing - that it will be a product able to rival LFS. The outcome we can all still remember. Granted, Kunos who didn't say a thing about nKP's sorry state or who maybe even believed the hype himself is in the end the one to blame, but this example just made it clear how journalistically worthless ASS actually is.
Oh well, at least the magazine contains the directions on where to apply it.