Quote from Sueycide_FD :

i doubt we will have newer cars other than maybe a RAC GTR or a RB4 GTR. IF you think about it we already have cars for every type of classification. Hatchbacks, street sports cars, touring cars, etc.

I bet after the devs see that people are simply making their own "cars" within the skins themselves(volvo skins, nissan skins, etc) they won't continue to make cars.

Huh? then I must be missing something or you have different classes there in the US.

Tin tops:

UF1/XFG/XRG/RB4/FXO/XRT/FZ5/UFR all have no obvious motorsport classes that I'm aware of. They're all just tuned "street" cars, (except UFR maybe).

European Classes:

Renault Clio Cup racing (XFR) - Touring cars (Nothing in LFS) - Something between WTCC & Le Mans (FXR/XRR?) - Le Mans (FZR is probably closest?)

Single Seaters:

Formula SAE McGill (MRT) - Forumula BMW (duh!) - Formula 3 (FOX) - Formula 3000 (F08) - A1GP/A2GP (nothing in LFS) - F1 (BF1)

Odd ones out : RAC & LX4/LX6


The lack of Touring cars and any form of Rally Car are obvious holes IMHO. They are also the two racing classes that are most likely to attract new customers to the sim IMO so from a purely commercial point of view should be considered for addition by the devs (at some point or other) before the final release of LFS as a finished product, (what ever revision that will be).

Other than that they've got it pretty much covered as far as I can see.

If I were to be critical there are too many "street" cars in LFS

Quote from Mustafur :

It would be good, i mean really good, but i highly doubt he would be fast.

I wouldn't be so sure. Generally speaking from all the times I've ever seen "freindly" cross over competitions between motorcycle and car racers the motorcyclists have done a lot better in the cars than the car drivers have done on the motorcycles. You need to have a highly tuned sense of what the rubber is doing on the road to be fast on a motorcycle.. far more than you do in a car I suggest. I'd say fast motorcycle racers are probably more tuned in to the feedback from the tyres than a lot of car racers are.

You're all still missing the point. It's not about dividing people, it's about giving people a place to talk about subjects that interest them. It's about having a single place to go to find such subjects. It's purely about having a logical layout to the forum that meets users needs. There will still be the general forum for all other things LFS related.

hmm yeah all I need to hear is some kid driving an XFG with a Cherrybomb pipe on it.... Not ! Get enough of that crap in real life thanks.

-1 deffinitely !!

+1 for a drifting section.

I would have no objection to a cruise section either but as bob said it's not really something the devs want to encourage.

All you lot that think it's divisive or that "racers" should just "deal with it" are completely missing the point. Just about every other forum I've ever frequented has sections that cover the different aspects of the "subject" of the forum. It's purely so that there are natural places for people that want to discuss the same subjects can go to without having to wade through a whole load of posts on subjects they have no interest in. That would be the SOLE purpose for having a drift and a race section to the forum, simply for the sake of logic and convenience for the forum users nothing else.

I also agree that given there is friction between the two comunities, different sections would allow those that seem incapable of not "biting" at threads they obviously find objectionable to not have to even see them and so stay out of them. Thus improving the atmosphere of the forum. Which I have to say is unfortunately one of the worst of any forum that I've ever frequented.

Quote from samjh :

Almost definitely a team order moment with Heikki and Hamilton at the closing stages.

Now way!! don't you remember??? McLaren have no team orders, their drivers are treated completely equaly !! ... hmm yeah ok..

Let me think... who to favour? Current WDC or the guy we've been nurturing to become WDC since he was 11?? hmmm... difficult one.. (pssst he's English...so's the team)... ahhh yes.. let's make Lewis our No1 driver then and just pretend we run an equal team stratergy.

Very simple as far as I'm concerned. The script is not provided as part of the games code, so by definition it's an addition. This therefore makes it a cheat if it gives any advantage no matter how small over people using the original game code with no modifications. If it modifies code to gain improved performance in the game world then it's a cheat. It is in fact the definition of a cheat in the world of gaming.

Ok well it recognises my wheel, even lets me calibrate it. but point blank refuses to use it in game.

So it's a non starter for me.

Quote from HVS5b :

Doesn't look very inspiring, Tilke at his best.......

Actually in my opinion it removes the only real bad corner on the circuit.
Also, remember that's going to be a down hill section in to the new corner.

Personally I like it, keeps the original circuit untouched and adds some length, but still with the option to keep the two original layouts for other racing formulae.

Last edited by gezmoor, Sat 12 Jul 2008, 18:46.

Hmm.. jury's out for me. I don't know the game but the film looks a little bit generic for my liking, most likely I'll wait till it's out on DVD. I only hope Nelly Furtados part is small.. very very small ..

Quote from Xaid0n :

This hopefully won't take long

Closest I can guess is a 50's American car.


Scrap that - rethinking looks more like 30's , still american though

I think the only like substantial difference would be that the persecution of the jews was a personal ambition of Hitlers, so whilst it's likely that there still would have been a war in Europe due to the political and social/economic situation in the various countries, it's far less likely that the holocaust would have happened. The biggest likely impact of that is that there would almost certainly be no state of Israel and therefore no middle east conflict and very likely no Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Or at the least it would have been far less likely to happen

Quote from Forbin :

Summit Point Shenandoah, Team Pro-Motion Track School (ART Basic)/Track Day, July 4, 2008

I took the 5 hour drive down from Jersey thursday night and stayed overnight in Winchester, VA. The next morning I woke up with a splitting headache and thought, well shit, this ain't good. So I sucked it up, got in the car and drove to the track. Lo and behold, my headache didn't bother me so much anymore. It was still there, but most of the time I didn't notice.

When I got there, I was a bit lost, so after a bit of wandering I ended up being personally helped by a guy who introduced himself as Mark (a.k.a. dad on ex-500.com). Shortly thereafter I got my rental R6 and school started.

My first track session was in the wet. The track staff tried to dry it out by sending the cars out first but suffice it to say there was still a lot of water out there. It must have been my fourth lap when I started feeling pretty good, even in the wet, and went to crack the throttle open a bit more coming out of a left onto a straight. BAM, the back wheel spun up and slid out and I just thought, "sh!t, I've had it." Somehow I stayed fairly calm, though, and quickly yet smoothly rolled off the throttle. It fishtailed a bit more but finally came back in line. Nothing like having "smooth" hammered into your brain quite like that.

The second session was much like the first: very wet, with a couple riders going down. By the third it started drying out, and I tried picking up the pace. It didn't take long for me to be outside my comfort zone and I found I was constantly missing apexes and even running wide in one spot. Then for my fourth session I started hanging off the bike a bit and everything really came together. I could sense I was going a bit quicker and leaning harder than I had in previous sessions and was having a blast doing it, constantly nailing my apexes.

That was abruptly ended when another rider came flying by as I was braking for the karousel. I knew there was no way he was making the corner and sure enough, he locked the front brake and slammed down hard on his left side. The bike slid off into the barrier on the outside of the karousel. Meanwhile, the rider slid into the back wheel of the rider in front of me, causing him to fishtail a bit as he entered the corner. The downed rider then slid off the track onto the grass without hitting anything else. From what I heard, he was merely knocked unconscious, perhaps from the moment he hit the ground. Then it started pouring.

At that point, I decided I'd already had my fun (and close call) in the rain and stuck around in the paddock talking to the other riders (great advice from Mark, bench racing with my ART Basic classmates).

Overall, an incredibly fun day, despite the close calls and the rain. I can't thank the staff at Team Pro-Motion enough for running the class and track day (on the 4th of July no less), and a special thanks to Mark Graulty and Bill Sink for helping me out and giving me great advice all day long.

If you've never attended a track school before (cars or bikes), do it!

Brilliant fun isn't it?? There is nothing like track experience to realise both the ability of modern sports bikes and you're own limitations. Really puts the stupidity of riding fast on the public roads in to perspective too.

Only thing I can say is get out there and do more !! Just be careful out there !

Ok lets put this semantic argument to bed:

From the Oxford English Dictionary -


race

• noun 1 a competition between runners, horses, vehicles, etc. to see which is fastest over a set course. 2 (the races) a series of races for horses or dogs, held at a fixed time on a set course. 3 a situation in which people compete to be first to achieve something.


So, unless it's timed or there is a time aspect to the competition it's not a race. It can be a sport, competition etc with 1st, 2nd places etc but unless the placing is time dependant it's not a race.

I post this purely to make a factual point. I know nothing about drifting and have no idea if it meets this criteria or not so this is not an anti-drifting post.

Quote from duke_toaster :

Surely it would only work if people knew that they had a knife though.

True, but I suspect many kids that carry often brag about it to give themselves cred.

Quote :

Probably best to install knife arches in more places.

True, which comes back to my point about being caught. IMO the real deterent to crime is the knowledge that there is a high likelyhood of being caught, (and that when you are you actually get punished in some way), that needs to be true before we'll see any significant drop in crimes.

Quote from Jakg :

It's not an ideal CPU, but I got the idea (from the CPU) he was broke...

If your not, an E8400 (or even a Q6600) would be a very VERY big upgrade.

I have a Dual Core 6600 and it runs LFS with plenty to spare, never really bothered to check FPS but a couple of times when I have it's always been over 100FPS. Anyway, I never have any stutter or anything, (GPU is a 8600GT 256MB).

Last edited by gezmoor, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 11:45.

Interesting. I've not added a SATA drive as yet. So I'm assuming there is no need to set the drives to master and secondary etc like you do with IDE then?

Quote from obsolum :

Well, this is weird After having gone through a number of boxes I found my Vista DVD. So I plug in the drive again, boot up the computer keeping the DVD at the ready, and... Vista boots without problems

Anyway, I'm glad it's working again! I'm gonna copy my LFS folder to the other drive just to be safe

Thanks for the suggestions everyone!

Most likely a dodgy connection in that case. These things can work loose over time or maybe get a bit corroded. Pluging/unplugging them a few times can sometimes clean the connectors and restore the connection.

Quote from nihil :

Not entirely true, since most sample based sound engines cross fade samples from a known rev range - this simply ignores all sorts of sonic nuances in favour of 'recognisability'.

By synthesising, you are not guessing. You are analysing a process and attempting to model it objectively, without presupposing what should be there.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_modelling_synthesis

Fair point, but it's possible to multilayer sample sounds too which can vary the characterstics of the sampled sounds rather than a simple frequency shift type manipulation. Samples can just as easily be filtered and or augmented than synth sounds.

If you want to model car sound from scratch as aluded to in that article, then that is going to have the negative impact of requiring siginificant processing power just to reproduce the car sounds. Given that at the end of the day the only important requirement for sound in a racing sim are as you state the feedback relating to various car sound type rather than accuracy to any actual car is this processing over head realy required? wouldn't it be better used to get better handling/collision etc physics modelling. Samples based sound systems would surely be far less processor intensive than such a modelled system ?


Taking the example you quoted for instance. Early drum machines tried using synths and failed miserably. All drum machines now use high quality samples. But admittedly the scenario is different as there is no requirement to modify the samples, they just use a huge sample bank in order to reproduce the hundreds of differing sound that can be obtained from a single kit.

Last edited by gezmoor, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 09:08.

well, as people have already said, it looks very much from the existing rubber that the Karts are low power. Looks very much like most people are double apexing it. Treating the last two corners as one wide turn with maximum corner speed.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

One thing which LFS (amongst other sims) is missing is the fact that cars sound a lot different depending on their orientation to you. If you ever hear a racing car drive past you, as they approach you head on most of the the sound is dominated by the whirring of the gearbox, then as it passes, its mostly noise directly from the engine, then once it's past, the sound is mostly from the exhaust, all three sounding very different.

Very true and a perfect example of why multiple samples are required in a samples based system.

Quote from Woz :

For me its a matter of depth. Samples give more instant wow factor but can never give the detail of a synth based system. I love the way you can hear the engine bog down when you bodge using the clutch and also hear the engine try to spin up and rev match if you fail to do it yourself

But those things are just a matter of gaining the correct samples. A samples based system does not have to rely on a single sample for all occasions. Various engine scenarios can be reproduced using various samples. That's why simple rpm inputs are not nearly enough as inputs for sample modification.

Engine sounds, are extremely complex. The problem with synthesising is that you are never going to accurately recreate a real engine sound through hit and miss manipulation. The only way to do it accurately through synthing would be to do an spectrum analysis of the sound of an engine and then use the synth to recreate that exact audio spectrum. What's the point? when that's exactly what a sample is doing anyway?

I think what people maybe don't understand is that there is absolutely no difference between the ability to manipulate sampled and synthesised sounds. The sole difference is the waveform you start with. With synthing you have to create the original "car sound" waveform before you can manipulate it to model the differing scenarios. With samples that whole first stage is done for you, all you have to do is pick the correct sample and then manipulate it. The advantage is that you are starting off with a realistic sound in the first instance, where as with synthing you're just guessing.

Quote from duke_toaster :

B sounds a bit sensible, but A and C are not permitted under international law.

Well, they're more vents of frustration than real suggestions Though, the more I think about B the more I think in some form it would be a good idea. Kids, especially teens, are very sensitive to peer pressure and I think ultimately it's through peer pressure that this issue has any chance of being resolved. However, I do feel you need to use stick as well as carrot. It's not enough just to talk about educating, not least because education alone will take too long to solve the issue. Those that are already of that mindset are highly unlikely to change their behaviour through education attempts, the young however are much more likely not to start that kind of behaviour if educated well in the first instance. So it will take decades for education alone to work, which is no good for the victim that gets stabbed today or tommorrow.

A quick comment on deterents in general. I don't believe, (and the evidence conclusively proves) that severe penalties work as a deterent. Why you ask? simple, the vast majority of people about to engage in a crime, (especially violent), don't take the time to stop and think about the consequences of being caught. Even if they did, they don't believe they are going to get caught anyway. That said, I strongly disagree with "letting off" for those that are caught.

Think of this scenario. You're in your car and you need to park somewhere. Problem is everywhere around is controlled parking and you risk a £100 fine and potentially getting your car towed. What do you do? What goes through your mind? If you're anything like me, (and I suspect most are), you think. What are the chances of a warden coming by in the next X minutes? Can I risk it? In other words you assess the risk of being caught, if you think you wont be caught then the whole issue of the penalty doesn't even factor in to it.

Think of this hypothetical scenario:

You need to travel to work by car every day. At work there are two parking bays, bay A and bay B. You're not allowed to park in either at the times you want to park and you have no other parking alternatives:

Parking bay A: Fine of £100 for illegal parking but a 1 in a 100 chance of getting ticketed.

Parking bay B: Fine of £5 for illegal parking, but a chip in your car and sensors in the bay mean you will get ticketed 100% of the time.

Which will you choose to park in each day?

Quote from Technique :

After playing iRacing for a couple of weeks I'm convinced that sample based sound systems can definitely sound good even if synthesized sounds are ideally what all sims should pursue. Could this possibly be a good community based project?

Discuss.

Having some background interest in audio, (both as a recreational drummer and hi-fi buff), I don't actually agree that sythesized sounds are the way to go for a realistic driving sim. Samples are by far much higher quality and truer to original than any synth sound will be, and as you have found out already can be manipulated quite readily. The only issues are obtaining the correct samples in the first instance and then applying the correct manipulation.

On the point of not being able to record a car in 6th gear under load, there is no need. The engine has no idea what gear you're in, it will sound the same under load in 1st gear as it would in 6th gear for the same "load" percieved. However just using rpm as the control for producing engine sounds is never going to be completely accurate. You need to factor in throttle too as an engine often sounds completely different on the overrun than under load and neutral throttle positions.

Quote from Jakg :

Perhaps the fact that theres MASSIVE problems in Sao Paulo (esp. in the Favelas) CAUSED the police's attitudes?

Oh yes, it's almost entirely down to that, (I know only too well as my brother-in-law is a Policeman in Sao Paulo), however it has led to the police being as bad as the criminals in a lot of cases, (although admittedly they are begining to get themselves in line). The point was however that the method's used didn't work in lowering the rate of violent crime on the streets - it just resulted in open warfare between police and criminals with the loss of many completely innocent lives.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/for- ... ice-torture-reporters-200

If in doubt about how harsh Prisons in Brazil are :

http://www.phaseloop.com/foreignprisoners/prison-brazil.html