Quote from SamH :

The pass looks great, but the condition of the track that made it possible is a disgrace.

IMO the pass only looked great and wasn't actually that great at all, merely good.

No offense to Massa, he's a good driver most of the time. I just think that pretty much any other car/driver on the track could have capitalised on that situation just as well. Rubens and Heikki brake slightly deep (an understandable mistake considering overtaking was occuring) and get on the crappy surface/marbles and get no traction till the straight. Massa gets to drive the much grippy line and cruises past them both without difficulty.

If the track were in a good condition that pass would most likely have not happened. To be honest the pass reflects a whole ton more on how crap the surface was rather than Massa's ability.

Like I say, it was a good overtake (from the point of view that he saw the opportunity and grabbed it firmly) but nowhere near as good as people seem to think it was.

I'd like to say +1 but I'd have to agree that it's not feasible for pick up races.

I bloody hate it when people get all crashy at the end of the race and park right on or near the racing line. I like to put a few more laps in whilst waiting for a restart so people wrecking me after a race makes me very mad. Especially when it is done on purpose. If I had my way then people who intentionally wreck after a race would be banned from using the internet for life.

In fact, I hate after-race wreckers more than in-race wreckers because at least in race wreckers know they are doing/have done wrong. After-race wreckers think that it's all in good fun. Bloody twats.

I'll stop ranting now.

Yep, I went for the SLI motherboard so I'd have an easy upgrade option should I want it. Maybe there's no point but it's not much money extra for that option to exist and that's the entirety of my reasoning on the subject. I suppose I should probably get a slightly more powerful power supply to support this idea also.

I'm not going to be overclocking it, not right away anyway. I figured I'd try and get something fairly decent without overclocking it and also decided to get a beefier fan so I could overclock it later.

Overall I don't think it's a bad spec but I thought I'd post it here so people more knowledgeable than myself could highlight any potential issues that I might not know about with specific parts or parts in combination!

Hey guys.

I'm looking at putting together a new computer very soon. I've quickly made up a spec by browsing ebuyer.co.uk. Would you mind taking a look at it let me know what you think? I've not put a massive amount of research, I've stuck to things I've seen referred to as being of suitable quality or just had a bit of a guess.

The spec (including ebuyer.co.uk quickfind codes in case you want to look at details):

Antec Nine Hundred Case (118268) @ 70.69

Antec TruePower Trio 650W PSU (114933) @ 78.21

Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard (125082) @ 60.11

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3.0GHz, 1333FSB, 6MB cache) (105994) @ 133.03

Arctic Cooling AC-FRZ-7P CPU Cooler (105994) @ 15.24

OCZ 4GB PC2-6400 Memory Platinum Performance CL5 (132904) @ 66.55

XFX 8800GT XT Edition 512MB (140128) @ 144.95

Western Digital 500GB HD SATA (124741) @ 51.62

Optiarc DVD/RW SATA (139414) @ 15.32

Which comes to a total of £636.35.

So, any thoughts? What components have I forgotten to look at? I've made a list and checked it twice and there are no glaringly obvious omissions!

I'm mainly going to use this setup for gaming but I'm not working with a massive budget (I can stretch to a little more) so bear that in mind if and when making suggestions. This seems like a reasonable amount of power for a reasonable amount of money but I haven't kept up with all the technology like these damn fangled multi core doohickeys. Should I be thinking about going for a quad core for some sort of future proofing or is that excessive/unnecessary?

Also, ebuyer.co.uk seems to be pretty good on prices does anyone know of anything better?

Anyway, you get the picture...some general thoughts as to whether or not this is a good spec (for the budget obviously) and suggestions/advice for different parts etc.

Thanks in advance

Tom

Quote from frokki :

Because othewise it would sound too German.
Schi laufen zu meine hause.

OT but interesting (IMO).

Funnily enough, as far as I'm aware, the GH digraph (a digraph is a pair of characters that are pronounced together as one sound) came to English from the Germanic CH sound. I'm no expert on the subject and I'd have to search to find references to back that up but I'd rather not (sorry!).

English is a funny old language and it has changed a hell of a lot over the years. This has resulted in some rather odd spellings, grammar and...erm...an odd language in general. I love it but I'm English so I'm biased!

I think George Bernard Shaw wrote some stuff about messed up English spelling. He decided that you could, in theory, spell the word fish as GHOTI. Using the sound of GH from lauGH, the O from wOmen and the TI from moTIon or any other -tion type word.

I recommend you keep spelling if fish though.

I'll stop being really off topic now.

Quote from The Radness :

Sage francis, Brother Ali, Pharoahe Monch, Big L, Buck 65, Josh Martinez......

The Canucks may know those last two. Hip-Hop for me. and 80's rock (my old man's music :shrug

I completely forgot about Sage Francis! He rocks man. I once got a police escort to a Sage Francis concert but thats an different and actually rather boring story. Josh Martinez and Buck 65 are also very nice.

Have you heard any Non Prophets stuff? Non Prophets = Sage Francis & Joe Beats = Good.

I'll mention Dj Format now too. You should here the stuff he did with Abdominal, it's ace (DJ Format Ft Abdominal 1, DJ Format Ft Abdominal 2)

Anyway, that's enough random song linking. See ya later

This is some good hip hop:

Aspects - Off the Lip
Excellent video

Aspects - Impact
Aspects are great. Nuff said. Probe Mantis and El Eye are fantastic rappers, humorous and skilled and Monkey Moo is an ace beatboxer

Taskforce - Cosmic Gypsies
I like taskforce despite the petulant child style of rapping. I saw one half of them at Glastonbury once, I believe it was Chester P but it could have been Farma G, I thought he was a very charismatic compere who had some good things to say

Roots Manuva - Dreamy Days
Check out witness the fitness and movements and pretty much every tune that roots manuva has made the vast majority are good

Pitman - Girls
Ok, he ain't too hot a rapper but I find it funny. The album is pretty funny but probably not for anyone outside of the UK...having been oop north might help too.

Lexicon - Nikehead
I heard this song on a compilation once and thought of it whilst finding these tunes. Fun and bouncy tune.

Numskullz - Raindrops
Actually a video of scarborough town with the song as a background - go figure. Nice lyricism.

People Under the Stairs - Acid Raindrops
It about naughty things, i.e. somking the reefa but it is such a beautiful song, I find it can make me drift away quite nicely in a similar the also very different way to Mutual Slump by DJ Shadow.

This is, of course, not the only hip hop that is good. There is a lot of it. About a gajillion tons of it really. I'm listening to Acid Raindrops at the moment and it is rather beautiful IMO, a proper mellow head nodder. A nice dose of some UK hip hop to because it is one of my favourite flavours.

I haven't listened to hip hop in ages due to getting back into more dancey music like that techno shit for instance. I used to not like techno but I saw the light a while ago, though I must admit that I liked Orbital the whole time I thought techno was crap...oops.

Just thought I'd show you some of the hip hop stuffs I like.

Bye

XMGT = yes please.

Good idea!

Quote from Breizh :

...

I did a similar test with the XRT on BL1. I flatshifted the whole way just to see how long it would take to burn a clutch out. It hit red at the start of lap 5 I think, I don't recall exactly. I wasn't consistent or trying to be but I can safely say that I could just notice a difference in speed from a 'just red clutch' and I was looking for the difference. If i wasn't looking for the speed loss then I wouldn't have noticed it that quickly. That was on X32 I think.

Just tried the same with the FZR at BL1 in X36. Flatshifting the whole time turned my clutch red just before the 1st split of lap 4. It then fluctuated between red and orange between shifts and was firmly red by around split 2 of lap 4, firmly meaning it stayed red not that the bar had gone up loads or anything. I imagine it would have got worse if I kept going but as far as I'm concerned at least 3 laps of being ultra abusive on the clutch is more than enough leeway considering that modulating the quick pedal a bit keeps the clutch all the way down at 1 bar of orange.

The only reliable method of clutch destruction (ok overheating being as it isn't actually destroyed) that I've discovered is being in far too high a gear for your speed. Under normal racing the current clutches are more than strong enough.

As for whether or not this level of durability is realistic I have no idea, but I guess that racing teams aren't going to go out of their way to make clutches much stronger than they need to be and the current ones in LFS seem more than strong enough.

Am I missing something with this clutch overheating thing? I just can't see it being an issue during a race if you shift properly unless you have some sort of incident/make a mistake.

I've been picking through this thread a bit mostly looking at stuff people have said about clutches.

I'm doing quite well out of it personally. By simply lifting off the throttle for gearshifts I seem to gain a lot of speed on certain people later in the race. No idea why. Oh no, wait, it's because my clutch isn't overheated and theirs is.

The only time I've managed to overheat a clutch accidentally was pulling away from a spin in second without thinking about all that clutch slipping that was going on. After that I made nice clean, non-aggressive shifts for a while and eventually the clutch cooled enough to go aggressive again. I simply don't see how you can overheat the clutch in 2 laps if you're doing it even vaguely right.

That's IMO of course.

These people sound a bit lame. Regardless of what they have against you wrecking is bad, m'kay?

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=8930

That's a link to a thread about the Wrecker Barricade. If people wreck you on purpose then upload some replays there. To save a replay, just in case you don't know, hit 2 when on a server that'll bring up the save replay dialog.

Other than that you'll prob just have to ignore it as much as you can.

EDIT: +1 to the choose to be invisible idea

Quote from Jakg :

Red = Wheel Sliding. Under hard cornering, or even if the wheel is just starting to lock - it's not a garaunteed way of spotting a wheel that's locked, either.

Why do you want to know, out of interest...?

Yeah, I considered that after posting it and was thinking about editing it to that effect. I just thought that it's an easy way to get an idea of whats going on because I assuming this guy just wants to know so he can improve his driving and or a setup maybe. The forces view will give you an idea at least.

EDIT: I just loaded up LFS to check and you get the triangles at the sides for lateral slip and the ones at the front/back for longitudinal slip. So sliding under cornering should be shown on the side indicators and sliding/locking under acceleration/braking shown on the front/back indicators...right? If so then forces view is a graceful if not accurate solution. Of course this is all irrelevant if my assumption that he is just curious as to when he is locking up his wheels is incorrect

Last edited by Hockquan, Sat 27 Oct 2007, 16:05.

If you didn't know then you can press F to enable forces view in game. When one of the triangles pointing at your tires goes red under braking then the wheel is locked. It's practically no use for racing IMO though, but if you save a replay and watch it back with forces view on you can see the places where you tend to lock up brakes and try to adjust your driving accordingly.

No need for insim!

+1 when the cars get overhauled anyway. It's only a visual thing that won't immediately affect the quality of racing so on a done when it's done basis.

It's an open and shut case IMO and this sentence says why:

Quote from sinbad :

It's more plausible to drive a car on the road with a roll cage (like a Porsche 911 GT3rs for example), than to race a car without one.

lol....thats pretty funny stuff.

I expect someone did notice the little mistake but they found it too funny to mention it to anyone who might think about changing it. I know I wouldn't.

"I won't cuss, swear, use bad language, or tell dirty jokes. Clean language is the sign of intelligence and always demands respect. I will use my language to uplift, encourage and motivate. I will Leave People Better Than I Found Them!"

A quote from the nocussing website.

I've got no problem with people choosing not to cuss and stuffs but I find this quite funny. I think that second sentence would be better put as "Clean language is a sign of intelligence and always demands respect." I still don't agree with the sentence but changing that one word makes it a lot better.

As an example of how clean language does not always demand respect:

"I like to urinate in my pants on purpose because it is a nice feeling, and I do not feel as though it has a great impact on my personal hygiene", said the man.

I certainly don't respect this hypothetical man but by golly did he use a clean sentence!

An example of how 'dirty' sentence can be more uplifting than a clean one:

Clean: "Wow, dude! That lap was great!", exclaimed John.

Dirty: "Wow, dude! That lap was ****ing excellent!", exclaimed John.

The dirty sentence seems to me to be more uplifting and carry slightly greater emotional content than the clean one.

Just because a word can be used badly it doesn't make it a bad word. We should probably eliminate all words that have bad meanings if you follow this logic. Thus this whole thing kinda reminds me of 1984 in a way (the book by George Orwell). No longer will things be bad, they will simply be ungood.

IMHO, it is not any particular word that is 'bad', it is the context in which a given word is used that makes a sentence 'bad'. I agree with the moral of trying to make people better than you found them, I just can't agree that not using swear words is the best method for affecting such a thing.


EDIT: It has just occurred to me though that I think I would perhaps really like to own a 'No Cussing Club' t-shirt.

Last edited by Hockquan, Sat 27 Oct 2007, 15:50.

I always find it funny when people say swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary. Surely, specifically choosing not to use swear words is doing exactly that.

A self imposed limit on vocabulary is what that is.

Go figure...

At the end of the day, as fun as it would be to go for a bash round 'The Ring' in LFS, how important is it? If it never appears in LFS, will I never play the game again in disgust? Nope. The fantasy tracks are great fun.

If people are desperate for a real track to be in LFS then I'd suggest (as many others already have) that a smaller circuit would be a good idea. Imagine how many other tracks could be made in the time it would take to craft a perfect Nürburgring. Quite a few probably...well...two as a reasonable assumption. So my question would be, 2 new fantasy tracks or one ring? I love 2 for 1 deals myself.

I'm in the "I don't care about having real race tracks but if they appear one day then that'd be nice thanks very much" camp myself.

P.S. I don't think a simulation requires real racing tracks to be a serious simulator. The simulation part is the physical model and the track is the environment in which that simulation is played out. That is an opinion of course and one that will undoubtedly be proven wrong at some point.

P.P.S I feel if real things are going to be added to LFS then I must demand that a 1.6 liter Rover 400 is added to the game as that's the car that I am forced to drive at the moment (it's not all that bad...really...) and if real stuff is going in the game then my car has to go in there. Period.

+1 for league usage

As other people have said before, not really worth it if you've joined a server for a 5 lap race. If it got used in all the public servers I'd quickly get annoyed with it. Would be definately be good for something like STCC where the races are presented for broadcast though.

It should probably start from the grid but an option for a warm up from the pits or grid wouldn't hurt. Though any public server that has a warm-up lap starting from the pits would probably end up being carnage and something to avoid...

+1 from me. I agree with the sentiment that it's better to have one more idiot than ban an honest racer. If someone is really a problem then surely things like the wrecker barricade could deal with it?

TBH, the people I want to ban the most are people who spam the ban button and cry over chat after an accident.

+1 from me. I agree with the sentiment that it's better to have one more idiot than ban an honest racer. If someone is really a problem then surely things like the wrecker barricade could deal with it?

TBH, the people I want to ban the most are people who spam the ban button and cry over chat after an accident.

EDIT: D'oh...totally meant to put this post in a thread that linked to this thread. Post left here so everyone can lol hard and long at my idiocy.

+1 for the third reset option, why the hell not?

This thread is a good example of why I love and hate LFS all at the same time. Someone makes a suggestion that would take very little time to implement and it gets shot down because it's not directly related to racing.

I fully understand that LFS is a racing sim and, indeed, I spend the vast majority of my LFS time racing with the occasional bout of drifting (yes, that's right...I'm a sinner). If adding one small insignificant feature that is already coded anyway allows people to have fun on cruise servers or whatever then why shouldn't it be (re)added as a server option? It doesn't hurt LFS in anyway for it to exist. Sure you can argue that it's bad for racing but race servers aren't forced to have reset on...it's an option. If a server operator decides he wants a serious race server he turns off reset. Job done. If someone wants to set up a cruise server then they can use the reset without repair option. Job done. Did the quality of race simulation in LFS suddenly just take a dive? Apparently it did if 'popular' opinion is to be believed.

Personally I can't stand cruise servers. Do I think they shouldn't exist? Far from it. Their existence has in no way affected my enjoyment of racing in LFS so I'm quite happy for them to go on and if all the support that is requested is one very small feature that doesn't affect the rest of the game in anyway...well...it's not much to ask is it? Giving that minimal support could well be more than worth it. If someone wants to buy the game to cruise it puts money in the coffers for further development and could also bring more people into the racing side of LFS.

If people stopped using their time shooting down perfectly sensible suggestions on the forum and working to stop people spamming 'BLUE FLAG! BLUE FLAG!' in a race or 'EVERYONE RESTART PLEASE! SHIFT + R! SHIFT + R!' as soon as a race has finished then my enjoyment of LFS would be improved immensely.

As an aside, a lot of servers insist that you should hit Shift + S (well...Shift + P nowadays) as soon as you've had a crash. Am I the only person who believes that crashes are part of racing and if you take a spill in the middle of a pack of cars then they should just deal with it and avoid the incident if possible rather than driving blindly into the wreckage? It's not necessarily fun to get collected in an accident but it is definitely part of racing. I wonder how many people who are anti-reset-without-repair would disagree...hell telepitting should be taken out of the game entirely. If you crash then you've gotta wait for your car to be removed by crane/truck/whatever...bad luck...that's racing! Sorry for the off topicness but I was trying to make a point there somehow.

Is anyone else amazed by how different Patch W feels to V?

I've not bothered with any of the V test patches because I've not played LFS in earnest for a while so this is my first experience of the sound/graphics changes. First off, all the cars I've driven so far sound good (ok, that totals the XFG and the UF1, but meh), will have to check out the others soon. The biggest change, however, appears to be the graphics. Not the actual appearance there of but...something...else.

I can't quite put my finger on it but everything feels very different graphically. At first I couldn't drive at all and didn't like it one bit. Now I've gotten used to the smoothness LFS genuinely feels a lot more exciting. If only I could explain why...

Anyways, good work guys. Very pleased so far. Can't wait for the next patch!

@Gunn:

I totally agree with you. One of the reason's I'd never release anything I made to any game community is that it's unlikely to make the grade.

I also can't disagree that any QA system would be difficult to implement or control. However, there's no reason not to try and come up with something (I don't mean to say you're saying the opposite, just pointing out that I feel the discussion is still worthwhile).

I also agree that the Dev's should not be expected to 'police' any such system or get involved too much unless they want to. I suspect they would want to to some extent. As I imagine it people within the community who understand and appreciate the spirit of LFS would have to involved in policing such a system (as I imagine it that would mostly involve deciding what is put out or the community to vote on for inclusion). As to who would do it, that's not a decision I could easily make. Any suggestions on how such decisions could be made?

To be honest, I don't want mods as such. Not packages of a lot of low quality things, that's for sure. I'd rather see a few quality community projects (meaning a track and a car, hell maybe even two - so long as they are good and 'fit' somewhere) added every now and then (added for online play on public servers that is - see earlier posts ). I was never imagining full blown mods; I was imagining small additions. The core physics and so forth should never be touched by the community...just the things that go around them.

I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take some people a year to make 1 track for addition to the game. I'd want a system where small amounts are added occasionaly so that people have the time to make something of quality.

I totally agree with the points you made about real cars/tracks. Really not necessary. Lapping around a real track in LFS would not IMO neccessarily be more fun than any of the tracks we have now. The fun part is the racing, the actual tracks and cars are just the details.

Anyway, I'm getting all tired now so I should go to bed before I start making even less sense.

Quote from total konfuzion :

The problem I see is that 2 people may have equal abilities and produce equal quality, but only accepted due to popularity, for example...

A lot of good content could fall by the wayside, but that's much better than a lot of poor content being included simply so all the good could be included too.

Quote from total konfuzion :

Now someone comes along and builds a relatively good version of Nords (for arguments sake, slightly less quality than my fantasy track).. which is going to get included? There's no question really.. yet I spent 2 months on my track adding these little details and working hard on making the AI competitive as best I could within certain restrictions and to make the track surface actually feel like a grassy area, not a grassy looking road track.

I see your point but I'm imagining anything that requires license, such as Nords, would have to be a no no simply to avoid those license issues. As I've said before, I see this as no big loss. On that count I'm not sure there would be a major problem. However, I'd hate it if no rallyX tracks were included simply because it's unpopular..I love sliding around on a bit of dirt personally. Maybe I should include in the system I suggested that certain styles of track could be specified on occasion. So the second track included would have to be a rallyX track, just as an example for arguments sake.

Quote from total konfuzion :

I don't expect to "win" everything and know there's people out there with far more talent than myself, but if the above hypothetical example was to be true (and no reason to really think it wouldn't).. then there's no chance I'd bother again.. I'd find myself a new sim to play with. OK, most will just say "see ya", which is also fair enough, but negativity travels faster than positivity and if / when people hear about a situation like that, they're possibly unlikely to give it a go themselves, thus in the long run, very little will ultimately be built for the sim, but plenty for other sims out there where anyone can have a crack and "be accepted".

Given the communitys general opinion on modding I doubt anything sub par would ever be accepted. I don't mean any offence or to imply that you yourself would not be able to create anything good enough. TBH, I wouldn't mind if it was only the people who were very good at it that gave it a go. I'm not interested in a large quantity of custom content, I'm interested in quality content.

Quote from total konfuzion :

Don't get me wrong, I won't download content for any sim that looks like it was started and finished in the same time as it took to eat / drink the curry and beer, but IMO, it has to be all or none, not just a certain "special few".

Unfortunately a lot of people don't seem to care about quality in their work or what they download as you do. As for all or nothing, I'll have to disagree. I would only want content that is over a certain quality. I don't care who made it, so long as it's good enough. Just like if I wanted someone to do the electrics in my house. I wouldn't let someone who isn't qualified do the job do so just because they want to. I'd get someone who knows what they are doing to do it. Perhaps taking the argument towards the extreme (bad electrics in your house is a lot worse than a bad track/car in your game) but that's the idea I'm getting at.

Quote from total konfuzion :

Funny you added that edit, that's exactly where I moved to for 18 months for modding and also ported the completed tarmac and WIP tarmac track to GTR2 too.. but let's not turn this into an "LFS is greater than everything" thread.. it isn't and there's more than enough threads discussing that already.

Simply trying to say that if someone is desperate to get their work out there then there will be other avenues available. I wasn't trying to say LFS is the best or anything and really don't want this thread to go that way...I'm enjoying this debate!