I would advise you to do some research to find out whose style you like and then contact that skin-maker personally and ask him if he would like to create something for you. That way you'll have a much bigger chance of success imho. This way it seems sort of random and as if you didn't care too much.

Good place to start research would be master-skinnerz or this forum's skin-section of course.

Quote from DasBoeseC :

But do we really want every single server admin to adjust this setting to his liking so we end up with 500 servers that have 80 different handicap settings?!

Nope, we certainly don't want that. But I don't think it will happen either. After all, many server owners don't even bother to restrict their server to certain cars. I'd see this more as an opportunity to amend existing car classes. Like I said earlier, a restricted RB4 is a nice addition to the XFG and XRG. Or you could restrict XRG and XFG to run with the UF1 etc. Surely this is not necessary per se, but a nice addition. And of course Leagues that want to handicap individual racers also should be able to do that server sided for ease of use.

Haven't watched the replay, but 1:08.24 is almost one second faster than the 103% benchmark of the world record. That's about as close as I usually get to wr times after a little over 16.000 online-kilometers in LFS (which is nothing considering that I've been playing LFS for more than three years, but it's still valuable experience). Seeing that you have put in 4.487 km since december 2006, and that you're obviously a dedicated FOX-racer, I'd say your driving is just as one would it expect it to be. If you keep going at that rate, you'll soon find out that you'll get faster the more you race, but progress naturally won't be as fast as it was in the beginning.

Still, I have 3 suggestions for you:
1. Also drive other cars every once in a while, as that will help you to find different lines and different techniques which might just help you finding those extra 10th in the FOX.

2. Download wr-replays and see what's different. Where are the braking points, which lines do they take through turns, and how much speed do they carry into, through and out of turns and how fast does that maybe make them on the straights?

3. Practice!

Quote from Burnzoire :

d'oh, that sounded like you were about to explain it all to me, until you state you also don't know why it isn't server side

I guess we'll just have to wait to see what happens, or until scawen sheds some (more) light on the matter.

I just posted because some people were obviously talking about the global balancing system, which I thought was not what this thread was about. Sorry for getting your expectations up .

I would expect Scawen to implement a server sided balancing option sooner or later, though. Because forced handicaps and intake restriction would be pretty pointless if they can't be enforced. But that's just speculation. And like you said, we can only wait .

Ok, I wiped out the knw files of AI1 for FO8 at Bl1 on patch W and on patch W9. Then I let them run a 10-lap race around bl1 with the same setup. Only the patch W9 setup had a preload of 150Nm (default?).

Results:
W9 pb 1:09.72 on lap 10
W0 pb 1:09.60 on lap 10

Lap times over the whole distance were very, very similar. Most of the time patch W AI was a tad faster (usually around .05 seconds). On the first lap they were .02 seconds apart. I guess preload does not make the AI faster.

Quote from matze54564 :

I find the low speed behavior great, and it is absolutely realistic.

That's basically what Dave was saying. But he was also saying that the highspeed behavior is not due to unfinished aero modeling. Or did I get it wrong?

Haven't really noticed this and I have done some AI training before patch W9 (FO8 on As4r) and now again with it. I seem to remember that AI's pb were somewhere around 2:12.xx and they haven't improved afaik. But no thorough testing on my part either.

I'm running a quick test right now and let you know what I find out .

+1 definitely helpful for further balancing. I don't know if an automated solution is possible, but that would probably have to be made by Victor through LFSWorld?

And for a non-automated system all we need are volunteers capable of wr-times who post their hlvc's in a dedicated thread on the forum (I'm just glad that I'm not even remotely close to wr-times, so that's no work for me :tilt

Quote from Vykos69 :

And thank you, for delivering the perfect example for spam and why test patch forum got closed

You know that's not true, Vykos. The test patch forum was certainly not closed because of the occasional "thank you"-post. It was closed because there were endless discussions and requests about handbrakes, handicaps, car-resetting and whatnot.

Just for clarification, as it seems to me there's still confusion and that there are different things mixed together here:

Currently there are two different handicap-systems.

Number One is what is usually referred to as global balancing. This means that the FXO and the XRT have a weight penalty and the FXO an additional intake restriction and FZR and XRR both have a weight penalty. These handicaps can not be changed server sided and this is an interims solution that Scawen implemented to meet the longtime requests for class balancing in a physically compatible patch. Again: This is not final. In an upcoming physically incompatible patch things will change again (so far it's confirmed that the FXO will get narrower tires and will put on weight).

Number two is the voluntary balancing system via setup changes. I think this is what the OP actually referred to. And just like him I would have thought that it was possible to apply intake restrictions and weight penalties server sided. But apparantly it isn't. Can people confirm this?

My take on the matter is that it should be possible to enforce server sided handicaps. Not only driver based for leagues (similiar to the WTCC system) but also track based for regular public servers and pick up races. Not only could you balance car classes track specific, you could even set up a server where f.e. XFG, XRG and RB4 could run competitively together (among others, XCNuse has created a nice setup for the RB4 that makes it more or less equal to XRG and XFG on BL, which is imho a nice addition because it could make for more variety in racing).

Just my 2c.

And tuning in the throttle with the applied steering lock helps a lot. The less your wheel is turned, the more throttle you can apply. People who are going full throttle out of a turn will probably have hit the apex so they have the wheel straightened out almost completely (and they anticipate the rear stepping out). Just practice, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Personally, I think we need to be shown fuel in pounds or gallons, not percentages...

Make that liters or kg and you have a point (which has been suggested before, actually and does not really belong in this thread, either).

While I'm posting already, I might as well say a very big thank you for this great patch, which not only contains more new features than what I would have expected, it also has come a lot earlier than I would have thought. I'm impressed .

And maybe the car-resetting discussion should be moved to it's own spin-off as well ... ?

Edit: and this post belongs in the clean-up, of course.

Quote from KeiichiRX7 :

to be honest i'd like to allow road super for the lower classes.

Seeing that the XFG and the UF1 are better off with hybrids at least on the rear the way it is now, I doubt that road supers for the STD class is such a good idea atm.

And slicks would imho render the STD (and maybe even the TBO) class useless, as all the cars would be soo boring to drive and still most servers would allow them because it's faster .

Damn, not only am I not 1st anymore, I'm down to 5th (eventhough Kubica finally earned me some points). That Hamilton guy is just too quick and I have no idea what to replace now to catch up with the first 4 players, who all have the same team setup like me except they have Hamilton instead of Heidfeld .

Overlays, commentary, cutting, editing, all this stuff is post-work in STCC videos, JR. They're released well after the actual race took place (and it's apparantly very time consuming work for Becky). So, nothing like this would be possible for OLFSLTv (I suspect that's why you're asking ).

And please give your thread a descriptive name. That makes browsing this forum more convenient .

+1 from me if it's easy to implement. And I don't even think it would be exploited that much. What's to gain by searching for crap and then posting something unrelated? And if somebody does exploit it anyway, we can at least flame that person with proper cause (=for being an inconsiderate, ignorant troll ).

Edit: +1 for the original suggestion by XCNuse, that is. Not to what duke posted and not the moderating idea either, as it would just mean extra work for the mods.

I hear that servers can be eerily quiet during regular US-racing times, but I wouldn't really know how much of a problem that is.

I don't really understand how people could want the most realistic racing sim possible and at the same time want unrealistic (or call it unplausible, if you like, which is essentially the same) setup options. That's clearly a contradiction. The feeling I'm getting here is, that the dismissal or approval of certain features is dictated by personal preference rather than objectivity. People who like tinkering with an infinite amount of setup options just want them because *they* like them. Others want to be able to use an H-shifter with the BF1 - I doubt too many of the "infinite-setup-option-supporters" would say, sure, why not. It's a sim, so we can do whatever we like. It doesn't matter if an F1-car doesn't have it in rL.

As has been pointed out before, the argument of the perfect (yet unrealistic) environment a sim is capable of providing is not valid at all. And I'm really surprised that it has been brought up at all (considering that we're supposedly all here because we want realism) - that is the NFS-approach and not the other way around.

So, bottom line for me is: Make this sim as realistic/plausible as possible and compromise where necessary due to real life limitations (mostly dictated by hardware).

What time frame are we talking about here? If you look at the server history the highest number of licensed racers online was 764 in the last half year. That number was reached around 40 days ago (when were the new sounds introduced?), and has indeed been dropping since (1 month=674, 1 week=580). However, keep in mind that spring is coming (at least in the northern hemisphere), so there's likely to be a little less activity. Also, the latest patches (V to W) have been out for some time now and a new patch usually leads to more racers. So I'd expect the number of racers to rise considerably with the upcoming multiplayer incomp patch (whenever that might be). And afterwards figures will go down again. However, after each new patch that changes things considerably, the numbers will probably stabilize on a higher level than before the patch (at least that's what I think and hope). Unfortunately, the LFSW statistics don't seem to go further back than half a year, would be interested to see how figures have changed over two or three years.

(and yes, I don't have much to do at work today, so that explains the lengthy post about nothing :tilt

Quote from Davo :

Same thing here. I put it down to a low quality sky. Even though Don's skies are excellent Fern Bay is lacking.

That's what I always thought, but shouldn't everybody have the same gradient-look then? Hm, maybe they do but just don't post here ... ? Who knows...

My Hi-res Fern Bay sky looks exactly like yours, dynofiend. Funny thing is, not only do I have the same quality settings you have (and a current driver), I also have the same gfx chip: nvidia 7600GT (XFX 7600GT XXX to be precise). Maybe that's the problem?

Quote from Becky Rose :

The good news though, is aswell as the single seater expansion i'll also be adding GT1 and GT2 servers. Exact specifics havn't been worked out yet (single seaters first), but the idea is that the GTR's and the XFR/UFR will be added to the existing STCC licence system as some form of licence extension for gold and above racers.

Well, that's indeed great news (although you've mentioned that before ), but shouldn't the UFR and XFR be available to silver licensed racers (I'm not just saying that because I'm still silver)? I feel they're easier to drive competitively than the TBO's.

I voted unified for two reasons:

1. I don't think the FOX really prepares you for the next SS. The FOX is a piece of cake to drive compared to the FO8. Sure, they feel somewhat similar, but additional experience with the XRT, the FZ5 or the LXes and their tendency to powerslide is imho really helpful to be able to deal with the FO8s power. So, I think the FOX should come before the TBO class in the license ladder while the FO8 should come after at least the TBO class.

2. very personal reason is that I don't have too much time racing and I wouldn't really want to divide my precious STCC time to two licenses (feel free to disregard reason 2).

But it seems I lost already, anyway. So, be it.

The Original LFS League is great for Beginners and Pros alike.