Thanks for the info Sam.
Giving the same status as the processed report seems the most sensible thing, indeed.

Quote from SamH :

These are the reports that cost the most time because it takes about 3x as long to confirm that an event didn't happen as it does to see an event and decide it's too trivial. Longer, if the admin (as I often do) goes searching for the correct replay to match the report.

Ouch. Given how short of time you guys are (and how little fun it is to process reports at all) I'd have thought you should just drop any report with the wrong replay.

Quote from SamH :

I'm very tempted to add a checkbox to the report filing page, to confirm that the replay has been checked and the event is definitely present and as described - and mark it as an agreement that, if it's incorrectly filed, a 10% points penalty will be issued against the reporting driver. That might slow down the number of errored reports.

Excellent plan

Quote from bunder9999 :

are there any track maps for the bnj servers? i tried them out today and had one of these moments... :ices_rofl

i like the champagne layout though... that's a fun one.

Oh wow, that video is priceless. Crying with laughter

But maps would be good... Do the layout files get dumped on the local PC when you play? I didn't spot them yet but maybe looked in wrong place. If they do get dumped locally, it would probably be easy to knock up a simple map image.

I first tried BnJ a good while back and was unlucky enough to start off in the tiny car with no reverse gear at all (forget the car name/code) - ARGH. It might have been the champagne layout? The one with the tight left-hand hairpin with haybales etc. Bloody nightmare. Didn't finish a single lap. Every time I didn't bugger up the hairpin, someone else hit me from behind and buggered it up for me. Sheesh.
I then gave up for months (cos I thought BnJ was ONLY that car!) and retried this weekend. Had a lot of fun, but asked lots of people how the hell they figured out the course, and they basically all said "by following other people". I think I see a flaw in that plan...

Quote from Toddshooter :

Also for well balanced sets try "General Inferno" sets. They are usually well balanced and symmetrical so they can actually turn both directions.

Sounds good... Where would I find them? Sorry if dumb question! (Had a look already and just found a setupgrid-like Setupfield on the Team Inferno website but no sign of General Inferno sets specifically.)

Quote from SparkyDave :

Although its not written on the CTRA website, I was sure there was a rule introduced a while back that stated, when a driver spams "BLUEFLAG" or similar message, the driver in front (about to be lapped) has the option to "race" the spammer, including not giving way on the racing line.

Wow! That could have been a lot of fun
I can see though why it could also have had somewhat, eh, mixed results :bitehard:

Quote from Becky Rose :

It therefore is not possible for X-System to know the exact moment when the lights go green, and has to work with both small and large grids. Consequently there is a period of time where LFS has the cars on the grid and you cannot join.

Aha... Having access to the source code makes this sort of thing much easier (Or in your case, being the author of the code! )

Quote from bunder9999 :

what's annoying is when this happens, and there aren't any cars on the grid...

Ouch, hasn't happened to me but sounds like a simple-to-fix buglet... Is there any bug-fixing going on in the X-System?

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Neilser, try a Westhill set for the XRT. Just shorten some of the gear ratios a bit. Before I went away and made my own set, it worked pretty well across all the tracks I tried it on.

Cool - will give that a go, thanks

Quote from zeugnimod :

I'd say a third is quite a lot.

Agreed! It's just not as bad ("most") as hyntty thought... It's encouragingly good, in fact. I guess the overhead of reporting is more or less high enough to discourage trival reports...

And I suspect that multiple reports of an incident ALL get flagged as "BAN" or whatever, rather than dismissals. But that's a guess
(Hey, 93.6% of what I say is guesswork!)

Quote from hyntty :

I'm betting most of the reports are completely useless and raised with too little reason.

Umm, I doubt it: check the STATS link on the CTRA page.
Right now, of 3529 processed reports, 1103 were dismissed - less than a third...

Last edited by Neilser, Fri, 6 Feb 2009 23:26. Reason : trimming quote

Many good points above.
Personally I moved away from Race 1 as soon as I could.
This was despite the fact that it was great to race against quick people - Gold/Platinum+ - and I learned a lot about driving etc. from them. Most of them were really chilled about beginner incidents, and expected it because, hey, it's the beginner server for pete's sake

But ironically, the main reason I moved up was not because of the newbies but actually because of some of the OTHER Gold/Platinum people - the ones who:
a) don't appreciate that beginner people are there to learn, and flame them a lot, spoiling everyone's enjoyment
b) don't understand that being quick and coming up behind a backmarker who is shown a blue flag does not entitle them to barge past rudely - the backmarker does NOT have to dive out of the way (unless a mid-race joiner of course)
c) have failed, in fact, to understand the rules about blues in general - in particular they whinge when they lose any time at all, even though the rules instruct them to expect it; they also send "BLUE!!!" messages with hotkeys and honk the horn even though the rules expressly forbid it...

For me at least, those people made R1 a not-fun place to be when they were online.

Ahem. Rant over.

But as for Race 2 - yes, it's a dead duck right now so anything to revive it would be cool. Perhaps some of the quick people could post setups on Setupgrid too? Cos when you join the server and it's pretty much empty, the one or two people there tend to be just 'visiting' and don't have decent sets for the cars! A casual look on setupgrid (last time I played with R2) didn't give me much joy.

Hmm, nobody so far has a clear answer so here's my guess
If you are on the grid, i.e. have already JOINed the racing, you can duck into the pits and change set and rejoin. If however, the server has activated the restart, maybe then nobody new can join even though the people already on the grid can pit and rejoin... ??

I am not entirely certain I've ever done what you did Lateralus.
However, I am certain that I have dived into the pits and rejoined, more than once, successfully.
I'm also pretty sure that on at least one occasion I've not managed to rejoin. That *could* have been an occasion when I had just joined the server though...

It could be an LFS feature coming into play here? In that when you enter the pits from spectate mode, the button you are offered is JOIN. When you dive into the pits *from* the grid, the button you get offered is OK. So the game treats you differently...

If you have any hope at all of beating this, it's probably to Shift-J immediately if the "Restarts in ..." countdown is showing and then immediately Shift-P. I dunno when CTRA decides not to let Shift-J work of course - if it's when the countdown starts then you'd be stuffed anyway

Hi Worry. Sorry to hear you have overindulged on LFS and have to take a break!
But many many thanks again for the time you put in organising the races and writing a superb Insim extension - Airio has lots of features I miss on other servers :clapclap:

Quote from EQ Worry :

Yes, my bad, sorry for the very short notice. I wasn't sure until the last moment if there should be a race or not. Just six people made it in time, but only 5 races because I lost connection and was offline for full 50 minutes. From what I heard it was one shortened race (15 minutes) and one very short (5 minutes). I'll make sure the next test race is announced much sooner, several days before the event, not several hours. Meanwhile suggestions for track to race on are welcome. Options: FE2R, KY2R, AS1, FE3, WE1, KY3R, AS2. :-)

Hehe. Yes indeed, a bit of a quiet evening. I think it was 5 of us that started the 15 minute race, but unfortunately we lost the leader (also to a connection problem I believe) about half-way in, and gained one more person mid-race :-)
The 5 lap race was quite close and more fun though! (Even though only four of us then...)

Quote from EQ Worry :

Doh, such pity, you must have missed it by just a minute or two - the server was opened until the 1st race start, that was around 21:03 UK time. What a pity... Next time try to use "end" as a password...

Yeah, figured that must be what happened.
Got stuck late in work and missed the boat... Ah well!
Will practise hard for the next one
...
Hmm, just checked the date for the next race, will be out of the country until the night before so might still be able to compete, but has the track been decided yet? (Would be nice to practise a bit and I've only got experience of about three tracks so far...)

Argh, can't connect - private host, needs password...?
Am I too late?

Hi...
Still finding my way around the forum ;-) and just came across this thread.

Is the race series still going?
Didn't see anything new on the team website (but maybe looking in wrong place).

Quote from wheel4hummer :

This is the car info format. Nothing about the torque curve, I don't think.
http://www.lfs.net/?page=CAR_INFO_BIN

Aha - thanks. Yes indeed, no hint of torque curves in there . Shame.

I have to presume somebody asked for the torque curves before engaging in heroics to extract the curves from the replay files... No?
Can't imagine why the devs wouldn't be happy to distribute them...

Thanks for the info, all!

I've now tried VHPA, and was wondering where it got the torque curves from, and then I read Bob's post. (Wow, dedication!) It's a seriously nice, and complex tool, for which I hope there's good documentation :-) (Only scratched the surface last night.)

However, given the info in Bob's post, it seems like the easiest thing to do would be simply to ask the devs to provide the torque curve though, no? Reverse-engineering it from the force data in the replay data seems a bit extreme, unless of course the devs have already declined to provide the data...

Unless of course, the BIN file contains the torque curve, as the other posts seem to hint.

(Btw, does the replay actually provide contact-patch force, or does it have to be inferred from the acceleration? In which case how does the acceleration get corrected for wind resistance...?)

Anybody know where to get the torque curves for each engine in LFS?

I know a gear-ratio-calculator was once working (dead now I understand), which means that the person who wrote it must have had access to the torque curve, as far as I can figure out...

TIA!

Quote from Dac :

if its used for training purposes i have no problems with that as ive mentioned multiple times in this thread. i think it would be an invaluable training aid and id like to see it in LFS. however if the time generated from following the ghost car could be legitimately uploaded as a hotlap then i would have a problem with that [snip]

Aha. Hadn't realised you weren't totally against it - sorry.
On that point I'd be in agreement - no hotlaps should be uploaded with ghost mod on. Just like the current hotlap mode doesn't allow the racing line to be turned on.

[Edit: reviewed your mention of training - I *had* noticed it, but at the time thought you had literally meant the "training" mode; e.g. acceleration training, slalom, etc, which isn't really useful for a ghost car. If you mean training by racing in single-player, which is actually useful, then we're on the same page :-)]

Last edited by Neilser, Sat, 26 Jul 2008 18:32.

Quote from Dac :

thats exactly the point. LFS is about racing and driver skill, its not about using as many aids as you can to boost your times. real drivers dont have 'ghost' cars so in what aspect is it valid for a simulation?

im all for ghost cars and racing lines in the training section but anywhere else is a big no no. you have to understand what LFS is about before you realise why things like this are bad for it.

Hmm, a few years ago drivers didn't have any electronics. So no split times in the dashboard, no lap times. Some had radios for the team to tell them stuff, some didn't. Are split times OK?

If a rich racing formula like F1 came up with head-up displays with ghost cars for training drivers (I doubt it would be allowed during a race! ), would you suddenly change your mind? Would you allow it only in an F1 car, but not in a saloon car?

Or do you think Shift+P should be banned too, along with Shift+S, because they are just unrealistic? Probably Shift+R would go too. In fact, the whole hotlapping mode is just unrealistic, as you don't have to do a whole out lap.

But now a serious question: if somebody used a ghost car mod, and trained themselves against the WR time (if that's possible with the ghost mod), and then went up against you -- without it -- would you feel the race was unfair? And if so, how does that differ from them driving as close as poss behind a really good driver in an online session, and picking up a better line that way?

[PS: I believe most F1 teams do some driver training in sims... I wonder if they have ghost cars in them?]

Quote from Dac :

what i mean is that theres nothing stopping you from just following the ghost car and doing exactly what it does apart from maybe taking a slightly better line into a certain corner to improve your time - which is unrealistic.

Wow, I've never found that with ghost cars myself - yes, they help you spot the problems and improve, but it doesn't just magically wear off again when you remove the ghost car. It's not that easy to copy a ghost car... And LFS already has replays.

As for whether anyone wants it, quite a few people seem to be pleading for it on kegetys' (spl?) own website. I'm guessing that not so many people have the programming skill (+time :-) to reimplement it either; wild guess = less than one in a hundred LFSers... And I doubt I do either to be honest, though I might have a go if I buy a licence (which will happen if I can convince myself I won't spend 8 hours a day playing!).

Quote from Spils :

tristan will scream blue murder about how a ghost car is acradey and homo..

Yeah, well displaying the racing line seems a bit artificial too but it's a damn good training aid. Let them scream it's arcadey and homo if they want Nobody says they should use it

Did a bit more investigation, and turns out the Ghost mod author has said he "might" one day get around to fixing it. People suggested he released the code for others to use but I guess he doesn't want to do that.

Maybe it's not a huge job to reimplement it?
Might be a good idea to ask more about this on the mod forum I suspect...

Hi all! :-) (1st post)

I've got a few hours of racing under my belt, but my version of LFS must be bust cos I can't get my FBM BL1 time below 1:17 :-/
I guess I'm missing the turbo setting or something!

Anyway, I've cleverly figured out how to see replays of how it's reallly done, and then thought "hey, a ghost car overlay would be cool".

One search (here) later, and I learn it's already been done, but died when a version update broke it.

This seems to have happened some time ago, so maybe there's no demand for a new/fixed ghost mod?
Do the regulars & experts not feel the need for a ghost car?