This video was the first couple that raced in the sim, right at 5pm when the event was suppose to start. You may want to turn down your volume before playing it, as the generator from the adjacent food truck was VERY loud.

I got this video then my phone battery died... so did not get anymore. Sucks because the noisy generator moved away after the first hour.

I charged $2.00 per race at this event.
I gave away a $80~$130 RC car that I paid about $40 for, to the person that held the lap time record at the end of the day.

This was an event with families, not just car owners, so there where lots of kids.

I was in a really good location at this event, likely the first time I could say that.
Everyone had to walk almost across my trailer ramp to get from tables and games to get to the food trucks and lawn for watching the fireworks.

The first half hour to an hour, was fairly slow. However after that I had a line and there was almost always a butt in every seat, the exception being when there was only one or two seats open and a large group wanted to race together they would wait. Because each race was 10 minutes a lot of people that waited gave up and left the line before their turn, some came back later though.... So this was the busiest event I have done, that was not FREE to play.

Most people only raced once, there was only about 10 or so that raced 2 to 4 times. The teen that won the RC Car, raced about 5 times, although he had already set a quick enough lap to win the RC car on his 2nd attempt. There was only about 5 people that were fast enough to even compete for it. It takes about 20 laps to get the hang of it, and not many raced a 2nd time.

While doing the event, I felt like I had made over $250... however after counting the cash it was only about $150, so in the future I will be charging at least $3.00 or back to the full $5.00 if there is a prize. $2.00 may have been too low at this event, especially since the bounce house guy was charging $10 or more, for about 3 minutes in the bounce house. A lot of time was also wasted breaking 20s for change since I mostly had singles... so $5 is faster to make change.

But with about 3 busy hours of 10 minute races, up to 15 minutes if you add in practice lap and driver change time, there was only time for 12 to 18 races. Which would have been a maximum of $192 to $288, so ~$150 is about right with $2.00 races.

I need to fit my other 2 cockpits in the trailer some how so it is 10 players. I only need about 5 more inches, so maybe pinching the 2 in the front of trailer together will allow me to slide them all forward a few inches.

I guess I will have to color code the cables and always try to plug them in the same way, and see if that helps. It seems it was remembering it the first few times... maybe windows had an "update".

Thank You.

Upgraded...

SCAWEN:

First I am still using R7... will update when I have extra time, to fix things incase I muck up all my settings.

When does it save the cfg changes?
Instantly? or only if I exit LFS and restart it?
I notice if I lose power the changes are not always saved.
And when I make changes I always go through and reboot just to make sure it saved them, and once in a while there is a button or view that I changed that did not save.

Also, the last few times I started up an event I had to redo the wheels and headphones. I thought it was remembering it regardless of what order of USB or DISPLAY PORT I was plugging into, but apparently I need to plug them in the same way each time... to get it to remember the right controller and audio choice.
Is there a way I could have easily messed this up?






I have a few potentially large events lined up and pending, but then I thought the last one would be large

One might be a Hot Wheels 50th event in Detroit.

So RAIN was forecast, and there was a tiny storm on the radar.
However it never rained, and that storm vanished before it got there.
It was hot and sunny, a perfect day for a car cruise.

However, due to the forecast most of the people that paid for parking spaces at pep boys never showed, so parking lot was pretty much empty, thus only a few people in this area.

Because it was somewhat dead, no paying racers, I decided to use my big dry erase board and make a sign to get people off of the road to come in. I wrote RACE SIMULATOR => on it... and set it against the road sign out front of pep boys.

The good luck wishes must have worked though, because as I was walking back from placing the sign, I found $40 sitting on the ground.

They paid me $400 to setup all day, I found $40, and I sold $40 of races.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be getting my logo on the trailer.

The first 3 paying players knew what LFS was and had it at home, but they wanted me to set it up for drifting and driving with external view. I sort of did, but they were use to different drift setups, and a custom external view they must use.

Getting ready to do another car show type event in a few hours at Pep Boys in Eastpointe Michigan, USA. It is a street cruise so plenty of businesses along an umpteen mile strip will have vendors and cars parked along the road while other cars cruise up and down the highway. Suppose to be a few 1000 people at the pep boys area, because they have a car-dyno setup.

I will only be charging $1.00 at this event for a 10 minute race, so if MORE people do not race this time, then people just do not want too, and I will have to focus entirely on for-hire events.

They are also paying me a little to setup, so this event is sort of a half hired and half pay-to-play event. So... at least I have already made money on this one, and made up for the $100 lost so far on the other events.

I also have a few other big events lined up, but they are not until August/September.

Spent the day testing things out, and solving misc issues.

PC 2, would turn on all 4 monitors, then one would go off like it was unplugged, never figured out why. Spent a lot of time trying to fix it, reboots, different cables etc... I wound up just swapping the monitor with one from PC 1... and it worked. ...

Left it running while doing other things in trailer, and had the first BLACK SCREEN since scawen made a patch for it to recover. And it recovered from the black screens in about 30 seconds. Drivers would have crashed, but at least it would have been back up and running in the same race. The radeon watt program also crashed at the same time, but that did not recover .

It was a hot day, so heat likely was an issue, watt man temp readings were 70 and 80.

Have a couple events lined up, but they are not for a few months.

I am still trying.

It has only been 1.5 warm months, and I have next to no advertisement... so too soon to call it. I am just bummed out that I've only done 1 event so far this year.

I will dump about $2K more in for the ad/graphics/flags etc, which is all I have remaining. If that does not improve things, then how much money I have at the end of the year will determine if I put it up for sale.

I may be way off, but it is looking like I am only using about 20-25% of my Ryzen 1700 processors. 5% each Instance. So plenty of CPU room, however I think my GPU is pushing the limit. LFS does need GPU, as my i3 machine cannot run LFS above 20fps since it has built in gpu.

I spent all my prep time trying to get one of the monitors to work, need to figure out why it turns off... something to do with windows, and the MST adapter I am using. It did this before, but I forgot how I fixed it.

Might spend the day tomorrow messing with the sims in the trailer, if weather is decent enough to warrant it.

I will first run it as it was end of last year, to make sure it still works that way. Windows and graphics updated, so who knows what may have changed. Then I will test latest patch versions. I already have like 15 LFS folders of different versions, and back up setups...

I am both eagerly awaiting and dreading the new graphics changes. It will look nicer, but.... will 4 to 6 players still run on one of my machines?


I got all the upgrades to the cockpit frames done, tomorrow will be wires and hopefully a test run. But I need to build one more piece out of wood to keep the sim seats snug in place in the trailer...

After waiting for parts to be delivered, weather etc...

I finally got the trailer in the driveway last night, and started taking the cockpits apart to swap out the tiny broken caster wheels with something bigger. The little ones were just not meant to take the load of people constantly getting in and out of the seat. My hands are raw and cut up from tuning so many threaded caster wheels and screws...


Will hopefully have it up and running tonight or tomorrow to get photos and once again start testing for the black screen log. I need to get it going because I have 3 events planned this weekend, and would like to do at least ONE of them...

Last edited by SimulatorRental.com, Tue, 15 May 2018 00:32.

I have not had a chance to test this editor, so maybe you did this.

I would like to see the blocks/polygon type objects editable like a box or lines in Sketchup. Push pull, move etc...

Thank You, I really Tetris'ed the heck out of everything to get it to fit. I have more fun doing that then playing most video games...

I have actually done 2 IndieGoGo projects. A few years ago, it was too difficult to get interest, and there wasn't much of a tangible product being created to give back to the backers, they had to either come to me, or me to them to get a reward, of using the trailer. Which also means only people in the USA would back it... thus knocking out most potential backers.

The grand Prix, has a Family Fun Zone, all rides, bounce houses, and games are free. The only thing vendors can charge for are products, like T Shirts, and food. And I think the one year I setup my slot-track there, 1 Slice of Pizza was like 12$ or something... it was silly expensive.

The good news is I have had a few company owners show interest in being a sponsor. So maybe....?!

The purpose of doing the Grand Prix would be for ADVERTISMENT to people attending, for doing future birthdays graduation and bachelor parties.


I am finding it difficult to do events with the trailer. Way more than anticipated...

I either need $3000 or more for vendor fees, they do not allow me to charge money, they have rules against games, they are full, they only want high-end-corporate sponsors, etc...

The M1 Concourse place I mentioned previously said they will no longer let me setup, because they prefer high end sponsors only, that pay high vendor fees. I suspect they are already in a deal with someone else to setup a race sim facility there.

I had expected to post photos from the first 2018 events, however the weather had other plans. Usually it is a warm spring here, but winter's ice and snow remain. So the trailer is STILL in winter storage...

I have not been able to set it all up indoors over winter either, so I still have no log files from black screens. If winter keeps holding on I may have try indoors anyway, if I can make room for all the monitors and wheels.

I am currently working on setting up the Simulator Trailer at the Detroit Grand Prix, however they will not allow me to charge people money to race and the vendor fee is usually about $6000. So... it will not happen unless I find a company to sponsor the vendor fee, in trade for a temporary trailer wrap or something...

If I can pull it off, LFS may get some public exposure in the USA, maybe even 1 minute on TV. (My slot car track was on TV for 1 minutes on the news, back in 2012).

I am working on some upgrades for the trailer to make it more comfortable inside, and give me some storage space. This means Air Conditioner, Rear Strip Door, and a false floor under the simulators to raise them up, and create some space for storage drawers.



I have also been doing some more 3D sketches of some wishful thinking for the future. I had a quote of $100,000 to $150,000 USD, to build it, so unless I get rich doing this, it will never get built, but it is fun to dream. (see video)

It is basically a mobile Man-Cave/Tiny House that incorporates all my hobbies, and minimized versions of all the spaces I use at home.

Last edited by SimulatorRental.com, Thu, 19 Apr 2018 04:09.

Auto or Manual?

For me, on Auto the FMB likes to spin out due to the jolt from downshifting. Using manual fixes this...

I am too lazy to go through replays... not even sure I have it setup to save them. None are really worth much, other then when the kids where wrecking, and one car stuck about 10 stories up in the area into an invisible wall for a while.


That BIG pedal is exactly what I want. I tried to buy some of those larger pedals, but they cost like 40-60 each, and playseat wouldn't do a discount on them for a bulk order They claimed shipping was too high to do a discount for 10-12 of them. They only had 3 or 4 in stock.

I am thinking about just 3d Printing my own to go over the metal plates that are on it now. (I have a Form2 3D Printer)

There are people that try to press the middle pedal to GO..........

The silly sign I posted on the wall for each seat, is needed...
But I need a new one, because no one looks at it.

So far at least 3/4 of the people that have raced in my trailer have no idea what the shifter paddles are for. Even those that drove to the event. Shifter Paddles are not in many (affordable) cars here, and it is not taught in drivers ed.

I have had adults, that very likely drove to the event, ask which pedals are gas and brake. And even after I told them, they still pressed wrong one.

And as I type this I am realizing that some kids may hear me say Paddles and Pedals... and they may sound the same to them with headphones on. "Press the pdls" lol

Last night was a 13~14 year old's birthday party, his 9~10 year old brother that sat on towels to see OVER the wheel, kicked everyone's butt, with a consistent 1:16 on Blackwood in the default FXR. He would have been faster if he wasn't constantly on the brake and gas in corners, and smoothed them out a bit.

Just did a private rental event today. All went well, even though it rained lol. I had the rear of trailer inside their garage so the rain and thunder did no harm.

There was no black screen during this event, so nothing logged.

After the event, I decided to make a video of the system starting up. To show that it is remembering the monitors, wheels, audio etc...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrOkP_JZ8kI

I wont stop doing the events with the trailer, but I am still pondering ways to do an indoor setup.
I only need a small space for the simulators.





And if it actually makes cash, I could secure/decorate it like it was a pit garage.

For me to get a garage I would first have to move into a place that I can build one. Living in a duplex-condo-complex type of thing... to many rules, and the garage the units have are not much taller then myself.

I have been trying to get my foot in the door for an indoor setup location, at least just for the winter months. I can setup the simulators in a flipping hallway if I have too. However this place is too busy upgrading, and charges too much... which is why I went with the trailer.

I only need 30to40 foot of floor space, 6 foot deep. Could use office walls to block it off.

Last event before I pull it all indoors, is on the 5th.
This will be a birthday party, that reserved a month ago.
I have been watching the weather, and the last few days it has gone from cloudy, to light rain, to rain showers... it has now just upgraded to thunderstorms. The rest of the days around it are light rain, so even bringing it all in the house is gong to suck.

However once it is in the house, I will be able to set it up and just let it run until it does the black screen routine, even if it takes 24 hours... thus catching the error in the log once and for all.

I better start making room in the basement, since there is hardly room to walk let alone put 8 race simulators.

Some of the servers are just people hosting from their PC. So THEIR internet connection may suck.

Try hosting your own, put AUSTRALIA in the name, maybe someone will join... who knows.

Current weather at the location of the event, which is a 2.5 hour drive away (and back), has the hours before the event and after the event with 0% rain. During the hours of the event, it is 50%... and it is currently snowing in near by areas, and a large blob of snow is heading toward my home, and I do no want to drive trailer in snow...

I may be calling this one off as well.
Too far of a drive to have no one show up at their event, due to cold temps and rain.

I guess it is time to pull it all out of the trailer and bring it in the house.

Maybe I can just have my startup .bat file rename the files...

Don't think I can have it automagically ++1 the file name/numbers though. Or at least I don't know how to do that with .bat

Pending the rain holding off long enough, I will be doing an 8 hour event tomorrow. 28th, 12 to 8pm EST. With 8 hours it is bound to go through the black screen routine, will let you know what it does.

6r7 is currently installed.