So uh - why can't LFS sound like that to begin with!? You'd think a driving simulator could sound as realistic as video editing software, lol.

Priceless

It's easy to get around it at my high school, since I know the admin username and password - so I just log in with those instead of my account No program restrictions, no site restrictions, no anything restrictions.

Quote from DeKo :

some of it must be computer animated, since when did tyres roll up a hill after a slight tap?

Yes, they were weighted. That's the ONE thing people point out saying - IT'S FAKE!!! But I mean, come on, think about it. If they weren't weighted, and they really were supposed to be rolling on their own, do you really think they'd have made such an obvious error as rolling uphill? Common sense people!

Anyway, if I recall correctly, it took them something like 6 months to come up with and shoot the thing. It is 100% real and 100% made of parts from the car other than the board that passes through the door at one point. Took them something like 500 takes. There is absolutely no computer animation involved. That's the reason I consider this one of the best commercials ever made.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Schools don't need the internet anyway. You are meant to be learning, not 'surfing'.

Tell that to EVERY engineering student at Virginia Tech, who is required to have a tablet computer. They may as well REQUIRE that you play online games during class. How else do you think I make posts on here throughout the day!?

They did make a new rule this semester though - no "inappropriate" desktop backgrounds that would be unbecoming of a good engineer! So at least the guys are less distracted in class now...

Quote from U.S. Racer :

Just recently 217 women and children were taken out of a Texas polygamist camp because the camp was abusing girls as young as 16.

If I'm not mistaken, I think the latest number was over 400 children...

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

Tristan, I think you need to get your helmet painted, to help you pick up those lost tenths every lap.

:hide:

No - actually - that's why it's white. If it were any other color, it would absorb more light, which means that over the course of the race, the total weight of his helmet would increase, leading to slower lap times.

I am amazed that no-one here has posted what has to be one of the greatest commercials ever made... especially since it was aired in the UK.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xcr6ZIVi-Vg

As far as cases. I cannot emphasize how great the Lian-Li case I have is. It's absolutely wonderful - and it keeps everything nice and cool. Plenty of room too (though it get's a bit cramped when you have 5 hard drives and every PCI slot filled... but still. SO EASY to work with - all thumbscrews, mobo tray slides out, and it's very well built. Just FYI.

Quote from Clownpaint :

Based on all of the above information I have come to the scientific conclusion that LFS simulates something nearer to overdosing on anaesthetisers and racing a caravan. All of the evidence points towards this. I have my bed and wardrobe here with family going about their daily lives in the back, and I can't feel shit apart from in my hands.

edit: Reality sliding away in a box could potentially be a side effect of OD'ing.

Touche, my friend.

Forum whore | Online occasionally...

Quote from h3adbang3r :

Keep in mind that he is in Scotland so he cannot buy from Newegg.

Yeah - people always say that - but I just link to that site because it's easy for me and it's just for them to find out about the product I'm suggesting, since they'll be buying from whatever site they choose.

By the way, I see that you linked to a SATA CD drive. Can you tell me if those are any good? I ask only because I used to hear that they were full of problems somehow. Have those issues been resolved, or were they never a big deal to begin with? I'd love to eliminate that stupid ribbon cable I have at current.

Well, I'll start you off with a few recommendations:

RAM - Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800 4- ... 9 ($29.00 after rebates!)

HDD - Seagate Baracuda SATA 320 Gb HDD

Corsair 520W modular PSU (mayb ... r but built like a tank!)

That ought to get the ball rolling...

Quote from JTbo :

Driving well then.
You are then good driver when you can tell about everyhing what will happen in 10 seconds ahead 300 meters range around you and when you can use this information to adjust your driving. It does not matter even you would win F1 champion, but on road you are bad driver until you can do that.
And there is even more to it, understanding risk areas, knowing what is right speed to situation, as we know speed limits mean absolutely nothing, those are only to help you drive the speed where you won't get fines.

If you can't give space or back off, you are bad driver.

But most important is skill of foreseeing upcoming situations and possible solutions to them + ability to choose best of solutions without too much of thinking.

When I'm driving, I always play "what if?", I see kid on sidewalk, what if kid jumps to road, now I need to know is there someone behind me, up coming cars, what is my stopping distance from that speed, possibilites to steer side and avoid kid, all these must be thought before I'm in range where I should make actions if that scenario happens and there is no time to think then, that is why I play it constantly, I know always cars behind me, front of me, people on sidewalks, behind parked cars, estimating their positions if I don't see them at the moment.

There has not been true surprises due this, even I have had car joining from sideroad at less than 50 meters front of me while I was driving 80kph etc. It was unlikely, but I had played already what if scenario for it and solution, had not much trouble avoid him, but surely scared hell out of me, how stupid can some drivers be, don't they think at all?

That is absolutely, positively the core of being a good driver.

R34king, you need to pay attention to what JTbo is saying. I don't care if you are Michael Schumacher, there is absolutely no way for you to be able to predict what other cars will do on the road without experience. Over the past few years, I have learned a lot of things on the road, but by far the most valuable skill is the almost "psychic" ability to tell what other drivers are going to do before they do it. This is something that is IMPOSSIBLE to know without first hand experience - and lots of it.

You learn to tell things like whether a car is going to change lanes just by how they are tracking, or which cars that are merging onto the highway are going to cut over to the fast lane just by how they're following the cars ahead of them. Sometimes you can't even explain it. More and more frequently, you'll find yourself avoiding cars doing crazy things before they do them. I good driver knows what others are going to do before THEY do.

Every so often I'll be a passenger in another car, and we'll be catching up to someone in another lane and I'll be looking at them and just say, "I think that car's going to move over," and then he does and cuts us off. You won't even be able to explain it.

I'm tempted to test how this would work in my 98 automatic. There is a shift-lock button, but you CAN shift into reverse while driving forwards if you press the button. However, there's that half second delay between moving the shifter and the transmission actually shifting, so I've always had the time to go "OH #&*$!" and knock it into neutral. Curious to see if it would actually try and shift though if I left it...

Dude - seriously. UltraVNC. I've gotten it to work on my school computers.

Quote from AlienT. :

Thanks mate, hmm if I don't need 2 graphics cards then maybe I don't need SLI? and could go for a less expensive mobo?

The only games I play are race sims (got almost all the half decent ones loaded) Race 07 seems to give me the slowest FPS with my current laptop, BF2, Age of Empires and Eve Online.

Yeah. Those games will be DESTROYED by just one GTS. Unless you're playing the latest and greatest DX10 games, you don't need anything more than ONE of the latest and greatest cards. You could go with a lesser mobo, but TBH, I think you should just stick with an SLi board. They might be more expensive, but they're also more geared towards performance and overclocking... and they tend to be better built.

EDIT: That's a nice alternative though (the one posted above...)

I just hope Scawen reads this thread and comes out with something like, "Well, we were going to wait a little longer, but after reading this thread... SURPRISE! 17 new cars! 4 new tracks! Weather! Dynamic environments! Have a great day!"

...or not. Either way

Quote from AlienT. :

Hmm, I was thinking of basing my system around this.

Asus Striker II Formula nForce ... -Express DDR2 Motherboard (can't seem to remove the underline sorry)

Gettin a Core™2 Quad Q6*** and sticking on two 8800 GTS GPU's

Also 2 x 160G SAGA hardrives with no raid, one for running vista (64 bit) and one for storing my small number of files? (I don't need a mega HDD)

Antec Nine Hundred Ultimate Gaming Case, with a decnt 600w power supply.

Still to check out power supplies and cooling, I have read a couple of reviews on the mobo, some folks have advised the non OEM cooling may be required if it is overclocked as it may run at quite a high temp?

Oops forgot about decent quality RAM 4GB to help with the vista 64. Is it easily possible to run XP on a seperate HDD if I get peeved of with Vista?

What do you guys think of this, don't be harsh i've just started looking

Sounds like a good start. I'd look at some Corsair XMS2 memory... and possibly a Corsair PSU - though they're a bit expensive.

I'd go with Seagate Barracuda hard drives. Excellent quality. But you really should look at getting two 320Gb drives.

You could easily run XP on the other hard drive. Then on boot you can select which drive you want to run off of.

I don't know why you'd really want two 8800GTS cards. Aside from requiring a lot of juice, that's just going to make it more difficult to cool your case - not to mention make it louder. Besides - I don't know what you'd REALLY need two of them for. One will run almost all games in existence without any issues. If it's for Crysis, then you're going to need more like 17 of them... lol. Save the money from one of those and get the 320 Gb HDDs and a nice PSU AND a nice aftermarket cooler for the CPU.

I'm thinking along the same lines as STROBE.

The simple fact of the matter is that anything in life, no matter how good, gets boring after awhile. What we really need is bigger changes than we've been seeing lately. I'm sure I speak not only for myself when I say that things like "realistic clutch modeling" are great, but are only a BIG DEAL when not much else has come around lately. It's time for something MAJOR. I'm tired of pretending that these tiny improvements are making a HUGE difference just to keep myself excited.

Not quite sure what you mean with the whole full-screen thing but not stretched across both monitors, but whatever it is, you should be able to do whatever you need to do using the standard video drivers. With my old nVidia drivers I can generate one large desktop across both screens, clone one on the other, create two separate desktops... I think you can do what you want without needing SoftTH stuff...

Quote from Jakg :

The issues I had were because I didn't know wtf I was doing or buying when I started - people like at my PC and say "oooo I wish I had one like that" but I don't - I wish I could start again with all the money i've spent, and have something much better.

Yeah. Lucky for me I had my friend who is a computer genius. He's got like 17 file servers in his home and stuff, lol. Every time I decided on a new part, I'd get his approval first - which usually involved a long lecture as to why or why not it was a good choice.

Quote from AlienT. :

Good advice I think.

This and the fact I can't be bothered building it because I just know I would get myself into no end of hastle has led me to just get a ready made system......damn I just want to play on it not have an intimate relationship with its internal organs....what was I thinking

True. You also get the benefit of an easy-to-take-advantage-of warranty.

TBH though, every computer we've had has died... except mine so far. My dad's been through 5 Dell laptops over the years... my mom's Dell Dimension died a few weeks ago (don't even know why and can't get it working.) The HP which is the family desktop computer stopped working at one point, but reseating everything internally got that working again.

What Jakg said might apply to his computer, but that doesn't necessarily mean your computer would be the same. If you pick the right parts you won't have that problem. I have none of those issues save for maybe the CPU running a bit hot, but that has more to do than the environment (dorm room with no A/C with windows facing sun - get's up to 76 sometimes.)

Also, having an "intimate relationship with the internal organs" is useful for more than just geekyness. You can so much more easily fix problems that occur if you know how it's put together. That and it makes for easy upgrading. But either way is a good route I guess.

I've always found it silly that if I took two aluminum coke cans and glued them together at a 45 degree angle and tried to sell it as a symbol of the modern world for $5,000,000 people would look at me as if I was crazy. BUT if some well known modern art designer did the same thing, claiming it was a symbol of our modern day and age, it would be called a masterpiece, be bought for 25,000,000 and displayed in the Smithsonian.

WTF >_<

Quote from AlienT. :

Very good job on building that. If you were to buy a system with similar specifications ready built how much extra would that have cost? What i mean is how much have you saved by building it yourself?

Jack has convinced me to build a new system.....so I'm in forum Troll mode

Also I'm just so tempted to copy your spec...!

An equivalent Dell XPS system will cost about the same (+/- 50gbp) HOWEVER, you cannot do such things as choose specific motherboards, cases, etc... when you order from Dell. Not only that, but some of the parts in that computer will not be of the same quality as the parts you'd get by building it yourself. Granted, it will work no problem, but it's more likely to die earlier than a custom-built rig.

Of course, the best part of building a computer yourself is actually building it. It's lots of fun (after the first time) and you get great satisfaction - and gain much better troubleshooting skills.

Again though, the benefit of building yourself is being able to choose specific parts from specific manufacturers for the computer that you would not be able to do otherwise, meaning you get a PC more tailored to your needs...