Quote from JJ72 :

I think faith is very logical, it's just a mechanism to stop us going nuts when we can't explain stuff with logic alone, so we can continue life instead of breaking into a terminal BSOD.

Heh, I seem to be doing all right with the concept. I'm fine with having a few unknowns out there, and I don't even think my chip has fried as a result. To me the lack of an apparent logical explanation is an invite to investigate, to find out more, not to invent explanations to keep your existing world-view intact. I know that's human nature, and it may have served us well through our development as a species, but I'd rather like for us to move on now.

Feel free to combine religion with Darwinism, but then it's no longer science, and for me worthless. For me to accept the concept of "God", you'll have to provide me with proof that there is such a thing. If you can't I'd rather leave the question unanswered and instead focus on things we can prove or disprove. I'm not going to take something on faith just because it's handy when explaining certain aspects of our own existence. That's just not rational behaviour.

Quote from somasleep :

It baffles me how rational people can seriously believe that the reason they think, feel, and believe what they do ultimately boils down to physics.

Why? What's rational about believing god just stepped in and made use think and feel? That's more or less the polar opposite of rational. How do you reason your way to such a conclusion when there's absolutely no evidence to support it. You're taking it on faith alone. That's not rational.

Quote from somasleep :

When you insist on only believing only in what can be proven scientifically, then not only does God not exist but human beings don't exist either.

Why does the fact that your feelings are ultimately caused by electrical signals whizzing though your brain make them any less real? You are real. Proven fact. You have feelings. Proven fact. Losing someone close to you hurts. Proven fact. Kissing a girl makes your naughty bits tingle. Proven fact. It's all real. Why does the ultimate cause of all these feeling make any difference whatsoever?

In statically typed languages all type information is available at compile time, so the compiler won't have to figure out any type information at run-time. It knows what instructions to use by the type you give your variables. Dynamic (script) languages like JavaScript and Python obviously work differently as they don't have static types to rely on. In these languages the interpreter has to check what type different variables have before it does any work on them.

The easiest way to figure out this stuff is to look at the disassembly of the code the compiler generates. In Visual Studio (C++) you can do this by setting a breakpoint by the code you're curious about and when execution breaks there, press ALT+8. Not sure how other IDEs do this.


As you can see, when working on ints all mov instructions operate on dwords (4 bytes). These values are moved from memory, into registers. The addition is done, and the result is moved back to memory.

The char code looks similar, but all mov instructions now operate on single byte pointers instead. Another difference is the movsx instruction, which in addition to working like a normal mov also converts the single byte var3 and var4 to 4-byte signed integers in the eax and ecx registers. Addition is then done on these 4-byte integers and the first byte of the result is put back in result2.

Quote from Dygear :

So to put it plainly, the CPU does not know, the program does.

Yes. Or more accurately, the compiler translates operations on ints and chars to the correct assembly instructions for operating on 4 byte and 1 byte integers respectively (on most platforms).

Quote from GoGen :

So, overheating is not the problem.

Sorry, but this does in fact sounds like a text-book case of overheating. The fact that you get graphical artefacts is a dead give-away (overheating graphics card). Random crashes are usually caused by faulty or overheating hardware (memory or CPU) as well. I haven't had LFS crash on me even once the last 3-4 years so I doubt it is to blame.

If you are indeed sure the computer is dust free, try to set it on "stilts" on a flat surface to make sure you get plenty of air circulation around the underside. Also make sure you plug it in so it doesn't try to conserve energy by powering down the fans. If the problem goes away, you know heat was the issue.

Glad to help. Applying "layout" is kind of a magic bullet to IE hacking in my experience. It's always the first thing I try if something's off in IE, which is most of the time.

Looks like an incarnation of the Peekaboo bug. The solution is usually to apply "layout" (a concept without basis in the CSS standard, but which changes the way IE renders a block) to the block wrapping the disappearing tags.

Try setting the CSS rule "height : 1%;" on .info-section, #main-content or some of the other wrappers you have there. That will force "layout" on that block, and will usually fix these kinds problems. Make sure you hide that CSS rule from other, proper browsers though, as they will actually obey the height rule and shrink the block. Conditional comments are useful for that in case you don't know how.

Last edited by wien, Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:08.

Quote from Maukkade :

Thats not ugly, its cute.

It's in fact so cute it got Clarkson featured on Cute Overload. Anything that's capable of doing that can't be wrong.

I'd say that's more of a general rule of posting though. If you're not adding value by posting, please STFU.

Heh, nothing to make you feel inadequate like seeing what the pros in your industry are capable of. It may be evil, non-accessible Flash, but it's just... so... pretty...

This thread sure took a weird turn. Not that is started out very well, the poor thing.

Just plug them both in and set up the pedals like usual in the controls screen. Just make sure you've set LFS to use "axis" clutch first.

Quote from The Moose :

LFS and NetKar Pro are the only sims with physics worth talking about.

Richard Burns Rally too IMO. Pretty poor on tarmac, but on dirt it's at least in the ballpark.

Why are bumps bad again? Isn't it better to bump a related thread than make a new one? As long as you actually add value to the bumped thread that is.

As usual though, how important is this? I mean honestly. Everyone keep bringing up all these silly little details that, lets face it, have little impact on the quality of LFS as a simulator. They would take Scawen quite a while to do something about though, so that makes me wonder if you really think this through before posting?

It should be blatantly obvious by now that Scawen's time is very limited. This isn't some huge company that has limitless time and funds so, keeping that in mind, is this really what you want him to work on? Is it that important? Wouldn't, say, a proper damage model be of more use? You're free to propose as many silly little things you like of course, but do you really expect them to be implemented or are you just wasting time?

Quote from Shotglass :

but why would he do it in such haste?

He's pumped up on adrenaline on account of sitting in an F1 car and having just done a pretty nice pass maybe? Additionally he has a lot of G and wind affecting him, making any movement less than elegant?

Quote from bbman :

The fact that he instantly knew what it was to be able to correct it is also suspicious...

What? He did it on purpose? It's not that unlikely he'd connect the two if he hit his elbow on the steering wheel and the car suddenly stopped accelerating.

I think some of you are looking a little too hard to find controversy where there is none. As has been said, if you look at the incident in slow motion, you see he's going for a tear-off but stopped himself as the limiter went on and then started fiddling with the wheel instead, exactly like he said himself. Why does it have to be more to it than that?

Quote from Noccy :

if u know someone is down on your inside and allready braking at his maximum.. u are the only one who can avoid an accident by turning in a bit later or taking a wider line.

I interpreted that as a "I knew he was behind me" rather than a "I knew he was beside me". I doubt he would have turned in like that if he knew Massa was going for a pass, much less announce it on TV.

Quote from Technique :

They have the same problem we do!

The answer is obvious. LFS needs a van with racing stripes!

...actually, that could be rather entertaining.

Quote from Dajmin :

Ah, but you see it's getting harder

Yeah, but then you have this stupid arms race going. Who will outsmart whom? The one with the most resources (free time) basically, and that won't be Scawen. And all that for an autocross layout?

Security through obscurity just doesn't work.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Then again, I bet anybody who's enough of an idiot to want to steal a layout would also likely put some more effort into obtaining it, maybe even just because you put the barrier in.

Yeah, an encryption scheme like that feels about as futile as DRMed media. Motivated individuals WILL get around whatever measures you put in place, and that makes it a wasted effort even trying in my opinion.

How valuable can a layout be anyway? Aren't we going a bit over the top with this whole IP thing here?

Quote from The Very End :

Of course I know there are people like this in every culture / nation, but IMO the soldiers with lowers morals is the american soldiers.

You sir, should get off your damn high horse. I seem to remember a big controversy not too long ago surrounding a Youtube video of Norwegian soldiers using stray dogs for target practice in Afghanistan. It's ****ing awful to watch what these people are doing, but try to keep a little perspective before you get all holier than thou.

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

When you run a 'high res' (not really by todays standards) windoze resolution I can't play the movies smoothly fullscreen;

That's an artefact of Youtube not using hardware acceleration (overlay) in full screen if I'm not mistaken. I'm guessing it's a limitation of going through Flash as Stage 6 didn't work that way.