Quote from Racer X NZ :

A bit like the global warming THEORY ( prepaires for flaming ) if anyone disagrees then their a heretic and a complete idiot with no knowledge.

I see you have the same misconception of what "theory" means as creationists.

When someone has just thought of a nice idea, it's called a hypothesis or a conjecture. Then, if there is experimental data that supports it (and a fair amount of it), and none that contradicts it, it can be called a theory. The theory may be uprooted later, when new data becomes available, or when another theory appears that explains the facts better.

So, when you say that global warming is a theory, there is no need to duck the flames: there is indeed a lot of evidence that supports it. There are scientists who have a different explanation for the facts, and they may be proved right.

(And on both sides of the debate you will also find complete idiots with no knowledge. Like Alex Jones.)

Quote from duke_toaster :

Quote from JTbo :

But also as side effect it brings often good, it builds individual self confidence they would lack otherwise and thus helps them achieve more than they would otherwise in life, some religions also serve safety net and also keep people from killing each other.

That's often argued, but that generally isn't the case.

Yes, from a scientific viewpoint, it is the case.

Evolutionary theory says that any stable characteristic that is found in a species must be beneficial to its survival, or has been in the past. Religion has been around for a long time, so it must have given an advantage.

Caveats:

• This does not imply that it is beneficial for you as an individual. You can use the same reasoning on some other phenomena, such as infanticide, cannibalism and rape.
  
• Nor does it imply that religious views are factually correct. (Phew!)
  
• And neither does it mean that it will continue to be an advantage to us in the future. (So it might still be a good idea to get rid of it.)
  
• Richard Dawkins has argued that religion could be merely a side-effect of some other trait, and that it's the other trait that brings the advantage for survival. But I found his arguments weak, and they have been countered by David Sloan Wilson here. (Other interesting discussions on the topic can be found here.)

Quote from Mazz4200 :

So, can anyone explain the mystery of where all my socks have gone ? I bought six new pairs last month, and now i can only find two.

Just keep wearing the remaining two. Sooner or later they will lead you to the place where the others hide.

This suggestion is not about a certain change to LFS. Rather, it's about a mechanism that will make a number of other suggestions possible, such as:

• Mandatory use of a standard setup.
  
• Enforce particular settings that have been prescribed for the league (e.g. standard tires or gear ratios).
  
• Limit setup options for road-going cars.
  
• Lock out particular settings that are deemed unfair or unrealistic (e.g. hybrid tires on road tracks, low brake force).
  
• Enforce handicaps for individual drivers.

The general way how this would work is:

1. When the driver leaves the garage to join the race, LFS sends the setup to the server.
   
2. The server passes the setup data to an external add-on (using InSim).
   
3. The add-on checks the setup against the local rules.
   
4. If the setup is not acceptable, the add-on spectates the driver, and sends a message to explain what is wrong with the setup.

The advantage of this construction is that Scawen doesn't have to look at each suggestion, decide if he wants to program it, and spend time making it. The same holds for other ideas in this area that may come up in the future.

Possible extensions:

• The add-on modifies the setup to make it compliant, and sends it back to the driver.
  
• In the list of servers, you see a flag that indicates that the server uses setup validation.

Wow, one thread, so many discussions. Hard to make a choice.

Quote from Racer Y :

Y'all think Tom Cruise and John Travolta will star in a buddy comedy together?

Naww. Cruise looks like the kind of guy who hasn't yet grasped the concept of humor. And never will.

Quote from Polyracer :

But for me you know, God really blew it when yet again, when I was even 11 years old for chrisake, - I did not get a bicycle for Christmas.

Then your belief failed at the first hurdle. If you are "true believer" material, you can keep your faith against all factual evidence. You can even say that it's easy to see there's no Santa Claus, yet that the Lord's existence is unquestioned.

You failed the test. Congrats, and welcome to Skeptics Anonymous.

Quote :

I don't know but it scares me if I look at the changes, and the rate of acceleration in the changes in all things around the world, I honestly believe that we have well past the point of no return, and we are all dead men walking, I reckon 25 years tops, but law and order such as it is, will break down long before then.

Then things have improved lately.

In the 70s it was said we'd die of poverty because we used up Earth's resources, in 20 years' time.
In the 80s folks believed that "they" would drop the bomb soon, and the radiation would kill us all within 10 years.
Now mankind's life expectancy has risen to 25 years. Things are looking up.

Quote from Horseman :

Of course, how could the devs want their product to develop at a faster pace in graphics, physics, or any other area, with other very skilled programmers working for them?

Because, to put it bluntly, it would mean either working in a sweatshop, or running one.

Becky, Albieg, please... Count to 10, take a deep breath, DON'T HIT THAT REPLY BUTTON YET, have a good night's sleep, re-read the posts.

I think the two of you have different definitions of "environmentalism" (scholarly vs. woman-in-the-street, so to speak). If you want to continue the discussion, could you show some more sensibility, and less sensitivity? Don't go on shouting from a distance.

Quote from Linsen :

I think if you read more closely, you'll find that most people are complaining about how the whole pricing scheme all comes together.

Yep. Normally you pay a fixed price for a product, and a subscription fee for a service. Racing sims started out as products: they were off-the-shelf software, where all production cost was made in advance, and you paid a one-time fixed price to own it. When online play was introduced there also were some services included (servers, and stats sites like LFSW). The manufacturer has costs to run these, so it's reasonable if you pay a subscription fee.

Until now all racing sims were fixed-price, and I think that's logical because the main production cost is in developing the software, not running the servers. With iRacing I can imagine that they provide extra services, such as stewarding, or organising races where you can win a prize. But iRacing is subscription-based, which would mean that the main costs lie in the services. That's weird IMHO.

And if you think the price is reasonable, compare it with using LFS since S1 was out (August 2003). It's cost you $60 or so, but iRacing would have cost you around $700.

Both are at fault IMHO.

Monty was trying to race you, which he shouldn't have done because he was 2 laps down. He was clearly faster than you, but not so much faster that he could overtake anywhere on the track without disturbing your race. The only place to safely overtake you was on the main straight -- which he did. But he made a couple of attempts in the previous lap which were wrong, and which he should have aborted earlier than he did.

On the other hand, you could have known that he was faster, and should have seen him coming in your mirrors. When he overtook, you left your line and hit him.

Quote from Hankstar :

I presume you were being hyperbolically Clarksonesque.

I didn't know Becky was into Clarksonianism. Isn't that a cult, too? I mean, worshiping a guy named J.C. who is part of a Trinity. A bit of Buddhism thrown in, always talking about a "Great Vehicle"... Got to be a cult.

Quote :

don't listen to the dreadlocked, taupe-clad stinky hippies who chain themselves to walruses to protest Robbie Williams' continuing musical career.

Hey man, stopping Williams' music is vitally important for saving our planet.

Quote from Riders Motion :

Can you see the top speed you did with this tool? I'm currently testing my gearing and would like to know the exact and mazimum speed I reach in a replay.

No, there is no readout of the maximum values. But I don't see how this can be useful -- what counts is the laptime, and how much time you win or lose on a certain stretch of track. Anyway, if you want to know the max speed for a certain gearing, then I think VHPA (Bob Smith's setup analyser) can be of help.

Quote from xaotik :

Statistically speaking, all the previous ones mentioned were likely Buddhists in a previous incarnation.

Equally likely, they were Christian, Jew or Muslim in an even earlier incarnation. Therefore, they have never been reincarnated...

Quote from Becky Rose :

If it is OK to bash Scientology then it must also be OK to bash some other religions too, like Christianity, and that new one Environmentalism.

It's OK to bash Scientology, not because of what they believe, but because of the way they treat their dropouts and try to silence the opposition. If the Catholics were still burning heretics at the stake they'd deserve to be bashed, too.

BTW, I think DDoS'ing them is a childish act. Not heroic, and not effective. Better to publish their dirty tricks, like Karin Spaink (the Dutch woman mentioned in the first post) did.

Quote from xtm :

That's what I was looking for, sorry for the confusion. Still maybe something like this in cursor mode? The tooltip box will still hover under the mouse pointer.

Sorry, but no.

I agree that it would be a nicer, more readable display than what LRA has now. But this will be quite hard to make, for technical reasons. It can not be a classical tooltip, because it's not text-only. Therefore it must be a normal window that follows the mouse pointer. That would mean a lot of redrawing as the mouse moves, and that will make LRA sluggish and unresponsive.

Don't forget that you also have to pay for extra content. The $156 a year will give you 60 "dollars" of credits, which equals 3 cars or tracks... Makes LFS seem like the bargain of the century.

Given the choice of cars and tracks, it's targeted at the North American part of the simracing market. That'll be a "niche inside a niche inside a niche" market.

Say, doesn't the iRacing logo look remarkably like a racer who is being mugged?

Quote from DragonCommando :

I think the only way LFS can move forward is to start removing all of the variables that alow people to make unrealistic setups for there cars, untill then, you will still get people who don't want to learn the right way. And that is what holds LFS back from being the best of the best in sims.

You know, I get an icy feeling when I read words like that. I see visions of re-education camps for dissenters who deny the Sublime Truth (tm), and who try to lead us away from the Glorious Path to Racing Paradise.

Quote :

Calling GT4 a sim is a joke

Sure. Yet you failed to see the irony.

Quote from Bongle :

No, I tried this today, which is what prompted me to post the thread. I wanted a very diverse field, so I did that exact thing, but once I was in the race, I noticed that I was passing the RACs (at least one of which should have been a pro) while driving a gimped XFG. Then I added them in a different order with the last one being a pro, and I was getting killed by everyone (even the UF1s ).

That's strange, because LFS can do it. In the overtaking lessons you race against 1 "Ok" AI, 1 "Quick" and 1 "Pro". And it's not just the label: there is a big difference in speed.

Quote from DragonCommando :

In the end, LFS is a sim, so a wheel and pedals is the right way to play it. Just because the devs have been nice enough to put other control methods in doesn't mean they have to keep unrealistic features to make keyboard players happy.

Yes they do. To stay alive, LFS needs to attract a steady stream of new players. (Licensed players won't produce new income for the devs until S3 is out.) Many newbies will start as mouse or kb drivers -- you can't expect them to buy a FFB wheel just to try out LFS. And if the learning curve is too steep, they will give up and go to the competition.

<offtopic>
Don't get me started about LFS being a sim. You use it for your enjoyment, so it's a game. It would be a sim if professional racers would use it for practice, but there are none AFAIK. On the other hand, Lewis Hamilton is rumoured to use GT4 to learn F1 tracks, so GT4 is a sim.
</offtopic>

Another point: It's very easy to cheat, if you have a wheel.

If LFS were to fix the brake force to, say 800, and I want it at 600, then I can tell the Logitech Profiler to scale the brake pedal input down to 75%. Presto, I'm back at the current situation where I can stomp on the pedal and still be safe from blocked wheels.

(And if your driver software doesn't do this for you, you can always place a carefully chiseled piece of wood under the pedal.)

Simple suggestion: Let Shift-R restart the training lesson.

In the overtaking lessons, once you've hit an AI car, you know you have to abort and start again. Currently, you need to press Esc and click the mouse twice. A faster way would be to Shift-R, just like in a single-player race against AI.

When patch Y was due, Scawen said that he had plannned to program awareness of other cars into the AI. But that large number of bug reports had made that impossible (because patch Y had to be ready before Christmas). He estimated it would only be a couple of days' work to add it.

Based on that, I expect we will see this last bit of AI improvement in the next patch. (It's only my guess, though. Nobody knows for sure if it will be.)

Quote from xtm :

One thing I would like to see implemented though is a Cursor Mode, similar to F1perfview. At the moment you have to move your mouse to the precise point on the graph to get it's coordinates, whereas in f1perfview you only need to move it along the x-axis and it automatically tracks the values for you.

I'm not sure what you mean here. When I look at the cursor mode in F1PerfView, I see several differences with LRA:

• The cursor position does not change when the mouse moves: you need to click or drag the mouse to move it.
  
• Dragging the mouse moves the cursor. (In LRA, dragging is for zooming in.)
  
• You see the X and Y values at the cursor. (Note: LRA also has these values, but in a different way. The Y value is in the Legend pane, the X value is in the track map pane. There is also the "Tooltips" option.)

Which of these would you like for LRA?

Quote from AndroidXP :

1) You gain lots of consistency by making sure most corners don't require any special attention to the brakes. Besides that, it's also much less tiring/stressing to be able to just mash the brake with little risk of damage, which can play a big role for your mental performance in longer races.

OK, point taken. I had been thinking of hotlapping, but in long races the consistency is a big bonus.

Quote from Bluebird B B :

You want to keep this settings? Although it takes away some(for me a lot) of the fun of racing?

Why does it spoil your fun? You can choose to set a high brake force, and control the car in your style. Or do you mean that you have less fun because you're slower than others, because you use a high brake force (which is harder to drive)?

A high brake force may seem closer to RL, but RL drivers have an advantage over sim-racers: they can control their brake input by the force that their left foot puts on the pedal, whereas sim-racers must brake through the foot's position (which is harder to control precisely). Next to that, RL racers also get feedback by feeling the G forces. RL racers have it easy, methinks.

Quote :

Today i received a set for fbm with brakeforce set as low as 565nm and i though 700nm was already to weak and difficult to get lockups on.. Yet, people are incredably fast with it.

Well, you can get the same result with 700Nm and the pedal at 80%. (FYI, the FBM's default setup has brake force at 541Nm...)

What is all the fuss about? LFS still has brake help, so why should this brake force thing matter?

Does having a low brake force give you a competitive advantage? I don't think so. If you want to be fast, you need to modulate the brakes. If you don't, you will get locked wheels because
(a) downforce decreases when the speed drops,
(b) the car gets lighter when going over bumps in the track,
(c) engine braking is added when you shift down,
(d) tyre grip decreases when the tyres wear out or overheat.

If you set the brake force so low that you avoid locked wheels under all circumstances, you need to brake much earlier, and will be several seconds per lap slower.

If LFS would enforce a minimum brake force, it does not make a difference for the fast guys. But LFS will get harder for the others: drivers who are learning, or are less talented, or drive with mouse/kb (unless they switch on brake help, assuming it's still there). Some of those may give up on LFS, and buy a different sim.

What will you gain?

Very very VERY nice.

Suggestions:

• I would like to see the same sans-serif font used throughout the app. Different styles and sizes are good, but IMHO all text controls should use the same basic font.
  
• Show the names of racers who have finished be shown in a different colour.
  
• Show the label (number + name) of the 'focused' car in a different colour.
  
• Higher maximum zoom. (EDIT: never mind, I saw the explanation.)

Nitpicking:

• When you drag the mouse and move it outside the window, the applet does not catch the button-release event. (Might be a Flash quirk.)
  
• Some characters in driver names are shown as blocks. (Missing from the charset, I guess.)
  
• Why can't you focus on a driver when he is pitting?
  
• After a race has finished, some cars carry a yellow block. It probably means he's been flagged, but after the finish that's no longer useful.
  
• When 'Show message log' = NO, the system messages are still shown.
  
• Bug: the applet occasionally loses its background (i.e., the track map) for a few seconds. This happens when I click a couple of times in the names list.

Wild ideas:

• Ability to read an MPR.
  
• Log the race history, so you can skip back to an earlier moment in the race. (Okay, I guess I just want rewindable replays. :tilt