New version (0.4) has been added to the first post.

Quote from WarBeer :

I find that watching good drivers doesn't always show the actually path, due to lag.

Get hotlap replays of the fastest drivers from LFS World. SPR replays don't have lag problems, and have a much higher "sampling rate" of driver inputs.

Additionally, you can use one of the replay analysers to study the replays in even more detail.

Quote from Sabonius :

I`ve pointed it with arrows in attached picture

i think it would be useful to show them (if it`s possible, of course)

Sorry, but there is no way to get that data.

The track data itself is not readable outside LFS, because the file format is not public. There are two "extracts" of track data that can be used by external programs: the PTH files (which LRA uses), and the SMX files (which Analyse For Speed uses). The SMX files contain more detail, but not so much that you can see where the curbstones are.

Quote from xpjames :

Maybe some official corner names should be implimented. Maybe we could have a suggestions thing and then a vote at the end of it all to see what we think fits best.

Read this thread. And there have been many more attempts before that.

If there is one thing the LFS community can't agree on, it's corner names.

Quote from Jakg :

IMO, if you crash, you should stay - i understand that on the oval it's dangerous coming across a stationary car at 200 MPH, but you had a yellow flag and a mini-map, and you also have to remember that there is always a way around.

[...]

Even so, its another area of skill thats required, i HATE the "Shift+S n00b" atitude, provided the driver stays still, then the onus is on the driver to avoid the potential accident

That's only true when you're racing with a field of experienced drivers. If you are amidst a pack of cars and at the front someone crashes, you need to lift (a bit) so you're able to avoid the crash. You also need to rely on the ones behind you to do the same.

But at the level I'm racing on, I can't rely on them. When there is a crash, I lift the throttle, but more often than not someone behind just crashes into me and I become part of the scrapheap. Maybe they're inexperienced; maybe they suffer a big fps drop and lose control; or maybe they have that "do or die" attitude. In those circumstances, Shift-S is the best way out of a crash - that is, the way that minimises the loss of racing fun. YMMV.

An SPR file contains the driver inputs (steer, brakes, etc.). A RAF file contains the car's state (speed, position, etc.). To generate a RAF file from an SPR all the physics calculations must be done again, and LFS is the only program that can do this.

This is also the reason why you can not view replays that were made with "old" versions of LFS i.e., versions from before the last change in the physics.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

If you have an nVidia card and are at all interested, you owe it to yourself to pick up some red/blue glasses for $5 and check it out.

Anyone know where these glasses can be bought? I asked at a couple of computer/games store in town, but no success. All I got was blank stares, or responses like "yeah, they were popular a few years ago but they weren't much good and they don't work anymore with modern games".

Quote from Sabonius :

i think it woul be useful to draw borders in a window, which shows driving line

I don't think I understand what you mean.

If you want a window that shows the driving line of the car on the track, there is one. Press F7 to show it.

If that window does not show the boundaries of the track, then you need to install the *.pth files. The files are included in the .zip file; copy them to directory lfs\data\smx. (Also explained in the LRA manual.)

Or did you mean something else?

Quote from farcar :

At the moment, it is beneficial for idiots to bounce off the walls around South City, drive straight over the final chicane at some AS and FE combos.

I agree. I've come to hate FE because the only way to be fast is by flying the car over the kerbs in the chicanes, in a way that should instantly kill the suspension. In LFS it's still risky, and it often causes mayhem in online races.

In a technical sense, any language filter is doomed to fail. You can take the 4-letter word of your choice, distort it a bit, bind it to a key, and go about swearing merrily without being caught.

In a practical way though, a filter may have some use. It can serve to signal that respectful behaviour towards fellow racers is expected. It's a barrier, however slight, for gratuitous use of bad language. But there are two things to note.

First is that the filter shouldn't be the only measure, else it will be an empty shell. It should also be mentioned in the rules, and there should be a place where you can complain about someone's conduct (same as when you report a wrecker).

Second is that the filter must not be too blunt, else it will backfire. If someone is banned at his first 'wtf', he may be tempted to come back for revenge (since dodging the filter is easy).

(Personally, I see no use in language filters. I prefer to look at the intention, not at the form. My kids, 4 and 6 years old, hear me swear often. I don't mind; I don't think it's "language not suitable for children". And I also don't mind if they swear. But I'd hate it if they saw me being mean to someone else, just as I won't allow them to intentionally hurt someone.)

Quote from [RCG]Boosted :

yea but its only good with wheel.
with mouse / keyboard it just has a way too sensitive steering.

You really need to tweak the setup for mouse/keyboard driving.
- Lower the steering lock. In the Control Panel, set a low mouse motion speed.
- Experiment with the setting for parallel steer. A high setting makes the car twitchy, in my experience.
- Set the diff-lock setting low. Start at 3 or so, then take it higher if you can handle it. WR sets have it at the maximum (20), but that makes it hard to accelerate out of turns without spinning.

You can't get setups from replay files. Many people do not want to publish their setups. The setup data is in the file, but LFS applies encryption to prevent unwanted access to the setup.

The good news is that there is a whole site with WR setups, the Team Inferno site. People who have done a WR (and are willing to share their setup) post it there.

Quote from NoQuarter :

1) If you wreck, but are still mobile, why not soldier on back to the pits, get repaired, and rejoin instead of exiting to the pits. [...] The only time I ever exit out is when I've rolled onto the roof, then I exit to spectator and wait for the next race.

If I wreck, I usually exit to pits, because
- I don't want to become an obstacle that the other drivers crash into (especially on narrow tracks like SO and FE).
- the sooner my car is repaired, the sooner I can try to score a few points by setting a good laptime.

The only time I continue racing is when the podium is still within reach (and the car not really limping), or when I've already set a very good laptime.

Quote :

2) If you do exit to pit and then go back onto the track, why are you pressuring a driver who is still in the running? Rude, rude behavior.

I must admit I probably have "pressured" a driver who was still in the race, but it was a driver who was several seconds slower than me (and I'm not exactly an alien myself). Why? Because I wanted to set a good laptime, he was making that impossible, so I was looking for an opportunity to pass him.

A minor niggle for the MRT sound: At high revs there is a low-frequency oscillation, a bit like the chirping of crickets. (Though at Fern Bay this adds to the atmosphere )

Quote from thisnameistaken :

That's a good point in terms of the training lessons. The default sets might be a bit of a nightmare, but they do a good job of emphasising the character of each of the cars.

For mouse users, the default sets make the cars practically undriveable. (At least, all of the higher-powerd cars.)

Quote from danowat :

Surely the simplest soloution would be to make the colours user-definable, like you have done with the UI, that way people can tune it to their preference, as I think it will be a VERY difficult task to please everyone with these colours.

An even simpler solution is to use different shapes, as well as colours, to distinguish between the cars on the map. For example:
- Triangle = car that is ahead of you
- Filled Square = car that is behind you
- Outlined Square = car that is more than 1 lap behind you

Then it wouldn't matter which type of colour-blindness you have. And it may also be useful for folks who can see all colours, but for whom the shape is a better visual cue.

Hah, if it weren't for those silly FIA regulations, F1 teams would have ditched the drivers long ago. Computers can drive faster, more reliably, and they don't ask for multi-million dollar wages.

F1 should be the pinnacle of motorsport: top engineering AND top programming, dammit!

Quote from windmouse :

If the program can show data for all wheels in one graph (as the average) and can show average of values over certain period of time, i will be completely happy.

Average of all wheels will be in the next version (and 2 other averages: of the front wheels, and of the rear wheels). For the average over a certain period of time, see my response to FL!Ps first remark, below.

Quote from FL!P :

- It would be great to have an editable list of values to display in the legends instead of just showing the value of the selected graph. There would be a menu where you'd select which parameters to show independently from graphs (for example you could select speed, throttle, brakes and steer even though you'd just display the speed and throttle graphs), and you'd see in the legends the value of each of these parameters at the point where the vertical cross-hair is.

The legend would not be the right place to show this amount of data, because then it would be too wide for a "sidebar" pane.

But I can envision a "stats" window containing a table of numerical data, one row for each loaded lap. The columns in the table would be user-selectable, chosen from the same list as the graphs. You would also have an option to display either the value at the crosshair position, or the average, minimum or maximum value over the selected part of the track.

Quote :

- It would be very handy to be able to define and save segments of a track. You'd click and drag in one graph to select a segment of the track, for example, then select Save Segment in a menu and be prompted to give the segment a name. Segment separators would be shown in the track map, driving line display, and graphs (probably as bars) and clicking on one of these segment separators in a map would select the segment that starts at that point (and scroll the graphs accordingly). Of course, the time spent by each driver in that segment would also be displayed in the legends. And the icing on the cake would be to have several possible sets of segments for a same track. So for example you could define a set of segments identical to LFS' splits (or have LRA defining it automatically for you by default, maybe?) and another set with one segment for each turn, and then switch easily between them. These saved segment sets would be available each time you analyze replays for the same track.

Whoa, this is getting complicated!

How would this help you in analysing your laps? For myself, the time difference graph tells me all I need to know: where in the lap I lost time, and where I gained some. What would a detailed list of sector times add to this?

Quote :

- I'd really like the driving line display to scroll automatically (if necessary) to show the point corresponding to the vertical cross-hair on the graphs. I know you said you'll look into it, but I just wanted to emphasize how important it is IMHO.

OK, noted. It'll get a high priority.

Quote :

- It might also be handy to be able to combine graphs. So for example instead of having a graph showing the speed and a graph showing the brakes, you could have one graph showing both the speed and brakes. Obviously some combinations would generate an unreadable mess, but some would work fine and that would allow to display more graphs at once.

F1PerfView can do this. It's called overlays. You can add other data to the graph (provided that it's expressed in the same units).

I can't say I like it, though. I find it difficult to distinguish which line is for which type of data. The display gets messy very quickly.

Quote :

- Any way to apply antialiasing to the graphs and texts?

It's not supported by the library I use (wxWidgets). Anti-aliasing is rare for Windows desktop apps. Do you have any readability problems with LRA, perhaps?


Thanks for the suggestions!

And of course, when you have watched lap 45 you could then type "/goto 2", and the replay would automatically be restarted and then fast-forwarded to lap 2. Thus, you'd have rewindable replays, although a bit clunky: whole laps only and with delays.

Quote from KurtG85 :

Is this program better for comparing your driving inputs (from your replays) to the driver inputs from WR replays than Analyze for Speed?

I'm biased on this, so I'd better not answer the question.
Why don't you try both programs, and see which one suits your needs best?

Quote :

Will it give me more usefull and easier to observe information on why im slow? Or is this program more geared to making good setups rather than recognizing driving errors/areas for improvement?

LRA should be useful for both. If you want to analyse the driving style, you can look at speed, time (difference), and at the driver's inputs. If you want to analyse the setup, you can take a look at camber, slip ratio, tyre load, etc.

More errors.
Weird... Did Microsoft screw up when updating the .NET framework? Or has the message format of the LFS servers gone wrong?

The third screenie shows a different kind of bug: the buttons overlap when the window size is small.

Quote from Madman_CZ :

I really dont see many uses for speech recognition, only maybe for the disabled but still wouldn't that annoy you if you spend half an hour trying to tget it to type out a web domain.

When you see someone who is trying to cut down a tree with a hammer, do you blame the hammer?

The video may be funny, but the idea is silly. Only an idiot would try to enter programming code though a speech recognition tool, and expect a good result. The tool is meant for processing spoken natural languages. Perl isn't in that domain, last time I checked.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Just to point out, Dave's sound pack would never have been possible without the new sound system in patch V.

And to also point out, Scawen is harnessing the talents in the community:

Quote from Scawen :

Here is a new fully compatible Test Patch, V2.
[...]
New PACK button in sound editor to load a sound pack

To me, this means that Scawen has recognised the quality of Dave's sound packs, and has added a feature that makes it easier to use them.

Quote from Bogey Jammer :

Since I like MoTec's interface, I would like to see histogram and XY plotting features, what F1perview is cruelly lacking of.

Um, what do you use histogram plots for? I've seen them in MoTec, but couldn't see how they can be useful.

XY plots are already on my list. Or in any case, a traction circle graph is on it. That seems to me the most useful example of an XY plot. (BTW, F1PerfView can do them, but maybe they're too limited for your taste.)

Quote from nihil :

Would still be handy just to evade to playback altogether though.

Yes, generating RAF files in LFS is stil a bit clunky. An auto-save feature like I mentioned in post #11 would make things much easier, and would make the learning cycle (drive -> analyse -> adapt -> drive etc.) much faster.