No difference in tyres - the only difference in conditions from server to server that can possibly be is if it's windy or not.

Fully racing spec TBO cars would be great - in pretty much the same sense that extra cars would be great. Wouldn't that effectively move them to the same class as the UFR and XFR though (although with more options for the drivetrain)?

Quote from migf1 :

The name XR GTR says nothing to people, yes, but once they drive it, it says a lot, and properly set it can be easily connected to the behaviour of a lot of rl GTR cars, while Westhill says absolutely nothing to anyone outside this community, even if they drive the track hundreds of times... it feels (and is) completely isolated to the rest of the world.

There's a big contradiction in that post. So essentially:
XR GTR = unknown until you buy s2 and drive it
Westhill = unknown forever even if you buy s2 and drive on it for hundreds of laps

I think you're not getting your point across well - but I also think it's enough to say that you, like others, would like some real tracks and just leave it to that. There is no need for justification, once you move into the area of justifying something you leave it open to critique as people will be poking at your justification rather than your preference - which is what has already happened.

Last edited by xaotik, Mon, 14 Jul 2008 09:23. Reason : Patch M1 - color legend updated

I got up today at 3 o'clock in the morning. Just to find that there isn't any coffee or bread in the house. Well, she should've looked yesterday and bought some for ****'s sake. Why am I mentioning this? Because my darling and a friend of hers ate all the bread and drunk all the coffee at 6 o'clock. It's a two person scheme to annoy me.
By the sounds of it (the farts and the constant in-and-out of the bathroom) their scheme has literally back-fired.
Also, the friend of hers warned me, coffee makes her talkative - and boy was it true, the damned bitch talked until 1 am before locking herself in the bathroom.

Still, I'm as hungry and annoyed as I was on christmas eve in '87 (when there was no food left by the time I got home because Greeks aren't as patient as other nations [commonly bunched up as "foreigners"] when it comes to food)

Ah, the beauty of food.

I'm off, the air in here stinks.

Quote from migf1 :

For me real tracks are of equal importance with physcis, ffb and online racing in a simulator.

Real tracks not only give a huge boost to the immesrion part of the sim , but most importantly they are the absolute common ground amongst anyone and everyone involved in ANY KIND of racing (real life or simulated).

The blue part I can understand - personal preference and wanting real tracks; nothing to comment on that. As for the red part, the only thing that I can imagine as being common ground is the name and the general shape of the track.

However, I'd never walk up to some race driver and chat them up on the pretext of having driven on a virtual Monza in some sim - in fact I'd rather not chat them up, especially if I liked their driving.

And even in sims there is no real common ground apart from the common ground of debate and argument between fans of different sims as to which sim gets Monza the best.

Even with laser-scanned real tracks, the major benefit apparently appears to be something that IRL people try to minimize: surface irregularities. And even those change - on a real hot day the asphalt in a braking zone will eventually get messed up (especially if it's the quality of asphalt we get around here).

I think that which Becky mentions is by far more interesting and would be indeed unique (for a change). Imagine joining different servers and finding the track conditions different between them in various ways: "watch it - there's still dirt on T3 because of an off xaotik had in the last lap of the previous race", "this track hasn't been used for a long time, the racing line is filthy" etc

Gives you something to think about whenever you call a company with outsourced-to-India phone support.

The "third" line is actually the continuation of the second one as denoted by the "\".

By confflags it means configuration flags - they're handy when compiling stuff, they tell the compiler what capabilities are to be integrated in the item being compiled - in your case ffmpeg.

Quote from lerts :

what do you think?

I think it's caused by one of the most potent forces:
Oil on the track.

Great read - all these new HowTo's need to be stickied and/or added to the wiki.

Quote from MonkOnHotTinRoof :

Is it even possible to be quilty of anything in predetermined universe ?

Only if one is determined to be.

Guilt however is not a universal concept.

Quote from gezmoor :

it's far less likely that the holocaust would have happened

Maybe not exactly the same, but Europe in a whole was already saying "jews go away" (ironic - "jews go to Israel" it was then, "jews get out of Israel" it is now) - the levels of antisemitism in Stalin's Soviet Russia were escalating exponentially.

Quote from gezmoor :

The biggest likely impact of that is that there would almost certainly be no state of Israel and therefore no middle east conflict and very likely no Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

Actually, there was conflict in the middle east before the creation of Israel. Quite a lot of it in fact - and at the time the UK was at the forefront of it.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I'd recommend reading the Into the Wild book, btw. It's a fantastic read and Krakauer really shows all sides of it.

I hope it sheds some light into aspects of the story that in the movie just didn't add up.

Quote from Mazz4200 :

/\ Yeah, i've been a fan of cycling since the days of Fignon-Lemond-Hinault etc, but the fiasco of the doping scandals of the last few years have really put me off a bit. Hopefully they're getting to the bottom of it now, but it's always gonna be a question hanging around whoever does well.

Amen. What hit me worse was when that crap started going around local clubs and athletes here. Even those who were not technically pros - and even for events that were not races (doping up for a brevet has to be the most ridiculous thing ever). That put me off of watching almost any professional sports really - it seems pointless and really empty.

Quote from danowat :

So basically, atheltic performance is pre-determined at birth by your genes?, there is a heck of a lot of information, most of it inconclusive, either way, however, I do think that the base atheltic performance is probably genetic.

A lot of our bodily traits and abilities are indeed hardcoded. From where the body stores it's fat, percentage of muscle fibres (slow twitch vs fast twitch), max heart rate, etc. Which all in turn dictate the aptitude of an individual in certain forms of sports. You can't expect a person with a high percentage of fast twitch muscles to be really good at endurance events and vice versa.

However, for the performance discrepancy itself to be visible a high level of training has to be attained first - then you can start "blaming" things on genetics and whose mum baked better mitochondria.

Quote from danowat :

edit : most of this in not that relevent to sim racing, because it's unlikely that you are ever going to be working hard enough to hit your anaerobic working zone anyway.

Unless you've been simracing for far too long and your zone is really really low. In which case Becky has to write up a "Living" how-to.

Quote from danowat :

Thats not strictly true, Carbs supply gylcogen to the muscles, your body uses these as it's main supply of energy.

The main reason you shouldn't eat (pretty much anything, carbs or not) before an "event", is because your body will be using your energy to digest your food, rather than supplying the body, which is what it should be doing.

Isotonic sports drinks do a couple of things, one of which is supply gylcogen to your muscles so the body can cope with any anaerobic demands you put on it, because the first 10 or so mins of any strenious activity mainly relys on anaerobic energy untill the body switches over to supplying the muscles aerobically, also, they contain electrolytes which help the body stay better hydrated.

Carbs are a good source of energy, well, complex carbs are, I always eat a bowl of porridge 3 hours before a running event to top up the gylcogen stores, any carb energy you put into your body, and don't use, will be turned into fat, so they body can use it later.

I have plenty of literiture about the two different fuel sources, it's "vats" and "taps" should anyone want to read up on it

As a disclaimer, I am not a sports scientist, nutritionalist or anything like that, my opinion is based on personal experiance, and the ingestion of a LOT of literiture on the subject, and others professional opinion.

Gylcogen is for msucles. Muscles use glycogen.

It's all down to the efficiency of a body's mitochondria and their ability to produce ATP quick - which is something you inherit directly from your mother (eggs have mitochondria, sperm do not). Another interesting part, since digression is fun, is that mitochondria are likely (as shown from the DNA) the result of a symbiosis between bacteria and singlecell organisms which occured several million years ago. The latter basically "decided" it was a good idea to assimilate the former. Somehow I find that fascinating. The main reason we're able to have so much energy at our disposal to keep our tissue going is because of essentially two different entities at a microscopic level merging.

EDIT:

But to get back to the part of glycogen, what's consumed and what not - the body can store about 1500 calories of glycogen readily available for immediate use in muscles and liver. 1500 is quite enough to get you going without isotonic drinks and the like - in fact isotonic drinks are more relevant to later stages of exercise and mostly for rehydration (after about an hour or so at >75% of your maximum heart rate you can lose quite a bit of salts). However they are not a must - even a glass of water or juice with a pinch of salt is enough to avoid dehydration. For really long and strenuous events one could go for a hypertonic drink that provides more basic sugars for energy. But that can never really be a good substitute for complex carbohydrates - even a slice of wholegrain bread can keep you going for much longer after your glycogen supplies are depleted or nearing depletion. Too many simple carbohydrates/sugars can cause an insulin surge, which has the exact opposite effect than what we'd hope to gain from consuming such "raw energy" - it makes us feel tired, drowsy and hungry and, ironically enough, at times it can make one crave more sugar - which leads to a vicious cycle.

Last edited by xaotik, Fri, 11 Jul 2008 07:59. Reason : details, details

Quote from RMachucaA :

we all have brains, we can all deduce our own conclusions without people like you shouting your opinion out

Plus One - I propose the establishment of Shut Up Shotglass Day.

I had to backtrack a bit to figure out how this turned into an iRacing thing. Turns out it was BBT shouting his opinion out.

Shouting opinions out - or even just typing them in a forum are a good way for exchanging ideas and getting a discussion going. Silencing all opinions about anything goes both ways.

Quote from RMachucaA :

-back to topic-

Neat disclaimer.

-cut here-

Opinions aside what I really don't get is this religious-like arguing about sims, personal opinions, personal preferences and personal taste. Here we are minorities of minorities bickering about a couple of games (hobbies, whatever) - just like I've seen photographers bickering over digital vs analog, cyclists bickering about road cycling vs mountain biking, divers bickering about breath-holding techniques and even those philatelically inclined are prone to massive arguments (I was quite amused when I witnessed one). Pretty futile really.

-cut here and fold twice-

Quote from evilpimp :

Just a quick question.

Is it normal that my steering wheel kinda turns a little (the force) when getting to a corner? Like when im on the corner it kinda turns by itself a little. Is it to simulate the tilt of the track?

I think the default FFB settings do that when you put a wheel on a kerb if you set them to "Full". It's some canned effect and you can adjust how much it pulls in the controller.ini (which is ridiculous) - all that crap all goes away if you set the effects to "Low".

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Content is a dime a dozen.

Not in certain circles it's not.

I don't know what you categorize as content, but a track with extra bumps on it (either due to high-precision scanning of a real one or inspired imagination for an imaginary one) can be a pretty good selling point. And that counts as content AFAIK.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

which is the feeling I get from some folks that act like they don't play it for some bogus moral reason with their pricing structure

Well, there's always the genuine reason of simply not wanting to pay just to try something out. Not to mention what a pisser it would be if you pay the 20 bucks just for kicks and then end up liking it, thus knowing you'd have to keep on paying to play it.

And now back to the topic at hand:

I think most people that get grumpy and edgy about LFS are the ones that probably have played it to death or the ones who think they have (for example people that stick to 2-3 combos and if something happens in an update that changes something in the combo they've driven thousands of laps on they go ballistic). No matter how much you like something you'll reach a saturation point if you are at it for many hours each day - it's inevitable.

Another underlying factor is the general increase of aggressive behavior online, as seen in forums and such (1st prize goes to the youtube commentbox). More and more people appear to have a short fuse and/or forget how to express themselves without resorting to personal insult. Add that style to someone who is looking for a gaming fix and has been addicted to LFS but reaches their saturation point and you get what looks like a withdrawal syndrome - only geekier.

Blessed be the casual gamers.

IMHO, the current model LFS uses has a more subtle deficiency than just the lack of detail or extra noises: the way it calculates available headroom before clipping and turning off the sound entirely needs to be more forgiving and discriminatory in relation to frequencies that are causing the clipping.

For example, if you use a really low frequency sample that's almost (or completely) inaudible in a high reving car (bf1) you'll notice that clipping will occur soon and all other sounds regardless of their frequency will be muted - it would make more sense if it gated sounds based on frequency bands relevant to the one that is causing the clipping or better still if it had an active compressor working as a limiter. A slightly more complicated compressor would also benefit the apparent overall volume in a as-realistic-as-possible sort of way without distortion.

Quote from PAracer :

At least they didn't have the little antenna on the nose cone at that time.

Who knows - maybe in a Newton Vs Apple mythical sort of way that accident inspired the newer Ferrari nosecone-with-a-hole.

Quote from Intrepid :

That's not what I said, and you are trying to make the argument black and white to suit your own ends just like a UK tabloid.

The argument is genetically predisposed to do so on it's own. I didn't raise it like that.

On a more serious note (and in anticipation of further bold and capital text) - it seems that the book you mentioned does hint at genetic predisposition quite a bit.

Ah - here we go again with the "nurture vs nature" debate.

So essentially people are genetically predisposed to knifing. I bet a lot of people will sigh in relief and the "afflicted" ones will just shrug it off "man, I can't help it, it's in my DNA to cut you up".

Quote from danowat :

It's the parents, IMO, responsibility for "yoofs" should start and end there.

That's dangerous talk around here - some spoiled kid will tell you you're just rehashing TV-psychologists' babble.

It's an open-wheel fetish we can never hope to understand.

Quote from xaotik :

I hope he had the camera set to burst more as he went down - it'd make the best animated .gif ever.

Sadly, my hope was futile - he only managed one photograph before going down: