Hello everyone!

I don't personally make resolutions, but I wish to make some requests and some statements regarding driving behaviour and administrative items for 2013. I request that you read it all, and DISCUSS this and more related to this. I did consider making this a REQUIRED READ FOR PARTICIPATION, but will not, unless I feel that insufficient reads AND reaction have been given to this.

Driving Standards MUST IMPROVE

There is absolutley no reason that we should be having massive crashes on Lap 1 of our races. Yes, some incidents are to be expected, but wiping several cars out as has happened in many recent events is unacceptable. I know that it is difficult, but you really do need to take it easy on the first lap, YES do try to improve your position, but DO NOT take big risks that lead to massive start crashes.

Also, generally, we've noticed that behaviour needs to clean up. We do often look at incidents that aren't protested, but do not take action to save resources, or just because we don't have the time to deal with them. I don't really want NDR to be ACTIVELY seeking incidents to protest, I want the DRIVERS to protest what they feel is unacceptable. However, we do hold the right to investigate whatever we want, and if need be, we'll start issuing more penalties. However, who wants that? That would mean that the admins are deciding where people finishes, not the on-track efforts.

Please, work to self-police driving standards, be more sporting, be less aggressive, keep your emotions in check. Contact is of course always possible, but avoid it at all costs. Let's take a case in point: iTCC. That was mothballed partly due to a general feeling of "contact for contact's sake" instead of "contact as a result of hard racing".

If You Enter and Event, ATTEMPT TO PARTICIPATE OR WITHDRAW INSTEAD

If you are unable to attend a meeting of an event every once in a while, fine. But if you sign up to a series, show up maybe a couple times then lose interest and stop showing up? Withdraw yourself. There's no penalty in that. In fact, if you ever do want to rejoin, you get your old number back IF YOU RACED WITH IT. It is more work for us in checking entry requirements, and everything we have to do bureaucratically to have these entries who stop showing or never do show up. It's etiquette anyway: If you get invited to a party, you either say "Yes I'll be there" or "No I won't be there, thank you for the invitation however". We're FINE with one or two total no-shows and no-answers, but it is always more courteous to give a reply all the same.

We need to be faster at the bureaucracy

We do, it's very true. It does take time to go through everything, but sometimes we do forget, or just get too lazy or demotivated. Be it results, processing signups, replying to questions, responding to protests post-race, it does need to go quicker. To this end, is the main reason why I am attempting to make a new NDR website to be able to have that system handle ALL of the mundane bureaucratic items we usually do by hand...taking entries, checking requirements, doing points, confirmations. I have to tell you, the 2012 Kyoto 250 was awesome having the website check the hotlaps and online laps, all I had to do was make sure that was working, and add the sessions. It was SO nice to be able to focus on the racing and not the bureaucracy.

We want to enhance the experience

Along with the new website taking the bureaucratic load off of our shoulders (eventually), that would allow us more time for other things, the fun things that made LFS so special back in the time when NDR started. Better streams, more reviews, more news articles, more community interaction. MoE 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 were the echelon in LFS broadcasting to my mind. We had big admin teams and big commentary teams, the racing teams were helpful, the public racing scene gave sim-racing topics to talk about when the on-track action got dull. Thinks were clicking on all cylinders. I want to get back to that (Wilko says he does too). We need your help, because without participation, it's in vain. But not just raicng. We'll soonish look for people to help on all sides of matters.

Yes, LFS as software is stagnant right now. However, that is no excuse for what's left of the community to just trundle on...whenever the new tyre physics and new content hit our HDDs, NDR wants to, and needs to be poised and ready to handle the probable influx of fresh activity that will bring.

Let's make 2013 a good year!

Regards,
dekojester

Reading this, while imagining it being written by that person in your avatar, made it sound very scary and funny at the same time.

Jokes aside, it's all very true especially the last paragraph.

And I think it's time to also acknowledge that without Deko and NDR and the Comms team, league racing would not be anywhere near as good as it is right now, despite stagnated LFS development. So thank you to all NDR team and I at least heed your words about driving standards etc

Read it all and I'll do my best, and will try to make my team to do their best to make this all happen. Bring it on 2013!

I think I will use 1600x1200 resolution in 2013, which is the same I've been using for last 2 years. It works very well and looks good on my screen. xdd

Quote from Joku123 :

I think I will use 1600x1200 resolution in 2013, which is the same I've been using for last 2 years. It works very well and looks good on my screen. xdd

You're so funny, I'm dying of laughter.

How about not allowing teams to enter after round one if there are more than 32 teams :/
Or some application deadline.

Deko not yelling at boothy for being right and causing stu to crash.
Just kidding it only happened in gt1ws oddly

Quote from Bmxtwins :

How about not allowing teams to enter after round one if there are more than 32 teams :/
Or some application deadline.

Because some teams gonna withdrawn. Completely agree with what Deko said in first paragraph. Can extend that in restart and even under safety car, last two races werered flagged because someone did hit a rolled car.

I don't agree about the stream though. With the overlays last round has clearly put stream in lfs a step further. However I miss team's advert. That was creating some fun (thinking about spdodog). I think it can be possible to broadcast some or some usefull movies for the audience during the SC as wave around takes a lot of time.

Quote from MoMo92i :

What MoMo said about streams

And somehow add replays of accidents to streams :S

Yes broadcasts were advanced from the overlays. Finding out how to do those in GT2WS was more rewarding than I could have imagined. And now Boothy and Deko have worked out a way to use the tracker on screen live (the ticker up top).

However, this isn't really what Deko is speaking about. Media coverage of the series was much bigger back then. There were preview and review videos of race and qualifying, there were team videos (commercials), series videos (commercials), there were many more team articles. It was much more than "just a broadcast" like we have now. Sure that broadcast is better, but the entire media coverage is considerably down in comparison. Most (if not all) of those things were produced from people outside the league admins and broadcast crew (which anymore is the same people).

And replays of accidents is easily possible, it is just a complete pain. I found an easy way to do overlays, I want someone else to produce an easier way of using replays.

I agree with the statement, I think 2013 will be a good year. :P

Read it and fully agrees.

Quote from PMD9409 :

Yes broadcasts were advanced from the overlays. Finding out how to do those in GT2WS was more rewarding than I could have imagined. And now Boothy and Deko have worked out a way to use the tracker on screen live (the ticker up top).

However, this isn't really what Deko is speaking about. Media coverage of the series was much bigger back then. There were preview and review videos of race and qualifying, there were team videos (commercials), series videos (commercials), there were many more team articles. It was much more than "just a broadcast" like we have now. Sure that broadcast is better, but the entire media coverage is considerably down in comparison. Most (if not all) of those things were produced from people outside the league admins and broadcast crew (which anymore is the same people).

And replays of accidents is easily possible, it is just a complete pain. I found an easy way to do overlays, I want someone else to produce an easier way of using replays.

I agree with you too. I was actually doing replays in the Kyoto 250 that I broadcasted a year, but it was by far a good method. Basically had LFS running on another computer with access to the streaming LFS' mpr folder through the local network. Then just loaded up the temp_mpr, put it where I wanted to, started it and showed some transition-effect between the two.

But it takes some time, and when you need to take care of the main stream and all at the same time, it is hard to do. So it is by far a good way, but it works! :P

Although I'm not in any NDR league at the moment I agree 100% with you Deko
I think a good summary is this quote from your post:

Quote :

Please, work to self-police driving standards, be more sporting, be less aggressive, keep your emotions in check. Contact is of course always possible, but avoid it at all costs.

Guess this goes for the ongoing RN leagues as well ... there was some very aggressive driving last Indy-race on KY ...

Will post a link to this forum thread on our team site

Quote from sjoblom :

Guess this goes for the ongoing RN leagues as well ... there was some very aggressive driving last Indy-race on KY ...

Indeed, i think we'll have people tested from oval racing theory and rules before KY 400, just to annoy the bad drivers away.

Good idea, just like deko does. But unfortunately rn arent strict enough about disrespect imo

Quote from Bmxtwins :

Good idea, just like deko does. But unfortunately rn arent strict enough about disrespect imo

On and off the track, yes. People try a lot of shit in RN leagues they wouldnt even try in NDR events because they know Deko would just give them a dt instantly. The admins care more about the show(which is bad regardless, because they have bad commentators) than the rules. But anyway this is about NDR. Hopefully you guys keep it up for another year.

I do think that NDR continues to be the best league organization out there as far as just about everythong goes other than website. Just as in anything else you guys must continue to push forward in order to make things better for everybody, including those who you are in competition with as fear as other leagues go. It's nice to see that you guys continue to push forward even as you guys are on the top so it would seem

The streams are something which I wish could quite honestly disappear. It would be better to have a massive audiance of people attempting to make it into an event than to focus on just having people there to watch the race on a stream. The stream is just a tool to get people interested. Thing is that in most cases a bad stream will attract low quality racers, while no stream attracts nobody (of course). Sadly, in this age of LFS, streams are required to keep interest at it's peek and thus racer counts high unless you have easy to drive vehicles like STD's.

In the end I guess it comes down to the question of what can we as league directors do to make sure that only the best racers and most sporting racers are in our events? The answer seems simple: be more strict with the rules and kick bad drivers out of leagues quickly. If you start kicking people out what do you have though? A small field. There's nothing exciting about a small field of drivers for a long league race is there?

NDR is in the best position to be strict because they have the reputation of having great leagues (5 years+ worth after trial and error of course). That's the thing that I've been fighting in RN, but as I said earlier else where and Kid pointed to: We're making internal changes that will make us more efficient and closer to NDR than we ever have been as far as strictness. I suppose you could look at our results in upcoming RNCS events to see if this would work for you as well at NDR, but you guys are already there as far as that goes so it wouldn't be a direct indicator of what your best course of action would be, but possibly it could be. We just have enough interested to fill a 29 car grid for our first round (1 short of max). You guys do have more interest than that thankfully and now we have less than before the first round I'm afraid as I look at protests and we start to decide upon them

Once you start letting people off with breaking the rules, however small the infraction is, they will take and take and take, but at what level are enough people interested to keep the fields strong with competitors who are sporting as well as fast? That's the question that I feel NDR must also ask themselves as far as driving standards and asking people to withdraw rather than being absent from an event. If you guys feel that being more strict as far as causing incidents is the way to go then all the more power to you guys. We at RN are taking steps in that direction becasue we're behind there. Not saying that is your solution per-say, but I am suggesting that it is the quickest way to do it.

Is it all worth it though? I know NDR will make the right call as they usually do in the time that I've known them. They, like all humams, eventually make mistakes. I'm pleased to know that they continue to try to make their leagues better. I've been proud to be a tiny part of them a couple of times, and I look forward to what they come up with as far a solutions to these issues. There's nobody better to learn from than these guys.

Well quite true Cornys but I disagree for the stream. As a racer and team member I'm more interesting about the racing than the stream. I rarely watch a stream from a race I'm not involved (racing or helping for set,...). In endurance racing stream is a good way to follow the race overall and keep updated to what's going on. On sprint racing I think it is just useful for people wanted to watch themselves driving and I have to admit that I usually watch a stream of a race I have attempted just for memories.

That's exactly the same thing as having a go pro in a racing car. Race driver like to see them driving even if they will be the only one to watch that video.

For another note, I miss GTAL & MoE I have been nostalgic lately and read some old threads. Amazing to see that the two only surviving teams from MoE 09/10 are CoRe and Conquest (3id not being really involved in LFS) ! But on the other hand I think nowadays racing in LFS is clsoer. What is true is that there were a lot of promo video about the racing but have to see that LFS is closer to racing now. Teams are more focusing in to the racing and only few teams published a race edits. May have something to do with current LFS standing but still, there are plenty racer involve and talent to do some really interesting things. Stream constant improvement is one nice example.

Quote from MoMo92i :

But on the other hand I think nowadays racing in LFS is clsoer.

Nothing surprising considering that we've been on the same content and physics for years.

Drivers getting a very good knowledge of cars and tracks, top class sets being leaked to the wide public, etc.

Just like in real life... Technical stability = Closer racing in most cases.

Quote from MoMo92i :

Well quite true Cornys but I disagree for the stream. As a racer and team member I'm more interesting about the racing than the stream. I rarely watch a stream from a race I'm not involved (racing or helping for set,...). In endurance racing stream is a good way to follow the race overall and keep updated to what's going on. On sprint racing I think it is just useful for people wanted to watch themselves driving and I have to admit that I usually watch a stream of a race I have attempted just for memories.

That's exactly the same thing as having a go pro in a racing car. Race driver like to see them driving even if they will be the only one to watch that video.

Wouldn't a race replay on the LFS side do the same? The only race that I've ever been in that had a stream was last year's Kyoto 250. I personally would rather watch the LFS side replay than the stream. In fact I've only watched the stream once and I've looked at the LFS replay multiple times

I have watched the majority of the Kyoto 400 replay from last year, but I administrated that. That's the only time that I'd rather watch the stream than the LFS replay myself.

In any event, I do think that the stream needs to be the last priority in racing, but perhaps that's just me

Thanks Deco, is a nice message you are sending.

IMO: zero tolerance for anyone passing during the first lap after a green flag that are in an accident involving any driver that started ahead of him. Simple as this, get the aggresiveness after starts away from NDR and RN events.

I love both leagues and have huge respect for the organisers of both. I take part in both, but as I am older than a number of the kiddies taking part, I am more cautious (I simply cannot be aggressive and controlled when 25 drivers are surrounding me, can anyone really be??) than them, which usually costs me dearly.

Well you still can gain position safely. And even some safe overtaking attempt can turn as carnage if the defending driver act as a tw*t.

In general I agree that some driver are pretty aggressive on start and cause some of the usual troubles. But that's not every driver that gained position that does it dangerously. Otherwise, need to bear in mind that last two races took place in two of the hardest venues of LFS (FE3 and BL1) and I haven't seen a race league start there without some troubles. That will probably be better at WE1 (hopefully).

@Cornys : Guess different ppl get different vision I personally prefer stream

Please make sure the rules are more related to the racing itself, and not politics/administrative stuff, as to what just happen in GT1WS in my opinion.

I would rather have serious things looked at, rather than meaningless things such as the pre-qual in GT1WS have become a victim of.

If things gets too strict and the rules are more of a pain, it will kill the fun.
I would rather have more attention and focus to the driving standards that affects others (either by gaining an unfair advantage, or by causing problems for someone else). An example: I would really really hate if any of my competitors were not allowed to race because they did not have the skin right.

If we get to that point, it is not fun anymore.

Yeah, more attention were put toward driving standards, that's why you are not allowed to drive the wrong way through pit road and do a U-turn onto the race track. That's poor driving standards and something you would never see by anyone in an official session of any series.

You shot yourself in the foot, and even though it hurts, there's no one here to blame but yourself.