Biohazard,

I am fully aware of the driving skill to hotlap, its a different type of skill though and mostly applies to preparing ones self for qualifying laps. There are alot of people who hotlap an are great at it while at the same time struggle in traffic. I use T1 as an example because in this corner on the first lap everyone is racing as hard as they can to get position. This means everyone and especialy the hotlap experts are trying to put their car in the same space. They often are so conditioned to their practiced line and braking points then they are unable to adjust for traffic and thus a T1 incidient ensues.

I personaly do not hotlap because I do not care where on the grid I start from so being able to pull out a perfect lap is not important to me. But in racers where there are a lot of people in fast cars there are always a few that fail to leave room, or smack the car in front because they are so focused on their perfect line. I have lost track of the number of times I have been hit in the first turn because someone tried to find that perfect line and found it unavalable and did not know how to react.

That is the biggest deficency in LFS drives. Everyone tries to drive at 110%, few know how to drive well off the ideal line. The Hotlap feature feeds that deficency. Its not a global stereotype but its becoming a common trend.

I agree that racing and hotlapping are quite different, but I also think that the skills involved are very similar. I find that the people who are fast in hotlapping will generally be fast in the race. They may lose a position or two because they don't have the racecraft of the better "racers", but they will still do very well.

I agree with the fact that pause should invalidate the single lap that it is running in the moment the game has been paused, but absolutely disagree about the uselessness of hotlaps.

Imho are very usefull, i have pratically learned the racing tecniques watching hotlaps, and LFS is the only simulator that allowed me to improve in that way.

In other communities, like GTR2 or rfactor ones, all replays and setups are kept like secrets, and it's really hard to improve without having some visual example.

Another usefull things hotlaps do is saying you a very good time to which refers for knowing how much are you going fast.

Knowing WR time in a certain track allow you to understand if you are running around the track only sufficiently well (within 1,5 sec from wr), good (within 1 sec) or very good (within 0.5 sec).

Imho obviously

P.S: i just forget to say that some of the most fun and exciting races that i have done in lfs were in servers with very low number of people with 1 or more wr holders on it, and none of us crashed on others at T1. On the opposite, all raced very clean, so really i dont see your point on this argument.

well, gimpster, now i can say that i totally disagree

people who are entering t1 without obeying other cars are no hotlappers - these are stupid fools.

plus, i have had some very uncomfortable situations in races, caused by racers, not by hotlappers. racers usually tend to fight about their position as much as they can, at least most i know. people without a huge amount of racing experience rather tend to leave a bit more space between the cars to avoid such situations.
i am not somebody who just brakes and let you pass, but i´ve met some racers who absolutely surprised me with their kinda driving.

let me improve the image of the hotlappers a bit more...
usually the common hotlapper knows what he does and what his car is doing. he is able to set the car up and is a bit faster than the average guy.
i cannot imagine that such people, knowing well what´s happening there, enter t1 like they were alone on the track.

from what you wrote i´d rather say you aren´t complaining about hotlappers here, you´re talking about the newbies. unlike the hotlappers, newbies don´t have any experience at all, they don´t know how everything works, how the cars behave in any given situation. they´re happy to be able to keep the car on the track without any accidents, another car coming from behind puts them under a deadly pressure.

long story short: hotlappers know what they´re doing. if they aren´t complete retards, they won´t change too much paint with other cars.
they know how far they can go - and probably will do it.

p.s.: i didn´t even notice such a trend. may you explain that a bit further, please?

Ok I surrender, I have derailed this topic far too much when I did not really care one way or the other about the OPs idea.

I am really bored at work today. Sorry.

Hotlapping does help you:
Hone Car Control Skills
Improve Track Knowlage
Build Consistancy
Learn the Fast Lines

Personaly I have improved more while racing with good racers (who may also be good hotlappers) then on my own hotlaping.

+1

Quote from DANIEL-CRO :

+1

Holy :bump: Batman!

I agree, and it shouldn't be hard to implement.

What year is it?

Early 2009.

Wow, never thought this could be possible, as I have never used pause in a hotlap, but yes, if it is already removed that feature, it's cool, if not, then I suggest +0,5 for this.

But not a big deal for me as I won't use it. I simply force it to drive it over or just Shift-P


I don't think it would be that much useful for cheating, but somehow I think it would be nice to drive a full lap without any disturbance or any other method, which would take an effort of lap in any kind "unclean".

hm...

EDIT: sorry for bump, but I found this and I got interested

always thought the same myself, id say that removal of the option to pause should be removed.