Quote from JasonJ :

Lateset version of LFSstrobes you can configure keys for each function horn/lights.

Thanks!

Hey guys, I'm using a custom key for horn, not the default 'B' but 'Z' instead - more comfortable when driving with mouse, and using S&X to shift gears.

It doesn't seem to be possible to configure this anywhere within the app? Does anyone have the source code? Or is there any way? For now I switched horn back to default 'B' but it would still be nice if I could use it with 'Z' for horn.

Quote from sdether :

Doh! I was so fixated on checking my button logic, that i forgot about that. Yeah, didn't set that and once i did, it worked just fine.

For LFSLib.NET reference, InSimHandler.Configuration.Local must be set to true if you want to display local buttons during multiplayer.

Thank you guys for all your help! With Configuration.Local set to true, it works nicely

Thanks again,
Rado

Quote from sdether :

I'm going to dig into my code and see what I may be doing wrong, but here is some behavior that makes me think it's either not allowed or a bug in LFS:

1. Create a button in the main menu
   
2. Join a multiplayer server
   
3. The button will still be visible
   
4. Disconnect your insim program
   
5. The button will still be visible
   
6. Leave the server and the button will disappear

Similar to what you mention here, I also got some unexpected behavior - buttons created during singleplayer remained on screen when I switched to multiplayer, but were frozen (i.e. I was unable to update the text).

On the other hand, I'm a big fan of http://www.livetocruise.net mod, and they're using custom buttons in their server side insim mod (it's a cruising server and the buttons are used to display current cash and license levels). I know they use PHP + MySQL, but it's been all down for a few days - waiting to upgrade server.

Quote from GeForz :

You are connecting to the local running LFS, aren't you? Did you try sending the buttons to Connection 0 with local flag?

Thanks for your idea, just tried now, it didn't work.
And yes I'm connecting to the local running LFS. When I request the RaceTrackPlayer event, I get the list of players, with myself having "Remote" flag set to false so I can get my own connection ID. But sending the button to this ID doesn't work either.

Hello Guys,

I've been playing with LFSLib.NET 0.13b a little bit, trying to create a very simple fuel warning thing for LFS, and can't make the buttons work at all in multiplayer. In singleplayer, I didn't have a problem with them, but in multiplayer, they just won't appear on the screen.

I've tried to use both overloads of InSimHandler.SetButton method, either setting the "local" boolean to true, or sending the correct connectionId. Nothing worked.

Any ideas anyone?
Thanks!
Rado

Seems I fixed it, thanks to you guys! Yesterday I've decided to move the sound card 2 slots down, and while I was at it, I found an old chipset fan (those small ones), tied it to the heatsink using 2 rubber bands - not a sophisticated or very elegant solution but works perfectly!

The heatsink of course still gets hot after some time, but I can actually touch and hold it without a problem and without the risk of burning my fingers. I could also complete 3 5-lap races and one 20-lap race without a single hiccup, so I assume the overheating was the real issue.

I'll try to bring back all the settings (i.e. AGP back to 8x, etc) to see if it will come back or not (hopefully). But the funny thing though is that switching AGP from 8x to 4x didn't have any difference on performance (I really mean it - framerates in the game are the same, didn't notice anything).

So once again, thank you for all your help guys. And maybe this thread will help someone else with a similar issue in the future too

Rado

Just a quick report on my progress (not much...)

• Turning off Haze - didn't help
  
• ProcessExplorer monitoring interval set to 2seconds - no peaks detected in any other process but LFS this time
  
• AGP reduced to 4x in BIOS (lowest value) - didn't help

I was racing a 20-lap BW rallycross, and today the lock up occured in the 9th lap, and then in 16th. So it didn't start to occur more often after the first one...

Thanks for your idea SparkyDave, I'll try to dig up some old fan tomorrow and tie it to the GFX card to see if it'll make any difference! BTW I had 3 similar of these huge-passive-heatsink cards, 2x FX5200 and this one FX5500, and I remember that they all used to be extremely hot when taking them out of PC after turning it off. But this one seem to be even more.

Rado

Guys, thank you again for all your support. The more I think of it the more it seems to me that it could be an overheating issue. While testing it first happened after some 8-9 laps, and then more often, though I didn't get any artifacts, etc, before the image freeze... When I removed the case cover, the graphic card heatsink was so hot I couldn't even touch it, but the CPU heatsink as well as the chipset heatsink (passive) were much "colder" (that is I could touch them both and keep holding).

Worse (or better?) thing is I couldn't reproduce today - I drove 20 laps without lock up so I couldn't test anything else yet. However I have a plan of next things to try out, and once I get somewhere, I'll post my results here. More things to try:

• Turn off Haze: thanks for the idea Shinrar! I think I've tested it with Haze off before, but I'll give it one more try as I don't remember. And your issue looks almost exactly like mine
  
• Try running from another hard-drive
  
• Do some more Process Explorer monitoring
  
• Move the (huge SB Live) sound card farther from the graphic card - may be causing heat to build up as they are really too close.
  
• Try to reduce BIOS settings like the AGP rate
  
• Try to install WinXP on one of the spare drives I have and running on a clean system

Robble: WinXP home is just fine for me at home and the license was cheaper I only use this box for browsing and graphics. As I also do some network administration at work I keep the system clean and up-to-date with security fixes etc, so that really shouldn't be an issue. While doing the process cleanup yesterday to test if it helps, I didn't find anything I wouldn't expect running in the background, so there should be no spyware either. But anyway thanks for all your other suggestions (swapping graphic card, HDD, etc, will eventually give it a try if all else fails)

So thanks again guys, and wish me luck!

Rado

So here's a short report with my further observations and results of ProcessExplorer monitoring:

1. When the lock up occurs, I can't switch to another app, nor switch num-lock status. But the key presses get buffered and executed after the system starts responding
   
2. No disk activity when the lock up occurs
   
3. Tried to stop all services and kill all processes but the necessary ones + antivirus remained running too, as well as process explorer.

The lock up occured after about 7 laps on BW rallyx, that is some 8+ minutes. This is what I found out when I looked at ProcessExplorer's performance history:

1. CPU history for LFS process has 2 charts - green and red, green apparently showing CPU usage, but I don't know what red is? Anyway, normally while driving the CPU (green) was at avg. 80%, red one being much lower, perhaps 30%. At the time of lock up, green went to some 99%, and red had a major spike to ~100% too. Afterwards both have dropped.
   
2. As for other processes, I didn't notice anything strange, nVidia driver helper service had a very small IO spike at the same time, but it wasn't bigger than other ones while playing.
   
3. The csrss (windows core) process did have have CPU (both green & red) spike to about 30% at the same moment, whereas it was at 0% (both green & red) all other time. I don't know if this is related, but you really wouldn't want to kill this one

Do you have any other ideas? What I'm gonna try now is to update the graphic card drivers to see if it helps, and eventually reduce some of the BIOS settings (like switching from AGP 8x to AGP 4x).

SparkyDave: this particular card doesn't have a fan, it does have a HUUUUGE passive heatsink covering the whole card. One of the reasons I got it - to keep the PC noise level down a bit. I didn't see any temp monitor in nVidia driver but I'll google if I can find something. Otherwise I can only remove the case and use my hand to monitor temperature, and see if it's an overheating issue?

Rado

Thank you guys for your responses! First of all, I must say that I found out something while playing with the "Graphics" options a bit more. It seems that when I turn off the "Hardware Vertex Shading" it will not crash. At least yesterday, I could play about 30+ laps with no crash.

However, the bad thing about this is the performance drop that makes it unplayable. On Blackwood Rallycross I only get 25 fps, and when the race starts (many cars in one place) 10-15 fps Normally with hardware vertex shading on I get up to 70 fps.

Bob Smith: I've tried stopping all I could, but I'll try to go through every single process to see if it will help... I must confess that I don't play any other games I can hardly make time for LFS between my work and personal life

Robble: I'm not 100% sure but I don't remember any disk activity during these lockups. But I'll remember to check this, as well as to alt+tab from LFS when it happens to see if it's only LFS or if windows is frozen completely, and report back. I don't have any background tasks (like antivirus) scheduled so it wasn't this. Once when windows update started to download/install its stuff while playing LFS, it only LED to much worse performance in LFS but not to a complete lockup.

Eric Tetz: I know Process Explorer as well as other Sysinternals excellent utilities, but didn't think of this. Thanks for your advice I'll try it out! Also thanks for your very detailsed instructions!

Last edited by immutability, Tue, 28 Nov 2006 19:37. Reason : added a "thank you" :)

Hi guys,

I seem to have a strange issue, probably something with graphics, on one of my PCs. I've been trying to get rid of it for a very long time to no avail.

This is what happens:

• The game will lock-up / freeze for some ten seconds
  
• Happens in multiplayer, single player, or even when watching a replay
  
• Happens randomly, i.e. I can play 15 laps without it, or it will happen twice in a single 5 lap race
  
• When it happens, the image remains frozen, and the sound plays in a loop (half-second engine noise and 2 seconds or so of silence)
  
• Afterwards, my car will appear further on the track, usually crashed against a wall...
  
• When I saved a replay of this happening, my car simply disappeared from the track for those 10 seconds, and then reappeared further (crashed, etc)

This is my HW/SW combination:

• ASUS mainboard (don't remember exact model number, can lookup if needed)
  
• nVidia GeForce FX 5500 AGP card
  
• WinXP home

After going through these forums, I couldn't find anyone seeing this particular issues, all the lock-ups i could find were of a different nature. I've tried to play with various graphic options (disabled / reduced most of the things) but it didn't help so far, and I don't know what else should I try. Someone mentioned to disable AGP fastwrite in BIOS - disabled but it doesn't help either.

I have a very similar configuration on another PC, with FX5200 Card and a slight bit older graphic driver, other than this the PC is much older (slower CPU, older mainboard) and there I don't have any issues, aside from performance being worse of course.

If anyone has any clues, I'd highly appreciate it and try it right away! :-)

Rado

PS: If you want to just see how it appears when it happens, just go to a multiplayer race and stay in spectate. Then go to graphic options and toggle the "half texture size" setting. The behavior while the setting is changing is very very similar (image frozen, sound loops for a few seconds).