Something I've noticed for a while now, it seems that it's no longer possible to change the rollcage colour for the XFR and XRR. The skins I have for those cars are made to change the cage colour and still do in the CMX viewer but in game the cage is white. Here are the two skins that I've noticed this with.

I'm getting the impression that the cages for the XFR and XRR have to be the same across the board. If I edit the dds file that basically means that all of that car type in the game will have the same cage colour. Methinks I'll submit this as a bug. I know it's not a bug per se and it's a minor thing but it still irritates me.

This is something I've noticed for a while. At some point, the skins I made for S2 stopped colouring the rollcage. Is there still a way to colour the rollcage in cars like the XFR and XRR or are we stuck with white?

One question: I notice that the XRR doesn't pick up the roll cage colour from the skin anymore. Is there a way to set the colour for this?

[edit]

Hush your whining you bunch of ingrates. This is another real step forward in terms of content and actual game environment. Well done to the devs.

I voted FXR, not because I find the handling difficult but because I find it essentially impossible to drive at a competitive speed (or almost any speed) without destroying the front tyres. Other people seem to manage it so it must be me.

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

Some people don't have a clutch pedal. Kinda rubbin it in the face, aren't you?

Oooh, look at me , I have a clutch pedal, so I have no problems, all you poor bastards out there in third world countries, look at me...

I don't use a clutch pedal and I don't have any problems either.

Quote from Hankstar :

Hell, I've never had a credit card. VISA debit ftw :up:

+1 to that. Mah Visa debit, ah lubs it. *cuddles it*

F08 and XRR ftw and mostly for the same reasons. Gobs of power, big gumball slicks and while being neat and tidy is usually the way to go you can grab them by the scruff of the beck and fling them around if you want or need to.

Quote from XCNuse :

If you want it that bad, find someone that is willing to pay you minimum wage for 5 hours (this is all in the US of course, I don't know what the UK standards are or anywhere else to be honest), and you can afford S1.

Or, if you're young enough, ask for it for Christmas, it's just around the corner you know!

Young enough? I'm 37 and if I didn't have the cash for an S2 license I'd probably ask my wifeto buy it for my birthday or Christmas. You're never too old for presents or LFS

Oooh

I'm going to get in right here and propose South City Urban Enduro (green line) and South City Unlocked with no barriers and the roads indicated by the blue lines filled in for the C'n'R crowd and I'm sure others would work out things to do with it.

Count me in as someone who really likes the new patch. The different gearboxes really add to the feel of the cars and if you've been burning the clutch in the FBM I'd love to know how. My only gripe at the moment is not that I have to manually blip the throttle on downshift, but that I *can't* blip it of downshift. I don't have room on my desk for a wheel and so I drive using a joystick which means that for me throttle and brake are combined axis. I can't hit the throttle while braking. The control setup screen lets me bind a button to throttle as well as an axis but it doesn't work. *nudges Scawen hopefully* This makes things a bit hairy braking into corners sometimes so I have to modulate the brakes a bit and I've also discovered as a result of that that it is in fact perfectly possible to drift the FBM And as far as the demo doriftobaka crowd go, if you can't drift the XRG then you badly need to practice. Came back and talk to us once you've learned to drive.

Kudos to Scavier generally and w00t for Y.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

That was not clear from your initial post. It sounded like you didn't want to use a button and you also didn't have a free axis to use.

You could probably get a wheel or an analog gamepad very cheaply. Xbox controllers seem to work fairly well, and they're very affordable. Would that be a simpler solution?

Sorry...I must have been in an unusually foul mood when I wrote that. I don't really have room on my desk for a wheel nor do I have the disposable income for a reasonable one. (and cheap wheels are horrible) An analogue gamepad would give me shorter and crappier travel than any of the axis on my logitech joystick. The reason I'm posting here is that I'd like the ability to bind an auxiliary button to throttle so I can blip while braking. I'd have exactly the same issue with a lot of wheels where the pedals are combined axis so if you poke the throttle while braking you don't get brake and throttle at the same time, you just get less brake.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

If it's really a 4 axis joystick, then what's the problem? You have one axis for steering, one for brake, one for gas, and that still leaves one left over.

The twist axis and throttle slider axis are not great in terms of travel or smoothness. I'm asking whether having a button AND an axis for a single control could be possible (as I'm sure it used to be) not for someone to condescendingly shove options that I've already considered up my nose.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

You either need to buy another controller or use another input on the controller you've got. For instance, you could use one button for gas and one for brake or you can use the throttle slider that many joysticks have as the throttle. But there's no way to make a third axis on a controller that is, by definition, two axis.

Actually, it's a 4 axis joystick, but that's not the point. If I set both a button and an axis as throttle then I should be able to accelerate using either and I am so NOT using a button as my regular throttle.

I drive with a joystick which is necessarily combined axis for throttle and brake. I know there are a few wheels are there which are combined axis as well so they'd be affected by this too. What this means is that it's impossible to apply throttle while braking. I tried setting a joystick button to throttle as well as an axis so I could manually blip the throttle on down changes but it doesn't work. Is there a way around this?

One way to do it perhaps would be to find keyrings that will take a standard computer case badge. (LFS case badges would rock anyway) From there it's a matter of getting the badges printed and there's plenty of people doing that and it's stick and go!

Quote from Stone in Focus :

yeah i had a mojor problem today. I set my desktop res to 2000*1600 or something ridiculous like that, and the screen (some 15" 50 year old thing) couldnt take it, and it wouldnt revert back, so i was stuck with a blank screen and no way to revert it haahhah good times I LOVE COMPUTERS. All fixed now though.

Anyway, yeah, i need a new monitor... Woah off topic, i tried to bring it back but alas, it was too far gone...

Assuming you're running Windows, start in safe mode which will drop it back to 800x600 so the monitor will cope and then you can reset thte resolution. That's assuming you haven't killed it utterly of course.

Quote from Shotglass :

that is simply and utterly wrong ... there is no data to back this up (we had curves from the formula student tyres here a while ago and there was no dramatic loss in any way) and there is nothing in the physics of a tyre to back this up theoretically in any way

what youre seeing is a loss in downforce not in tyre grip

I think there's a bit of both going on. You'll certainly drop downforce if you get the car sideways (and LFS does model this, I checked it out a while ago), but I recall reading a book I bought a while ago about racecar setup which I have since lost so I can't recall the author or title which said that peak tractive effort for a conventional road tyre is at ~10% slip while slicks are more like 5% for peak tractive effort and the curve drops away more sharply.

Quote from Shotglass :

there is something far more important than gyro forces that bugs me about jumps
wheels dont seem to have any moment op intertia ... or at least i sure have never seen any effect of braking or stepping on the gas pedal while airborne

They do...try it with the car on its roof.

Quote from sinkoman :

I've been having a bit of trouble recovering from having two tires slip into the grass. I see people do it just fine, but for me, it seems like tire + grass = spin.

What I try to do is just snap the throttle shut, and slowly try to steer back onto the track (assuming the track is clear), with copious amounts of countersteer to combat spinnage.

I'm wondering, how do you guys do it?

Don't lift off completely, bak off to about half throttle so you're neither accellerating nor decellerating. That way the driven wheels aren't trying to do anything other than roll. Then steer gently onto the track AFTER looking at the track map and your mirrors.

Quote from Shotglass :

ive often experienced minor taps and panel rubbing that sent me in a spin and on the other hand ive seen hard crashes that looked more or less convincing
with the current state of affairs it seems a bit like you could just as well roll a dice and if it turns up odd you continue driving normally if it turns up even you slam the wheel to full lock ... its just as random

The gentle taps and rubbing are the awkward ones because a little lag can cause overlap and them the physics engine has to resolve that. That's hard. A high velocity impact is much easier to predict and solve for.

I've always thought that the obvious way to bring the FZR back into line with the other two is to make it a good deal peakier. A NA engine making that sort of power to capacity would have a very narrow rev range where it's making good power. So by doing this you'd wind up with a car that, relative to the other two, is fast down the straight but will burp and fart a bit until it gets on cam out of corners. You can get around that a bit with careful gear selection but it would still give the others the advantage out of corners and suchlike. I've always liked racing cars that are essentially equal in laptime but with different strengths. On some tracks in S1 racing MRT against LX6 gave very similar laptimes but because they managed it in different ways there was a heap of overtaking and the racing was really interesting.

I'm inclined to think it's largely a self-perpetuating thing. Nobody drives the BF1 because nobody can drive the BF1 because nobody drives the BF1 &etc. I find the thing a challenge but can get around any given track in LFS without breaking it against a wall. Quite frankly, if it wasn't a tricky thing to drive you'd have to question how well LFS represents it. I dread to think what would happen if someone gave me some track time in a real F1 car. I suspect that assuming I managed to get away cleanly rather than stalling or just turning it through 180° in its own length, I'd giggle uncontrollably all the way down the straight, brake WAAAAY too early for the corner and then about halfway though the first corner just as I start gently feeding in the power I'd think something like "Hey, I really can drive thi...". *spin* Still, I like the BF1 but as others have said, the F08 is a better drive. I'd say it's my favourite car and not just because it's brain-fryingly fast. It does the aero thing but still has huge amounts of mechanical grip so you can actually slide it around a bit and still go fast. Granted, you can do that with the BF1 as well, but I often wonder whether neatly pulling out of the long gentle drift just as I kiss the ripple strip is because I'm improving or just raw stupid luck. It *is* usable on a public server, but not for everyone.

Quote from 96 GTS :

Hehe, my first lap of the 'Ring in 2.5 years had no spins and was almost a minute faster than my old PB

Maybe playing Forza for hundreds of laps around the ring really does help...

I found the same thing after punting umpteen different cars around it in Racer. I went back to GPL and suddenly I could drive the Ring! I'm still not fast, and I doubt I ever will be, but at least now I can turn clean laps far more often than spinning into the walls.

I did this one a while back. A little dirt, some flaked paint and rust, the odd bit of primer and a second hand replacement rear guard that just hasn't been painted the right colour yet.