Every now and then I've been getting LFS locking up using mods. The game freezes and the engine sound loops, after a short while, say between 15 and 30 seconds the game resumes. The next time it happens I'll report here with the mod name, at what point it locked (with a screenshot) and how long it locked for. Is there anything else you'd need? Logs?

Jimmy Broadbent playing LFS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEY2JvWJ4I&t=534s

Got it

Cheers!

Fordman...IM sent.....

I'll give it a go.....been a long time since I've fired up LFS.

What's the server name? I couldn't see one call Old Skool....

Quote from Ingolf :

What if: the so long awaited patch makes it nearly impossible for keboard/mouse users to be on par with wheel/pedals/clutch/gearbox-users?

As for me I do not see it as a personal problem (using G25) but in another perspective; maybe Scawen must take this into consideration when applying the new tyre physics model. If the patch elevates the (full) wheel users and makes it extremely hard to participate/being cometitive with mouse/kb all those fellas are going to drop dead and wish for keeping S2 as is.

On a personal note I hope Scawen exclude the adaptation to mouse/kb input and go for making the wheel input as standard to get the most out of it.

Some still use mouse and kb so I was just reflecting over this possibility that they may no longer feel competitive after next release.

I for one would be very disappointed if mouse/kb control was removed or possibly "amended" in some way. Some of us just don't have the time, space or amiable spouse(!) to set-up a wheel. I find a quick half to one hour online is enough fix to have a good time and at the moment you can be competitive with wheel drivers for a short time (although I've found they always have the upper hand over longer distances - and rightly so).

LFS is the only racing sim where mouse control is good and I've tried loads (GTR2 was not bad). If anyone else can recommend another sim where mouse control is on a par with LFS, then I'd give it a go whilst waiting for the update to be released.

That's good to hear Bob, lets hope something like these sets gets into a release of LFS soon and with new physics updates, it'd be great to drive a "typical" road going car.

And I'm sure you've probably used these in 0.6B, but for those who haven't - give them a go, they're good fun.

I'm going to try these sets later on 0.6B, but is anyone using these still (especially on cruise servers)? I'd be interested to hear any comments about these on the latest version.

And oh, Bob, if you're reading this, great stuff - thanks. I think we should have road going sets in official releases of LFS.

The two songs by SchUPor, "Something about LFS" and "Hotlapper" are two of my fav LFS related songs.

Quote from Hotdogxx60 :

I downloaded the demo but I can't get it to work, it goes to load I get a black screen in the top lefthand corner and then the report the error to microsoft screen pops up.

I'm running a quad Q6600 with 3 gig of ram and a GTS 8800, my son loaded the same install on his computer that has less specs and it ran, although laggy.
Any ideas?

Have you tried my suggestion above?

For those that have had the game crashing around the time the intro video plays, try this:

1. Right-click the Shift.exe or ShiftDemo.exe and select Properties.
2. Click on the Compatibility Tab
3. Click on "Disable visual themes" and "Disable desktop composition"
4. Click OK

This seemed to fix the loading problem for me on Windows 7 64bit, ATI HD4680. I spotted this in a post on the official EA forum here.

Quote from LazLoW :

I had a 6200. It will run LFS no problem, it's mainly CPU based. But it may suffer in other current games.

I had an onboard 6150 and it ran LFS....just.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Oolololol no it won't.

I also had one and it was the biggest waste of space ever.

Edit : Tomshardware (google it) has charts of all the 2008 cards, and some of the 2007 cards for comparison on a variety of games at different resolution and AA/AF settings.

Tend to agree...

You may have seen the thread around my choice of card here.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Also, I had no idea the 4670 was a dual slot card.

Well, the fan on it is quite large and overhangs the PCI slot next to it. It's still not that loud though. The MSI card at Novatech looks slimmer though - http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/dirresults.html?s=4670

Well, at long last I managed to get the.........4670...and boy has it made a difference!

To say the machine has a new lease of life is an understatement! For fun(?), I thought I'd benchmark my machine with 3DMark05. This is for older cards and would be suitable for an ageing nv6150 and have a guess what the 3DMark score was.....667, yes bad.

OK, fitted the 4670 (lost a PCI slot because it's a double height card, but no problem). Installed the latest Catalyst driver and fired up 3DMark again. Any takers....? I couldn't believe it when it showed a score of 11554!!

OK, test 2 - LFS time. Detail at Max, AF at x16 and AA at x8 with 10 AI's on SO1 in front of me and I'm still getting 40-50fps...AND it looks stunning.

So, anyone who has an old card - it's a no-brainer - go out and upgrade today!

I don't know why I didn't do this earlier! Thanks for the all advice - esp. cobra.

Quote from Powered by AMD[ARG] :

4670 for my 22" monitor plays every SIm in 1680X1050@8X AA & 16X AF.

4670 Rules

Yes, I think you're right....Toms Hardware rates it....

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ ... cs-Card,review-31363.html

However, Novatech have sold out and I'm waiting for some more to arrive.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

OcUK have a 2900GT going for 40 quid at the moment.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... 20(PCI-Express)%20-%20OEM

It's an older card, but it was top-spec kit when it came out.

In fact scratch that, they do a 256MB 8800GT for £46 which is an *amazing* deal!!

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/ ... PCI-Express)%20-%20Retail

Hmmm, that looks good. Have you bought from them before and if so are they reliable (delivery / support etc)?

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

The 4670 is out now here in Canada, selling for $100, or about 50 of your pounds. Seems like a good deal to me.

Yeah, seems pretty good. Novatech (my local) has them for £60.

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SAP-4670

I should be getting one soon!

Quote from anttt69 :

If ur interested I have a X1950pro for sale

CHECK IT OUT

Thanks, I may consider this , however I want to wait and see how much the 4670 will be from my local store.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Bottom line: any card you get will be FAR better than the onboard one you're currently using. I simply suggested the Radeon 4670 as it is a current generation card, whereas the Geforce 8600 is 2 generations old and Radeon x1950 is 3 generations old. I was just thinking you might want a current card, but any of them will be better than what you currently have.

That was my thought as well. It seems to me it would be better to get the best performing card from the current generation to future proof any features that are implemented later. When you look at the spec of some of those cards, they don't all match e.g. some don't have Shader 4.0/4.1 or support DX10.1 like the 4670 supports.

OK, the 4670 isn't going to perform at the same speed and resolution as higher end cards, but it does seem to cover all the bases with regard to features.

I think I'll do some more digging into UK sites selling the 4670 and then compare price and performance/features to older cards.

Great feedback though - thanks very much to everyone for posting...

Quote from DaveWS :

Just get the X1950 Pro that I linked to earlier. It's faster than both the 8600GT and the 9400GT, since it has 256 bit memory rather than 128.

Do you think this would be better than the 4670 suggested by cobra?

I realise that at the end of the day, whatever card I get it's going to be a huge step forward over the onboard card I have, although I may as well at least try to get the best price/performance card that's on the market.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

LOL Duke Nukem 3D and Midtown Madness don't count! We're talking about CURRENT games!

Anyway, to the op, ATI's numbering scheme is not that hard to comprehend, and in fact it's no different than Nvidia's.

ATI | Nvidia
2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

That is very useful to know - it now makes more sense, thanks. Where would the X series cards that DaveWS suggested fit into this?

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

If I were in your position I would wait a couple weeks and pick up an ATI Radeon 4670, as it will be a very good card for that the price. The GeForce 8600 is a piece of crap, don't go for it. The 9400 would do fine, but have you looked at the 9500? It might be better.

Thanks very much for the advice. I don't know about you but I've always found the ATI numbering scheme to be difficult to grasp as the numbers don't seem to mean much. At least with the Nvidia cards they are sequencial whole numbers and the bigger the number the better the card! Maybe it's just me though!!

I was looking at this 9400 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-94GT5

And this is the 9500 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-95GT5

Quote from SpyDa-LV :

i agree, that the 8600gt is a piece of crap. never buy it, i agree with cobra, you should wait for some new cards to come out.

Interesting that you both agree that the 8600GT is crap as some other posts I've seen seem to indicate the opposite.

I can wait a few weeks if it means getting the best card for the money I have.

Thanks.

More upgrade advice I'm afraid!

My budget is very limited - £40 (£50 at a push) and I need to upgrade from the onboard Nv6150 card. Mainly play most of the racing sims and the onboard just isn't coping well. Mobo spec is Athlon 64 X2 Dual 4600 with 2GB RAM. PSU is 500W.

I quite like the Nvidia cards (mainly because that's all I've had), but open to ATI if there's a similar card for the same price. Basically just need something that will allow me to play with LFS, rF, GTR2/Evolution etc etc at a decent frame rate with fairly high settings (I wanna see what these sims should look like!!).

I was looking at the 8600GT and then the 9400GT which seems slightly faster. Not bothered about DX10 stuff like Crysis!

Oh, I also dabble with a little Linux as well - Ubuntu, OpenSUSE - the main flavours. I've read somewhere that Nv cards are better supported under Linux. Anyway, hope someone can advise....

I would seriously look at the 4850 - check out this review at PCPro....http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews ... k-ati-radeon-hd-4850.html

Quote from Gills4life :

Zero7: Your M3GTR sound is done

Sweet!! Nice whine you've managed to recreate

Thanks very much.

Quote from Gills4life :

If it is the car you request then it is the car that i will TRY to do it for.
Give me a few days ? i'm not at home over the weekend

Much appreciated Gills - if you can get anything that sounds like that for the FXR that would be awesome!