Quote from Venus :

I think its a pointless debate. There's no way the ring is going to be added. Its just too much work.

I agree with this if you append "for the devs" on the end. Much as this isn't the answer I would like, I think it is probably true. It just seems desperately unlikely that Scavier will be able to bring us a real, accurately modelled Nordschleife at the current rate of progress, within the next ... oooh ... long enough for it to not really matter. 10+ years?

If, however, we managed to unlock the enthusiasm, creativity and energy of our community to work on it as a community project then I think we could knock out a workman-like effort within a few months and the perfectionists amongst us would progressively refine it until after about 18 months we'd have the best Nordschleife going out of any racing game or simulator.

So - by the devs? I agree it realistically isn't going to ever happen. If we get a chance to have a shot? You betcha!

Quote from Venus :

I'd love to drive the ring, sure. But I'd only want to do it once. After that there's no point. Can't race there; can't do anything

Sorry to harp on about GPL, it's my only Nordschleife point of reference. When I first drove it in GPL simply completing a lap was an achievement. Next barrier was to do a lap within 20 minutes. I.e. maybe not crash every single corner. With this rate of flinging yourself off the track, naturally any race quickly became a hotlap attempt. Or perhaps "distinctly cold lap". The AI cars, possessed with an unholy genius driving ability so that they didn't wipe out every bend, rocketed off into the distance straight away, leaving you in your Lotus wedged in the ditch cursing loudly at yourself.

The next milestone was to do a lap under 10 minutes - this meant that you were basically "driving" around the whole lap with the odd off here or there. The measure by which you charted your progress at this point was counting the number of offs per lap - trying to keep that as low as possible.

Finally, once you knew the track well enough you could start to really try and put a decent racing line on it, carry more speed, exit the corners harder, explore where you had more or less grip allowing for the significant gradients and compressions in the suspension at the bottom of dips etc. I remember one estimate put this milestone at being within reach after about 100 laps or so. What? Only 100? Yeah, but you have to remember that a five lap session at the 'ring would absolutely finish you off and was a bit of a marathon stint. Not necessarily in terms of time at the wheel (which might only be getting on for an hour) but due to the saturating intensity of memorising the track and concentrating so hard.

If you made it this far, the focus switched to beating the hotlap benchmark that came with the game, which from memory I think was 8 minutes 29. The real hotlappers of course were aiming to beat 8 minutes flat, but I never quite made it. I got down to 8:22 or so, I think, and was just buzzing with elation when I crossed the line. It felt like a heroic achievement, such a massive victory. Even though it was a hotlap, it was a badge of honour, like graduating at the 'ring to show that I demonstrated at least a minimum basic competence there, even though I was a lifetime away from any conceot of 'mastering' it (as if anyone ever could anyway).

So ... could you race on the Nordschleife? Well I tried it a few times, but only ever against the AI. More often than not you were your own worst enemy as you would try to hard and stuff the car into the scenery when trying to take on an AI car. What I remember is that it wasn't too hard to keep up with the other cars, but because the track was so narrow, overtaking was so very, very hard. But even though all the odds were stacked against you (track so long, so narrow, any error so punishing ) it was an intense rush, and such an immense challenge. I remember my heart nearly ripping itself out of my chest with adrenaline as I finally managed to wrestle the car onto the long straight, still on a hotlap, knowing there was just that final sequence of corners to navigate ... would I bottle it? Would I chicken out and ruin 7+ minutes of fast driving just to make the lap safe? Or would I try too hard in the final part of the lap and throw away the entire effort, only being forced to start all over again?


Anyway when all is said and done, the Nordschleife is legendary, we all know that. A simulator of LFS's pedigree demands a track of this stature, nobility, and status. We owe it to LFS to build it even if the devs can't, I just fear we have a long wait before we get a chance to do it for them.

Rakhsh

Starting as complete n00b I played around with Blender for about 3 days and came up with a rough Karrussel. If it's possible for me as a complete beginner to crank out something that vaguely resembles a corner then this shows me that for you experts making a complete track wouldn't be out of the question. Naturally if you wanted quick results the Nordschleife probably wouldn't be a good first choice of a place to start.

NB no need to point out the obvious flaws, like I said, this was after only 3 days.

Cheers

Rakhsh

While we're at it, why not allow S2 licensed drivers to have their skins downloaded. Imagine the one-up-manship inherent in driving on a demo server knowing everyone was marvelling at your fancy car skin, while everyone else appears in that lovely alpine white. You'd also be able to identify the S2 licensed drivers who, like you, are also cruising about in demo-land.

Rakhsh

Figured I'd give it a shot too. For anyone else having a Frank Spencer moment, don't forget to log in to the web page itself (top right-hand corner) first as otherwise the "add credit to your account" won't appear.

5 quid in, hi-res skins here we come...

Rakhsh

Quote from g7usl :

I really believe that [the n00burgring] is in fact, the second most challenging circuit.

Top of the tree is the fabulous Isle of Man TT 37+ mile road race circuit. real road racing.............

Great suggestion, +1

Part of the fun of GPL was going to the GPL track database and adding on those amazing, high-quality tracks. I remember thrashing around the Isle of Man - and while I never fully mastered it in the same way as you had to with the tracks that came with GPL itself, it was a great experience, and best of all just a good cracking drive along interesting roads with real history, character and atmosphere.

Wouldn't it be even better if LFS could accommodate an arbitrary track length? I recall that they compressed many of the straights but left the cornering sections intact to fit into a hard limit of track length imposed by the GPL engine.

Oh hell, while we're dreaming...



Rakhsh

Quote from hammer it :

I think it would be acceptable to start out in the pits after a track change rather than on the start grid.

+1 from me.

So if starting a race from the setup screen (i.e. the screen where you select the track / wind / number of laps) it could go into a bit of "post-race limbo" mode, i.e. put the game status into the same state it is after a normal race had been completed. I.e. everyone is in the pits, and there is no race about to start. This would then allow everyone to get their acts together / load new sets / set correct fuel etc, and then collectively Shift-R to progress to starting the actual race. If it was easy for Scawen to code in, I guess you could put the default mode into something similar to practice mode, except on the next restart (Shift-R vote) it would start the race itself properly.

I frequently get caught out with juggling all the setup options when changing cars and tracks, and running out of fuel towards the end of a new combo because you didn't take on extra juice is always a bit depressing.

Rakhsh

Part of the problem is hiding from yourself the dark realisation that you might not actually be a WR-holding LFS genius. So we all drive beyond the limits of the car thinking that this will magically gain us that elusive extra second per lap to keep up with the front runners, with predictable results.

Of interest, I was frustrated with my persistent mediocrity at n00bDodgers so downloaded Biernot's FZR set from 'Inferno and tried to work out how to get the thing successfully around the track. My initial experiences were that the R2 tyres would vaporise in a cataclysmic supernova of annihilating intensity within about two laps. Baffled by the almost instantaneous overheating I tried to work out how to get the thing around without resorting to R3s.

But then something weird happened - I started driving within the limits of the car, being acutely aware of any tyre scrub - over-braking on the way in, any drifting on the exit, applying the throttle too fast and too eagerly. And the result? I'm about a second a lap faster than I was before... I still am a way off the fast guys (who are low 1:41s nowadays) but I can manage a high '42 on a good run, and am running R2s all round.

So maybe the truly fast guys are using the secret of never over-driving the car, but just hold it consistently and unwaveringly exactly on the optimum limit at all times (or, perhaps, are consciously overdriving the car to get that one perfect hotlap, and chewing up the tyres and engine in the process).

And back on-topic: yes, very hard to keep your cool when you stumble out of your zone of being unconsciously skilled. You start being aware of what you're doing (consciously skilled) and start making all these daft mistakes, which get compounded as time goes on ... off the line, hot tyres, dirty tyres, poor entrance, woaahhhh .... eating the barrier ..... Kind of like in real life when you have a passenger who you know is a good driver. Easy to start driving like a learner again. Maybe the biggest lesson is just to know what you are capable of doing, accept that you might not be in the running for the top podium spot, and keep the car as safely close to the limit as you can manage, but not beyond. The normal rate of attrition in races suggests that you'll place pretty well just by actually being there at the finish line without a major "off".

Note to self: must apply this cool logic next time a hotlapping race leader is breathing white hot fire up my exhaust pipe...

Rakhsh

Oh, and it would be great if they didn't have an almighty crash every race at turn one. No, wait, that's what we do...

Rakhsh

This is what I knocked up after playing with Blender for a couple of days. I know it's rubbish, but it happens to be my wallpaper right now.

Rakhsh

Quote from BigFatCat :

The best thing for the UF1 would be on circuits with wind: You could open the doors and get more benefit from a tailwind.

Actually I was going to continue the irreverent humour in the thread with my next suggestion but this one is almost certainly feasible:

Get some engineering clever type to rig up a desktop fan with adjustable fan speed. Then get an insim packet from LFS to determine car speed and adjust the "wind in your hair" factor accordingly - the faster you go, the faster the fan blows until you have the full hurricane effect as you reach max speed along the Aston straight. Of course, this should really only apply to the open top / single seaters (unless you want to simulate having wind-down windows in a tin-top, perhaps). We could get Victor to start selling LFS-branded aviator goggles for the truly die hard.

Rakhsh

Quote from BigFatCat :

Can we have cardboard boxes, loose paper and fruit stalls in South City for the Starsky and Hutch race series? Guess it'll need a red XRT skin with a white stripe for the full effect.

Superb, I can visualise it now. BL1 Rev would be the obligatory circuit of choice for our dorifto brethren. We could also update the track marshalls and in-game warning system as well.

Rakhsh



Rakhsh

Quote from TheBlackLion :

we can get several fictional tracks in the time we can get one real life copy

Nicely put. Because we never hear from Eric nor see any signs of work in progress we assume that his productivity is very low. I think a lot of the anxiety shown here about developing a realistic Nordschleife is that the amount of our Eric "budget" that would be needed to develop the track to the customary high quality standards of LFS means that we wouldn't get anything else for a very long time.

If we were getting periodic new content we could use, or simply even a progress report from time to time, we could build up a better picture of how long these things take and how 'expensive' developing the Nordschleife is in terms of dev time.

I'd absolutely love the real Nordschleife in the game, and would be prepared to pay extra just for it, but I would think twice if I knew that it means that I would not get any other content whatsoever as it represented ten Eric-years of development. Conversely, we would all reassess our expectations if we knew that we should only expect one new fictional track every three years from Eric anyway.

Finally, in GPL, more often than not you were battling against the track itself and not so much other racers. The only times I remember seeing other cars was in the first few corners, thereafter it was a case of keeping the Lotus on the circuit. I don't remember feeling that it was anything other than a thrilling experience, even if I never quite cracked 8 minutes.

Rakhsh

Quote from james12s :

he doesnt use a suitable virus protection package so be careful on download

Although to be fair this doesn't remove the responsibility lying firmly with yourself as the downloader to have some sort of virus checker running for anything you download and install.

Rakhsh

It certainly is very frustrating when you gently and progressively slow down for an anticipated T1 pile-up and despite trying to signal this to the drivers behind you, you still get taken out...

One aspect that doesn't help is the difficulty in adjudicating over who was at fault. Imagine if you were the world's best mod operating at a packed ConeDodgers 1 server - you have a full pack of GTRs and after a race restart it ends in the inevitable pile-up. Accusations and complaints fill the air - but how can you quickly and efficiently resolve who was at fault, and mete out appropriate punishment?

Perhaps a future iteration of the replay system might help where you had a pseudo-"TV umpire" style feature, where you could easily switch between drivers and 'jog' frame by frame forwards and backwards, watching just prior and just after a point of collision to work out who was racing fairly, who was being wildly over-optimistic, and who was simply unskilled. I imagine that right now the only option to have an evidence-based conclusion is for the mod to save the replay, then watch it either under a separate instance of LFS (nb not tried that, it might not work) or worse still, exit the server and watch the replay before rejoining. (I did this once with [CD] Birder, who it turns out was actually completely in the right, so I believe that a replay-based decision has a lot to be said for making fair decisions.)

But ultimately, having to weed out the wheat from the chaff on a populated server is always going to be a losing battle - I think the best bet is to somehow end up on a server populated with skilled drivers who enjoy the fierce thrill of the give, as well as the take, when truly racing a worthy adversary.

Rakhsh

Even though there's such a theoretical range of combinations to get to a PB on (every car x every track) it seems I'm not alone in wanting something fresh and new. What have been the macro changes to the game of late? When patch S came out we got the improved physics and the BF1. We got the improved sounds in V/W, and X has brought pre-load clutchpack and false starts. Sure, there have been a squillion other improvements but not in any area that broadly affects the user experience - and these changes span a development time of 14 months (not including the dev time for patch S).

We're all going crazy for something fresh and new, and it seems to me that we could be easily appeased with new content, and so we'd STFU to allow Scawen to work on the core game engine (collisions, engine damage, weather...). I've previously thought that user-contributed material would be a great way to go, but only if:

• Quality was controlled by a central authority (e.g. Scavier), to whom all content would have to be submitted, and may go through several iterations for testing, suitability to the game, playability etc. There would probably be a closed beta-testing group for this (beta testing an alpha product? You know what I mean....)
  
• Downloading content was integrated into the game engine, e.g. with the patch auto-updating. No hunting for patches, no worrying about new content integrity.
  
• Strict versioning control was implemented. E.g. think about the two Brands Hatch in GPL. Cosmetic differences would not be the end of the world (e.g. the SO City graphical updates) but any layout changes would be crucial to ensure every driver is using the exact same circuit. I can imagine LFS having all sorts of hideous sync errors as well if this wasn't managed properly (e.g. your version of Brands has incorrect elevation, so my car's reported position appears to be tunnelling through the solid track to you....)
  
• There was an agreed and committed release schedule. It could be as meagre as one car every six months, and one track per year. Oversaturation would be unhealthy and unnecessary. But having something - anything - we could count on to look forward to with a reasonable degree of certainty would be such a refreshing change
  
• Certainly there would be a number of keen amateurs who would jump in and have a go at submitting content. But I suspect that there are a few genuinely talented members of the community who excel and thrive at producing the desired content, and most of the hard work would come from them. So I don't think inferior quality would be an issue so long as the QA process was built in, and well documented and understood. Also the required quality would soon become evident with comparison to the stock cars and tracks plus any newly accepted material. I.e. don't even bother submitting content until it's of the same level as Blackwood
  
• This could allow LFS to further develop into its own niche, which right now feels like track-day specials and somewhat obscure regional circuits. So new cars like the DP1 would fit right in. I seriously doubt whether we would ever see our Ferraris and Porsches shipping with the stock game (although anything could happen over time, particularly if LFS' popularity continues to grow).
  
• There remains a big question about licensing. Clearly the devs can't blatantly ignore licensing issues, but possibly one workaround would be to implement various 'repositories' of content. There could be three: "core" (all the content we know and love right now), "official" which would contain community addons approved by the devs (e.g. a community created and approved fantasy track, where there are no license issues, or officially blessed ones like the DP1), and the "community" repository which is a link to only a single content source where community members can QA and approve content for download. This would have a big fat disclaimer like 'any content downloaded form the community repository is not endorsed by Scavier etc etc' but would allow us to develop things like our own Nordschleife, or the GT3RSR. Crucially, QA control, download management, versioning etc as listed above would have to be applied fiercely to this community repository as otherwise we'd be straight in to rFactor territory. Some lucky volunteer would have to step up and 'be' that community repository host, and we'd also have to appoint a QA committee to perform those tasks, as we could hardly ask Eric to adjudicate whether my copy of the Karrussel was up to the game's high standards.

If I felt I had even one iota of success in persuading Scavier to adopt this, I'd start talking about the positive reasons for doing so - that the community goodwill and patience is a finite resource and that this would be a really cheap and empowering way of further reinforcing our borderline-obsessive feelings about LFS, and that you can't ignore a certain degree of exasperation even among the die-hards that we never know what we're going to get, and when we get it, it doesn't materially affect the game we love so much. I think the model I've described would work, but who am I kidding? I can't see it ever being adopted so I'll just sit back and wait for improved GTR textures (that we can already download) and improved AI (that I don't need), and keep driving GTR at AS National along with the 5,000 others (in broad daylight).



Rakhsh

Quote from Gener_AL (UK) :

FXO -70Kg (3% air intake restriction)
... etc

The hyphens could be a touch misleading to folks who have not been following the class balancing threads. All the weights were added to the cars, not taken away. E.g. FXO gains a 70kg weight penalty (in addition to the air intake restriction).

Rakhsh

Quote from Scawen :

Hi. Arabic is quite a difficult one to support because the text needs to go in the reverse direction [...] and how you combine Latin text and Arabic text in one string, and how the direction of the text changes in one ascii string...

My wife's Persian and her native language is Farsi, which is distinct from Arabic, although it is written in Arabic characters (by and large - there's a unique 'p' to Farsi that's not in Arabic, and many extra characters in Arabic that aren't used in Farsi). I spent several months building a weblog for her that is entirely in Farsi, so I had to learn a ton about right-to-left languages, which Scawen is referencing here. Curiously, web browsers are pretty good at supporting complex languages.

In terms of the basic characters themselves, it doesn't seem so terrible on an initial assessment as there are 'only' 32 characters - Arabic as a language has even more. However the gotcha is that the shape of the letter depends on where it is in the word - is it the first character, the last, or in the middle? Think of how we capitalise the first letter of certain words (names, first word of the sentence) - it's roughly the same principle, except instead of "is it a capital letter or not" there are four positions to worry about.

And of course Arabic users have their own keyboard input layout as well. I built a phonetic one for us to use at home, so that the character 'alef' which is a long 'a' sound is mapped to the A key on the keyboard. This works great for us at home, but of course a native Arabic speaker would most certainly expect to use their conventional keyboard layout. For Farsi, it's called ISIRI 2901, with the actual key layout shown. But thinking about this, I'm sure Scawen has cracked this already e.g. for our European friends using native keyboard inputs etc.

For the interested, you could always research 'bidi' (bi-directiona ... igatory Wikipedia article has some good links.

Anyway, if Arabic characters ever make it to LFS I can start writing my racer name correctly, and hopefully people will stop confusing me with 'Rakesh' and assuming I'm Indian - when in actual fact I'm about as Persian or Indian as Scawen is.

Cheers

Rakhsh
(reh-kheh-sheen written in Farsi)

Quote from DFS_MadFred :

I'm racing with #26

I think we have a bit of a conflict on that no. 26 business

About time I had an official number

EDIT: Let's try 26 - someone else got there before me.

Here's an update of the low numbers since I read the thread:

0 duke_toaster
1 Maggot, The GEneral Lee
2 Soul
3 Bob Smith, BenjiMC, Scottie, hotdogxx60
4 JTbo, geeman1, Blaeza
5 tristancliffe, Playlife, illegal
6 spankmeyer
7 szyszek, KartRacer, RevengeR, rx-7 dale
8 Jakg, wabbit
9 Vain, RudolfR
10 Beefyman666
11 Mountaindewzilla, ATC Quicksilver, Michael Denham, bawbag, mrbogeyman
12 Forbin, Lucasinio
13 Dennisjr13, Biohazard, Nobo
14 joen, DC2
15 wheel4hummer
16 Dawesdust
17 Dizzlez, Michel 4AGE, Alkanphel
18 XenoWolf, Fischfix, Bradracer
19 Davo
20 Arrow
21 Horsepower, M. Catamount, infiniti, Mark
22 Kid222, Lampost22
23 herki
24 Jet CZE, Racer2418
25 Kalev EST
26 Rakhsh (Aegilops)
27 BlakjeKaas, Falcon140, Falcon140
28 (SaM)
29 Osco
30
31 Gimpster, Rovens
32
33 birder
34 RicoP98
35 Dadge
36
37 MattxMosh
38
39
40 Tick
41 Captain Slow
42 unseen, XTer, Fl!p, RudiTurbo
43 Vroom
44 Madman CZ
45
46 Knight Attack, cmckowen
47
48
49 Linsen
50
51
52
53 SamH
54
55 (SaM)
56 banshee56
57
58
59
60 neRu

Last edited by Aegilops, Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:42.

Not wishing to unduly parade my ignorance, but I had always assumed that the wind direction and strength changed throughout the race. From memory it seemed as though they flap in different directions and with different amplitudes (if that's the right way to describe it ). Is it really as simple as the wind having a single direction and strength calculated by the game at the beginning of the race?

Excuse me, but is that a Tervueren? He looks young - ours is seven.

I think if you have to apply such drastic and instantaneous opposite lock that you're probably not in a very good position in the first place - certainly this wouldn't be a desired approach for obtaining a good lap.

The force-feedback is one of the two must-have reasons for getting a wheel - it gives you such a greater insight into the onset of the loss of grip.

The other must-have is analogue pedal control. Being able to balance the car on partial throttle and gradually open it up as you approach the corner exit is much more natural than the digital throttle you'd use with the mouse. You can also start incorporating trail-braking into your technique, if you have a desire to do so.

Just give it time, I suspect you'll find there's no turning back.

Rakhsh

Just watched it solely because of the .sig advert (watch an STCC video or die a horrible death...)

It was great! Watched it on YouTube - grainy / hideous as hell but despite the low video quality the immersion was tremendous. I liked the banter between the presenters (and I think the commentating must have been so much harder than you made it seem - so well done there lads), the real-world touches like making reference to performance in previous rounds and qualifying, guys being unlucky for various reasons and so on. The on-screen graphics were really good, as well as the in-car footage and replays, the parc ferme... Perhaps a bit more in-car footage would have been great, but from memory F1 broadcasts were just the same, so it felt very "real".

The fact that both commentators knew all the aspects of LFS meant that it was hugely involving - commentary about the heavy RB4, and the pounding of the front-lefts hampering the FXOs (without spelling out that FXOs are FWD...) - it really felt real. Even the mis-matched styles of Becky and Tristan worked very well - one doing the majority of the talking, the other providing the odd counterpoint. What we need is for Tristan to think up really incisive and pertinent comments while Becky adopts the saying what's going on style... more cutting dry wit Tristan!

I was amazed by the pace car, too - such a professional touch.

Just a few points:

* it was hard to tell where the battles were taking place. I'd appreciate some more on-screen graphics flagging up where abouts in the race the particular cars were
* no mention of people setting fastest lap - that might be a nice thing to put in
* think about some use of slo-mo during the crashes?

But basically you guys are doing *great* - well done - more of the same please. The weirdest thing is that I always thought that "Becky" was a "Rebecca"...

Cheers

Rakhsh

It might be interesting to build up the archive of LFS versions. Yes, yes, I know that some of the older ones are available off the main site, but actually very few are available there. Wouldn't it be interesting to capture some of the quirky twists and turns in the development of LFS? E.g. I remember when they first started working on S2, they released the 'new and not-so-improved' version of Blackwood....

Sounds stupid now, but when we are all grizzled veterans on S4, we'll wish we had this archive for future generations of whipper-snappers, new to the game....

Rakhsh

Big thumbs up for me for Nordschleife. But how about also doing the Sudschleife and of course joining the two together for surely the ultimate racing experience - the 28km long Gesamtstrecke:

Quote :

[It] had three different loops: the Nordschleife (the Northern loop), which was by far the largest with a lenght of 22.810 kms, the smaller Südschleife (Southern loop), 7.747 kms, and, in the middle, the Start und Ziel Schleife (start and finish loop) of 2.238 kms. It was also possible to combine these three loops to form one giant track, the Gesamtstrecke, which measured an astonishing 28.265 kilometres. All of the first races on the Nürburg-Ring were held on the latter track. Chiron (Bugatti) drove a lap on the Gesamtstrecke in 15.06,02 minutes (112,31 km/h) in 1929

(emphasis mine) From: http://sudschleife.8200rpm.com/history.htm#1927

Also while we are in crazy fantasy-land-ain't-ever-gonna-happen mode, how about the Stelvio Pass?

But even more extreme than this would be the infamous and deadly Chaloos Highway. This road leads from Tehran to Chaloos over the Alborz Mountains and is a three hour drive of wicked switchbacks, hairpins and breathtaking scenery - embellished with the evidence of recent accidents where drivers have plunged to their doom down the mountain side.

(picture picture picture picture)

Cheers

Rakhsh