Ok, seems to have been a case of PEBKAC. I was just trying to capture some screen shots of how LFS sees the device, but won't register the gears as buttons, and voila, now it works. Don't know what i did wrong before.

For reference, I am using the Leo Bodnar adapter. I got it originally for Assetto Corsa. Hadn't touched LFS in quite a few years, but wanted to scratch my auto-x itch and nothing compares to LFS for that.

I have a G27 Shifter connected via a USB adapter, rather than a Logitech wheel. LFS does show it as one of my controllers, but when I go to assign shifter gears, it only has "Keyboard" and "Wheel Buttons" and if i click on a gear slot to assign a wheel button, it does not register the shifter going into any gears.

Are there any config tweaks for letting me assign the gears outside the game, via files or something, since LFS does seem to recognize the device?

Being an object bigot, I just wonder among all the multi-dimensional this, jagged that, whether it wouldn't be more convenient to use a single dimensional array of objects that has the storage fields as access members?

As an aside, jagged/ragged terminology pre-dates C#. I learned about them when I first started programming Ansi-C on pre-Solaris Sun System IV.

Last edited by sdether, Sun, 2 Mar 2008 20:09.

Quote from bukhem :

I created a branch for the migration and added a new (pocketpc) project named LFSlib.CF into it.
VS defines a precompiler constant(?) named "PocketPC" by default for such projects, so I'm going with that in the source.
Currently I think about "tricking" the logging stuff with that:

#if !PocketPC
using log4net;
#endif
[...]
#if !PocketPC
private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);
#else
private static readonly LogFaker log = new LogFaker();
#endif

Of course LogFaker implements everything from the ILog interface.
Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Michael

You could make it even easier on yourself and create a Mock LogManager that returns a Mock ILog. Then you just need to do

#if !PocketPC
using log4net;
#else
using mockLog4net;
#endif

Inside of mockLog4net you have two classes, LogManager and MockLogger, and a copy of the ILog interface. LogManager which just has the static GetInstance method and always returns an instance of MockLogger which implements a stub ILog interface that does nothing.

Hrmm.. haven't checked .NETCF 2.0, but 1.0 didn't have System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType.. so if that's still the case, then you're solution is the one to use.

Last edited by sdether, Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:21. Reason : never mind

The newest version, along with SVN source access, bug and request systems and all the happiness that sourceforge brings, is now up at http://sourceforge.net/projects/lfslibnet/

Quote from the_angry_angel :

Erm.. I think you're confusing LFSlib.NET and LFS_External bukhem :o These are 2 independant projects.. Or have I lost the plot?

Actually Micheal's been going through LFSLib to get it working under .NETCF and we hope to sprinkle the codebase with preprocessor instructions so a single source tree will be able to compile the lib for both .NET and .NETCF

I'm currently doing some code clean-up and bug fixes to get 0.18b out (i know 017b never made it out publicly). That version is also going to be the first that lives on sourceforge.

Current version, docs, etc. are still at http://lfs.fullmotionracing.com/

0.18b and on will migrate to http://sourceforge.net/projects/lfslibnet/

If you want to become a contributor, drop me a message on sourceforge.

The reason I generally use GPL for things i release publicly is that I don't want people to use public code for commercial projects without getting a license from me or contributing back. I know GPL is a bit more heavy-handed as it forces everyone, commercial or not to release their code.

If someone knows of a license that basically prohibits commercial use but attaches no copyleft restrictions, I'd be happy to hear about it.

I am shutting down Full Motion Racing, and I don't forsee me doing a lot of extracuricular activities for a while, as I rejoin the regular workforce and recover from the losses. That means that LFSLib.NET won't get any maintenance from me any time soon. At the same the time commercial needs for the lib are gone, so i can turn it into a full community project.

I'm thinking putting it on sourceforge would be the best approach, but I wanted to check here, if there are any preferences on how I open it up.

cheers,
sdether

Quote from sdether :

I'm not sure about the details, i think it's less the voltage than the Hz. I talked to Force Dynamics about it and basically, I'd have to ship the machine back to them, they'd retrofit and ship it on to Europe. All told it would probably add about $10k in expenses for shipping and parts.

Talked to Force Dynamics about this (got another inquiry from the UK) and it turns out, it's just a matter of getting a transformer after all for the UK.

Quote from SamH :

110V is pretty standard in the UK for industrial equipment. I have a yellow box transformer lying around here somewhere. Sadly I don't have the money for the seat.. though if I had, you'd be at risk of having your arm ripped out of its socket

I'm not sure about the details, i think it's less the voltage than the Hz. I talked to Force Dynamics about it and basically, I'd have to ship the machine back to them, they'd retrofit and ship it on to Europe. All told it would probably add about $10k in expenses for shipping and parts.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Shipping to UK?

Yeah, that is one of the tricky things. It would cost close to $4k to shipp it to europe (the sucker is heavy). Plus you'd have to swap out transformers for the motors for european power sources.

My company, Full Motion racing is shutting down. We were unable to find a financially viable way of creating a sim center, so I'm liquidating the company.

What that means is, I have two used Force Dynamics 301s available at a price that might be a bit more affordable to the dedicated hobbiest than the retail of about $35k.

I'm sure you've all seen the videos of the 301 in action that are on YouTube and other places -- It's really the ultimate Live For Speed accessory and I've spent many hours racing. I hate to see them go, but I gotta try to recoup some of my losses and the units are too big to even keep one at my house. Not sure how i'm going to re-adjust to racing without motion feedback

You can find the details here:

http://www.fullmotionracing.com/ForceDynamics301ForSale.aspx

or you can hit the ebay listings directly here and here

I recently had to do a Java project and also ran into having to deal with XML. On the .NET side I'd been spoiled by Attribute markup to do serialization of XML to and from objects. I found a project on sourceforge that offered the same for Java and it worked great. Check out http://simple.sourceforge.net/

IMHO, as long as your schema is stable, the serialization path is so much simpler to deal with and cleaner to program in.

If the goal is applications, not web applications, then I really can't think of anything easier than C#. I'm trying to think of easier application platforms, and I really can't think of anything. Java is as easy/hard as C# but UI (Swing or SWT) is painful compared to WinForms in Visual Studio Express. Some may think that VB.NET is easier, but I just don't see that, if you have no previous VB experience. I think IronRuby or Boo might be easier choices on the .NET platform, but neither is mature, and the last thing you want as a novice is running into a problem and having to figure out if you are doing something wrong or hitting a problem with the framework.

Quote from Jakg :

Yes, but what if you want an InSim app to be able to read it...?

But isn't it just a matter of math? I mean you get the split for each car and you store it. Then as you hit a split you can diff your time to the ones that already passed it and as more hit the split, you can diff theirs.

Quote from Mr-Apex :

Yep it is 1:1 but there's no stop there, oh well i guess i'll just have to live with it. Thanks all that have listened, it was my first thread and im glad that there were so many that responded very quickly. The LFS community really is GREAT!

Do you know if there is a way to programatically change physical stop, or is it only exposed in the Logitech profiler. Writing code that picks up what car you are in is relatively trivial, but the question is, whether there is a way for the code to tell the logitech driver to change.

It's possible, as Keygetys has proven with his ghostcar mod:

http://www.kegetys.net/lfs/

But it's not trivial, requires some rather more elaborate manipulation of LFS than most people on this forum are in a habit of doing. It's borders on being a request better argued for in LFS itself, than an add-on, IMHO.

Quote from DarkTimes :

Wow - it is just physically impossible to have a conversation about programming without it desolving into an argument!

If programmers spent less time arguing and more time making useful bug-free software then the world would be a much better place!

I guess after spending some time finding some annoying bug, going to a forum to watch the slow-motion train-wreck of programmers defending the semantics of their chosen language is stress relief. I mean this thread has long ago stopped being useful on the programming topic, but why do i still read it.. Is that why people watch reality TV? Geez, i thought i was better than that .

Warning, On-Topic content follows:

I just spent the last week tracking down memory issues in FMR's control software. Yeah, isn't switching to a "managed" language supposed to solve memory leaks? Hahahaha.. you'll never get away from memory issues. They're not called "leaks" anymore because it's not leaking, the GC is completely aware of the memory being retained. It's you, the programmer, that has done something that prevents the object from being collected.

Except in this case, it actually was an old fashioned leak: The GC was not growing, but the Taskmanager was reporting growth. I did a stress test of running our software for a week and at day 4, I was running out of VM.

Did memory profiling, etc. and couldn't track it down. Finally found single line in a bit of utility code that was the culprit. See, .NET, unlike Java, let's you get down and dirty. I.e. it hands you a shotgun and sez "I know you're not used to handling heavy weapons, but hey, it's your foot your gonna shoot off. Have Fun!" I was using a scheme of getting some unmanaged heap memory, pinning it down (so that the GC didn't move it), and copying a byte array straight into a struct (a standard operation in C/C++). I then did unpin it again, allowing for GC collection, but in some places was missing the line that did the heap de-allocation. Dooh.

Expect LFSLib 0.17b in a week or so (other changes still being worked on) and if you have more pressing memory concerns, PM me.

Referring to Java and Speed ...

Quote from the_angry_angel :

That's like saying if you've never driven in a sports car you won't notice that your Ford Ka is slow..

The thing that gets me about people complaining about Java and speed is that half the time it comes from people that then go back to writing php, python, perl, ruby, etc. (angry_angel, don't recall what your choice is). Now that's like saying that you think that the Ford Ka is slow and that's why you'd rather walk everywhere.

I won't argue that Java has a habit of forcing people down very academic levels of abstraction in OO that are just unfriendly to newcomers and speed. Swing and the whole j2ee are two infrastructures that come to mind there.

the_angry_angel is right, of course, that any reference to particular languages will invoke long, meaningless posturing by all Consider this my posturing, and that said, I do agree that if you're starting out and not doing it via CS 101, java is a bit heavy and more likely to frustrate you before you ever find the joy of programming (unless you're just a OO geek). The scripting languages is really where it's at to get your feet wet.

If you're going into a language with a large framework and wordy syntax (read, C#, Java, many modern OO languages), I highly recommend using an IDE. Otherwise you'll spend more time looking up object names, methods and methodsignatures and correcting spelling than programming.

The Visual Studio Express series is a good place to start. Full visual studio offers more, but not to the extend that the cost is worth it until you can write-off the expense.

Java and python (and depending on who you talk to, ruby) have great Eclipse environments. Although I have friends that swear NetBeans is now better than Eclipse again (at least for ruby).

Terse syntax languages (perl, php, ruby, etc.) don't need an IDE, but syntax highlighting is always a good thing. I personally like to stick to emacs there. I was pleasantly surprised by JEdit as well, but obviously not pleasantly enough to give up my old emacs habits.

As maczo already pointed out, LFSLib.NET should fit your needs. In particular, I wrote up two samples for using the lib for OutGauge and OutSim:

OutGauge Monitor Windows App example

Simple OutSim & OutGauge samples

As birder pointed out there is a new spectator app out that will be able to take advantage of the V4 relay.

Quote from birder :

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=30492 (Race spectator) have just been launched but there are not cars on any of the servers

Quote from Gunn :

The guy just requested a mod that he liked. Where's the harm in that?

Being naive is not the same as being stupid.

I agree, i don't think there is anything wrong with requesting a mod, and generally people have been a bit overly abusive to those who ask. However, it would be nice if there was a place for those requests, because it's kind getting busy with requests around here lately, with not a whole lot of people with the time or interest to field the requests.

Maybe an admin could be so kind as to create a "InSim programming requests" subforum and just move those threads there. Maybe after seeing a bunch of "moved" threads, people will not post here. Maybe just wishful thinking