I have been playing LFS without any problems most of the time. But occasionally when I am racing online the frame rate drops significantly. I havn't seen actual numbers but it feels like 1 or 2 fps. Everything still keeps happening except for the sound and video. So quite often when it corrects itself I find myself in a wall. Every time this has happened moments after it has given me the message that my skin could not be found online. Which is obvious as I am only a demo driver. So I thought this was an internet lag thing, but then it happened once while I was doing a hotlap as well. Does anyone know what could cause this?

Specs are:

3.1ghz Core 2 Duo E8500
XFX 9800GTX+
2GB RAM
1500/256 Internet connection

Check background programs as the culprit.

I always forget to stop scans from virus/spyware programs, and will suddenly get a sudden lag spike, sometimes messing my whole race up.

Programs to turn off (IMO)

Messenger programs
Virus/Spyware programs (or just make sure they don't start a scan)
Internet programs (not always a problem)
Music programs (could possibly lag occasionally)
Apple software updates (they love to minimize my games)
OS updates

Hope that helps. When I turn off laggy programs, I get a very noticeable increase in FPS and Smoothness.

Oh yeah, well I think I had a couple of them up last night so I'll look into that. Very odd that I got the message that my skin couldn't be found every time though.

About the skin; since you're a demo user you can't upload your custom skins for other racers to see; so they'll just see a white car when you're on track, which is why LFS throws up the warning every time you leave the pits.

Yeah I understand that. It just seemed odd that the slowdown seemed to coincide with that message every time. And it wasn't just pits, it would happen randomly where the slowdown would occur then the message would come up.

Quote from FalconXB :

Yeah I understand that. It just seemed odd that the slowdown seemed to coincide with that message every time. And it wasn't just pits, it would happen randomly where the slowdown would occur then the message would come up.

Happened with my old crap computer. Always when someone left pits. I think your problem is the cars loading and it drops the FPS down.

Quote from Tomba(FIN) :

Happened with my old crap computer. Always when someone left pits. I think your problem is the cars loading and it drops the FPS down.

I forgot to mention that. Good advice.

Try turning down Car, helmet, and whatever texture resolutions you can find.

I have never actually had problems with performance with LFS, seems that the game is suited well to many computers.

That is what it seems like. But my computer is far from crap. It plays more graphics intensive games like bioshock at full settings without an issue. And I still can't work out why it happened in hotlap. I havn't had a chance to play it in a couple of days though, so I shall see if it was a freak thing or not later tonight.

get s2. It's worth it.

could try taking the skin off lfs world and see if it changes does it. Could have been one of those weird computer glitches.