Hello all,
There is a new feature on LFS World, i guess primarily for the hotlappers amongst us. It is a hotlap analyser made in Flash that allows you to just select two hotlaps from a chart and analyse them.
You can find it if you go to
www.lfsworld.net , open the hotlaps section / hotlap charts, select the hotlap chart of your liking, select two racers for comparison (click the C's next to a racer's flag) and finally click the Instant Hotlap Analyser button that appears to the right (under the quick compare). A new window will open with the Flash analyser.
When the window opens, the selected hotlaps will be loaded. This can take a couple of seconds, even though we have reduced the RAF filesize tenfold.
Speaking about RAF's, we convert all hotlaps from SPR to RAF in the background. When you upload your hotlap, a RAF file will be generated within a minute. RAF files contain a lot of data about your hotlap, which can be used for analysis.
The hotlap analyser for now is in BETA stage. Or well, actually alpha, because there's one feature still missing. But because I cannot get my head around how to display some data, I thought I'd just throw it out there for suggestions.
The missing feature is Wheel Info. You can select it, but it's not good. It works, but it lacks information.
Thing is, it shows you a top-view of your wheels. You can see forces acting on them and you see the air temperature inside the tyres. Problem is, this is not all information available. There is also vertical load and i could display suspension movements.
I thought it would be nice to put it all in one screen, Wheel Info. But perhaps i just need to make two screens, one for top view and one for rear view. But even then i'm not sure how to actually display it
So to conclude, the Hotlap Analyser works fine, but it needs some things still and i was hoping by making the application public, some good comments and suggestions might come in.
NOTE (1) - Some hotlaps will not load in the analyser. This is because they don't exist. Now that we have a background RAF exporter, we can also do actual HLVC (HotLap Validity Check) and OOS (Out Of Sync) checks. Since Scawen improved the wall detection for example, some hotlaps have become HLVC invalid and will soon be removed. The same thing goes for OOS checks. A hotlap going OOS is normally due to the use of cheats. This way we can make sure the hotlap charts will remain cheat free. More on this topic later when we will do the actual removing of the invalidated hotlaps.
NOTE (2) - The setup values controversy.
The idea behind RAF files and this hotlap analyser is to stimulate people to study their driving skills. Because hotlap analysis is now as easy as a couple of clicks, it should become much more attractive and fun to learn how to improve your driving. Part of this is studying basic setup settings. Yes some people regard full suspension values as too much, but it is only half of the full setup, and it is the part that people can learn the most from. Seeing why someone uses a softer or harder suspension on a certain track allows them to better see how suspension works and that it should not be the same for all tracks. These values can also be used in addition with the suspension movement and remaining range graphs in the analyser.
If you really feel that it is a breach of your privacy and do not wish others to learn from your hotlap, then you should not upload your hotlaps to LFS World, or anywhere else for that matter, because these values have been in RAF files ever since the format was created. I don't think we will remove them either.
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I have attached an image with some explanations as to what the buttons at the top of the hotlap analyser do.
you can use this to compare your driving and car setup to other people who have uploaded hotlaps to www.lfsworld.net
