Fatlogic

Here are a few photos of my first ‘rig’, it’s just a prototype, but it works well for my apartment. If it weren’t for the CSL I would have never gone this far. There’s only so much ‘losing’ a guy can take. ;)

The next step is to make it collapsable because I’d like to be able to fold it up and toss it under the sofa when I’m not using it. For now, I went with the fixed structure to make it easy to build, $30 in materials, 1 hour at Home Depot, 1 hour at home, and it was complete.

Here’s a QuickTime of my fastest lap from Race 1 of the CSL Enduro Series. Please feel free to drop me a line with any suggestions on how I can improve my times!

CSL Enduro Series, Race 1, Adelaide, Fastest Lap (26MB)
(Right-click and ‘Save Target As’ for best results.)

In case you’re wondering, that’s [FOG]Kokomo from the ‘Fast Lane Racing Team’ that I’m trying to chase down.

My beginning lap times for Adelaide were around 1:18-1:20 and a lot of people were doing 1:14’s so I needed to practice for this week’s CSL Enduro race. I used two methods to bring my times down, so far my best is ~1:14.

Time Trial
In Time Trial I raced against the ghost car with a baseline setup until I found I was not improving my times. When I’ve got a track figured out I use Time Trial to test different car setups. By comparing lap times against the ghost car I can see how well the different setups are working.

Free Race
When I hit a plateau in Time Trial I switch to Free Race. I start with a custom difficulty, somewhere between 85-100%. In the Series Options I use ~6 laps, grid position set to back, and opposition set to custom. After selecting a car, I select my opposition by first clearing the list, then adding 4-6 drivers. I find it best to choose P1, P3, P5, and P7. This selection allows me to follow the line of some slower drivers if I make some mistakes while allowing me to follow the lines of the faster drivers when I’m improving. As soon as I’m able to beat the AI I reset the Free Race and raise the custom difficulty until I’m playing at 110%.

In the past, my preference has been to race with ‘Collision Mode None’ since any crash in a 3-5 lap race determines the outcome. But, I recently played a few V8 Supercars races with 10 laps and it was nice to see how the pits could come in to play in case of damage.

Tonight we’ll see how much interest there is in an extended session of 25 laps around Norisring. I’m not sure how hight the interest might be so we’ll plan on starting at 5:45 PM PST, Sunday, November 21st, 2004.

Here are the details.

• Session Name: FATLOGIC.COM
• Session Password: 25
• Series: DTM
• Max Players: 6
• Rated Game: Yes
• Grid Order:
• Allow Vehicle Setups: No
• Damage: On
• Handling: Simulation
• Collision Mode: Full
• EOR Timeout: 30 Seconds

Please have respect your fellow racers, refrain from intentional collisions, and have a good time.

All participants will be recognized on this site at the end of the race.

I finally bought ToCA Race Driver 2. I had rented it to make sure I’d like it and this was an easy purchase. I’m having much more fun playing this than Pro Race Driver. The ability to restart a race has made all the difference.