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Ah, I forgot about the paints... But you can always have a folder named the same as the .pkz with the "paints" subfolder inside of it, right? GPB would pick the paints from there and the rest of the bike from the container. That might even have some benefits over having all the bike unpacked.

Anyhow, thanks for reminding about that, DD

That's exactly why I'm asking the modders to pack stuff up into .pkz
It's much easier to just drop the .pkz into the appropriate folder and leave it there. GP Bikes sees them and unpacks them into memory when needed.

There is also an additional plus to this. Say, you have that WSBK 2017 set packed into separate .pkz files... And there is that patch that consists of the identically named folders containing changed files for each of the bikes. Just drop the folders into the same directory where the packed bikes are, and your bikes are patched without doing anything to the archives!

In fact, just a while ago I found a kart track and that made me wondering if riding a WSBK bike there was at all possible with direct steering...

While the beginning is slow, keep in mind I had absolutely no idea what to expect of the track when I started that run. After the first lap (if you can call it that) I started going faster.
I'm actually surprised I didn't drop it on the first lap. My first performance in Automobilista with one of the Caterhams on a kart track was much worse in terms of keeping it on the track.

Yes, he is on this forum and I hope he is going to release another video soon enough. As expected, direct drive wheels might actually be even better for direct steering in GB Bikes than they are for car sims (DS2, of course).

But if you give it enough time and if it's a heavier bike (like a liter bike), it's not impossible to perform ok even with a Logitech wheel.

And here I thought a "tilkedrome" cannot be fun... Easily, one of the best tracks to ride on, great job!
The TV cameras deserve an additional praise.

[payware]

This is actually a suggestion for modders.

There is very little to no reason at all to be using RAR for packing stuff up these days. Not only WinRAR is payware, it loses to open source 7Zip in terms of packing effectiveness. But even if it didn't, is the size difference between a usual zip-packed archive and a rar-packed one warrant paying for WinRAR just for that?

Zip file format is understood by the majority of software. In fact, PKZ is basically a zip-file with its extension changed to .pkz.

So, here is my request: please, guys, pack your mods as zips instead and either leave them as .zip or better yet, change the extension to .pkz

And if you absolutely refuse to lose in the packing effectiveness department for whatever reason, how about switching to 7Zip and .7z instead?

While I'm personally not a VR user (at least not yet), I have already suggested a workaround to a friend of mine:

• copy the rider you want to a separate folder using a new name
• change the .ini file name to that name as well
• open up the .ini and change the "name =" line to correspond to that name
• now get the gfx.cfg opened and find the "cockpit" section
• change the model and the shadow subsections so that there is empty space after "file =" instead of the .edf models

Try choosing the new rider you created and see if it's any better.

Its a shame I can't get the KT track, especially when the rest of their games quality is, 'questionable' to say the least.

Hear, hear. I mostly got their game as an "interactive guide to the Snaefell mountain course" and in hope that one of these days someone will crack that nut, since using it without paying for the game wouldn't be right.

Piboso.. Varese, Murasama and 125cc no update?

If you haven't converted them to beta 15 yet, I can share my conversions (chain fix included).

Hello there.

Direct steering is not impractical, it just takes a while to learn to employ. Besides, I hope you used directsteer=2 (DS2)? Now, using DS1 with pretty much anything IS impractical.
With DS2, however, a better wheel is recommended. A Logitech like a G27 has a lot of problems, the most annoying of them being the loss (or almost a loss) of FFB in the center. And it just so happens that when you are negotiating a corner at high lean angles, you happen to hit that "sweet spot" of almost no FFB, so you have to switch to relying more on your eyes than on the FFB.

Still, it can be done. And I'd say that if you have an FFB wheel at all, this is the only mode worth using. Anything else just doesn't feel like riding a bike to me.

[and]

Took me a while to get back here...

I never said DS1 makes much sense myself, have I? That's exactly why I'm using DS2 with my FFB wheel. Even though I used DS1 in the past with a joystick and even could manage to keep the bike up for a lap or even two, using it in its current form is highly impractical (although that could change with a "vestibulary helper").

After practicing a lot more with DS2 I should say that it's already pretty much ok as it is. What would really help a lot is moving on to some better wheel. Preferably a direct drive one. I have a feeling that with such a wheel catching falls would be a breeze thanks to highly detailed and strong FFB. For now I'll have to do with my Logitech wheel, but I have already gotten pretty good at it, if I say so myself.

[some]

DS1 is referred by me to using the

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directsteer=1 key, while DS2 stands for

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directsteer=2

The point of having some help from the autopilot even in one of the direct steering modes is to make them more precise and easier to use. And that might be desirable because different people use different peripherals and you can't exactly plug the sim to your vestibular system to tell you the exact moment when you should start saving your fall (not to mention such an ever present nuisance as input lag).

A proper implementation of such a helper would allow you to focus more on the lap times rather than on trying not to drop the bike in the trickier low speed corners where the stability depends more on quick reaction to the bank rate change. A reaction that should also be precise and should not straighten the bike up too much (which is not too easy to achieve with a gear-driven FFB wheel with 1:1 steering ratio).

The majority of GP Bikes users who ever tried direct steering found it inconvenient for a variety of reasons. And as it is, it's much harder to learn than real life riding because of the very limited feedback (mostly visual), lack of control precision and lack of control immediacy.
Even the DS2 mode, I personally prefer ever since I've gotten myself an FFB wheel, is not perfect for trying to ride with as little care for sudden falling as you'd do on a real bike. DS1 is just plain weird for perception. Granted, I started learning with this mode first, since I didn't have a wheel at the time nor did GPB have support for the alternative mode (DS2) and even managed to more or less ride the bike without falling every single lap (and with THAT beta it was much harder than with, say, beta 10). Still, in my opinion DS2 remains the optimal mode.

As you have probably guessed already, I'm not new to GP Bikes and especially to direct steering, so there is no need to explain to me what different steering modes do. In fact, I was probably the only one who nagged Piboso a lot back in the day to include direct steering into GPB after I saw it in MX Simulator first. It was back in the old forum though...

What I don't like about naming these two submodes DSA and DST is that it can get confusing, whereas with DS# you can see exactly which one was meant.

DST is the first submode. It was coined by someone (not Piboso) DS-Torque because from the simulation's standpoint you are feeding it the torque value. It's all good, but from your perspective you are changing the joystick or thumbstick's angle. So, for you it turns into "DSA".
If this wasn't confusing enough, the second submode was called DS-Angle because you command the required handlebars angle to the sim with an FFB wheel and the solver does its best to reach that angle. But using 1:1 steering with FFB on my wheel I don't really care for the angle, I'm pushing on the sides of the wheel, inducing torque on it! Now, doesn't that make it into "DST"?

That's why I think it's much easier to just call them DS1 and DS2.

Now, about your idea. It will supposedly make GPB's default steering more "hardcore", but you are forgetting several things. First of all, you need to waste some of the joystick's total deflection as "an angle where you fall and slightly beyond that". That makes steering even less precise, while at the same time the critical angle remains pretty much the same and you'll just develop muscle memory for it. Though you could always go beyond the angle with a slip of the wrist or a thumb, turning the whole thing into a weird very artificial mini-game. Do you really need that?

Direct steering, on the other hand, is a natural way of controlling a bike. The only proper way. It just needs more work to make it feel polished. Including adding helpers. The default steering is just too much of a helper. Deflect the joystick fully to a side and the virtual rider will do its best to assume the steepest angle possible. Anyone can do that without even trying.
Your method turns it into an unnatural challenge that has little to do with simulation. It adds even more artificiality just so you could also fall over similar to using direct steering. There is no need for that. There is already direct steering. You are not trying to guess the right lean angle with it, you are controlling the actual angle yourself and feel the resulting feedback. Just put some adjustable vestibular helpers into the equation and you get the direct steering that doesn't require you to constantly be conscious of the impending fall. Because in reality that is ALSO done automatically for you. By your body's reflexes. But you don't tell your body, "hey, let's achieve 45° now" or "let's achieve the max angle". You have to work to put your knee slider on that tarmac.

And that's great news.
As for having to deal with updated (or updating) mods all the time, I'm afraid there is no going around that aside from abolishing mod support altogether. But we don't want that, right?

I personally don't see what is the problem with that. I keep all the mods in a separate folder. Granted, beta 15 broke support for the "[mods] folder=" key section (and I hope Piboso will fix this), but I just symlinked the mods folders into GPB's directory and it works fine like this.

After the initial beta 15 I had to fix both DisengageMaxTorque and the chain rot section for every mod bike I have, but it's rather easy to do this for one bike, but you need to repeat this for every single one of them. Still much better than dealing with mods for Richard Burns Rally, if you know what I mean...
With 15b, though, you don't need to do anything with the chain, but I decided to add the chain rotation section to every bike, just in case.

I think it makes sense to add this here:

It is possible to disable the automatic dab adding the line

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autoriderdab = 0

under the "aids" section of the profile.ini file.

[Automatic Dab]

Could you please at least give me a recompiled .exe with Automatic Dab disabled, Piboso?
I understand it most likely won't be usable online, but I'm not concerned with that.

It is possible to disable the automatic dab adding the line

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autoriderdab = 0

under the "aids" section of the profile.ini file.

Thanks a lot!