... and? I mean I don't have any wheel at home, no HW. (I'm not talking about driver issues ... Once you don't have HW, you don't have driver issues, it's magical, everybody should try that some time...)
Why exactly? It would made cracking offline part of LFS slightly easier (removing the check in source is simpler than debugging the binary), otherwise not much else would change, you would still have to buy license to access S1/2/3 content in MP games.
Unless Scawen is actually selling LFS code base as his know-how into other projects, the business model would be quite unaffected, except all the new noise of pull-requests coming...
It took long time to move from DX8 to DX9, and that's somewhat related API, and it's just *now* the content and rendering method does catch up and the LFS is finally taking advantage of those new DX9 features... Seems to me like this next update (with track graphics and new rendering method) will be done somewhere in 2019. Then the car graphics will become elephant in the room, plus there's still the new tyre physics to be finished and released. I don't see any practical reason to prioritize yet another render API change over these two major points, so I guess your request will be considered not sooner that at summer 2020 (after cars-patch, which I guess will be released somewhere in 2020..2022)...
At least vulcan will be quite mature at that point I guess, unless they will start to add new features every year like DX and OGL did lately, keeping the drivers in constant mess of not working precisely as specification says, or even situations where gfx drivers contain database of known shader logical bugs, and compiling such source into different shader code to fix the bugs in some games...
There's thread where I was suggesting moving to OGL about 5 years ago I guess (too lazy to search for it), but only DX8 -> DX9 migration happened in the meantime.
This is all JFYI (it sounds a bit like I'm patronizing you or something, sorry for the tone, pick up the facts please), as it seems you are somewhat new here, and not accustomed to speed of LFS development and you somehow are asking for fix for something what is not truly broken (wine works well so far, and Scawen is keeping LFS win-api usage intentionally minimal to levels where older windows and wine should be safe), while there are major game changes on-going for last 10 years (new tyre physics), blocking pretty much everything else, for a bit too long. Patience... (it still makes me a bit curious, why impatient people didn't meanwhile fix TORCS to be better simulation, all it needs it's just forking it and fixing everything you wish...)
EDIT: BTW, the DX11 support in wine is hot news (in the LFS development time-scale), when Scawen was last time touching the rendering code, the DX11 support in wine in prototype stage, basically not working, and you had to have development branch of wine, building it from sources, so that's why he did target DX9 and not DX10/DX11, to keep LFS somewhat linux compatible (plus the API change between DX9 -> DX11 is substantial and it would remove also WinXP users, not just wine, and DX9 has enough features to provide reasonable graphics, so there's no hard push for particular feature of DX10 or DX11 API, which would suddenly magically make LFS look/work much better, DX9 is quite sufficient for the moment).
EDIT2: hmm.. and just in case you missed it, Scawen is the only programmer on the project, so maybe do search for all his forum posts, to get better idea how LFS is being developed, and what are the future plans. Also it's often quite informal read, and one can learn a thing or two. So while your request would make quite some sense for somewhat larger team, where one part may start to work on new 3D engine, in LFS case working on Vulcan port would probably stop everything else. And if it ain't broken...
edit : I did some bs (discovering) and tomorrow the links will die ... should have practiced more before doing stuff like this
edit2 : fixed my bs
edit3 : corrected first link
Well, that's the point of "cracking" process, to remove all similar checks. The more (and more non-obvious, buried deep in the other code) checks you add, the harder the cracking process is (but then also it may get more difficult to make it bug free, or modify some parts of game later, and developing clever-enough checks is often time consuming).
Modern systems like "denuvo" go to a lengths where part of game code is transformed from binary back into custom interpreted language, encrypted and it's being executed inside custom virtual machine provided by the protection framework, using all kinds of self-check, polymorphic self-alteration, and similar (other SW using most of these techniques are rootkits/viruses ... hmm, just saying, not implying anything), to make removal of these checks difficult.
(I'm not asking Scawen to work on these, I believe it's wasted time, if somebody is skilled enough, game designed as LFS (with dedicated server executable available, i.e. all vital code parts are available to regular customers, so the cracker can start there and just remove checks) is sort of "easy" to crack ... makes me just wonder, how somebody skilled enough doesn't feel ashamed, and what is the motivation. The game itself is super cheap already, and you are supporting three (two and half) developers directly, no big corporation, etc... how can people still pirate game like this is beyond my understanding, I would feel so ashamed). (the whole "lfspro" situation is just pathetic, especially when they start to whine on forums, they use all those pathetic excuses, like from a book, pure raw definition of pathetic people ... but they will probably never in their life realize, what they did, so they will never ever understand how dumb they are)
Feels like that. I paid so far only 36 pounds for everything around LFS. Considering single karting race weekend does cost me around 400-600 pounds (racing the most economy category there is)...
Anyway, if you want more real-life racing experience, try iRacing and keep all the content unlocked for 2-3 years. LFS does give you zero idea about how real racing is, as 36 pounds is hardly enough to cover just travel expenses, so with LFS you are completely missing the biggest and most important (and difficult) part of real world motor racing. The cars, tracks and physics, etc... everything in LFS is quite nice and simulated reasonably well, but the main part is basically missing. iRacing is still just game, but it's doing some basic simulation on the financial side too.
indeed, no other companies are updating their already sold product more than ten years later ... free of charge . I wish Scavier to sell many more licences in the months to come
And again, in current world, having a beautiful product that is not leaving the taste of half-done things is a very good move : LFS is clearly going to be highly polished in all aspects and this is a very good news. I hope Scawen is progressing well on tire physics assumptions (if we can call his algorithms assumptions ), and his will to separate graphics and physics parts : understandable he is not talking too much about it. Eric is undoubtfully doing great things on the 3 remaining tracks.
Why complaining when it is clear we will get a huge (and not small) update coming ?
It is great to have motivated and nice guys doing such great things, some would try to demotivate them ? You can’t be serious !
Enjoy waiting for the test patch ! (BTW, will we get test patches track per track or the whole thing at once ? Eric will go mad if he has to address all the small thingies we will found)
And I'm still a bit confused, what you then see in the LFS... Maybe it "just works" so well, that most of it seems "obvious" and doesn't ring a bell when you see it...
Just a quick recapitulation from top of my head (and most of it guessed, I didn't see sources, so I may be wrong about some), what you can experience in LFS, to give you idea how detailed the model of simulation is:
- the actual simplified model of suspension is simulated, i.e. the wheels don't connect to the car body through some approximation, but the struts/springs are defined of physical features resembling real world, and simulation of those is sending forces between wheels and car body.
- those forces include dynamic centre of gravity (i.e. fuel tank position and it's load does affect forces applied on the suspension during race, dynamically changing setup "feel" as the fuel is burnt away)
- the clutch-driveshaft-ignition-starter is modelled to a level where you can move car by the starter (the most unreal thing about that is, that the battery can't be depleted, other aspects are pretty much correct reproduction of what you can do with real car)
- sounds are dynamically produced according to revs/ignition of combustion engine (i.e. 4 cylinder engine vs 8 cylinder at the same revs produce somewhat different sound in LFS, if I understand correctly how it works)
- the tires do simulate flatspots (both in terms of surface temperature and vibrations/grip anomalies), and latelar deformations (not just as graphical effect, but actually changing the results of force transfers between track, tire and car body)
- you can save the fuel consumption by lift'n'coast like in real car (the fuel consumption is calculated based on ignition in cylinders and the "richness" of mix going into engine ... although probably just represented by some simple linear calculation from gas pedal state, but results are reasonably close to real behaviour)
There are still quite gimmicky parts of LFS simulation using quite basic approximations, or even missing completely (like brakes wear and temperatures), but some parts of the simulation were state-of-art back when introduced, and I guess quite some of them are still on par with commercial packages available today used by some race teams in RL racing. F1 teams have probably better ones, but if you step down to lower classes... I remember times when GT teams were using GTR1 and GTR2 to figure out quickly some insight into how other teams car react to some setup changes, etc.. as the sim, although mostly based on table data provided to developers by some teams, did mostly produce results close-enough to give engineers general idea "what if this", accurate enough to decide for further action (like prioritizing what setup changes they were testing on track in real practice session first)...
"MATLAB as the most complex software for mathematical simulations" - probably quite true (*) in general point of view. But it's just tool, framework to base your own calculations/simulations on, it doesn't make them sophisticated complex on its own, serious amount of work must go into the task creation, while the video shows just somewhat simplified clickable widgets, you can hardly compete with such "nice to use" SW with something specialized like car simulator.
*) when considered in absolute values, MATLAB is nowhere near the specialized work of some commercial researchers ... I just guess, but I believe F1 teams would use MATLAB only for some generic overview and early guestimates, but they have much thorough models for example for CFD. working on super-computer grade HW.
This. It would also resolve the notion of "LFS is old game" BS, and bring in new money for development. And basically it's available almost for free, changing the logos, preparing new web, packaging, etc... like couple of weeks of work, and LFS2 is done. And ultimately, it may be launched as "early access", so it doesn't even have to be fully finished and working. Maybe even kickstart it first to scam some more money.
@Big Daddy: I'm not sure what you mean by "how can you wait all those years".
Do you think I'm like sitting behind PC, refreshing LFS page all the time, and waiting until the new tires physics is released? ... I simply live my life as is, doing all kind of other stupidities, and when(/if) the LFS will get update, I may try it eventually (actually last decade I pretty much don't have HW to play LFS, so I'm just checking the development, maybe I will buy some PC and wheel later when I will be retired, so from my point of view even another decade of wait is not a major problem, doesn't affect my current life much).
Or what do you actually expect? Should we all moan, how the LFS development is not progressing fast enough? How does *that* help-with/change anything?
Also it's not like devs are mysteriously silent, Scawen several times clearly stated, that they are happy with their current development process (even if it is slow, compared to other game developers), and that they don't plan to change it in any foreseeable future. I'm pretty sure it's been stated like every 3-4 years here on the forum, so you should have read it even if you read every second/third post of Scawen. So all those things you mention (VWS, ROC, tire physics) and everything else, is being released "when it's ready" and that's how also everything else in LFS up till now was released. They are not happy with the resulting speed of development too much, as they expected to advance much faster, but they still want to continue like this, so they don't find their current modus operandi as a problem. If you find it as a problem, it's then your problem, unfortunately.
indeed, even if it has been slow and if it could have been fullfilled with plenty of other cars and tracks like the initial years of development might have let supposed, it is crazy to act like bitches now ! When obviously things seems to be brilliant at the least for the future !
Scawen has spent a few weeks on kerning ? Eric has not finished the track he is working on ?
... that's life. There is no promises on what they must do for LFS, but in the end they want to do things better, it is all that matters. How many other simulators with serious flaws are having the development team explaining you that everything is perfect, so they begin another project keeping the previous one unfinished ?
Clearly Scavier rock, and I hope they can release this graphic update as long with the magical tire physics update that will allow them to implement new contents (what you can be sure the team is waiting for a longtime now (VWS, mythical rallypack, and things they never spoiled etc etc ...)
Well, the current physics is obviously quite good for game, and if you are new to car racing, it will certainly give you good estimate of how tires work and mostly correct basic knowledge.
But in some situations + setup-type they deviate from real-life expectations quite a lot (temps/cooling/grip can sometimes work in unexpected ways, getting near to the point where you can "exploit" it by setups which feel simply unreal/wrong).
Especially if you consider it relatively, like how well the graphics, sounds and suspension physics work now, the tires feels like they are not on par with other systems. And it's sort of unfair, because code-wise they are probably the most complex simulation in LFS and "state of the art" IMO (even in 2018), but as the tires provide so much of the final "race car driving around track" result, any inaccuracy there is felt lot more than in other areas, quite easily tenfold or more.
Also I personally expect the brake simulation to be added together with new tire physics, because the carbon brakes heat/cooling does affect tire heat and behaviour considerably on the fastest cars (like F1), and it would be nice addition especially for longer races (so one would have to manage also brakes). And it doesn't sound that complicated, at least in some basic variant and for somebody of master skill like Scawen
And also I expect the new tire physics to be already designed with live-track and weather already on mind, making addition of those in future more real (i.e. without another complete tire physics rewrite, only with some major changes added).
But I may be way too optimistic... (and let's hope Scawen will not hit his forehead after reading this, and rewrite it once more ...).
eee... I guess you have absolutely no idea how these things work in simulator? It's not predefined table or something what you can *copy* from somewhere. You set up few basic parameters of the tire, and then the simulation yields *some* results, and then you eventually somewhat tweak those parameters to get somewhat more reasonable responses from simulation, but if the simulation is wrong in it's principle (like LFS), then the produced results will be skewed off, no matter how much you tweak the parameters.
I'm aware there are some "simulators" based more on table data instead of pure simulation (like ISI engine generally), where you can tweak the behaviour lot more than in LFS, so while they may have similar or worse underlying pure simulation, the final result is more "real" on average, as the pure simulation is used more like just interpolation between table data. But LFS is on the path of quite pure simulation trying to grasp real physics (formulae based), instead of table data based physics.
Which makes "copying" from other sims impossible, without replacing whole physics simulation in LFS.
Hmm... thinking about VWS particularly, there's probably even more problem to that, IIRC the problem was not as much about resulting values like temperature/grip levels of the tires, but more like whole dynamics/feel of the tire, which pretty much invalidates my previous paragraphs, because then even table-based data wouldn't help LFS, if some "interpolating" simulation underneath would still produce wrong dynamics/feel.
Anyway, as Eric wrote once, the new tire physics *feels* much better, so let's hope he's sensitive real world driver and the "better feel" is actually real step forward toward simulation and not just his subjective "gamer" preference...
"I think we are closer than ever to the new tire physics!" - well, that is obviously factual true in any moment between start of the work, and release (or even if the release would never happen)...
There is 100% chance they are deleted (remember Rockingham update was leading to OOS)... 3D kerbs are most probably not only visual ^^
And if we consider there is a chance that tire physics come aswell ...
If the next update would include tire physics, then most probably yes, we will see it.
And maybe when the progress reports of South City or Fern Bay will come it will figure the VWS in action But dreams do come true ...
one of the reason : LX8 version was leaked, VW's one not ... So the treatment will be different ^^
But for now, let's not disturb the master, he may be in the final stage of testing the new tire physics before writting a progress report
Indeed, LFS remains the driving/racing simulator I will always use.
Who is still playing AC or GP Legends regularly ? Most of the time you enjoy these sims a lot when you discover them, but after a while you are not keen to run them anymore ... Not the case with LFS
I am not sure licensed contents is helping that much, even if it is nice to have the feeling to have the real thing through your wheel (AC is quite successful in some cases on this aspect ... but in the end it is less pure than LFS in the global behaviours of the cars, leaving a mixed feeling). Having plenty of different architectures of vehicles is a must, this is where LFS is lacking a bit : some kind of modern supercars, GT3 racecars, and I let you imagine everything else the new tire physics will allow to bring.
Good idea. Thanks for the suggestion. Could you try this one? In case you don´t have a cam file for the layout I´ve attached one, just need to change the file extension from .txt to .cam ... can't upload cam files here. Thank you so much!
may be also heat... dusted or it got loose, or it's not sticking properly on GPU .. etc... can be pretty much anything, from SW (malware crypto mining in background, drivers, weird OS like MS windows, ...) to HW (above or even malfunctioning) ...
It's not possible to tell from the description, nothing specific there (unless all of LFS players with similar HW on the same LFS version would experience it, then it would be probably LFS fault)
The autoexec.lfs file (not folder) has to be directly in the script folder. It will not work if it's in a subfolder.
Move the autoexec.lfs file from the autoexec.lfs folder to the script folder so the path is "...\data\script\autoexec.lfs" not "...\data\script\autoexec.lfs\autoexec.lfs".
(you will probably have to rename the autoexec.lfs folder before moving the file because for some reason Windows doesn't allow names of files and folders to be same)