Quote from nigel_2003 :

I'm just posting it to get advise and to improve myself and my skills

Funny to see that people are still learning how to photoshop LFS screenshots. I used to be very passionate about it, but it's basically obsolete these days, as most racing sims look good enough already.

I'll tell you what I see is wrong with the first one:

There are a lot of details that don't add up. Wheels are blurry (spinning), but neither the car nor the scenery are blurred. So it seems like the car is standing there, but with all four wheels spinning? But only the rears are smoking? On a flooded street? No tyre spray? There's heavy rain but only right in front of the camera. We see none of it hitting the street or car and there's a bright sky in the background, doesn't look like a rainy day (also because of the warmth of colours).

Then there's minor details like the reflection should show the floor of the car. Smoke is a bit too bright, also needs to appear thicker (not see-through) and voluminous (highlights and shadowing). Or the spinning brake calipers .

It's funny because the joke is told by someone from 'murica; and as the cliché goes, it is of course perfectly possible that one of two mountain climbers would carry a firearm.

I'll just wait for some RWD options to appear.

Quote from GarethEgglestone :

snip

If you don't mind: For an old-photo-look try playing with contrast, blur and chunkier noise. The picture is excellent quality, it just seems to be on a material that's ten times as old as the cars.

Quote from Racer Y :

snippety snip

You realise it's called "Ask Me Anything" not "I Will Answer Anything"?

In my opinion LFS needs a few more cars, a lot more tracks and a couple of updates.

The sound engine needs a bit of a polish. I mean it's a very advanced way of producing engine noise and I don't think any other game has come close to synthesising it as well as LFS does and yet... when a new player exits the Blackwood pits for the first time I can't help but imagine that the sound aspect will seriously underwhelm him. It still sounds too dull, too artificial.

Other than that the existing content needs to be kept fresh as well. For instance they did a mighty fine job of updating the XF and XR series of cars years ago, they've also taken care of Blackwood numerous times now.

But once a new player finally decides to buy a license and takes the RB4 for a spin on Fern Bay... well it's all 2003 again. God awful geometry and even more awful textures as far as the view distance can render.

However not much is going to change as far as content goes. From what we've seen in the last couple of years we might get a new or updated track every year or two and sadly that doesn't seem enough to get LFS going again. Not until the devs start releasing a development software to the community and run competitions to act more as a sort of quality control instead of doing all the work on their own.

I love the bumpy braking zones but was a bit disappointed with the whole extra bits. There's a couple of nice roads around but the business park itself is rather repetitive. After the marvellous job you guys did on the Westhill update I was sad to see most of the access roads around the track are still not available for driving.

Anyways it's a clean job (as always!) and I can't wait to see what you have in stock for Fern Bay, as it's arguably in the most dire need of an allround revision (like Westhill).

We have far too little of a player base remaining to introduce any sort of match making.

And although I sympathise with your view on real world racing as a whole, I don't think it's the racing itself that drove players away from LFS. It probably was the lack of progress for many years, both in terms of content and overall development.

Just found out about 0.6Q and immediately thought of an edit I posted almost 7 years ago. :O

Our group of friends had LAN Parties when we were teenagers. 2005 or 2006 one of them had me try out this racing game, which turned out to be LFS 0.5P. And yes it was cracked, sorry devs. :/

Eventually I played more and more Demo to race online. Got into screenshot editing and entered a skin competition to win an S2 voucher. Unfortunately I came second. When PayPal became a thing I gave my friend the money and paid the 36£ for my license.

I don't know about modding but I think they should outsource stuff to the community via tendering. Like:

"Hello 3D artists! Once again we need your help, this time with a mid to late 90s touring car class. Polygon count is 9000-12000, we aim for 4dr sedans but we'll allow one estate as well. As always you may seek inspiration, but no direct copies of real life counterparts allowed. We will provide a tyre model for reference, you can see the detailed specifications of wheels, aero, safety etc. down below. Top 5 entries will receive 500 £ each and get their vehicle put into the game after final touch-ups by Eric."

Quote from w126 :

For suspension we have Shift-L view

Thanks, but that only gives you the 2D view from the garage. I was thinking of incorporating that into the Shift+F view in 3D.

Quote from Flotch :

Who has never driven a FWD with open diff IRL? I do not think they are handling that mad!

Well I certainly haven't driven any real car the way I'd typically do in LFS, which is at the limit.

But the handling differences could stem from a combination of problems. I'm thinking of the suspension here. The FWD cars in LFS all have trailing arm rear axles. But we don't know at which angle they are attached to the chassis. Real life torsion beam axles pivot around angled mounts (so the toe angle changes if the wheels deflect differently i.e. during corners), made possible by rubber bushings and the fact that steel is not perfectly rigid, but flexible. Both of which I assume is not modeled in LFS, same goes for chassis flex. We also don't know much about the steering geometry, do we? (Honest question there)
Edit: "Parallel Steering" seems to be responsible for this, but we don't know which geometry applies to 0%. That would also be a hard thing to find out about real life counterparts (Citroën AX, VW Polo?)

So maybe, just maybe, Scawen is "blaming" too much on the tyre model. If the handling problems are distributed among several issues with the physics model, he couldn't expect the new tyre model to solve everything.

But again I don't know what kind/amount of data Scawen has to work with.

Edit2: Has the suggestion been brought up to display suspension stuff in "Shift+F" forces view?

Last edited by 5tag, Wed, 27 Apr 2016 15:56.

Issue has been resolved, I updated the audio driver.

Weird for it to happen out of the blue, though.

Quote from Scawen :

Yes, we announced it but did not release it because we didn't like the way the car had to be set up. It showed up flaws in the tyre physics.

May I ask how you noticed that? At that point you had already recreated the Formula BMW. Did these flaws show up with that car as well or was the amount of data for the Scirocco just much bigger? Or does it have to do with ESP/ESC?

I was driving online and all of a sudden all sound was lost.

Everytime I pressed Shift+N (toggling sound) or clicked a menu button I'd get the error message:

No sound (Play:Z -2004287478)

I loaded up a YouTube video in my browser to check and didn't get any sound either.

Just when I thought my sound chip was fried I went back into the game and pressed Shift+W (reinitialising sound). At that time I was spectating a parked car but when I switched to another one, there was sound again.

So I'm not sure whether reinitialisation fixed it or if it mended itself. Just wanted to report it anyways, there might be more to it IDK I'm not a coder.

Have a nice day!

Edit: Now that's wonky... It happened again and Shift+W doesn't help, just triggers the same message as before.

Edit2: So it comes and goes, appearantly at random. 3rd time now.

Yet another Edit: It's definitely not limited to LFS. Trying to watch something on YouTube kills my sound as well. The interesting thing is that this happens precisely after 6:00 minutes with every video I start. Still I'd be interesting what the LFS error message hints at.

Last edited by 5tag, Mon, 25 Apr 2016 18:01.

Hey folks, I remember seeing an awesome XRR skin based on the 80s Toyota Celica IMSA GTO. Somehow I never managed to download that beauty and now that I've looked for it I can't seem to find it.

Does anyone still have it and can upload it here? Preferably in 2048px resolution.

I'm not sure who made it but my tummy tells me it was Schuppor so the original upload probably went down with L4P. :l

Last edited by 5tag, Sun, 10 Apr 2016 23:00.

Quote from Racer Y :

Batman Vs Superman

Absolutely outstanding movie that one! Solid 5/7 IMO.

Sorry for off-topic:

Quote from cargame.nl :

[...] curbs "biting" [...]

I'm fairly sure it's the current tyre physics. Rather than simulating the whole tread it seems to calculate the forces based on one single point of the contact patch. So when you cut the curbs hard, it's just that one point travelling inside the curb and then suddenly hitting the inside edge of the curb (>70° angle, so basically like a wall although just a few centimetres high).

For that short moment, the tyre point has nowhere left to go while the car+wheel continues to travel further away from the curb. Inertia prevents the car from just sticking to the inside curb edge like a train so the tyre model gets stretched until it glitches out of the curb, changing the contact point's position almost instantly and thus sending a jolt through wheels, suspension and ultimately the whole car.

Just a few more trolls and TypeRacing takes the crown SMH

Hot damn! Excellent composition and despite the asphalt blur and brake caliper it's perfect. Stunning work and honorable effort but I think this comp died a long time ago.

Quote from e2mustang :

some new things

Never understood the appeal of those.

Quote from R3DMAN :

they are behind the seat, you can see them through the holes

Aren't they 4-point harnesses? How can they go through those holes and why are they back there?

Quote from R3DMAN :

snip

Still the sexiest thing in this thread. Form follows function, everything's neatly done and clean. I envy you Brits for what kind of mods you can have street legal. What happened to the seat belts on the driver side?

Welcome to the internet... There is no technical protection, so I think it's pretty naive to assume every single one of those that get their hands on your stuff will follow your rules.

I like Ped7g's approach, personally I've only ever asked not to remove the credits on my skins.