Quote from Macfox :

1. They should give a shit. Any business that ignores it's customers isn't going to last.
   
2. All the excuses about tyre physics etc, doesn't explain the lack of content updates. We haven't seen a new track in (3+?) years.
   
3. Adding a developer or tyre simulation/physics expert might delay the rumoured release, but the longer term benefits would make it worth while.
   

1. A business lasts or fails based on making or losing MONEY. The kind of dialogue folk here seem to expect from the devs is absent from the vast majority of successful businesses for good reasons.
2. There have been multiple explanations about the lack of updates. They all make sense. These reasons are hard to accept when you want new LFS stuff, but they are still valid reasons.
3. Adding an extra developer is just as likely to slow things down or kill the project as to speed things up and make LFS better. Scawen wants to code alone, without Scawen, there is no LFS. Simples.

IMO this thread is great. It just demonstrates how important LFS is to lots of people. I reckon that while it keeps going as it is the Devs aren't worried. If folks stopped bitching and moaning, maybe they would get scared and start changing their plans a bit?

cheers

Col

Quote from samjh :

I thought you were hiding behind your words (ie. writing "might" when you actually think it as certain).

I might have assumed wrongly. My fault.

Yep your fault.

At first you falsely attack me for claiming that 'body language' signs are certainties.
Then you accuse me of 'hiding behind my words' for correctly making it clear that they are not certanties.

What a dick you are being.

Quote from samjh :

Let's not play amateur psychologists.

Bringing one's hand to the face is not a definitive sign of untruthfulness

er.. who said it was a definitive anything?
I guess that although you seem to be an expert on "behaviour science", you're not quite so hot on elementary interpretation of English language? ("suggests that they might" != "definitive")

I was just pointing out what a hand near the face *can be* an indicator of because for some reason Tristan suggested that it meant Vettel believed Webber was at fault.

Quote from (The Stig) :

what are they doing and will we get what we deserve

No, you won't get what you deserve. The devs are way too busy working on LFS to give you a smack and send you to bed without your supper.

Quote from JPeace :

Vettel did a gesture to the cameras that indicated that Webber was crazy.

That's not 'body language', that's a conscious gesture. 'body language' is a subconscious thing that tells tales on you, and is difficult to hide/fake.
fwiw, watching the race, I thought Vettel was gesturing the crazy sign about himself - kinda like when people shout at themselves after making stupid error - its intended for others, but with a helmet on, it has to be a hand gesture.

One classic 'body language' sign is when people bring a hand near their face when talking (eg. to the mouth, nose or ear) this suggests that they might not be telling the truth . Of course, on the pit wall this might have been more about dealing with the background noise... But certainly, Vettel looked every inch the worried culprit, and webber the surprised and somewhat confused innocent party.

Quote from BenjiMC :

Because i'm pretty confident it is a coded message, as is pretty much everybody but you.

Yes, and when Lewis asked if would button pass him and was told 'no', the team maybe realised that this was a bit too obvious, and that they were going to get in trouble for it, so they u-turned to prevent punishment of losing time and/or grid position for the next race.

In the future, when they are told to 'save fuel' I bet Hamilton wont be asking silly questions in public that make the coded message too obvious.

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Yes, it's ok to overtake once SC steps in the pits and green flags are waved, i never said anything different.. I'm just saying that it was ALSO the last lap, and once SC controlled the last lap in some point, which it did, all the way till the box, then you could obey 40.13, or not, Mercedes did not, because they saw green flags, and they are right too..

doh...

Once again... READ THE RULES.
*There is NOTHING in the rules that supports what you are saying.
*The rules are coherent - there are no contradictions
*The stewards got it wrong
*You got it wrong
*You are making yourself look like a fool
*simples

Quote from Boris Lozac :

But aren't the green flags always waved when SC comes in, isn't that the right procedure? And the message "SC In this lap" and all that... That doesn't mean they are good to go racing, it's just mean that he's getting out of the way cause it's the finish of the final lap.. it would mean racing and all, if it wasn't final.

Talk about going around in circles... lol

No Boris, the green flags are not ALWAYS waved when the SC comes in. They usually are, but on the very special occasions when the race finishes under safety car conditions, green flags are NOT waved when the safety car comes in because the track is still under safety car conditions... that's has happened before, but it didn't this time. That means that safety car conditions were over and the race did not finish under safety car conditions.

Not that you will listen, I get the impression you are trolling big time...

Col

Quote from Boris Lozac :

Offcourse.. the thing is, their rules contradicted one another in this instance. If it wasn't the final lap, then this overtake would be completely legal.

Nope, their rules don't contradict one another.

Here are the two possible situations:

#1 the safety car is still deployed as the race enters the final lap. The danger is not removed, so the safety car conditions remain. In this case, the clerk of the course will not issue the message "SAFETY CAR IN THIS LAP" and rule 40.13 will apply, the safety car will enter the pit lane at the end of the last lap and the cars will take the chequered flag as normal without overtaking.

#2 The safety car is still deployed as the race enters the final lap. The clerk of the course decides it is safe to race so he calls in the safety car and issues the message "SAFETY CAR IN THIS LAP". This means that after the safety car line, the race is no longer under safety car conditions, therefor rule 40.13 does not apply

There is nothing in the rules that says the decision to bring the safety car in due the danger passing cannot be taken on the last lap, so #2 is a perfectly valid scenario. Going by the evidence presented by Ross Brawn, this is exactly what happened. The stewards got it wrong. If their decision stands, then Mercedes and Schumacher will have been cheated

To re-iterate, the rules are not contradictory, however, they need to be more clearly stated if even the stewards cannot interpret them correctly.

cheers

Col

At last, proof that the physics in F2 are totally unrealistic!

EDIT: doh.. someone already did the physics joke :doh:

Last edited by col, Fri, 14 May 2010 19:12.

Quote from AndRand :

and you provided more cons than pros. Thank you

Only to the OT(off topic) side discussion about the unrelated suggestion of adding 'live' track surface conditions to LFS.

You're welcome.

Col

Quote from AndRand :

Do you mean... new cars?

No

Quote :

on live tracks...
... creating completely new track in mod mode...

No and not new tracks either.
Please re-read the first post.
See in the second line where I say "I'm not suggesting new cars or new tracks".

Well, I meant that.

cheers

Col

Quote from Woz :

LFS used to have the race line that would darken based on the path people went....
...The rest can be handled client side as given the region it should be possible to vary grip levels and the server can validate.

I think you're under-estimating the complexity of this and not thinking through some of the problems that it would present.

Anything that the client does that is 'validated' by the server is open to the dreaded 'lag' problem. This is bad enough when it only affects times when two or more cars are nearly touching. If it was related to the track surface, then any dropped packets would potentially cause you to spin or lose some amount of control. Anyone with a connection that is not VERY high quality would not be able to play.

I know there are numerous possible solutions to this problem, but they add a lot of complexity to the solution and probably introduce other more subtle issues.

e.g.

All live track data must be downloaded, and validated before it can be used by cars.

issue#1 There's lots of data
solution: stream it interlaced (gridwise) at a low rate... the surface can be updated slowly and filtered to keep it smooth.
issue#1.1 It may be necessary to create some sort of flow grid for each track to improve the perceived smoothness of the filtering...

issue#2 All cars need to be using the same track data + the data must be downloaded and then validated. If one or more of the cars lags, then it will not be validating - what does the server do if a) that car brings dirt onto the track, then eventually does validate - should dirt just magically appear long after the car that caused it has left? or b) the server ignores lagging cars - their tracks will update in a very unconvincing fashion.

issue#3 'latency'. if the track is updated gradually, and filtering is used, and if some magical filtered fudging is used to improve the integration of lag and dropout related problems, then the latency of update will be such that the 'live' will only be useful for keeping a grippy line and having marbles in certain synthetically pre-defined areas.
All the other stuff that a live track would be good for like wet and drying track, cars bringing dirt onto track, cars cleaning up dirty areas after a few laps etc. will be difficult to implement convincingly.

But, even forgetting about these problems, there is another big one for LFS, and that is 'environmental persistence' i.e. if the track resets itself on each race start, it will seem very fake, and the races will need to be long before any great benefit will be perceived.
On the other hand if it was decided to avoid this by allowing servers to keep persistent track surface data (this would be cool IMO) then the LFS server software would need plenty of re-working. In this case there would also be a BIG bandwidth load every time a new car joined the server and needed to download that servers track surface data, not to mention each time that server changed/rotated tracks - many cars may need to download the surface data.

I'm sure there are many other issues that you can come up with just by some hard thinking. Of course, there are always plenty more that surface after implementation and testing.

I think these problems are solvable, but for the system to be great (good enough to complement LFS), it would need a LOT of work, and probably to wait until the average internet connection is a lot better than currently and also until bandwidth is cheaper.

IMO it's definitely not a trivial weekend update of the purely visual dynamic racing line.

Quote :

Live track along with removing control over wind/weather so conditions changed over time (Talking hours here for weather) would improve LFS no end.

Sure would

Col

Quote from Woz :

I think more than that we need a "live track" where the racing line is cleaned and hence more grip than off life where the marbles form.

LFS has always had the changing racing line so how much harder is it to implement variable grip so the line has more.

Tracks will constantly change then so also present a different challenge.

But yes col, I see where you are coming from.

I would love changing line and grip levels, marbles etc. however that would be a big programming effort and would take a lot of development before it was good enough for release.
The point of my suggestion is that it is not improvements, just changes. No programming required, and very little design work, just some cut'n'pastes and smoothing the joins, then probably a little testing and sanity checking. So it would be feasible to do it regularly, while we wait for improvements such as 'live track'

Quote from Furiously-Fast :

+1 to annual track improvements, but as for car changes, it has to be -/+1 to me. Yes, I think the textures and power can be changed, but the models have to be kept the same. There are loads of people who take a lot of time to skin cars and they wouldn't like it if their work was useless after a year or so.

Again, I'm not talking about improvements at all! in fact, it's likely that some changes made will be seen as the opposite on occasion (just like real life).
Personally, I'm not that bothered about making a bit of extra work for skinners if it means improving the LFS experience over all. Any changes like I'm suggesting are going to cause issues for people who obsess about keeping the status quo - skinners, hotlappers, possibly developers of some in-sim apps, drivers who depend on their car being slightly faster then others in its class... If keeping some life and interest in LFS means annoying these people a little, then so what?

cheers

Col

Quote from Flame CZE :

There were several track changes in patch Y at Blackwood track and several cars were "tuned".

Yes there were, and they helped to liven things up IMO, unfortunately that was a long time ago - Christmas 2007. If changes were more regular and didn't only happen along side major patches, it would help to keep the game alive and interesting.

col

Bear with me on this one
I'm not suggesting new cars or new tracks, I'm not suggesting 'improvements' and I'm not suggesting opening LFS for modding.

Here goes...

Everyone who's been an LFS player for any length of time will be very aware of the speed of development, and the fact that there has been very little new content added to the game in recent history.

There are various reasons why people want new content, but to me it seems that one reason above all is an issue for LFS, that is the fact that a big part of the enjoyment is learning and progressing - developing lines, finding the limits of the car, creating and honing setups.

Once you have done this for all the cars *you like* on all the tracks *you like* a big part of the enjoyment is lost. There is also the problem for newcomers that many other drivers are so far ahead that it will take weeks or months to be competitive.

I'm proposing an 'improvement' that will help to provide a solution to this problem.

In real racing, things change constantly, car designs are updated, regulations change, tracks wear out and are repaired, corners are tweaked to 'improve' racing.

What if LFS had periodical changes to performance, and some details of the tracks. Not improvements, just changes.

e.g.
track stuff:

the apex of a corner might be moved.
the track could widened or narrowed at a corner exit.
bumps or small hills or dips could be added or removed.

car stuff:

changes could be made to chassis dimensions
power changed
setup limitations could be swapped around
weight balance could be altered

These kind of changes would not be enough to change the feel and 'personality' of the cars or tracks, and would not involve nearly as much work as upgrading the quality or adding completely new content, but they would add some spice and keep the existing content alive in a way that is natural and realistic.

I know there would be resistance, particularly from the hot-lappers, people who love the fact that nothing ever changes so they can obsess over every tiny detail doing thousands of identical laps. There would also be complaints every time there was an update about resetting charts. And some people would moan that a new change 'spoils' something that was better before the change.

I think that the benefits would outweigh the problems - It would keep the game interesting and fresh and it could become something of an annual event that everyone looks forward to, like a patch, but not requiring the same amount of work from the devs.
One of the nice things about LFS in the early years was the fact that there were regular changes and LFS world resets. I think that the changes were as important as any graphical or physics improvements.

cheers

Col

Quote from kip4hours :

dose anyone no when the new vw scirocco comes out ?

yes eye nose. I ear, its in a mouth or toe

Quote from samjh :

This can be resolved by:

• Issuing spec wings, front and rear, designed by an FIA engineering committee to produce only slightly more down-force than GP2, with minimum possible drag and wake.
  

I like the sound of this.

Another possible would be allowing teams to use tyres from any manufacturer - currently with them all using the same tyres, as soon as one driver gets an advantage from changing tyres, they all dive into the pits at the same time. If they had various tyre manufacturers involved with different teams, strategies would be much more varied, and performance would be more variable at different times during the race making overtaking more likely.

Quote from Intrepid :

A gain in position increases points does it not?

Yes. But in this case, you would get more if it was achieved through overtaking.

Quote :

You'd also get team mates playing little games to gain extra points.

Probably not, if they overtook and re-overtook each other 10 times, there would still only be one point available if the one who started behind finished ahead.

Quote :

We'd also have to wait for official championship results.

We already have to wait for results - these days lawyers have the final say anyway.

Quote :

How would we feel if a driver won the championship because he overtook a HRT?

The same way we feel if a driver loses because he gets taken out by or loses time behind an HRT... that's racing - same rules for everyone.

Quote :

I think the 2009 McLaren proves wind tunnels are not a certain way to measure air flow... certainly not enough to regulate it.

Also different teams will have differently calibrated wind tunnels.

It's also a rather expensive exercise and complex thing to do.

Agreed - wind tunnels are probably not the way to go, I'm sure they could come up with some much more low tech way of measuring turbulence behind a car well enough to use it to set up some regulations.

Some brainstorming:
-----------------
Give teams/drivers points for overtaking !

At the end of the race, if their finishing position is better than their starting position, they get a point for each of the cars that started in front of them that they overtook on-track.

Maybe this would get the teams working on developing cars that are better for overtaking
It would certainly offer more of an incentive to drivers not to play it safe and wait for pitstops.

This could be crazy at the end of the season if a drivers only hope of winning involves starting at the back of the pack, and scything through the field to finish in the top 5
------------------

FIA could afford to hire a wind tunnel to test all cars.

They should put a restriction on the length of the 'wake' that cars generate. Ban them from creating too much turbulence/'dirty air'.

This would allow some to use double diffuser etc. as long as they can stay within the limit of allowable 'wake'
-------------------

two races - second with starting order a reverse of first race finishing order... (I know its not an original idea )


any other silly ideas ?

col

Quote from AndRand :

...next step: racing with real life ghost-cars from real life races.

Thats your idea of a 'next step' for racing sims ? I don't get it.

# You can't 'race with' ghost cars. All you would be doing is hotlapping, so all you need is a time to beat. To 'race with' a car/driver, it needs to react to you and you to it.
# If in the future some hypothetical sim managed to create a perfectly real physics (I know its not possible), then it would be easy for many to beat real life times for two reasons:

1) sim driver can drive in a style and with a setup that would be way too dangerous for a real driver.
2) real laps cost $$$ whereas sim laps are free, so testing and practice would enable sim drivers to get closer to the 'optimum' lap.

col

Quote from ASR Sanchez :

I'm starting to thinking that devs are working on an another project, maybe a new engine or sim for a big company, or whatever, and they've just moved lfs on place 2 . maybe that's the only logical answer for the favorite question: what takes 1yrs of work on an already existing and "working" car modell, and a physic update . Sorry guys, but do you know a better answer? fanboi's plz shut up

FWIW, I do know a better answer, but going by your final sentence, you would be too stupid to understand.

You really would be too stupid.

Quote from The Very End :

There is no economical reason for them to just be 3, they have stated that several times before. The reason is - because they want to.

Of course there is an economical reason for not hiring help. It seems pretty obvious to me.
If they were to hire more programmers and designers, that would dramatically increase their costs, so to make the project viable, they would need to sell a lot more units.
To do that, they would have to appeal to a much wider market. For that to happen, they would need licenses for real tracks and real cars (lots not a few). Of course that would need a lot more money, so even more units would need to sell to make it viable.
Now for that to happen, LFS would be turning into a more mass market product. That means competing with big budget titles, which would be a huge gamble - they would likely get wiped out, or bought out.
Additionally, there would be many legal demands from the licenses that would tie them to various rules limiting their scope for realism, design decisions, development directions etc. etc.

THose things considered, it's starting to look like a completely different product: Need for Speed? Forza? Gran Turisimo?. Sure they are all great in their own way, but I get the feeling that the people are here because LFS provides what they don't.
If the dev process changed, the product would be forced to change.
Either it would become an also-ran in the highly competitive mass market, or it would have to go with a hi cost subscription model something like iRacing (although I don't think scavier have the industry contacts, reputation and financial backing that they would need to pull that off in the way that Dave Kraemer et al are doing)

Bottom line: LFS is a business, if they change the dev process, the product will change. It might get developed faster, and have flashier graphics and better sound, but it would also lose a lot of what makes it unique and makes it work. LFS is what it is because of the small team and the approach they have taken.
The whiners are here because Scavier took that approach.
So why are they criticizing the approach ? it makes no sense!

Why are you all desperate to kill the goose that laid the golden egg?

Quote from pearcy_2k7 :

All i want is a date

Jeez, just because you can't get a woman, you have to come whining and bitching here. Go watch some porn or something.

Quote from Dac :

...my argument has stayed the same throughout...

Rubbish. You have contradicted yourself at the core of your argument. Bawbag pointed this out and you have done nothing to address his point other than a desperate attempt to imply that he is too stupid to understand.

As far as LFS and real driving, you may have a valid argument. You obviously think you do, but until you admit that some of what you've written is contradictory, and some ambiguous, and then start again, making it clear what your point is, you're just making yourself look foolish.
Even then, many people may not argee with you, and you don't seem to have any empirical evidence to back up your claims.