I use this program for Silent Hunter III also. It works great and the mod community here should REALLY make their mods so that they work using this utility. It makes things so much simpler when you've got multiple different mods to manage.

Quote from Lato :

Belive me, in year 2007 +4000 polys for 8 crew members, and +40000 polys if 10 players would pit equal time, isnt a big deal to render realtime (speciealy with LOD options) - 2d sprites were good for duke nukem. Simply look at F1 challange from 2000 and the virtual pit crew... today we have GF8800 cards (and LOD options for those who havent got a g80) so it is really no big deal.

I have to agree, here. Animated, fully polygonal pit crew shouldn't be a problem as far as 3D card performance is concerned, as it hasn't been for quite a long time now. For reference, here is a shot from F1 challenge (2000), a game that came out SEVEN YEARS AGO:



And here's a shot from Grand Prix 4, circa 2002:
http://www.simracingworld.com/screenshots/1/?n=54


Let's not forget that F1 Challenge also had wings and tires that could fly off in an accident, as well. Computers have the power to do all this stuff (and have for quite a while now), we just need more hours in the day for Scawen to program it all.

Last edited by Cue-Ball, Mon 18 Jun 2007, 16:43.

Quote from Becky Rose :

GTR2 manages to give us 3D crews, with a low speed machine option of seeing only our own pit box. It would really add to LFS, but there's one thing in GTR2 I would not want to see, in GTR2 you dont drive the pits, only your throttle / brake.

That's an option that can be disabled.

Quote from duke_toaster :

That would be a very good idea, as would a pit board

Both of these are already in the game. Or, at least, they are if you download them from the unofficial addons section.

LFS Companion tells you if you're going slow, close to running out of fuel, what lap you're on, etc. LFSpitboard displays a pit board with your current place, gap ahead and behind, etc. Companion hasn't been updated for Patch X, but LFSpitboard works fine in X.

This has been brought up before, but it's still a good idea. I think that the more car types LFS offers, the better. Personally, I would love to see a 3/8 mile dirt oval and a sprint car and stock car to go with it. Even though I prefer road course racing, I used to attend the dirt track races a LOT when I was younger, and I think such a course would be a great addition.

I think you're right. I truly believe that engine and suspension damage would be the number one thing that would change LFS for the better. In real life, people would never get away with the downshifting that they do in LFS. If pushing in your front bumper 5" caused the car to stop running, I think we'd see a lot fewer T1 accidents. If brushing the wall in South City caused your race to be over, races would be a lot more realistic and interesting. There would be no more limping to the pits after hitting a wall going 100 mph.

I'm hopeful that these things are on Scawen's "to do" list for upcoming physics changes (along with a working clutch).

While I would love to see updated versions of the current cars (keeping the tried and true versions), I just can't see spending the time. There are so many other types of cars I'd rather see. I don't want Eric to spend time remodeling cars we've already got when he could be working on a Formula Ford or mid-engine sports car.

I've said this before in other suggestion threads, and I think it still pertains: We really need differing track temps before anyone will have a good reason to use anything other than R2s. I can guarantee that if you had to run a 30 lap race on a 130* track, rather than the cold, balmy, British tracks we have now, you'd rethink using R2s.

At the very least, the tracks should have different temperatures depending on location (ie: Fern Bay's track temp should be a lot hotter than Blackwood's). Even better would be to then vary the temps according to time (ie: Early morning or overcast would be cooler than sunny mid-day). The best solution would be to allow server side control (and/or somewhat random generation) of the track temp.

Can you imagine a league where you have to look at the weather forecast and choose your tires accordingly? Do you take R2s, hoping that the predicted forecast is correct and that it will be cool for the race, or do you take harder tires because there's a good chance that the sun will break and the track will be hot?

Quote from Falcon140 :

If it is so unrealistic, let's take out typing too, because you can't type in a race car.

One of the many reasons that quite a few of us race with messages muted.

Quote :

What's so bad about VOIP. I think it would be great! But only if it were like Counter Strike. Where you can mute people. Or like ROOST, where you can choose to talk to everyone, or your team, or certain people.

Nothing is wrong with VOIP. The simple fact is that there are already tons of programs out there that do this. There's no upside to Scawen spending his time making it a part of LFS when not everyone wants it, and the people who do already have alternatives that work fine.

Quote from morcs :

I also like the idea of fixed cockpit view and dials etc., as well as forcing no auto-clutch and blip and other realistic constraints. Would this be a bit elitist by restricting servers to G25/other pedal users though?

You WILL see this. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I had planned to start a weekly race series (and possibly, an eventual league) around this idea. But, then InSim completely changed and the tool I was using to enforce gearbox, clutch, etc. no longer works. I'm no programmer, so until someone can come up with an InSim tool to do the dirty work, this is on the back burner. But, I can pretty much guarantee someone will code up a tool to do this (Monk is probably already working on one).

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I do like the idea.

I've occasionally suggested (over the 4 years or so I've been playing LFS) that the devs should include a server-side option for a fixed setup, to be imposed on all drivers on the server. NR2003 had this option and it produced some of the best races I ever had with that game.

This is something I've wanted (and put in the suggestions forum) for a long time also. When I race with friends we all just use the same setup anyway. It would be nice to be able to do the same thing, but with more people. Working on setups is my least favorite part of racing, so anything that would let people jump into a race and have a competitive car would be a big plus in my book.

Quote from Dygear :

Speaking of community added content, I would love to see that McLaren added ASAP.

Don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

I haven't really had a chance to try Patch X online, and I didn't get to test anything past about W20 or so, but the other night I ran a couple of races against a dozen AI cars and had a pause right as the lights turned green each time. I'm not sure if this is what you guys are talking about or not, and I'm not sure what causes it, but it's certainly not lag since I was playing single player with AI.

Anyone else seen this? My system is fast with plenty of RAM and a good vid card, so I don't think it's system overload.

Quote from srdsprinter :

- Basically it almost would amount to asking the dev team to stop developing, and move to become a test and implement team.

Not in the least! Scawen could still do all the same stuff he does now. Eric currently handles all of the car and track modeling, so he should be the only one really affected. And, again, it's probably going to be a lot easer for him to import a quality car model than it would be to create one from scratch.

Quote :

- Online gameplay would be affected (not necessarily hurt), but if 4x the cars and 4x times the tracks showed up, there would be a noticable toll.

This may be true to a certain extent. However, I would argue that the effect would be positive, not negative. People would be able to drive the cars that they really want to drive, instead of the cars that are the closest thing that we currently have. And just think of how many more people we could bring into the community. Add a 60's F1 car and we might get more of the GPL crowd. Add a stock car and we might get more of the NR2003 crowd. Add a Formula Ford and we might get more club racers. Add a stadium truck or buggy and we'll get the off-road enthusiasts. The list goes on. And you can look at it another way as well...people are always saying that they want more cars in each class. What if we had 5 GTR cars instead of 3? What if there were a mid-engine MR2-type car to compete with the XRG and XFG? Quite the opposite of driving people away, you would create even more diversity in each class, and draw more people in to the races. In the same way, there are always people complaining about Aston being run on so many servers. Well, what if we had two other tracks that had the feel of Aston (long, high speed tracks), but that were totally different? Something like a super hilly, fantasy Bathurst or a clean and wide Miller Motorsports Park type track.

I love LFS as it is, but I would be lying if I said I wouldn't like to see another dozen tracks and cars. I don't want LFS to turn into rFactor, and I don't want to see it openly modded. But I do want to see more content, and I think the community is the best way to get a lot of great content without a lot of work from the devs.

Also, this could be an additional revenue stream for Scavier. I think that most users would be willing to pay a few bucks for a track/car pack (lets say, three new cars and two new tracks for 5 pounds). It's a win-win situation. It would keep the game fresh, add to the community, and please the fans. We get the content that we want and the devs get enough money to make it worth their while.

Quote from Jakg :

i had the "pleasure" of using Safari on a Mac today, it was JUST as slow and JUST as buggy to use. Only of course, i couldn't right click!

Seriously, Firefox + Extensions owns this

Unfortunately, I must agree. I was really looking forward to the new release of Safari, because I like some of its features way, way more than Firefox, which I'm currently using. I installed the beta on my Mac last night and was very disappointed. It's still very, very buggy and a lot of stuff wasn't working right.

Hopefully the Apple engineers get on the ball and fix up the problems because the old release of Safari has fallen behind Firefox in a lot of areas and really needs to do some leapfrogging if they want to maintain market share (and represent the company well).

Quote from BrandonAGr :

Although I can definitely see why the devs want to just focus on what they are doing now. Trying to organize and import 3rd party content certainly would be more work.

Compared to what? Which is harder, creating a model from scratch or importing a completed model into the game? Admittedly, none of us really knows exactly how cars and tracks are put into the game, but I have to believe that designing the car and creating the model are 80% of the work, while importing it, setting suspension hardpoints, and determining balancing are the other 20%.

Quote :

Opening up formats for people to be able to use would also lead to an increased chance of hacking.

There's no reason that the LFS formats would have to be opened up to the public. Again, nobody but the devs know for sure how development is handled, but I would be willing to bet good money that Eric creates his tracks and cars in a standard program (like 3D Studio), then imports them into the game. So, while they may use a proprietary format in the actual game, they were most likely created with standard tools that are available to the public.

I think the general consensus is that Scawen doesn't want (or need) anyone helping him program.

That said, I think that Elektric Kar's updated track textures are outstanding, and should be the defaults that ship with LFS. Ditto for some of the interior textures that other users have made (though, these might be obsolete when Patch Y comes out). I would really like to see these things included with LFS since they really add to the game, and since the work is already done. This would be similar to what was done with the sounds in patch W. Community generated content that is far better than what comes with the stock game (no offense to the devs).

I would also love to see the devs embrace community submitted cars and, perhaps, tracks. So long as they are of high quality, and are not trademarked or copyrighted, I think that such additions would be beneficial to everyone and would probably only need a bit of work from Scawen and/or Eric to get the models into LFS. I really hope that the devs consider doing such a thing, but I somehow doubt it will happen.

This is awesome! I've always wanted LFS to use a pit board instead of the giant letters plastered across the screen. I can't wait to get home and give this a shot.

This app puts LFS just a little bit closer to nKP in this regard. Great job.

edit:

Quote from Vain :

Later down the line I'd like to improve LFSpitboard's behaviour for situations like mid-race join and qualification, make the insim-port editable using a config-file and add customizable pitboard-layouts, aswell as fuel-tracking to warn the user when runs out of fuel.

Will the new InSim let you use different fonts or anything like that? It would be nice if it looked more like a real pit board, with big block letters:
http://www.imotorgear.com/asse ... t_images/37030100P001.jpg

Last edited by Cue-Ball, Mon 11 Jun 2007, 17:07.

I'm hoping that this is something we'll see fixed with the AI updates in Patch Y. It would really be best if the AI would finish the race, take a cool down lap, then stop in the pits.

+1 from me

Quote from Blackout :

I guess this question is better over here.


Yesterday I noticed (or confirmed what I think I've heard) that the skins are not loaded while racing as the leading guys who had just joined front of me were all white and when the race had finished their skins showed up. But my question is, why the skins seems to get loaded if you join mid-race? The skin loading causes small pauses at least for me, and could end up with even worse results if you had it at the wrong time. So could all skins be loaded after the race?

Scawen has said that skins load when you spectate, or when you are stopped/barely moving. If you join, then sit in the pits for a few seconds, the skins should load. If you join, then immediately start driving, the skins won't load until you stop your car.

If 8 people think you're a tool and ban you, that's good enough for me. There are plenty of other servers, and you can always host your own if you don't like it.

Quote from jayhawk :

Take a long break from coding....you deserved it!

Yes. Just not TOO long. Because you just know everyone is going to be chomping at the bit for Patch Y now.

I also think something like this is really needed. It would make pit stops more authentic.

Scawen mentioned, in the past, customizable driver suits. I think it would be a good idea to have the driver suit and the pit banner use the same graphic file. That would help conserve bandwidth and would make it easy for everyone to customize their pit space. Add in a lollipop man in front of your stall and you're set. Not the perfect solution, but should be relatively easy to implement (versus an entire 3D pit crew) and just as informative.

Of course, I would love to see a GTR2-like 3D pit crew, as well as more general activity around the pits...but, baby steps...baby steps.

Punctuation is your friend.

The word is spelled "you".

That is all.

Quote from anttt69 :

Its a funny question really, a little ambiguous. Suffice to say that I would still play LFS if it continued the way it is, however I would pay another £12 just to have a handful of real tracks, no need for real cars.

I would pay for more cars OR more tracks, real OR fictional. If the devs ever decided to release track packs or car packs, I would gladly pay (assuming, of course, that the cars were different enough from what we've got now).