Quote from Scawen :

It's a totally different and much, much larger project to go to unicode. We still use the same basic font drawing system for this version - it now has around twice as many characters. It's not possible to include Chinese on pre-rendered font textures, so i'd have to write a large character caching system, or switch to a later version of Direct X that can draw them live, very fast. We'd also have to go to XP only, for the unicode support it offers, ruling out a large percentage of all current LFS players.

Also, all text buffers in the game and every packet that handles text, would need to be rewritten with some careful thought in each case. It's many thousands of lines of code and new functions that will need to be updated and tested.

So basically, it's not the time. I guess the right time will be in a few years from now, when no-one uses the old versions of Windows, and all graphics hardware supports later versions of DirectX.

thanks for explaining all aspects...so coding is not the only issue, OS, graphic card, net packets, etc. things that you cannot control obvoiusly.
well i have to say "fortunately"...may i ask you if there is any chance that we can beta test phisics patches (only for offline use), like it happened for the Q-patch?

cheers

Quote from axus :

@Honey - I'm sure that Scawen want to do some more fascinating stuff for a bit like physics (any excuse to skip the unicode implementation for now )

i also have the feeling that he had some kind of trauma with unicode when he was a kid

Quote from STROBE :

A perfectly valid point in terms of the logic, but ssshhh! The rest of us are looking forward to the physics/aero updates!

Thanks Scawen for S2Q.

indeed as i said elsewhere my whishes are different:
1) tire phisics
2) collision engine
3) aero bugfix (only the "high nose" fix)
4) suspension improvement5) better damage model
6) better aero phisics
...
99999999999) language support

so thanks god patch Q is out, let's "patiently" wait for the next phisic patch...i'm just wondering what things will be patched.


my point was, better to wait now to finish language support rather than making happen again in the future that while we are waiting for a "most wanted" thing, Scawen will make joke to use by working at unicode

Quote from STROBE :

Current big Ferraris are front-engined, not front wheel drive.

The FZ50/GTR is rear engined like a Porsche, and to me it has an ingenious hybrid shape that's like an illicit lovechild of Ferrari and Porsche stylists.

you're right i didnt read correctly...

however you're right again, fzr is much more beautiful than both scaglietti and carrera

Quote from ajp71 :

The FZ50 and FZR are not Ferrari 550 based, they are rear engined, who gives a shit what it looks like? The FZ50 is closest to the 911 Carrera S.

do you mean ferrari are fwd????!!!!

i always tought there was no doubt, fz50 and fzr are almost exactly ferrari scaglietti! i frequently see a guy near my workplace with a ferrari scaglietti and i'm always stunned, it seems to me to be into an lfs race (me with gti)

the only difference is tires width: the scaglietti ones (rear tires) are much smaller than fz50/fzr

only front lights are from carrera, the rest is scaglietti, no doubt!

Quote from Scawen :

As two people said here before me, Chinese, Korean and Japanese Kanji contain thousands of letters, so it's a different task, which is best left until the future, when there's no-one left using older versions of Windows, and we all have a later version of DirectX, because Unicode and so on, is supported better with Windows XP.

The only reason we could do a Japanese codepage, is because Japanese has a special text called "Katakana" which is something like an alphabet, containing letters like "KA" and "RO". It's useful for writing words when the Kanji character is not known (because in Kanji, which is based on Chinese writing, each character means a word, and you can't just figure out how to write a word just by hearing it - you need to know the Kanji).

So all Japanese people are familiar with Katakana, it's useful for chat and looks cool, even though in LFS they can't write full Kanji.

first of all thank for replying to a such sarcastic (mine) post, i understand chinese would have implied unicode and you probably remember i am one of those who thinks that for a race sim language suport is the very last thing, but apart from my opinion, my consideration was:"if language support is important to gain more customers allover around the world, why not target to the most numerous country?".
so my real question is (actually against my whishes...), if codepage took so much time, why not target at the big goal "unicode"? i think that with the latest patch you rewrote almost all parts of code that implies text, so while you are fresh with that issue, would still require a lot of time including unicode?

cheers

Quote from tristancliffe :

Can't you just watch the replays and learn that way? Having a translucent car on track that you can drive through is soooooo unrealistic it's just silly (before someone tries to be clever and state that LFS isn't 100% realistic, I know, but there must be boundaries to the noob-aids). I would ONLY be SLIGHTLY interested in this if the car was solid (and hence you could follow it, but NOT set good times by being able to drive though it. Thus if you want to set artificially fast times using a ghost car you have to pass him, not drive though him...

it would be very interesting with solid car (me fighting with myself ), but there would be issues:
if you hit the ghost car, what should it do? should it be perfectly rigid and don't change speed/position OR should interact according to crash phisics? in the latter case, is it possible to implment a kind of AI to make it regain the line/speed of the ghost-lap (i think it would be not easy to implement)?

however i would like even the classic transparent ghost car, BUT disabling hotlap recording when in ghost car mode, so to avoid "cheating" with hotlaps.

[sarcastic mode on]
thanks a lot!!!!!!!!!! the new wonderful chat it's so amazing...now i can chat in japanese while i'm racing!!!!!
[sarcastic mode off]

the "funniest" thing is that chinese was left out...but they are the most numerous people...

Quote from GP4Flo :

This would be his first post in the new forum. Unfortunately Eric is still hiding :hidesbehi

"surely" is because he is hardly working on new tracks, cars and a rally pack

"surely" before christmas we will be gifted of a mountain track and new amazing cars

Quote from M.Mos :

I would even say we need more the 2 way per travel direction. LFS has so many different cars and tracks (rallyx) that you need different damper characterictics. Somekind of "damper equalizer" and a damper-graph showing the damper characterictics

i agree!!! more settings and more graphs and maybe an option for noobs/simplified settings page.

and just to tell i would like it to be scheduled (it is only my whish i don't want to tell devs what to do and when to do it) as follows:

1) tire phisics
2) collision engine
3) aero bugfix (only the "high nose" fix)
4) suspension improvement
5) better damage model
6) better aero phisics

PS graphs are very important when trying to counteract the bumps of a particular track...that is, frequencies of springs are very relevant, so a graph would be of big help IMO

PS bis i don't know how LFS code is implementing suspensions, but as a dev i believe that it should not be complicated, but it can affect PC performances a "bit" but only one guy can tell you for sure...

Last edited by Honey, Sat, 26 Nov 2005 13:12.

Quote from Warper :

oh my god, that would be really awesome - please scawen, stop debugging codepages, work on the sounds

[complaining mode on]
don't tell me...i'm so sad that the most unuseful thing took precedence on everything needed to finish S2...and the worst thing, is that it's taking months... i'm so sad...
[/complaining mode off]

an idea just popped in my mind: what do you think about a car similar to fox but fwd? in real life we always see rwd formula cars, it would be interesting to see and drive a fwd version in lfs

Quote from Krane :

No need for donations, just buy S2 license vouchers and give them to friends, family and random people

i agree!!! the income for devs will be more or less equal, plus there are more people knowing/playing lfs and also it would be helping marketing with more licenses sold!

...now i know what to give as christmas gifts!!!!
everyone let's buy lfs to friends as christmas gift

Quote from Scawen :

Well there's about 5% in transaction charges then about 10% goes to VAT (some payments are exempt from VAT). So another 35% for income tax, national insurance, server costs, etc doesn't seem unlikely. I'm just estimating 50%, more or less... just pointing out that we don't actually end up with £24 for each license, as some people assume. And it's a similar story for all businesses of course, not just ours.

for others who don't know, i confirm it! taxes are about or more than 50% (roughly), doing some maths is like each one of you had an employment with about 2000€ monthly income (not considering costs like hardware, software licenses, etc.), which is a regular income and honestly i think you three deserve more (i already paid, so i can be sooo generous ... )

i always tought sells were much less...i'm happy for you i was wrong

Quote from Vykos69 :

Thx kid, you're the man to get my thoughts onto the screen In those times I sometimes feel a bit offended by people calling me a blind fanboy etc. and then I have exactly those thoughts in my mind...

and you are proud of it?

O_________O

...bah...
why can't people just talk? the thread started with wrong foot, but it does not mean that everyone must try to make it worse and worse, i personally dislike insults, please if you have to discuss do it, if you have to insult, please do it on another forum, i would like lfs forum to be the lfs forum, not a wild arena...please!

please all calm down there's no reason for all of that, please!

Quote from Scawen :

Could some people please stop thinking that the only reason they don't get physics updates is because of hotlaps. SPRs and hotlaps being made invalid are only one reason. But i'm seeing the same thing mentioned all over the place, some myth that hotlaps are stopping people getting new physics updates.

If there is any change in physics, there is an ONLINE COMPATIBILITY issue. Old physics and new physics cannot join together. Some people will download the test patch, and some people will upgrade their hosts. So then the people with the new version, would be all alone in their sub-community of people who like to get incompatible test patches. So then they'll say "we like the new physics" and some other people will start to get the new patch. Meanwhile, the people who never heard about the new patch, will wonder where everyone's gone. Then we'll discover a bug in the new physics so hundreds of people will be annoyed that they got the test version and didn't wait for the final version. Then a new patch will come out with some more improvements. People will wonder whether they should get the new one or not.

Then what you can't imagine is the anger that starts to be stirred up. Posts all over the web on different forums and shout boxes "why are there so many stupid patches" and "what is wrong with these developers". For some people it's a big effort to download a patch, and it makes them angry and uneasy.

Compatible test patches are very easy, get them if you want to, no disruption to the community. So it makes sense to do as many compatible things as possible (which need to be done anyway - it's bad when people can't type in their own language) before starting on and releasing physics changes, changes to car models and tracks, and other online compatibility changes. Anyway, how could i code physics changes, at the same time as updating the language support? I can only do one thing at a time.

So, as we always say, and as we have learned from experience, incompatible patches are kept to the minimum, due to the community distruption they cause. Compatible test patches can be released freely and that's the time when many game updates are done. When i'm working on the incompatible things, you probably won't hear from me for a few months, as i'll just be focussed on those very difficult things, and there won't be anything to test until several things are done.

you can make those patches available only for single player and not online, so only those who really want to see how development is going will download it and apply on a different copy of lfs, so they can help you by deeply testing it...i think this solution can satisfy everyone...what do you think?

by the way, i understand you may be so disappointed for threads like this one, but the reasons are that you, eric and victor are Superstars to us, our Superheroes!!! we only want to know you three are there and what you are planning...we think of you more as "friends"!
there are people that will never be satisfied and people that will always ask for more...and to be honest i felt so unhappy when i realised you were spending so much time for the "characters patch" because i consider it much less urgent than everything else, but i kept it for myself because i understand it is not easy for you guys to hear all our complaints...but as you can see i just surrendered to temptation and i said it...

i understand you guys are always in a difficult position (we are crazy kids to handle ), but if once in a while you can tell us what's goin' on or if you can ask us what we would like first ( ) maybe we can handle easier this abstinence crisis of such drug called LFS

Honey (just another kiddie never satisfied )

Quote from P5YcHoM4N :

I'm probably the only one. But for some reason I'm faster using my mouse then I am my wheel illepall

But the best tip I can give is use a mouse, and learn morse code. And in RWD cars, take the corner one gear higher then you need too, which helps prevent spinouts

same here

probably we need a good wheel with force feedback, but it's a shame that mouse and keyboard racers are so penalised...

it is true that with much practise, mouse can be fast as wheel but only for hotlapping, because in race with mouse your tires will die much faster, so again a fast mouse racer is penalised...

what i would like from scawen to implement is throttle/brake with mouse wheel or make the mouse wheel to control the percentage of throttel/brake to apply when the throttle or brake button is pressed.

actually i'm developing a tool to achieve this, but with the first model i implemented it's worse because of windows timing that are so unaccurate, so i will reimplement it with real axis, but i'm so lazy and also i think that if scawen do not want to implement such thing into lfs, he will also not be happy for me to make this tool available.

PS two days ago i took for the first time the f08 on blackwood, i spent a lot time to make a fast and good setup and i could make 1.04.50, but a slight mistake while "tapping" throttle during corners and i started to drift, if i do it right, my tires are dead after 2 laps, i think it will be not unfair to give mouse a smoother way to control trhottle/brakes...
...to be honest, i must say i know there is a way to use the up/down axes of mouse as throttle/brake but it's really impossible to use it: in the best case you cannot "full throttle" because it requires too much movement and if you lift the mouse to adjust, you crash! ...it's a real pain i tried for long time but i was never able to make a lap without crashing...

i really hope Scawen will implement the throttle/brake with mouse wheel...

Quote from AndroidXP :

Well, rear and side mirrors show the "same". The virtual mirror is actually the best because it shows the complete calculated image, while the "realistic" left/middle/right mirrors only show the corresponding portion of the rendered scene. You don't actually get more info from the side mirrors.

O_____O i really don't think so! in the past i used the cockpit view with an angle that let me see both side mirrors because i needed those to see cars very close to me on one of the 2 sides...really when a car is exactly on your side central mirror don't show it, but the side mirror yes...

at the moment we have virtual and real mirror, if they could be replaced by 2 virtual side mirrors there wouldn't be any fps drop and usability will increase a lot because the central mirror is totally unuseful and side mirrors are essential to avoid crashes! ...unfortunately, at the moment to view side mirros we are forced to use so crappy and unrealistic visuals...

Quote from HASTA :

In the first days of S2's new lfsworld there was a difference between the controllers at the world records list page. After some days this difference dissapeared. Why did this difference dissapeared? It was a good challenge between mousers and keyboarders. Now we have to open 744 charts to see the records.

because with mouse i was beating also wheel records, so devs tought that mouse is faster than wheel...

seriously: the bad thing was that it allowed poor wheelers to go up into the hotlap chart, by doing harder hotlaps with mouse instead...anyway, i think that it would be good to add view filters

sorry to bother, but speaking of plate...is it possible to change that ugly brown/yellow of the background with white or grey?

Quote from danowat :

It has been 31 years since my last confession, this past week I have been covetting another, she goes by the name of GT Legends, in this last week, I feel I have neglected my first love, LFS, for the sake of this new love, please forgive me father, I didnt mean this to happen, it just did, its one of those uncontrollable lust things.

What should my punishment be?.

Dan.

well, my son...you are already punishing yourself by not playing LFS...what greater punishment can i give you?!

however, the holy ways are beyond our understandings and i dare to say that walking along the road of perdition can only strengthen your faith!

it's not far the day you will understand...and that day your faith will be stronger than ever!

PS today i converted another lost sheep to the faith of LFS he was complaining that force feedback in GT4 was not strong enough as real life, he was tired of toca2, not convinced of GTR...i made him try LFS with DFP on a huge TV...he was amazed! he said "i cannot believe it! is exactly as in real life" he is addicted to tuning real cars, so...go guys and spread the word!

Quote from JeffR :

Some experiments I ran with LFS S2 alpha. I chose the LX6 as it has a good power to weight ratio and doesn't have downforce.

Drove in circles until cornering forces approached about 1.15g's, then continued to steer inwards until I reached the steering lock point. As I continued to steer inwards, the cornering forces dropped down to .8g's this is more than 30% loss in grip. Ran another test, initiating a spin, but then centering the steering wheel, grip remained about 1.1g's even with the car going sideways. Last test, slamed on the brakes, locked up the tires, slight loss in grip until the tires over heat. While drifting sideways or with all 4 tires locked up, there is very little loss in grip, but steering inputs can cause an extreme loss of grip. This doesn't make sense to me.

Induced understeer doesn't seem to work as well as it should, especially on the LX6 with front swaybar maxed out, and rear sway bar set to 0. With this setup, it would seem that the much stiffer front end would have significantly less lateral grip than the rear end. If the car starts spinning, pegging the fronts inwards should cause the front end to wash out, because they have a much higher slip angle, and because the suspension is set so much stiffer up front, yet induced understeer doesn't work well or not at all.

My conclusion from these experiments is that something strange is going on when one end of a car loses grip, as opposed to both ends losing grip at about the same time. When one end loses grip, the result is much less grip than when both ends lose grip.

i didn't read all replies, but your conclusion seems pretty realistic to me:
if u lose grip on both front and rear, at each wheel aren't applied any forces (phisically speaking) and the sliding is only consuming the energy that car have because of velocity, when only one edge is sliding then there is also the centripetal force to compensate, so the sliding wheels (the rear) must dissipate the cinetic energy and also conteract the centripetal force.

it's hard to explain more easily in english for me, i hope you understood anyway

Quote from tristancliffe :

Just (ha, just!) needs elasticity of collisions to be added (the barriers 'soak' energy in real life) so that weird things like this don't happen so much. The other issue is that cars actually overlap between packets, meaning suddenly LFS realises two cars are in the same space. This generates huge forces, which makes some pretty impressive crashes.

exactly! the overlap caused by lag isn't usually so dangerous, either because on regular races after T1 we ususally don't get too close other cars and lags usually are not too big and also because since we got car damage, i think car-to-car collision is somehow "elastic"...BUT, lightly hitting objects will produce "hyperspace jumps" that are totally unrealistic...as i said this has not been a huge problem for regular races till now (except for SO track), but since servers are hosting custom layouts (see StuntRacerClub) where rigid objects are all around, this is becoming a much bigger realism problem IMO.

i imagine that scawen will schedule this for a major patch after S2 final, not before i think...in the meanwhile let's consider this: good crashes realism is good, not crashing is better