I vote for real tracks in the future. What's the big deal? I think we've emulated car physics successfully and LFS gives you a good feel for what virtual racing is like. Why not take it to the next level. THere's something special about real world locations. We play em in every other sim and its frustrating that LFS physics and cars cannot be unleased on these same tracks. I think this would render all other simulations obsolete for me. That only reason I play GTR, rFactor or GPL is becuase of real world locations. This would be a cash cow for the devs. I'm sure there are plenty of tracks that can be modeled without incurring huge amounts of expense. Heck, I'd pay good money for such tracks.

I usually set the amount of lock in the logitech control panel or windows. As long as the amount of lock is set up there, you should be able to turn the wheel that much. Then set it up normally in LFS and it should work fine. Although, now that you mention the side to side thing, something strange happened to me last night. I fire up LFS and the wheel kept moving left to right uncontrollably for some reason. It was too late to troubleshoot.

You know how many kids would be like "this is too hard" and never play it again? For now, the PC is THE platform for simulations. I think catering to arcade junkies and teens is killing the sim/pc scene. They just dumbed down starwars galaxies for this same reason and forced me to cancel after 3 years. Not good.

LMAO - that's funny. Here's a picture of my car, its the best...

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\My Pictures\Sample Pictures\winter.jpg

If its flashing, make sure power cable is in and unplug the usb cable and reseat it. It usually flashes when the calibration goes out of whack.

I say give the new guy a break already. So he was too lazy to search, big deal. Comments like this can turn people off to this sim and this forum. New people have to figure - hmm that forum is probably "the" best place for info. If it means I have to visit there and get flamed, then maybe I should try another game. Lets face it - we dont get anything new around here from the devs too often, so why not re-hash old subjects for time to time for the new people? Sometimes these forum based search engines aren't exactly up to par with google, although I'm sure "rain" would have yielded some pretty good hits, Seriously tho, sometimes people want to talk and share opinions with those who are activly posting and reading the forums. I can see people posting commons threads just on this basis alone. It's more interactive. I'm sure if you did a search, you would find that anything that could possibly be discussed about LFS is either here or in the forums at RSC. Does that mean that lfsforum should be placed in read only mode for no other purpose than being an information repository? Come on. Anyway, Welcome Mark - I too would like to see rain especially since other sims are starting to give this feature some priority.

I don't think updates are released often enough to warrant this feature. Im sure most of us are here scouring the forums for new releases. Still, it would be cool to have nonetheless.

Prolly has been discussed before, but we may as well keep this forum hoppin' Anywho, I haven't been tracking alot of dev work so I'm wondering if we'll ever see a time when real world tracks will be available for LFS. I know there are licensing considerations so I'm not looking for something sanctioned from the devs but maybe an opportunity to create or convert them from other sims unofficially. Let modders take care of it under the cuff so to speak. This came to mind while I was racing the other sims like nr2003 and GTL and thought how great LFS' physics engine and cars would be to drive on these tracks that we all know so well. Trust me, I'm a huge fan of the fantasy tracks in LFS already. They are the best fantasy tracks ever. Most real world tracks dont even compare to the quality and flow of these courses. Not complaining about the LFS tracks or bored with them by any means. I just have this crazy itch to race the LFS cars on familiar tracks, that's all.

Last edited by joeynuggetz, Wed 25 Jan 2006, 03:24.

I still vote for a seat-belt option. And if you dont use it, the ragdoll physics would kick in and you would go flying through the windshield. Kinda like this little app:

http://jet.ro/dismount/rekkaturvat/download.cgi?zip

Last edited by joeynuggetz, Mon 23 Jan 2006, 14:52.

Oh, I just found this. Looks like a good tool. Not really something I would need, but I'm getting closer :-0

http://www.carsim.com/

This almost looks like the XF GTI - I wonder if the devs use this proggy

Last edited by joeynuggetz, Fri 20 Jan 2006, 05:50.

That stuff looks interesting. While we're on the subject - does anyone know of any software packages that will allow me to model something in 2D/3D such as motor and then have the software actually run the motor? I love to play with java apps based on pysics and would love to find some type of software that will allow me to make mechanical components and test them. I know you can use dynamics in 3d studio, but do CAD software packages usually allow this sort of thing? Not even sure if I'm describing it correctly. I just wanna make gizmos and make them work in a virtual/simulated environment.

I dont know, I'm not one to complain about something as good as LFS but I cant really blame people who bought a license and expect a formal means beside searching through threads to be kept up to date with any updates for the product they just purchased. I know everyone respects the devs and really cherish this piece of software called LFS. I rant and rave about it daily to people even remotly interested in racing on the PC. Only thing that troubles me is that sometime it seems as if the people who make inquiries on progress often get the "how dare you rush or bother our beloved devs" type of responses. I know it takes a lot of work to create a sim of this level of quality and it does take time, especially if the goal is to do things right. Many companies cannot obide by this core methodology becuase of the big business models. But here we have very talented devs who know a thing or two about sim racing and have shown us great potential. I think it's natural for people to want more of a good thing and I don't feel that inquiring about it is bad either. Sure, people will often overdo it and sometimes it's not even the same people asking. I'd have to assume that LFS is growing and people continue to aquire licenses. They have a right just as we do to open a thread about status reporting if they cant find information regarding progress anywhere. Who knows, this may keep the devs on their toes. Afterall, if no one ever said anything and just went with the flow, I think our wait could be longer.

I know the devs cannot post real progress reports becuase some things they may be looking to add may not turn out to be feasible after furthur research. However, I do feel that the devs aren't going at this thing blind and have some sort of gameplan. Why not communicate that to the people who don't already know? We all know physics are on the radar, so why not mention the things that are definitaly in the works in a central location at the top of the forums or at the main LFS site for anyone to read without having to dig through threads of this size. At least, this way things get updated once in a while and those of us who cannot spend 10 hours a day in the forums can come and get a quick update. Anyway, good luck devs, I know I'm looking forward to the next update.

Last edited by joeynuggetz, Fri 20 Jan 2006, 02:22.

I had a day to kill last week and I set the game up so the AI uses my setup. I then ensured that I filled up the tank but the AI could never finish more than 17 laps. Am I doing something wrong? I don't mind training them, but the lazy bastards always seem to stop. Maybe they fell asleep :-)

I know the AI can be setup to race and learn or else they cream you from behind, but are the knw files portable? Can they be shared or downloaded?

The reason I ask is obviously so we wouldn't have to set up our PC's to just run AI practice sessions for 60 laps. I guess maybe I'm answering my own question becuase it would seem that if this is indeed possible, then no one would really train the AI and the devs would have included knw files for all cars/track/skill combos. So what's the real answer and can any knw file be added to the in game training sessions so the AI doesn't run into you when the objective on the class is to drive carefully? I forget which training level this objective is from.

I haven't been able to locate this. I know master skinnerz have this one in the works, but are they the only ones making templates of this caliber? Better yet, is there a tutorial on how to do this? Or even better, if it's available for download, I'd rather have that and get ta' skinnin'

Sounds good, I wonder how many hours of actual work they average in a week.

Instead of a full blown report, can we get a yes or no on whether or not developement is actually taking place full-time? I would be curious if this is a full time commitment for the devs or whether or not families, kitchens, and other things come first during normal business hours. I usually leave my family stuff till after hours. Is LFS a spare time thing, or can we assume Scawen and company do nothing but LFS 9-5 and then do whatever they want after that?

Last edited by joeynuggetz, Thu 19 Jan 2006, 17:08.

Is there a dedicated update or what's new section on the forums? Where does one look for updates from Scawen and company?

Thanks for the tip. Better yet, can anyone explain this anomaly? Just doesn't seem right. I'm starting to think that my logic is retarded.

/bump anyone?

Since LFS is CPU intensive, check your CPU usage before you enter the game. Hit ALT CNTRL DEL and see what it says. Maybe you need to kill some apps. I would close everything including any crap you may have in the taskbar.

Really looking forward to this one. Cant wait to see how they pull off the much needed rain/wet surface. Those wet shots are amazing. The FF in GTR feels pretty good. Simbin does wonders with the ISI engine. Look at rFactor, it's canned cars, lighting and tracks are crap. GTL looks way better. If you look close enough, there really isn't a sun in the rFactor sky. Seems weird. How can you have day to night transitions with a sun moving across the sky? It's a mysterious light.

Physics wise, I cant ever seem to recover from a slide with as easily as I can in LFS. LFS feels a lot more natural. Maybe they've tweaked their physics some more. We'll see. I'm getting it anyway.

I think you're used to racing cars in other games that have slicks. You cant compare that to road tires on road cars. Try the slickmod and fit some slicks on the road cars and you'll see that it's all in the tires.

When you play another sim and the car handles like crap.

Hmm, one thing that I found interesting with LFS was that I had crappy frame rates with something like 1024x768 at 32 bit. What I did was up the resolution in game to 1600x1200 and I got 90+FPS. Unexpected but I'm glad it worked. You might want to increase your resolution or try 16 bit mode with dither enabled.