Quote from JeffR :

It still has up to 1000 players online at peak times, far more than other racing games as far as I know.

Since you are including arcade racing games in the discussion, TrackMania as of now has >1500 players online and I think the peak should be substantially higher than that.

For a comparison, on LFS there are now about 600, but peaked earlier in the evening around 1400. The numbers are remarkable considering that TM offers much more content (1 car, infinite tracks) than LFS for free.

I don't know about iRacing since their stats appear to be only accessible by subscribers.

Quote from majod :

but not as much as apocalypse now

or FMJ

You don't have to be a whinger to be negatively affected by this situation. Let's avoid that mistake of lumping everything together: there are ADD kids, trolls, etc, and there are people genuinely disappointed -- it's the latter we are interested into.

The OP didn't come here whinging, trolling or whatever. He just asked a question, voicing what I suppose is a legitimate concern: as such he doesn't deserve to be tarred with the same brush.

+1 to the last two posts.

I'll probably be able to join the test race this sunday but cannot make it in time for the qualification. Do I have to do anything/inform anyone?

May I quote myself?

Quote from NightShift :

E.g. implement an ".eng Validator" on LFSWorld that discards files that clip or clip more than a preset threshold.

Quote from Bob Smith :

I'm happy for IMG links to be converted to URL links upon quoting.

Exactly my thought.

@ Sam, Scawen and all the others are just men like everybody else, they make mistakes, have emotions, a real life etc. - that's understood.

It doesn't change the fact the people may be dumping LFS not because it's a bad or outdated product but rather because communication is mismanaged.

The OP has a point; but if the solution requires a well-managed development blog, LFS is in a stalemate situation:

• If they get a pro to run it, LFS turns into something they don't want it to be.
  
• If they fetch some guy from this community, it would risk becoming a lightning rod a bit like the front man for nKp, call him Malaussene if you want
  

The situation calls for some creative thinking

Quote from gigi91430ita :

What do you think?

I think you're crashing into the forum wall, i.e. people telling you are wrong when in fact you're right: more communication would be great if they did it correctly.

If you take a look at old posts, you'll notice the dev team was much more informative about what was going on, the quality and amount of communication has deteriorated, which is -I guess- another reason why some people insist saying LFS is dead.

Of course someone will tell you that was a consequence of people asking too much of the devs, but it's probably just because they didn't manage communication effectively in the first place:

To avoid backtracking (rally pack, MRT6, LX8, you name it), they just stopped talking, but as a matter of fact, backtracking still happens (e.g. Moving House), and it backfires a lot, too.

PS:

Quote from SamH :

It sometimes seems like people CHOOSE to be ignorant of the facts that Scawen has put into the community

Sam you're a nice guy but this is a prime example of provider mentality, i.e. you're swapping cause and effect.

Along the same line of thought, remove .eng editing altogether or create a group of super-users who are only allowed to do that

Quote from word. :

- increase the speed of the automatic clutch to 10

<sarcasm>Perfect! and then let's remove the analog clutch altogether.

Nobody uses it anyway, because it's just so much faster than the AutoClutch that everybody would feel like cheating to use it in race</sarcasm>

OMG this thread is taking a surreal turn

Quote from Bladerunner :

Why oh WHY have so many crap flms been made out of Phillip K Dicks' books? I can think of lots of "Average" films...Total Recall, Minority Report, and the above mentioned Southland Tales...but only ONE true classic! (Absolutely NO prizes for guessing which one! )

Well most of his books are crap but that's not the reason of course only a handful are truly great books, and about the classic you're talking about, the plot is entirely different from the book and only some of the names and some very general concepts have been kept intact.

What I find ironic is that BR visually defined the aesthetics of the Cyberpunk era, and eventually got labeled within that movement despite having been released some time before the genre-defining Neuromancer.

And while certainly (the true) Cyberpunk had something in common with PKD's own way to see things, it's certainly the product of another generation. Even more ironicly, BR is also quite one of the few 'Cyberpunk' movie that isn't completely worthless.

IMO Total Recall and Minority Report are just dull blockbusters. Southland Tales in some way captures the crazied, paranoid, half-mystic vision of the late PKD, think about Valis if you've read that. In artistic terms you could say PKD is a bit like the EM Forster of the US SF, he was never truly out of the 50s and 60s (and their pulp) and never really into the 70s (and into social SF) - he stayed that quirky writer, churning out stories day after day, in his own personal, flawed style. So human! If I had a time machine I'd go pay him a visit just to say bye and maybe drink something together

Back to the point, Kelly really deserves a big big applause for doing that film. He could have capitalized on the Donnie Darko success, instead he moved on and made something completely different.

It's the kind of courage you rarely see among moviemakers. Dollar is a god and king.

ST is not everybody's cup of tea and could never be, that's why I had put that premise about PKD before my recommendation

PS: sorry for the long post I feel chatty tonight!

Quote from dawesdust_12 :

So Closed and proprietary? OSX is quite the contrary. Most of it is Open-Sourced.

OMG what a self defeating line There's no middleground between open and closed when you're talking about the OS itself.

The fact they recycled code off some BSDs only goes to prove their prices are even more outrageous

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Why even offer button as an option when it's obviously abused..?

I'm not against deleting clutch button (I'm sure there are legitimated uses for it), but as I said in an old thread you panned...

Button clutch should have a lower limit implemented in it so it's not possible to shift like the wind anymore

Quote from Mogar :

I personally think that we would have an at least 70% drop on complainings about next patches if the "alpha" tag of LFS was removed.

It wouldn't change anything, the main reason (there may be others, but let's stick to the big one) why people complain is the infrequent updates in content.

Also your textbook analysis of the business model does underestimate the power of expectations and emotions. Since content and 'core' development are intertwined and suffer from mutual locking in LFS, the sparseness of content updates overshadows the updates to the engine.

And since we are on this already: last physics update dates back to Dec 07, and as most think 0.6A will bring no innovation physics-wise, it means people aren't expecting to see something new before 4Q09.

(As usual, apply disclaimer: 'will be more than glad to be proven wrong')

Quote from Mogar :

the arguments saying "we didn't get what we paid for" are not valid.

That's certainly a moot point but emotions are seldomly expressed through logical reasonings

Quote from Deesiel :

by promoting it to people who are interested in real life motorsports.

This is what iRacing is trying to do, whether it's the greatest idea of the decade or a giant marketing trick, time will tell.

Personally I (and others in this thread) came from Trackmania and I do not regard myself as an 'unserious' player (well, given the constraints, i.e. I can't play 8 or 12 hours a day like some younger fellows, or spend thousands of euros on sim equipment at the drop of a hat)

I also don't give a royal fudge about real life motorsports, as seen in TV. It's just the entertainment circus, which as far as I'm concerned could be shut down tomorrow morning, that's the extent of the regard I have for it.

As for amateur racers, I suppose some may actually develop an interest in simracing but not all of them. The relation simracing ~= real life is too easily falsified.

First there's a problem with fidelity of the recreation of real cars and tracks, a problem which has been exemplified quite evidently by the continuous revisions in some of iRacing contents. If it doesn't behave exactly like the real thing, it's not the real thing, no matter how many licenses you got under their belt, or the money you pour into exotic marketing techniques.

The other problem lies in the shortcomings and affortability of the feedback system. As far as I'm concerned learning to drive in LFS is almost like learning to drive again. To be fair, the two sets of skills have some degree of overlapping but not as much as one could reasonably expect. Sensing speed and accelerations is an almost totally theoretical exercise, unlike IRL.

E.g. IRL I can stop any car I hop on in the exact spot I want without even thinking about it. It's the same for the clutch. In LFS after months behind the wheel I'm still struggling to do that as naturally and perfectly whereas IRL it was just a matter of weeks.

Motion simulators and projectors both have shortcomings and affordability (as in money but also space) issues, though I'm sure in due time technology will offer some innovative and interesting development that could suit simracing.

Quote from Deesiel :

Most 'gamers' wont really be intertested because as a game,

LFS being a sim it's not quite completely a game and as such, concepts like being 'outdated' or behind the times don't completely apply as you were talking about a new installment in whatever FPS franchise comes out these days. The lifespan of products like GPL and NR2003 offers an interesting comparison IMO.

Back to the point, some people try out TrackMania because it has cars and it's free. Both TrackMania and LFS have several things in common: they are not games where you step in and with no experience whatsoever make a lap within cents of the WR. They need lot of practicing and effort to master them, as all those who completed the solo found out joining the online servers for the first time, immediately realizing the gold medals they sweated to earn, were easily beaten by the most average player.

And they have transversal appeal, in that they draw in people from many different backgrounds. I've raced against 50 yo people more often in my TM days than I ever did in LFS And you can bet your ass they're damn serious about being competitive, spending evenings and weeks training in e.g. the drifting technique which in TM is one of the keys to higher rankings. They have tournaments just as regulated and demanding as those there are in LFS, don't let the arcade physics fool you.

If we were to set up an LFS promotion initiative, we would certainly not expect a 100% conversion rate, and even 10% is likely asking for too much. But in LFS if there's a server with 20-40 people on it at once, it's an event, the most popular server etc. In TM there are dozens of them

Unless Safari suprisingly turns out to have the next killer feature, there's hardly any reason for Windows users to try it out.

It either caters to the Apple user who wants to feel at home when he/she is using Windows, to people who want to try the 'Apple experience' out. (ok, maybe also to the 2 developers who feel the need to check whether their sites are Mac-compatible)

Firefox offers extreme customizability, Chrome is designed ground up to be the perfect platform for Web2.0 and Cloud computing, easy to use and some nice touches throw in for good. Opera is for the advanced users that don't like Firefox. IE is evil but comes with Windows.

QED, no need for an evil browser that comes from another closed, proprietary OS

Nice, thank you for the tip. Although I can't help but wonder why they go all through that hassle to take off and don't just hit a barrier

Quote from The Very End :

Even if it's some years ago : Donnie Darko.

Yep and watch the theatrical version not the director's cut (which is only for completists)

Since we are talking about Kelly, for those of you who also happen to like Philip K. Dick, I recommend Southland Tales.

Quote from nismoCat :

I understand in Europe you have lots of people to race with, But because we down here don't have any peeps that play S2,

Maybe you are an owl among aussies?

I am an owl among europeans and remember racing against aussies, but for all I know, those might have been the larks of Australia

Quote from nismoCat :

I hate to say, But this is the only LFS downfall is Australasia! That we get no racing and no one knows about it here!!!

That is why LFS has been adding more and more translations, in an attempt to bring asian people to join. But I can't honestly say how much it really worked out.

The only asian I remember seeing online was Wulf§port (from HK IIRC), and since CTRA was shut down I've never seen him again.

Quote from gremo123 :

My time is 1:16, and I wanna know what's my problem?
I think my problem is not in driving but in setups.

I suggest you try out LFSWorld, upload one of your laps (choose a rather average one rather than the best you have) and then compare it with another lap which is around your target time.

That way you should be able to find out where you are losing time. And keep in mind that demo drivers tend to be extremely specialized so while a 103% of the WR may be more or less acceptable on any other combo in LFS, on BL1 it's like you're racing with a skateboard when everybody else has a rocket

PS: as for top speeds, try removing downforce (without altering the force balance too much)

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

TM is a bit cartoony to be attracting serious sim racers I think. rFactor or iRacing would be a "lesser waste of time"

TM is a totally unrealistic arcade game, that's why there's a chance to attract new players IMO: it'll be like fishing for those people who don't know about simming yet.

It may sound like a crazy idea, but think about it: the average simmer likely knows about LFS already or will find out sooner or later.

Rather than try to win over the fans of another sim, the point is to create new simmers

Quote from Crommi :

Believe it or not, people are paying real money for upgrading their character's equipment.

You mean like from the XR GT to the GT Turbo ?

Tonight I was trying to relax myself a bit playing some TrackMania, but something I'd read here got stuck in my ear and kept coming back to me.

Quote :

LFS need racers not servers there are enough

So I said to myself, TMN has a larger audience than LFS, what if we showed them another game they probably haven't heard of? The basic idea is to have more people check out LFS.

Some of us are certainly more or less regular players of TMN, so they could united in a team for the purpose of promoting LFS to that audience, whose members often like cars, driving, speed, etc. TMN also is similar to LFS in that the audience is spread across a wide range of ages, despite the bulk of it being in the 15-30 bracket.

The team would not be an official LFS thing, and would not look for endorsement from devs either, being entirely a 'grassroots' initiative.

Players would be recruited not for their raw speed but for their willingness to introduce other people to the world of LFS, being both polite and friendly.

Those people having a licensed TM account would be preferred as they would be able to use a specific avatar, an LFS car model and skin sporting the LFS logo and the URL. And more importantly, they couldn't be accused of taking something from what Nadeo created without giving anything back.

TMN licenses are quite cheap anyway since an account can be validated using an old key from the original TM which, last time I checked, retailed for something like 10 euros.

The team would be named accordingly to feature a [LFS] tag (e.g. LFS Federated Simmers or whatever you fancy) mimicing the colors of the LFS logo.

Ideally it also would run a public server, featuring LFS ads and boards and the tracklist would be made mainly of tech or speedtech tracks. Of course some graphic artists and admins would be needed besides regular drivers.

Of course for this thing to work, you have to be a TM player already so you aren't reallocating part of your LFS time to another game (which would not make any good to LFS)

Since I wouldn't be able to set this thing up myself, I'm releasing this idea in the wild without having anything ready beyond the basic concepts - so if you think this is a good one, go ahead, you have my blessing.

Of course the whole reasoning could also be applied to other driving games.

Comments, as long as they're constructive , are welcome.

WOW! Where do I buy one?! Oh wait...

Seriously you should add a disclaimer 'the actual ingame look may differ from video', if new people download the game expecting that level of bling, they'll be thoroughly disappointed