Quote from Paranoid Android :

I don't find the new business plan bad, but the biggest problem I can see emerging from that is that people will now HAVE the right to moan if development is slow.

Whether people have or have not the right to moan about development is beyond the point.

It's just it's been allowed so far on LFSforum. This forum needs a little revolution a bit like the one LFS is going through: set clear guidelines about what's OK to say and how is OK.

Basically, without a civil attitude you can't have a proper exchange of ideas. As long as people are allowed to play the internetz **** bosses smartassing anyone who they do not fancy, we are bound to have them around and our forum experience will always be sorry ass.

Quote from Scawen :

Anyway this frees us from having to "finish" S2 before releasing S3 content. It's not clear what "finishing S2" means any more. The LFS software and content can just keep improving and we can gradually do the features and improvements that we want to over time.

One thing we discussed was the possibility of just calling the software "Live for Speed 0.6A" and forget about the Alpha / Beta tag. It's very stable software so doesn't really need those tags.

This is REALLY great news!

TBH I think if you announced this in a more visible way some time ago we would have spared tons of whining and threads that have poisoned the community of forum goers.

So I was right in thinking you had aces up your sleeves I'm very happy about that (that you had aces I mean ) The OP in this thread still looks too much as an afterthought but with a real track coming (and laser scanned) I'm certainly not complaining.

The screenshots are gorgeous and I'm really looking forward to drive on this track. And in LFS of course

Hope that'll be soon enough In the meanwhile I'll just wait for the new tyre physics patch

Quote from IlGuercio :

Well,looks like it's time for me to think about buying a NKpro license...
Should i?

Eh! I can only try to put down some random thoughts. Not an easy task. I'll try nonetheless.

nKp is a lot of a mixed bag. The sound is quite decent IMO, the graphics are very nice and the FFB is way more immersive than LFS (=I love it!). I even like the interactive cockpit where you have to flip the flippers, and the lack of a HUD on most cars.

I still got the feeling the dev team has an awful amount of work to do, both for the product development and PR. I won't say anything on the latter just read RSC and most importantly DI.

As for the product. It only has 5 cars. 4 are single seaters. 2 are twin sisters and not quite easy to tame. The 500 IS fun but we'll have to see how it ends up when the grip of tyres will actually be affected by temperature.

The number of tracks is also limited, those built in are good (most way better than many LFS tracks IMO, though LFS has some that I simply love), can't say anything about 3rd party. Aosta+500 is quite a handful if you don't have a recent computer anyway.

Multiplayer is very rough along the edges compared to LFS (you can get a taste of that on demo), and overall the sim is not anywhere as polished as LFS is. Not a surprise considering the old 1.0.x interface sucked big time and the new one is still in its infancy. BTW I'm still wondering WTH I have to deal with tyre pressure in psi instead of bar.

My main gripe is I don't always have a clear perception of what type of work/fixes they are doing on the physics engine. One would think after years in development it should be there already and only need finishing touches. Truth is it still looks like a massive WIP to me, and I can only just hope they know what they're doing and won't compromise to appeal a wider audience.

As for the license, I think it comes down to what type of person you are. If you want it now, look at the current offering and see if that's enough IYO for the money.

If you're OK with placing a bet and seeing how it will turn out in the future, definitely go ahead. I see my decision to purchase the license exactly like that.

Quote from OkaChan :

But not for the price of 180 bucks. Im sure alot of people said it that the parts aint worth half the price.

So what? do you think the price of an unmodded G25 is equal to the sum of its parts' costs? or half of it?

Just because you can't afford it, it doesn't mean they should drop their prices or it is OK to make childish remarks (buy S2? sheesh) at a bunch of people that clearly have put quite an amount of effort to bring a new product to the market.

And to make this clear: no they are not my friends and no I haven't bought the mod nor planning to.

Quote from Bogey Jammer :

Moreover I fear negative reception.

I don't think you should be as long as you make clear all the caveats. I think it would be great 'food for thought' (just like VHPA is) regardless of its true usefulness to the average Joe Racer.

Of course if you don't want to share it I respect your decision, but hope you change your mind anyway

Quote from Gills4life :

I think a lot of random engine failures could be due to people not re-filling with fuel after each session. I have made that mistake before.

Might well be! It's something I've read around and can't find anymore. Personally I've only seen damage from overrevving

Quote from Bogey Jammer :

so I'm making programs to build automatically my setups as quickly as possible, relying most on theory with the help of very few but accurate enough driving feels, instead of full feeling corrected setups like most of people do.

Are you planning to release those sooner or later?

Quote from wien :

This is not enough for me to know how much stress the engine is under and if I'm getting my shifts right.

No doubt LFS sounds are more informative, in netKar sometimes I have this really wrong feeling like something is missing, but I'm fine with it at least 90% of the time.

Since engine damage seems to be limited to overrevving (and random failures or so I heard) right now the amount of stress is not that useful. As for shifting, sequential is all is worth using and I'm not finding too hard to match revs on downshifts if that's what you mean.

But there's a lot space for improvements, that's for sure

Quote from Mattesa :

Off-throttle cornering = death! Keep your foot in it to keep it balanced. Go for some nice drifts through the double apexes.

I'm liking the '1600 a lot but being a right foot braker I find useful to stiffen the dampers one click to reduce lift off oversteer. It also makes the car overall easier to control when I lose it badly.

Quote from wien :

The sound is no longer offensively bad, which is good, though I'd still like synthetic sounds a-la LFS for the amount of information they provide

TBH I'm finding the current sounds a bit closer to RL than LFS. I love the idle sounds and how convincingly they scream at high RPMs. OTOH when pumping the throttle in neutral is very bad.

Quote from heson :

Gain is now on the view tab of car setup in the pits.

I want to adjust FF gain while I'm driving, this was possible in Beta 1 but the key bindings have been changed.

BTW I've asked the Q on DI since my account got magically validated, so I'll post it here the answer if I get one.

Quote from NightShift :

Meh, Beta 2 is not working for me. Crashes every time I press the drive button, regardless of the combo

Sorted out. Just in case someone is having the same problem:

I was overzealous and copied all the dirs listed in the Changelog to the new nKp folder in My Docs. Apparently something was changed in the configuration files as the old ones make nKp crash. Copying just licenses and drivers did the trick.

Tried the 500 at Prato Short and it put a smile on my face. It's definitely not as fast as the UFR but still quick enough and handles in a realistic way. For some reason in nKp I find easier to modulate the throttle and brake than in LFS, so I'm finding it more straightforward to drive.

BTW I noticed the 1/2 keys are no longer adjusting the FFB gain (they move the 'virtual finger' over the AIM controls I think) anyone knows how I am supposed to do that now without having to stop at the box?

I'd ask myself on DrivingItalia but that silly IPS board ain't sending me the validation email.

PS: I had a couple laps on the 1600 as well and it's improved a lot wrt Beta1.

Meh, Beta 2 is not working for me. Crashes every time I press the drive button, regardless of the combo

Thanks for posting a progress report Scawen.

Quote from Shotglass :

can you give some more info on how the old model worked (conceptually; no code details obviously) and how the new one is different to give us physics geeks something to fill the time with between now and when the new version goes public?

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Indeed. Curious minds need food!

Seconded & Thirded. Also I do wonder if and how this new model will affect CPU usage.

Maybe you're not entirely up to date, Scawen has been putting some effort in supporting Linux/Wine as well. Check the first post linked in my sig.

Quote from Goo (Logitech) :

As far as the other comment - many serious sim racers have children (or have access to other people's children) as well.

Goes without saying. My point was actually a little different and a bit more articulated.

Just to clarify, 'safety reasons' translates to 'toy' to my ears. To some a wheel is only a toy, I perfectly understand this but..

...in the simracing community the G25 was the best wheel in the affordable range (that means, excluding the models from specialist manufacturers as Frex), today the G27 is probably not wearing that crown anymore

Hey Bob! So I devoted some time to play around with the RG set of sets and I'm really glad I did that. All of the LSD cars are very pleasant to drive, and respond in predictable ways to modulations of the throttle through corners.

I'm not too fond of e.g. the open diff XFG as IMO it's too easy to spin the inner wheel out of corners, but I suppose that's more of an issue with the current version of LFS rather than the sets.

Thank you for sharing

Sadly, these days big budget films cannot afford to be too cryptic. Imagine 2001 being released today. Imagine what people would comment about it on LFSforum

BTW film buffs are always analyzing and trying to guess so it's hard to fool them. The film makes an excellent work for the average viewer and even more IMO. I agree it suffers a bit from length issues but that is probably because they didn't want to cut too much of the book and make it too simple.

All in all I think it's an enjoyable/interesting watch which works on several different levels and offers good acting, excellent cinematography and direction, cannot ask for much more

Thank you Goo for taking the time to show up here and post so many replies

It's nice to see Logitech has made many changes that were high in the priority list of the simracing community. However I think the company will witness a certain amouint of disappointment coming from the high-end/simracing niche, as this product, despite the enhancements, still doesn't look as innovative as Fanatec's and with a starting price of 299€ the G27 will be very close to their top of the line offering.

I thought that maybe you might have had an entirely new and massively improved model in store until I read this:

Quote from Goo (Logitech) :

Yes, we could make our wheels spin faster. There are safety concerns associated with that, however, so it is unlikely that we will do so.

means Logitech wheels will always be aiming more towards kids with generous dads, rather than the high-end of the simracing market. This is actually leaving a market space between the specialist stuff (e.g. Frex) and the rest, a space which was previously occupied (and probably even created) by the G25.

All in all this is making sense to me (and I suppose it makes economic sense for the company too) but it's a bit sad for us customers to see that Logitech, instead of picking up Fanatec's glove, is actually leaving the newcomers to dominate this niche. Too bad, as we customers like competition as it drives down prices and/or results in greatly improved products

But maybe the company is just staying at the window to see if and how much success Fanatec will have?

Quote from Goo (Logitech) :

the G25 will be replaced by the G27.

BTW does this mean Logitech will start replacing faulty G25s with G27 from some point on?

Last edited by NightShift, Wed 19 Aug 2009, 21:16.

Quote from rc10racer :

The Prestige, watched it the other night and thought it was a must see film for anyone, the story is just top class plus it's got a rating off 8.4 on IMDB.

Yes it's a damn good film. First seen it at release and rewatched it in enligsh some time ago. I only got a glance at the extras in the first few seconds Nolan immediately says sth along the lines of 'this is a film about cinema' and put a smile on my face

Quote from The Moose :

Are you having the stuck at 31/16 FPS issue? It's been noted that simply reinstalling your current graphics drivers seems to solve that one. Not ideal, but a workaround until Kunos works out what's causing it.

Yep exactly. I had to dig for the Shift-F shortcut to find out I'm really too lazy to reinstall graphics driver - I'll try the new update you linked though thanks for the reply and keeping us posted

BTW some days ago I did actually manage to get my SO (behold!) to try out a sim and went for nKp but it was a showstopper. The actual sim would start up 1 time out of 10 tries, it got stuck after loading the track. An alt-F4 brought me to the save replay screen. When I actually got in the car, the wheel wasn't working. Of course this was all nKp's fault because the wheel worked a charm in LFS and other games were fine too, no need for a reboot hope this is all fixed in the update 2.

Quote from Michalxo :

neveretheless.. until it's so slow in wine 30-40fps single car, whole LFS gaming in linux is pointless

Not sure what you mean, with Wine LFS is just slightly slower than in a native environment. Maybe your hardware is <cough> a bit outdated?

Keep us posted Bogey Jammer, this is really interesting

Have you tried updating Wine? maybe your distro doesn't have the latest and greatest one.

Thank you Moose for the heads up

I don't know what was changed either in the tyre model or FFB but now understeer seems a bit more believable to me. Before it really gave me that feeling of sliding on a wet road. The wheel still sort of lightens up which rings weird with me (I'm talking about the F1600)

BTW I'm having FPS issues as well. The engine sound is horrible IMO (has a discernible digital/artificial nature) and it takes some time to load tracks compared to LFS. The interface is clumsy but an improvement over the old one, though I liked the old controller setup better.

All in all it's very good to see something is moving. If Beta 2/the 500 was really out before the end of month, I may end up thinking nKp is worth the 20 euros. There's hardly any competition at that price point not that I seriously believe it'll be out - but I'm not buying a beta on just a bunch of promises, considering the reputation Kunos has.

Quote from Nathan D. :

Can an official statement be made as to why there has not been an official dedicated server release for Linux?

This is just speculation but since the LFS client also contains the server's code, I suppose he just builds the server executable via some kind of compile option which strips away most of the client code and adds a little server specific stuff.

Having a linux server would mean having to keep in sync two different code bases, multiply the bugs etc so it's really a decision made out of efficiency of use of coding time.

With the current rate of advancements in LFS I think you'll have a hard time finding someone willing to trade LFS development for a dedicated linux server