Quote from PLAYLIFE :

Well... a music track is always the same: it will have the exact same sequence in all cases. In LFS you might start braking, crash, add revs, etc. it ican be unpredictable... So it's definitely not exactly the same (mind you, I did not say you said it is exactly the same).

No, it's not... playing an MP3 is always the same, but actually creating music (using Cubase SX and a gazillion softsynths (VSTi)), is something very similar to what Scawen is doing I'd imagine. The sequencer (Cubase, and LFS) only tells the soundgenerator (synth) what notes should be played (pitch and instrument), and the soundgenerator then creates the sound on-the-fly by creating a waveform that is returned to the sequencer. The sequencer then mixes all available waveforms and outputs that into a buffer.

Maybe Vista uses a sort of ASIO driver to dump the buffers in (which causes these problems, normal drivers just stop playing).

Quote from keltern :

and does RL physics have to come at the cost of beautiful cars?

Thanks to big corporations that have enough money to buy all the licenses they want, stick in all the cool eyecandy, and the ability to release new versions of the same software in a new package about twice a year, yes...

Those corporations care not about racing but about making money. Truth is, the learning curve for RL physics and driving at the limit is too high to make it profitable. People simply will not learn to drive it to the game's potential before a new version is forced on you. Which means they can't release newer version as fast as they are doing now, which means they make less money. Not to mention the fact that the market for RL physics isn't that big... There are not too many people interested in hardcore simulators, yet millions of people enjoy jumping into a car and throw it through neon-lit streets.

The only ones making simulators we enjoy are the small 'indie' companies like Scavier (or whatever we'll call them now), and the occasional 'former big shot studio turned indie' (like iRacing). Generally, those companies don't have the money (and definitely don't make the profit) to acquire expensive licenses.

One way to get around the licensing issue is by allowing modding, but LFS at its current stage is not ready for that by a long shot.

Quote from deggis :

pretty wacko

Yeah, I didn't like the idea of totally fixed setups, so I made it fixed with a twist...
My idea would add a new dimension to league races, I think. Although practice and qualifying sessions would need to be 30 minutes minimum.

Shoulda used multi-quote

Quote from xWolFx :

But if there is a boost button then wouldn't that just make him crash into the players faster and harder?

No, I don't think so... Most will be using boost to get off the line, and if he's going to wreck anyway, it doesn't really matter if he does it at normal speed +10mph. It would make it easier for wreckers to catch up to potential victims on straights, but now they just block the track and take out the leader...
All in all, I think a boost button would not in any way have a negative impact in wrecks or the act of wrecking.

Quote from silver bullet :

you mean like a Turbo boost?

Yeah, maybe add the option to restrict its usage to x times per race, or a total amount of x seconds...
Kind of like A1GP and Champcar (if it simulates real racing, add all the real options)

Quote from Fonnybone :

Well, actually, it's the other way around, some acadians (new brunswick)
were deported to Louisiana by the british a few centuries ago. That would
explain the similarities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acadians

???
Cajun speak french... Well, a type of french, anyway.

Quote from Jamexing :

Noob/wrecker uses NOS to get ahead, only to enter a tight corner right after the pass, fails to slow down properly and causes a MAJOR pileup.

Hmm, the potential team strategies are endless.

Seriously, NOS is great for drags but crap for circuits with ANY corners. Conclusion, LFS should NOT use NOS.

Current situation:
Noob/Wrecker steps on gas to get ahead, only to enter a tight corner before he's even passed, fails to slow down properly and causes a MAJOR pileup.

Doesn't have to be NOS, but some sort of boost button for some cars might be nice.

Quote from Aquilifer :

I suppose it is not the same as 4x4 evo 2 which came with my Radeon 9700 card. Cannot remember it having a Glide option

Maybe it coming with your ATi card, and Glide being old 3dfx libraries has something to do with that...

On topic: I hate you people for already having a G25, and the only off-road game I have is Gripped (which had glide).

Quote from xaotik :

Read all about it here.
On topic: NOS in LFS would be totally pointless (as is yet another thread about it).

They never bothered to update the rules for the current season...
Although I'd imagine the system itself hasn't changed much, I know it gives more boost this season.

+1 to server side forced aids... But make sure all types of controllers can join any server. I don't want to not be able to join a server because I don't have an H-shifter, or a clutch pedal.

and I'd add a forced setup setting for private servers (leagues) where LFS takes a certain setup, and locks selected settings (so they can't be changed) while turning other settings to randomized numerical values (ie, front-left spring = 12 (instead of a real value), so racers would actually need to spend their practice and qualifying session setting up the car, instead of just selecting the current world record setup, and practice offline until they are as fast.

Quote from AtomAnt :

So that's enough real weather without adding all the frame rate defeating things that will ruin this game.

We don't need squirrels in the trees in LFS and I don't think we need rain..buts that's just MHO.

But a power outage doesn't change the handling of the car before it happens...
Rain does.

Quote from keiran :

When you walk into a games store you will see very few racing games so they obviously they aren't as popular as the other genres, especially on the PC. Now how is LFS going to fit in? Not very well.

Add NOS, Lots of carbon parts, modding, tuning, and huge rims... Sell it to UBIsoft, and they'd make it compete with NFS:Carbon, and win.

Quote from silver bullet :

Let me set one thing straight at first. Nobody shut down Dice. Dice was no longer competitive, and EA was KIND ENOUGH to buy them out. Now let me elaborate....

Dice was VERY competitive... There is only one reason why EA would buy a company out... Rights to titles. As is the case here, EA wants to milk the Battlefield franchise as much as possible... Something that Dice could not (or did not want to) do. What will happen (keep an eye on this) is that there will be about 6 or 7 Battlefield spinoffs, within 2 years. And each will be the same thing with different textures. As little development as possible.

Quote :

It is a good thing because a company that could not survive in the market (Dice) was bought out by a company that could survive (EA). If EA had not bought the company, Dice would go down the drain and all of the employees would be out on the street.

It is very easy for Dice to blame EA and say "They bought us out, we had such a good thing going, and now we're no longer independant". The truth is that in 90% of the cases the smaller companies that get bought out are not profitable anymore.

Maybe... But this was a hostile takeover... Not a regular buyout.
Hostile in the sense that the buyout was arranged under false pretense...
Here's a quote from EA when they finalized the transactions for the takeover.

Quote :

EA is thrilled to officially welcome this team of incredibly talented people and a globally recognized game franchise. The DICE studio has strong opportunity for growth as we build the Battlefield franchise and other new products. We’re confident that our creative approach and business leadership principles are well matched to share future success.

5 days later, they close it down...
Something stinks.

Quote :

Example. When Google was just starting out they had countless offers from bigger companies to buy their search engine, but they never sold it. Why? Because Google was making money. Dice obviously was not competitive anymore, they did not sell games, and they were going out of business. EA stepped in and bought them out, and probably saved people jobs.

The reason why Dice wnt under because they were not making any money from their games, not because EA is evil. If Dice was making great games that were SELLING GREAT, like hell they would sell their business to EA. However, they could not sell their product, and they went under. End of story.

Do you even know what Dice is, or what they created?
They made Battlefield, Midtown Madness 3, Rallisport Challenge, Pinball Fantasies (and other pinball games in the old DOS era), STCC and many more titles...
They had no problem selling games, especially since they sold their games to EA and Microsoft.

Quote :

EA make games that sell. Whatever they want to do with their games, they can do it. Don't buy their games if you don't like them. Fact is that there are millions of people who love EA games, and there are thousands of stuck-up elitists like you and me that don't like them. (unfortunately) The world does not revolve around us.

EA doesn't make games... They used to make games back in the 80s (EA Golf), but they haven't made a game in ages... All they do is buy companies that made games they distributed. EA is a distributor, not a developer studio. It's kind of like EMI selling Madonna CDs... EMI doesn't make music, they just sell it, and make money off of it. Or 20th Century Fox distributing a movie which a studio made.

Yeah, millions of people buy EA games... And I would too if there was a really good one I'd want (in fact, I've tried a NASCAR Heat... It suxx0r'd)... That doesn't make their current strategy or their M.O. either good for the economy or a preferable over other strategies.

Why is it that threads about oval tracks always end up in flames going back and forth because the infamous 'oval-haters' have to make absolutely clear we remember their opinion of ovals???

We know, guys... Give it a rest already. You don't like ovals, fine... No need to keep posting the same thing over and over and over again... If you want to start a mature discussion about oval racing, fine, but you should give us something to discuss and not just the standard 'ovals suck'...

And to kill this thread I'll give you a quote from a pretty famous (much loved and hated) former Formula 1 and Champcar driver after his first stockcar race this weekend:

Quote from Montoya :

In Formula One if you go to the back you stay in the back. You can be two seconds quicker than any other car and you still cannot pass him. It’s great to see that whatever happens, you can still pass…I got hit and had to fix the car. I came to the pits four times to fix it and even after all that you go out and you’re in the back of a 30-car queue or line or whatever you want to call it and you still can get up front, and that’s really, really nice. I haven't had so much fun racing in a very long time!

Is it what people want?
Or is it that people have no choice to play what they want?
My biggest fear is that EA will at some point dictate what you will play on your PC, and then dump PC gaming alltogether and move towards console... They've been doing it for several years with the EA Sports section, removing the cool features from the PC games, to attract more people to the consoles.

Luckily at the moment we still have some simulators that do a good job of simulating racing which are not controlled by power-hungry corporations, but how long will that last?

Could someone change the thread title?

EA buys Dice should be changed to "EA shuts down Dice".

Dice no longer exists, employees will be transferred to other EA affiliates in Canada, or be removed from the payroll.

How can anyone think this is a good thing?

Quote from sinbad :

Heheh, well they surely have to consider whether it's safe to let him participate in future races. If he goes on the whole season in the same way, he WILL directly cause an accident at some point

I thought the races were pretty good, and I'm always happy to watch racing at Zandvoort, but, although obviously they are fast cars, the A1GP cars still seem a tad sluggish for an "upper level" motorsport international single-seater series. (To me). I thought there was a plan to increase their power significantly for this season, but then again I don't remember reading anything about that. Wishful thinking maybe.

Well, he did show progress... He started out 20 seconds too slow on friday, but was only 8 seconds too slow in the race...

Racing at Zandvoort is always fun to watch, although the track is a difficult one for overtaking. Having said that, overtaking is possible at a variety of corners, but it takes a lot of guts. F1 would be boring there as they wouldn't even try overtaking at any corner except the Tarzan and Audi S.
For the drivers the excitement lies in the fact that about 80% of the braking and turn-in points are situated so that you can't actually see them until you're on top of it. A lot of corners are blind because of elevation changes.

A1GP this year has a little less power, to level the playing field more. Lesser drivers are more likely to come to grips (pun intended) with the handling on a new track. The boost button however gives you more power (relatively) than it did last season, so the speed differences for overtaking should be higher. This results in a slower looking car, while providing more exciting racing. In the rain these things are virtually uncontrollable, though. Which is demonstrated by looking at the Audi S turn last sunday. Even doing 70km/h these cars were understeering like crazy on full wets. Strange thing is that the US (who were on slicks the whole time) had nothing but oversteer. Probably the perfect combination would've been slicks or intermediates on the front, and full wets on the back.

This is going to be a million dollar lawsuit against Microsoft, because Microsoft claims it is impossible to pull the XBOX from its position with the controller cords.

Well, 21 is too young, 35 is too young...
People are supposed to live into their 80s these days (at least 70s), so why not ban all racing all together?

Where would you draw the line? What's the difference between a 17-y-o, and an 18-y-o (who is allowed to drive cars)? People die in motorsports at every age. Not allowing them to race under 18 is not going to change things... It's only going to drive them underground in an uncontrolled environment.

Do you mean settings like:
Race length:
12 laps, with a max of 20 mins
46 laps, with a max of 70 mins

Quote from Leifde :

Excellent marshalling? The Pakistan car was pushed across the track for no apparent reason when a car was coming round on it's outlap. A lack of communication I think

EDIT: In the qualifying

Actually, the marshalls told him to follow the track towards the outside of the turn... He turned onto the track as soon as he cleared the gravel. They couldn't actually leave him there, either, so they really had no choice but to keep pushing... I was sitting on the dunes about 15 meters from that turns and saw the whole stupid move (including him spinning, and then ever so slowly letting his car roll onto the gravel).

Actually, I wonder if the Pakistani driver had ever seen a racing car up close before starting this race.

Quote from silver bullet :

Wow, Im getting gangbanged over here! Ouch.

It's funny, but this is not what I dream of when dreaming about a gangbang... For starters, in my dreams, all the others are female.

You managed to kill off the 'lust' with that post, though...

Quote from silver bullet :

There is this nasty thing called "reality" and sometimes you have to deal with it. The reality says that people need jobs. Big corporations provide careers for people so they can feed their families.

Of course it does not matter to you, because all that matters to you is Your Own Enjoyment. Again, I never bought an EA game in my life, I just have to deal with reality on a daily basis.

Reality is that our society is failing. In our society people need jobs... In reality however, people need a small patch of land to grow food on, and a bit of big game for meat.

In our society however, big corporations want to make more money for themselves... So the 5000 people that used to work all over the US at different helpdesks for EA are all fired, and EA opens up a large 3500 people callcentre in some 3rd world country (pakistan?) where the average salary is like $1 a week... Who cares about the 5000 American workers that are no longer able to feed their families and are unable to get a new job since all they know is answering questions on phones, and no smaller companies exist anymore because the large corporations have bought them all up. And what about those innovative programmers working on that groundbreaking new title that when it became popular lost their jobs because EA bought their company and outsourced all programming to their office in Malaysia?

Big corporations aren't the answer to economic problems... I dare say they are the source of most of its problems. Yes, they do some good, but at what cost?

Quote from silver bullet :

xaotic you'd be surpised how many CEOs have interests besides making money. Amazingly enough, most of them are people like you and me, but they have the gift or talent in business management, much like athletes do in sports.

TagForce, don't get me wrong man, I agree with you that monopoly means no choice. There is a reason why I play LFS, it has the small game, small community appeal that I would not get anywhere else. However it's stupid to be mad at EA for the little tricks they use to make people buy games every year. Their purpose is to sell games, they have thousands of employees to feed, investors to pay off, etc. I'm just saying, it's silly to be "mad" at corporations making money, it's like being mad at a dog for barking, that's what they do!

One important point though, don't doubt for a minute that LFS developers would sell the game in a heartbeat if the price was right.

I'm not mad at corporations making money... I'm just after the ones that want to make money by taking away the consumer's constitutional rights. And only a handful of people notices their tactics... Usually those that are into non-commercial stuff.

Quote from silver bullet :

Do you know that Bill Gates (who you all love to hate) changed the course of the AIDS epidemic in Africa with all the money that he made with Microsoft? I am running Windows, and I know that some of the money that I paid for it went into charity to help people in Africa. It's stupid, but it is true.

Ohhh wow... But I don't care about Africans, nor AIDS... I do however care about cuddly pandabears in China, but I can't donate because Bill Gates took my money and saved those damn Africans (this is an example, I'm not racist... really).

My point is, it is completely irrelevant what companies do with their profit. Most of it goes into finding more ways to make more money (donating to charity is actually beneficial to a company or CEO because it's a pretty cheap way to get publicity, and it's tax-deductable).

Besides the monetary issues, there are other issues that need to be considered. What if EA became the ONLY distributor for videogames in the world? What if EA decided that for every sports game they released they would stop online play after a new version came out? (Oh wait, they've already announced they will). What if EA decided to use an invasive protection method to protect their games from being pirated, resulting in their products to be only playable on certified hardware. What if they then decided that only some hardware will be certified (causing ATi or NVidia to not be able to play their games, or only some brands of DVD players accepting their discs)? What if EA's 'conquer the world' mentality actually works and makes it impossible for other developers to produce titles like... say... LFS?

I know this is worst-case scenario, and it won't come to that anytime soon... But then again, it might. Just look at all the stuff the MPAA, RIAA, MS, Sony, etc, etc have tried and are still trying... It all points to total control of the consumer's freedom of choice. No choice means skyrocketing prices, inferior products, and no more fun.