Quote from PlusP :

I just don't get it. Where do these people come from and since when were graphics the end-all be-all and continous updates demanded more than just expected? What happened to the old addage, "You get out of it what you put into it"? Frankly, I'm often disgusted that so many people (especially my fellow Americans) are missing the point of what a simulation is and why flash and glitz is so far down on the totem pole of importance. It also pains me that they whine so much over the progress of development and then compare it to newer titles of lesser quality and substance. We all paid the devs for LFS as-is. It's been a wonderful title and it's only gotten better. It hasn't cost us a penny more than we originally paid for the license. In my opinion, we need to step back and admit that we've received a heck of a lot more than we paid for and LFS is still truckin' right along. Besides GPL, RBR, and NR2003, most surving racing titles older than LFS, with communities of any respectable size, are few and far between.

I've been dropping in and out of here since I got LFS in 2007. I keep up on the forums but I stay pretty quiet. I don't race online much but I've logged an enormous amount offline laps. For longevity and bang for your buck LFS just can't be beat. Console racers as well as a good number of PC sims fade within a year or two, if not sooner. I've been flying Falcon 4.0 and Allied Force since 1999-2000. I've put weeks of time into IL2. By today's standards, the graphics in those sims absolutley suck. But that doesn't make them bad sim. Like LFS, they're great sims because they do so many things right. It's a crying shame that the hardcore PC flight sim community is dying and it’s not because of the inability of the devs to produce quality titles. It's because of the average consumer's short attention span and lack of patience. It’s also a refusal to actually learn and develop skills to be successful.

Many of my fellow Americans are falling into this category of "pick up and play" and I’ve yet to understand it. Not many people are willing to put forth the effort to understand a sim like Falcon. Having to actually study its 716 page manual that merely scratches the surface of what it has to offer is asking too much for the average Joe. Likewise, take a look at how many people in LFS actually take the time to study the basics of racing or learn how to set up their own car to get the best out of the sim. Logging 291 miles and worrying about how a car's bottom end looks is missing the point of what a sim is. I'm not knocking you jrs_4500. I'm just making a point. Go to almost any dedicated PC sim community and you'll find so of the most helpful people you could ever hope for. Just understand the difference between arcade and sim.

Oh, and if you want to see if a game is aging, check here: http://forums.frugalsworld.com/vbb/

Thousands of people are still supporting many sims developed in the 1990's and they are still going strong. Compared to it's competition, LFS is a testament to the longevity of a racing sim because of it's quality, continued support by the devs, and the great community. NFS-HP2 and the like is never gonna have legs like that.

As my friends across the pond say,
Cheers

You're making me want to get a replacement joystick...(i should have never given my MS FFB2 with a dodgy cord away)
And i agree with what you say. If people think they can do better than LFS for the price (hell just better, with free updates, dev support etc)
just go. If you decide to come back, we'll welcome you (long as you're civil)

I do enjoy some "mainstream" games, but most of them have been played through once, and left to collect dust. (some of the Valve studios titles are an exception here. They really do make some awesome games, with updates etc)

$56 AUD and roughly 7 years playtime. If you can beat that, please send me the title so i can buy it.

Quote from senn :

You're making me want to get a replacement joystick...(i should have never given my MS FFB2 with a dodgy cord away)
And i agree with what you say. If people think they can do better than LFS for the price (hell just better, with free updates, dev support etc)
just go. If you decide to come back, we'll welcome you (long as you're civil)

I do enjoy some "mainstream" games, but most of them have been played through once, and left to collect dust. (some of the Valve studios titles are an exception here. They really do make some awesome games, with updates etc)

$56 AUD and roughly 7 years playtime. If you can beat that, please send me the title so i can buy it.

The only game on par with LFS is netkar.
Simbin does the same as Xbox live only makes new game called STCC the game whils ist only just bunch of cars with no phycisc updates whatsover new game Yeah right... only fidle around bit and sel it for moer then its worth..

All the moaners plz read:
FFS shut up. You bought the full game good price.
Go play something else, THANK YOU!

Quote from SamH :

The sim mentality has always been a niche market.. small in numbers, and generally a bit geekish. I think the desire for a realistic physics simulation is something that comes from deep-down in someone.. perhaps even at the genetic level, and I honestly don't think that a person with that "sim gene" would ever be satisfied with NFS or GTA etc.

Isn't it more of the case that games in general used to be more of a niche market, with a higher proportion of geeks playing them, and sims being on more of an even footing with the other genres of the day?

Quote :

My beef is that people are getting so dumbed down in what they expect from a title. The masses want graphics and "pick up and play games" and the sim communities will naturally suffer as a result.

I don't think games are necessarily getting dumber, or people are getting dumber. I think games are probably easier to play and to understand, and in many cases much easier to beat.. but it doesn't mean they aren't complex games. Probably the main reason I don't play a lot of games of old (I have gigabytes of old C64 games on the HD), is because the overwhelming majority of them are such simple games. We expect more these days because everybody has matured, and the industry has matured. Offhand I can't think of any older games which could match the complexity of a BFII for example, an arcade game.

Quote from SamH :

I can imagine how you're seeing it, but I'm not sure that there's necessarily a direct connection between the increase in popularity for dumbed-down/arcadey games and any decrease in racing simulation popularity.

The sim mentality has always been a niche market.. small in numbers, and generally a bit geekish. I think the desire for a realistic physics simulation is something that comes from deep-down in someone.. perhaps even at the genetic level, and I honestly don't think that a person with that "sim gene" would ever be satisfied with NFS or GTA etc.

I do think they might *start* there, though. They might even buy a wheel for it.. but sooner or later, their curiosity will peak and they'll wonder if there's a sim out there that can quench their thirst for realism. They'll go Googling, searching the forums, and eventually find a discussion about a sim that sounds like it might meet their needs. Enter LFS

The most of people I know in LFS took this way to arrive to the game.

My case is similar: I played Toca2, when, in a local forum, read from someone something like: "I consider this the best simulator -> www.lfs.net", than I was surprised for something that until today I cant understand exactly. Maybe I got this "sim gene" too.

The handling was terrible, the graphics were simple, the sound were awful, but something got me.

I see when people knows LFS just two reactions: love or hate. Rarely someone who doesnt like it, will give a try, but if so, these people normaly give up after one week.

I think better graphics, better sounds, more tracks would increase the popularity of the game a lot, and I think the "dumbed" public should be considered, cause, the server population doesnt lie: drift and cruise (a kind of thing made for dumbs) are the big public of the game right now.

Before 10 years ago, it was easier to catch the sim virus, because sims were at the same level graphically than other games and advertised like other games.

So we were simply trying all nice games, attracted by novelty and fancy graphics/sound, and we discovered some of them were deeper than others.

Now, sims with their dated graphics and lack of advertisment (compared to big games) are more difficult to find. You have to know what you are searching for, there is very little chance to discover a sim by luck. So almost only people who feel the Need For Sim find them.

And when I wish LFS were developped faster, this is because I always regret there is no more sim with up to date graphics, sounds and physics. The sim world, generally speaking, needs a great, fancy, well advertised sim to open the eyes of people and show them what racing sims can be, and that what they usually consider like a realistic game is often crap.
I like what Simbin try to do. They produce sims or sim-like games, and with lots of graphic and sound work, try to make virtual motorsports popular. They managed to have virtual races on TV in Sweden.
The world desperately needs popular sims. Somewhere, working in the dark, heroes can save the world

The problem is nowadays it takes a lot of time and knowledge to develop a graphic engine top of the art.
And most games clearly focus in delivering the best graphics possible. That's not the principal aim of simracing because physics development also takes a lot of time and knowledge. So most important things first.

Maybe using some industry graphics engine is the solution but maybe that would cost a lot of money

As it was already said, LFS won't be screenshot generator.

Need some bling-bling 1000000000 polygon cars? Play GTA IV or Undercover.

Quote from Speed Soro :

The most of people I know in LFS took this way to arrive to the game.

My case is similar: I played Toca2, when, in a local forum, read from someone something like: "I consider this the best simulator -> www.lfs.net", than I was surprised for something that until today I cant understand exactly. Maybe I got this "sim gene" too.

The handling was terrible, the graphics were simple, the sound were awful, but something got me.

I see when people knows LFS just two reactions: love or hate. Rarely someone who doesnt like it, will give a try, but if so, these people normaly give up after one week.

I think better graphics, better sounds, more tracks would increase the popularity of the game a lot, and I think the "dumbed" public should be considered, cause, the server population doesnt lie: drift and cruise (a kind of thing made for dumbs) are the big public of the game right now.

When I first found out about LFS, it was purely by accident. I literally stumbled across it. I think I was playing GT Legends at the time and I thought SIMBIN was the king. Once I got into LFS, there was no going back. I can't tell you how many times I have deleted and re-installed rFactor. Just can't get into it and I've really tried.

I totally agree with Sam that sims are a niche market, but there used to be an enormous number of titles to choose from. I understand that back then, if you wanted good graphics, PC was the only way to go. However, now that consoles are putting out the bling, many companies are migrating away from PC altogether.

Sims get almost no mainstream advertising, that the masses would see anyways, and I believe many devs of competing titles feel like they have to make the PC minimum system specs almost too high so their game looks as good as, or at least on par with console titles. Most gamers are gonna have a decent PC, but not always good enough to max out the newest games. This results in poor frame rates for many when they try to get their graphics settings as high as possible. I don't think there are many newer PC's out there today that can't max LFS, and in my opinion, the graphics are good enough to get the job done.

I still play GTL and I have amazing immersion with this sim. I divide what I expect between the various sims, cause I undertand that no one is like other.

From Simbin games I find real tracks and cars, real pilots (at least in brazilian servers I have found drivers from Formula Truck, Stock Car Ligth and the extinted Copa Clio). Good sounds, goods cockpits, good simulation and good single player.

From NKP I find great immersion, great feeling and force feedback.

From iRacing I find great simulation, great system, and big prices

From rFactor I find some great mods that I play once in a while...

And from LFS I find some great immersion, great ffb, and great MP system for pick up races.

All these thing started in 2004, with LFS, when I realize the huge difference between what I though was a sim (TRD2), and what really was a sim.

The biggest moment was when S2 came out. There was a video (s2 onboard) that I think I watched at least 30 times before S2 be released.

Great times that age, because, between the time when I met LFS and S2 came out, did not pass too much time.

S2 was a big step. Since than I'm expecting something really new, so big as S2 was.

(sorry for English mistakes, I have not much time now for corrections)

Quote from PlusP :

Sims get almost no mainstream advertising, that the masses would see anyways, and I believe many devs of competing titles feel like they have to make the PC minimum system specs almost too high so their game looks as good as, or at least on par with console titles.

Even with advertising, I still don't think sims would catch on with the general public. If people wanted to play a sim, they will most likely do some work and find out about the sims that are out there, but the fact is that most people just aren't looking for that kind of experience, which is fine. While many people don't know about LFS or other sims specifically, I think they do have the general idea that there are some hardcore racing games out there, but they aren't interested in finding out anything else about them.

I have let my friends play LFS on my setup, and while they think its fun with the G25 and the cockpit and everything, afterwards they still make comments that it isn't Gran Turismo. They're not interested in the physics all that much, they just want to drive real cars on the Nurburgring(they do specifically ask me why they can't take the BF1 on the Nurburgring haha). Me on the other hand, I can enjoy arcade games for a short time, but its the fact that when I'm playing LFS I can feel what the car is doing, the front suspension sitting down when I brake hard for a corner, the tires losing grip when I get on the gas, that's the kind of stuff that hooks me. Obviously for most people, that doesn't appeal to them all that much. Sims will never become mainstream, no matter how many people know about the game.

Quote from Shadowww :

As it was already said, LFS won't be screenshot generator.

Need some bling-bling 1000000000 polygon cars? Play GTA IV or Undercover.

Isn't simulating what you see an important part of a simulation? Of course physics are important, but people shouldn't come here talk about "screenshot generator" or "playback player" when simulating sounds and visuals is just as relevant to a good simulation as physics.

Sure. You cant look for simulation just around physics.
What you see, what you hear, what you touch, what you expect is all part of the simulation thing.
You cant separate these things.

One thing that bored me a lot in LFS is the cars shadow under other shadows (bridge, trees, wall). The cars look like floating cause there is no penumbra.

I know that there is a test patch that treat this, but I still see the same situation. It breaks the immersion, and it is just graphics.

I'll address the main points of those couple posts which are direct replies to my last one, the rest is for the sake of discussion:

Quote from Juls :

You completely missed my point. Their target, like for the shoemaker, would be to keep doing what they like, and live from it, as long as possible.

I think I've got you point perfectly and my reply is, any growing business that is not some ultra-luxurious product (which by its nature appeals ONLY to a very select number of disgustingly rich people) will have to face a bottleneck in its own development. It's just a matter of time

If you still want to argue, the only point which makes sense is that LFS probably still hasn't reached that stage.

Quote from Hallen :

If you don't like the business model, then fine, that's your prerogative. But don't criticize something you don't understand.

I like LFS and its licensing model very much, and I was not criticizing it. If that's what you understood I suggest you re-read my post before politely suggesting me to shut up

PS: The examples I made about car and car equipment manufacturers were only chosen because those sectors are likely to be familiar to people posting here. I say this just in case.

--- 8< --- CUT --- 8< ---

For the sake of discussion now:

Quote from Juls :

I did not want to say Scavier makes a luxury product,

Yes in fact...

Quote from Juls :

limited series hand crafted cars.

....are a prime example of non-luxury products

If you are aware of many limited series hand crafted cars which are not also luxury products please post them here, I'm sure many would be interested in a handcrafted alternative to a Ford Focus or Toyota Corolla, of course at the same price point of the mass produced product

Otherwise gimme a big break

Quote from Juls :

I heard about guys there who still make tailored shoes, in small workshop for same price than mass-produced shoes.

Same price? Same cost would more like it

There are indeed several micro shoemakers in my country, the only problem is those shoes easily sell for several thousands euros a pair (if you're lucky). You could buy thousands of LFS licenses for just the price of ONE shoe

Quote from Juls :

It works because their products are known for their quality,

In fact the pope and his cronies, a number of politicians and VIPs from all over the world come here to buy their luxury, handcrafted shoes. That's why they don't need to do mass marketing BTW.

Why don't we just stop reacting to these kind of topics and ignoring those who do feel like moaning around.
Who knows, they might even shut the hell up.

The interface of the LFS is the best shot of all. There is no simulator or any other type of game with an interface as good.

You can do almost everything from inside the car and running on the track!

And you can still change the car without leaving the session. Beyond a lot of commands, scripts, real-time information, etc.. It is absolutely fantastic.

But it had a price. The Scawen is setting the interface already for two years. Man, is too long! Last year did he make something else?

The part that really matters, I think the last 2 years, I remember, it was only the FBM, the clutch (which I find very weak, heats too easy) ... I do not know if it has been made more things in physics.

Man, pure emotion from S1 to S2. Today the staff associated with S1 is just less cars, less tracks, but S1, at that time (early 2005) was quite simple.

From S1 to S2 were many changes. The big surprise was the crash system, because until then the car suffered no damage. The old tracks were improved, and new tracks came. New cars, transparent glass. The head turning of the pilot... Man, we was in ghana when launched.

First leaked version of an S2 that few people had access. Then came the official version. That was crazy. It was 24 June ... remember until today. I remember having spent almost the entire month of July in the game.

Before that I have watched the S2 onboard movie tens of times.

I just started to migrate to other simulators more recently, because I was tired of the same tracks, cars, and especially to stay in expectation of improvements that never came.

Man, I do not understand why, after so many years, have no heating of the brakes and engine yet. This is essential for the simulation and make much difference in fact .

But the interface and a lot of things that had not before, are now ready. At least Scawen said once he would make it first to make the game consistent.

If so, the next patch may well bring things more interesting, because now is the time to care for "the rest", since the interface is finished. Or not?

Quote from Speed Soro :

(...)
If so, the next patch may well bring things more interesting, because now is the time to care for "the rest", since the interface is finished. Or not?

I'm hope so, errr.... I'm sure it will!!
As Scawen said he is not wasting his time in the Scirocco. Lets have some faith and let them work, doing what they do best We will have big surprise I'm sure

Quote from Speed Soro :

because I was tired of the same tracks, cars

There are around 1000 combos...

Quote from Speed Soro :

The cars look like floating cause there is no penumbra.

FYI, Scawen has introduced penumbral shadows in the latest test patches. In fact, my understanding is that the changes Scawen has made to the shadow rendering system in LFS are a significant cause for the delay of the latest patch, with unanticipated graphic card issues in the wider test base. IMO there's still work to be done here.. All shadows, including the new penumbra, need greater contrast in daylit conditions, but I'm quite confident that will come

Quote from Shadowww :

There are around 1000 combos...

Well, yeah. With every car on every track you have just under 1000. But who really will try that? Considering like 100 combos are rendered irrelevant, no-one rallies with a slick tyred car.

Quote from Speed Soro :

I remember having spent almost the entire month of July in the game.

I think that just about sums it up.

Taking a break from a hobby is not a bad thing you know. It helps. It might even save you a July or two.

Quote from S14 DRIFT :

Well, yeah. With every car on every track you have just under 1000. But who really will try that? Considering like 100 combos are rendered irrelevant, no-one rallies with a slick tyred car.

In fact, I really told about more cars, but what I would say that we can have just 5, a formula, a FWD, a RWD, and its GTR version, but them should be perfectly made, with high detailed visual, and perfect physics. But tracks would be really better if we have more.

A season with at least 10 tracks would be great. I don't think just reverse and particular layouts give the same add that a complete change of enviroment. It is very diferent you change from BL to WE than just reverse the first one.

Quote from xaotik :

I think that just about sums it up.

Taking a break from a hobby is not a bad thing you know. It helps. It might even save you a July or two.

Come on... You just miss sending me a "get a life" or something... hehehe
Thank you for your concern

Quote from Speed Soro :

Come on... You just miss sending me a "get a life" or something... hehehe
Thank you for your concern

Nah, "get a life" isn't something up to me or anyone to say.
Simply taking a break can't possibly be that drastic a change.

Quote from SamH :

FYI, Scawen has introduced penumbral shadows in the latest test patches. In fact, my understanding is that the changes Scawen has made to the shadow rendering system in LFS are a significant cause for the delay of the latest patch, with unanticipated graphic card issues in the wider test base. IMO there's still work to be done here.. All shadows, including the new penumbra, need greater contrast in daylit conditions, but I'm quite confident that will come

If he can hit the penumbra, it will be a great addition to visual and, therefore, to immersion. That is one thing.

I do not have the slightest idea of how complex and difficult is the introduction of dynamic lighting, but that of course would be a definitive step to put this game in the present. There would be no debts to competitors, like iRacing, and threads like "Aging a Lot" would be reserved for history books.