It is unimaginable nowadays that the earliest version of LFS were able to achieve such quick success, seeing it was very basic and minimal, and the tire physics was horrid!
Hehe I remember the excitement of first time I tried LFS demo. It was in '03 or '04 and I was like "OMFG! That's what I've waiting for my entire life!"
Then I tried to brake with XFG from 190km/h. When 'brake help' kicked-in, I lost control and died in accident I was like "OMFG! Highspeed braking on bumps aint easy! That's what I've waiting for my entire life!" etc. etc and so on
Remember first time I saw LFS I kind of ignored the funky graphics (back in 03), when racing it it was a lot of fun, even if I did use keyboard at that time
Everyone who gets fed up waiting for the next LFS patch should be directed to that site, made to read the forum posts of the sad wraiths who still post there wondering if the game will get finished - and THEN tell them that Racing Legends was their 2nd attempt at writing a game - the first one got no further either.
Haha, this may be the very first time that the phrase "It'll be ready when it's ready" was used in relation to LFS
In the post of Karsten Borchers where he quotes (one of) the LFS devs.
EDIT: I also think it's interesting to see those reactions and compare them to the reactions we get here today. Back then I'm sure LFS was in a league all on its own, a real pioneer so to say, hence all those raving reactions. These days, though, there's a number of other sims out there that are quite matched to, or even ahead of LFS in certain aspects, and people expect a lot more now than they did 6 or 7 years ago. I can't help but smile when I see statements in that thread such as
I discovered LFS sometime in 2004, but didn't really get into it much then because I didn't have a wheel and it was impossibly hard to just get a lap around blackwood without spinning out using the keyboard/mouse so I gave up.
It sat on my hard drive for a while until I decided to try again some time later and was able to get round without spinning out and lost interest again. Then I got a DFP (for gt4 mostly ). Then in 2006 I finally got S2, mostly for the autocross (which I hardly ever do anymore). (fwiw, I now have a G25. yay clutch! )
After seeing LFS in September, maybe even August, and being a bit turned off by the somewhat goofy cockpit graphics (low poly driver hands and arms stretching out from the screen), I finally downloaded LFS 0.1E on 7 October, 2002 after it was suggested to me by a fellow league racer in Motor City Online (MCO). Joystick in hand, I stormed off toward Blackwood's T1 in the GTi (now known as the XFG), that little 4-banger buzzing in my ears. I yanked hard to the right for the hairpin and... promptly slid off into the gravel. My jaw hit the floor.
MCO never felt the same.
On a side note, I was 17 years old and got my driver's license just 3 weeks after playing LFS for the first time. To say LFS has been a big part of my life would be a huge understatement. It's been the foundation upon which my interest in racing grew tremendously and ultimately led me to try racing in real life, only on 2 wheels instead of 4.