Guys, I just got a pretty nice LCD widrescreen monitor for my racing computer. This was a combined christmas,birthday, and graduation dift. I would like to tell the DEV's AMAZING JOB ON THE GRAPHICS! I thought they were good before now imagine if i put high res textures on the new monitor.... The graphics are crisp and clear thanks guys! You guys should be hired by a mass gaming company and be multi zillionairs =P

Keep up the good work guys... now get that sirrico in so we can see even more awesome graphics

Honestly I have no idea what people are talking about when they say LFS has bad graphics - I probably like them better than similar sims from SimBin or the like.
They could be improved on a few areas, but overall they're pretty good.

I noticed graphics also when i gotted new monitor...
i was so stunned how detailed everything was

Agree. The graphics looks good enough for me. It's nothing fancy, but it doesn't look bad either. I have a top end computer, but I have no need for having graphic sex in LFS, for that I do other things. LFS is not about the graphics, but the game itself. And I enjoy it every now and then, and the graphics has never bottered me.
Well, the S1 did, but not the S2.

Quote from The Very End :

Agree. The graphics looks good enough for me. It's nothing fancy, but it doesn't look bad either.

+1

Even tho its dx8, it looks amazing

Hi-res textures and one of the reflection packs, plus a little AA and it does look great. The cars look real, and when you're watching a race surely that's the most important thing. Obviously full pixel shading and dynamic lights would be a bonus, but it works fine as it is.

Quote from hazaky :

Even tho its dx8, it looks amazing

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

Quote from Shadowww :

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

Well, why other game developers keep making games for latest dx? ...

Quote from hazaky :

Well, why other game developers keep making games for latest dx? ...

Just because they want people to buy newest graphics cards?

Quote from Shadowww :

Just because they want people to buy newest graphics cards?

Dont think so ...

Newer dx always have new coding and better source (im not pro at this thing, so im not sure ... as always). Like, Crysis has ambient lightning feature (dont know the exact naming of this) and stuff, i dont think that its possible to do in dx8 - even if it is, it would be hard.

Quote from Shadowww :

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

Is that the only way you can react on this forum? Men, people like you make this forum such childish

Quote from AbsolutMartini :

Is that the only way you can react on this forum? Men, people like you make this forum such childish

I gotta agree with this, i take this as spam. No offense Shadowww This big text thing started in other thread a while ago - so there it started, and maybe its cool to type in big text

Quote from AbsolutMartini :

Is that the only way you can react on this forum? Men, people like you make this forum such childish

Nice way of getting more posts, man. That was reply to "... even tho its dx8".

Quote from hazaky :

Dont think so ...

Newer dx always have new coding and better source (im not pro at this thing, so im not sure ... as always). Like, Crysis has ambient lightning feature (dont know the exact naming of this) and stuff, i dont think that its possible to do in dx8 - even if it is, it would be hard.

Ambient lightning can be done with software rendering too, seriously.

Quote from Bmxtwins :

...You guys should be hired by a mass gaming company and be multi zillionairs =P

Hell no, then LFS would never be finished.

btw.
Don't you know that Scawen and Eric already worked for Peter Molyneux at LionHead Studios and programmed/made gfx for the game Black&White.
Thank god they didn't do it all just for the money, else LFS wouldn't be what it is today.

Quote from Shadowww :

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

You couldn't be more wrong...
DX interfaces the games with the hardware. It has support for many features on graphics cards that games would otherwise have to do through software. Hardware acceleration, like the name suggests, makes things go faster, and faster means we can do more fancy stuff...

In other words, you try to use vertex shaders and stuff using DX 1 and get the same FPS you get on DX 10, and then you can come back and act the way you're acting.

Quote from TagForce :

In other words, you try to use vertex shaders and stuff using DX 1 and get the same FPS you get on DX 10, and then you can come back and act the way you're acting.

Well, maybe it affects fps, but not graphics.

Quote from Shadowww :

Ambient lightning can be done with software rendering too, seriously.

Of course it can... EVERYTHING can be done using software rendering...
Just not if you want anything over 0.001 FPS...

Quote from Shadowww :

Well, maybe it affects fps, but not graphics.

If it affects FPS it affects graphics...
In the words of Scawen: "It's a racing simulator, not a screenshot generator".
If it affects FPS to the point a normal rating can't be obtained, it won't be used in the game, hence it affects the graphics.

Quote from Shadowww :

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

So you're telling me Crysis could run on DX8?Hahaha...

Anyway,maybe you find LFS graphics ''clean/nice'' but when look at game like Forza 3/GT5,you realize how LFS graphics are getting really old.

Quote from CobraDrifter :

So you're telling me Crysis could run on DX8?Hahaha...

It could be coded to be ran on DX8, with no graphics loss.

Quote from Shadowww :

It could be coded to be ran on DX8, with no graphics loss.

Could, but it wont. Its a waste of time and resources

Ok, so let's chill down and speak about what DX does.

New DX versions has various improvements from the one before. But to very much put it blunt it's improving the way textures are drawn and shown on screen, aswell as improving effects like shadow. DX10 improved specially lightening effects and such, and if you have Age of Conan, take a look between DX10 and 9. 10 gives various GREAT lightening effects.
A other thing is that high end computers that are up to date runs the latest DX version better / more effectively compared to the others.

Hope that helps, again, very blunt but why it's popular to use latest dx version(s).

Quote :

Well, why other game developers keep making games for latest dx? ...

DX version gives more tools to programmers and artists to do more, whilst also increasing the hardware requirements to run the product if those tools are used.

For instance, DX9 has object instancing, which I dont think DX8 has. Object instancing allows you to send a graphic down the pipeline once, lets say we send a tree, and then render it in different positions and rotations. Cards which support it could then turn Westhill from a barren wasteland into a romp through the forest.

The downside is then getting a card that does not support the feature and compensates for it via software drivers. In the example I gave, those cards (already likely less powerful) would need to have the same model sent repeatedly down the pipeline - the result is it grind to a halt.

Chosing the right version of DX is paramount for indi software such as LFS because mainstream gamers tend to buy mainstream games and indi gamers dont necessarily have the latest hardware.

To this day a lot of indi games are still coming out with DX7, let alone DX8.

When developing a game most indi developers aim to use the lowest DX version possible to achieve the desired result.

Quote from Shadowww :

DX Version affects _N_O_T_H_I_N_G_. NOTHING.

Quote from Shadowww :

Well, maybe it affects fps, but not graphics.

he he


On topic...... with full AA and AF @1920 x 1200 even the standard LFS looks great, the hi res packs give a little more too, the best thing was when hi res skin downloads came in, really improve the close driving experiance for me at least

SD.

Quote from SparkyDave :

he he

"Nothing" was about quality of graphics

I've also found LFS looks great on larger monitors- in fact the default textures seem to work better on a larger monitor than on my old 17 inch monitor for example, where I was always finding faults and picking nits. That's almost counter intuitive to me because I've always appreciated how good LFS looks when you shrink an ingame screenshot down to the size of a banner ad, like in the top right of the forum here.. the images looks almost real because less texture detail is needed. On a large monitor everything is laid bare, but the graphics still hold up pretty well.

The biggest graphical improvement to come along recently are the updated interiors. They take up a good portion of screen space- they don't shift around a lot unlike the external track environment, so good interior textures and modeling can and did really help lift the presentation.

Still looking forward to seeing LFS evolve over the next few years. Mainstream computers are extremely fast these days, and mid range gfx cards are getting cheaper, so I hope the gfx engine (as well as physics) can go through some fundamental changes. From what I can gather Scawen still works on LFS on an older computer.. a new system might inspire him to work on more complex physics and graphics solutions.