Hi all,
Since I mostly race and play all my sims offline, I'm wondering if there is a plan to improve the AI in the very near future?
Thanks.
-mike-

well... there hasnt been much news on ai improvement sadly. why dont you like playing online? do you have a bad connection?

Why would you want to play a great sim like LFS off line. The whole idea of a sim is playin gon line against REAL people.
However each to his / her own

For sure it's going to improve in the future, but I don't think it will be very soon. As far as I know it's going to be during the S2 stage though it's probably not very high up on the priority list. But I'm not a dev so I could be completely wrong. I read a post from Scawen in another topic in which he spoke of a career mode, so they do have plans for it I guess.

But yes, LFS aims to be the best online racesim so that's where the most fun should be (and is!). So I strongly advise you to race online more often unless you can't for some reason.

believe me you've got to play lfs online, its the most engrossing experience i've encountered since the days of air attack back in 99 (in those days in uk we paid 1p a minute on phone bill as bt ran it and £600 quarterly phone bills were heard of quite often)

since i went licenced ive given up on bf2 and other games

also dont be put off by time zones, i work nights and get in at 7am uk time and theres always some race going on.

im sure ai will get better and dont forget they do learn the more laps they do but ai is an extra the reason for lfs is online.

get the licence and you'll find ways to be online as much aa possible

Thank you all, I appreciate your inputs.
I do play online once in a while, with GPL and GTR. However, I found that most of the time, I'm always at the back of the pack no matter how much practice I did so I now played offline as I could adjust the AI to match my level.
I'm going to check out the online server with my demo LFS and see how it looks like before I buy the license. Thanks again.

Ok, I just pulled up a list of servers from LFS->multiplayer. I was able to join 1 but I can't tell when the race is supposed to start? Also, it seems the only one that has a reasonable ping time (<100ms) in the single one at the top. Is that all I got or there is another way to get to other server list?
Thanks again.

People vote to restart the races, usually 1-2 min after a race has finished.

As for the server list, check the filters you're using. Select "ALL" on the right and filter only empty servers (buttons at the bottom). The ping times depend on your location and connection, obviously. For me there are 39 non-empty demo server currently. 18 of them <50ms, 26 of them <100ms.

Unfortunately decent racing in the demo can be a bit hit and miss but if you do get the licence racing in the S2 servers is far better

Can i just hijack the thread for a second and ask what exactly the ping time is all about? Sorry!

Quote from andy_bonjon :

Unfortunately decent racing in the demo can be a bit hit and miss but if you do get the licence racing in the S2 servers is far better

Can i just hijack the thread for a second and ask what exactly the ping time is all about? Sorry!

The amount of lag from the server to your computer, or vice versa. In other words, how many units of time (measured in milliseconds) it takes. Notice sometimes when you are racing on line, and the person in front of you dissapears and the word "lag" with a time underneath it? Thats excessive ping time.

Thanks again. So if I understand correctly:
- I can't tell when a race is going to start with any LFS server? (with GPL, for ex, every race has a start time posted and I can find one that will start in 5 minutes versus 2 hours by looking at the list)
- I have 3 Mbps DSL line but there is only 1 that's less than 100ms.
- So a race starts only when everyone vote to start? If nobody votes then it will never start?
THanks again.

Most servers run very short lap races unless you are in a league or something so just join a server and get some laps in. The race will be over and starting again soon enough. Just stay out of the leaders way unless you want a quick and generally annoying lesson in track etiquette.

With a 3meg pipe you should be getting better pings than that. Have a look at your settings again, do an idiot check on your connection and your filter settings. Is your firewall interferring, try turning it of and refreshing the server list. See if that makes any difference.

I have a 1mb connection and I'm always getting between 30 and 40 mps.

And yes, a race will start when people vote for it. If noone votes you could be waiting a while, but there's normally a good reason for it.

There really must be something up with your connection, not LFS server side. you should have loads of servers to choose from.

In practice very few servers have long pauses between races, since most people playing actually want to race and will vote to restart not long after a race has completed.

The way LFS works means that even if there isn't actually a race in progress ['cos it's finished] all the players on it can still get out and drive around the track/make pit stops improve their P.B times etc etc, the only difference being that since there's no race in progress nobody's going to win after a certain number of laps have been completed.

Server admins can force restarts with a command to the server, but you won't always find them present.

As for servers you can play on...well LFS is far less ping dependent than many other games on the market [in fact its netcode is widely admired]
I'd say don't be put off by the fact that a server may be some distance from you but try it and see if you get a smooth game, if you consistently lag out then somebody's gonna let you know sooner or later.

What you really ought to do is visit the Australasian LFS community site

http://www.austraracing.com/

and get registered for their forums, once you see just how active the LFS scene is down under you'll soon be buying the full game and playing online

Quote from newdriver1 :

- So a race starts only when everyone vote to start? If nobody votes then it will never start?
THanks again.

Not everybody has to vote. When a certain percentage (?) of the players vote the race will restart. I don't know the minimum percentage to be honest. It's probably like 2/3 or something. If nobody votes the race will never restart unless an admin forces a restart. But it hardly ever happens. After a short race there's another start within a minite or two most of the time, after long races it might take a couple of minutes.

being in australia may be the source of your lag

Quote from Jakg :

being in australia may be the source of your lag

I'm actually in California, US. I just updated my profile.
Now that I refreshed the list again and the one on the top is 117ms. I already checked "ALL" to list all servers.

Mate, you really should have a shed load of servers coming up . . . .

Done the Firewall thing? Idiot checked your settings?

Cable company missold you?

Quote from newdriver1 :

Ok, I just pulled up a list of servers from LFS->multiplayer. I was able to join 1 but I can't tell when the race is supposed to start? Also, it seems the only one that has a reasonable ping time (<100ms) in the single one at the top. Is that all I got or there is another way to get to other server list?
Thanks again.

Not sure about the States (or Aus), because of the time difference to most servers you may find very few busy ones. Try to search for servers during Europe's peak times to make sure it's all working (and use patch U if you don't already). From the filters, make sure empty & private servers aren't shown, and select all cars. I'm sure you'll get some servers.

I've played on 300ms servers without big problems, but any more than that isn't really drivable, usually though I don't join anything that's above 100ms.

There aren't timed restart intervals, the race will start when the majority has voted (I can't remember if it's simple majority, 75% etc but something like that).

Its Called Live For Speed "Online Racing Simulator" for a reason ya know