I still drive in LFS and by far it's been the best value for money driving game I've bought.

I've also got iRacing and coming back to drive LFS after having an iRacing drive, you really notice that the track surfaces need a load of work in LFS. They are just ridiculously smooth.

Quote :

My ask and suggestion is to Eric>:

Is there a chance that all the tracks might be redeveloped in the near future to include a more realistic track surface with bumps? I think this would massively enhance LFS if it was possible.

In addition, some more tracks please

i like the idea,
but a complete remake of each individual track will take time, lots of time i reckon.
we all want a little more realism added to this simulation. But thats the point, its a simulation and it can only get us so far to what we see and feel real life. But nonetheless its an improvement id like to see in the near future =]

That is a LOOOOT of work, but imo it needs to be done.

All tracks should be as bump some of the worst places of SO, that's why I like South City because it has a more realistic feel, it's more organic feeling, sometimes its actually to smooth, I know the really short SO track gets really bump in the XFGTR and it gets to be lots of fun!

I don't think its THAT much work, but I'm a noob so correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think he needs to remake the tracks, just add some random bumps here and there... Isn't there any easy way to just pull the ground up and make up quick bumps (Sims style ) ?

I do agree that they do need to be remade but i think its not what we need first i think when they are getting close to S3 final they should remake all the current tracks and tracks that they add next gen and add random graval on the road and stuff but still i don't think its a thing that needs to be done immidietly but sometime in the future when they are getting close to releasing the game to stores if they ever do it would make them more money

Quote from evilpimp :

I don't think its THAT much work, but I'm a noob so correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't think he needs to remake the tracks, just add some random bumps here and there... Isn't there any easy way to just pull the ground up and make up quick bumps (Sims style ) ?

Yes but knowing Eric if he's going to do something.. he is going to do it the right way, not ghetto rigged just so it's.. similar to how it works.

But either way, that is a ton of work, you think pulling up a few points will make a difference.. try a few hundred thousand points at random. On every track, that is a TON of work.

Except it can't be at random.. like I said, Eric is going to do it right, so he would do it where there normally would be bumps.

That means bumps at every surface change, every crack, every little surface blemish.

That is alot of work, but I thought of something. What if the bumps are not on the mesh? Instead you have a "bump map" that goes ontop, it's writen by texture, so it would be realistic. I'm not talking about bump mapping as in graphics, I'm talking a surface file that goes with the road textures to define the surface of the road physicaly.

Infact, you could even use graphics bump maps now that I think about it, instead of reading the hight for lighting though, it reads if for the physical texture of the track. relief maping already works this way, it builds the surface based on the texture map. The difference is the surface doesn't have to be actualy reliefed by the map, only the simulation needs to know where the bumps are.

The textures would need to be locked, so you can't cheat by changing the surface maps, but it would be worth the loss of moding, it would add realism and the capabilty for the devs to change the road surface easily once its added.

Its just an idea, I don't know how well it would work, if at all. But it would be an inovative and interesting concept to try.

I guess a cheapo way to do this would in 3ds max there is a 'noise' tool, just select all of the track inwards of the edge and use the noise tool and it will put bumps here and there, unfortunately it will do it.... everywhere.

As far as a 'bump map' goes, those are only for lighting, they remain flat, it is just how the light reflects off in game, the mesh doesn't change.

in theory you could use a greyscale bump map which affects collision per pixel but it would mean that the minimum specs for the game would need to be raised as well- this could corrispond with a texture+spec+normal map, etc.

the only other way would be to tesselate the road surface and using something like noise or getting an artist to do so, make the road surface less even. In other words it's adding a lot of man hours as that's a lot of tracks to go through, bumpify and test. Again this will raise minimum spec as you've now got 4 times as many triangles displayed for the road surface minimum.

poly number doesn't need to be increased, it is plenty to encourage a rough surface.

But you're correct about one thing.. man hours.. would take a very very long time.

And again, bump maps are a texture and lighting feature, they do not change the surface of a poly; aka you give a plain a bump map, it may appear.. 'bumpy' hence the name, but if you look at it fron the side, it will still and always be as thin as paper.

Besides, polys calculate I don't even know how many times faster than textures do, textures are the FPS killers.

Live track with off line loss of grip and rubber marbles build up would add more

I would love to see more bumps / less smoothness on the tracks in LFS. But as someone has mentioned it would need a loooooot of worktime to be done. As you say Xnurse, if they were as bumpy as in So it would be a damn fun experience, specially in the brake zones. Some bumps there would prevent absolutely perfect braking, but a chance of accidents and other somewhat realistic happenings. In So it sometimes can be a nightmare to try braking on the bumpy parts, but I at same time love it, when I canot predict how the braking / driving will be each time.

Quote from XCNuse :

And again, bump maps are a texture and lighting feature, they do not change the surface of a poly; aka you give a plain a bump map, it may appear.. 'bumpy' hence the name, but if you look at it fron the side, it will still and always be as thin as paper.

i can't accept that you of all people are forgetting about parallax mapping (i know what you're getting at, though. even with parallax mapping, the poly only appears bumpy, the physics engine won't magically take consideration of it, without additional work. for making the tarmac appear more realistic, it would help to have some kind of UV mapping ^_^ )

also, my suggestion still stands. there are coders out there who would (for free, too) improve the graphics of LFS. i wish i could devote time, i would add self shadowing, better material shaders, etc

don't think i'm one of those "OMG SHAD0RZ" guys who see hdr and get a stiffy. if there is one thing to choose to improve in LFS i would always pick 'physics' but don't downplay the importance of graphics: better graphics, more people interested, lfs becomes more popular and so on

Quote from XCNuse :

That is a LOOOOT of work, but imo it needs to be done.

My words exactly

Quote from XCNuse :

Yes but knowing Eric if he's going to do something.. he is going to do it the right way, not ghetto rigged just so it's.. similar to how it works.

But either way, that is a ton of work, you think pulling up a few points will make a difference.. try a few hundred thousand points at random. On every track, that is a TON of work.

why you say it is right way to do it? Right way to do is to put random bumps not to create each of them manually.

I miss a lot places with amounts of dust (like on the other side of FE Green pit lane straight) - besides bumps this is second thing that wil make track more alive.

Would belive so myself, probally because that's where most of the force on track would be, or where it would be much stress on the asphalt and such.. neverthless I have no clue on this subject, but I just want bumpier / real life "feel" of the road

I don't know about braking 'zones' but I would imagine the turns, in the lower spots near the apex where the asphalt gets the most amount of heat causing it to buckle.

Or at least that sounds rational to me I'm no expert on asphalt though lol

@andrand, that isn't the right way of doing it, bumps in roads are there for reasons, they don't just "happen" well.. most of the time, if it was 100% random like noise, it would be very annoying if it was random because it would be noise, it would be binary on the road going 0100011 010101 etc. etc.

Random is the wrong way of doing it.

Random bumps across the entirety of the track are a different thing to the oscillatory lumps that can build up in the braking zones.

Quote from XCNuse :

That is a LOOOOT of work, but imo it needs to be done.

All tracks should be as bump some of the worst places of SO, that's why I like South City because it has a more realistic feel, it's more organic feeling, sometimes its actually to smooth, I know the really short SO track gets really bump in the XFGTR and it gets to be lots of fun!

Why? irl road surface is sometimes very VERY smooth while others ae indeed very bumpy. What i mean is, NOT all tracks should be bumpy.

Quote from Bluebird B B :

Why? irl road surface is sometimes very VERY smooth while others ae indeed very bumpy. What i mean is, NOT all tracks should be bumpy.

Yes but a road surface isn't a race track surface

No I'm not saying it should be bumpy on every track, obviously something like FE however should be quite bumpy since it is based in Jamaica and they have wild temperature differences.

Actually ..

I guess the British tracks should be more bumpy because yall get snow and that gets in little cracks in the road surfaces causing it to be very pot holy and bumpy etc etc.

But in Jamaica because of their hotter temperatures, I think it would just cause the road to buckle and it be very wavy because of the road expanding (instead of something else eating away at it like ice).

I think, that we must wait for S3

Now devs are working with Scirocco

Save some money for S3.