Exactly today i was thinking about to leave the whole LFS community, and stop racing here, start to trying another simracing games. It was boring to see a lot of empty servers (except amg, lr, fox, r2r, cruise,drift, and some demos). And i was bored to wait the updates, without knowing any news about it. Now with this report i see a light at the end of the tunel. Good to know, that you devs are thinking and working on new projects, improvements, updates. It's bad, that it cost a llllllllot of time to do.

The LFS is a great game, with a lot of good things. you can paint your own car, you can set nearly anything on the car, you can change the sounds, and much more. You can drag, drift, cruise, race, whatever you want. The physics are very good, so the whole project is very good. The only wrong thing is the looong waiting between 2 updates. YES YES I KNOW I KNOW, it's not easy to make it, trust me, i know how many functions have to work properly to make the game good and enjoyable. YES I KNOW, that if i didn't like this, i can leave, and i can try another game.

But if i'm not wrong, than this is a forum, where anybody can post his own opinion about the LFS. I think my opinion didn't contains any wrong things. I think, that in my write, only one thing was very wrong....my english . No offence for devs, or for anybody on this forum, it's just a simple opinion.

Best regards
Sanchez.

and once again sorry for my bad english

Thanks for the Report ):P

Good Stuff

Can't wait to give the new tire physics a go sideways.

Thanks for the report.

Quote from boothy :

I couldn't see any red and white barriers at Rockingham so I don't quite know how it could be tested out.

I think he meant the LFS version they had on display at the circuit or something..? maybe, not sure.

cant wait (litteraly)
and again any chance that you might give us a little insight on who the new model is different from the old one... mathematically i mean for the engineering geeks round here

Thanks for the report Scawen, this is good stuff.

Quote from JazzOn :

such new technics (newer than DX9/8.1) ATM a "puff" is all that can be produced.

There is no RenderTyreSmoke(amount, etc); function in DirectX 10 nor 11.

Will the physics changes take a toll on driving styles?
You know, are we still able to be fast when turning before the apex? And do suspensions still make the car jump around when badly damaged?

For Scavier:
Your progress has been great so far, all we can do now is race and enjoy the game until the new updates come out. It's been 7 years of constant improvement, and you guys deserve every penny. Thank you for making such a realistic, detailed sim and most of all, a slow-computer friendly one .

Quote from Flame CZE :

The bold is already done. [car shadows]

NO! Proper light maps would SIGNIFICANTLY change the quality of lfs graphics. We have better car shadows now, which are a dynamic shadow mapping derivate. But thats something completely different than statically generated light maps, which are rendered at development time, and just added to the final texture result by for example using multi texturing.
Light maps can even be created with any renderer that supports rendering to a texture. This effectively means that you can create those light maps with Max or Maya, and use them in LFS. The best thing is, that the performance cost of light mapping is almost zero.
Therefore, the shadow 'story' should still be on the list.

But its however still a general discussion, how much has to be implemented to be a valid "S2 final". I would personally forget about the AI in the first place, and concentrate on adding the VWS and physics updated soon, add the interiors (that should already be done now), and most importantly, make the object collision better, beacuse this is the thing that distracts many people from the game, because it suggests "bad physics".
This package might be releaseed as S2 beta. After that, I would update the AI, add light mapping, etc., and the Rockingham track, and call this S2 gamma, and after a few weeks of intensive testing and bugfixing, this should be released as S2 final.

After that (on the way to S3), I would add support for custom content, and add weather support. For this, I would license a DX9+10 engine that ships with a decent content editor package, allowing everyone to try those editors, and taking a lot boring graphics programming tasks off Scawen's shoulders. New content could be made available to the users using micro payment (like, one car for 1€, a tarck for 5€ etc.), and content creators should earn LFS credits or real money with their work, too.
So lets say Don makes a nice set of new sky textures, and I would buy them for 1€, then the devs would get a part form that, maybe 20cent, for providing the download and server system, alongside with the content managemant systems, which should be user driven as well.
This means, users vote for good content, and each month, the best custom content from the polls is reviewed by the devs, and allowed to be put into the game. Basically the same method as used with the t-shirt designs, or the LX skin cometition. It is required that, without permission from the devs, no content may be spreaded, in order to avoid loads of crap mods (see rFactor), people stealing work from others.

So basically, S3 would add a new gfx engine + weather system, and allow users to add new content.

Just brainstorming a bit

Thanks for the report like in the good ol time!
Appreciate it!

Quote from ORION :

So basically, S3 would add a new gfx engine + weather system, and allow users to add new content.

Just brainstorming a bit

You are allready around for a long time in Lfs.
(no negative feeling please, Please don't understand me wrong)

So i though that you would know that in lfs:
1+1 is not 2
1+1 = an other variable

In other words, you would say you are correct, but i am afraid you are in-correct when you are taking this theory in to LFS.

I like the "limited setup" option...

I was thinking it could be nice (but perhaps I'm wrong, and it's just one of those noobish things) to have for each combo something like a few, fixed, not editable "setup templates", a bit like Bob Smith's "Road Going Setups" or "Race Setups", or similar.

Quote from zeromussov :

Nice work.

Could you tell us anything about other updates which will make s2 'final'?
- Improve collision physics
- Break off wings instead of bending
- Finish and release Westhill updates
- Improve track shadow rendering
- RB4 / UF1 / UFR interiors
- FZ/GTR/FXO interior updates

i think you forgot curbbugfix ^^ (kyoto i.e.)

Cheers! good work chaps, Best things come to those who wait

Quote from hotmail :

So i thought that you would know that in lfs:
1+1 is not 2
1+1 = an other variable

Well tbh 1+1 is 10, but to S10 its still quite a long way :P
so lets stick with 2 for now

Quote from Flame CZE :

The bold is already done. And by the way, those thing were just a plan.

It is not.
The car shadows and the track shadows are two different things. The car shadows have been done; the track shadows have not.

Anyway.

Thanks a lot Scavier! I love these progress reports, I'm so excited about this new patch.

Hi Scawen,

looking forward to the update. Sounds good and still a lot of work.

Just one little question:

The new tyre physics: do they solve the problem about longitudinal grip with heavy spinning wheels? Is a hard full throttle start now significantly slower than a controlled throttle start as it should be? Should be quite obvious in the "driving school" and the lesson about acceleration.

This would be also quite useful for a traction control to help with

Thx.
RIP

So Scawen IIRC, the fixed setup plans is to make it as an option? So the host can choose if the players can tune their setups to the fullest (like now) or limited?

Besides that, keep up the good work

Quote from Scrabby :

...So the host can choose if the players can tune their setups to the fullest (like now) or limited?...

Yes, so it was said in the test patch forum, IIRC.

Huray update report me likes .

I'm especially fond of the limited realistic setups.

Great stuff, and i like the fact that you're finally giving away some information about the development.. this is something i think, everyone wanted.

I'm really amazed and annoyed by the people who still manage to whine about the time it's going to take, and other updates that have been announced, while there's already a great list right there in the first post.
Just be happy with what you've got and what's coming.
It just never seems to be good enough for some people, which IMO, is a shame, if you see which hard work Scavier delivers each single time.

Anyway, thanks for the report, that's another thing i'll be eagerly waiting for.

Quote from ORION :

New content could be made available to the users using micro payment (like, one car for 1€, a tarck for 5€ etc.),

Not enough content in I-racing to chuck away your money ?

Really looking forward to a test drive and having to adjust set-ups and driving style to the new physics, which is always the most fun times in LFS for me

Thanks for the report.

PS - AI improvements would be great also, there is a one thing that bugs me with the AI at the moment (other than the obvious bugs) it is that when you position your car on their inside on the exit of a corner (sometimes even on the entry and often mid corner also) they pretty much stop in their tracks rather than race you.
If the AI detect they are being squeezed and there is not enough racing room then perhaps just a momentary lift off of the throttle is sufficient. At the moment it is too easy to overtake the AI in this circumstance as they drop too far behind and are then not in a position to race you any further.

Also AI being more human like would make it much more interesting i.e. their driving ability fluctuates during a race depending on their own ability rating, the length of a race, being under pressure, trying to catch an opponent, etc.

yeah im lookin forward to that but wat about the drifters what if the changes affect the way the users drift im not S2 licsend and i like drifting evry server i go into i drift if i cant use xrg i dont go into the server so plz dont let the "plans" affect the drifters of lfs

Quote from ORION :

After that (on the way to S3), I would add support for custom content, and add weather support. For this, I would license a DX9+10 engine that ships with a decent content editor package, allowing everyone to try those editors, and taking a lot boring graphics programming tasks off Scawen's shoulders. New content could be made available to the users using micro payment (like, one car for 1€, a tarck for 5€ etc.), and content creators should earn LFS credits or real money with their work, too.
So lets say Don makes a nice set of new sky textures, and I would buy them for 1€, then the devs would get a part form that, maybe 20cent, for providing the download and server system, alongside with the content managemant systems, which should be user driven as well.
This means, users vote for good content, and each month, the best custom content from the polls is reviewed by the devs, and allowed to be put into the game. Basically the same method as used with the t-shirt designs, or the LX skin cometition. It is required that, without permission from the devs, no content may be spreaded, in order to avoid loads of crap mods (see rFactor), people stealing work from others.

So basically, S3 would add a new gfx engine + weather system, and allow users to add new content.

Just brainstorming a bit

I sense many copyright issues in this. And involving money transactions is really begging them.