Bear with me on this one
I'm not suggesting new cars or new tracks, I'm not suggesting 'improvements' and I'm not suggesting opening LFS for modding.

Here goes...

Everyone who's been an LFS player for any length of time will be very aware of the speed of development, and the fact that there has been very little new content added to the game in recent history.

There are various reasons why people want new content, but to me it seems that one reason above all is an issue for LFS, that is the fact that a big part of the enjoyment is learning and progressing - developing lines, finding the limits of the car, creating and honing setups.

Once you have done this for all the cars *you like* on all the tracks *you like* a big part of the enjoyment is lost. There is also the problem for newcomers that many other drivers are so far ahead that it will take weeks or months to be competitive.

I'm proposing an 'improvement' that will help to provide a solution to this problem.

In real racing, things change constantly, car designs are updated, regulations change, tracks wear out and are repaired, corners are tweaked to 'improve' racing.

What if LFS had periodical changes to performance, and some details of the tracks. Not improvements, just changes.

e.g.
track stuff:

the apex of a corner might be moved.
the track could widened or narrowed at a corner exit.
bumps or small hills or dips could be added or removed.

car stuff:

changes could be made to chassis dimensions
power changed
setup limitations could be swapped around
weight balance could be altered

These kind of changes would not be enough to change the feel and 'personality' of the cars or tracks, and would not involve nearly as much work as upgrading the quality or adding completely new content, but they would add some spice and keep the existing content alive in a way that is natural and realistic.

I know there would be resistance, particularly from the hot-lappers, people who love the fact that nothing ever changes so they can obsess over every tiny detail doing thousands of identical laps. There would also be complaints every time there was an update about resetting charts. And some people would moan that a new change 'spoils' something that was better before the change.

I think that the benefits would outweigh the problems - It would keep the game interesting and fresh and it could become something of an annual event that everyone looks forward to, like a patch, but not requiring the same amount of work from the devs.
One of the nice things about LFS in the early years was the fact that there were regular changes and LFS world resets. I think that the changes were as important as any graphical or physics improvements.

cheers

Col

There were several track changes in patch Y at Blackwood track and several cars were "tuned".

Quote from Flame CZE :

There were several track changes in patch Y at Blackwood track and several cars were "tuned".

Yes there were, and they helped to liven things up IMO, unfortunately that was a long time ago - Christmas 2007. If changes were more regular and didn't only happen along side major patches, it would help to keep the game alive and interesting.

col

I like this suggestion; provided the character of the tracks is not lost. A lot of real circuits have been ruined by even simple changes, I'd hate to see that happen.

That said, this gets a +1 from me.

I think more than that we need a "live track" where the racing line is cleaned and hence more grip than off life where the marbles form.

LFS has always had the changing racing line so how much harder is it to implement vatiable grip so the line has more.

Tracks will constantly change then so also present a different challenge.

But yes col, I see where you are coming from.

I like the idea but I also agree with Woz in that there are far more important core features that need to be implemented first. I also do not think that the Dev team is large enough to make those kind of year to year changes while still adding in missing features. Again, would be cool, but not going to happen until after S3 is code complete. Even iRacing with its budget and dev team do not do this yet.

Quote from Gimpster :

Even iRacing with its budget and dev team do not do this yet.

Since I've been with iRacing (a mere 3 months) many cars and tracks have been tweaked enough that I've heard people disucssing the differences on several occasions so it is happening as a consequence of ongoing development. It used to happen more frequently in the early days of LFS also.

I agree it would make it a lot more life like and interesting if there were regular "tweaks" to cars and tracks. In real life it is rare for a serries to be the same car and track wise from one year to the next, that in combination with dynamic track conditions is something I am always hoping will become a reality!

So big +1 from me

+1 to annual track improvements, but as for car changes, it has to be -/+1 to me. Yes, I think the textures and power can be changed, but the models have to be kept the same. There are loads of people who take alot of time to skin cars and they wouldn't like it if their work was useless after a year or so.

as per usual Woz is on the money.

Quote from Woz :

I think more than that we need a "live track" where the racing line is cleaned and hence more grip than off life where the marbles form.

LFS has always had the changing racing line so how much harder is it to implement variable grip so the line has more.

Tracks will constantly change then so also present a different challenge.

But yes col, I see where you are coming from.

I would love changing line and grip levels, marbles etc. however that would be a big programming effort and would take a lot of development before it was good enough for release.
The point of my suggestion is that it is not improvements, just changes. No programming required, and very little design work, just some cut'n'pastes and smoothing the joins, then probably a little testing and sanity checking. So it would be feasible to do it regularly, while we wait for improvements such as 'live track'

Quote from Furiously-Fast :

+1 to annual track improvements, but as for car changes, it has to be -/+1 to me. Yes, I think the textures and power can be changed, but the models have to be kept the same. There are loads of people who take a lot of time to skin cars and they wouldn't like it if their work was useless after a year or so.

Again, I'm not talking about improvements at all! in fact, it's likely that some changes made will be seen as the opposite on occasion (just like real life).
Personally, I'm not that bothered about making a bit of extra work for skinners if it means improving the LFS experience over all. Any changes like I'm suggesting are going to cause issues for people who obsess about keeping the status quo - skinners, hotlappers, possibly developers of some in-sim apps, drivers who depend on their car being slightly faster then others in its class... If keeping some life and interest in LFS means annoying these people a little, then so what?

cheers

Col

Quote from col :

I would love changing line and grip levels, marbles etc. however that would be a big programming effort and would take a lot of development before it was good enough for release.
The point of my suggestion is that it is not improvements, just changes. No programming required, and very little design work, just some cut'n'pastes and smoothing the joins, then probably a little testing and sanity checking. So it would be feasible to do it regularly, while we wait for improvements such as 'live track'

LFS used to have the race line that would darken based on the path people went. If it was just AI you ended up with a narrow darker line as they allo followed the same line but in normal use it was more defuse due to the differences in lines taken etc.

That is most of the battle no? Prodably far less work than the physics update currently in place.

I think that was all client side so the server would need to broadcast the paths so everyone had the same but that can be handled with a simple set of centre + width markers + grip modifier outside the region overlayed on the track that give the dynamic bounds of the "clean" region. (More points in corners and less on the straight)

A soft change in friction could be implemented as you step outside the clean region such that the grip modifer is ramped from clean to full modifier over a width based on the width of the clean region. The thinking here being a narrow clean path would soon put you in marbles far quicker than a wider more defuse clean path.

Only markers that update would be included in packets to minimise bandwidth.

The rest can be handled client side as given the region it should be possible to vary grip levels and the server can validate.

Live track along with removing control over wind/weather so conditions changed over time (Talking hours here for weather) would improve LFS no end.

Too many servers have no wind enabled because too many people care about lap times over just racing in the conditions that are present

Just thinking out loud though

Quote from Woz :

LFS used to have the race line that would darken based on the path people went....
...The rest can be handled client side as given the region it should be possible to vary grip levels and the server can validate.

I think you're under-estimating the complexity of this and not thinking through some of the problems that it would present.

Anything that the client does that is 'validated' by the server is open to the dreaded 'lag' problem. This is bad enough when it only affects times when two or more cars are nearly touching. If it was related to the track surface, then any dropped packets would potentially cause you to spin or lose some amount of control. Anyone with a connection that is not VERY high quality would not be able to play.

I know there are numerous possible solutions to this problem, but they add a lot of complexity to the solution and probably introduce other more subtle issues.

e.g.

All live track data must be downloaded, and validated before it can be used by cars.

issue#1 There's lots of data
solution: stream it interlaced (gridwise) at a low rate... the surface can be updated slowly and filtered to keep it smooth.
issue#1.1 It may be necessary to create some sort of flow grid for each track to improve the perceived smoothness of the filtering...

issue#2 All cars need to be using the same track data + the data must be downloaded and then validated. If one or more of the cars lags, then it will not be validating - what does the server do if a) that car brings dirt onto the track, then eventually does validate - should dirt just magically appear long after the car that caused it has left? or b) the server ignores lagging cars - their tracks will update in a very unconvincing fashion.

issue#3 'latency'. if the track is updated gradually, and filtering is used, and if some magical filtered fudging is used to improve the integration of lag and dropout related problems, then the latency of update will be such that the 'live' will only be useful for keeping a grippy line and having marbles in certain synthetically pre-defined areas.
All the other stuff that a live track would be good for like wet and drying track, cars bringing dirt onto track, cars cleaning up dirty areas after a few laps etc. will be difficult to implement convincingly.

But, even forgetting about these problems, there is another big one for LFS, and that is 'environmental persistence' i.e. if the track resets itself on each race start, it will seem very fake, and the races will need to be long before any great benefit will be perceived.
On the other hand if it was decided to avoid this by allowing servers to keep persistent track surface data (this would be cool IMO) then the LFS server software would need plenty of re-working. In this case there would also be a BIG bandwidth load every time a new car joined the server and needed to download that servers track surface data, not to mention each time that server changed/rotated tracks - many cars may need to download the surface data.

I'm sure there are many other issues that you can come up with just by some hard thinking. Of course, there are always plenty more that surface after implementation and testing.

I think these problems are solvable, but for the system to be great (good enough to complement LFS), it would need a LOT of work, and probably to wait until the average internet connection is a lot better than currently and also until bandwidth is cheaper.

IMO it's definitely not a trivial weekend update of the purely visual dynamic racing line.

Quote :

Live track along with removing control over wind/weather so conditions changed over time (Talking hours here for weather) would improve LFS no end.

Sure would

Col

Quote from col :

I think you're under-estimating the complexity of this......

You are right it is still a fair size chunk of work and not a bash through in a weekend

Hope some focus is put on it after the initial S3 release as it would life LFS far about what is out there

Quote from col :

Sure would
Col

Trouble is so few of us agree about no control over weather

Simplest (IMO) solution would be to mirror all tracks...

We should call Hermann Tilke to convert all fast turns into hairpins, making them safe for all LFS drivers and encouraging overtaking.

NAH.

Quote from col :

car stuff:

changes could be made to chassis dimensions
power changed
setup limitations could be swapped around
weight balance could be altered

Do you mean... new cars?
if there would be maximum dimensions of the chassis (so in case of missing car default can be used)...
maximum power (or better engine capacity with some proportion on weight and power)...
minimum mass...

Quote from col :

All live track data must be downloaded, and validated before it can be used by cars.

on live tracks...
nice lol... but... seriously... creating completely new track in mod mode is such an effort that I don't think there would be much for validation - 1 a year? 2?

So IMO from those LOLs - there are some issues when not lol'ed.
1st one - great idea
2nd - not really

Quote from AndRand :

Do you mean... new cars?

No

Quote :

on live tracks...
... creating completely new track in mod mode...

No and not new tracks either.
Please re-read the first post.
See in the second line where I say "I'm not suggesting new cars or new tracks".

Well, I meant that.

cheers

Col

Quote from col :

Well, I meant that.

cheers

Col

and you provided more cons than pros. Thank you

Quote from AndRand :

and you provided more cons than pros. Thank you

Only to the OT(off topic) side discussion about the unrelated suggestion of adding 'live' track surface conditions to LFS.

You're welcome.

Col