Even though they don't communicate that well over the forums, they do show that they want to please us by serving the best sim. And that's what they did, and that's what they will do in the future.
I'll stay here on LFS together with all my mates with or without patch.
I've just scanned through the last few pages of the thread. I haven't looked at the thread for a long time, as I've been working a lot recently.
I think you are not correct about the contempt. We're just improving this simulator. I'm trying to program the tyres to behave as realistic as possible. It takes a lot of investigation and testing.
The reason I don't make progress reports is not contempt. It just doesn't make any sense to me to do, say, monthly progress reports. One of them says "I'm working on the tyre physics" and then the next month "I'm still working on the tyre physics" and so on. I just want to say something when there is something interesting to say. But the tyre physics has been a lot of development, a lot of testing and trying new things, finding it did some things well and others not so well. Changing some things, looking for reference material to refine constants, taking a break, coming up with a new idea to test, trying it out, taking some wrong turns, investigating something that turned out impossible, rewriting something, finding a better result, and so on...
Maybe you would suggest that all those twists and turns along the journey of development is exactly what I should be writing in the weekly or monthly progress reports, but actually I don't want to. When I am following a line of investigation, I don't want to say what I am looking at, instead I just want to get on with it and see if it turns out right or wrong in the end. It's kind of a private activity, not sure how to explain that.
I don't want to give any quantifiable evidence of progress at the moment. I suppose that would be a video or some graphs of tyre forces? No, I just want to get on with it. For example today I woke up with an idea to try which might have a subtle effect on the force outputs from tyres in some situations. It's a pleasing one because it can be coded in a few minutes and will be easily visible on the generated force graphs, unlike some things that take days to write. I don't want to say what it is, it's just something I'm looking into. Sorry to everyone who would like insight into every step of the tyre physics development but it's something I do for my own interest and to come up with really nice handling cars that our community will enjoy, and that's nice because it should give us more sales eventually as well. I'm not interested in doing something like writing a book on tyre physics development, if you see what I mean.
But what I can say is...
I think the tyre physics have come along a lot recently. There were some significant changes over quite a long time this year and when I found the handling was quite interesting and certain old issues were sorted, I started to look into the tyre heating, trying to get a version ready again for the testers. That meant sorting out the AI drivers, who only knew the old physics system. If they could drive well in the new tyre physics, they could drive consistent laps and so inform me if the tyre heating was working well.
The AI ended up being about three weeks of work, and I found it personally quite an interesting development time - which is good because that's what I'm here for! Anyway their grip prediction systems are a lot better and they can now drive quite close to the limit, the best and most reliable AI drivers yet seen in LFS. At some point I'd really like to work on their overtaking code, though that is not a high priority for this physics update patch.
So the AI could be crossed off that published list of big things to be done, and I feel the tyres are getting close. I've been testing them out with Eric and Victor for the last two weeks. They have been coming up with interesting comments and leading me to further investigations and improvements. I'm trying to get the version ready for our private beta testers to have a go. Also looking at notes I have here, specific comments from our testers, the last time they did some testing. I try to deal with each point then cross it off the list. No point giving them back a version that still has issues they mentioned before.
From experience I have learned that it's not worth giving the beta testers a version that I still know is flawed. While there is still plenty for me to work on full time, and Eric and Victor are pleased with what they see but are still able to demonstrate situations where they think the handling is not quite like reality, the best thing to do is just carry on. For how long, I don't know. Not everything goes as expected. Some things I try make strangely little or surprisingly large differences and sometimes they open up a new area of investigation. Personally I am surprised overall how much there has been to learn and understand about the behaviour of tyres.
Today I thought I'd just have a look at this thread, but there are too many new pages for me to read in detail. Anyway, you may be assured we have not stopped development. I guess if we stopped development then we'd make a post about it. I'm not sure how that would happen, maybe if I got run over or contracted a fatal illness or perhaps someone will come and offer me a flight to the moon but I have to train at NASA for a couple of years. Unlikely, and there's really nothing better I can do than work on this simulator. I just don't want to write about every step on the development path, so that's why there is a long time between progress reports.
Again, good to see you posting here again, I'm glad the AI system is ready and works better than the old one, sometimes I wanted to do some practice with them and now it's nearly impossible. Anyway, good luck with the tyre physics development, it seems that it's a long journey to make it perfect. Simulation is simulation.
I hope that someone won't start moaning here after few pages again
Thanks Scawen for that post. Good to know that AI updates are already done and they are better than before. Sorry to ask but how is the VW stability control, suspension updates and limited setup system? If the tyre physics is the last thing to polish then it seems like we are getting close.
Well explained Scawen, hope this will keep the wolfs at bay for a while.
I was wondering, with everyone going on about how good the physics in iracing is (never tried it), have you tried it and if so, will lfs match or surpass its quality?
So, its just as people have been saying for the last 71 pages, its business as usual.
Its just the doomsayers love to come up with all sorts of theories about how LFS is dead, sure progress is slow, but thats the nature of the beast, like it or lump it.
A percentage would be lot better then guessing on a time line until it's done but there will be people will still moan about not getting more info on S3 or what not.
Those things are not done yet. I am not expecting them to be too difficult though. But where have I heard that before?
- I'm not planning to try and make the VW stability systems as refined or complete as the real thing. I tried something before, when we were apparently close to release at the end of 2008. Already learned something by taking some wrong turns at that point and I hope that it won't be too hard to get a couple of reasonable systems in place that enhance the handling.
- The suspension updates I hope won't be too difficult, though that is an area where one thing could lead to another, so I don't really know. I think it will be a case of "where to draw the line". It's doesn't need to be the final update to suspension systems but if I could get a bit of anti-dive and anti-squat working then it would help with the default car setups which are more softly sprung now.
- Limited setup system is just a whole bunch of logic programming, meaning it's a load of rules, nothing complicated like physics and geometry. So it shouldn't be too hard. But there will be a few things to sort out, like how it will work in the interface and deactivate an "extreme" setup when you join a "limited" setup host, and you'll need to specify if a setup you are working on should conform to "limited" or "extreme" setup rules.
After the updates are done and the beta testers are quite happy with it, I think there will be a decent period of public testing. The limited setup system should be quite interesting. Class balancing will also need to be sorted out, with new tyre physics and default setups on limited setup hosts, we'll probably find that some adjustments are needed. And of course, public testing will usually bring up other issues we can't think of yet.
