I am considering buyig LFS, but before I do (or rather spend any time googling around) how is the online racing for LFS?

I have NKpro and I love the Sim, but it seems to be consistently empty except for league racing.

Also, are the online races a crashfest or is there a chance to actually race with mature drivers that do not play demolotion derby as in other sims.

My main sim is iRacing, but I'd like to have an alternative every once in a while. LFS seems very nicely done after playing to the demo.

Thanks.

EDIT: by the way, what about mods, especially in the form of Tracks to race on. The tracks in the demo are nice, but like everyone else I love racing Silverstone, Laguna, Road America, Monza, etc. Are there any tracks available? It's not going to affect my decision, but I am just curious.

Online racing is greatly dependant on servers and time.

The main difference with iracing and NKpro is that the community itselfs handles the online racing (pay for servers, organize and admin them) while LFS and addons provide all the tools to do it (kick / ban, set entry requirements on certain servers like experience and laptimes...)

Try to find live admined servers, as they usually offer the cleanest racing. You may not have a lot of choice considering your timezone (European evenings are the active moments) but make sure you try out what is available - I'm sure there is something that suits your needs out there.

Welcome! And I see that you did not consider for a long time

Seeing you already are S2 licenced, it did not take you long to decide! Thumbs up!

As Mille pointed out, the online racing is time dependant. Best way to find a server that suits you is to try couple of them out. Hop on, do some races, talk to the racers and switch servers if you don't like it. If you do this for a while you will get stuck on one or two servers sooner or later.
Many teams also have weekly events you can take part in once you have been on their public servers for a while. Those races provide decent racing without any crashfests.

Don't get frustated if you get crashed out several times in a row, though. It happens almost everywhere on public servers. Learn to avoid especially Lap 1 Turn 1 Mayhems.

As to you question about additional Tracks: There are none.
LFS offers several Configurations of the tracks included that should keep you busy a while. Modding is not officially allowed and I am not aware of any tracks made for LFS.
I started to switch reality for LFS, so Blackwood, South City and such are the real racing tracks for me nowadays and Laguna Seca, Silverstone etc. are the fantasy ones, they only exist in this awkward game called "real life". I heard the graphics are good, but everything else...

Well, yes, I figured it was cheap enough and there was no point going on with the demo for $40. I usually spend as much before I even get out of bed

I played the faster cars last night and they are pretty nice, Different physics but pretty accurate. As far as finding servers, one race a week would be enough for me, plus an odd race here and there. I get enough races on iRacing already. I just would like a change of page every once in a while.

Actually, one reason I bought LFS is the ability to race with AI drivers, just to get a bit more seat time with other drivers around. In iRacing wedon't get much of that and when you go racing it's often hard to negotiate traffic.

However, the AI racers are very aggressive. I spun out last night and I think every single AI hit my car in succession.

In another instance, most of the cars passed me cleanly (spun out again) except for a black car that absolutely was bent on driving me off the road, and did.

Is there a way to turn down the aggressiveness of the AI? I search but I couldn't find it. maybe in the files somehwere?

I don't mind them being aggressive, but I mind it when the plow into me in a turn and spin me out. I swear they are much worse than the rookies in iRacing at the no SR races.

Thanks guys. I'll see you around.

If you bought LFS for the AI racing then you made a bit of a mistake, the AI is far from unfinished. The best racing is of course with other drivers online. However good thing about LFS is all content is available to you, and there's no SR. Just make sure you try all of the content, and have a look at all of the leagues available, from slow to fast, single seaters to tin-tops, and from sprint to endurance racing - including League of the Americas.

Actually, I didn't buy it for the AI racing, but it's one of the reasons. Not so much because it's that much fun or because it's an advanced AI but because they are there. Meaning that with the AI on track you have to find alternate lines, different breaking pits, etc. As much as I try to practice that in hot lapping, there is nothing like having another car in front of you while entering a turn.

I guess to me they are more movable barriers than real racing.

Of course nothing beat racing with other folks online, ad I am looking forward to that in LFS, but as practice the AI are good enough for me. I just wish they did not have a death wish or were totally blind.

I mean, how hard can it be to program
if { car in the middle of the road
where: speed <= 5mph
Then steer the darn wheel }

But GTR/Race on/Race 07 they are just as dumb, so maybe it is hard to program them.

The problem is the AI only uses the physics available to humans, therefore you are essentially trying to program a human into a game. Have a look at http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=63807 and the pdf attached on how other games create their AI (also remembering the fake AI in F12010!)

I used some AI drivers to race against last night. I noticed that when I set my own skill level to a lower level, the AI drivers didn't seem to be as aggressive. I could race in front of them without getting spun out at every corner. So, maybe that's a good way to practice with the AI drivers.

This AI driver didn't seem to like it when I got into his left rear.



-Maurice

See? I told you they had a bad attitude. I probably didn't notice they were giving me the finger because I was driving tin tops

Anyway, believe me, I realize how hard it is to program realistic AI. I am a programmer myself and I have no idea where I would even start to code behaviors like that.

The idea of reducing the skill level seems like a good one, I'll try it later (although today is going to be a big racing day for me at iRacing, maybe tomorrow), but I still think that at the very least they could be coded to try avoid contact with other cars. If nothing else make it random, allowing contact every 5 times or something. That behavior shouldn't be hard because the program knows where every vehicle is and even cheap flash games have that kind of behavior programmed into them with 3 or 4 lines of code (or the opposite one for that matter).

Even i their attempt of avoiding the other cars were clumsy, I think it would mimic better the way a real driver would behave. As it is, in the sim or real race world, no driver would plow into another car that way.

Even with the SR at iRacing we do get the aggressive types once in a while but even they don't quite try to play bumper car like the AIs here and in other games. One thing is to dive bomb into a turn, quite another is to aim for the car with the purpose of rolling it over out of the track.

Anyway, originally I was asking because GTR (or race on, I don't remember) does have a slider to temper the aggressiveness of the AI without really affecting their skill level. I was hoping LFS would have something like that as well.

I could play GTR, but I think the physics are better in LFS and from what I understand, the online racing is certainly better. The few times I raced GTR online it was a massive crashfest and no one found it even a bit disturbing.

I can understand your reasoning but (as already pointed out) the AI really are terrible and learning to pass a car that is over a second a lap slower than you will actually teach you very little.
Yes you can adjust the level of the AI on LFS but they will always be blind and the top level is slower than anything that will help you learn anything.
Go online and race against real people..they may also share sets and help you learn also.