I'm not alone in thinking that what LFS is, as it is right now, is excellent.
Almost every day LFS excites and entertains me as I drive and race and love it. But of course I'm here because more, and whatever's next would be way cool too.
Anyway... On the 29th of September 2010, I spontaneously wanted to express my appreciation for LFS to the creators. Just 3 guys! I still think it's an amazing, superb quality output... Without thinking much, I wrote some things that were from the heart and found an email address on the website to fire them to.
Within 12 hours I had a response. It was from Victor. I hope they don't mind me posting this...
Thanks ******.
I have forwarded your mail to my collegues who I'm sure will appreciate it as well.
I hope the (eventually) upcoming updates to LFS will fall in good taste as well and allow you to continue enjoying LFS
Kind regards,
Victor van Vlaardingen
I wasn't really expecting a response - that I got one promptly is a good sign.
Obviously I'm here reading things (pointlessly) in anticipation of what comes next. But I also clocked up a few hundred kms tonight with friends, having some excellent simulated driving enjoyment. What's there, unchanged for a while notwithstanding, is hugely enjoyable and satisfying.
However, to either confirm or deny my dedication to LFS, I have tried some of the other main racing sims. In 2009, just after discovering and getting into LFS, I tried rFactor for contrast. For me, the decision of where to do simulate driving was very quickly obvious.
In the last month or so I also tried iRacing and netkarpro. I enjoyed and saw quality and potential in iRacing, and it felt good - physics and force feedback etc, but I wasn't fullfilled with the cars available. Having to pay for everything and a monthly fee isn't satisfying. It didn't look particularly special either.
LFS is incredible value. As a note on that - I can't imagine Scavier are making billions in profit from it all... I certainly don't feel they owe me anything more than what I already got for my S2 money. But they certainly will get my money for whatever comes next. Thus far I've purchased 4 LFS licences - It's my favourite gift to give to someone who will get sucked into it :-) and it's great to have them online. and to beat them... until they improve :-)
netkarpro: I didn't like they physics feel, but that was mostly due to the fact I don't favour open wheeler cars. Again, the current choice of vehicles leaves me most unfullfilled. It was pretty good and showed potential, but felt very much like it's still in its infancy.
The LFS suite of cars might be mostly fictional, but they cover the important classes and bases. After all, it's only a simulation. The fact it's an FR car with 4 cylinder turbo and behaves as such is more important than it being a recreation of a
specific car...
The tracks are stunning in feel and layout. The variety and scope they provide is thorough. The graphics, though perhaps somewhat dated, look great. The environments are really cool and the changes from setting different light conditions give good contrast and variety in appearance and atmosphere. Most importantly, the graphics are very functional. e.g Gran Turismo 5 has no smoke and tyre marks in your mirrors, when you're lucky enough to have a car with a cockpit view.
I've always liked the Gran Turismo series, but in the long wait for the latest, I (thankfully) seeked an alternative and found LFS. I bought GT5 on the release date (and took the afternoon off work), was burdened with a 130mb 'patch' the moment I put the disc in (which provided no real good stuff), played it for a week pretty solid (and was hit with several more large mandatory update patches), but was disappointed and frustrated most of the way along... and i'm back on LFS, quite heavily. PS3 hasn't gone on for a few weeks now.
Flowing on from that... The playstation GT5 crashed/locked up on me several times in that brief stint of playing. LFS is extremely stable, solid and reliable. and so fast! how much time in that week of GT5 was I starring at a loading screen???
To sum up: What's there is great. When something further comes our way, I'm confident it will be of an outstanding quality and will serve to enhance things further. In the meanwhile - let's race!
:-)