You know I think you may be right. Scawen doesnt say that the Scirocco will have a limited setup 'option', just that it will be limited setup, and that he is considering introducing a limited setup 'option' for the existing cars. This further reinforces my belief that VW pushed for a safe and limited version of the Scirocco, and will not authorise its release until such time as that is achieved. Why else would you limit the setup options of a new car
I'm fairly sure Scawen has said in the past that VW aren't veto'ing the release. It would be hard to measure such a "it's safe" requirement anyway. As Bean0 said, (being a "sim") the limited setup options will likely mimic the the real VW, so maybe options like the ride height, gear ratios, diff etc will be fixed.
Which is fair enough, but then when you press the "TC OFF" button, it should stay off because presumably they've either turned it on because they are serious driver and this is serious drive, or they want to wheelspin driving out of the pub to impress their mates. I mean, either way, we as drivers should have the option because as a rule of thumb, humans know better than computers. We are free-thinkers and they are preprogrammed only with expected scenarios.
I'm not saying TC on cars is a bad thing, it's just that you should be able to turn it off if you desire, and it should obey your COMMAND rather than go "Actually, Jay, you know what, I'm not gonna' listen to you, insted I'm going to take care of you, me old china." I'm like "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
Not true. ABS and ESP can both be turned off manually in the real Scirocco.
Actually I'm not sure about ABS, but I can't confirm it anymore..
I know ESP can be turned off.
If there will be both road and race version, this could be the race one, it ran the 24hrs of the Green Hell(Nordschleife), and won in it's class. The TSI engine has a 325 HP. The next year, 2 natural gas cars also took part and got a class win too.
I presume LFS wants to introduce in both cases(if) the gasoline version.
Don't know about driving aids like ESP, ABS, etc. though, it's a race car, I don't think it has.
When I used the word 'quality', I was referring to the simulator quality, not the driver quality. Also, I would definitely agree that current sim technology is a benefit to race drivers on many levels. I expect that my 'race craft' would be at a much higher level than most beginners if I were to actually race a real car.
What I was trying to say above is that because a sim has a real car on a real track and drivers post similar times to the real times, is not a good measure of how "realistic" a sim is. Some think it's the end-all-be-all, but I don't. There's many ways to skin a cat, some more elegant than others. It's that elegance that I suspect Scawen is shooting for.
All else remaining equal, if the physics of a sim were perfect, I would expect that an experienced 'alien' sim driver could always post a faster time than a top class race driver in the real car on a real track. But we know the sim will never be perfect, so there will always be exploits. Anyway, that's my thinking on why using real tracks and real cars isn't necessarily a great measure of how "real" a simulator is.
I do agree that you can more easily get to the limit and hold a car there when you are in the real car because of the better sensory input that you get. But the 'aliens' amongst us have ways of doing that in the sim that I personally think defies explanation.
And the point is? (BTW, OpenAL is sound library, not sure why you mention it together with DX8 ... even if you meant OpenGL, then again that's only 3D graphics library, while DX is more complex beast including sounds, force feedback, input devices, ...).
a) you either "rewrite" it from dx8 to [any other API you wish] ... this is fairly easy, you just need experienced programmer and give him enough time to rewrite all affected pieces of code. Anywhere from couple of weeks to a year or more, depends on current state of code and how hard-wired is the old API inside in original source code.
From user (gamer) point of perspective the benefit is obvious, if you take screenshot from the old version, and from the new version, they will be very likely pixel-perfect same. (the performance may slightly differ, but nothing truly dramatic and as LFS already performs very well on modern machines, the point is... eluding me again)
(sorry if too much irony went in, hard to resist )
b) you rewrite some particular graphics algorithm (like calculation of lights, shadows, more surface attributes and postprocessing, etc..) and/or change textures and models. Most of these changes can be done very likely already in DX8 version, although other API may be more convenient to achieve some of such changes. To add/change single thing is usually quetion of couple of weeks or months, this is often much simpler then switching whole API. If you also change API, you have b) + a).
From user point of perspective you get differently looking graphics output (maybe improved... with recent games I think that's a strongly subjective and personal opinion, because for me any game after 2k2 looks reasonably good and some of the newer ones have ugly additional effect like colors aberration or lens flares or other simulations of failures of cameras, which is IMHO quite a pervert thing, but some players probably appreciate it, or the engine coders are really bored and just try out what they can get away with and actually sell to customers...)
(Imagine Scawen enforcing starting races in LFS with damaged suspension, because that's what he gets when he's driving his damaged RL car => that's what I think about 3D engines supporting color aberration)
Downgrading requires similar amount of work, no idea why you think it's easy. (DX8 games do run with DX9 because DX9 contains the whole copy of DX8 binaries as well, so DX8 games under DX9 are running in reality under DX8) So for example rewriting LFS for DX5 would be probably lot of work, if possible at all.
P.S.
Rewrite to OpenGL would have additional benefit to make *NIX/Mac version of LFS to require less parts of code to rewrite, because major part of it would be rewritten during OGL conversion. This is not shortcut in any way, this is just doing the conversion in more steps. Anyway, Scawen IIRC told explicitly he decided the WinAPI as target platform and he has no intention so far to change anything about it (and it doesn't make sense from biz point of view right now, unless the market share of platforms will change significantly), so he's not even thinking about such rewrite IMO. Every coding he invests into other areas of LFS will have much bigger impact on customers right now (tyres, weather, improved deformations just to name major things, then check suggestions thread to get other million of ideas).
That has nothing to do with DX8 or DX9. Although under DX9 they are tad easier to achieve. (And most of the DX9 gfx cards have better raw power then DX8 cards, so supporting DX9 only you have better chance the code will be run on more powerful HW)
