Orion I think the management of this project has some failed. In every work/job/project you need to do some decent management otherwise the things go wrong. It seems LFS is nice picture of failining in many areas lately and management seems to be a big issue. I do work as a Project manager, managing people all the time and if you dont plan or manage properly always something go out of your hands.
Maybe there have a lot of in their pocket but with the feedback or reports its hard to bealive anymore.
They should have decide about things a years ago and now might be late....
Well i would say, they have not done any management except the micro management every programmer has to do, in order to keep track of the bugs and todos. Its clearly a disadvantage of the way development Scawen and Eric had chosen in the very beginning.
But on the other hand this approach made LFS the way it was in the first couple of years - more like a little family of funny people having a nice time on track. When professionality found its way into LFS - mostly in shape of the big leagues like the ESL and the Intel racing tour - the community changed and the requirements to LFS changed as well.
The part about having a nice time got more and more subsidiary and for most of the old school people, LFS is not as much fun anymore because of all the 14 year old competition racers who just want to win. And the other part is just hanging out on cruise servers.
However, enough nostalgia, at the point it does imo not really make much sense to increase the development team. They should push really hard and make a reasonable S2 version as soon as possible, and then it is time to rethink the development model. There are plenty of different paths to S3, and only one seems silly now: Making all the new features and content and realeasing it all together when its done. LFS needs updates in 6 months cycles with new content (like 1 track and 3-4 cars), and the old stuff needs to be maintained as well. And every 1 or 1.5 years we need a new game version with a new major feature like night racing, rain, etc.
That it takes already over two years is kinda iffy. But the feeling I have is that the whole physics project is being held up by trying to polish away really minor issues and esoteric corner cases. I think the developers should set a target date and try to get the best compromise out by then, release it and then continue working on the model. Unless there are some terrible showstoppers, like running over a small bump sending you to the moon, there's no reason why that couldn't be done. Every project has to enter a compromise on what it launches or not at a certain point in time.
LFS has many shortcomings, but none of them get as much attention as the lack of updates.
The red-barrier-bug, the crash-physics, the locked diffs, the behaviour of tyre stacks and all those other problems really aren't showstoppers. But the lack of updates is.
Are the problems of the new tyre model, in comparison to LFS's current problems, really that large that it's worth killing the community over them? I wouldn't know, but at least Scawen is convinced they are.
To be honest I'm not sure I'd want the red barrier bug to go away. Nothing is more satisfying than spotting some hotshot on a cruise server who's gone AFK, after doing 99 of this 100 lap bonus, only to gently push them into a barrier, and watch them go flying!
Yeah, but if you're playing on custom maps and have to deal with these idiots that don't know what a brake is or think they're clear immediately when the car they're overtaking is just out of the field of view, you'll be flying more often than not into these red barriers.
In combination with that, I figure it's about time to look into inter-car collision physics anyway, because it can't be that the guy who rear-ends you is able to keep control and stay on tracks virtually every time, while most often turning the rammee into a helicopter rotor.
Anyone still gives a about the Scirocco? How can you possibly even care from the beginning? It's a 200 hp fwd car..
It's made to drive to work, not race on a track.
Sadly, Volkswagen doesn't agree with you, otherwise why should there be a Scirocco R-Cup, and VW entered the Scirocco also into the BF Goodrich Endurance Championship in Germany, winnin-Wait, I already said that.
Scirocco R is a Car wich was made by other people. Here in Wolfsburg VW made a new Department called "VW-R". So they are developing the Scirocco R and the other R-Line Cars , like the R36 or the Golf R. The normal Scirocco is only a street car and its the main product from VW
The next patch is nothing to do with the scirocco, interiors, westhill updates, breakable wings or anything else mentioned before. It is about the tyre physics.
They are ALL being held up because of this, for over 2 years.
IMHO, Scawen has created this sim with the user community in mind. Insim is a good example of this. I hope when he does release S2 final and S3, he will think about a track editor at least. How he controls that within LFS I have no idea, but it would certainly stop the need for us to be waiting years and years for content.
I am happy to wait for cars, as I believe they do need to be integrated into the physics correctly. But tracks?
With an editor, or better still an ability to import tracks from something like bob's track builder (google it), it would take away the pressure on the devs, allowing them to work on the physics and updates to sound and graphics etc. Also, it would negate the need to have licenses for the tracks..