The online racing simulator
Is there hope left for lfs or all is lost ?
Were before saying anything, to clear things straight up -I love LFS.But at the same time since 2005 were s2 was released there was basically nothing of large scale been released.Sure Scawen released many patches that smoothed online play,increased the race grid,improved physics and as of lately increased the maximum amount of objects on tracks and made it possible to have open tracks.Sure all the above were great and got lfs very polished.But.....What else ? I remember for years since 2008 a promised new car....the infamous scirocco...Come on now...for God's shake....One car ? There are at least 50 triple-A quality cars for Rfactor (100 if you count the open wheelers,le mans and gt cars too).Grand tourismo 5 ? At least 200 ultra modeled cars and along the normal ones make it 1000+ ....Forza 4 ? The new Ferrari game ? And as i have said here 1000 times....just go over LFSMODS and take a look yourself ,you will find more than a dozen very high quality cars.(through all look slightly off while ingame because of tires looking slightly off because of some locked parameters)

They could easily make a contest and have the best cars chosen to be included in a new version or something..But to model one car in 3d studio ,even if you are not super talented it is more than feasible in less then a 2 weeks ....Not....4 years....

About tracks ? Ohh yes the infamous Rockingham story..Yes they have finished it and wait to have it for s3 BUT SO WHAT ? It is not Spa or Rouen or Norchliefe or brand hatch or circuit de la sarthe or monako or valencia or macau or pau or monza or isle of man.....It is a run of the mill track ,short,without any elevation variances,flat and without any interesting scenery....You know for how long people will play it ? Probably for a week or two....max.....

And ok i know LFS was never about graphics.If it was about that i would have stopped caring for it ages ago...But.....come on now,still a dx8 render ?
Other games use dx11 like the upcoming project cars,probably the ferrari game,gtr3,asseto corsa and even dx9 if used properly has good shaders and hdr lighting effects.

I never asked about a new dx11 graphics engine-BUT HOW hard could it be to upgrade the render to dx9 at least and support real time lighting/reflections,shaders and hdr ? Those effects along some high resolution textures could give a new life to lfs and for some time bring people sick of racing the same tracks to race for some time more as those tracks would look different ...


So...what my point is ? Well we all know scawen is still working on the game.Now if it is full time or whenever he finds some time thats another matter.Many people have bought and supported lfs along all these years ,not counting sponsors.So even if they don't have the time or enthousiasm they had in the early days ,could they not at least hire for a couple of months a few professionals to help them with modeling and remodeling and texturing/retexturing the existing tracks/cars along a dozen new ones ?
At the same time they could try to upgrade their engine and in the process give new life to lfs...
All is lost if you don't buy S2.
Didn't the devs hire a team to help them with the lazer scanning of Rockingham? I am fairly sure I read something about that..

Edit: Quote from the Rockingham post:

Quote :Laser scanning

After considering various ways to try and recreate an accurate version of the real thing, we realised that laser scanning was the best method. Laser scanning produces millions of points in 3d space, so we can then build a track to line up as accurately as possible with the laser scanning data, which is said to have an accuracy of around 2 cm. We discussed this with apr services in London, and were impressed by their systems including the fact that the 3d points can also have a colour, created by matching the scanning data with a photograph. We were pleased to ask apr to obtain and process the data. Scans were taken from several points around the track so that all areas were seen by the scanner and camera. This was later combined into a single set of data which we imported into the LFS track editor. Here are some pictures of the laser scanning data.

The game itself is stable and good enough to last well into the future, but it will need some new cars and tracks to make that happend.
The graphics are for me good enough, the physics are good enough, and the various systems within the game is working good enough.
The day / night feature aswell as rain/snow/whatnot needs to be in place too for the game to last, it's too steril atm.
Let´s face it: LFS is almost dead. LFS teams are dying one by one. Most entries in the online server list are Demohosts. Hard to find a good populated server running a different combo than Blackwood GP. No new cars, no new tracks. S3 is announced since years, but it seems that the three devs have too much on the ToDo-List to get something ready to publish.

And there is a new Sim appearing at the horizon that seems to become the Simulation everybody is dreaming of. Project C.A.R.S (http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/cars/) has a DX11 renderer, real cars and tracks, involves the community and will have real time changing weather conditions. And it does not have this aggressive money-squeezing that iRacing has. If C.A.R.S gets only half as good as it is told to be, it will be the final death punch for LFS. Sad but true
Quote from Ratman :Let´s face it: LFS is almost dead. LFS teams are dying one by one. Most entries in the online server list are Demohosts. Hard to find a good populated server running a different combo than Blackwood GP. No new cars, no new tracks. S3 is announced since years, but it seems that the three devs have too much on the ToDo-List to get something ready to publish.

And there is a new Sim appearing at the horizon that seems to become the Simulation everybody is dreaming of. Project C.A.R.S (http://www.wmdportal.com/projects/cars/) has a DX11 renderer, real cars and tracks, involves the community and will have real time changing weather conditions. And it does not have this aggressive money-squeezing that iRacing has. If C.A.R.S gets only half as good as it is told to be, it will be the final death punch for LFS. Sad but true

Challenge accepted!


Wait... im gonna soon play some LFS after I get off from work today
Quote from UnknownMaster21 :Challenge accepted!


Wait... im gonna soon play some LFS after I get off from work today

Stop being on LFS Forum (private things) during work. That's what once got me fired.
Quote from rockclan :Stop being on LFS Forum (private things) during work. That's what once got me fired.

Challenge Accepted!


Wait... For me it is not illegal to being on LFS Forum during work as long as I have done my work successfully for every workday
Quote from Ratman :Let´s face it: LFS is almost dead. LFS teams are dying one by one. Most entries in the online server list are Demohosts. Hard to find a good populated server running a different combo than Blackwood GP. No new cars, no new tracks. S3 is announced since years, but it seems that the three devs have too much on the ToDo-List to get something ready to publish.

But still we had full grid again in SGTS last sunday. There were even some teams that didn't make it to main race from heat race..

Not bad for 'dead' sim.
Quote from Joku123 :But still we had full grid again in SGTS last sunday. There were even some teams that didn't make it to main race from heat race..

Not bad for 'dead' sim.

+1 Exactly (? = as how it can be a dead sim then)

"Being a computer software and not a living organism, I pretty assume LFS was never alive"
Still, there is almost no variations to LFS servers atm. Since the user mass is not as great as it used to be, it's either FM servers, Cargame or some cruise/drift server you can join.
I am looking forward to an update that will bring back some old people, aswell as new people!
Quote from UnknownMaster21 :Challenge accepted!


Wait... im gonna soon play some LFS after I get off from work today

Don´t get me wrong. I´m still playing LFS most of the time. And I´m still trying to keep our team (OMR) together and organize events and championships and all that stuff. I still like LFS very much, but it gets harder and harder every week to get enough racers together. Two years ago we had about 20+ racers every saturday for our weekly event. Today I´m happy to have 7 or 8 people joining our events...
I would like to deny quite a lot of facts OP said, but I'm too lazy to write that much...
Lot of teams of dying but some other getting stronger and some news are growing so ^^. League part of LFS is still strong! MoE was full grid and it was one of the most exiting race of lfs history. Sgts aswell and so was gt2ws. I took part in a new championship (world tbo champ) that was quite good too with awesome fight, TEM lauched a new STD champ with more than 100 drivers registered! So come on LFS is alive!
Back again for your usual whinge? Zzzzz.
This is kind of funny to me. For one thing, unless you're a cracker, you wouldn't care about more content for LFS. For another thing, C.A.R.S. is not going to be a very good sim imo. It's just another racing game, and it uses a tweaked version of physics from Need For Speed! That particular NFS was claimed to be a sim, but clearly was not. If you're really interested in sims, you won't give C.A.R.S. another thought. I was interested for a while, but after seeing some gameplay footage I realized it's just a joke. If you're interested in more content then just buy LFS. Or if you don't care about physics and want more content, go get C.A.R.S.

Quote from Ratman :
And there is a new Sim appearing at the horizon that seems to become the Simulation everybody is dreaming of. Project C.A.R.S. If C.A.R.S gets only half as good as it is told to be, it will be the final death punch for LFS. Sad but true

There's a lot of hope left, trust me.
Quote from HVS5b :Back again for your usual whinge? Zzzzz.

+1
Always the same old, the same old. And I bet you still don't own any of the sims you're complaining about in your endless repetitious postings, eg netkar or LFS.
justafan again xD

FTR Eric is modelling and some say he has done some, but he does not want to release them, just to piss you off :P

But seriously, there is always hope... just do something else in the meantime. It wont happen any faster if you keep 'askin' about it.

RF2 is just out. Why arn't you playing that now?
Hope always has the opportunity to leave you disappointed.
Right, if you have specific expectation you might get disappointed, but how much can go wrong in one of thefew racing games that can actually call itself a simulation
The "LFS is dead" topic again…

Men, don't you have more intelligent and less boring things to talk about in this forum?

always the same crap…
All is lost. Lets burn some candles.

(I didnt even read all this shit )
Worl ends on december anyway, so who cares.
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FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG