Can you back that up with some facts, because it would be very interesting to see the statistical distribution between people racing on cruise/drift/race and crap servers. I guess you have counted the excellent private servers into the crap category, or where would you place it?
Isn't it true that you only need 1 quality server to drive on (that fits your driving style)? Find a good one, make some friends and you're all set for some serious fun .
I won't give you facts but I have to agree with him. Unless I get on at primetime (Nowadays typically only 7-12 GMT on Fridays and Saturdays IMO) then what do I get? 2 or 3 cruise servrs at the top of the list with 15-30 cars in them. I don't cruise so that's a no go. Then, maybe, Cargame.NL with 10-15 cars. The server's great, but with so many classes I'm probably going tojust end up hotlapping while I get lapped, so no there too. What's left? Probably 5-10 demo servers with 5-12 people in them. Sure it's demo, but at least I can race someone! Only problem is that you can only do so much Blackwood/FBM before you go crazy.
What's sad is that there's probably enough LFSer's like me looking at the main sever list and saying "nothing to do here" to fill up a good server with lots of action. If everyone actually joined a server instead of not raciig 'because no one else is' I bet there would be plenty of good servers out and about. I imagine that we will have lots of busy servers and great racing again, but with most drivers waiting for the new physics I doubt it will happen until then.
That said, no reason for Scawen to rush perfection.
Well... It's interesting to ask what perfection is.
In the end physics might feel even more real but do people want that in the end. Last year Scawen wrote that he was sweating behind the wheel to keep the car on the track and was excited about that. I believe some hardcore racers want this but I have my doubts about the general flock.
Main problem is that in all those years there hasn't been a test version for us to give/share opinion about this physics progress.
It probably is that bad that it continuously goes to the garbage bin. What if after all those years there still isn't a workable solution to be found?
Or worse... Scawen thinks he finally has a better version.. But the general public doesn't like it at all when released? The Iracing 'drama' is the current best example of that.
highly anticipating rfactor 2.... huh what? mods? large community? Actual online racing atmosphere?
all of which lfs lacks.
maybe devs should get a business model that is suit to their highly priced product.
Hire a marketing team, but the time for that has come and gone...
it seems like they're forcing this sim to an exclusive crowd of diehard fanboys, and that aint good for business... scawen is business right, or is it?
I have already abandoned rFactor 2 because it has not pushed the envelope like 2012 expects. I have raced so many times and it is still generic. This year may not even give me anything I have been waiting for since 2010.
Almost a catch-22. The gripping hand is still that it's Scavier's prerogative. "LFS is not screenshot generator".
If you ask me - Why would you still play LFS? Instantaneous answer is the feel of the physics.
All of this undoubtedly nice real world furnishing would ring false due to flawed foundations - the physics it all hinges on. Especially if when you get past some level of complexity, stranger and stranger consequences appear from those flawed physics. Then again you can't know these issues exist till we see em.
These discussions always end up with one common conclusion - moving forward is all that matters, and as long as Scavier don't pull a West Bros, you really can't do more than complain IE describe "how you'd do it differently". The essence of LFS is the physics of driving and racing, whether you're a physics purist or technically agnostic wheel & pedals brass tacks purist.
If Scawen can get it right, it puts LFS once again right in the race along with the other race sims. The hard part would be outta the way. It'll get done, or it won't, either way all of us have lives and most of us'll check out what the physics update is worth. All because one guy was dedicated enough to see the task thru. Years on. What more can you ask for? Cause clearly no one else who types on this forum is up to the challenge Scawen's chosen.
Well tbh. the "race along with other race sims" is getting further and further away all the time. At some point the new physics might have put lfs "back there with other sims" but to get back there today requires a lot more than better rubber on the cars, one boring fwd shopping trolley and one new track.
Let me ask an honest question. Do you really think the next lfs patch will put lfs right there competing with the other sims (assetto corsa, iracing, rf2, gtr3 and so forth)? Do you honestly think so? Have you actually seen what the list of features for online racing sim looks like in 2012?
I think scavier understands this well too. A new patch won't bring lfs up to date with other sims so any surge of new members won't happen either. Maybe the risk of losing those who use lfs today is bigger than the possible influx of new members? After all people are so used to lfs in what it is today that any change might make them leave instead of relearning it. For the hardcores the change in itself is bad and for the rest of us it is just too little too late.
Imho any kind of 2nd coming would require a fundamental change in some of the core aspects of lfs. I'm not talking about hiring more devs, selling stocks or selling lfs to some other dev. For example allowing community created tracks would improve lfs more than anything else.
In a way this long development time puts lfs back where it was in the S1 stage. Relatively promising and simple online racing game. Maybe it is just about going around the circle and coming back where you begun? Maybe the big days of S2 are gone and the ending in S3 is very much like the S1.
I tend to disagree here. With the already high levels of LFS tyre physics performance I think the intended (slight?) improvement in the maths would elevate the game experience into something completely new. At least for the sim-junkies. And LFS has always been the place for simmers, with a bucket full of gamers that do not appreciate the sim elements that much but still contribute to the community in their own way. 100 more cars or 200 new tracks simply does not satisfy a sim-junkie. It has to be interesting cranking numbers and getting the feel of the car in a way that you would expect - compared to real life.
We do not know if Scawen will reach his goal, but I'd rather wait for a good attempt than seeing a release of abstract car models and tracks.
I see your point though and it is a very valid comment for the gaming community as a whole. Just my opinion.
Like what? The graphics are medium but it sure as shit has a lot more actual features in terms of RACING than other sim offerings. It's only in Beta, and the 370Z for example blows away anything else I ever drove (LFS, iRacing, NKP) in terms of physics.
The dynamic track and weather add a ton to the experience, there's no other proper sim that has this yet. It has brake temps which iRacing just got around to adding for some cars recently, I could go on but there's already an RF2 thread. I just have no idea what you've been waiting for since 2010 that RF2 doesn't at least partially address.
The rubber is easily the harder half of the work, as far as I understand it. What else is so fundamentally difficult as physics?
Cars? Just need good "driver" sense for that one. Simplest look at the game right now shows too little engine type diversity in TBO class and outstanding archetypes in other classes (e.g. "big" saloon type in LRF, no RWD in UF/mGTR classes). No LMP class. Etc.
Same deal with the rest: Sound is just a matter of getting it right, and mostly esthetic and nowhere as complex to get right as physics need to be. Tracks is even less difficult, it just needs to be fun to race on - not even required to match reality IE real track licensing (always positive but not mandatory).
Only physics requires not merely fun and esthetically coherent design, but design that matches reality. What other element of the game is stuck tween rock and hard place that way? The only other game breaking (cause years-long delay-inducing) features are physics-linked, e.g. weather.
No but that's not what I meant - see above.
Same as above. It doesn't matter if physics really is the biggest chunk of work and Scawen manages to make it work well enough. The rest of the issue is the same deal again: It's their choice to put quality ahead of quantity - including timeliness. That's just how it is. What other game managed to beat LFS at this challenge? We won't know till we see LFS' new physics - see whether it was worth the wait.
I don't know about "second coming". It's a game. So is everything else. There's no such biblical proportions involved. Just games worth playing that everyone variously prefers. I personally don't like any other racing game (including arcade ones) feel nearly as much as LFS. Meaning all the LFS fundamental design cues - physics and esthetics, all of it. I just wish it had more cars, sound esthetics to match sound mechanics, more tracks, and so on. But all this is built on the physics and none would be as good if the physics just did not work, as they don't now.
Maybe. We'll see. I personally am not betting either way.
Maybe I didn't answer clearly. I think it could go a lot of different ways. The more likely scenarios, IMO, aren't any second coming; but in these most likely scenarios it's definitely possible that the new physics are competitive with other sims' physics. And from then on it'd just be grinding out content to exploit those good physics.
Or Scawen could never find good enough physics coding. Or Scawen finds the physics too late - LFS would never catch up to other sims because of this few-years delay, despite keeping the same rate of game-development-progress as the other sims.
It really could go either way as far as whether LFS will "live or die" in terms of playership. We won't know till we actually play the physics.
Maybe Scavier figure there's so many other racing sims that it's just not worth it, by principle, to make yet another less-than-great sim. Which LFS would arguably be condemned to remain, with physics as flawed as they are now. I suspect this is the strategy they're banking on, to deal with this problem:
What if: the so long awaited patch makes it nearly impossible for keboard/mouse users to be on par with wheel/pedals/clutch/gearbox-users?
As for me I do not see it as a personal problem (using G25) but in another perspective; maybe Scawen must take this into consideration when applying the new tyre physics model. If the patch elevates the (full) wheel users and makes it extremely hard to participate/being cometitive with mouse/kb all those fellas are going to drop dead and wish for keeping S2 as is.
On a personal note I hope Scawen exclude the adaptation to mouse/kb input and go for making the wheel input as standard to get the most out of it.
Some still use mouse and kb so I was just reflecting over this possibility that they may no longer feel competitive after next release.
I don't know that the two must/will be mutually exclusive, but I'd say that true physics trump keyboard/mouse accessibility. It's undoubtedly better, IMO, to have proper physics and then work out some control accessibility scheme rather than compromise the physics for kb/mouse controls' sake.
I have driven Rockingham, both as a sim and for real, its not a great track... oh and the Sirrocco to...
There are better tracks and cars, but ill be happy with what we get as long as it out strips the others on the day!
I don't understand what's wrong with this? A person who sets up a cruise server isn't forcing people to play on the server. People who play LFS choose to play on cruise servers.
I think you should be asking yourself a totally different question. Maybe "Why cruise servers attract more players than racing servers?" and then try and improve your racing server?
It's kinda stupid to blame it on cruise and drift servers. If the player doesn't like your race server then he obviously won't play on it.
I for one would be very disappointed if mouse/kb control was removed or possibly "amended" in some way. Some of us just don't have the time, space or amiable spouse(!) to set-up a wheel. I find a quick half to one hour online is enough fix to have a good time and at the moment you can be competitive with wheel drivers for a short time (although I've found they always have the upper hand over longer distances - and rightly so).
LFS is the only racing sim where mouse control is good and I've tried loads (GTR2 was not bad). If anyone else can recommend another sim where mouse control is on a par with LFS, then I'd give it a go whilst waiting for the update to be released.
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