LFS was good, now it's okay-ish compared to what other games and projects can perform. Denying this makes you extremely arrogant, or just blindly. LFS was great for it's time, but it could not keep up. Even with a perfect physic update now it will not help for the static enviroment of LFS aswell as the same borring tracks
What do you have in mind? And what specifically is it better at? I know AC is delivering a superb physic feel and pCars a nice atmosphere, but still not on pair with LFS when it comes to netcode. What are the titles you are referring to, iRacing?
Physics wise there are several, but AC feels more "live" compared to LFS. Netcode wise I think Iracing and AC beats it, but only by a tiny bit. The downfalls of the two above is the booking system, and that collision detection is a little off, other than that it's much more "fluid" / not so choppy. If you go for a spin in LFS the cars, even with low ping, bounces around and door to door racing in corners can be a problem.
And every SIM has a static enviroment is not entierly true.
What I mean with static in LFS:
There is no day / time change, the track deos not change at all, the cars have little to no wear of time and so on. Even in it's early form AC at least have dynamic time.
Let me correct myself, LFS is still good, but it's borring. It's been on hold since the last update which gave us the new South City config. Some language update and a DX update which mainly increased FPS (which most of us allready had plenty of) is not progress. Where is the new cockpit for the cars? Where is the westhill update? Where is the Scirocco? Where is Rockingham? Where is the better mechanical and visual damage?
All stoped, because tyre physics is obviously more important than everything else.
While I agree that physics is a MUST, they themself can not help the game, it's the whole package that is important. And at current time beeing LFS does nothing really great compared to others, it just sorts of... lingers on in the background. And that is thanks to the community, not the devs, thats for sure.
You should try LFS again and this time avoid South American or Australian hosted servers!
Dude,seriously - if there is no lagger,door to door has never been a problem,I use a 3G connection for a while and still I don't experience too much of laghits,still get them time to time,as the 3G has pretty ugly jitter,but it's no LFS fault. I don't know where you get the idea about LFS cars bouncing around,as I have seen guys hooking up in bumpdraft for 20-30 laps in row without having problems,which is a great indicator of movement/collision smoothness. I even organize a yearly event,where contact is unavoidable and also there haven't been any weird lag-takeouts.
So on this note - LFS is still the best if it comes to online mode. Easy join system,good netcode,complete admining. AC beats LFS in graphics,no doubt,and also if you want real life cars and those boring real life tracks,where you're just turning and keeping half throttle half of the lap.
Sadly devs have lost their motivation and developement has slown down,obviously money doesn't motivate them,as they could sell tons of content without problems,but there isn't any. But still there is possible great racing,unless you're one of those "if there is no full grid with wr-holders,I'm not joining"-snobs.
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Sadly devs have lost their motivation and developement has slown down,obviously money doesn't motivate them,as they could sell tons of content without problems,but there isn't any.
Could they? Racing as far as video games goes isn't a very hot seller on PCs
And I dunno if this is off topic or a reflection of things, but I noticed younger generations (gen Y and Millenials) don't seem to have as much of an affection for cars as baby boomers and Gen Xers do. Sure, there's a niche market and will always be one, but mass appeal? As far as consoles goes, sure everyone has one racing title, just to have one. But that's about it. When a new console title or new version of the same game is released, racing titles don't get anywhere near the hype, exposure or customer anticipation that first person shooters do. I've seen co-workers take off from work so they can wait in a line to get the latest greatest Call of Duty. Can't say that I've seen that for any racing game. Sucky arcade type or hyper realistic simulator.
Is there a chart that shows the various genres and what gets sold?
There's gotta be a chart for this somewhere, probably more than one. And I imagine on this chart, realistic simulations, and I'll lump in planes, boats and pogo sticks together, would be somewhere in between virtual tennis and children's educational games in the 18-35 sausage market.
If they released S-3 right now, I don't think they'd get too many more customers outside of the s-2 license holders. Especially the way the licensing system works. I don't really see a potential new market for S-1 licenses once S-3/if S-3 comes out. Newbie players are going to want S-3 instantly. They're not going to want to have to buy the same game three times to get it. And at approx. $60 US, LFS will have lots and lots and lots of competition. Not so much from other racing games. Most of those are sold in boxes you can get in a store somewhere. LFS isn't just in a niche market as far as the genre, but it's an online only game as far as purchasing goes. It's main competition is from other online only titles of whatever genre. If LFS development was concerned with making Money it would exploit that target demographic. What does LFS have in it that would appeal enough for that demographic to be willing to pay 60 bucks for it?
il see if i can find some genre sales charts but as for pc gaming in general heres an extract from one article
According to DFC Intelligence whispering their secrets to Games Industry, the PC gaming market should exceed $25 billion this year. That’s a raised forecast from $22bn, and an improvement over 2013, which was an improvement over 2012
Most of the damage for lfs would be the vast majority of pc gamers having never heard of LFS while they all have heard of others such as iracing. I have mentioned LFS many times to other gamers while ive been on bf3+bf4 and nearly everyone ive mentioned it too had no clue about it
lfs is great for someone that is new to the simulator. While there may not be a big choice of servers that are packed with racers,there is still enough to have races with.
I experience it daily with our s2 server,If the server is empty i guarantee that within 5 minutes of me joining the server many others join.Maybe not massive numbers but easily can be 10+ racers within a short time which for me is enough to have a good race with
Yes,they could few years ago - pretty sure that most of active S2 users would have upgraded to S3 if it came out with 2-3 tracks and some cars too. I'm pretty sure that even now most of active S2 users would upgrade,but it's not that big amount anymore.
You mean exposure. Promoting product awareness. That calls for advertising.
Since it's an online only game. advertising shouldn't be a whole lot. How much does a banner ad cost for a site with decent traffic?
But that's only half the game. Putting out there, as is, will make it no more or less than any other title on any other banner. What is in LFS that would make a potential customer prefer to pay $60 to purchase it over the other titles?
In other words, what is it's selling point? And does that selling point overcome it's drawbacks? If not, then something would need to be done to minimize the drawbacks.
Like for instance the graphics. in the world of eye candy graphics LFS isn't cutting edge. That's a drawback. But it can be spun. The graphics are perfect for online play and most importantly, if you want to play this game you don't have to shell out extra money for memory, a card, another computer... That helps as far as selling points, but not enough.
I think, and this is just my opinion, is that they ought to target market newbie sim racers. One, LFS doesn't really require any sort of wheel or extra controller to play and have fun with. Try playing some of the other titles with a KB or mouse.
Also, one of the things that really turned me off with the other titles out there is how anal they seemed about everything. Who the hell wants to have to try and learn to play online with a field full of candy asses? The casual approach LFS has to serious racing should be a real big selling point
LOL makes for a good slogan too.
"Live for Speed. The casual approach to serious racing." OK maybe not.
And of course. Customer support. You have a problem with the game and have a question? You get a real person that has something to do with the development of the game respond. Not some kid in New Delhi copying and pasting pre typed responses that automatically blame everything on your end.
Scavier. Nah they don't need to hire on more inmates for the asylum, they just need to get motivated and learn a little marketing and how to package what they have to something that will appeal to who they wanna sell it to.
well LFS became s**t, the same old crap with stupid users, i haven't played for some months, joined a server a few minutes ago and i got kicked , no wonder it has a few players
I think the tyre physics is very important if this should be a SIMULATOR.
(last weekend karting race: we did spent all the Friday and half of Saturday tuning our dry setup (going very well) just to see it raining all evening and during the main 3h endurance race ... and we were unable to make our wet tyres work... horrible driving experience, almost as difficult as some PC simulators ... ok, not that difficult, at least the real life is always much easier... )
It's funny you say that, considering S2 doesn't have the same immature and toxic players. Demo has always been a shit show because there's no consequences. People just create a new account and they're back to being pricks.
it will still remain s**t, they made no game updates in almost a year, i haven't played for more than half a year and even now nothing new was added, i was still waiting for some better car body damage to look more real but i guess it will be done in 10 years or never
Everyone is waiting,expecting,hoping and demanding. And that's your problem! Don't wait and enjoy what you have. If it's not enough - move on.
But no,most of them have to come here,post crap about how unhappy they are...
when you see this...... it's clear scawen are trying to communicate with community sometimes, but some member are making this impossible to him because of troll/imature comments who don't care about lfs progression, same things with some new memeber or old lfs user bored by community behavior.
this is why I said that not only the whining thread/comments are making the current LFS situation.
So I'm guessing that crash servers are your main location. Totally legit use of LFS, I'd say. The fact that in 7 years you couldn't get yourself to contribute a purchase to the scene says a lot about that attitude. You are basically saying that it's shit because it's shit.
I hate to say it but I think they lost Rockingham a long time ago when the V1 championship pulled away from LFS. I suspect they may have taken the rights to model Rockingham with them.
As for the Scirocco, I don't really know. If I remember correctly the Scirocco was modelled for some sort of launch event? It wouldn't surprise me greatly if this permission was removed too, and therefore if they have been working on LFS they've possibly been working on different content.
I still want LFS to be updated, I genuinely love the simulator and any improvement is a bonus IMO. But there's been no word on these two things which were almost completed (well, apart from tyre physics but that doesn't affect Rockingham) for a LONG time, and it's quite concerning.
