As long as I have actively played LFS (now about two years) I see now and then comments that multiplayer mode is dead.

Since I have recently played also Assetto Corsa and Raceroom Experience (both modern sims with ehh...graphics), I can't say that their multiplayer mode is full of exciting combos. Opposite, I have been surprised how small amount of populated servers there are. Of course more than LFS, but cmon, those are quite new sims...would expect tens of full servers with several categories and combos.

So is the fact that nowadays there are so many simulators and communities (and mods and tracks...hundreds..) that sim-gamers are simply spread on very large virtual area?

What I have read discussion forums outside LFS forum, I have understood iRacing being only sim that have a lot of life in multiplayer mode. Is that true? I havent tried it... Or maybe I have missed something.

What I would like to hear, is there any as user friendly multiplayer sim that LFS is? I think the strenght of LFS is, that the multiplayer mode is really social, you really feel you share the room with other players and the most important - you can so easily share the fun with others. Im really new in any other sims, so please tell me your experiences of other social simulators.

Quote from lucaf :

So is the fact that nowadays there are so many simulators and communities (and mods and tracks...hundreds..) that sim-gamers are simply spread on very large virtual area?

That's an interesting observation. It seems that simracing is more and more heading towards the "gated community" concept. Then you have iRacing which was a bit of a "global village" from the start, but even they are handing the keys to trusted members to co-organise their leagues, and their race format is quite unique, being somewhere between league and automated pick-up racing.

Looking back I think that LFS was a bit of an anomality in the way that a combo of forgiving netcode, great UI, lack of third party content and niche status allowed for quality public racing to blossom for a decade or so. There's a lot of trust and commitement needed for a good race... so it's no wonder it's hard to find. And when people can't find it, they either play offline or with their friends.

I'd also say that other eSports are taking a few gamers who would have been racers 10 years ago. So many genres have exploded in popularity in the past few years. 8 days ago I saw on BTSport2 some Rocket League matches right after the MotoGP races live at Sepang. Weird world we live in.

iRacing is the big thing, you should try it. It's gonna be expensive but the racing is way better than here, just because there are leagues and ongoing competition, as well as people strive to be better at the game, whilst here you will mostly encounter people who have only their own interests.
Props to Rony though for keeping his race series going, he's pretty much the only guy left who can provide great and fun racing.

Thanks for telling something about iRacing.

What I quickly noticed comparing AC and RRE, AC has nothing compared to LFSWORLD, wich is absolutely unbelievable. All your personal bests are saved only offline on your own hard disk in one ascii file.

While RRE has in many ways better UI and has complete statistics about best times done on different combos (this feeling I got, I checked the game really quickly even I bought an interested package on it...).

Quote from MousemanLV :

Props to Rony......he's pretty much the only guy left who can provide great and fun racing.

Quite much disagree with this, currently similar fun can be experienced at least on Absolute Beginners, Cesav, Fragmasters... But of course RTFR is legend

Quote from lucaf :

Opposite, I have been surprised how small amount of populated servers there are.

What is small? I count 20 full servers at this time of the day.

http://www.cargame.nl/forum/acservers.php?nfilter=&tfilter=&cfilter=&cfiltex=&pass=1&sm=bmode

Indeed, most AC servers are well populated throughout the day. I really like the Street Fight servers and their choice for combos. Great admins too.

Quote from cargame.nl :

What is small? I count 20 full servers at this time of the day.

http://www.cargame.nl/forum/acservers.php?nfilter=&tfilter=&cfilter=&cfiltex=&pass=1&sm=bmode

Ah yes...private servers, yes you're right, I had filtered off them. Maybe its time to join leagues also there (first need to improve skills ..)

Quote from MousemanLV :

I really like the Street Fight servers and their choice for combos.

Hadn't discovered such ones...checked youtube, looks interesting and fun. Need to try, thanks!

All former aging racing-simmers have turned to Farming Simulator - a place with better suitable pace...

Jokes aside, I'm having a good time in AC (private leagues).

iRacing has epic racing, and so can AC if it is the right people. Not tried R3E properly though...

https://simracing.club/

Currently driving the VEC league there, it's 6-24h multiclass racing.(GT-LM, p2, p1) There's some ex lfs drivers/teams too. Oh, and the league uses rF2, which is the only platform that provides rain & night/day cycle atm. rF2 requires pretty good pc thou, (because physics) so it doesn't run on every single toaster like LFS does.