Quote from mbutcher :

...

Your reply is the forum equivalent of changing the rim size of an already existing car and pretending that you made a new car.

Thanks for the feedback.

About calendar on the entry screen of LFS:

Quote from nexttime :

The best way to increase attendance would be to put them on the main menu of LFS.
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The main screen is quite empty anyway, there's quite a bit of space there. I know LFS main menu isn't made to be dynamic, but extra menu could probably do the job.

Quote from mbutcher :

There's a bunch of space on the LFS landing screen, maybe you can create a simple News/Calendar UI there?

There's a lot of real estate, and it's the one place everyone who plays LFS visits every time they want to race. It doesn't have to include much info, just enough to direct someone to the relevant page on the lfs.net/leagues system.
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Include a tab for the latest official news article and a link to the article online, and you're away.
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I really like the idea above about "subscribing to events" and receiving emails to remind you. That's a good one.

Quote from FIZ :

It would be great if the Calendar of Events will be integrated in LFS.
I always loved the LFS integration between the game and the web pages, but the average user just looks at the game.
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TL;DR: please do the Physics and Graphic update asap, it will bring more people into LFS. Also, try to integrate the Events Calendar into LFS game.

Quote from redbot_ :

+1 from me.

Now not many people find events to attend without actively looking for them. Putting these on welcome screen makes more casual racers aware of it. Also, Demo racers also get to know about these and probably get motivated to get license to attend these as most do not check forums.

It seems this idea is quite popular and I'm wondering if we can do something quite simple so it doesn't take long.

To me it's a bit like the mods screen. Download a load of info for coming events, add a screenshot for each event and a scroll bar.

I only want to do something very fast, so it seems the easiest is to copy the code from the mods screen. If we do go ahead with that we need to nail down the data fields. I might try something this morning, moving as quickly as possible to a visible mockup.

Data fields (buttons displayed to the right of an event image):

Event name / Season / Round
UTC time & date / Local time & date
Short description of event
Race organiser / Vehicle / Track
Link: Sign up / Link: More info / Link: Live broadcast
Server name (click to enter "Join Specific Host" screen)


Question 1:

Can you think of any missing data / buttons?


Question 2:

I think we have an on-site system for signing up to races, but more often organisers use a forum thread. If an on-site system was used, we could do reminders, or highlight races in the calendar that you have signed up to. What is missing from the website system, that Victor could add so organisers would choose to use it? For example, if entrants had to add name, number, team, etc. Maybe the organiser could export something to load into a spreadsheet.

Quote from nexttime :

Your reply is the forum equivalent of changing the rim size of an already existing car and pretending that you made a new car.

Ah, I didn't see your reply. I had mine drafted earlier in the day but didn't post it until later.

@Scawen: if you want livestream links, there will need to be a field in each event listing for that information in the leagues system.

Quote from Scawen :

Event Name / Season / Round
UTC Time & Date UTC / Local Time & Date
Short description of event
Race Organiser / Vehicle / Track
Link: Sign Up / Link: More Info / Link: Live broadcast


Question 1:

Can you think of any missing data / buttons?

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Server info, or button for quick entering will be nice if its possible.

Quote from mbutcher :

@Scawen: if you want livestream links, there will need to be a field in each event listing for that information in the leagues system.

Should the livestream link be clickable before the event is running, or should it only appear when it is actually live? It seems like it should be at least highlighted if it is actually live. I guess the forum banner could be linked with the event somehow.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

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Server info, or button for quick entering will be nice if its possible.

Added that to the list of buttons.

Quote from Scawen :

Question 2:

I think we have an on-site system for signing up to races, but more often organisers use a forum thread. If an on-site system was used, we could do reminders, or highlight races in the calendar that you have signed up to. What is missing from the website system, that Victor could add so organisers would choose to use it? For example, if entrants had to add name, number, team, etc. Maybe the organiser could export something to load into a spreadsheet.

I believe the main reason on-site signup is not widely used is (as you kinda figured out) the inability to easily work with the data. In forum thread drivers sign up via post in specific format, that allows organisers to just copy the line into their tracking system and they are done. With on-site signup as it is now, they would have to manually write down all entries which would be a lot of tedious work and would cause many unwanted administrative errors.

The ability to export the on-site signup data in desired format (as well as utilising other functions like attendance confirmations for example) would definitely make it a viable (and possibly desired) option.

Quote from Avraham Vandezwin :

Putting the LFS demo on Steam is using Steam to promote LFS.

To be fair, this is something that definitely ha to be considered.
But it has to be DEMO ONLY (so the core LFS is still standalone and independent) and I strongly suggest to do it AFTER the graphical update (unfortunately graphics are the first impression a game can give and LFS graphics as it is right now is not very impressive for general playerbase, so if we don't want to make the reviews flooded with thumbs down, it has to wait until the update is up and running)

Quote from Scawen :

Yes, these graphs have not escaped my attention. The good bit is the right hand side on the licensed racers. It's a big increase over recent years, due to mods of course. And the new graphics and physics will be another good boost.

But I was really wondering if there was anything we could do, quite quickly, to boost participation, including this well organised and fun rallycross event you are running. Tyre physics and graphics update of course aren't an immediate solution.

1) allow full contact ramming
2) make an announcement on TC City Driving & RC Cruise, day, hour and minutes before the event, and during the event
3) make short races, where players have nothing to lose and can have fun
4) have weird funny configs (e.g. Burger race, bus race, 4 km drag on those "lamborginis")

... but make 4-5 races on the same car & layout, to let some people learn a bit and adjust setups.

That's what Piran Moto and GT4Tube do, and they assemble 20-30 racers.

Watch from 8:10:

Quote from detail :

2) make an announcement on TC City Driving & RC Cruise, day, hour and minutes before the event, and during the event
3) make short races, where players have nothing to lose and can have fun
4) have weird funny configs (e.g. Burger race, bus race, 4 km drag on those "lamborginis")

I agree with this!

In my opinion Cruise servers are kind of a chat/lobby servers for the global LFS auditorium. Improving the system to support more "cruise-like" control for the inSim hosts would be a good step forward for increasing popularity and attendance there.
People who have LFS already open when the event starts are way more likely to join than those who don't have their setup ready.

Quote from Scawen :

Should the livestream link be clickable before the event is running, or should it only appear when it is actually live? It seems like it should be at least highlighted if it is actually live. I guess the forum banner could be linked with the event somehow.

If you would add clickable links or buttons to the chat, I would be definitely adding the announcements to my Cruise server.
For example people could subscribe to the events they are interested in and get personal notifications few minutes before event start or when the server goes live.
This could even be opted in by default.

Quote from xspeedasx :

Improving the system to support more "cruise-like" control for the inSim hosts would be a good step forward for increasing popularity and attendance there.

Coming back to this - here's a list of easy to implement but really useful improvements for cruise:

• insim-controlled restrictions for individual vehicles (set air restriction, weight penalty, add passengers, change tyres? force skins?)
  
• insim-controlled vehicle swapping, chosing. Select the vehicle for player or even hot-swap it ingame.
  
• mod list filter for individual players
  
• clickable links
  
• move player to another host from insim
  
• ...and many more
  

Quote from detail :

3) make short races, where players have nothing to lose and can have fun
4) have weird funny configs (e.g. Burger race, bus race, 4 km drag on those "lamborginis")

I also have an idea in the works - to implement some automated "racing" events in the cruise server itself:

• Hot-lapping with scoreboard
  
• Kart racing/public renting in the tracks that have separate karting tracks
  
• illegal street racing with regular traffic and police
  

this is still hypothetical but could work to some extent

One useful thing I can see missing from the forum calendar system is a non-default or free-text option for the fields.

For DD, we're running 21 races with various cars at various venues, but the event goes into the calendar as 1 practice at BL1 because that's as close as I can get.

If it's too much to put free-text options into each field, maybe just an 'other' option for the fields, and a separate short text field for notes?

I appreciate we're a bit of an edge case, but I've seen it outside our case too. I've practised a standard config for a race advertised in the calendar, only to realise it was actually a layout track when I got there.

I didnt bother to read all of the posts, BUT if possible, an additional future could be added to the game itself, a menu which opens a calendar, similar to mods menu, it has refresh button and gets data from lfs website. it would be enough to just be the photo which is published through discord servers and on twitter with all upcoming events. just a simple image. Would be much easier to track and follow events for people who cant bother with twitter or forum stuff

Maybe some form of statistics similar to or added to LFSWorld stats could be more inviting to people joining Events, even though some wont admit it, we like to have good stats. Like events joined and how many podiums won in events.
I understand that this would not be a quick fix and take some time to implement, if at all possible to do

Quote from lfsrm :

and yes, we were all kids/crashers/beginners when we started to play the game, it's up to us the community to guide the newcomers to become better as a players, there is nothing wrong with that.

True, running our demo servers over the past 11 years i've seen people progress from one end of the spectrum to being great racers.

As you say we all started in the same way.

I don't think LFS should ever become a steam only sim so not everyone would need to be running steam, but those who often use steam have it running in the background anyway so it would be no different for them

For visibility, you need a real "challenge" with a prize to be won! (to be clear, I hate the physics of other games and I don't care about the graphics) we are all "adults" now, the younger ones fun with hospital bed/sandwich/rocket balloon/... I'm looking for realism and found it on lfs. Every player is looking for what they want, how many people are looking for realism? Steam might disappoint a bunch of "drivers"

Quote from NENE87 :

For visibility, you need a real "challenge" with a prize to be won! (to be clear, I hate the physics of other games and I don't care about the graphics) we are all "adults" now, the younger ones fun with hospital bed/sandwich/rocket balloon/... I'm looking for realism and found it on lfs. Every player is looking for what they want, how many people are looking for realism? Steam might disappoint a bunch of "drivers"

If other sims were dead/non-existent then maybe you'd have a point that the number of people looking for realism is low, but other sims have 10-20k simultaneous active users on a daily basis where LFS caps out at 300 active users at once.

There's a market for sim racing and LFS once was the leader in terms of content/variety/multiplayer but it is not that anymore.

For the idea of having a calendar shown on the entry screen of LFS, here's a first version of that.
It can be changed, I'm posting it to see what you think.

Currently "event name" and "more info" are intended as links to an event page in the leagues section.
The "Server" name takes you to "Join Specific Host".

Quote from Scawen :

For the idea of having a calendar shown on the entry screen of LFS, here's a first version of that.
It can be changed, I'm posting it to see what you think.

Currently "event name" and "more info" are intended as links to an event page in the leagues section.
The "Server" name takes you to "Join Specific Host".

this looks great! perhaps a small timer that shows how many hours are left until the event starts if the event is in the same day would round it off perfectly? red font if less than half an hour

Quote from Scawen :

For the idea of having a calendar shown on the entry screen of LFS, here's a first version of that.
It can be changed, I'm posting it to see what you think.

Currently "event name" and "more info" are intended as links to an event page in the leagues section.
The "Server" name takes you to "Join Specific Host".

Looks nice, great job for quick time. In fact, that for several years after I starting to play LFS, I didn’t know that competitions were taking place here at all. And something tells me I wasn't the only one. So this is very handy. And bring new players to the competitions.

but why gray background? Imho that looks a bit boring.
And buttons and info tabs looks the same, not intuitive that is can be pressed. if button tabs could have some kind of outline, maybe with blue color it would be clearer.

Thats perfect, but the grey background is kind of boring

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

And buttons and info tabs looks the same, not intuitive that is can be pressed. if button tabs could have some kind of outline, maybe with blue color it would be clearer.

I agree with this point - it should be made clear which are actual buttons and what is just an info text. Maybe use use plain text for the labels. Also the event title could be made a bit bigger:

Quote from nikolai_01 :

Thats perfect, but the grey background is kind of boring

You can change it in game files

Here's an intermediate update that may look a bit better.

Showing 4 per screen - less busy / more balanced
The four events are centred vertically
Leaves space for a title at the top
Trying the usual blue background
Removed "more info" button

I agree the clickable buttons have to be clearly visible/distinguishable. Even better if there are standalone buttons next to the informative text to avoid any doubt:

something like:

[Server] [MRc E-Challenge] [JOIN!]

As owner and admin of CESAV, I think will be really good for the all the racing community, both drivers and organisers.

Although, I have some suggestions:
The hours should be displayed in your machine current time zone, not UTC.
The clikable buttons should be clearly identified.
I would remove the second event datetime. Less text its more clear.
The more info should be by clicking the image, but it needs some small text or icon to be noticed as clikable
It would be great to be able to add events into the calendar with the REST API, I know this is not directly related to this quick patch, but its good place to mention it

Quote from VladM :

perhaps a small timer that shows how many hours are left until the event starts if the event is in the same day would round it off perfectly? red font if less than half an hour

Interesting...

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

And buttons and info tabs looks the same, not intuitive that is can be pressed.

Quote from Flame CZE :

I agree with this point - it should be made clear which are actual buttons and what is just an info text. Maybe use use plain text for the labels. Also the event title could be made a bit bigger:

I've done this according to Flame's design.

Quote from michal 1279 :

Even better if there are standalone buttons next to the informative text to avoid any doubt:

OK.

Quote from NeOn_sp :

The hours should be displayed in your machine current time zone, not UTC.
The clikable buttons should be clearly identified.
I would remove the second event datetime. Less text its more clear.

I'd be interested in some more opinions about this. Is it best to show always in your local computer's time and not UTC?
That would look nicer and could leave space for VladM's suggestion.
But is there any value in showing UTC time, e.g. for telling other people?