Its a shame really. I saw the videos and was amazed! I thought it would be the best racing sim ever!

Then I played it....wow. TOTAL dissapointment.

NOTHING any time in the even distant future will replace LFS. Its a TRUE simulation without all the glitz and glam that the armchair-racer is looking for.

I also would love to try out other racing games. But unfortunately, I can get 40 FPS in LFS and even 80 if I wanted to. But with every other racing sim demo version I've tried, I can't get above 15 by my self due to being hardware challenged. It's either LFS or NR2003 for me. And I haven't done oval racing since I joined in the LFS community.

I really really wanted to try out GTL back a while ago as I would be very interested in that class of cars.

Like Cue-Ball, my initial impressions of GTR2 were not very favourable. However, after changing the FFB settings and playing around with the setups, I started to really like the feel of the cars (and tracks) in GTR2 to the point that I find myself firing up GTR2 more than LFS right now.

I still think LFS vehicle dynamics are superior but there is a lot to like in GTR2. Unfortunately, I now find myself stuck in a bit of a racing sim no-man's land: neither LFS nor GTR2 fully satisfy my racing sim itch. When playing LFS, I miss many of the features of GTR2 yet when playing GTR2 I miss the LFS vehicle dynamics and overall feel. If only there were some way to meld the best features of each...

For what it's worth, I can't stand rFactor and found the original GTR almost unplayable, so I'm not an ISI or SimBin fanboy by any means.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Greetings.

GTR2:
"It's like heading down to the bar and picking up some hottie bar fly chick with fake boobs and daisy-dukes, and getting a quick romp in the hay; leaving you with nothing more than an itchy crotch and an empty wallet in the morning. LFS is more like the medium-pretty girl who has character and substance underneath... You should marry LFS, it can only get better with time like a good marriage, because it's not built on superficialities. The bonus with LFS is that one day it'll turn into the hottie just to finish it off. Conversely, the "sim whores" of the world have no hope of ever having the substance they lack which is tragic indeed."

Like any slut, GTR2 has sex appeal that can make you crave more. Once you "go around" a few times you realize the relationship between you and the ... sim ... is shallow and only based on depraved desire for a few moments of extasy instigated by a lust for extreme sensory input.

I guess i couldn't explain what i think of it better than what you stated here

I anyway prefer much more LFS, it's more a game too, it's much more "user friendly" than GTR2.

Pretty much the same what I felt when testing (and trying to like) the game, except I'd like to bash the graphics more. You totally forgot the rain effect, thats pretty much the same I saw in TOCA 2 on PlayStation 6 years ago. And the sun glare looks more like a lens flare than anything you would see with your eyes. With decent fps rate the graphics would be 'ok', but when you get 25fps from a year-old average pc (2,5ghz athlon 64, 2gt ram, gf6800 ultra) when it's dark and raining, I don't get it. The game calculates maybe the half of what LFS does in physics, and doesn't look that good, why it has to be so heavy compared to prettier modern games?

Scawen would code the similar lens flare / rain / dynamic lighting effects in under a month by himself, and wouldn't do any worse. BBT's marriadge symbol is a perfect explanation why Scawen won't code bad, unfinished effects, and also an explanation why I play LFS instead of one of those 'sims'. I think that Race driver series is closer to GTR series than GTR is to LFS.

EDIT:

@felplacerad about GTR2 players' driving skillz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpmjJdaUXww

I wonder how many GTR2 fanboy enjoys the turbo cars without knowing that the turbo isn't simulated in the physics engine: http://www.lfsforum.net/attach ... id=17762&d=1160389791

Indeed I did fail to mention the rain. It's really barely worth mentioning though. It's a little bit of reflection on the road and a rooster tail behind the car, combined with less grip. The line isn't really affected by cars so it's not a very dyanmic experience.

The other MAJOR MAJOR thing that I did not mention in the review was the fact that on my previous system (1GB RAM, GeForce FX5900, 80GB HD, same everything else) it ran OK most of the time... But would be suddenly transformed into a literal slide show of around 3FPS +/-1 (!!!) No rhyme, no reason... sometimes right away, sometimes not for 20 minutes, sometimes never. It doesn't do that anymore with the new hardware. This is a known bug and has been in rF, GTR, GTL, and GTR2 according to the SimBin forums. It's usually dismissed by the fanboys as "poo hardware" or "background tasks". I eventually figured out that task switching away from it and back again somehow fixed it. Wierd. And also really really crappy.

@Nuse, sorry I neglected the multiquote thingy

Hi there.

Good review all in all for a LFS fanboy

1) As you said a matter of taste. But featurewise you can't deny that GTR2 looks better and I think that's for most people, because there are a lot details , you won't find in LFS.
But I know what you are talking about when saying a bit too saturated.

2) I really would like to understand what is bad about these sampled noises except, they won't simulate anything like a partly damaged engine, which LFS doesn't do too at the moment.

I like the sound in full throttle, in no throttle but also in between them. It just sounds awesome to accelerate all the way up and I don't think its really bad when going a bit off the throttle.
Perhaps these "in-between" sounds aren't perfect or as realistic as reality, but the engine sounds better all the way in comparison to LFS.

One thing about it is perhaps a bit more latency between your foot when modulating the throttle and the sound/engine reaction in comparison to LFS. But I personally think that is one very unrealistic point about LFS. The throttle pedal seems to be disconnected from any kind of engine and just connected to your revmeter. It just reacts instantly. There doesn't seem to be any mass in between. Big Engines like the one in GTR have some mass to get moving. They will react very soon but not instantly. Engine has to fire up and start reving and won't be like in LFS.
Perhaps some cart engines are as instantly as the biggest engines in LFS ...

I think the truth is perhaps in between those in terms of reaction. In terms of pure sound it is way more like GTR2
The system of LFS may be superior in the year 3000, but it will be very very hard to simulate the sound as good as those samples get at the moment and we are comparing at the moment.

3) Nice explanation. I think its more like GTR2 as full throttle starts with really really much wheelspin in LFS don't really differ much from trying to modulate your throttle. And I fear somehow that it won't be fixed, because this is hidden, if there will be free starts in LFS. Reaction time does have a big influence. Perhaps 70% ... but there is still a lot of difference between someone with throttle control and someone without. And this isn't really simulated in LFS yet somehow.
I hope LFS will be like GTR2 in this topic somewhere in the future.

BUT as you said there are no flat spots in GTR2. I didn't get any too. This is better in LFS ...

4) Well this is the biggest topic somehow. I hope you used the original physics and no mod, because the mods just try to make it more difficult but take a lot of realism away in my oppinion.
More difficult is NOT more realistic. You'll see a comparable development in LFS after the latest physics patch.

Those cars aren't very difficult to move fast but away from the limit. They should be this way because they do very long races and not only absolute professionals drive these.
But at the limit it is damn hard to drive those. It isn't really more easy to be fast than in LFS with GTR cars ...

I know this bug you are talking about. This bug is in every single ISI engined racing game. At certain drift angles physics seems to give up. This is very bad for street cars, as you can't drift them as LFS. In fact I know of no game where you can drift cars like you can do in LFS.

BUT if you are driving seriously you won't try to get to that angle. Those are racing cars with slicks and they aren't done for stable drifts ... if you want to be fast you avoid any kinds of drifts.
You will get somehow some small drifts but in this area physics still work. You can catch the car by counter-steering anytime. If you get past 45° or so it will be nearly impossible. There would be only a small chance without that bug as steering lock is at 20° and those slicks really aren't slow getting from grip to slide ...
In GTR2 there is no real chance of rescuing the car. But as I said it doesn't matter that much as you shouldn't get there if driving careful and most of the times you wouldn't rescue the car anyway in this situation... with LFS or without LFS physics.
So this bug doesn't really bug me and most of people enjoying serious races instead of trying to drift around the track *g*

I hate this bug in rFactor, but I don't notice it in GTR2 at all, also he is there for sure.

Perhaps it was exxagerated if you were using some kind of "reality mod", which just lowers the grip level of tyres. Because then you get faster to the angle of no return. With standard physics you will rescue the car exactly as in LFS by countersteering in most of the situations.

5) No addition here.

6) I can't say to much here as I hate force feedback. It is very very very very artificial in all of the games including LFS. In LFS it is somehow a bit better but way to bad to use it. I tried it once for fun. It is really fun but has nothing to do with the feedback you get from a real car at the limit. There was even some ridiculous bug of the steering wheel bouncing left-right-left-right just standing on a straight without touching it. illepall

It just lowers precision of steering a lot. In real life the car will steer for you in a drift. You just have to get your hands away from it. In LFS it tries to do that, as FF is really calculated. But the FF wheels are WAY WAY to slow to do it as it is going on in real life.
So precise steering with some FF effects is more difficult in most cases than without and no way realistic.
In order to get it realistic there should be at least 6 FF engines which are able to move the wheel about 10 times as fast as now (braking your finger if you don't pay attention) and a lot more has to be calculated by LFS. No steering wheel in the world will go left-right-left-right ... just standing with the car
I don't know if it is something missing in the calculations or just the very low resolution of ground affecting the FF.

Both FF effects are fun, but I won't really take them in to simulation itself.

7) Damage is way better in GTR2. It doesn't look as good as in LFS in low speed crashs, but it does effect racing whereas in LFS its more like an graphical gimmick. Ok, there could be some sort of damaging to the suspension but it never will end your race. Drive back to the pits as you can do always and repair it in 10 seconds.

In GTR2 if you crash in the wall it can end your race. Crashing with over 100 kph may rip your wheels off or destroy the engine completly. Damage in the front will make your car understeer more, damage in the back may lead to more oversteer. Suspension can be destroyed to. But you won't continue driving as you do in LFS.
Engines can blow up and will if you are shifting wrong or have to much risk in your setup (rev limiter high, cooling down ...)

So here GTR2 is much more of a simulation. Ok, it doesn't simulate the look of crashs as good as LFS in low speed crashs, but it simulates the effects on your car much more.
LFS lacks too in optics if it gets to high speed crashs. Crash at over 200 kph in the wall and it will look like 30 kph and will have the effects on the car as 10 kph. You can see immediately, that damage is far away from getting finished in LFS. Try the BMW for example Crash with over 300 DOES look different. There both games are very similar ...



8) I will add something to multiplayer. I played a lot of races. There are some unpretty bugs sometimes. Cars can fall through the earth. But most of the races did work really good. Netcode is good enough to allow very close long racing and no CTD or 1FPS bug in masses anymore ...

But the netcode isn't as good as in rFactor or LFS. You won't notice the difference with good servers and racing against people with good connections. But you will notice it immediately with bad servers and low bandwidth ... there the result is much better in LFS or rFactor.

It seems that the bugs above are fixable. The netcode won't improve I think. So all people racing should have a good connection and the server should be a proper one. But then there can be very nice races with 25 people at the same time ... so netcode is good enough but could be better.

I hope Simbin will fix those irritating bugs, that occur sometimes with their first patch. We'll see ...

hehe, sorry. I'll fix it ...

Quote from RIP2004 :

It is really fun but has nothing to do with the feedback you get from a real car at the limit. There was even some ridiculous bug of the steering wheel bouncing left-right-left-right just standing on a straight without touching it. illepall

It just lowers precision of steering a lot. In real life the car will steer for you in a drift. You just have to get your hands away from it. In LFS it tries to do that, as FF is really calculated. But the FF wheels are WAY WAY to slow to do it as it is going on in real life.

For the first bit, just tone down the FF strength in your wheel's control panel - I used to get that too until I did so.

For the second bit, that's the first thing I noticed in LFS when switching from a non-FF wheel to an FF wheel: the ability to catch slides by letting the car "steer itself" and balance out without fighting the wheel... before that I had to think of the angles all the time and go by ear - same with corner exit. Perhaps the FF on your wheel isn't that good or maybe you didn't disable the "canned" effect settings (like the damper, etc crap in the logitech wheel control panel - if you got a logitech).

If GTR2 FF is like rFactor's (and like the F1 games before that) then I can understand why you'd hate FF - it informs you of nothing interesting and is just there for show.

@xaotik : I tried several settings. If I tone down the FF the wheel is even slower ...

It's more a general thing. I know how a real car feels at the limit of its grip and what a real steering wheel tells me. And I can't find that in the FF on a wheel. I have 2 FF wheels: the Microsoft Sidewinder FF and the Logitech Driving Force Pro.

It depends on the angle of slide, if the wheel catches the slide itself. If it is a slide with high angle, you'll notice that the wheel is to slow. Toning down FF even makes it worse ...
If you turn on the 900° Mode of the DFP you'll notice it even more. The FF wheels can only catch slides, because they are in a much smaller mode than a real life steering wheel. Most cars have over 1000° ... and even street sport cars don't have less as 900° usually.
But in LFS most FF wheels are used with 270° oder 360° or something like that. Therefore the wheel doesn't have to go a long way to catch a very small slide but even then it can't catch a higher slide like a real wheel could do perhaps.

I get a much better feeling for the cars without using those FF effects. It is a difference between LFS and the ISI FF, but both aren't doing it for me If using the 900° Mode its even more difficult to catch slides than without any FF, because you have to spin the wheel faster than the engine can do it and therefore spin against the resistance of the engine somehow.

It's also much better to know how to control a slide without this FF. Because if you'll notice it through the FF of your wheel it is already to late. You are already sliding and losing time ... And the artificial FF in games is even slower than a real FF through your whole body (mostly bottom) would be. If you know how to push the car without sliding out before sliding, then you are faster. And you learn that a lot better than with FF in my oppinion.

There was some ad company that was supposed to make some auto downloading ads to GTR2, that ad company was involved to spyware stuff, well I decided that my computer won't get GTR2 ever because of that.

I don't know if they had to cancel that plan because of negative publicity, but really if some even plans such thing what else there will be in that software? They lost my trust and it is really impossible to gain back.

So I can't say nothing about GTR2, I just assume there is funny brakes and inertia values from hat, but can only guess, for sure it won't have better dynamics than LFS, nothing has, Insane comes pretty close actually, but it had lot of other funny things and it was not sim.

Still GTR2 can still be quite fun, I did had one of nicest online races with GTR1, also telemetry was nice to have to build setups

I really tried hard to like GTR2. It caught my eye at best buy, and I thought I'd give it a try for real.

First off, I have no idea why it has to be so huge, to me, there doesn't seem to be enough content to justify several gigabytes on my hard drive and 3 CDs to install.

The menus I don't mind particularly, they're somewhat complicated, but not too difficult. They could be much more intuitive however.

Now for the actual game, I really want to like it, but I feel so disconnected from the car I can hardly drive it. I've tried different physics mods, changed the Force Feedback, tried different tire curves, and it still feels like my car is in no way connected to the track. I can't get over the canned understeer effect, it honestly confuses me every time I get into an understeer situation.

I don't mind the sounds, they do sound very nice, but after a couple laps, I start missing the synthesized sounds from LFS, GTR2 sounds like the same recording being played over and over again. I do really like having some gearwhine though, and the pebbles hitting the bottom of the car is a nice touch.

Visuals wise, I don't see what all the hype is about. To me, neither the cars nor the tracks look all that great. I don't know what it is with the cars, but they don't seem to have any visual weight to them. They look like paper cutouts with textures driving around the track to be honest. The tracks are decent, but nothing spectacular. I'd take Aston over any of then any day. Finally about the graphics, I don't know what it is, but it totally kills my computer, I really don't think it looks good enough to justify the framerate that it has.

It seems to me like SimBin is really trying to make a realistic sim, but they can't. GTR2 doesn't need an update, the physics engine needs to be scrapped and completely recoded. I actually think Sports Car GT feels more realistic...

finally played gtr2 kinda disspointed it has its goods and bads i like the formation laps etc and cockpits look so good but the gameplay isnt great i get the feeling im playing sega rally 2 or something

Quote from RIP2004 :

2) I really would like to understand what is bad about these sampled noises except, they won't simulate anything like a partly damaged engine, which LFS doesn't do too at the moment.

I like the sound in full throttle, in no throttle but also in between them. It just sounds awesome to accelerate all the way up and I don't think its really bad when going a bit off the throttle.
Perhaps these "in-between" sounds aren't perfect or as realistic as reality, but the engine sounds better all the way in comparison to LFS.

I don't know have you heard about CSR (Car Sound Remixer) for LFS but in my opinion "LFS synth sounds suck" argument is just not valid anymore. Of course CSR is an unofficial mod/utlility - but so are all the rFactor mods too.

Check these:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZkWZj1TothA
http://youtube.com/watch?v=vYczmOkQowE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5mVvLvnrZX4
http://torttu.net/temp/lfs/beefy_FZR.mp3

Before this CSR I always defended LFS' sound engine, though I still would defend it because the engine is good but the actual sound result is not. Now after I have used to CSR I have very hard time playing LFS without it. The best sound packs with this CSR sounds as good as GTR2/GTL, or in some occasions even better. I think there is something wrong in the GTR2 sound system, when you lift off throttle the engine noise basicly "dies" immediately. In CSR it sounds better under braking and downshifting, as you can especially hear from the mp3 file above - even that they are just samples but there must be some differencies in GTR2 and CSR how the samples are blended especially when throttle is off (both still has 3 or 4 sample files for "throttle off"). Those sounds in that mp3 file are actually stolen from GTR2's Lamborghini.

Quote from 96 GTS :

It seems to me like SimBin is...

To once again clear this confusion:

GTR1, Race = SimBin
GTL, GTR2 = Blimey
Blimey = contractor for SimBin, it was formed when half of the original SimBin team left

Maybe CSR is showing that blending samples with generated sounds can yield the best of both worlds for engine sounds?

If the samples were actually taken from proper engines similar to the ones in LFS (IE the LX6 sample really should be a small straight 6) that would be sweet.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :

Maybe CSR is showing that blending samples with generated sounds can yield the best of both worlds for engine sounds?

Yes, it's just hard (time consuming ) to get the samples to match the LFS sound pitch.

I had the same issue with GTR's physics: massive understeer, and when the rear end does break loose the car usually ends up facing backwards (almost like it's canned animation). If you play long enough, it still ends up being fun and intense, and you start to be able to catch the rear end, but it doesn't feel quite as legit as LFS for some reason -- but I've never driving real GT cars. Do they understeer that badly? Hell if I know.

Sounds wise, GTR has an extremely good sample-based sound engine. If I have a friend over, and I want to impress them with how cool driving sims are, I don't start them with LFS. I set them up in GTR driving a Lister Storm and a crank the speakers. Roaring down a straight with that thing at full throttle, my brother said, "I don't know if I'm supposed to be excited or afraid." The car sounds like it'll come alive and rip your head off.

That said, after an hour or so with GTR or rFactor I start to get fatigued. The samples begin to sound very repetitive. That never happens to me in LFS. I feel like the sound engine in LFS conveys a lot more useful information.

It's the exact same difference between sprites and real-time 3D. Sprites can easily be photorealistic, but the illusion is blown when you get them in motion. Samples are the audio equivalent of sprites. LFS's approach is the audio equivalent of real time 3D rendering. LFS's audio is more realistic 'in motion' than any sample-based approach I've heard.

Quote :

There was even some ridiculous bug of the steering wheel bouncing left-right-left-right just standing on a straight without touching it.

That's not the force feedback, per se. In other words, it's not necessarily a problem with the software providing inaccurate feedback information to the wheel, it's a weakness in the mechanics of most force feedback wheels. They are very slow, and have a significant amount of latency in the force feedback, especially when changing directions (which causes that oscillation problem).

If you want to see how good it can be, check out the G25. It uses two FF motors, each with reduced gearing. It has much less latency and it's about 3 times faster than the DFP. Still not as fast as a real wheel, but fast enough that letting the wheel automatically countersteer feels much more realistic, even when using 800+ degrees of steering lock.

Quote :

Visuals wise, I don't see what all the hype is about. To me, neither the cars nor the tracks look all that great.

Perhaps you need a better GPU? The cars in GTR with all details cranked to max are astonishing, IMO.

Quote from Eric Tetz :

Perhaps you need a better GPU? The cars in GTR with all details cranked to max are astonishing, IMO.

Yes, I do, I have a Radeon 9550, my whole rig needs upgrading. But my point is that, on my computer at least, GTR looks worse than LFS and has lower framerates

Quote from 96 GTS :

But my point is that, on my computer at least, GTR looks worse than LFS and has lower framerates

Well, you said "I don't see what all the hype is about". I'm pointing out that you haven't seen what the hype is about because your computer can't show you.

LFS won't look much different on a high end machine compared to yours (other than resolution, filtering, and anti-aliasing improvements). GTR looks a lot better on a high end machine. The track doesn't change that much, but the car models become extremely detailed.

@deggis : I heard of that mod and I will give it a try for sure ... sounds pretty good.

@eric : i think understeer or oversteer depend a lot on the setup. Most setups are friendly towards driver mistakes as it is better for long races.

FF :

Could be the fault of the steering wheels. This way or that way FF isn't what I expect FF to be all in all. And I am not sure if the G25 is that much better ... but for sure a little bit better with those 2 FF engines ...

I have to say that after trying the demo, I agree almost completely with the original post.. As for what I put in if I want to impress my buddies that come over, it's straight LFS baby! Of course we're more for the expierience than the glitz. They've all been as stunned as I was when I bought LFS though, (which was a mere 2 days after trying the demo, I couldn't wait any longer!). Haven't bought any games after trying any of the GT demos though, nor were my friends as engaged or impressed with them - but to each their own I guess, you play what you have the most fun with. For me it'll always be LFS I'm sure. It's the only true driving simulator out there and I don't see any competition for it arising anytime soon. There just aren't any other developers as dedicated to getting the realism over the commercialism. Somthing else we have to remember, S2 isn't complete either, while they just keep pumping out unrealistic GT games..

Quote from Eric Tetz :

It's the exact same difference between sprites and real-time 3D. Sprites can easily be photorealistic, but the illusion is blown when you get them in motion. Samples are the audio equivalent of sprites. LFS's approach is the audio equivalent of real time 3D rendering. LFS's audio is more realistic 'in motion' than any sample-based approach I've heard.

Quote :

In fact I know of no game where you can drift cars like you can do in LFS.

The rally sims (Richard Burns, Colin McRae) allow a lot of drifting. GTLegends also has a lot of drifting with some of it's cars, but difficult to control in some of them, especially in cars like the Pantera (unless you're Greger Huttu or one of the other alien drivers who seem to be able to drive fast and sideways with just about any sim). In Grand Prix Legends it looks like you're drifting, but it's mostly because the tires used on the 1967 F1 cars had large working slip angles.

With both GTR and GTR2, there's not enough steering lock to recover from a typical oversteer event, but with GTR2, induced understeer works (steer inwards hard enough to washout the front end). It's not fast, but it's better than facing backwards.