Quote from keiran :

The developers couldn't approve mods. They would be officially linking themselves with copyrighted material and I very much doubt they want the likes of Bernie or Sony banging on their door .

Very true. I was going to add that and forgot about it. A system like that would only work with non-rL-content and is therefore probably not what we really want -- evereybody wants the ring after all and not something that's inspired by the ring.

Sorry for telling the old stories again, but I'm just answering to an old theme here:

Take 1nsane e.g.
The game was designed for multiplayer, it was biiiiig fun and the first game I actually played online only, I think with an Athlon 1200.
In that game you could see a list of games, the cars/classes that were driven and the track afair (as far as I remember).
When the big modding wave came there were many many new servers running special cars on special tracks. Invictus (the game devs) didn't want the players to flood their HDDs with too many cars and tracks, so they restricted the max. number of these to 128. I had many of the cars installed, mostly funny small ones like the old Mini and stuff. But I could only join Servers with special cars that I had too. Some of them were made on big fast machines, so the poly count was too high to handle for my system.But the main audience of this game were young 13-year-olds, they all built their ÜBER cars, put them on some download space and raced ugly, square boxes with 11084 hp and 8 wheels. That was exactly the point why 1nsane went down.

In lfs we have (guessed) 80000 users, in the evening there might be some 500 online. If I look at the server list there are about 500 servers, so why should we allow modding cars etc.? The community would even split up more.
Today we have drifters, draggers and racers. Some like Formula cars, some GTRs and some frontwheelers.
The moment the devs decide to allow mods the community will split IMO and break apart like it did with 1nsane!

We would have non-modders, ricerfans, stupid kids with ugly 239234 hpboxes, cheaters (think of that point!), group C, 5, A, B, whatever fans, guys twho drive `70s concept cars, lawnmower endurance racers....................................

I really like the cars and tracks in lfs and I'm afraid of breaking up with the best racing game atm, so please no additional stuff here!
If somebody wants to do something for the community, there are still gadgets to be made up... Use in/outsim or outgauge and build up something as special as carribean cruise e.g.! Try to do something great that keeps us lfsers together!
Or go create a car sim yourself *g*

greetz

der butz

PS: the greatest fart in 1nsane was a modeled plane pink square!!! In game the driver was sitting on/under/in the middle of it, holding his wheel. When I asked the "creator" of this thing why he uploaded such a crap he told me that this should really be a flying carpet!!!!!

I'm glad you guys posted some valid arguments.

Still, I'd like to share this...I had a chat with a friend of mine who has absolutely nothing, and i mean nothing to do cars. For him, cars get you from a to b have four wheels a round thing and three funny pedals. Bikes only have two, why would you need three illepall ?!. I just told him this is not an arcade, but a simulator, his instant reply was something like this:
- the community of a game is still made mostly out of 'gamers' so when given the chance they will make a lot of crap, not even close to anything real -

Well this applies to any simulator, a plane simulator, a submarine simulator, a spinning circle on a stick simulator even!

Later I tried imagining what -I- would actually do if I'd have an editor. Hummmmm . Well, I for one would like more 4wd cars. Good. I also love the Wrx-STI. Good. So 3dstudio max, WRX-Sti 3d-model done. Adobe Photoshop (or search skin_x) and i've also got a skin. Awesome. How about the engine/handling? Suppose i just write that in a text file and the game knows what to do with it. Well now.... Here's the problem. Suppose i'd have a lot of technical specs and so on...I've never driven an STi, how would i know if it 'feels' like one?

I know there are a lot of people here that did (or maybe still do) get a chance to know what that's supposed to feel like, but unless they get together and suggest something directly, the rest are stuck with (eventually) a new 3d model and maybe a new skin but with let's say FXR's specs.

In the case of tracks , it's very complicated to -create- something entertaining but not consuming and simply re-creating real tracks becomes a copyright issue.

And managing the mods is a dev nightmare, i never tried looking at this from that point of view.

So definetly no cars, maybe, just -maybe- submitting 3d-models.
Definetly no tracks, but again mabye, just -maybe- submitting ideas, designs.
So what's left?
Game physics and mechanics - definetly a nono, no 'maybe' here.
Textures - check out the sand / snow tracks .
Sounds - there's something on this too,though i think it's outdated due to the last patch.
...was that all? Pretty much yes.
Not actually, LFS DOES have an autocross editor. I wouldn't a call it a track editor. Well, i've noticed cones, walls, tires, even a ramp. Awesome. And i DO mean -awesome-.

Therefore the only suggestion i still have is to improve the autocross editor .
I've used it and this is what i'd really love to see there:
-more checkpoints, not just three.
-less important, but still interesting, would be the ability to set two different paths for the same start/finish (think at a final stage of some rally: two cars compete for two laps at the same time on the same track but on different routes, the second lap's path of each car being the first lap's path of the other car)

Quote from Linsen :

Very true. I was going to add that and forgot about it. A system like that would only work with non-rL-content and is therefore probably not what we really want -- evereybody wants the ring after all and not something that's inspired by the ring.

Yes, that's an important issue, but I have been wondering often about where the boundaries lie in this matter.
I mean, what's allowed and what's not? Take other games like rFactor and nKpro for instance. The cars in nKpro are clearly exact replica's of their real-life counterparts. You've got a Formula Ford, a Formula 3 and a Formula 3000 (?) yet they are named differently. in rFactor you've got tracks like Monza, Silverstone and Nurburgring (which are official releases as far as I know) yet they are named differently. I have not heard of any legal problems for those games. So why would Scavier get into trouble? Just wondering.

I don't know about the tracks you mentioned for rFactor, but afaik, rFactor is making deals with "track owners". They recently released some lesser known rL tracks (Jiading and Bianza). I suppose that those are a lot cheaper than popular tracks like, say, Spa or Nordschleife. But there are definitely legal issues and you can't just recreate something without permission of the rightsholder -- not when you'd benefit commercially at least. If you're creating free mods it's actually basically the same as far as I'm aware, it's just that the rightsholders usually tolerate it. I guess it's a "grey" zone.

As for nKpro, I'm sure I read somewhere that at least one of the cars (formula 3, I believe?) is licensed in a similar way as the BF1 is licensed for LFS or rFactor (coop with a team rather than a series). And building pretty much exact replicas of rL cars is again a "grey" zone. It's not really allowed, but it's also very hard to prove that it is in fact a rip off, which would be one of the reasons why the rightsholders don't come after you if you do it. Also, a major issue for rL racing series is in fact the name, as it's a major selling proposal for Game Developers. So, take some crappy arcady F1-Game where the cars don't behave anything like their real counterparts, but it says Formula 1 on the box and allows the marketing experts to say stuff like "Now You can be Michael Schumacher and race his F1-Ferrari on the most realistic recreation of legendary tracks like Spa, Silverstone or Monaco in any Racing simulator to date!" We all know that that's rubbish, but it sells.

Btw, even the FO8 is pretty much an exact replica of the F3000.

Edit: One would probably have to see what happens if a modding group recreates real life content that's released for free with approval of the devs and under fantasy-names. Who knows, maybe the rightsholders will tolerate it -- and maybe they won't. It's definitely risky business.

I wonder though if rF made a deal with Silverstone for example. It's named differently so imagine if they would have made a deal they would be allowed to use the real name. Or I could be wrong and those tracks are mods and not official releases, I don't keep up with what's happening in rF too much.

I knew nK has agreements with a couple of RL companies like Avon, I didn't know nK had licensed the cars though.
But I guess it's like you say, a gray area. And you're right about the F08 being pretty much an exact replica of the F3000. So that's why I wonder, if it's mostly about the name what could stop Scavier from making cars that are near copies of real cars? I know they are already based on (mixes of) real cars, but I think it could be taken a step further. Not that I care that much about having real cars in LFS but it would be nice. I would love the FOX to look more like the real Formula Renault for instance.

Problem is, you never know where the threshold for a certain company lies, so keeping your design a little further away from real life counterparts is the safer way to go, if you want to avoid expensive lawsuits.