All unsolicited advertising should be made illegal.

Quote from Dajmin :

Potential Sponsor #1: That's exactly our target audience. Please, take some logos and a sack of cash.

Problem is, this is not gonna happen (yet), I'm afraid, because it's not worth the effort for the potential sponsor (see Ian's posts for further explanation).

I'm with you Gunn!
For example a thing I find quite annoying is going to the cinema on time and then waste those 15 minutes or so watching stupid adds about pointless things (the trailers are ok though)...

So The Ads around a circuit or around a football pitch or basketball court, or whatever it is, are something to give realism to the simulation enviroment, but, for example if you are using Flightgear you woulndt expect seeing a dirigible or Zeppelin saying Nivea for Men: Don't Forget to ... ilots never have a Beard!, would you? Well, at least I wouldnt!

Well they might not think it's worth the effort, but with a little bit of calculation it's not hard to work out the same figures. For instance:

Ad#1 is put on in place of the current Intel ads. For arguments sake let's say there's 25 of those round Blackwood GP. That means that in the XFG (I'm guessing here, work with me) each advert is on your screen for around 5-7 seconds on a mid-pace section of track. Some of them are combined so we can assume a total of maybe 10 seperate adverts. 10 ads @ 5 secs each = 50 seconds of advertising per lap. Average a 5 lap race = 250 screen seconds of advertising per race.

For a company looking to advertise, that's 2 minutes work to watch a single lap and time it themselves. Costs could be worked out accordingly. Much better than forcing the users to run what could be considered spyware.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Perhaps sponsor decals inside of the GTRs would be nice, because they do it in real life to advertise to the cockpit cam.

Banned in the BTCC AFAIK.

And +1 for banning in game IGA's and popups. But IMO TV companies should be allowed to use product placement. When watching American stuff (or Anglo-american stuff, if it's shot in the US it's under their law) I always play "spot-the-product-placement". In The State Within, all mobiles were Motorola Razrs.

The day LFS gets IGA would be the day I go back to GR even though no-one else is there.

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Normal bill-boards are fine and realistic. Popups are not. Perhaps sponsor decals inside of the GTRs would be nice, because they do it in real life to advertise to the cockpit cam.

No way I'm allowing ads in MY PERSONAL cockpit where I have to stare at it all the time... If anything, it should be part of the skin, but not generated by someone else than me...

For me its a simple

NO!

People that serve up IGA want to know what adverts to push to you so they want to give you spyware. BF2142 anyone? That FORCES spyware on you by only allowing you online when you use the spuware!

Just.... NO

Quote from bbman :

No way I'm allowing ads in MY PERSONAL cockpit where I have to stare at it all the time... If anything, it should be part of the skin, but not generated by someone else than me...

Well, i just meant decals in the .dds file, not in-game advertising.

Only if I can turn it off. Imho, changing track side billboards adds nothing to the LFS experience. All I can see is bad things. For the same reason I don't listen to radio. Commercials.

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Quote from wheel4hummer :

Well, i just meant decals in the .dds file, not in-game advertising.

It is in-game advertising when you have ads nsiide the game/sim.

I like swapping my billboards around every now and then. It gives the tracks a fresh look. I'm always putting together assortments of new boards with Advan, Pirelli, Castrol, certain tasteful pics involving the fairer sex, that sort of thing. Doesn't make me want to rush out and buy the product...

I'm a Mac guy, only way I play LFS is to restart my MacPro in WinXP. So IGA hasn't really hit Mac games yet.

I play BF2142 also, now they started using IGA and it has really taken away from the game a lot. Since before you would see billboards of propoganda for what ever side you were playing "Join the cause fight!" kind of thing.

Now when you play every flat billboard is filled with Intel Core Duo 2
adds. Which really takes away from a feature conflict game when you look at it, thinking "Wow 135 years from now Intel is still pushing Core Duo, or are even around in a post apoctolypic world!?"

For LFS if it is done right, where track billboards have stuff. Not in our cockpits. Or if you had a designer tool for your decals for companies you want on your car. So lets we open up the 3D car viewer app, in it we have the company logos to choose from on one side. We can drag the logo the logo on to the spot of the car we awant it on, the it automatically sticks to the car and we adjust the scale. These logs could automatically update if the company changes there look.

The down side is you would have to connect online to get the info. One major draw back in BF2142 is even the offline game you have to connect online. I've had my high speed internet go out a few times and couldn't even start the game because it checks online first, no other option around it. They did make a slight fix, that if it doesn't find anything it will go to offline mode. But any unlocks you have are unusable.

I'm not for in-game adds. But if they have to happen they should ONLY be for related products to that game. Ads that would actually be there. Not racing around a track with "Play super ultra FPS shooter now!" or ever billboard is some game websites logo and URL.

Quote from al heeley :

I like swapping my billboards around every now and then. It gives the tracks a fresh look. I'm always putting together assortments of new boards with Advan, Pirelli, Castrol, certain tasteful pics involving the fairer sex, that sort of thing. Doesn't make me want to rush out and buy the product...

I too would like to do this its gets a bit same old same old with the current billboards, have you by chance released these changes as a pack or would consider doing so Al?
Shannon