Since I have no idea about the timeframe of the next incomp patch, all I have are ideas of what I think will come before S2 Final. Hopefully sooner than later for some of this:

-Better cockpits (with DaveWS sound; now they seem odd)
-Better diffs & aero
-False starting
-Stalling
-Temperature sim, radiator damage
-Brake temps
-DaveWSs sounds or better for defaults
-Improved longitudinal tire behaviour
-Improved suspension & car damage

I'm pretty certain the cockpits will be around the corner; since the mirrors went high res (Scawen tends to work on related things together, & I think better looking cockpits may have sparked - "hmm, the mirrors suck now...")

I'm also hoping for some other visual updates, such as motion blurred wheel/tires (flickering textures on openwheelers looks silly), glowing rotors to go with the brake temps, actual suspension component models (LXs look silly etc)...

I'm sure decent AI will be in there somewhere, but who cares

I see RFactor in the same way I see modern art, it may be popular, but at the end of the day its elephant shit smeared over a canvas.

I have complete faith in the LFS dev team, word of mouth has already introduced LFS to thousands of people. Would you rather they spent money on advertising, or making the game better?

The thing that amuses me is that in the screenies that flash up you have good ole Jacques Villenueve's helmet on view, the man that BMW Sauber basically sacked and replaced with Robert Kubica . If they were trying to make it the best sim ever, should they not have tried to keep it current and upto date with either Kubica or Heidfeld's helmet on view, inkeeping with the current sponsorship?

LFS is done slow specifically so it doesn't start sucking, like every other game made under pressure. The games industry is just no walk in the park anymore.
You can take one step at a time, and be effectively progressing as fast as if taking five steps forward and four back. That's what other games seem to be doing.. granted, they have either more backing (usually because they woo their audience and fund sources with eye candy etc), or larger dev teams, but who else is going straight for the real solutions (real time audio engine, etc..), besides the West brothers?

I can't explain myself very good in the English language, so I try to keep it short. I find it very sad how some people talk about LFS and its progress. If you really think the game sucks, okay, just leave it and go play another game. How do you think this kind of reactions will ever inspire Scavier? I think they are working as hard as possible to make this the best racing simulation ever made. They don't need some of the crap that is written in this topic. Play it, love it and wait for the next patches, otherwise leave the game behind.

Quote from prodeg :

LFS will run on a P2 233, come on now.

I get 100 FPS (1920 x 1200, all visual settings max) on my two year old laptop.

thats.. nothing to be proud about in this case... who *seriously* enjoys games these days that look like they were made in the mid 90s.. LFS is one of those games, it gets compared to N64 games graphically, its just.. bottom of the line for what it is currently its just.. not good

people want stuff that looks real.. if it looks real.. it appeals to the senses and becomes more realistic in your mind, LFS can't do that because it looks .. like crap
you have to think about the senses that occur in games:
sound
sight
feel

so far LFS has only half of one of those, and that is feel, as tristan dubs "canned effects" who cares? if it feels right, it doesn't matter at all if it is done realtime or not, realtime doesn't make it more "realistic"

if LFS wants to succeed on the market.. it needs to amp up the sounds to more realistic sounds including suspension and more tire sounds etc.

sight.. LFS is completely downright lacking 100% in this area, its a whole generation behind in today's world

when it comes to the market, it really is what they call a nasty world, no one cares about computers that can't handle it, look at Test Drive Unlimited for an example, if you dont have a graphics card that is less than 2 years old, chances are you can't really play it, and that is actually pushing it in today's world (and i dont mean pushing it like.. you have to have the best, thats pushing it to where you just want more people to buy it)


no offense to the devs of course, i fully support them, but a 3 man team.. it takes miracles to hit the top with such a team, most gaming teams have hundreds of programmers and whatnot; this is more of a dream for LFS than i can imagine will ever be a reality

Quote from danowat :

Ahh......my bad then, I don't think LFS "sucks" per say, it is still the best sim there is, and this I think leads to complacency in it's development.

I don't believe for a second that there is any complacency in the dev team - these guys aren't just doing this for fun, they are doing it to feed, house and cloth their families... they are committed to their project and this community and work very hard.

What some of you seem to be missing is an understanding of software development and creative endevour in general...

When a project is new, a very small effort generates a large percievable change. As things develop, you need more work for a smaller percieved improvement.

As LFS matures, every update needs more work than the last for it to create an 'improvement' rather than just a change. As The simulation gets closer to what it is trying to simulate, it gets harder to notice the improvements, but at the same time it is much more difficult to implement those improvements.
I suppose its a little like learning a new car/track combo - at first your times drop quickly and significantly, but the closer you get to the world record, the more work you need to put in in order to see any improvement.... the final 0.5 of a second down to the world record will take way more time and effort than all the rest...

I guess you guys just need to take a break from LFS ?
Come back in a few months, and you might see it a little differently
That is of course unless you are one of those types who have bought into the 'gotta get the latest video card' mentality where if a game doesn't look better on your new card than it did on your last one then its a crap game

(BTW, I also want to see improvements, new features, improved diff, tyre model, aero etc. However I don't expect to see them until they are ready, and I know they will be ready as soon as they can be and that the devs are working harder than I would want them to towards that goal.)

Quote from Da Fish :

The thing that amuses me is that in the screenies that flash up you have good ole Jacques Villenueve's helmet on view, the man that BMW Sauber basically sacked and replaced with Robert Kubica . If they were trying to make it the best sim ever, should they not have tried to keep it current and upto date with either Kubica or Heidfeld's helmet on view, inkeeping with the current sponsorship?

I don'T want to defend rFactor as I am no fan of it, but to let you know, in rFactor the BMW F1 car has a different bodywork (minor differences of course) for every single F1 round last year and you can freely select which revision you want to play with. it even has those vertical winglets, which were used at magny cours and only if you select that specification. So considering this is the 2006 BMW, until hockenheim Villeneuve was their other driver, so it is right to have him in the screenshot. it's not like the screenshot is the bmw f1.07, isn't it?

Quote from XCNuse :

LFS can't do that because it looks .. like crap

I strongly disagree. LFS may not have the fancy shader effects, lighting and detailed modeling of, say, GTR2 but I genuinely prefer the look and feel of LFS to the over-rendered, everything-covered-in-plastic ISI engined games. The colour palette in LFS is just about spot-on, the 3D models actually look like they exist in the scene instead of being superimposed on top of it and the locations presented in LFS look more real to me in spite of being completely fictional than most of the real tracks portrayed in other games. I should add a caveat here that I play LFS with a FOV of around 40-50°, so I don't see much of the interior of the cars when I play. The car interiors are one area that do desperately need attention; it always makes me cringe when I see screenshots showing the inside of the cars.

LFS has crap models, the cars in LFS have 1/4th the amount of polys cars do in today's gaming generation

if you think lfs looks real lol.. you might need to get off whatever you're on

there are no actual effects in LFS at all period.. and thats what make it what i consider.. crappy graphics

Quote from XCNuse :

thats.. nothing to be proud about in this case... who *seriously* enjoys games these days that look like they were made in the mid 90s.. LFS is one of those games, it gets compared to N64 games graphically, its just.. bottom of the line for what it is currently its just.. not good

You can compare LFS to a C64 if you want - doesn't mean they are the same - to suggest that the graphics in LFS are technically at the same level as N64 games is ridiculous - that said, I would still play LFS more than any other driving game even if it did have N64 graphics !

Quote :

people want stuff that looks real.. if it looks real.. it appeals to the senses and becomes more realistic in your mind, LFS can't do that because it looks .. like crap

Not to me - In my opinion, LFS looks very good. It doesn't have any of the annoying glossy synthetically shiny crap that so many other games do and I find that refreshing.

I agree that the sound needs work, but I would prefer that dev time was not spent on the graphics when so many other things that are more important to sim racing need attention.

Quote :

...when it comes to the market, it really is what they call a nasty world, no one cares about computers that can't handle it, look at Test Drive Unlimited for an example, if you dont have a graphics card that is less than 2 years old, chances are you can't really play it, and that is actually pushing it in today's world (and i dont mean pushing it like.. you have to have the best, thats pushing it to where you just want more people to buy it)

My guess is that you are a 'gamer'. In mainstream gaming where there is a very large market, and a lot of customers who want new games to show off their (s)wanky new gfx cards games do need to sport all the fancy glittery bells an whistles.
In the Sim world things are a little different - the potential user base is much smaller, so you cannot afford to lose potential users by demanding a high spec system. Many of the users fall into a different demographic than mainstream gamers - I'm sure there are many LFS racers who don't do much 'gaming' - these folks don't want to have to spend hundreds every year upgrading their PC just to play LFS - which was just fine in the graphics department anyway...

Quote :

no offense to the devs of course, i fully support them, but a 3 man team.. it takes miracles to hit the top with such a team, most gaming teams have hundreds of programmers and whatnot; this is more of a dream for LFS than i can imagine will ever be a reality

Not miracles but a clear vision, hard work and skill. Remember these guys are industry veterans, they know about the problems that large teams cause so they chose to keep it small scale, they also chose an game genre where quality wins out. (You should go and read up on the team dynamics of software development )

Of course there is the reality that LFS IS SUCCESSFUL despite the fact that it has employed none of the marketing that its competitors use and it eschews cutting edge eye candy in favour of quality simulation. This success suggests that they have got the balance right and that changing things would be a mistake - maybe they understand their project, their users and their potential market better than you do

Quote from csurdongulos :

I don'T want to defend rFactor as I am no fan of it, but to let you know, in rFactor the BMW F1 car has a different bodywork (minor differences of course) for every single F1 round last year and you can freely select which revision you want to play with. it even has those vertical winglets, which were used at magny cours and only if you select that specification. So considering this is the 2006 BMW, until hockenheim Villeneuve was their other driver, so it is right to have him in the screenshot. it's not like the screenshot is the bmw f1.07, isn't it?

True, as I am not really an RFactor fan I didn't realise the facts, and I hang my head in shame :slap:. I just thought if Intel, as partners of BMW, were trying to take it serious about RFactor then they would want to show the latest product that they were sponsoring, but I suppose they have sponsored BMW sauber for a while now so it really shouldn't matter which car they use to show off their product sponsorship.

LFS's graphics isn't the greatest, but they don't "suck".

The big reason that LFS have been so popular over the years, imo, is because the devs gives out small/big updates now and then.

The development dosen't go fast, but to me it seems like they are sending out a new patch juuust when a bunch of people have gone tired of the current game settings.

For me graphics isn't really important, its just eye candy, hell, people are still even running big GPL leagues, THAT game's graphics sucks, even compared to LFS.
I wan't something that FEELS real and have a good online code, and that's exactly what LFS gives me.

I understand that people are getting impatient, I am beginning to go there to. But I understand that it takes allot of time when there only are two people developing the game itself, lots of time goes to testing, and moaning (because thats what this thread have become) dosen't help, it dosen't get you or the devs anywhere.

me.. gamer? hell my graphics card is like 5 years old lol! i can't be one

but as you also pointed out indirectly about the "sim" world... how many mainstream true simulations are out there currently? 1..? yea thats.. no competition there

i can tell some of you guys are with me what i'm saying but still just kinda sitting back and letting it go by a little, but honestly.. how many of your friends (that dont play LFS) would play this:
http://www.liveforspeed.net/pa ... nshots/s2_SouthCity37.jpg

or play this:
http://www.jxp.ca/media/jeux/7268/pgr3-09.jpg
or this:
http://images.playsyde.com/gallery/public/4326/1069_0044.jpg / http://gamesradar.futuregamer. ... gt%20hd_1%5B290906%5D.jpg

and if you still think LFS looks more realistic.. you need to go see an eye doctor

and yes i do realize that majority of you here dont give a damn about the graphics.. the rest of the gaming world does, if LFS wants to have big success and be up there on race tracks and being fully supported by rFactor, LFS is going to have to look.. good.. and that will bring more people into it, and make it hit headlines

Quote from XCNuse :

LFS has crap models, the cars in LFS have 1/4th the amount of polys cars do in today's gaming generation

Ah, so more polys == better models fewer polys == crap models
RIIIIGHT, I guess you don't really get the arguement for quality over quantity

Quote :

if you think lfs looks real lol.. you might need to get off whatever you're on

there are no actual effects in LFS at all period.. and thats what make it what i consider.. crappy graphics

So why are effects required for something to look 'real' or 'good' ?
You need to justify your claims that LFS looks crap with a little more than just a poly count !
C'mon lets hear in a bit more detail what it is thats wrong with how it looks - and I don't mean what tech it uses or how many polys it uses - thats not really very important - what is it about the balance of colours or the aesthetics of the car shapes...
To me it seems that in LFS all the objects in my view at any time seem to sit correctly together - they look like they are all part of the same environment. Very few games achieve this to the same level and it has nothing to do with Poly count and fancy custom shader coding. It has to do with an eye for subtlety, a desire for quality and a high level of aesthetic maturity.

For crying out loud, some new troll virus has spread over the Internet to our veteran players? You sound like freking ISI/rTracktor trolls we used to have, the same arguments and moaning how LFS won't ever make it big because it's either sounds or looks are bad and there isn't dx10 with the latest fancy shaders. How they are going to make the experience any better? Serious sims are about physics, without them you have nothing. Graphics come secondary until the physics are spot on, but still have to make decent framerate as lagging racing game is the worst game of them all.

Looks like the pre-patch hype is starting to build up again. Scawen hasn't released any test patches for a while, and it's almost a year from the latest incompatible. Community can't wait and is releasing it's frustration as the game is so crappy they can't stop playing it and it should be made better.


edit. Xnuce, those are arcade racers for platforms where graphics can be optimased to look great because if it works on 1 PS3 it will work on them all, which is not the case in the PC world. So no comparison, and do they have physics, I doubt.

aesthetic maturity? every space in the models are closed! you can't even get into the cars if there was one infront of you now, you'd have to break a windshield to do it

XCnuse, sorry, but you are talking bulls**t...
It doesn't look crap, it looks bloody REAL, yes, that's right, it looks REAL, not like a computer game, but like a simulator should look.
Cars look like they are really there on the track, not that i am Alice in Direct X wondwerland, but like i am really there, racing.

I know what i am saying here, i am graphic designer, and bit of a artistic soul, and i can tell you that LFS looks great. Photo realistic.
If blurred enviroment and over saturated textures are real to you, than i rest my case..

Quote from XCNuse :

and yes i do realize that majority of you here dont give a damn about the graphics.. the rest of the gaming world does, if LFS wants to have big success and be up there on race tracks and being fully supported by rFactor, LFS is going to have to look.. good.. and that will bring more people into it, and make it hit headlines

LFS will look good once it is 100% finished, complete, done. We are at the beta stage, its is a major project being worked on by 3 guys and they want to take LFS a certain way and once LFS is complete i bet that it will look just as good. You cant expect Scawen to upgrade the graphics every 2 years to keep up to date with other sims!! I think the graphics is the last thing that he will rewrite once the physics, sounds and other features are sorted.

There would be just no point to update the graphics now so in 3 years time when LFS is finished the final version will come out and look out of date again and having to redo all of the graphics again! It's understandable that a longterm and on going project such as LFS will be out of date with a few things due to other things being developed. I dont care if i was driving a lego car made out of only 10 polygons, if the physics are right and its playable then i am happy.

Yes the competition has increased over the year with xbox360 and ps3 coming out with sim titles who will just market their game with graphics and other crap but i have confidence in Scavier that they know which direction they want to take and i am sure it will be the right one. For now, yes i shall go back and race my unrealistic cars.

Gotta agree with Blackout 100%

mad

Quote from XCNuse :

people want stuff that looks real.. if it looks real.. it appeals to the senses and becomes more realistic in your mind, LFS can't do that because it looks .. like crap
you have to think about the senses that occur in games:
sound
sight
feel

so far LFS has only half of one of those, and that is feel, as tristan dubs "canned effects" who cares? if it feels right, it doesn't matter at all if it is done realtime or not, realtime doesn't make it more "realistic" most gaming teams have hundreds of programmers and whatnot; this is more of a dream for LFS than i can imagine will ever be a reality

LFS is definitely behind in some graphical details ATM, granted. However, there is nothing on the market that inherantly looks "more real", save for the missing details like proper suspension models / cockpits etc. (The ambience is what I refer to here) What would be more "real" - overdone oversaturated colors and cars as reflective as mirrors? Using better effects doesn't necessarily make it look more "real", although it could if done properly but I've never seen it on a PC. (XBOX Forza 2 looks damn "realistic" IMO)

LFS already has far more feel than anything else I drive (and I do drive other sims, even bought GTR2 & RBR, used to run Nascar as well but not anymore). Beyond that, anything can have "feel". TDU has a "feel" to it, and you can get used to it and calibrate your inputs & brain accordingly.

If the virtual-physical result is closer to a comparible real life scenario, than you are inherantly having a more "realistic" experience, at least in an objective point of view. It's not about recreating an impression of the experience, but the experience itself as closely as possible. You will then calibrate your senses to respond to the software regardless, and it'll be based on something that's not arbitrary which cannot be said for any other sim I've tried. Name one other sim that even attempts to model tire flex (not just anecdotally) and even do it visually.. Right, there isn't one. Name one other sim with a universal physical model, with official vehicle content that includes everything from a FWD mini to a F1 car, GTR cars, a variety of engine layouts, a decent attempt (but to be fixed) at turbo modelling etc. Anything that's previously been referred to as even remotely realistic focuses on ONE type of car, and they can't even get that right because the approach is wrong, fake, canned, whatever you want to call it - it just doesn't work. For the sensationalist emotionalist wow-factor type, sampled sounds and DX10 are the way to go. Those people don't need an accurate reproduction of vehicle dynamics to make them happy, and the point of LFS is lost on them.

I think people get frustrated think of what LFS COULD be. I also think sometimes folks need to step back and look at what we already have, that cannot be seen anywhere else!

LFS could've easily gone the Racing Legends route and been the best vapourware racing sim ever made, and we wouldn't see it until 2008/9/10. Why bitch about something that's not done? If I'd paid good money for LFS as-is and it was deemed finished; sure I'd be angry because it's NOT done. Look at the people paying $50 for TDU (which I will do in 4 days anyway) and it apparantly doesn't work half the time, but it sure looks nice.

LFS is also the most customizable piece of software of ANY kind that I've ever owned. With so much customizability in terms of usability, you can suit it to your exact taste with ease. It's far more mentally ergonomic than anything out there.

Sorry for the rant, this is just such a silly topic that repeats itself now & then. Nothing is ever resolved, I suppose it's nothing but a place to vent

Side A: "LFS Development is too slow, even though I like it it sucks and has missing things."

Side B: "Suck it up princess"

Chrome and eyecandy are worthless, computer rice that is just plain silly thing, LFS looks more than enough good, imo.

Quote from Madman_CZ :

LFS will look good once it is 100% finished, complete, done.

do you happen to know how many years that is to come?
i can take an estimate if you dont mind, alot of people expected S3 to be released this year, thats not going to happen, S3 wont be out until somewhere near 2009/2010 at best, by then i can't imagine many will still be here

Forza 2 looks okay, but so far GT HD looks the best there is right now (it looks damn good)
GT4 has okay sounds, but its like LFS when it comes to sounds, all it has is engine and tire squeels, there aren't other sounds you actually hear when you drive around, no suspension at all, no tread sounds, no fan sounds.. i really could go on for a while, the graphics dont bother me as much as alot of you think, its really just the aspect of everything, there is no immersion in the game to speak of at all, to me it still feels weird driving the XRT around (closest to what i drive)

thats what i'm saying about all of this, LFS has a very... very very very far ways to go in every part of the game, not it sucks period ... as you can tell, i'm damn glad i spent my money on this game

Quote from XCNuse :

do you happen to know how many years that is to come?
i can take an estimate if you dont mind, alot of people expected S3 to be released this year, thats not going to happen, S3 wont be out until somewhere near 2009/2010 at best, by then i can't imagine many will still

LOL

Who in their right mind thinks S3 will be released this year?

I think it's tight to get S2 Final out this year TBH

edit: I also note that S2 will also contain far more than they thought it would originally.

Quote from XCNuse :

do you happen to know how many years that is to come?
i can take an estimate if you dont mind, alot of people expected S3 to be released this year, thats not going to happen, S3 wont be out until somewhere near 2009/2010 at best, by then i can't imagine many will still be here

Well I don't see why a deadline should be given when LFS will be finished. Devs never really gave a clear deadline on the finished release of LFS so i dont see why we should suddenly expect them to give one. Yeah I agree with you that s3 will not be done before 2009/2010 although once the physics are sorted then ther is very little to do apart from work on eye candy maybe add a few tracks and few extra cars.

I also don't see why people who are here today will not be here in 2009/2010. I think many will be here and the few that will flock to other next gen sims who no doubt will look awesome just like GT HD does but I strongly believe that they will be back once LFS reaches s3 final whenever that is. The question remains though are 2 people (as victor isnt a graphic man) capable of getting the graphics up to GT HD's standart. In this case i find myself in a doubt. I can't really see a way that 2 guys can do what a team of people did in GT HD over few years on their own, but maybe i am not giving enough credit to Sca Er and they will come up with some awesome stuff. Maybe they have some plans to get a helping hand from somewhere to push LFS further and faster, but maybe not, i don't know.

But to say LFS sucks is just not justified.

mad

EDIT: A point BBT brought up above is that the devs are also thinking of new features to add as they go along and this will also delay the process slightly of suddenly Scawen will have a amazing brainstorm day and come up with another nifty feature he wants to add to the already few meters long list I bet he has!