Maybe on one computer. Probably wont work, just an idea. Have a computer with a fast videocard, have 2 monitors hooked up, open two different installs of lfs with different licences. one copy of lfs on one screen, one on the other, then start a local game, and see if you can join it. Just a Hyopthesis.
Hmm, it may be doable to use two different controllers, one for each instance of LFS, but there's still only one keyboard. If one player presses shift-s, for example, both cars will pit (and so on).
One thing I did notice last night when I tried this...
I connected my 2 G25's to my PC and started LFS, went to the OPTIONS menu and in the CONTROLLER area, at the top right of the screen, in yellow text it stated that 2 controllers were detected. Even if I calibrated and assigned axis and buttons to both, there was no where to go to select a second player offline.
Sure would be sweet if this could be added to the software...in my opinion anyway.
if you had two monitors set up. Have one instance of lfs on one and a different lfs on the other. that should fix the focus issue, and keep some things secret (gas amounts, setups, ect.) and a cheap 15-17 inch crt shouldnt be far out of reach for even the most unresourceful. again a decent video card would be ideal to run it, I watch tv on one monitor as i play lfs, surf the net,ect. with the other. i have a dedicated tv tuner, with a 7600gt oc. i cant see why this wouldnt work.
edit:make a program that associates one keyboard to one instance of lfs and another keyboard to the other instance of lfs. A cheap usb keyboard would do it. Bob could probably do it.
There are probably all sorts of solutions to this (short of building the feature into the software). My setup is my barrier (and I'm too lazy to dig into the programming and hardware mapping aspect). I have 2 Evolution Playseats with G25 wheels/pedals/shifter assemblies. My PC runs to my Panasonic 50" monitor, so a split screen is ideal. Colin Mcrae does it beautifully and my little nephew and friends love sitting in front of the same screen going head to head. Maybe one day LFS will release something like this. OR one day I can just win the lottery and buy my own open wheel formula car and do it for real!
It is quite possible, LFS sends out a warning though. But it still works. You obviously need two licenses to be able to connect both clients to online hosts.