Well, I am not going to check it out really but I am curious how about licenses from chassis manufacturers (like Panoz, Reynard, Dallara, Lola) for racing series with dedicated chassis or series itself (A1, GP2, F3000 or other lower series providing the car). They are more drivers’ championships than manufacturers’ - their publicity is based more upon drivers’ performance than worldwide companies’ logo promotion and clients' needs for specific car or racetrack.

After STCC broadcast I watched recently rCraptor ETCC promo – damn, that was really funny watching those no suspension heavy sponges sliding or flipped on the roof by unvisible force when exceeded 40deg vertical lean, heh, strange CoG placement (or I can mention GTR2 400hp mod cars that do not slide on dirt ). It would be easily visible for nonLFSers how LFS is technically ahead, even without visual hints from tyres temps, suspension movements and damage.

And the real proof would be winter races for series drivers to admit LFS is a race simulator

What about this kind of publicity?

Quote from Eldanor :

Argh, not again, I mean, I really don't understand some people point of view.

"LFS doesn't need real tracks": What? Of course you don't need a real track to make great races, but anyone who likes motorsports (and I think we are a lot here) would like to have some real tarmac to race on.

I'm starting to think it's a pretty fanboy attitude, just because other games have real tracks, they say LFS doesn't need them, and the same happens with sound, eyecandy, etc.

Come on, are you really saying to me you don't want to take the FZ5 out for a lap at Spa? Or the BF1 at Silverstone? (or whatever your favourite track is) I don't believe it

I AGREE

I agree also but this put things in prespective

Quote from BuddhaBing :

Out of curiousity, I contacted Silverstone Circuits Ltd and MotorSport Vision Ltd, the owners of Silverstone and Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Snetterton, Cadwell Park and Bedford Autodrome respectively, and asked whether they required any licensing agreements and/or fees to use the 3D likeness of their tracks in a software application.

There is a £35-45,000 licensing fee required for the use of the Silverstone circuit and a £10,000 per venue fee for each of the circuits owned by MotorSport Vision Ltd. Additional track hire fees would be assessed for access to the track for photography, surveying and so on.

So, there you have it.

Quote from KMSpeed :

I agree also but this put things in prespective

Yep, I guess the only viable option for small sim developers (other than unlicenced community mods) is to do some sort of deal to provide a custom version of the game for the track owners to use at events as some sort of barter/exchange.

Another problem that may already exist, but if not, will surely happen soon is that console developers will buy exclusive rights to certain tracks - in that case it wouldn't matter if you could get the cash together...

Quote from BuddhaBing :

Out of curiousity, I contacted Silverstone Circuits Ltd and MotorSport Vision Ltd, the owners of Silverstone and Brands Hatch, Oulton Park, Snetterton, Cadwell Park and Bedford Autodrome respectively, and asked whether they required any licensing agreements and/or fees to use the 3D likeness of their tracks in a software application.

There is a £35-45,000 licensing fee required for the use of the Silverstone circuit and a £10,000 per venue fee for each of the circuits owned by MotorSport Vision Ltd. Additional track hire fees would be assessed for access to the track for photography, surveying and so on.

So, there you have it.

Wow thanks alot, that was some interesting Information.

Looks like alot of small Tracks doesnt require license costs at all, while a GP Track costs really alot.
NetkarPro has Silverstone, Monaco,... without licensing the Track, they dont officially advertise it, but these Tracks are openly available. Hope to see a real Track someday in LFS aswell. While I think the tracks we currently have are excellent in Graphics and Layout, some real life Tracks is always nice in a Simulation.

There is no way I would want to have to put up with the inevitable picky nob who has nothing better to do with their time than drive around a RL track in LFS, find faults and report them on the forum, then whinge that there is no way you should be able to cut the chicaine at T3 as much as you can, and claim that LFS's physics is crap because the lap record in an RB4 is 0.7 seconds faster than the real life lap record in a Celica GT set in 1995.
That would happen too. Some people in here are like that.

The Devs would be crazy to put real life tracks in to LFS for this reason alone.

I on the other hand think it would be great if they created fantasy tracks inspired by RL ones.

Inevitably I have to point out that it's not our decision, and that it's likely to have been discussed between the various members of the developer team in the past. Further more, are the same old arguments actually going to sway any decision that has been made, which we may never actually know?

Knockhill simulated (Scotland) would be fun....I take my real life car (e46 M3) to track days there occasionally....it would be fun to see if I could beat my real life lap times on LFS. Which no doubt I would cos I drive round Knockhill like a pussy scared of wrecking my car.

Quote from farcar :

There is no way I would want to have to put up with the inevitable picky nob who has nothing better to do with their time than drive around a RL track in LFS, find faults and report them on the forum, then whinge that there is no way you should be able to cut the chicaine at T3 as much as you can, and claim that LFS's physics is crap because the lap record in an RB4 is 0.7 seconds faster than the real life lap record in a Celica GT set in 1995.
That would happen too. Some people in here are like that.

The Devs would be crazy to put real life tracks in to LFS for this reason alone.

You honestly would pay attention to those complaints?

Quote from farcar :

There is no way I would want to have to put up with the inevitable picky nob who has nothing better to do with their time than drive around a RL track in LFS, find faults and report them on the forum, then whinge that there is no way you should be able to cut the chicaine at T3 as much as you can, and claim that LFS's physics is crap because the lap record in an RB4 is 0.7 seconds faster than the real life lap record in a Celica GT set in 1995.
That would happen too. Some people in here are like that.

Keywords my freind.

RB4 and Celica in 1995.

FYI: Like Buddha contacted Silverstone, I went the other route and asked at the Sachsenring (wouldn't be surprised if hardly anybody outside Germany knows it) if it were possible to get the track licensed and what it would cost. All the ADAC (german automobile-club which runs it) would ask are a few "copies" of LFS for them to give away at competitions or lotteries. However, I doubt they could provide any valuable data of the track (didn't ask, because I didn't want to be too much of a hassle), so that's where money (and workload) becomes an issue again.

I guess you could generalise that: Licenses for big tracks that are run in F1 f.e. will be expensive, while not-well-known tracks will be cheap/no charge for the license itself, but obtaining data will be a problem. Plus, for the majority, driving on the Sachsenring will be no different to driving on a fictional track -- they don't know it, will never drive on it and will hardly ever see it on TV .

(I'd love to have Sachsenring, of course, as I'm planning on driving there at least once this year :tilt.

Quote from farcar :

There is no way I would want to have to put up with the inevitable picky nob who has nothing better to do with their time...

Yep, whatever you do or say on the internet, there's always at least one picky nob shouting you down... like for example if you suggest that real life tracks would be cool in LFS...

I just watched few on-board vids on Sachsenring and I must admit that the track certainly looks interesting.

http://video.google.com/videop ... amp;q=Sachsenring+onboard
http://www.sachsenring-circuit.com/video/onboard_lap.wmv

Quote from Hyperactive :

I just watched few on-board vids on Sachsenring and I must admit that the track certainly looks interesting.

http://video.google.com/videop ... amp;q=Sachsenring+onboard
http://www.sachsenring-circuit.com/video/onboard_lap.wmv

It does, doesn't it? It's rather hilly with interesting turn-combos and it's lay out like the landscape demanded it. Not like they poured out a mass of concrete somewhere in the desert on a perfectly flat plane. It's supposed to be very challenging, but unfortunately, besides the Moto GP no major racing series actually uses it, afaik.

Nice track the Sachsenring, love the descend and climb before the start finish straight.

Only ever seen it used for MotoGP though.........

The last 2 corners of the Sachsenring are quite hot

But I guess not a lot of tracks would mind free licensing. I think the main prob is closing the track and measuring every cm of it, which cost a lot of time, and time is money.

Mid-Ohio! Yay!

Quote from mikey_G :

But I guess not a lot of tracks would mind free licensing. I think the main prob is closing the track and measuring every cm of it, which cost a lot of time, and time is money.

Most smaller tracks in the UK have a restriction on how many days they can have racing taking place, or can only open on weekends, so thats not necesarily a problem

Quote from mikey_G :

The last 2 corners of the Sachsenring are quite hot

But I guess not a lot of tracks would mind free licensing. I think the main prob is closing the track and measuring every cm of it, which cost a lot of time, and time is money.

Hi. Why close the tracks and measure every cm of them? I work as an architect and I can´t help but thinking that track owners already have precise architectural/engineering loads of data about it and its surroundings. That information would be a necessary part of the deal, and there would be no reason for them to not share it. I think the main job is the fine tunig of the tarmac, and shouldn't be that hard.

I hope you can undertand my english and also my point of view.

How much does it even cost to do GPS scanning or anything similar to get the track surface info? The more precise the more time and more money at least... No idea of the actual quantities though

I would be happy to make Snetterton. I live close enough-ish to go and get photo's and I have some skill at making 3d models. As mentioned earlier in the thread there would be no licencing fee for Snetterton. I also love the track and would dearly love to race my favorite big track corner in LFS (Russell Bend).

I dont have much time right now, but it could be a project for me to sink my teeth into in the next few months when everything else settles down.

The question is, would the devs want it?

I emailed them previously about making a track gratis and got no reply.

Quote from Hyperactive :

How much does it even cost to do GPS scanning or anything similar to get the track surface info? The more precise the more time and more money at least... No idea of the actual quantities though

I doubt GPS scanning is the only way to do that. I guess you can get a very accurate track surface representation by simple telemetry analysis. And again, possibly, for free! Add this to the architectural/engineering data you already have and you have done it for free. In fact someone else has done it for you. Remember there are lots of ways for working things out.

Edit: heheh, I remembered a spanish sentence: "matar moscas a cañonazos" > "killing flies with cannon shots" This comes to my mind when I think of GPS/laser scanning.

Quote from AndroidXP :

I agree, Nürburgring is a two edged sword. I mean, I'd love to see that track included in LFS and it would draw in a good amount of new players, but it is an enormous amount of work for a track that will only be used in hotlapping or leagues. Just look at FE Black, or races with more than ten laps in general. On a public server you can expect an at least 50% dropout rate - the attention span of many people is just too short to bother with such long tracks/races.

But what a fantastic challenge
I'd be well up for contributing a few quid to that cause, but I suspect we're :banghead:

Quote from Becky Rose :

As mentioned earlier in the thread there would be no licencing fee for Snetterton.

Not true. See post #50 in this thread. I contacted MotorSport Vision Ltd, who own and manage Snetterton and several other well-known circuits in the UK, and asked about licensing requirements for the use of a 3D likeness of their tracks. They charge a £10,000 per venue licensing fee for each circuit plus additional fees to access the track for photography, surveying and so on.

Here's the relevant text from their email response: "Thank you for the enquiry regarding licensing the IP for MSV group of circuits. To licence our circuits we require a one off payment of £10,000 plus VAT for each venue for each game produced (multiple platforms permitted). In addition should you require access to the circuit to photograph, film or measure we require payment of the standard track hire fee for each day required."

What about - if licencing fees might be an issue - this for an idea.

It never ACTUALLY was used. It VERY nearly happened in 1969 - a street circuit in London.



Whilst this would be a crapload of modelling - it would be unique.

As for tracks to contact, maybe Rockingham, Knockhill and Lydden might be an idea.

The Rock has an oval, isn't owned by MotorSportsVision and has more layouts than Aston. (No exaggeration).

Knockhill is licenced (but doesn't) run in either direction. Therefore, it could be done in game in either direction, and it also has a rallycross track,

Mallory Park - has a short oval and various layouts. It doesn't host the BTCC now. It's not so heard of, meaning that all they would want would be a pint, pretty much.

Mantorp has been suggested, that circuit would add another drag strip.

Doesn't someone in the LFS neck of the woods live near Mosport? That isn't too heard of now. Mosport + LFS = Drool. They also have an oval, but that is off the main site.

Varano in Italy maybe?