There is always enough time and room to make LFS somewhat better
I have to edmit I bought GTR some days ago. I heard some nice things about it, especially for the sound. Installed the damn thing, downloaded "Nordscheiffe" circuit and thats about it. Nothing more was interesting. Its that much fun. Couldnt even register for online racing because the "@" cant be pasted in the game, how stupid is that:pillepall Its gonna end somewhere in ebay. Please dont get me wrong folks, I believe that some people like GTR, enjoy playing it and thats not a bad thing
I am not a fan of AI traffic, thats why LFS is my number one. Yes it has some bugs and yes the sound needs much improvement, but all games arent perfect and thats a FACT! Somehow I cant find a better simulation that offers me such pleasure of beeting some of you
Jeez you do alot of winging Delerue, we all have idea's about improvements for any sim, the fact is that the Devs involved with LFS do more updates, bug fixes, and improvements then any other sim i have ever used, to be honest people who start a thread off like you did, and complain so much usually means two things, 1/ they want to be noticed, 2/should sod off if you dont like it, and winge else where, you don't even have a S2 licence..get a grip man.
People generally don't understand that LFS is a game for serious racers.
Whether that be due to the fact that it's not heavily advertised to give that impression, or the fact that a couple of 12 year olds find it on the internet and tell their mates etc etc. I don't know how this can be changed in the short run.
Also this game has a community which is far easier and accesable for the average user than any other game, hence why you can get the odd idiot posting.
ISI is working on a patch for rFactor. That is a fact. Then nothing has been done YET???? Where are you coming from dammit?? LFS S2 Alpha has been released months before rFactor and nothing has been done in here either. We only get language patches which, even though can be important if you want to get a greater userbase, are not quite as important as fixing the aero model which allows for exploits, or adding sounds like the differential sounds in the cars that need it or the shifting sounds. Oh and that's all talking Scawen-work. We don't even know what Eric does (if he does anything at all, but let's not get silly, it's his job).
I mean I'm like 100% sure ISI will get their first rF patch out before LFS gets a patch out that does anything useful at all that actually improves gameplay.
Don't get me wrong, I like LFS and I even help running a league for it. It is my sim of choice, but sometimes I get a feeling of nothing being done. IMO there's a great lack of both feedback and speed in Eric's work. We know pretty much what Scawen is up to, but not Eric. We never know.
Errr... I'm thinking - I can't think of any reason why you can't like LFS. Think about this: GTR may be simulated farther than LFS is currently, however, everything in LFS is simulated better (tyre physics for example - except you don't even know how those work in LFS, so let me elaborate...). Each tyre has an inner, middle and outer temperature (same as GTR so far), but where GTR falls back is the fact that LFS has 48 different spots on the tyre, who's temperatures are taken (16 over the circumference X 3 along the surface of the tyre). Then the pressure exerted on each of those points is calculated as a function of camber, load etc etc. Then the grip that the tyre has with its current temperatures and pressures is calculated, so grip and pressure varies when you go over a flatspot. GTR uses a table of values - which do you think is better?
Can you please show us this so we become as "enlightened" as you are?
EDIT: By the way, if you are talking about someone that SimBin payed to say that GTR is the best thing out there think about this: your money (you are buying the game) is going to pay for someone to say that that game is better... value for money, eh? Where do I sign?
Lets clear the three feedbacks up one by one (now read this slowly...).
Sound: LFS's sound engine is mapped to the engine's real-time piston movements and the explosions hence occuring. This means that you know exactly what your engine is doing at any one time. If you listen really hard when racing GTR you can hear the samples overlapping one another. LFS may fall back in terms of effects (cog-swop sounds etc etc), but those aren't really feedback - they are just there to make you feel a bit more like you are in the car. Nothing one cannot live without. The tyre squeal sounds are perfectly audiable and very informative - despite hearing all sounds from the front you can still tell which ones come from the rear tyres and which ones from the fronts. When I play GTR I have no idea if the tyre squeals come from front or back and how much grip each tyre has and how much of it it is using. And about the crash sounds... who gives a shit? If you crash your car, the race is over - there is meant to be no more information in those than a simple "your race is over". So what I basically conclude (and I am not making you agree, this is my oppinion), GTR has a lot of ear-candy but no real information comming through the sounds. Fools will be blinded by the ear-candy and will convince themselves that they are being sold a better product. Anyone using the sounds as feedback will prefer LFS's plainer but more informative sounds.
Force Feedback: LFS has far better damper force feedback than anything out there at the moment - GTR admitedly has better road feedback, but if you know the track, that little bit of extra road feedback doesn't really mean that much. The damper feedback is what tells you what the car is doing - the road feedback just tells you if you are on grass or tramac. No real issues here IMO - if I had to choose between LFS's Force Feedback and GTR's I would take LFS's.
Graphics: WHAT? LFS has graphics feedback issues?
:pillepall
GTR and all those simply have better shaders and lighting - nothing that affects the feedback from graphics. In fact - LFS's graphics are a lot less edgy than some other games', and that is what makes them informative. The tyre smoke in GTR is pathetic by the way, so don't even go there. The interiors of cars aren't that great - agreed, but what does that have to do with feedback?
I really thought I should bring this up again before I ended off:
"and much more: the tyres physics and the aero physics are insane."
LFS has _complete_ tyre physics - only weather effects aren't simulated for them but multiple samling points, pressures, blow outs, punctures, tyres getting dirty... there is no comparison between GTR's table of values and this. Aero physics will be sorted out very very soon I think - it is a know bug and is being exploited setupwise. Scawen is busy on making LFS a sim that has full language support (not something many can boast) and that looks like it will soon be finished. The first patch that changes the physics will also fix this. Does any other sim out there even have suspension damage simulated? (I know that most of them have the wheel alignment damage down but I'm not too sure about the suspension.)
To be quite honest, what these three guys have achieved on their own deserve's a bit of a break from it. I wouldn't for one minute begrudge Eric having a break, even if Scawen is back working hard. Just be careful not to judge people without having enough information to back it up.
Also some of the latest patches like P9 don't only accomodate language fixes.
GTR/GTL/etc pixel cars are fake.
Fake LFS cars are as real as any other pixel cars.
I said they can't be rationaly compared as pertains to taste. I'm saying they're apples and oranges. Find an english idioms dictionary.
To answer your question, I prefer neither MIDI nor WAV to a thorough real-time model rather than something canned like phased-in and -out WAVs or realtime MIDI polyphonics, which is where LFS stands at present, according to the same plan that'll eventually have it doing both real-time and "WAV" quality as you simply put it.
Circle? Sound might be too "bad" for your ears, but your brain should recognize it is the best choice in terms of prioritizing the constituent modules summing LFS. Each thing in its own time. A matter of Design. That was the plan from day one as far as I can tell.
I'm not defending it, nor saying it doesn't have enough money.
I'll reiterate one last time: GTR is a different animal. You're saying Velociraptors are lesser predatory species as a whole because they come into the world as eggs, rather than autonomously locomotive as zebras do.
Yes I play it, what's your point?
46$ is scandalous? What are you complaining about? No one's forcing you to pay.
I'd argue but your english isn't making sense to me, sorry.
All I'm proving is the inconsistencies in what you're saying. You're free to like what you wish. Vice-versa, you won't get far telling others what they should like, or telling them what they're doing or liking is "wrong" (a moral value btw) unless you show undeniable proof.
Yes it's about taste, and arguing the implications of this to you is tedious.
"It"'s an alpha of the second of three developmental tiers.
Apples and oranges. GTR is finished, wasn't designed with the same goal or through the same approach, nor catered to the same audience.
Eric's work is surprise stuff - examples? UF GTR... FZ GTR... both came out of nowhere. And my guess would be that he is working on the rally pack that will be realeased after S2, which would indeed be another surprise but I honestly have no clue what the next surprise from him will be and I like that...
We shall see when the first test patch with updated physics comes from Scawen - if you have been keeping up with the language stuff it is near completion.
Is being able to do 3D models myself , my own textures and either put them in a game engine or render, and knowing the time it takes to do such things enough information about it to be entitled to complain? Oh and I'm not really fast either. RMachucaA is a pro and he's modeling much much much faster than me still.
Here a sample. A steering wheel. Took maybe 4 hours including texturing and making the textures.
This has no relevence, how much time and effort do you think went into this game?
4 hours?
Without meaning to be rude, you made a steering wheel. They made an entire game!
Now I'm not saying I know anything about programming, I know nothing, the fact is they put months of work into this game and people are complaining nothing is being done atm. That annoys me tbh.
Yep, and as you go along development, the more software (code or content) you add, the more complex potential problems become.
This might not be obvious unless you've coded yourself.
When all's said and done, this is the bottom line:
Everyone is doing what they want, both devs and "paying customers" (as smugly as some put it), and Eric & co want to design their game as they see fit. They may make certain choices to accomodate the intended customers' expectations, such as not taking a century or using customer's cash to vacate to the Bahamas every other day, but as long as they aren't clearly misleading anyone, where's the beef?
It's their game and unless they're failing their promises, rants are undue.
This wheel looks better because it is rendered and not in-game. If a game could spend as much time rendering each wheel/car/tree/piece of grass/you name it, imagine the PC you would need.
EDIT: Oh, looking at it again - it doesn't really look better than the Cromo wheel in LFS. It looks rather flat actually - the button on the front doesn't bulge out and it doesn't look right. No offence.
How is this "knowing anything programming" relevant at all? We're talking of the 3D works in LFS right now. Not Scawen's job of programming. Don't confuse that.
My point was that if only 4 hours had been spent on stuff like that (stuff like that, which includes remapping cars (which the LXs and the RB4 still need to be) and other little tasks like that, or adding bolts to the wheels (a bolt is not quite something hard to model, much easier than a hood pin, which the GTR cars already have)) it would add an edge to LFS. A thing that shows greater attention to detail. Or even that statement is wrong. The cars have that, there are hood pins and wipers and stuff, it's more a lack of consistency in the attention to detail shown.
@Axus: you want a wireframe shot? The button does bulge out. Look closer again. The rest is flat because the reference pics showed me it was flat.
Edit: oh and do you want me to mention the suspension arms of the single seaters?
Bear in mind I'm no artist; how many polygons is in that wheel? I'd hazard a guess its fairly high-ish...
I think you'll find that LFS could be higher quality - but in doing so LFS will be locking out the lower end of their potential market again. If you're part of the LFS team, do you want to keep the market as large as possible, or do you want to restrict it?
Yes, its possible that LFS could be more beautiful, but its not planned for this stage of LFS. Its a case of getting it working properly before optimising and refining it.
Scawen explained this, in person, at the LFS meet. Eric's work cannot be applied to new patches, because it makes all previous patches incompatible, and a new release of the server and the client is required. A large number of the models cannot simply be replaced willy-nilly. As a result his work is added in major patches. He does more work than I think we give him credit for.
Edit:
Victor I'm loving this quick edit feature. Its ****ing handy.
Ok, then please render some tracks (with ideal line alpha layer, as in LfS, and don't forget about the variants of one track!), a few cars (with selectable driver, working wheel and suspension in mind), trees and other sorroundings, people and so on...
I forgot to say that all that should NOT be based on real stuff (maybe the props, because I'm a nice guy )
Ah thanks! Finally a useful reply to my post. Glad to learn that. That explains a bit better. Makes sense too.
For the record, that wheel is 1502 polys. Not "high poly", still suitable for a game engine but certainly higher than the 406 polys of the FOX steering wheel of course.
@bbman: a track isn't "hard" to do. It's a loft. What's hard is the terrain and objects around it. Getting a realistic feel of it. Eric does a great job at that. It's the cars that I'd like to see improved if you didn't notice in my posts that I'm pretty much only talking about cars. On the other hand, once the track is modeled, considering Eric has many textures by now, I believe the progress of some parts of his work should normally gain in speed as he doesn't have to do everything from scratch all the time.
There you go, backs up my point about knowing sweet fa about the whole process of game development.
However I spotted in a later post "finally a useful reply", I'd be careful not to be rude, I'm merely adding my voice to the argument. Not being offensive in anyway.
I'm not trying to de-grade your work, just saying that you have spent that time on a wheel, imagine that on a whole game. Takes a long time right? Hence why the dev's deserve a break instead of people jumping on the bandwagon of asking for improvements asap. Let them do their work and you do your's is my philosophy.
Damn Karl - I was going to explain how Eric is working FULL TIME (like Scawen and Victor) on improving LFS.
I don't know, but I expect that we'll be seeing a physics/incompatible patch fairly soon (fairly being a relative term, as it will take time for Scawen to code the fixes once the lagnuage stuff is finalised). However, I'm confident that by the new year LFS will be alsmost unrecognisable from what we have now - better 3D models, better tyre physics, less track/aero bugs etc etc.
I DO NOT KNOW THIS, THIS IS MERELY EDUCATED GUESSWORK, based soley on what Scawen has said and typed over the last few months...
I too suspect an incompatible patch not too far away but...
That's funny educated guesswork to me, either that or your eyesight is really bad. Fixing a few physics bugs and tweaking of car models is hardly going to make LFS seem like a new game (while appreciated all the same).
Oh and I don't think tyre physics are ever going to be drastically different to what we have now since they're just not that far off. We know the circumstances under which there is most disparity but the rest of the time few people would complain on the general feel.
Oh, and sorry for killing your excitement, I forgot, mentally 5 and all. Santa isn't real either.
Santa isn't real either. 