Quote from George Kuyumji :

It doesnt "need" it, but it should of course have one. Any serious Simulator should have a real Track.

I don't understand that. First you say LFS doesn't need a RL track, and then you say that it should of course have one to be a serious simulator. It's quite contradictory if you ask me.
I wouldn't mind a RL in LFS, but the reason as to why it is a "necessity" to some really escapes me.

Quote from Jakg :

Its a nice track, but a better idea would be Scwarzwald, a mythical track set in the German Black Forest with huge elavation changes

Give it a better mythical name. Even the name Blackwood reminds very on the Black Forest.

Quote from joen :

I don't understand that. First you say LFS doesn't need a RL track, and then you say that it should of course have one to be a serious simulator. It's quite contradictory if you ask me.
I wouldn't mind a RL in LFS, but the reason as to why it is a "necessity" to some really escapes me.

Because of the word Simulation, not semi-fantasy land simulator. A simulation is an imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system.

Quote from joen :

It's quite contradictory if you ask me.

I don't think it's contradictory at all. It just implies that LFS is no serious racing simulator, which is true.
Right now LFS compares very well to CounterStrike. Oh no, CS is more realistic, it doesn't allow you to respawn until next round.

Vain

I'd like to see it as I'd like a realistic simulated driving environment in which to learn the course for when I go. I've played it on GT4 and PGR3 but it's useless trying to take it seriously.

I don't get all the people moaning saying it would be useless for racing on. Well obviously, but that's not what it's about. It's the Mecca of roads for one, and the Ring is all about fastest lap. That's pretty much the point of it I thought.

Plus there's the southern ring. The full thing, or just the north ring could be just one layout. You've always got the south one for "proper" races.

+1 for me and if it was a licencing issue I'd chip in with funds.

Quote from CSU1 :

Because of the word Simulation, not semi-fantasy land simulator. A simulation is an imitation of some real thing, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviors of a selected physical or abstract system.

Gotta love Wikipedia.

Thats exactly the point people are missing here, and with the topic on bikes in LFS. There will never be a sim that you can race with then go to a real track and it be 100% the same. Peoples opinions of whats a real sim and what isnt is just that, their opinions. People say the Gran Tourismo series ISNT a sim, but yet it sold millions to people that think its a sim. Are millions of people wrong?

After so many sims and racing the same tracks over and over, I like the fantasy aspect of LFS. Chances are, there are very few real tracks Id drive in LFS even if they were made...definately wont be on the ring.

If you could be racing the Nürburgring or any real track in real life on a regular basis, why would you be spending all your time in front of the computer on a simulator...thats just stupid.

Quote from Motordirex :

If you could be racing the Nürburgring or any real track in real life on a regular basis, why would you be spending all your time in front of the computer on a simulator...thats just stupid.

That's just stupid, because no I can't. I can afford a £24 licence and £50 wheel, but I can't afford regular trips and time off to visit germany and spend hours on the ring.

Also, why would you be so against the implementation of a track you perhaps wouldn't use? Are you saying there should only be one opinion of what tracks should be there? Or that you regularly and equally use every single layout in there already? Perhaps we should remove some? Perhaps we should ditch the rallycross tracks, along with the skidpad because I never use them. Just because you wouldn't use it, doesn't mean nobody else will, and there are ALOT of people that would use it, myself included.

Does no-one else here just sometimes pick up LFS and drive for no reason other than the love of driving? The ring is pretty much the ultimate B-road, and is now a baseline for any reputable sports car. I'd love to be able to whisk an LX6 around it for nothing more than fun, while learning the most famous toll road in the world.

Quote from EeekiE :

That's just stupid, because no I can't. I can afford a £24 licence and £50 wheel, but I can't afford regular trips and time off to visit germany and spend hours on the ring.

Also, why would you be so against the implementation of a track you perhaps wouldn't use? Are you saying there should only be one opinion of what tracks should be there? Or that you regularly and equally use every single layout in there already? Perhaps we should remove some? Perhaps we should ditch the rallycross tracks, along with the skidpad because I never use them. Just because you wouldn't use it, doesn't mean nobody else will, and there are ALOT of people that would use it, myself included.

Does no-one else here just sometimes pick up LFS and drive for no reason other than the love of driving? The ring is pretty much the ultimate B-road, and is now a baseline for any reputable sports car. I'd love to be able to whisk an LX6 around it for nothing more than fun, while learning the most famous toll road in the world.

Point one: theres an IF at the beginning of that sentence. IF I lived closer to my local track I know Id be on it more. So sim in the world can replace real racing

Point Two: this thread was to determine who want the ring, no? And you are correct in saying there are tracks in LFS I use more, but that doesnt mean to bin them...now your being silly. I said it wouldnt matter to me because I like the new refreshing fantasy tracks over the driven to death tracks of past sims.

Point three: agreed, but MY choice just wouldnt be the ring and I prefer the company of others. If I want a Sunday drive, I'll get in my car.

1) I know there was an if, but it's just a redundant sentence. The fact we're all on a racing sim forum suggests we like using a racing sim, and are not spending all our time on race tracks where there'd be no need for such a sim.

2) The second point wasn't aimed just at you, but the people who seem to quite active against the idea, rather than saying it doesn't interest them and leaving it there, or not contributing to the thread at all. It just seems a bit selfish. I never use the ring, or will understand people who do but that doesn't mean I want it removed, or would campaign against it being put in in the first place. The more the merrier.

3) I don't have an LX6 to take on a Sunday drive. Again, back to the point of simulation, free from death, petrol prices and the rozzers.

Quote from Motordirex :

Are millions of people wrong?

Unequivocally

Quote from Motordirex :

Are millions of people wrong?

Yeah without question as I was one of them. It's just a natural thing due to the exposure it gets.
It's not so much you think GT4 is perfect, it's more about not knowing there anything better out there. Compared to NFS, Ridge Racer etc, it DID seem like somewhat of a simulator. Also bear in mind alot of the Playstation Generation from the early ones weren't even driving yet. I certainly wasn't

Quote from EeekiE :

Yeah without question as I was one of them. It's just a natural thing due to the exposure it gets.
It's not so much you think GT4 is perfect, it's more about not knowing there anything better out there. Compared to NFS, Ridge Racer etc, it DID seem like somewhat of a simulator. Also bear in mind alot of the Playstation Generation from the early ones weren't even driving yet. I certainly wasn't

I agree, and I also was caught out at first. GT5 will also do the same with the masses. May not be up to snuff as far as a real sim, but the slicker then shit graphics and all those pretty JGTC cars will help the game sell millions.

Now my GT series only gets use by my 7 and 8 year old boys...that tells you how much of a sim it really is...or that my kids are f@#king brilliant!

There is no contradiction in what I said.

LFS doesnt NEED real Tracks, because it is doing GOOD without them, BUT it would be GREAT if LFS would have real Tracks.

Lets not kid ourselfs, we would all immediately download a LFS representation of a real Track as soon as it would be available.

Following some LFS Fans logic, we should ask for the Raceabout and the BMW F1 car to be taken out of the Sim, because we dont want representation of real life things.

Quote from iSkewl :

Some say they wouldn't want Nurburgring, however 90% of the LFS world would murder for it.

I think that somehow we should start a project to get this track into LFS. There are many willing developers out there I'm sure, and if money is an issue I can't imagine how many thousand of people would donate even a simple 10 dollars.

1) What does everyone think?
2) If it'll cost money to have the rights to use it, what would that be?
3) If you'd be willing to be a part of this project or atleast talk about maybe having it someday, please post.

Nurburgring may be long, intense, and big for LFS drivers. But, think of the simulation! This would truely be an intensly exciting way to test the inner workings of LFS's simulation capabilities.

AND: As well as a chance for all of us racers, drifters, F1 drivers, and wanna be's, to finally practice the legend of nurburgring at home! Who knows, maybe we can beat some world records?

Back to the point. ^+1

Quote from boosterfire :

I think that one point that nobody has talked about yet is that Eric definitely has more important thing to work on (i.e. stuff that he should have done in the last year).

That said, I agree that driving on the Nurburgring would be quite an experience, but something tells me that it would be too long, and too hard with LFS physics to actually be interesting. And as other people said, you would be pretty much alone all the time on the track, which would lead to boredom.

To be honest, I'd prefer original tracks, but more importantly, interiors for the GTRS

Too hard with physics to be interesting? What?
Original...like a real track? or.......

real tracks are certainly appealing. it's fun to watch a race on TV and actually recognize the corners having driven them in a game, and i often wish that i could drive the LFS cars on the GTR tracks (because the GTR cars are undrivable, imho).

but i also understand how impractical it is to have real tracks in LFS at this point. adding content that doesn't directly relate to the development of the game-engine is a waste of time. ie, i would only expect to see a new track in lfs if it contained a feature that tested some new physics. furthermore, working in the software development biz myself, i know how time consuming it is to integrate code branches back into the mainline, and with such a small dev team working on the core functionality, having "help" from the community would actually slow them down.

so as much as i would like to see real tracks eventually, i'll wait patiently for the game-engine to be finished first.

Quote from evilgeek :

real tracks are certainly appealing. it's fun to watch a race on TV and actually recognize the corners having driven them in a game, and i often wish that i could drive the LFS cars on the GTR tracks (because the GTR cars are undrivable, imho).

but i also understand how impractical it is to have real tracks in LFS at this point. adding content that doesn't directly relate to the development of the game-engine is a waste of time. ie, i would only expect to see a new track in lfs if it contained a feature that tested some new physics. furthermore, working in the software development biz myself, i know how time consuming it is to integrate code branches back into the mainline, and with such a small dev team working on the core functionality, having "help" from the community would actually slow them down.

so as much as i would like to see real tracks eventually, i'll wait patiently for the game-engine to be finished first.

Quote from evilgeek :

real tracks are certainly appealing. it's fun to watch a race on TV and actually recognize the corners having driven them in a game, and i often wish that i could drive the LFS cars on the GTR tracks (because the GTR cars are undrivable, imho).

but i also understand how impractical it is to have real tracks in LFS at this point. adding content that doesn't directly relate to the development of the game-engine is a waste of time. ie, i would only expect to see a new track in lfs if it contained a feature that tested some new physics. furthermore, working in the software development biz myself, i know how time consuming it is to integrate code branches back into the mainline, and with such a small dev team working on the core functionality, having "help" from the community would actually slow them down.

so as much as i would like to see real tracks eventually, i'll wait patiently for the game-engine to be finished first.

What do you mean by integrating code branches back into the mainline?

Quote from George Kuyumji :

Lets not kid ourselfs, we would all immediately download a LFS representation of a real Track as soon as it would be available.

Yes, me too. But we would all immediately download a new fictional track as soon as it was available as well. So no big difference there.

Quote :

Following some LFS Fans logic, we should ask for the Raceabout and the BMW F1 car to be taken out of the Sim, because we dont want representation of real life things.

...please actually try to understand what is said. Neither me or anyone is saying that there should be no real life things in LFS, let alone be taken out. Some people just don't see real life based content as a necessity. Your twisting a statement completely to the other extreme, not following some members' logic. Or can you point me to a post in this thread of someone saying real life cars to be taken out?

Would I like the ring or any other RL track in LFS? Sure, the more content, the better. Do I feel LFS is incomplete without them? No.

Quote from CSU1 :

What do you mean by integrating code branches back into the mainline?

to simplify for non-devs, i'll use an example.

say someone publishes a template for a skin. you take that template, and add your own logos and stripes etc to it. meanwhile, the person who made the template makes a fundamental change to it (change the size of the radiator, for example). in order for your new skin to work with the new template, somebody will have to go back and redo a bunch of work.

But that would apply to any track currently being used.

"Some people just don't see real life based content as a necessity."

No-one does, if they did they wouldn't have even bothered with LFS, but that doesn't mean people should be pounced on for asking for a real track. I'd love to see a "real" track in LFS just so I can master it and then take a track day there, and I'd love to see the lap times people will be getting with the various fictional LFS cars. It would put them into perspective somewhat then. Especially with the 'ring. Which is essentially soley about what time you can do while soaking up the views and having a nice b-road style thrash instead of a flat repetitive track.

Quote from EeekiE :

But that would apply to any track currently being used.

yes, it would, which is all the more reason for the devs to be careful about how much content they add themselves, let alone allowing the community to add content.

Quote from EeekiE :

No-one does, if they did they wouldn't have even bothered with LFS, but that doesn't mean people should be pounced on for asking for a real track.

Who's getting pounced on? People are just expressing their thoughts and opinions about it. If that happens to be different from other people's opinion, then so be it. It has nothing to do with pouncing though. I just don't like to see my words twisted.

In which case you agree entirely with the original post. It just didn't seem that way.

As everyone who's sticking with LFS simply cannot see real content as a necessity, but they still would like some real tracks.

But just to clarify, I'd sooner wait for it to be done in-house, than be hacked in/done badly by some 3rd party.