As you know, currently in LFS, there are no settings for the details like low, medium, high, etc, like in other games, instead, there's shadows on/off, LOD, skies on/off, wheels on/off...
With my current hardware (Athlon XP 2500+, 512ddr, and Radeon 9550) i can play LFS with all those things ON and high, i have AA on 2X, and i use high res community addons including my own ones.. and i mostly have no problems(excpet with the large grids with 20+ cars, FPS can get bellow 20)..
But the problem is, if we get some graphical update in the future, many people couldn't play it, because i don't think that turning the LOD all the way down, switching the shadows off, etc would make that much of a difference, we need proper graphical settings, like LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, or some slider that actually do something (not like LOD slider), so that people with powerfull PC's could enjoy it in full details, and people with low end PC's could still play it..

This turned out in Improvement suggestion now , but my main question would be, how many of you could handle a better graphics, how many couldn't and how many would be willing to invest in better hardware in order to continue playing LFS?
I am definately for the third option (If devs don't manage to make better use of graphic detail settings), i would definately upgrade my PC for LFS, no question about it..
I could make a poll, why not..

i have a rather high end pc (a64 x2 4400 7800gtx 2 gigs) and still the game slows down to a crawl with many cars on screen so first and foremost i could handle a quicker engine that doesnt suffer as much with cars on screen

I think my PC would be fine if the graphics quality was increased.

Quote from Shotglass :

i have a rather high end pc (a64 x2 4400 7800gtx 2 gigs) and still the game slows down to a crawl with many cars on screen so first and foremost i could handle a quicker engine that doesnt suffer as much with cars on screen

Really? I'm using a four year old box with a 2600+ Barton chip in it, 9800 Pro and 512Mb RAM and the worst I get on a busy grid is about 20fps, the rest of the time I'm usually 60-80fps. That's with everything maxed and 4xAA. Nothing overclocked or anything like that.

with my machine at 1600*1200 (or 1920*1200 once i get my damned fw900 working again) i get around ~70-80 frames when im alone (8xaa 16x(crappy nvidia gf7)af) but it slows down to 20-30 with a bunch of cars on screen so its very similar to the performance you get and with both of our pcs im miffed how a few cars on screen can cause the frames to drop that much

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Really? I'm using a four year old box with a 2600+ Barton chip in it, 9800 Pro and 512Mb RAM and the worst I get on a busy grid is about 20fps, the rest of the time I'm usually 60-80fps. That's with everything maxed and 4xAA. Nothing overclocked or anything like that.

You wont be on that busy grid if you pass it on to a Norweigan driftor leader of a massive invading drifting thing like u said like, so , dont.

My equipment can easily handle better graphics, however the future may not be as simple as just being able to handle better graphics. I would assume that graphics, sound, RAM, CPU, and disk access speed would all be tested if the devs were to put all of their ideas straight into LFS right now. I wonder how many people's PCs could handle better graphics but not together with other improvements that could be made in the future to LFS? LFS is not particularly graphic-intensive considering the hardware that many of us are running these days, but I expect it might become more CPU and RAM and audio intensive as it evolves.
Currently, my PC wouldn't struggle in any of these areas if things were a bit more advanced and even a few small enhancements to graphics would make almost no impact on my frame rate. Dual core compatibility in LFS would be welcome though

Quote from Shotglass :

im miffed how a few cars on screen can cause the frames to drop that much

Well, probably cause there's so much going on graphically and physically with those cars around you.. I think that's the main reason why rFactor can handle so many connections (maybe i'm wrong), just look how simple the cars behave compared to LFS..
Cars in LFS are behaving properly, they roll, they dive, the tyres deform, basically the cars are THERE.. And that's a good thing, i don't want to give that up... but, sure, there must be a way to optimise this, it's nonsence for you to have same FPS with large grids as i do, and you have twice the better machine than i do..

well im running some serious post processing with those aa and af settings but still

roll or not if i correctly understand hardware vertex shading the main bit of the car (the body) should just be sent to the card with a few vectors and the cards does all the rest which cant possibly be that demanding

Quote from Shotglass :

with my machine at 1600*1200 (or 1920*1200 once i get my damned fw900 working again) i get around ~70-80 frames when im alone (8xaa 16x(crappy nvidia gf7)af) but it slows down to 20-30 with a bunch of cars on screen so its very similar to the performance you get and with both of our pcs im miffed how a few cars on screen can cause the frames to drop that much

That's bizarre. I'm running 1680 x 1050 here. There must be something wrong at your end to be getting the same performance as me from modern hardware.

I have a brand new computer (2 weeks old) so perhaps I shouldn't be talking about whether or not I'd be able to handle a graphics update.

I run LFS with the LOD at the new default #, 1280x1024, AA x16 (? or 8, whichever is highest) and never get below 90 FPS... I've got a E6300 1.83 GH/z C2D, 8800 GTX NVidia card and 2GB of DDR2 PC2 4200 RAM.. So.. I'm pretty much set on graphics for the next couple of years actually...

I think that a graphics setting would be great though, that would definitely help my poor old laptop that hardly runs LFS (Poor thing has a 900 mh/z Pentium 3 in it) run it a lot easier. I can't say this and back it up with facts but wouldn't allowing graphical settings to be changed take quite a chunk of code to do? Or could you just lower the pixel count/planes (Thats what I think they're called right? The triangles where colors are drawn) that are displayed on the screen... So confused.

For those people who can hardly run LFS, why don't you just lower the resolution that you run LFS at? If you lower your game all the way to 800x600 or even 640x480 I bet you could squeeze a couple more frames per second out of your machines, right?

its the aa and af ... without those i get something in the 150+ range

also accoring to the lfs bechmark database my systems doing just fine

Quote from Tomtheman70 :

For those people who can hardly run LFS, why don't you just lower the resolution that you run LFS at? If you lower your game all the way to 800x600 or even 640x480 I bet you could squeeze a couple more frames per second out of your machines, right?

bizzarely the res has little impact on performance in lfs bellow the 1024 mark

My PC was ninja when I had it built 4 or so years ago. It still handles LFS pretty well (testament to LFS' coding and to my hardware I guess) but if any graphic improvements required me to upgrade I probably couldn't spare the cash. There are plenty of other aspects of LFS I'd love to see upgraded before the graphics, however ...

ehehehhehe! aa ssf * 16 yeah! 22* 16 - 4 whopa zero icecles fridge freezer * 2, aa ff, kevs a sheep

Start making sense or we'll put you in that crooked home that locks up the old folks in the broom cupboard ...

Quote from Hankstar :

Start making sense or we'll put you in that crooked home that locks up the old folks in the broom cupboard ...

Is there LFS there ?

I can barely play lfs sometimes on servers with lots of objects (CLC or AutoX drift servers)

However I don't know what the devs did to W17 but I have a significant FPS gain of about 10-25fps.. which is great

i get quite low framerates if i am in last place on a 32man sever w/ current test patch of course i am running 1280x1024 w/ 4xAA and 8xAF. my system is probably considered lowend now though...

AthlonXP 3000@ 2.2ghz
1024mb ddr400 ram
x800gto flashed to 16pipelines AGP 8x
windows xp +
160gig sata drive w/ 70gigs of freespace
40gig eide main drive.

Quote from Gabkicks :

i get quite low framerates if i am in last place on a 32man sever w/ current test patch of course i am running 1280x1024 w/ 4xAA and 8xAF. my system is probably considered lowend now though...

AthlonXP 3000@ 2.2ghz
1024mb ddr400 ram
x800gto flashed to 16pipelines AGP 8x
windows xp +
160gig sata drive w/ 70gigs of freespace
40gig eide main drive.

Can you PM me how to flash my old x800GTO? I've always wondered how to open up those extra pixel piplines but I just gave up and switched over the NVidia. While I know the 8800GTX is leaps and bounds over the x800 I still loved that card but really wished it could push out a little more power for the money 2 years ago. That'd be great if I could flash my old card.

Quote from Tomtheman70 :

I have a brand new computer (2 weeks old) so perhaps I shouldn't be talking about whether or not I'd be able to handle a graphics update.

I run LFS with the LOD at the new default #, 1280x1024, AA x16 (? or 8, whichever is highest) and never get below 90 FPS... I've got a E6300 1.83 GH/z C2D, 8800 GTX NVidia card and 2GB of DDR2 PC2 4200 RAM.. So.. I'm pretty much set on graphics for the next couple of years actually...

I think that a graphics setting would be great though, that would definitely help my poor old laptop that hardly runs LFS (Poor thing has a 900 mh/z Pentium 3 in it) run it a lot easier. I can't say this and back it up with facts but wouldn't allowing graphical settings to be changed take quite a chunk of code to do? Or could you just lower the pixel count/planes (Thats what I think they're called right? The triangles where colors are drawn) that are displayed on the screen... So confused.

For those people who can hardly run LFS, why don't you just lower the resolution that you run LFS at? If you lower your game all the way to 800x600 or even 640x480 I bet you could squeeze a couple more frames per second out of your machines, right?

yowzas.... 8800GTX for a 1280x1024!

Yeah, that should handle LFS graphics.... forever...

max AA is 16 for the 8800s. You'd be a prime canidate for more resolution i imagine...

Quote from Gabkicks :

i get quite low framerates if i am in last place on a 32man sever w/ current test patch of course i am running 1280x1024 w/ 4xAA and 8xAF. my system is probably considered lowend now though...

AthlonXP 3000@ 2.2ghz
1024mb ddr400 ram
x800gto flashed to 16pipelines AGP 8x
windows xp +
160gig sata drive w/ 70gigs of freespace
40gig eide main drive.

Wow you have better Specs than me and you're considered low end? damn

Athlon 2500+ @ 1.8ghz
512mb DDR 333
128mb Nvidia 6200
131gb HD

Quote from srdsprinter :

yowzas.... 8800GTX for a 1280x1024!

Yeah, that should handle LFS graphics.... forever...

max AA is 16 for the 8800s. You'd be a prime canidate for more resolution i imagine...

I didn't build the computer for LFS. :P

My LCD can only go to 1280x1024 so I'm not really complaining about anything, besides, anything smaller than that and I wouldn't be able to do my work properly (Well, that's probably not true, but.. whatever)

I use my computer mainly for yearbook (I'm in charge of the school band yearbook) video editing (Home movies and the like for my family) and lastly gaming... So I just wanted something that had a lot of horse power and would be able to keep up with RAW image editing and pretty advanced games.

Quote from CSU1 :

Is there LFS there ?

Only Neo-Geo :eek:
Like I said, it's a crooked home.

how about "yes, I have a 3 year old PC and I get over 100fps"

some people expect software development to sit still for 10 years so they can still play on their dusty beige dinosaur that wouldn't fetch more than $5 at a flea market.

Quote from Burnzoire :

how about "yes, I have a 3 year old PC and I get over 100fps"

some people expect software development to sit still for 10 years so they can still play on their dusty beige dinosaur that wouldn't fetch more than $5 at a flea market.

Well, those some people could download LFS and play it flawlessly :P