This is a suggestion for way down the road, once we have variable weather that is able to encompass most real life driving conditions (i.e., probably S3 final, sad to say).

The idea:

The devs could assign each track in LFS a set of GPS coordinates corresponding to a similar location in the real world (e.g., rural UK, city UK, Jamaica, Kyoto). Then, much as in flight sims, the weather in-game could be determined by live weather reports from those coordinates in the real world (delivered via the master server, I suppose).

There would have to be a server-side option to toggle it on or off for each server, of course, because who wants to log in and find they can't drive because Aston is under three feet of water? Still, it could add a ton of realism for leagues and the like.

I remember when I posted this idea back in RSC, let me see if I can find it.
(just for references)

-Edit-
Well, whatever RSC is being retarded as usual, nikimere has already pointed out this has come up several times, if RSC works I'll try to find that thread again.

something like this has been mentioned many times before.
+1

Hah, yeah, I just did a search (after posting the thread, of course) and found that there was already at least one other thread with this idea posted this year. Oops.

Well, as a first step you could hardcode rain on UK servers

Quote from AndroidXP :

Well, as a first step you could hardcode rain on UK servers

And snow on Swedish and Finnish servers. Right, jakg?

I remember this being suggested before, and I'm not convinced it would be a good idea. It'd mean certain tracks (like Blackwood) would be almost always wet. And others (like Fern Bay) would mostly be warm and dry. Or possibly tornado.

Basically, I just don't think the weather would vary enough from location to location to make it a worthwhile addition - you'd be just as well to hard code specific conditions to that track.

I think it's a cool idea, but I agree with Dajmin, in that I'm not sure how well it would actually work out. For example, I usually spend more time on LFS during the winter when it's crappy out, and for those of us who do (if we live in the Northern Hemisphere at least!) we may be driving UK-based tracks in a lot of rain and not much sun.

FEL, you're wrong, it'd rain IKEA in Swedish servers.

Not necesarily Dajmin, I doubt every server would be using realtime weather.
I might be confusing this thread with the one back in RSC, that thread I suggested making it an option, which it would have to be pretty much. The best game I can compare to how this system should work is the latest Flight Simulators which have realtime weather. Also in FS you can set it to whatever you want, and in other racing games you can tell the weather to be random, rainy, change (dry to rain or vice versa), etc.

/me wonders: Think we could set it to hurricane weather in FE ? :cry:

I'd definitely prefer it if it was an option, and I think if the devs looked into it at some stage that's what they'd do.

Quote from Dajmin :

I remember this being suggested before, and I'm not convinced it would be a good idea. It'd mean certain tracks (like Blackwood) would be almost always wet. And others (like Fern Bay) would mostly be warm and dry. Or possibly tornado.

Basically, I just don't think the weather would vary enough from location to location to make it a worthwhile addition - you'd be just as well to hard code specific conditions to that track.

I guess you've never visited the Caribbean, eh? It's mostly bright sunshine with occasional (but pretty much daily) torrential downpours. Fern Bay at least would be quite varied in its weather. And probably slicker and scarier than it already is when the sun's out. Hah.

I imagine Kyoto would be quite variable, too. and I refuse to imagine that the UK is always wet.

I'm envisioning this mostly for hardcore league use, but it would probably also be fun for people who are into the Caribbean Cruise sort of thing.

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

and I refuse to imagine that the UK is always wet.

It is. Any footage that might want you to believe otherwise is photoshopped! You know, to fool the tourists...

:d

Provided it can manually be set to a specific setting, +1 for the option - a wet league would be a good idea.

I think it's a brilliant Idea, +1

I like the idea. Another method could be setting the time and weather based on server location.

Big +1 to the setting of the server location. I'd hate to want to run somewhere and it be raining all the time because of where the track is "said" to be at. This way, those of us who frequent US servers will get weather more to what we are accustomed do and those on the UK servers will get what they are accustomed to, for example.

When I fly online with FS9, I always have real time weather running.

I think t'would be much better for LFS to have its own "climate". So the weather doesn't depend on the real world, but everyone on each server using the "LFS Climate" would be experiencing the same weather.
"You shoulda seen it here last night, man, it was pissing down!" (etc)

That way the devs could have whatever weather pattern they liked and have mini seasons and so on, perhaps.

Quote from duke_toaster :

Provided it can manually be set to a specific setting, +1 for the option - a wet league would be a good idea.

That's exactly the wrong way to do it but unfortunately the only one we have now... There should be NO options about weather... Either base it on real weather on a specific point on earth or better, make it random...

When was the last time you raced on a server other than clear & no wind? And when was the last time you switched the weather outside your house?

Personally, i agree with sinbad's idea of a GLOBAL weather for LFS. Like, maybe have it load up what the weather is like/predicted to be, with a cool "map" of some sort, updating every 5-30 minutes or so, but still random, and having it happen to all the servers.

Here's a checklist of stuff i see that could make it work, from a simple "i only know the basics of coding but i'm still taking classes so give me a year and i might understand how hard it is to take in our whining" view.

1. Global Weather for "Areas" where the tracks MAY be (like an LFS map of some sort. Then again, eye candy isnt always that great) that change over time, maybe running off data from an international weather web site or something.

2. Have this weather FORCED on all internet servers. Meaning that when that server is created, or loads a track, it loads data from the master server that tells it that it's raining... then again, having a constant random weather might make the master server overload and such. but its a thought.

3. Allow people in lan/offline games to be able to choose between weather for practice, but mainly because if they're on lan or offline they arnt connecting to the master server

4. At least get rain in at some point.

5. For the changing weather, maybe you can make the server check every 10 minutes or so for a few lines of code like "PRESENTweather = Light Showers " and, since i only know visual basics and javascript, some like
"If blah blah blah then blah blah blah"
i dont know.. =/ just if you did SOMEHOW implement, don't do what EA did in "NASCAR SimRacing" where when the weather changed one moment it was rainy, the next perfectly sunny.... in a split second... for it to be real it'd have to change softly over time... like.. Rain... no rain.. heavy rain.. light rain... no rain..... night time... blah blah im done now...

Quote from mrodgers :

Big +1 to the setting of the server location. I'd hate to want to run somewhere and it be raining all the time because of where the track is "said" to be at. This way, those of us who frequent US servers will get weather more to what we are accustomed do and those on the UK servers will get what they are accustomed to, for example.

When I fly online with FS9, I always have real time weather running.

+1

must have the option to use server selected weather though. letsw face it most of us just dont have the time for league races to be getting postponed by rain

Who'd postpone a road course race due to rain?

I can see the benefits of using 'LFS Weather', the system wouldn't be dependant on a 3rd party, the weather would be set on the master server.

Setting the time of day according to the server time should be straightforward. But I suppose it would be best to implement server location based weather in a separate application. You don't want LFS throwing a wobbly whenever accuweather or whatever source is used changes their interface.