I was replying on the thread about having birds when I had this off the wall idea. You know how on some tracks there are all these empty seats?
Well what if how the stands were filled was determined by the racers' stats that were racing at that particular time? Like an individual's fan base count is determined by the number of wins (1st, 2nd & 3rd) vs races entered or something. and that resulting number would determine how many seats a
particular driver could fill on any given track. maybe have a maximum fan base @ 4 or 5% for each driver. That would reflect on the fact that a five car race won't bring sell out crowds.
I dunno. just a crazy idea

That's actually a pretty good idea. Perhaps it should be done by % of overall usage of each track/car combo, though?

GeneRally does it in the sense that the colours of the clothing the spectators wear depends on what the colours of the drivers are, but it sounds like a lot of coding for no real gain. And the crowds are textures rather than models anyway.

Well dukey you could always increase by a group of 4.

There are 3d people still around, if you look they exist in the original S1 tracks, I haven't seen any at the S2 tracks. The cool thing about the 3d specators incase you haven't noticed all these years however are randomized and put in different locations each time you load the map. There was only a few of them in total, I think FE has the most, but its only around 8 of them or so.

+1 if it is possible.

I like this idea. Basing popularity on LFSWorld stats might be a bit uncool though - I don't want to have to drive really slowly to try to spot my single fan at trackside.

Kev, I think the idea is to drive really fast (and win a lot) so that you attract more fans, so you can see them when driving fast, instead of picking the loner out of the crowd.. :P

Good idea in my opinion! The amount of spectators should represent the "coolness-rate" of the whole grid, based on average podium finish percentages from lfsw for example, multiplied by number of starters, and adjusted so that half-full servers couldn't draw full stands but hardcore leagues with full grids like MoE most propably would.

EDIT: lolz, just read my post and realised how useless and repetative I am :doh:

In my opinion, win percentages are not a good stat to base this on. This is because we all have hard times as a beginner, and when we occasionally get screwed by wreckers and stuff. I think this feature should be based on either number of total wins, top-5's, etc. Or just on experience and exposure in the LFS community. Anything BUT win %, PLEASE!

This is kind of a interesting idea. You could have a option for "Fans Colors" it would give 3 sliders, so the user could try and match those with there team/car color. So maybe your fan has two colors for a shirt and one for a hat. This would basically be a filter. Where a uncolored fans clothing would be white. Then the user adjust it.

It should be time on the track percentage. Even Minardi had/has fans and they never won a race. So time on track "exposure" should play in to it.

Quote from ManwithanF1 :

In my opinion, win percentages are not a good stat to base this on. This is because we all have hard times as a beginner, and when we occasionally get screwed by wreckers and stuff. I think this feature should be based on either number of total wins, top-5's, etc. Or just on experience and exposure in the LFS community. Anything BUT win %, PLEASE!

Well a beginner really wouldn't draw sell-out crowds? But no not strictly just on win percentages. It would have to be some sort of formula based on the number of places vs total races entered.

I don't really care for the team color filter - unless the "fans" had A.I. and would fight each other. No. No color filters, just simple people count.
LOL it's bad enough getting "downloading HEL_Green messages or what ever. I'd hate to see Fan _ Old Lady SKIN NOT FOUND" - yuck!

Yes but just fans, how would you know who's fans are for what? So I can sign on Blackwood, and see the stands packed and tell everyone it's because of me?

A color filter wouldn't be a download. It would work the same as changing your cars color with the sliders. If I make my car Orange, it doesn't download anything, since there is no texture change. It's just changing the filter for the base white car.

Having colors you could see who is for what driver. Look at F1 see a sea of Red in the stands, safe bet it's for Ferrari. See Silver, it's for Mclaren.

With out difference in fans, I don't see the point. Because no one would know who they are for. If for some odd reason I change my fan's merchandise colors to bright pink and green. If I go past the grand stand and see pink and green I know it's because of me.

Quote from neglouseight :

Having colors you could see who is for what driver. Look at F1 see a sea of Red in the stands, safe bet it's for Ferrari. See Silver, it's for Mclaren.

That's true, and would also work in LFS if we had only few dozen drivers in 10 teams instead of thousands of racers in several hundred teams.

Quote from frokki :

That's true, and would also work in LFS if we had only few dozen drivers in 10 teams instead of thousands of racers in several hundred teams.

It could still work. If it goes off of amount of time on the track, amount of laps done, amount of races finished, about of races you placed in. So I got to a server in a car I'm not fimilar with, on a track I don't normally do. Never finished a race, or even placed. I wouldn't have 1 fan there. Since the virtual fan wouldn't know who I am. Now I am on the same track but with other people that have more time on the track, more laps done for that car, more races finished, and or placed. They will show there fans, and basically over ride my non-existent ones.

This would also in a way be a competitive thing in your virtual "tickets" since someone with a huge fan base that up to 45% of the fans, could be for one driver/team, and the rest is split among the remaining drivers.

Name one track 1,000 LFS drivers can race on at a time? lol At most 32 on the track with the new test patch. Every server wouldn't have every fan for every LFS driver. It would only display the fans colors if the driver is at the server and if the driver meets the requirements for a fan base. The number of fans be it's own formula to calculate, etc.

I quite like this idea...!

And the spectator colors could depend on the driver's chosen (team-)colors for the pitbox (thinking of MAGGOT's suggestion from some time ago; http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=12119)

+1 anyway.

This is an interesting idea, but it would take a bit of effort to get it working.

Obviously you'd need a Team Colours setting. Maybe 2 sliders there.
Then you'd need a way of calculating all of the stuff to work out what percentage of fans belong to each racer.

Then, if you wanted to do it properly, you'd need to have a variable number of spectators at the side of each track, because you wouldn't have several hundred people round a track if there were only 2 or 3 people racing.

This would work well in conjunction with the other suggestion of having models for each spectator around the track (which wouldn't be all that much of an addition) in their own team colours and maybe helmet.

So I say +1 for the coolness and interactivity side, but with a -0.25 for the extra work it would take.

just for the records: http://forum.rscnet.org/showpo ... =2290691&postcount=12

This is a brilliant idea, it has one technical hurdle to overcome which is how dynamic the population of a server is (how would fans appear/disappear) - solve that and you've got a really cool idea.

Colour sliders are also a neat idea.

I really like this. As I contribute a whopping 2 fans (both STCC junkies) it's a +3 from me .

+1, but becky's right, the fans would have to either moe to thier seats and leave when thier favorites arent around anymore, OR change each race and slowly mix out the old drivers/number of drivers

Quote from Becky Rose :

This is a brilliant idea, it has one technical hurdle to overcome which is how dynamic the population of a server is (how would fans appear/disappear) - solve that and you've got a really cool idea.

Generate them at every quali/race start... When you first get onto the server, you're not really racing anyway and even if your race should be over midway through the session, racing fans usually stay anyway as long as there is action on the track...

Quote from Becky Rose :

This is a brilliant idea, it has one technical hurdle to overcome which is how dynamic the population of a server is (how would fans appear/disappear) - solve that and you've got a really cool idea.

Colour sliders are also a neat idea.

I really like this. As I contribute a whopping 2 fans (both STCC junkies) it's a +3 from me .

How the heck should I know?
I really wasn't concerned with "fan" colors because Well unless they're dressed head to toe in some sort of pre-defined color, it won't be noticed and if it was done that way, it would look bland. LOL like a N. Korean Variety show. I also thought it could be accomplished with the "cardboard cut-out" fans. I mean if it could be done that way, with color sliders, then that would be cool and all, but I was thinking something simpler.
No I just thought something that would help populate the stands in a somewhat realistic manner. And it shouldn't matter who's fans are who's
The total fan count would be determined by the combined totals of everyone's fan base added together.

Hmm like sprint car racing. You get a small crowd at dirt tracks. but when they have like the world of outlaws or whatever, you get a bigger draw, yet it's the same class and type of racing.
Also, Dead Wolf Bones had a neat idea with this as well about factoring in class of cars used.
Like if in real life if there was a UF1 race on the oval, I doubt it would draw as big of a crowd as say Westhill with GTR cars.

I'm a complete illiterate with computer coding, but couldn't a simple form of this idea be done from salvaging some of the code stuff from the old credit system somehow and using it? {plz. respond to that in layman's terms, or better yet, in special needs terms }

+1 from me

I like the idea, but honestly wouldn't want it unless it had fan color sliders. Without it, there would be no real reason why the fans keep filling and emptying repeatedly. Go on a server and it's a virtual sell out, yet everyone it wouldn't mean anything. To a new user, or a old hand at LFS. Since there would seem to be no rhyme or reason why they are thing.

If there wear fan colors it would make more sense and mean more. If you are new to LFS sign on, playing a little with a couple of people. Then some big guns in LFS show up, and all of a sudden after the next race restart the fans are filled with these drivers team colors, that would be more impressive. Then more questions would be asked. "How did you get the crowd wearing your colors" etc. More people would want to try and get a big fan base. Meaning more time on track, more races run.

How I see it, picture the 2D fan art that is in the game now. Those are fillers. Once more virtual fans appear for a given driver, the filler fans would start disappearing down to maybe 10% of the over all fan total. This way it doesn't come down to every fan is tied to some driver on the track. Virtual Fans should only start appearing after a restart for Qual/Race/Practice. This way the server won't do micro pause to update fans during a race. So even if a driver leaves the server until the server is rest the fans stick around.

Then the master server adjust the color sliders for the drivers fans. It does the exact same thing now with car color sliders. It doesn't send a new texture just sends the color values to all the people on the server for a given driver.

Now my fictional time is Horizon Motor Sports the colors are Black, Red, Grey, these colors I would choose for my Fan Colors. It wouldn't mean I drive passed the grand stands and see a whole section with my colors. That would be kind of silly. It would have my fans, mixed in with other drivers, and with the filler fans. The more fans I have in one area would mean I have a large fan base. (Wishful thinking lol) But that area wouldn't solely be mine.

Quote from neglouseight :

.........

Now my fictional time is Horizon Motor Sports the colors are Black, Red, Grey, these colors I would choose for my Fan Colors. It wouldn't mean I drive passed the grand stands and see a whole section with my colors. That would be kind of silly. It would have my fans, mixed in with other drivers, and with the filler fans. The more fans I have in one area would mean I have a large fan base. (Wishful thinking lol) But that area wouldn't solely be mine.

Yeah, mixing them in with other fans would be the way to do that. I don't know why I was thinking of just blocks of fans in team attire...lol "official merchandise".

But also, your right about how it would have to be set up. With mid race join, it would look like a bunch of off balance people trying to do the wave or something.

This is a great idea, but I wouldn't limit it to the LFSWorld stats, as I do a lot of playing offline; my internet connection isn't the best Just fans wearing colored clothes would be neat to see how many fans are cheering for you / your competitors.

Not a bad idea...even if i have only 10 wins, 15 seconds and 25 thirds of 250 races joined^^
EDIT: it's time to increase that number, *gone racing*