If it is at all likely that we won't see "much happen" with LFS in the next 6 months to a year I'm fine with that, as I know there'll always be people ready to play. Such is the quality of this WIP sim and the loyalty of its players. Though, as I'm in a bit of a racing lull, the prospect of a wait doesn't concern me much (just finishing Pandora Tomorrow on the PS2, about to kill God Of War before I get a PS3 - yeah I'm years behind but hey, I have human friends to interact with). I'm used to being patient with race sims anyway - GPL mods seem to take a minimum of two years to go from "hey, I've got a plan" to "ding! it's ready!" In the case of the Le Mans sports car mod, try more than 5 years...

Things in LFS-land may seem to have slowed to a crawl, but I'm confident the next big patch will surprise and please a lot of people. Whenever it comes out Until then, why not just stick with GPL while you wait for LFS progress? Sod most of the others, they either take ages to do sweet **** all or they're simply half-assed to being with. Join a GPL league (because pickup races basically don't exist anymore) and you'll be sweet - 500+ tracks and three F1 seasons to choose from (with more on the way), it's unlikely you'll get sick of it. Unless of course you don't like open-wheelers, in which case you're screwed ... until the Lotus Cortina mod is finished People may think GPL's an outdated dinosaur, but I reckon it was about a decade ahead of its time - it should just be coming into its own now

Yep, sounds like some people do need a new hobby. Bonsai maybe? Takes longer than any sim in history to achieve the desired results - start a few bonsais and soon you'll be amazed at the progress of your favourite sim

It's not just Driving Simulations that are developing at a slower rate these days. Flight and Combat simulation is as well. FPS, MMO's and other game types are the hot area of development right now and are the games that are in demand. They are however paving the way for much better Simulation Software down the road as they push graphics, physics and rendering tech forward at a fast pace.

As far as LFS development is concerned, my impression was that LFS will go Beta and then Final when all included features are implimented. I think in addition to the physics updates, AI improvments, as improvments to the GTR interiors and track envirenments we will see a more completed Aero model and physical damage model, but the graphic componant of these will not likely come until the S3 Graphcs engine update. Unless Scawen has changed greatly in the last few years, which I think unlikely based on what has happened to S2 so far i the development cycle, he is not the type of person to like leaving things unfinished.

In the past he has stated that S2 is about the cars and S3 would be about the envirnment. To me that means that S2 will not be final until the cars are modeled as realisticly as they can be within a realistic time frame. By this I mean things that affect the cars directly and from a physics and functionality point of view not a graphics one. Place-holder damage and incomplete aero are as high on the list as physics optimizations and the AI, in my opinion. I firmly believe that S2 would have been final a while back if in his development he had not stumbled on to as many interesting posibilities and feature requests, all of which have improved the sim greatly and extend its posibilities, even if they were not originaly planed.

The future is still bright for LFS, more so now then it might have a few years ago, but it will take time and time is somthing we all have plenty of.

Ultimately Scawen's got a family to bleed him dry now, and looking at his hair and frequency of shaving I don't think he'd be all that happy about going back to work for somebody else (plus he wouldn't see as much of the boy if he was working elsewhere), thus: I say S3 is likely at some point in the future.

Good point: to maintain his lifestyle, Scawen has to keep working on this thing or it's back to the rat-race! Nooooooooo! :eek:

Quote from Gimpster :

In the past he has stated that S2 is about the cars and S3 would be about the envirnment.

citation needed

Quote from thisnameistaken :

looking at his hair and frequency of shaving I don't think he'd be all that happy about going back to work for somebody else

LOL!

Endless forum banter about this notwithstanding, I'm 100% certain he's more concerned about LFS than all of us combined for that very reason. This is his bread and butter after all

I'm pretty sure noone wants it to succeed more than he does! (Well, and Eric, and Vic too of course)

I personally wouldn't be worried if s2 final was released, but if S3 came out, I would be rather worried, because obtaining an s3 license would not be easy in my current situation.

And using the word muppets is awesome, I learn things on this forum way too much XD

For those of you who know Southern California, critical doesnt want LFS to become like Azusa.

For those of you that don,t, heres an explanation.

Azusa was, and still is a technical mountain road that very few people knew about, and was much fun to race on because of that. However, as people became more aware of the Azusa mountain road, the more crowded and un-personal the atmosphere became there, making it difficult to get a good run in caused by teh constant people comming and going, which drove away the true racing comunity. Now it is just a novelty mountain road that people go to because they heard about it from some friends.

^ Exactly.

Ball Bearing Turbo,

That was buried somewhere back in time in I believe the test patch forum, if I had a link to the quote I would post it. It was long enough ago now that it may no longer be representitive of the current direction of development. In any event the basic understanding I gained from that was that the devolpment and feature sets for S2 would include those that directly impacted the cars them selves, like physics, aero and the like, while S3 woudl introduce more changes to the enviernments we race in, such as changing weather and track conditions.

One example of this seperation of car (S2) and enviernment (S3) features is that currently dirt and grass stick to the car tires, but in S3 we are likely to also have that dirt and grass come off the tires and stick to the track. I have no definitive proof or facts, its just what I have gathered from reading this forum, outside publications and interviews. LFS is an evolving creation that has already taken many unexpected turns thus far and I am sure there will be many more to follow. Thats the best part about evolution and the way LFS is being developed, you never know when one small snipit of incite will give birth to some as yet unconcived new feature or optimization.


legoflamb,

There is one important difference though, since LFS is a self-contained virtual comunity, there is always the posibility for one group to step away from the crowd and desgnate a private version of that comunity if the overall comunity becomes over crowded with those they do not which to associate or be bothered with. Thus unlike the real world in which once Azusa had been discovered and is now a place for the masses, we can always make a place where Azusa (LFS) still feels like our private little known secret.

I really want to see some more cars. Maybe a supercharged car, saloon car. All really

i think the AI in the next stages need to be a little less computer heavy. i can get about 30+ cars in rFactor and a full field in GTR2 with minimum lag but in LFS manage only 6 cars

Making it available online only prevents n00b-kids that arent really determent to race to get LFS and it dramaticly increases chances of having a nice comuniity with grown up ppl that will look for friends and not enemys

Quote from Gimpster :

Ball Bearing Turbo,

That was buried somewhere back in time in I believe the test patch forum, if I had a link to the quote I would post it. It was long enough ago now that it may no longer be representitive of the current direction of development. In any event the basic understanding I gained from that was that the devolpment and feature sets for S2 would include those that directly impacted the cars them selves, like physics, aero and the like, while S3 woudl introduce more changes to the enviernments we race in, such as changing weather and track conditions.

One example of this seperation of car (S2) and enviernment (S3) features is that currently dirt and grass stick to the car tires, but in S3 we are likely to also have that dirt and grass come off the tires and stick to the track. I have no definitive proof or facts, its just what I have gathered from reading this forum, outside publications and interviews. LFS is an evolving creation that has already taken many unexpected turns thus far and I am sure there will be many more to follow. Thats the best part about evolution and the way LFS is being developed, you never know when one small snipit of incite will give birth to some as yet unconcived new feature or optimization.


legoflamb,

There is one important difference though, since LFS is a self-contained virtual comunity, there is always the posibility for one group to step away from the crowd and desgnate a private version of that comunity if the overall comunity becomes over crowded with those they do not which to associate or be bothered with. Thus unlike the real world in which once Azusa had been discovered and is now a place for the masses, we can always make a place where Azusa (LFS) still feels like our private little known secret.

I can back you up about the statement regarding S2 being about the cars and S3 being about the environment. I definitely remember Scawen saying this although for the life of me I cant remember when or where.

Quote from Sueycide_FD :

i think the AI in the next stages need to be a little less computer heavy. i can get about 30+ cars in rFactor and a full field in GTR2 with minimum lag but in LFS manage only 6 cars

If anything they will require stronger processors in later stages.
The next AI will have to include tire use/fuel/pit stops/damage on top of the calculations they require now. So i don't see them using up less CPU time compared to now.

I'm guessing your PC must be rather dated as LFS has always been programmed to work well with older hardware.

yes
-LoganC-

Quote from SpikeyMarcoD :

Nobody outside the LFS community seems to grasp the concept.

Not true ! Plan on seeing LFS reported on very soon

Quote from Sueycide_FD :

i think the AI in the next stages need to be a little less computer heavy. i can get about 30+ cars in rFactor and a full field in GTR2 with minimum lag but in LFS manage only 6 cars

Im guessing a pre-PIII processor there with little to no graphics support. I certainly hope the dev's dont limit the game to work at all with such systems.

Quote from Sueycide_FD :

i think the AI in the next stages need to be a little less computer heavy. i can get about 30+ cars in rFactor and a full field in GTR2 with minimum lag but in LFS manage only 6 cars

The AI cars in rFactor and GTR2 use simplified physics simulation, therefore the AI algorithms may be simpler also. Both these things are less computationally intensive than in LFS, where the AI cars are fully simulated physically and the AI has to do the same steering that we do. The approaches of LFS and ISI engine are very different, so IMO their performance shouldn't be compared directly.