You can joke all you want but the fact is that LFS is not gonna get accepted by larger sim audience and car/race enthusiasts without some great and famous real tracks and cars...and with such great physics that it has it would be a shame
I belive you probally got at least something right there.
I belive that it would get a "boost" in lisenced drivers if there was some sort of official stuff, or / and moding posibilities.
Of course it is.
It is already...
It's not "the most realistic real track simulator" or "the most realistic real car simulator", but it is "the most realistic racing simulator".
Lots of folks think 'real' licenced content would improve LFS.
Some folks want modding because it would make it possible to have 'real' licenced content such as 'real tracks' and more 'real cars'.
Most agree that if modding was to be allowed, there would have to be quality filtering controlled by the devs otherwise LFS would decend into rFactor style chaos.
The devs will not be willing to sanction licenced content for fear of the legal implications.
So - as has been mentioned - any dev sanctioned content would have to be 'fantasy'
So what would be the point of modding ?
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Can anyone come up with a convincing model that would allow suitable quality control over un-licenced 'real' mod content without the devs (or any other sanctioning body) getting into legal difficulties ?
I suppose that if a strict set of metrics were devised, it would be possible to measure the 'quality' of a track without referring to the 'original' it was based on....
However, most of the praise and/or criticism for any mod is concerned with how closely it models the 'original' and where it gets it wrong.... all those comparisons would have to be avoided... souds tricky to me...
Are there any lawyers out there?
Would it be possible for the devs (or some other sanctioning body) to sanction mods based on real world tracks by making some sort of disclaimer... maybe stating that they accepted or denied mods purely based on the quality of the work and that any infringements of intellectual property were the responsibility of the mod authors ?
Take GTA San Andreas for example (as many people play it). There are literally tons of mods for that game (and it even doesn't have a support for it). I'm talking about unlicensed, unofficial, but real-life mods, like car models proudly wearing BMW badges all over for example. And I haven't heard of any legal action being taken against the GTA authors/publisher for that.
Because they are free, you just need the full game of SA. For LFS the only way of doing it would be to have the mods made by the community and nothng to do with LFS.
Not true. The likeness of the track is also trademarked and you do have to pay license fees then also.
The reason why track owners/car companies aren't after mods is that they don't sell the mods and mods are mostly free ads to the companies. On the other hand If you try to make money by using someone elses property, it's not a surprise they will ask for a license fee.
I'd much sooner see some decent fictional content if LFS becomes modable than real content. You can use your imagination (unlike Tilke) and create some interesting tracks.. most real tracks bore me silly after a few races, less a few such as Silverstone and Bathurst.. but would be just as happy to see tracks of a similar nature but completely fictional (not just in namesake).. I'm not driving either Silverstone or Bathurst when sitting infront of a 19" screen holding onto a £50 plastic wheel drinking a cup of coffee on the straights.. so having real tracks makes no difference to me personally
The BTCC are a prime example of your statement. A few mods have been closed flat because TOCA (or whoever the head retard is) threatened legal action, A1GP was the same IIRC.
yeah i think adding real life tracks for use online would not be possible. i would not want modding to divide the online community, or make it harder to find games cause you don't have the correct mods. so the best way i could think for them to incorporate mods would be to implement the popular ones into the actual game. they would then appear to be making money off this content, and if any of it was trademarked material they would likely get in trouble. so the only way to have real life tracks would be to have them strictly offline, or keep them as unofficial mods, and not incorporate them into the released game, which would divide the community between those that have a particular selection of mods and those that don't, making games harder to find. i don't approve of that possibility, and it seems the majority of the community doesn't either.
But looking around the Web at "sim racing" sites and publications, it seems as if the majority of people in "the larger sim audience" are arcade racers anyway.
I also find it odd that the LFS community is considered to be separated from the rest of the sim racing community. Many many of us are members of these other communities. Many of us started racing GPL when it was first released. many of us were pioneer members of the GP1/2 Crammond revolution. We have and do race other sims and games.
Having driven pretty much every car/race game/sim that has been released ever from the old arcade cabinet racers of the 80's through to the race and rally titles 3DFX PC era and into the modern 3D era, why do I find myself with LFS on the top of my list? The absence of real tracks and popular real cars have made no impact at all.
Even after about 30 000 laps in LFS I still haven't tried every car on every combo. I see no shortfall in content, real or otherwise, when it comes to driving the greatest and best racing simulator to date: LFS.
I also firmly believe that it is an absence of real world tracks and cars that has helped LFS to become what it is.
I'm glad I don't see Civics punting each other six ways from Sunday nor Skylines with anime paintjobs and fake body kits. It's refreshing to step into the world of LFS and just get on with the racing.
Modding a game or sim to add more content will always appeal to me, but when people say that LFS needs real cars and tracks to progress or to truly be a sim they sound naive.
Modding suxx. The content in LFS are superbly done and if the users gonna start making cars and tracks the quality level will drop significantly which is not gonna be good for LFS`s visual quality.
That is what can happen in the worst scenary. What we are talking about, if there will be a moding posibility, is that it will be controlled. People will not be able to just make something, and then put it online. It would need accepting from the DEV`S, to be putet in the game in a patch or something, this is for securing that only high quality tracks and cars will be possible to use online. And whats happend offline doesn`t really matter, because then if they make some crap, only they will be able to use it
Erm, Mike, do you think it's that simple? They don't want a cut of the profits, because tbh it's not only not that big but also because to them LFS could easily dissapear - they want cash. Upfront.
The devs WILL put cars in if they get them free (ie with the RAC) or if they let their sim be used in a commercial event (ie the BF1)
seems silly to not allow/want it, if you don't want to run any mods.. then don't and stick with the core game. let the people that want to download and install 10 versions of the same track.. just because you don't like to do that why stop everyone else from doing it. noone is forced to run a mod or addon.
Doesn't work like that. You are infact forced to run mods even if you don't want, because other people use them online. Offline you can do whatever you want, but online you have to do what other people are doing.
