With GT HD simply being a concept of what's to come in the next GT, which includes real car cockpits for every car (and they are trying to get the license to do damage modeling) as well as their proposed move from arcade-ish play to a pro mode (LFS if not better equivalent in physics, tire wear, engine damage, etc), GT5 will most likely give all other sims a run for their money. If it only was available for PC
For those saying that GT HD looks fake, have you been outside lately?
Sun and light reflect, the road blurs in heat at a distance, cars get dirty, etc. Anyone claiming that LFS looks realistic needs to visit an eye doctor...pronto.
NFS has overkill effects and barely uses a true physics model!
Dont compare LFS to NFS please.. its annoying to hear the vast amounts of people who do!
LFS is an online racing simulator.
NFS is some arcadish racing game targeted at those who can't handle realism too well!
And ... because of the community and how lfs is evolving according to the community in wich LFS exists, there is no racing sim out there that can kill LFS...
1. I didn't say NFS had physics.
2. I didn't compare LFS to NFS.
3. I didn't say anything about online/offline.
4. I didn't comment on the driving skill or expectations of a NFS player.
5. I didn't say there currently WAS a better driving sim, I said don't let there be one.
6. Growing and evolving is updating the graphics.
I just quickly wanted to point out that I don't think graphics are the main reason anyone should turn to any sim, and if I sound like I'm coming across like that, then I hope I've now clarified myself . Graphics are nice when done properly but I agree that they're not the most important factor. Maybe a first person shooter, which requires tons of believable atmosphere to draw you into the drama, or an adventure game- but a sim like LFS, a driving game which professes to realism, that simply requires a good driving model before all else. That's just logical.
When I hype graphics, I'm really doing it from a general evolution of the medium POV, to me it's very exciting and as one growing up in the C64 age I still catch myself astonished sometimes that games are actually no longer limited to 16 usable colours!
Well, I've wandered off topic- but the topic's been done to death anyway. Just wanted to chuck in my last 2 cents.
Totaly agree with EK...
While the better graphics are always welcome, the graphics should be BELIEAVABLE, and only LFS IMO has belieavable graphics of all sims. Even if the cars are made of 10 polyogons(well the number isn't much higher anyway ) it will always be more realistic to me driving LFS than anything else...
The graphics should be done in style...
A painting done with old brush and dated colors will always look good in the hands of an artist...
You're forgetting that those pictures were probably taken using a digital camera, which is where the bloom (glare, as you called it) comes from. Our eyes are much better at dealing with bright lights than digital cameras. I'd rather have LFS model my eye than my digital camera CCD.
HDR is great. Bloom is not.
I was talking about my own experiences walking around, and noticing how sunlight plays off shiny metallic surfaces. I only added those shots as a quick afterthought as a back up to my own experience. Of course our eyes are able to register far more intense levels of light and shade than can be achieved normally in reproductions, but that doesn't mean that we don't experience glare or a kind of bloom effect as sometimes seen in computer games, or similar to what those photos show..
HDR can be great, but bloom is a lower cost calculation which can look nice as well under the right circumstances. Both may be frivolous graphical add-ons as far as LFS is concerned though, atleast right now.
Ah and that screenshot.
Now who could possibly not wish for LFS to look even remotly like that GT5 screnshot?!
Yes, physics matter, but only to a certain extent.
It's the package that keep s people playing for a long time. It's the fun part of racing. Immersion. Whatever you wanna call it.
LFS has been pretty good in the "package" department over the last few years. However, it's been a very long time sinec any of you have seen any changes worth mentioning that would expand on that.
There are some serious physics bugs still persistant, audio is....do I need to tell you?!
Vissually, LFS looks good...if today was 1996. Yes it's sufficient for it's purpose. But if sufficient for it's purpose is all we ask of, let's remove all models, all skins, all high res textures and scenery.
7 poly boxes are more then enough to get the core out of LFS.
Let's also remove all tracks besides BL, as the track enviroment really shouldn't matter...core physics racing and all.
Get real people and beg that Scawen doesn't share your opinion of what's pretty. I don't want to see LFS die just yet.
I have always preferred sims with best physics instead of nice graphics. You can make pretty nice graphics with dx8 too
But wouldn't mind dynamic realtime headlight projection of course, however I'm afraid this would have quite high impact on speed, think about 48 cars with 2 or more lights being rendered realtime :drunk:
I agree with you and other "physics" advocates but my qualm is this:
Does there have to be a choice between the two?
My point is not to reduce, eliminate or set aside LFS's effort for perfected real life physics modeling for the sake of improved 21 century graphics (most of us are not asking for much really, just something that would fit the year, or maybe even the decade we currently live in).
All I want to see is a few hours here and there spent on making the whole package fit; this must include sound and look, IMO.
I realize that SCAVIER is itching to get the Alpha tag off of LFS, hence why the AI is currently being worked on.
My stand, however, is that regardless of "Completed" tag, LFS's following will not change.
It won't become more popular or mainstream and thus should not generate more income. And while many of us are happy and proud at SCAVIER's choice of leaving LFS a niche product, pride doesn't pay bills.
Looks is what sells many computer games today. With this in mind, LFS has a tremendous potential of "luring" so many "casual" gamers (customers) into the world of a legit SIMs thus becoming legendary by simply improving on looks and content while keeping up the realistic qualities we love it for.
Imagine what the disgust of the general public towards arcade race games could do to the SIM world. Imagine what it would be like if the standard for any race game would be LFS style physics, before simply making it purrty. Sadly, the general population is unwilling to give titles such as LFS a chance as things stand.
Also keep in mind that the majority of people who spend money on games are people who have decent machines that have no issues handling higher end graphical elements.
I'm not preaching to leave users with lower end equipment out of the picture. As most games have become quite scalable these days, so should LFS.
I guess I'm a dreamer who wishes for LFS to live up to it's potential.
I'm not sure that can happen as things currently are.
I guess their main concern is smooth gameplay even if your computer is not most recent technology. LFS got graphic update in some stage and I believe we will see another sometime in not too distant future, but I don't believe there will be huge bling bling, but you never know, devs do make sim that is perfect in their mind, so what mainstream of casual players think weights pretty small amount.
Bit better textures could help for starters, maybe as option to maintain smooth running for low end machines, then maybe some light effects and certain models might be good to check, but overall I don't find need to go into bling world, it is so demanding for hardware, that benefits don't cover expenses, imo.
Making DX10 Vista only must have been one of the worst decisions Microsoft ever made. There isn't really anything wrong with DX10, some parts are even better performance wise too considered to DX9.
But anyway the worst thing is that it puts developers in to bad position, especially in LFS' case. Developers really can't skip DX9 because DX10 is not available on all systems and going DX9 only is a bit "old fashioned" because the replacement is already available. Using both isn't very good either, because you basically have to do double the work to keep both versions up to date. [/offtopic]
In physics wise not as long as it needs to sell 50 millions copies, thus being optimized for pad usage, thus requiring very dumbed down driving physics.
That is the most stupid and unhelpful answer to a post I have ever seen in my life. At least write 1 sentence so I get a vague idea of what your saying 'nope' to!!!!!
You asked a simple yes-or-no question (does GT5 have physics comparable to LfS?). The answer to that question is no.
Concerning the why, you'd have to ask polyphony, not us.
Why don't we just race boxes on wheels, whit no skins, no ability to change the color of the box. We could also use colored surfaces instead of textures, that would be an FPS boost After all, LFS is not a screen shot generator, so there is no need for any eye-candy....
You have a point... as far as i've seen people dont like eye candy...
Although if you start racing boxes its not really a sim...although its still a racing sim... but not a car racing sim, just a box racing sim... should be renamed to
Ah, the old "take an argument to an extreme to make a point" ruse.
SOME eye-candy (i.e. car shaped models, textures) are required to make it vaguely real. Some extra stuff is still needed. Too much, or candy for the sake of it, isn't really a priority in LFS at this time
Would you like the better graphics if you had the capabilities of running better graphics? Of course you would, anyone would.
Now mix in the fact that 99% of the people that race LFS as is with decent frame rate compared to 50% or more that would still attempt to race with sub-par frame rate out on the servers with you. Due to their framerates, their controller visual and controller inputs are lagging behind, causing them to run sporatically on the track. You can't have as close of racing as we've been having because of other's frame rates. Those of lesser machines are causing more crashes into you and the others you are racing because of frame rate issues.
I'd rather have the bit dumbed down graphics, not for me, but for my opponents so they are not on the track with me with their sub-par frame rates.
LFS graphics could use a bit of tweaking, but if you go too far, then there are more people out there trying to run on their lesser machines causing incidents through no fault of their own other than refusing to not play due to system specs.
. Graphics are nice when done properly but I agree that they're not the most important factor. Maybe a first person shooter, which requires tons of believable atmosphere to draw you into the drama, or an adventure game- but a sim like LFS, a driving game which professes to realism, that simply requires a good driving model before all else. That's just logical. 
After all, LFS is not a screen shot generator, so there is no need for any eye-candy....