I dont understand all the fuss about insim/cruise servers. If these cruisers werent not on a cruise server, they probably wouldnt be on LFS at all. Things like cruise servers, SUMO, CnR etc etc, imo, are things to keep people intrested in LFS without new content. I think when we start getting some new content, cruise servers, and the like, will lose some of their luster.... until people get tired of the new stuff. Im not a big cruising fan, but if they keep people intrested in LFS, then Im all for it. Its been a while since Ive felt like doing any racing on LFS, if not for my role in helping test SUMO, it would have been 6 months (or more) since ive double clicked the LFS icon on my desktop.

I don't know many people who can play a game every day for 3 or 4 years and not get bored of it after a while. The start of a new year always sees a drop in users online, people go back to work, there isnt much motorsport on TV, schools start preparing for exams, there are lots of reasons. Don't worry though, in the summer the numbers shoot up again.

Quote from Ian.H :

...now cars drop out of the physics engine and turn themselves off to try and recoup some resources. No car I've ever driven does this.. so a big step backwards IMO for realism.

Ian, you seemed to be pretty upset over this in the dSRC forum as well and I didn't understand it then either. If this is the worst thing you can nit pick about LFS I think the devs are doing a great job Really, what difference does it make if the cars shut off after being idle for several minutes. I really don't understand how this can affect your enjoyment of the game. After all, I don't connect to a race server to watch my car idle. I don't really care if I need to start up the car after going afk for a few minutes. I wouldn't leave my real car running while I'm away either! (i live in the US)

If after years of development your FPS stayed the same I would say the devs aren't doing their job. When this game is finally released, the average PC hardware will be much faster than what we're using today and that should be the target - not the average PC when development began years ago.

P.S. I have similar hardware specs and I get ~45-60fps @ 1600x1200

Back on topic, perhaps many of you that are bored waiting for the "devs" to make the game more realistic can make the game more realistic yourselves!

Build a realistic cockpit. Buy a 720 degree wheel, h-shifter and clutch. That will add more to the realism than anything else.

I think the lack of combinations is beginning to wear thin. The number of laps I've done at Blackwood is ridiculous.

I often switch to GPL, GT4, Toca3, all sorts just to get a break from the same cars on the same tracks in LFS.

Shame, because I think LFS is by far the best sim.



:heyjoe67_:heyjoe67_:heyjoe67_:heyjoe67_
:shhh:GPL 1966 mod available now!

Hmm I don't think adding more combo's will solve that problem as it is now people are still driving as nat with gtr since s2 released.. There are so many tracks and cars almost unused...

Quote :

i wonder when S3 will come out with real cars and tracks...?

righto!

Until the day LFS helps me develop close relationships with females, it will remain my last priority. (Says the guy who has 3,235 posts lol)

Quote from wheel4hummer :

Until the day LFS helps me develop close relationships with females, it will remain my last priority. (Says the guy who has 3,235 posts lol)

LOL!
Well, good luck finding a girl on this forum, and even if you manage to find one - getting a close releationship with her is a whole other thing

There is a lot to do with LFS. I drive it since 5 years and im still not bored (well, i've not realy drived new patch yet).
An exemple : Even if LFS is not moddable, here is an exemple of what we can still do with it with some imagination

http://nsa01.casimages.com/img ... 9/0712291239451931794.jpg
http://nsa01.casimages.com/img ... 9/0712291241271931812.jpg
http://nsa01.casimages.com/img ... 9/0712291242461931818.jpg

Im running an ice racing league (with the real rules of the trophée andros) with the french community and some other drivers like tonix of the Muroc.

And belive it if you want, but its pretty realistic with some little changes thanks to LFS tweak (and Bespoke for the rims).

We drive on modified FE6, other wise its only layouts that are directely on the tracks.

http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=4019353064053497031

Well, if some of you are bored, PM me
We have our server on the V version.

Quote from Ian.H :

No point in having soopadoopa physics updates if the physics engine is so badly optimised that my FPS is down nearly to single figures with shitty hacks to try and hide the fact.

Seriously mate. I get 150+FPS with everything on full, anti-aliasing and AF with my laptop.

You can't ask for all these updates if you're running the game on an old machine. It sounds like your computer is the problem, not the game.

More Tracks and/or Cars is NOT what is needed.

I'm quite sure of this. I think people that are asking for this are just old users who are wanting more variety because they've been playing the game for years while forgetting that the game is not yet finished! It's still in alpha mode! More fluff content is the last thing the devs should be concentrating on now IMO.

What is most important is finishing the game. It's only in alpha mode and there are glaring omissions that have a major impact on basic gameplay! There's not even a proper damage model yet! The AI try and ram through each other if there car ahead is slower, let alone being so robotic they do exactly the same lap times to a hundredth of a second! The physics model, while being very impressive and showing almost limitless potential, is not complete. The interior of every car is almost identical.

Secondly, how many tracks and cars do you want? There's about twenty cars there already and at-least 7 totally unique tracks. Considering how long it takes to master driving one car on one track, more of the same is not what is needed while the rest of the game is still incomplete! There's 140 car/track combinations there already! And that's not including the track variations.

Yes, more tracks would be nice. But at the alpha stage of development it would be a serious waste of the developers time in my opinion. There's far more important things, that will have a vastly greater effect on the overall LFS experience than adding more fluff. Really, adding that sort of stuff shouldn't be considered until the game is complete.

I think if the LFS community saw real and appreciable progress in the actual development of the core game they would be more than satisfied. Adding tracks and cars is just more fluff and not real progress.

This "Alpha" tag is a copout, it is always dragged out whenever people point out flaws in LFS.

The truth is, LFS has been alpha for a dogs age, and personally, I can never see it being anything other than an aphla release.

It's a little bit of everything that turns down some people and turn on some others. A sim can't satisfy them all in all areas.

What I'd like to further comment on is about some fellow posters who claimed that it's only natural to get bored if you play the same game over and over again for a vast period of time. It surely is natural, but the whole point of this thread is to seek why this might happening with LFS (correct me if i'm wrong). LFS is not supposed to and does not remain the same game through the years. It's rather an ongoing project, so we shouldn't play the same game over and over (and in some extend we didn't).

So the real question is whether the LFS progress satisfies the majority of the community, especially the online racers according to the topic's title.

Although I agree with Ian that the sim's progress is slow and with questionable priorities, I beleive LFS is still the... king of online racing. I've tried mostly rfactor and GTR2 and none of them offers the same excitement online... not even close! Wheel-to-wheel fights feel really short and somehow fake in those sims. Is it the superior LFS force-feedback, is it the physics engine, is it the fact that I'm by far more experienced in LFS? I dunno, the point is that LFS still offers me the greatest deal of enjoyment online, compared to any other sim I have tried.

That being said, constructive criticism should always be welcome by any sim's devs & community, since it's the only healthy way for a sim to evolve towards the right directions. For me RL tracks and sound rework shoud be high in LFS's to-do list, others prefer physics, more cars and grfx to be done first. Some others prefer rain, night and offline championships. One way or the other, the truth is that LFS is starting to show its (evolving) age and it's up to the devs to get the message early and do something about it, before the competition reaches or even overcomes LFS's current strong points.

Quote from The Very End :

I can`t understand why people want a real life track. Screw that, any kind of track is good. The current tracks in game are good, and if we would have anything new that is on that level I would be more than enough happy with that. But I guess people belives that they get bigger cocks if they can drive a RL track fast in LFS

I believe if you can get a sub 8" around The Ring in GPL you get a couple of extra inches, really

Why do flying simulators have representations of the Earth? Would they have the same fun flying on an imaginary planet on imaginary airports? Maybe, but flying from Rome to Madrid is different than flying from "Happyville" to "Capital city".

I'm not saying racing at Spa will be better than racing at Aston, I'm saying it's different. Nothing to do with penises BTW.

Quote from Eldanor :

I believe if you can get a sub 8" around The Ring in GPL you get a couple of extra inches, really
[snip]

Interlagos could be quite... cocky too

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

The start of a new year always sees a drop in users online, people go back to work, there isnt much motorsport on TV, schools start preparing for exams, there are lots of reasons. Don't worry though, in the summer the numbers shoot up again.

Thats a bit weird, I would have thought there would have been a drop off in the summer with the long evenings and all. Certainly that'll be the case with me. Got better things to be doing than sitting in front of a computer when the sun is shining brightly outside

Aye, ok, so I'm in Scotland, but the sun does shine here, if we behave

I suppose it all depends on the demographic, but is it really biased towards schoolies?

Oh, btw I love this game, just want some more tracks!

Quote from Ikaponthus :

More Tracks and/or Cars is NOT what is needed.

I'm quite sure of this. I think people that are asking for this are just old users who are wanting more variety because they've been playing the game for years while forgetting that the game is not yet finished! It's still in alpha mode! More fluff content is the last thing the devs should be concentrating on now IMO.

What is most important is finishing the game. It's only in alpha mode and there are glaring omissions that have a major impact on basic gameplay! There's not even a proper damage model yet! The AI try and ram through each other if there car ahead is slower, let alone being so robotic they do exactly the same lap times to a hundredth of a second! The physics model, while being very impressive and showing almost limitless potential, is not complete. The interior of every car is almost identical.

Secondly, how many tracks and cars do you want? There's about twenty cars there already and at-least 7 totally unique tracks. Considering how long it takes to master driving one car on one track, more of the same is not what is needed while the rest of the game is still incomplete! There's 140 car/track combinations there already! And that's not including the track variations.

Yes, more tracks would be nice. But at the alpha stage of development it would be a serious waste of the developers time in my opinion. There's far more important things, that will have a vastly greater effect on the overall LFS experience than adding more fluff. Really, adding that sort of stuff shouldn't be considered until the game is complete.

I think if the LFS community saw real and appreciable progress in the actual development of the core game they would be more than satisfied. Adding tracks and cars is just more fluff and not real progress.

:bowdown:

Quote from HVS5b :

Aye, ok, so I'm in Scotland, but the sun does shine here, if we behave

I can vouch for that. Well atleast for the summer before last. I was in Scotland for a week and it only rained for a couple of days.
Even when we went to hike on Ben Nevis the sun shone. Must have been the result of this global warming thingy that everybody is talking about.

Quote from Busta :

An exemple : Even if LFS is not moddable, here is an exemple of what we can still do with it with some imagination

Im running an ice racing league (with the real rules of the trophée andros) with the french community and some other drivers like tonix of the Muroc.

And belive it if you want, but its pretty realistic with some little changes thanks to LFS tweak (and Bespoke for the rims).

We drive on modified FE6, other wise its only layouts that are directely on the tracks.

http://video.google.fr/videoplay?docid=4019353064053497031

Well, if some of you are bored, PM me
We have our server on the V version.

Very cool!

Regarding the inability to find a decent pickup race...

There IS pickup racing happening in LFS - on the demo servers. Why there and not on the licensed servers? Demo users generally don't have any leagues to practice for. And unless the name of the server has a drifting reference in it, chances are nearly 100% that there's a 4-10 lap race happening there.

If you use the in-game server browser for licensed servers, you have no idea if the 5 people on are spectating, qualifying, running a 5 lap race, or running a 3 hour race.

My suggestion: have the in-game server browser report the status of what's happening on the server (i.e. lap 2 of 6 or 10 minutes remaining in qualifying) in addition to how many people are on.

Many times I've seen 5-7 people on a server that sounded interesting, something like LFRs at South City, only to join and find that they were practicing for a league race or working on hotlap setups. It's fine that people do that (I do it too), but I'd rather not have to join the server to find that out.

And about the point of more content = better pickup racing. It's actually the opposite. Again look at the demo servers. Everyone knows the limited combos there so the learning curve is small.

Quote from Danke :

My suggestion: have the in-game server browser report the status of what's happening on the server (i.e. lap 2 of 6 or 10 minutes remaining in qualifying) in addition to how many people are on.

That's a very good idea and should be added to the improvement wishlist (if it isn't already). It's actually one of the first questions I asked before coughing up for S2... but I was told that I was "asking too much", that LFS was "in development", blah blah blah...

The question mark gives you most of that info and now LFS remote shows you a plan view of the whole circuit and you can even watch a plan view of the racing (if its set up on the server).

You can see the current state of play at LFSW, and join the server from there if that's actually something you want. That way, you don't even need to start up LFS to decide if there's a server you want to race on. Pretty efficient!

Quote from SamH :

You can see the current state of play at LFSW, and join the server from there if that's actually something you want. That way, you don't even need to start up LFS to decide if there's a server you want to race on. Pretty efficient!

Never use anything else