After playing the demo for several days here are my thoughts .

1. No wheel... thinks it's safe to say that most like myself that stumble across the game have only a keyboard, mouse and maybe joystick/gamepad. I have an optical mouse and this seems the best of my options. Went into the Control Panel > Mouse setting and set the scroll speed 4 clicks from slow. This helped car control as the movements were more subtle.

2. Practice... and practice some more! After lap 1..20...100... started to find my groove. Still brake too late sometimes or over correct in the heat of the moment trying to catch up. Laps under 1:50 are common now. Not sure how this compares to most but it makes me happy.

3. The book... wish there was a dummies (like me) guide for newbies. The Wiki writeup is ok but there was a lot of trial and error and reading through posts looking for answers. The options in the game are many and a "quick start" guide is needed to get people out of the gate quicker. Maybe there's one out there already?

4. The races... for the newbie that heads into multiplayer land it's kinda fuzzy. You don't want to jump into a "room" and get booted because you're ruining a race with pros. There should be a few permanent rooms LFS hosts titled rookie racers, practice sessions, and the like where you can get your feet wet.

5. Skins, etc... LFS should have additional skins, and other game enhancing downloads on their home page. People like to customize and though there seems to be plenty of user created work out there it's a search game and a hope you're not ripping a person's work they didn't intend to share.

Great game that has me hooked. A license once I learn some more.

Any other newbies have thoughts to add?

Quote from hawkusa :

After playing the demo for several days here are my thoughts .

1. No wheel... thinks it's safe to say that most like myself that stumble across the game have only a keyboard, mouse and maybe joystick/gamepad. I have an optical mouse and this seems the best of my options. Went into the Control Panel > Mouse setting and set the scroll speed 4 clicks from slow. This helped car control as the movements were more subtle.

2. Practice... and practice some more! After lap 1..20...100... started to find my groove. Still brake too late sometimes or over correct in the heat of the moment trying to catch up. Laps under 1:50 are common now. Not sure how this compares to most but it makes me happy.

3. The book... wish there was a dummies (like me) guide for newbies. The Wiki writeup is ok but there was a lot of trial and error and reading through posts looking for answers. The options in the game are many and a "quick start" guide is needed to get people out of the gate quicker. Maybe there's one out there already?

4. The races... for the newbie that heads into multiplayer land it's kinda fuzzy. You don't want to jump into a "room" and get booted because you're ruining a race with pros. There should be a few permanent rooms LFS hosts titled rookie racers, practice sessions, and the like where you can get your feet wet.

5. Skins, etc... LFS should have additional skins, and other game enhancing downloads on their home page. People like to customize and though there seems to be plenty of user created work out there it's a search game and a hope you're not ripping a person's work they didn't intend to share.

Great game that has me hooked. A license once I learn some more.

Any other newbies have thoughts to add?

1. I have played LFS using mouse earlier. When I tested it first time using wheel, there were no going back.

2. As for comparison, the world record is around 1:33. However, they have done several thousands laps and spent days to optimize their setups.

3. I find the wiki a valuable source of information (Altho, I used it to learn setup-making and about dedicated hosts, nothing more).

4. It would be a good idea to have server for freshstarters. Problem with demo-servers are that users are "anonymous" (Just like in /b/), and thus they don't have reputation to maintain.

5. You can download skins from LFSworld (However, it requries S2 license).

I'm happy you liked LFS.

Welcome! (and goodbye to your free time at the same time)

There's always some new decent racers amongst those countless flows of leetspeek dorifto kiddies

Indeed. I was on demo servers yesterday, and there were multiple racers who was near WR.

Astonishing!

That can't be a shock when they'll only be running BL1 24/7

@hawkusa
Welcome and I'm glad to see you're on board with the non-moron folks If you'd played LFS with a wheel you would never go back. Mine is currently broken and I can't afford a new one, so I'm out of the running because I just can't do it without FFB.
I did think there was a newbies guide, but maybe I'm just thinking of the one you've already seen.

I also had a 1 year break recently when my drunken buddy tore my MOMO into pieces. LFS just isn't LFS without a wheel.

Quote from Gekkibi :

Indeed. I was on demo servers yesterday, and there were multiple racers who was near WR.

Astonishing!

Yes they are. It's in Zion Race Demo, if i'm not mistaken. It's for XFG and XRG only and laps below 1:35:XX are common.

I frequently watch those races. Would like to participate too, but i can't get below 1:37:XX. Maybe it's my setup. I run in default setup with slightly hardened suspension...

edit: and i run with mouse and keyboard, btw.

Quote from frokki :

I also had a 1 year break recently when my drunken buddy tore my MOMO into pieces. LFS just isn't LFS without a wheel.

I no thats what happened to me, I missed out for a bit Due to my G25 Breaking.. u just cant drive without a wheel.. im Just not into it now with a xbox controller, not realistic!

If you don't want to ruin some serious demo races, maybe if you tried joining some demo cruise server. There you have to drive slow and will get some experience in driving among other people (avoiding collisions, accomodating to their reactions, understand the nonverbal gestures and get chased by cops).