I have a dream… A vision of LFS… A vision that is different then what we have now… One in which the old feelings of unchecked adrenalin and pure passion were rampant and where driving was just a joy which I cannot express in words still exists. I want to see the passion brought back to LFS.
My vision of what LFS was to become and the developer’s vision of what LFS is to become diverged some time ago. While the changes and path of development have resulted in some interesting and innovative features I am still perplexed and a little sad/annoyed but the path which was led us to the point where we currently find ourselves. When I first discovered LFS, back in the days when all we had was a demo, featuring the XRG, XFG, XRT and Blackwood, it had a much different feeling then it does now. This feeling has nothing to do with the physics or the looks of LFS but has to do more with the design and content we had. Those three basic cars were perfectly matched to the track. Their performance and dynamics played very well to the layout which resulted in a cadence and pace that just made you forget you were sitting in front of your computer and instead made to feel as though you were in your real car at a local track competing door to door with your best buddies. It had this feeling of youthful innocence that has now been lost. Today, LFS feels less like I am running at a local track with friends and more like I am a struggling racing professional lost in the jungle of national level competition. I miss the old feeling.
I think this is in part due to the nature of the content we have been given over the S1 and S2 releases. The cars very quickly became very diverse and now extend to the very apex of open wheel racing. The new tracks are wide and open and surrounded with reminders of the level of racing we now compete in. Where once we had a track carved out of the land with few reminders of the commercial nature of racing, we now have track environments surrounded by bleachers, and filled with sponsor ads. The tracks are wide and open with sudden choke points that seem ill conceived. Few of the new tracks feel well suited to the cars we have to drive on them and their wide surfaces contribute to a dulling of the sense of speed so many in our community have been commenting on. When I watch racing videos there is often little room for passing, running three wide is almost impossible and if done the cars are nearly scraping paint. I think this has a lot to do with why many people are seeking faster and faster cars. It’s not because they want to drive faster it’s because they feel like they are driving so slow in the cars they have.
In my vision of the LFS we don’t have the FO8 and FB1, we don’t have the FZR, XRR and FXR. The pinnacle of open wheel cars is the FOX and the panicles for the tin tops are the UFR, XFR with perhaps a RWD and AWD rival. The faster cars should have been left for S3 along with the tracks in which they would feel at home. In my vision of LFS Aston would be a pair of smaller track venues each with no more than 3 variants of varying length, each presenting unique challenges and with a layout that flows smoothly from one turn to the next. Kyoto would be a short track oval which would require some braking in the corners and its attached road course would have to involve exiting under the banking through a tunnel or be completely detached from the oval as it would not fin in the infield. Westhill would be much like it is now but perhaps a little more compact, but not much. This would be the track which gave us a promise and taste of what the future would hold when faster cars are introduced in S3.
In my vision of LFS the level of racing is also based in a class structure which exists outside of the inherent class based on the performance of the cars. The level of competition would directly affect how much adjustability there is in car setup. At lower levels drivers are forced to use a predefined setup for each car while at higher levels of competition more settings are allowed to be adjusted as well as the number of adjustments available for each setting. As it stands now many settings are infinitely adjustable, when in reality things like gear ratios, springs rates, damper settings and sway bar stiffness selections are limited to a handful of available options. I think this is a problem and in my vision of LFS we are much more limited.
In the end we have what we have and LFS will continue to develop as the people running the show deem it should, but perhaps in the future the path of development may start to wander back towards how I hoped LFS would be when I first started dreaming towards the future of LFS back before it was no more than a demo. I hope I am not alone in the way I feel and that there are other out there that have those same fond feeling of what LFS was like in times past when the community was smaller, the choices were limited and the competition was close and fierce.
I guess you had to be there to understand... Oh well...
My vision of what LFS was to become and the developer’s vision of what LFS is to become diverged some time ago. While the changes and path of development have resulted in some interesting and innovative features I am still perplexed and a little sad/annoyed but the path which was led us to the point where we currently find ourselves. When I first discovered LFS, back in the days when all we had was a demo, featuring the XRG, XFG, XRT and Blackwood, it had a much different feeling then it does now. This feeling has nothing to do with the physics or the looks of LFS but has to do more with the design and content we had. Those three basic cars were perfectly matched to the track. Their performance and dynamics played very well to the layout which resulted in a cadence and pace that just made you forget you were sitting in front of your computer and instead made to feel as though you were in your real car at a local track competing door to door with your best buddies. It had this feeling of youthful innocence that has now been lost. Today, LFS feels less like I am running at a local track with friends and more like I am a struggling racing professional lost in the jungle of national level competition. I miss the old feeling.
I think this is in part due to the nature of the content we have been given over the S1 and S2 releases. The cars very quickly became very diverse and now extend to the very apex of open wheel racing. The new tracks are wide and open and surrounded with reminders of the level of racing we now compete in. Where once we had a track carved out of the land with few reminders of the commercial nature of racing, we now have track environments surrounded by bleachers, and filled with sponsor ads. The tracks are wide and open with sudden choke points that seem ill conceived. Few of the new tracks feel well suited to the cars we have to drive on them and their wide surfaces contribute to a dulling of the sense of speed so many in our community have been commenting on. When I watch racing videos there is often little room for passing, running three wide is almost impossible and if done the cars are nearly scraping paint. I think this has a lot to do with why many people are seeking faster and faster cars. It’s not because they want to drive faster it’s because they feel like they are driving so slow in the cars they have.
In my vision of the LFS we don’t have the FO8 and FB1, we don’t have the FZR, XRR and FXR. The pinnacle of open wheel cars is the FOX and the panicles for the tin tops are the UFR, XFR with perhaps a RWD and AWD rival. The faster cars should have been left for S3 along with the tracks in which they would feel at home. In my vision of LFS Aston would be a pair of smaller track venues each with no more than 3 variants of varying length, each presenting unique challenges and with a layout that flows smoothly from one turn to the next. Kyoto would be a short track oval which would require some braking in the corners and its attached road course would have to involve exiting under the banking through a tunnel or be completely detached from the oval as it would not fin in the infield. Westhill would be much like it is now but perhaps a little more compact, but not much. This would be the track which gave us a promise and taste of what the future would hold when faster cars are introduced in S3.
In my vision of LFS the level of racing is also based in a class structure which exists outside of the inherent class based on the performance of the cars. The level of competition would directly affect how much adjustability there is in car setup. At lower levels drivers are forced to use a predefined setup for each car while at higher levels of competition more settings are allowed to be adjusted as well as the number of adjustments available for each setting. As it stands now many settings are infinitely adjustable, when in reality things like gear ratios, springs rates, damper settings and sway bar stiffness selections are limited to a handful of available options. I think this is a problem and in my vision of LFS we are much more limited.
In the end we have what we have and LFS will continue to develop as the people running the show deem it should, but perhaps in the future the path of development may start to wander back towards how I hoped LFS would be when I first started dreaming towards the future of LFS back before it was no more than a demo. I hope I am not alone in the way I feel and that there are other out there that have those same fond feeling of what LFS was like in times past when the community was smaller, the choices were limited and the competition was close and fierce.
I guess you had to be there to understand... Oh well...
and I know several other older LFSers that would too. I'm not so sure that LFS will ever be that way as a whole, or if even it should be, but I'd sure love to see a more simulator oriented segment of the community enabled with server side options and perhaps insim apps to give them the experience they crave with like minded individuals. Drifters and criuses are being cattered for so I don't see any reasonable argument for why other segments shouldn't be catered for 
)
I absolutely agree.. I talked about this with someone close to the community a little while ago.. I was trying to explain why I didn't play LFS as much as I did.. but I couldn't really find the right words. I think I'll just copy/paste your post because I agree with every single word.
