iRacing looking to be a very well rounded sim. It's obviously doing things the hard way (propriotry tire model, pulling cars apart and weighing the pieces(!), unheard of attention to track details etc). I'm glad the developers haven't been too shy or too lazy to bother with making it sound or look good either.

I can't say I'm as excited about LFS. Not these days. Perhaps not at all. Real progress has ground down to almost a halt, even if it's still apparently full steam ahead for the small dev team. There has been an offer of laser scanned track data, which was ignored. I appreciate Scawen is busy, but maybe a 'no thanks' would have been nice. It's not as though he'd have to drop everything either- this kind of work could be done independently and concurrently, it could sit on the shelf for a year or two until the time was right. I haven't heard from Piddy for a while- maybe they indeed cut some kind of a deal, but I doubt it.

Anyway, I'm about ready to pay good money for some new content, any content. As Hyper pointed out, iRacing is new- and yeah.. that matters. Maybe that's the biggest strength of iRacing atm, which is ludicrous.

I'd say iRacing is the WoW of simracing

which means, i'd play it if it'd be the game you pay for. this getting a free "software" and then paying for using it like half the price of S2 a month... is just stupid

Like others, I think the answer to the thread title can be summed up in one word: no.

Imho, the slow pace of development is beginning to have an effect. Both on the community as a whole, and for me personally.

Imho, the fact that we still don't have modelled aero undertrays or engine heat (and thus, radiator damage) is disappointing. When S2 was released in 2005 I can't say I ever thought we'd be half way through 2008 and still not have such things. LFS is also lacking what I call "procedural" features. Like the ability to run a formation lap and have everyone park on the grid, or have a rolling start, or have a dedicated safety car option. The kind of things that aren't so relevant to public racing, but would be huge with league racing, or just more "serious" pick-up servers.

Speaking of a safety car model, the main problem for LFS at the moment, and the reason I can't get back into it properly, is the lack of new content. LFS is absolutely crying for some new tracks. Whilst an RB4 or FZ50 with a lightbar would be handy and novel feature as a safety car (although one that would require some rendering of light sources), what we really need is tracks. I know we're not entitled to any, as we knew what content was included when we bought our S2 licenses, but dammit, I'm so sick of doing the same corners in a variety of configurations. Yes, someone will come along and say, "well there's 8,389 combinations and you haven't mastered any of them". True. Maybe I don't want to "master" them in the sense of running at WR speed. Maybe I want to enjoy racing in a variety of tracks and environments, which is something that LFS is sorely lacking these days.

I really want ot be "into" LFS again, but it's just feeling stale at the moment, I'm afraid.

Quote from Electrik Kar :

I can't say I'm as excited about LFS. Not these days. Perhaps not at all. Real progress has ground down to almost a halt, even if it's still apparently full steam ahead for the small dev team. There has been an offer of laser scanned track data, which was ignored.

...

Anyway, I'm about ready to pay good money for some new content, any content.

I think that's the general consensus on the forum...heh...especially recently...

Do I think LFS will 'stay on top', no

At one point did I think it would, yes

I think a lot of my change of thought has to be related to the speed of development and how it has slowly decelerated to a crawl (at least publicly [what we, the community, sees]). Right now, at this rate, there is no way they could stay ahead of the game...

As Electrik Kar mentioned, laser scanned tracks would be awesome, and someone is willing to help but it seems the devs are very selective and hesitant to recruit help...that 'hireing strategy' could really make or break LFS in my opinion...but again, it is their game and I know they have some kind of vision of what it will become but a lot of us, including myself, seem to be having a difficult time having the same vision as of recent...

Quote from Electrik Kar :

There has been an offer of laser scanned track data, which was ignored. I appreciate Scawen is busy, but maybe a 'no thanks' would have been nice. It's not as though he'd have to drop everything either- this kind of work could be done independently and concurrently, it could sit on the shelf for a year or two until the time was right. I haven't heard from Piddy for a while so maybe they indeed cut some kind of a deal, but I doubt it.

I actually PM'd Piddy about this very subject a few days ago. After seeing what he was able to do with Eastern Creek, I was willing to volunteer my time and a considerable amount of money to try to do the same laser scanning at Pacific Raceways here in Seattle (assuming that the owners were open to the idea, which I imagine they would be).

Apparently, the devs have expressed zero interest in having this happen. Frankly, this is something I just can't understand. You've got dedicated users who are offering to donate their time and money to make this sim better, but the devs don't seem very receptive to the idea at all. The same thing is true for new cars. Look at how many cars there are for Racer and rFactor. While LFS probably would be unable to work out licensing agreements for real cars from major manufacturers, "generic" cars that are not copyrighted should be relatively easy to add. I know that several of the best car modelers in the community are fans of LFS, and I bet that some of them could model a Sprint Car, Stock Car, off-road buggy, etc. very quickly. I can't imagine that it would take that much effort to add a car to LFS if the car model and interior were done by volunteers for free.

I understand the desire for Scawen, Victor, and Eric to keep LFS from becoming a "job", but I also think that they could embrace community generated models (car and track) while still keeping true to their own work ethic.

Maybe Patch Z will come out with a new car and track or two in addition to the GTR interiors that we know are coming. That wouldn't address everyone's concerns, but it would at least be something new to keep people content for a while.

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Maybe Patch Z will come out with a new car and track or two in addition to the GTR interiors that we know are coming. That wouldn't address everyone's concerns, but it would at least be something new to keep people content for a while.

Scawen said on the patch test forum that patch Z would be only fixes, that devlopment would be after that.

They NEED to get more people on the Dev team, to speed everything up to keep on top is my opinion. I dont know but to me its been fealing like LFS has been going down hill since these new "sims" has been coming out.


I have a question...Did Apple come out with iRacing? Becauce of Ipod, Iphone etc.?

Quote from scoobyrbac :

I have a question...Did Apple come out with iRacing? Becauce of Ipod, Iphone etc.?

No they didn't. Apple is one of many companies who've used "iSomething". They don't own the rights to the lower case "i" you know (although if they could they would...)

LFS will stay on top of the genre for alot of people for quite some time in the future. How many Racing Sims have came out since LFS exists? And there are still 1000 LFS drivers online racing at the same time, no other Racing Sim comes even close to those numbers. LFS will do fine in the future also with iRacing around.

What the iRacing product and the LFS product are offering is completely different but they are both Racing Simulations and every "side" will benefit from the other.
For example, some LFS drivers want real tracks, iRacing will be able to give them laser scanned tracks who are accurate to the cm. iRacing in return will bring alot of new people and Motorsport enthusiasts to this hobby. John Henry wants to invest alot of money to make Sim Racing to a broadly known legitimate Sport, threw advertising / marketing every Motorsport Fan should learn what Sim Racing is and how he can get into it. And they are serious to bring Sim Racing out of its niche. Last year a real NASCAR CTS had an iRacing paintjob on it, and they dont even have a product out.

iRacing will attract new people to Sim Racing, and not everybody who gets attracted will be satisfied with what iRacing offers (and costs) So they will look around what else is available, and LFS with its Physics and conveniant Multiplayer Mode is going to be very attractive to Sim Racing Newbies. LFS is falling far short of its potential, it doesnt even do any marketing. So I think LFS and also other Sims will benefit from the new people iRacing will bring to our hobby.

LFS progress is slow, and I think making laser scanned tracks wouldnt really help this Sim. It takes alot of money and months which could be spent on other things, like getting more developers for Scawen. But we all know thats not what Scawen wants to do. What I would wish for LFS is that Scawen allows modding. I dont mean modding like in rFactor where everyone throws out 10 versions of cars and tracks, but having 1 dedicated Mod Team with people of programming skills from within the community.

That 1 big Mod Team could work on making Spa, Monaco, Nürburgring... If it is dedicated to bring out only quality products, it would not hurt LFS. Something like the GPLEA is for GPL, or the iDT is for rFactor, if modding is happening in a controlled fashion LFS could have all the tracks and cars other Sims have even with further development from the LFS Devs.
Considering only 3 people work for LFS it has progressed very fast, but there are 40 people working for iRacing, so its progress will be faster, iRacing is now at what you could call S1 Version, but if LFS doesnt allow controlled Modding (only quality Add-Ons) I dont see how LFS will stay infront in the long term.

Quote from LiveForBoobs :

Scawen said on the patch test forum that patch Z would be only fixes, that devlopment would be after that.

Don't burst my bubble! Nobody knew ahead of time that we would get either of the BMW open wheelers, so I'm crossing my fingers that Patch Z has a little something extra in it too (I know it probably won't, but a guy can dream, can't he?).

In any case, we know the GTR interiors are on the way. That change should be enough to keep everyone interested for another few months while Scawen works on physics changes and Eric (hopefully) cranks out another track or two.

Quote from LiveForBoobs :

The only problem i see with LFS is the development speed. Sooner or later there will be a serious simulator that takes advantage of having more people making it that will surpass LFS. It's just a matter of time, if LFS continues evolving at this speed.

This is the main issue, combined with fact that I'm seeing some evidence that the thrill of online racing games is gone for a substational number of players. I see posts at rec.autos.simulators newsgroup from players who have stopped playing any sims questioning if even iRacing will be enough to bring them back.

I don't play LFS online anymore, apparently it's still drawing a fairly large crowd compared to other games, but attendance is down from LFS's heyday. This is no different than any of the racing sims, and if anything LFS is suffering less from burnout than other games.

The problem with the very long development cycle is the burn out factor. If more players lose interest than new players gain interest, there's an overall decline in the total number of player (my wordy way to state the obvious). Being in the USA, I don't see a large influx of PC players for any type of game, the consoles appear to be taking over. The rest of the world isn't experiencing this, at least not yet.

As far as physics goes, the main issue for me and a lot of other players is controllabitly when at or just past the limits. It's not fun to drive if the phsyics is "all or nothing", meaning that once you lose grip in turn, there's virtually no chance of recovery. The original 1.0 release of GTR was an example of this, it was as if the game had a canned sequence to spin a car 180 degrees every time it lost grip. On the other extreme is GPL, where an experienced player can drift through every turn, controlling the oversteer with appropriate throttle and steering inputs, which is what made the game fun and difficult at the same time. The cars were tail happy, but not impossible to control, and it took some skill to keep the cars at their limits.

The main thing that iRacing has done is stimulate feedback from real racers: most race cars are controllable if driven a bit beyond maximum grip, and if the cars do lose control, they lose it slowly, still out of control, but it's a slow oversteer response, not the snap oversteer response you get from so many racing games.

This is where the physics in most racing games need improvement, skilled controllability when going beyond maximum grip and back in order to keep a car at the limits, which is what real world racing is all about (except for high downforce cars, where the downforce is set to generate understeer at speed for safety reasons, in which case it's all about the racing lines as opposed to car control, since many high speed turns are taken flat out).

Quote from Whitmore :

Half those racing on-line are demo users (like me )

If you just count full version users then other sims do come close and rFactor has more. And it is difficult to count all users of other sims - they don't all have a system that captures all on-line users.

I dont have much experience in rFactor, but in its Multiplayer Server lists are alot less people, and there are still alot of other Sims with less numbers. There are also times were 1600 people are Online Racing in LFS, Demo Racers are part of the community and part of the Racing, no reason to count them out.

Quote from George Kuyumji :

LFS progress is slow, and I think making laser scanned tracks wouldnt really help this Sim. It takes alot of money and months which could be spent on other things, like getting more developers for Scawen.

That all depends on who is doing the scanning and who is putting up the money. Piddy has already tried to pitch the idea of his scanned Eastern Creek track to the devs. Presumably, adding his already finishedtrack to the game wouldn't take any money or time on their part other than converting it from rFactor/3DS/whatever to a format that LFS can use.

Let's not try to fool ourselves here. While it takes a very specific skill set to do code development, it requires a much different skill set to model a track or car. While there's no way in hell I could ever help Scawen code something for LFS, I do have the skills to operate a digital camera, a GPS, and most likely a laser scanning device. Joe Blow might not be able to program the slip curves for a tire or code up an engine damage system, but he could very well be able to create a very good looking and functional car model.

Adding cars and tracks to the game doesn't necessarily mean taking time away from other development. Especially when there are people volunteering to do the work. Unfortunately, we don't really know for sure since the devs have never really commented on why they can't or won't accept work done by the community in these areas. Perhaps it would be a lot of work for them to implement. Perhaps it would cause legal problems. Perhaps they just don't want to deal with a bunch of whiners from the forums. We really don't know, and they seem to be in no hurry to tell us.

I have wondered this for awhile, what do they do with all the money they get from users who buy the license's?

Put it towards food / rent / tax / mortgage / fuel / loands / insurance / credit cards etc.

Basically what everyone else does, except also fund the LFS Master Server...

Quote from scoobyrbac :

I have wondered this for awhile, what do they do with all the money they get from users who buy the license's?

3 subscriptions for iracing.....

Quote from Cue-Ball :

Maybe Patch Z will come out with a new car and track or two in addition to the GTR interiors that we know are coming..

I knew they are coming in 2006... They probably won't be in the Patch Z, but in the "christmass" patch, and peope will be "omg, omg, Scawen and Eric youre gods!!" and so on.... July 2009, we get Saudi Arabian and Hieroglyphs, and maybe they'll remove the digital speedos from race cars and formulas too...
Sorry Scawen, this may sound harsh, but it's hurting me, really.... We could'of drive on Knockhill now, Sneterton, LFS could of been presented in Fifth Gear, Top Gear, their tracks could of been in game, etc... We could of have Arial Atom, for free, very very likely... etc, etc, etc...

Quote from iam220 :

- T1 wrecks every.god.damn.time.
- people constantly rear-ending me;
- inconsistent drivers

I've only been playing for a week or so, but so far I'm not impressed with the racers on the public servers at all.

Stop driving the single-seaters.

Seriously! The road car drivers in LFS are 10000% less dickheadish.

Is there a way to tell how many S2 license members there are?

I think the estimate is at about 23,000 or so active licenses.

Quote from iam220 :

The more I play LFS, the more I like to prospect of iRacing. Here's why;

- T1 wrecks every.god.damn.time.

- people constantly rear-ending me; I don't know the tracks, so i'm about 2-4 seconds slower, yet given the practice some of these people must of had, surely they'd know how to make a pass?

- very short races,

- inconsistent drivers ( I start out 10th and I finish 3rd because the people in front, although fast, can't keep their cars on the track)

Of course, of course...as we all know, paying a little bit of money every month will radically alter human behavior, for the better.
No, iracing won't see any of the above grievances you state, because as we know, people are rational and logical when it come to their money and winning, they would not DARE to bump, push, cheat...whatever it takes to win.

Quote from Rappa Z :

I think the estimate is at about 23,000 or so licenses.

So I wonder how much money they have actually made, I just tryed and I cant get the currency exchanges right.

Quote from scoobyrbac :

So I wonder how much money they have actually made, I just tryed and I cant get the currency exchanges right.

Google

Quote from morpha :

Google

I used xe but I get confused real easy..and I cant figure it out..

23 000 x 24£ = 552 000£ = 131.089176 million Kazakh tenge