1) Iracing - have not played it myself but have heard good things about it.
2) netKar Pro 1.0.3 - I know what your thinking, but belive me im a beta tester of it and the improvement over 1.0.2 is amazing - it will be the NKP it should have been at the start!
iRacing is a better simulation. LFS is a better game.
It's only my second day playing iRacing, but due to the structure it's a bit difficult to actually get into a race. For instance, I wanted to play during my lunch hour, but my only choices were a race at 11am or at 1pm. So I've mainly been doing practice sessions. You click one of the many practice time slots (all of which always have 0 entrants) and hope people join in. 1 or 2 usually join (during peak hours you may get 7 or 8) and you basically hotlap by yourself for 30 minutes. My only race thus far was a complete disaster so that really hasn't helped my opinion of the game Once I get some real good races in I my change my opinion. But I can say for certain LFS does have HUGE value considering what you get for the price.
24,000 S2 licences sold. Even if we assume their all upgrades at £12 a go that's £288,000 revenue over 3 years or £96,000 a year (averaged). That's enough for an income of £25k pa each (which is essentially the national average). Leaving £21k per year left over to put back in to funding LFS. Dedicated hosting isn't that expensive, example cost is around £2.8k per year, (that's for a 2.66Ghz core duo machine, 3GB ram, 1TB storage, 10mb/s dedicated pipe and unlimited bandwidth usage).
If they're half upgrades and half new sales then the revenue is up to £432,000 or £144,000 pa - could pay themselves £40k pa and still have £24k pa to reinvest in LFS !!
Yes I know it most likely hasn't been that even a cashflow situation but with those kinds of numbers you have to be pretty poor at cash management to not come out sitting pretty no matter how the cash flow has varied over the 3 year period.
Races should get more frequent as more people arrive.
Also the practices MIGHT be changed (not sure exactly). Some people on the iR forum have suggested that either when you want to practice on the combo of the week you have to do it online, or that there should be a constant open practice server that anyone can join at anytime. Some of the iR staff liked the idea, so hopefully they could implement one or the other.
BTW, both things were read on the forum and I don't know if and/or when they would happen.
i don't like the pay per month system's so iracing is a no go for me ... but i'd pay to have cars and tracks packs i also like that lfs doesn't require high end machine and i can play it with my athlonxp , i think the dev team will find a way to go forward , i read too many posts people complaing about the pace of development and i remember the reason Eric don't write to the forums..... i hope scawen and victor ignore them and be active like they do now
Just to keep things interesting, here's a post from Scawen in a similar thread that took place just before the release of Patch X. It seems eerily familiar...
I have an Athlon 3400+ and a 6800GT and it runs perfectly smooth at 1600x1200. I haven't noticed any framerate issues (I think I'm running ~50FPS but it feels like 70-80 to be honest). I also have mainly be racing at one track with little to no cars on the track so maybe I'll have an issue with a full grid. High end machines these days are cheap though... compared to my last build.
I hardly play LFS at all. i am waiting for the next major patc. I spend what few simracing time i have driving the Historic GT and Touring car mod for rfFactor. Its probably the best mod ever.
Hopefully rFactor will get more laser scanned tracks
Incompatible or not, i hope hotlaps won't have to be deleted cause of the cockpits.. In that case, i can't see a reason for them not to be in Patch Z... but it's LFS, what's another 6 months/1 year of wait..
Who knows, perhaps Eric has already made like four or five tracks and five or six new cars for upcoming S3. We should not forget that S2 is pretty much finished and in my opinion we shouldn't expect much before S3 is out.
Comparing LFS to anything else is pretty much pointless to me. I'm not interested in games at all. I don't play any other game, because that they all do feel like games, but LFS doesn't. It's different to everything else, Scawen and his team mates has got a way different understanding of what the word simulation means and this is pretty much the same understanding as I have. I fully understand Scawen, I wish he had more time for LFS and perhaps a bigger team, but well, it's his own project and everything is up to him.
The slow developing process is painful for many of you as I can see, but hey, other games don't have such a thing at all. It's like 1) I'm out 2) buy me 3) be happy for a month or so 4) bye bye. LFS is different, here you're a part of process and I guess this makes many of us so impatient. For me it's a big pleasure to know, that something is still ahead of me. Sometimes waiting itself is more exciting than the thing you been waiting for. However, wanting for more and more is not that bad I guess, it's natural I believe .
However, LFS is all about racing, you shouldn't forget that. Patches are just big bonuses, that makes this fantastic simulator even more realistic and more exciting. We might have got more during all these years, but we have also might got less. One thing is for sure, there will never be enough for everyone doesn't matter how much we get .
Fixed. I'm not going to bother digging up the quote, but Scawen has said that S3 is not being worked on until S2 is finished. If Eric has already made new cars or tracks, we'll see them in S2.
"Pretty much finished" is fairly ambiguous as far as LFS is concerned. Yeah, it seems mostly complete. We haven't been promised any additional features (other than the GTR interiors). However, Scawen has said things that lead us to believe that he still has some tricks up his sleeve. He's talked about tire improvements and fixing the collision issues. He's talked about an improved damage model, detachable body parts, and improved aero modeling. Given the things that have been changed recently (clutch modeling, engine intertia changes, false starts) it would seem reasonable to conclude that the devs vision for the game is to continue to refine the sim to be as realistic as is practical. That would suggest that we could see plenty more changes before S2 is final. We haven't been promised any of these things, and we aren't owed any of these things, but I think that we will wind up getting them anyway.
I personally have a vision in my mind of what I'd like to see LFS become. I think that Scawen's vision is probably very similar. I also have a vision of what S2 should be when it's "done", and I think that vision will probably be fulfilled. It's just a matter of how long it takes to come to fruition. I obviously would like to see it sooner rather than later...but I'd rather get it later than not at all.
My bets of what S2 will get before it's final:
New car models (including body panels that fall off and no license plates on the race cars)
Improved damage model (blown engines, more easily bent suspension, crushed radiators, etc)
Fixed collision system (no more flying cars when hitting barriers or walls)
Improved longitudinal grip tire model
Adjustable track temperatures
Improved turbo modeling
Further improved clutch model (with a grinding noise when you miss a gear)
More realistic lap time and flag displays (animated GPL style marshals for Yellow flags and a nkPro-like pit board instead of numbers flashed across the screen)
Improved textures, added details, perhaps working pit lights - general graphical improvements.
And I'm going to go out on a limb and say we'll see at least two tracks (tracks, not layouts) and two more cars (and possibly lose a few of the current cars).
I don't have any sort of inside info, but these are the things I expect to see before S2 is done, based purely on what we've got so far and my own personal hunches.
If you look the past 3 years, the years since the launch of S2 you will quickly notice that your bets are quite high. There has been only one (1) patch that has changed the physics noticeably in three years, no new tracks, no new pieces of tarmac, just 3 layouts all of which did introduce just one new corner, the as7 hairpin. Sure, the south city and blackwood did get updated but who would notice unless we were told there being changed?
You can be as optimistic as you want, just like the few fan boys who always see the next big patch being released in the next few months. The thing that will more probably happen is S2 is being released in year or two with maybe a percentage of those big things you mentioned. But hoping for two new tracks is totally over the top, it just won't happen period. Even the GTR interiors have not been released because they are not ready, not because of physics incomatiblities etc., this has been said too somewhere...
It's not about glass being half empty or half full, it is simple a matter of looking what has been done since the launch of S2 and looking at the future with that in mind.
I don't think they are, and I'll explain why below.
Considering I'm complaining as much as anyone else, I don't know that I'd consider myself and optimistic fanboy.
How can you be so sure? Do you know for a fact that we won't get any new tracks? If you think that S2 will be released a year or two from now, what will Eric be doing that whole time if not making tracks?
No, it hasn't. Re-read my quote from Scawen:
The GTR interiors could have been done months ago. But Eric is redoing more than just the GTR cars. Specifically note that Scawen mentions the XFG and XRT. Because the interior changes make a patch incompatible, they want to release them ALL at once.
You're right. So, let's take a look at what has been done over the past year. I won't list everything - just the significant changes:
Patch Y24 (current):
- FFW and REW in single and multi-player replays
- Huge frame rate increase (HVS utilization)
- Demo license system (A solution to wreckers!)
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean language support
- In-game AA and AF support
- Car shadows increased to 16 cars
Patch Y (Dec '07):
- New car - Formula BMW FB02
- Updated South City track
- Updated Blackwood track
- Improved AI drivers
- Improved Physics (engine inertia, throttle cut/blip removed, clutch heat)
- Road car and GTR car class balancing
- Interface updates
- New training lessons
- Auto-update system
Patch X10:
- Force cockpit view added
Patch X (Jun 2007):
- 32 car / 47 guest / 20 AI limit in races
- False starts!
- Physics (clutch pack preload)
- High resolution skin download service
- Global class balancing system
- Huge InSim changes, allowing us to have the CTRA and other such leagues.
- Connection queueing
This list doesn't cover all of the small interface changes, bug fixes, engine sounds, etc. Frankly, I'd say that some of the best changes EVER to LFS have happened in the past year (stalling, working clutches, and false starts alone were worth the wait). But, because we haven't had anything shiny, it doesn't feel like progress has been made.
I personally feel as though the glass is more than half full (with rFactor being a quarter full and nkPro being full of tobacco spit) ...but that doesn't mean I don't really, really want to have a full pint.
I would really like to have the same kind of job. Because in my job, however fast I work, people paying me always agree I work too slow and none of them give reasons to defend me
Well he said, just search for it. He also told in the same post the cycle the team does in terms of physics updates and other updates.
In my opinion Z will be the last patch of S2. That would explain all the fixes, the languages, the improved online system, and all other minor details like the new menu, tipical of the softening the edges of a final product.
With a little less probability in my eyes because i can only guess, would be that indeed the interiors are almost if not made already, maybe also a new track. That would mark the first S3 download, so we would have something to pay for when paying the 12£ for the upgrade.
That would be wonderful, and I hope you're right. But I don't think you will be. I think it's somewhat optimistic based on recent progress - progress which yes has included plenty of significant changes but hardly any large additions that draw crowds, bring back lost "old timers", or represent "milestones".
As much as I've got both feet firmly planted in the "lack of content is hurting LFS" camp, I feel that statement I quoted is too harsh. The updates to Blackwood and South City were pretty significant in terms of visual appeal, race tracks, all the kerbs fixed, corners revised and rescaled, etc.
Have to agree. There's no doubting the quality of what's going into S2, it's just that the pace of it doesn't give much to get excited about in the future.
Another issue is that away from coding, as the various models (mass, aero, physics, tyres, etc) get more advanced, the more research Scawen has to do, before he can even start coding. Learning so much must take some serious time and effort, especially in such specialist areas. After all it's not like you can wander down to your local library and pick up a book called The Varying Co-efficients and Centres of Drag and Downforce as they relate to Aerodynamic Undertrays of Racing Cars which has all the answers you need.
However he might be able to write "Racing Simulation Implementations of The Varying Co-efficients and Centres of Drag and Downforce as they relate to Aerodynamic Undertrays of Racing Cars and Why I Didn't Add NOS" as an autobiography of sorts.
Once I get some real good races in I my change my opinion. But I can say for certain LFS does have HUGE value considering what you get for the price.
