*looks at the bills to arrive in the post this morning*
Nope.
*looks at the bills to arrive in the post this morning*
Nope.
reality check
it has been in development since nr2003 so roughly as long as lfs
its damage system produces very similar results to lfs' (no wings falling off, suspension parts can shorten to a ridiculous degree etc) and the collision detection is just as bad at times
that leaves us with better tyres and better tracks which is more a matter of gigo than anything else
all that with more than 10 times as many coders as lfs has
Simplified rule of software development: Each additional programmer is only worth about 80% as productive as the previous one. You can throw manpower at a project and it will be finished faster, but a lone programmer is still a force to be reckoned with.
- Sometime in 1999: Working on Lionhead's Black & White, Scawen starts to write a small stunt simulator with mouse steering in his free time
- Spring 2001: After the release of Black & White, Scawen and Eric leave Lionhead to work fulltime on LFS
- 18.08.2002: A user of the West Racing forum finds the demo test 0.04k on the internet and spreads the word about LFS.
Very true shotglass! But we will all just hold on to the fact that because there are so many developers, these things will be dealt with soon
Hehe...Edit: Yeah I do agree, LFS has been in development longer than iRacing, but still, it is surprising that certain things are missing in iRacing. A lot of things that are missing in iRacing have been in LFS since the first public version! I suppose it's just a case of different priorities, which is fine. I do think the developments over the next year or so will be very important for iRacing though... Whereas LFS is already a very solid product that I don't think needs much work now. Sure, new content will be welcome, but as far as features go it is very well established already.
who cares what was started first anyway? Isn't that like two old men arguing who's balls are wrinkliest? When really, it's about the action you get...
This quote sums up how I feel at the moment.
I await new content with excitement but fear it won't be made available in the short term.
Still, with over 100,000 miles of track driving I have received awesome value for money so far.
i don't want to argue about iracing, i haven't tested it yet, but many lfs drivers i trust, are really satisfied with the product. i just want to wait a little longer and maybe then join the club.
it's not even public yet. all i want to say: they know that sim development is expensive and because of the small userbase, they take more money for it. they don't have excuses if they don't produce new content on a regular basis and if they can accomplish that, it's probably the only sim i need.
i don't care how many coders they need. it's astonishing what scavier has accomplished a 3-man team, but in the end it's the product that count.
you are right about this if you have only one project to work on, becky. but if you can split the project into individual packages that can be developed simultaniously (e.g. many tracks, many cars, coding), that rule doesn't apply. plus, in a bigger team you can afford to have specialists. with proper management deployed in the right way, this can be a great advantage.
Yeah, things are always different the moaning after the night before...
In this moment, if LFS do not have another options instead of rims and skins, i am going to buy silvesrtone and have some fun with the barber F2000, that do not mean LFS is a bad product!
Dont miss the aim of this thread, pleaase.
Anyway, i am not selling my s2 license..atm.
Dont miss the aim of this thread, pleaase.
Anyway, i am not selling my s2 license..atm.
OOP ONLY works in software code. Anyone who's played BF2 knows that it doesn't work when applied to manpower resources.
what does this have to do with oop or bf2?
modelling a porsche doesn't stop some other modeller creating a ferrari in the same time, another ten 3d-artits creating 10 tracks and 1 other guy coding this....one other coding that....etc.etc.
you need someone to coordinate, but that shouldn't be a problem.
i really don't get it. i was talking about work packages in a bigger project.
modelling a porsche doesn't stop some other modeller creating a ferrari in the same time, another ten 3d-artits creating 10 tracks and 1 other guy coding this....one other coding that....etc.etc.
you need someone to coordinate, but that shouldn't be a problem.
i really don't get it. i was talking about work packages in a bigger project.
I was being glib. I was talking about the left hand committee not knowing what the right hand working group discussed with the right leg surveyors regarding left toe deployment.
[edit] BF2, it seemed to me, was a very good example of failure to communicate effectively between modular working groups. My understanding of EA's manpower structure revolves specifically around these issues. Or perhaps my computer just wasn't fast enough to compensate.
[edit] BF2, it seemed to me, was a very good example of failure to communicate effectively between modular working groups. My understanding of EA's manpower structure revolves specifically around these issues. Or perhaps my computer just wasn't fast enough to compensate.
The overtly OOP approach can indeed result in bloatware, for examples of how totally independent working groups with a core of "object linkers" just doesnt work look at Windows ME.
There comes a point when adding more coders to a project will result in the usual, ever deminished, efficiency gain in terms of productivity. However the resulting application is just bloated, with obscure hard to track down bugs from incompatabilities and deaply relational code where altering something has uncertain effects.
In short, there are limits to the practical deployment of OOP working practices, and for an example of what happens when that practical deployment is exceeded look at any in depth discussion on why a lot of technophilles hate Windows.
There comes a point when adding more coders to a project will result in the usual, ever deminished, efficiency gain in terms of productivity. However the resulting application is just bloated, with obscure hard to track down bugs from incompatabilities and deaply relational code where altering something has uncertain effects.
In short, there are limits to the practical deployment of OOP working practices, and for an example of what happens when that practical deployment is exceeded look at any in depth discussion on why a lot of technophilles hate Windows.
afaik ea has developed very successful novell approaches to managing the workforce
http://www.kloonigames.com/download.php?file=tagd.zip
I think it was Vain. And it still applies although there is a change to the better
The main strength for iracing in LFS community is the neweness. While there doesn't seem to be much happening in LFS to get people back to racing there is something (finally) happening in sim racing scene and that's something good.
As I see it LFS has all the weapons and resources to challenge iracing but not the will or something. Better physics, new tracks and improvements to the "major flaws" would be "enough" for me. Comparing what iracing actually offers versus what LFS offers to someone who has been active in LFS for few years, there imho isn't competition. Even with its flaws iracing wins hands down for me. And those flaws are not something small, the pricing needs some adjusting, the "league" system is artificial and disappointing, there are not enough races and the whole system seems badly thought out with some serious flaws and mishaps all over the place.
I'd rather not comment on your comment about better tyres and tracks in iracing being just "gigo" but I just can't get over it. Those are major parts of what makes a good sim!
well scawen has once again made clear that the collisions are near the very top of his to do list so lets hope it gets done this time round
with that out of the way and better damage lfs would imho already be one major step ahead
maybe it really is the superior sim... i guess ill never know unless they dare to show me its flaws for free
and the whole system that forces you to wait at least 4 month and pay quite a lot for cars you dont want to drive just to get to the radical has rip off written all over it imho
they are indeed but im just not convinced its a major accomplishment of any sorts
were talking thousands of dollars going into tyre testing vs getting it right from stuff you can find on the internet and in libraries a lot of which is indeed garbage... i obviously havent tried it myself but some who did have said its not that different to what we already have
The community here give ideas to the devs. Sure, some of the members are quite annoying, they bash and whine LFS. You have to remember though, feedback is quite valuable. I must say, I've tried other sims, and come back to this one everytime. This is a great product. Let the devs do their work, you sit back and enjoy the ride.
Plus, how many other people send out public test patches?
Plus, how many other people send out public test patches?
(RMachucaA)
DELETED
by RMachucaA
Plus One - I propose the establishment of Shut Up Shotglass Day.
I had to backtrack a bit to figure out how this turned into an iRacing thing. Turns out it was BBT shouting his opinion out.
Shouting opinions out - or even just typing them in a forum are a good way for exchanging ideas and getting a discussion going. Silencing all opinions about anything goes both ways.
Neat disclaimer.
-cut here-
Opinions aside what I really don't get is this religious-like arguing about sims, personal opinions, personal preferences and personal taste. Here we are minorities of minorities bickering about a couple of games (hobbies, whatever) - just like I've seen photographers bickering over digital vs analog, cyclists bickering about road cycling vs mountain biking, divers bickering about breath-holding techniques and even those philatelically inclined are prone to massive arguments (I was quite amused when I witnessed one). Pretty futile really.
-cut here and fold twice-
ok, samh i understood. but if the communication between the several departments doesn't work, you have either a badly organized structure and/or a bad project management.
yes i agree, that the bigger the staff is, the less efficient work can be done, but it ain't that bad if it's properly managed. the management is the overhead, you wouldn't have had in a small team. iracing as an example can establish workers who spezialize and get better and better in different sectors(e.g. car modelling, track building, UI-Programming, 3d-Programming etc. etc.).
It's not all bad, having a big team working on a project. things can be done good or bad. in a small team or a big company.
uhh, this gone really offtopic, but i think we agree at least at some points. i just wanted to say, that by taking that much money and using that kind of payment structure, iracing has made some kind of "promise" to provide updates and new content. they have to keep the relatively small customer base happy, to keep the cashflow coming. imho sim racing development cannot keep the pace other genres are developed because of the small userbase sim racing has. it doesn't pay of for big companys to do hardcore sims, because there aren't enough customers. by implementing a career mode and lots of helps simbin tried to get also the casual gamers to buy their game. iracing made another clever choice to circumvent this problem.
with it's cheap price and the focus on reaching a big userbase by integrating many languages, lfs gone the other way. i hope this will pay out, too. although imho s2 should have been completed first. many racers speak english anyway.
yes i agree, that the bigger the staff is, the less efficient work can be done, but it ain't that bad if it's properly managed. the management is the overhead, you wouldn't have had in a small team. iracing as an example can establish workers who spezialize and get better and better in different sectors(e.g. car modelling, track building, UI-Programming, 3d-Programming etc. etc.).
It's not all bad, having a big team working on a project. things can be done good or bad. in a small team or a big company.
uhh, this gone really offtopic, but i think we agree at least at some points. i just wanted to say, that by taking that much money and using that kind of payment structure, iracing has made some kind of "promise" to provide updates and new content. they have to keep the relatively small customer base happy, to keep the cashflow coming. imho sim racing development cannot keep the pace other genres are developed because of the small userbase sim racing has. it doesn't pay of for big companys to do hardcore sims, because there aren't enough customers. by implementing a career mode and lots of helps simbin tried to get also the casual gamers to buy their game. iracing made another clever choice to circumvent this problem.
with it's cheap price and the focus on reaching a big userbase by integrating many languages, lfs gone the other way. i hope this will pay out, too. although imho s2 should have been completed first. many racers speak english anyway.
I followed this thread because it was mostly quite interesting.
I'm concerned to post in it, because every time I post, people start trying to draw me into discussions on things I have already talked about. Let's not do that because we'll end up with a closed thread, and I definitely don't want to close this thread.
But I just wanted to comment on a couple of things you said, Fetzo.
Maybe you just couldn't find the right word there but... as a sim developer it concerns me when users start to say what a developer has promised, when they promised nothing of the sort. So I'll just defend IRacing on that point - I don't think they made that promise at all. When you pay for a month, I think their promise is to provide you with a racing service for that month. They did not promise to provide updates, so you cannot hold them to that. Of course, I agree that it would benefit them to provide updates, so people keep coming back. But that is just business sense, not a promise to anyone.
Well, I'm not sure if you said this to provoke a reaction. For one thing, if you think the main focus of LFS is language support, you are extremely far from the mark. In the whole of LFS's development I've only put a few months work into that. The voluntary translators do the translations. It's not me sitting here surrounded by translation dictionaries, if that is the image you have.
It makes me angry that people criticise me for supporting the East Asian languages. Not only you but some other people - and I am quite shocked by that. Who do they think they are to say that? What I do in January, when I'm having a "month off" after a massive push for an important update, and I take a few weeks of working at a relaxed pace to support some languages I've always liked and look so great, and so covering another fifth of the world's population, that's up to me to decide. It took nothing from you. I don't criticise you for what you do in your free time. When I start telling you what to do in your holiday, then you can tell me what to do. Until then, leave me alone.
I'm concerned to post in it, because every time I post, people start trying to draw me into discussions on things I have already talked about. Let's not do that because we'll end up with a closed thread, and I definitely don't want to close this thread.
But I just wanted to comment on a couple of things you said, Fetzo.
Maybe you just couldn't find the right word there but... as a sim developer it concerns me when users start to say what a developer has promised, when they promised nothing of the sort. So I'll just defend IRacing on that point - I don't think they made that promise at all. When you pay for a month, I think their promise is to provide you with a racing service for that month. They did not promise to provide updates, so you cannot hold them to that. Of course, I agree that it would benefit them to provide updates, so people keep coming back. But that is just business sense, not a promise to anyone.
Well, I'm not sure if you said this to provoke a reaction. For one thing, if you think the main focus of LFS is language support, you are extremely far from the mark. In the whole of LFS's development I've only put a few months work into that. The voluntary translators do the translations. It's not me sitting here surrounded by translation dictionaries, if that is the image you have.
It makes me angry that people criticise me for supporting the East Asian languages. Not only you but some other people - and I am quite shocked by that. Who do they think they are to say that? What I do in January, when I'm having a "month off" after a massive push for an important update, and I take a few weeks of working at a relaxed pace to support some languages I've always liked and look so great, and so covering another fifth of the world's population, that's up to me to decide. It took nothing from you. I don't criticise you for what you do in your free time. When I start telling you what to do in your holiday, then you can tell me what to do. Until then, leave me alone.
Allow me to put in a few words about user created content: I don't want it.
I was browsing the RFactor forums a while ago, looking at the what people were doing with mods. Stumbled upon a thread with a high reply/view count and checked it out. The OP was "age:19". Now... I'm not saying that young guys can't do good work. But do you really think a 19 year old has the breadth of experience to produce a mod accurately? This is a simulation remember, where realism should be priority number one.
Someone above mentioned the high kid count in LFS. Can you imagine letting lose all those kids on mods? Of course I don't have to play what I don't like, but the clutter will still be there, and there will still be dilution of the core product. I'll put up with Blackwood all day long rather than some guy's interpretation of the Nurburgring. He, who has never been there. He, who's only exposure to the "fabled holy mecca pilgrimage 'Ring" (ooooooohhh ahhhhhhhhhhh zzzzzz ffs it's such a boring track) is from other poor interpretations.
---
Now, a bit of perspective on LFS.
I only purchased S2 with the release of patch Y. Didn't play the demo much at all, but lurked around the forums a great deal waiting for the untapped potential to be... tapped into. The foundation is all here. The sophistication of the physics engine is awe inspiring. But...
For me patch Y was the first sign of real life. The FBM is a real car! Not some engineering project like the MRT. Not some fantasy concept like the RAC. Not beyond the reach of mere mortals like the F1. And to top it all off, Scawen went to drive the thing! He and Eric had first hand experience with it! Now that is how you do Q/A with a simulator. Add the gearbox simulation, and I was sold. "Brilliant." Now let's stay on course and do more.
---
iRacing. Now that's my kind of sim. Laser scanned tracks, real cars, lots of nitty gritty detail (actually... it lacks quite a bit compared to LFS in a few areas), and I hear it drives great. I love it already. Except the price. So that leaves me with LFS... goooooooo LFS!!!
I was browsing the RFactor forums a while ago, looking at the what people were doing with mods. Stumbled upon a thread with a high reply/view count and checked it out. The OP was "age:19". Now... I'm not saying that young guys can't do good work. But do you really think a 19 year old has the breadth of experience to produce a mod accurately? This is a simulation remember, where realism should be priority number one.
Someone above mentioned the high kid count in LFS. Can you imagine letting lose all those kids on mods? Of course I don't have to play what I don't like, but the clutter will still be there, and there will still be dilution of the core product. I'll put up with Blackwood all day long rather than some guy's interpretation of the Nurburgring. He, who has never been there. He, who's only exposure to the "fabled holy mecca pilgrimage 'Ring" (ooooooohhh ahhhhhhhhhhh zzzzzz ffs it's such a boring track) is from other poor interpretations.
---
Now, a bit of perspective on LFS.
I only purchased S2 with the release of patch Y. Didn't play the demo much at all, but lurked around the forums a great deal waiting for the untapped potential to be... tapped into. The foundation is all here. The sophistication of the physics engine is awe inspiring. But...
For me patch Y was the first sign of real life. The FBM is a real car! Not some engineering project like the MRT. Not some fantasy concept like the RAC. Not beyond the reach of mere mortals like the F1. And to top it all off, Scawen went to drive the thing! He and Eric had first hand experience with it! Now that is how you do Q/A with a simulator. Add the gearbox simulation, and I was sold. "Brilliant." Now let's stay on course and do more.
---
iRacing. Now that's my kind of sim. Laser scanned tracks, real cars, lots of nitty gritty detail (actually... it lacks quite a bit compared to LFS in a few areas), and I hear it drives great. I love it already. Except the price. So that leaves me with LFS... goooooooo LFS!!!
Well I for one certainly do not critisice this decision, and I dont speak a word of any of them. The nearest I can manage in Japanese is to say Windy Road instead of Hello, I can't even speak my own mother tongue, seriously, I dont even know enough Cymraeg to get by. I sometimes even wonder if English is my main language, it seems i'm most fluid when talking source code...
What I do see though is a huge potential market, computer games are treated differently in the far east with big boss kills in WoW and Lineage being prime time TV viewing in some countries!
The potential market opened up by supporting asian langues could have a massive positive effect on the LFS userbase if the game garners support in those countries.
Sure over half of Europeans speak English, this isn't the case in some Asian countries, particularly some of the less developed countries where none-the-less online gaming is a huge business.
And best of all if we cant understand a word each other are saying we can't argue after an accident, hell, even smilies are written differently!
Becky ^^
thats one of the mistakes here, comparisons between LFS and Iracing, are not the same things, different concepts, different bussines.
I kept my eye on this also, hoping its stays a worthy debate.
I think alot of people regardless of invlovement with the developement of LFS, do feel at times intimidated by the possible reactions that occur in the forums here, I wish i could put myself in your shoes for a day, just to see how it feels to read some of the thoughts people share with each other, on somthing shaped and crafted by myself and other collective indviduals within the team.
Could i reamain calm, would i be able to bite my tounge , id like to say i could.. but sometimes i really could scream (actually i do sometimes)
and i do wonder if you have any hair left (as babies also have damn strong grip)
But its not all bad there are regulars that do make me smile and there are the posts that really get you thinking, or realise your not the only one with that same hope.
There have been points throughout my relationship with LFS (yes i do feel connected to this sim wether its driving the RB4 (yes FXO kapput, in garage for repair) or talking with people i've met along the way, in IRC, IM or in here the forums.
Ocassionally in the past I perhaps felt things slowed down, regarding the proccess of developement, but i really do understand that life and having a good balance between with all that it encompasses, is essiantial to happy living.
I've in the past changed jobs for much less pay, or less stature or responsabilty, for the "happy living" equation. There comes a point where the stress just isnt worth it. For myself the less stress the better, i enjoy what i do more .. thats about it really, things just happen more naturally.
I could carry on, but again, quoting you
Sometimes its not what people say, its what they dont
The Great Moaning about Updates versus Ethos Controversy
(142 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG