Quote from Michael Denham :

....The next day I checked the forum and got this message.... "Hey I noticed you disconnected after our coming together...... You'll do better.... I have no worries racing with you in the future...." And I've also had another 3 PMs from people saying how much they enjoyed racing with me etc. That's not happened once in LFS...

That's not happened once to you!

I've had plenty of PMs sent to me in LFS of similar context as you quote and have sent many PMs to others as well. I have on multiple occasions, spectated because I've seen someone driving "erratically" and figuring (correctly) that they were new, have helped them for the rest of the evening. I have multiple times left a server after telling someone new to LFS to follow me to an empty server.

I've had the same experience when I was new, first with my very first S1 demo (Feb 2005) server join when Mach1 left his race and helped me with settings all night long. Then again, with trying to drive the RWD when we got the S2 demo, Gimpster had joined me in an empty server and took the time to help me get controlling the RWD all evening.

I can't tell you how many times I've seen "Go offline, you noob" in the chat, but again, I also can't tell you how many times I've seen someone help someone out who needed the help as well in my 3+ years of LFS.

There has been plenty of attempts at "driving schools" made here on the forum to help out new people. There was even a drift team that extended a special server for racers to join to try their hand at drifting. There's plenty of help and good words that come from LFS members.

I can tell you one thing for sure. You will never see me yell "Go offline, you noob" in the chat. In fact, just last night, someone was directly in front of me who obviously did not know the track and braked in a spot that did not call for braking. He took me by surprise and I sent him into the wall with my bumper. I pulled over to his wrecked car, apologized, but let him know that you don't have to brake for the corner in an attempt to help him out. He then apologized to me because he didn't know the circuit. Can't remember my exact words, but I let him know that it was me who hit him from behind, no matter what the circumstances that caused it was, and it was my fault.

Quote from RMachucaA :

Going off to try a sim with that mentality is what keeps kids in lfs, and adults in IRacing. Thankfully Iracing has attracted a more mature type of crowd, which is what i personally feel is sorely lacking from lfs in general, sure theres a ton of old guys like myself, but the grand mayority of users dont even have hair on their chest. Just look at the server lists on any night\day, most of them have nothing to do with actual racing, which is what we old farts look forward to the most. Anyways, as mentioned before, LFS for what it is, is an amazing product hands down. No need to fluff up your feathers and defend it by beating down on a rivaling product, we all have brains, we can all deduce our own conclusions without people like you shouting your opinion out.

-back to topic-

i cant believe im responding seriously to this post
as vain (or i ?!?) has said its not about which ones the best but which one sucks the least
so lets look at past sims their demos and how they turned out to be
lfs - started off as a demo turned out quite well
rfactor - didnt have a demo for the first year or so and turned out to be a complete pile of rubbish
nkp - still doesnt have a online enabled demo and we all know how bad its netcode is
so no i will not blindly trust in a developer that doesnt dare to release a proper demo and i certainly will never pay to demo a game

Quote :

When I start telling you what to do in your holiday, then you can tell me what to do. Until then, leave me alone.

Heh.

I'll admit that sometimes I get anxious for the next update or piece of information and get bored of the current content but I always come back. I think one of the reasons I come back is because Scawen's posts reassure me that they (the devs) obviously have a vision for the final version of LFS. He always lets everyone know there is still progress being made but is so damn mysterious in the process. I think half the fun of watching LFS 'grow' is no one really knows what is going on other than the devs. Sure, we have a basic outline of what needs to be done but there are always other surprises that come along with the to-do list we are aware of. That's how it has always been, we think we are getting 1 thing and get a surprise along with it.

Do I wish LFS would move along a little faster, hell yeah. Does it bother me that sometimes it seems to crawl at a snails pace, sometimes. Can I reassure myself that LFS is still being worked on and we still have a lot to look forward to, absolutely!

It is pretty clear that Scawen is going to do it his way and not take crap from anyone about his method. It is his 'baby' and he can do what he pleases. I think this is a concept that quite a few people need to grasp, even if it is hard to at times.

I'm happy with the current content...although I'd like more tracks... Great work scawen.

Quote from Scawen :

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.

yes you are right scawen, "promise" may be the wrong word. but by charging on a monthly basis and getting extra money for content, i think they can provide many workers to get things done. they never officially promised what i said, but if racers stop racing, there won't be new cash coming into their pockets and if the servers are getting empty the whole system will collaps.

maybe i should have left that language-thing out. to be honest, i didn't want it to distract from the rest i said. all i wanted to say, is that lfs trys to win with a fair price and a big online user-base for easy to have online fun. there is no game, where it's that easy to get pickup races. i tried to highlight the different concepts.

i have different priorities than you have and i definately don't know what plans you have for the future. i really didn't try to attack the team with this. it's just a view from an outsider thinking about sim-racing. yes, i would like s2 to be finished, but who wouldn't? the biggest flaw of lfs is for me the lack of new content and i mean by that new cars and new tracks. that's very subjective, some posters even call it egoistic expressing this "need", but well that was the only reason i stopped playing lfs some months ago.

i tried to be fair in my posts, maybe i wasn't. difficult to say something the sensitive way, if you are struggling finding the right words. i was surprised you were offended by my post.

For me real tracks are of equal importance with physcis, ffb and online racing in a simulator.

Real tracks not only give a huge boost to the immesrion part of the sim, but most importantly they are the absolute common ground amongst anyone and everyone involved in ANY KIND of racing (real life or simulated).
Saying "I lapped under 2 mins in Monza with the XR GTR" makes much more sense to so much more people than saying "I lapped under 1.08 in Blackwood with the XR GTR". And there's no need to have zillions of rl tracks. 2, 3 wisely chosen tracks, with configurations, can provide so much immersive thrill for a long time (both offline and online). And track development is physics independant, meaning each one of them is moslty one time project (once it's done, no need to change it with every patch).

Cars on the other hand don't bother me being fictional, as long as they come in a variety of types and with setup options, since most of the attempeted simulated real cars don't really live up the expectations (in other words, variety of car types along with setups options and good physics, can yield in simulating any real life car's behaviour). Which reminds me to suggest Scawen to allow the user/server admin to optionally lock/hide car setup options, in an effort to preserve some basic characteristics of a car (i.e. expanding the Baby UFR idea and making it generally available ingame).

That being said, I am also bored with LFS but not to the point to completely abandon it. However, I feel the devs owe me nothing, since they have over-deleivered all these years compared to the money I paid and the fun I was (and I occasionally am) having!

Real life tracks (even just one, well known) and a proper damage-model (external and internal parts) are the highest 2 things in my wish list. Dynamic tarmac grip, day/night transition and dynamic weather (in that order) are the rest of the most important things missing from LFS, imho.

Am I willing to wait? Yes
Am I willing to pay? Yes

PS. Am I willing to pay $20 for demoing iR 1 month? No

Quote from migf1 :

For me real tracks are of equal importance with physcis, ffb and online racing in a simulator.

Real tracks not only give a huge boost to the immesrion part of the sim, but most importantly they are the absolute common ground amongst anyone and everyone involved in ANY KIND of racing (real life or simulated).
Saying "I lapped under 2 mins in Monza with the XR GTR" makes much more sense to so much more people than saying "I lapped under 1.08 in Blackwood with the XR GTR". And there's no need to have zillions of rl tracks. 2, 3 wisely chosen tracks, with configurations, can provide so much immersive thrill for a long time (both offline and online). And track development is physics independant, meaning each one of them is moslty one time project (once it's done, no need to change it with every patch).

Sorry but your argument about real life tracks just doesn't stack up on a world wide scale I wouldn't have a clue what is an average time for a particular car around Monza, Brands Hatch or many other well known tracks. I've driven them in some games gp4 and more recently gtr/gtr2 and have seen some brief footage but otherwise know nearly nothing about them

I like real life tracks don't get me wrong, but for instant the first thing I did when I purchased GTR2 was download the mods for V8Supercars and the Australian tracks. I virtually haven't touched the other tracks in GTR2. See where I'm going with this

LFS is sucessful as a World Racing sim because it doesn't have real tracks imo. Real tracks would have a tendancy to localise players to the tracks they know. If Bathurst were put in LFS for example I'd drive it 99% of the time

So I don't think real tracks are as important as physics, also I think you will find that getting real tracks laser scanned for example would require substantial changes in the structure of LFS. At least the resolution of the tracks surface as seen by the physics engine would most likely need changing so I wouldn't jump the gun and say real life track additions would be physics independent.

The rest of your post I agree with

Man, just watched this vid of Radical in iRental... damn, it looks impressive! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfMl4JhTwmE

The sense of speed, the physics, the sounds, the adrenalin... i got all pumped just watching it...

I can't believe that i'm actually considering trying this, but the paying system is still redicolous to me, BUT, can't help but think that maybe that is the only way you can run serious sim... All these laser scanned stuff and all need to be payed somehow, and constant development costs If this thing develops, you may see laser scanned Monza, Spa, Monte Carlo... can't say that it doesn't sound tempting.
Someone said that you shouldn't compare iRacing and LFS, how's that? To me, the realistic physics and the whole immersion comes first, they're both trying to simulate the real thing and that's what matters the most.
As my friend said, LFS should have been final with Patch X, and then concentrate all the time and resources on S3, more tracks, trying to find the deals with UK track owners, puting their tracks in LFS, probably for free, just going more hardcore with everything.. but OK, that's just my dream, i totally respect the devs decisions and their path..
The only thing stoping me from purchasing iRacing is not having the ability to drive at least offline, no lap recordings nothing, once you don't pay for the next month, but you can't do that... If that changes, i won't hesitate...
I hope LFS devs realise that they have one of the two most realistic physics engines curently, wheather that was their aim or not, doesn't matter.. just hope that they will think about that and up their game a bit

Quote from Boris Lozac :

The sense of speed, the physics, the sounds, the adrenalin... i got all pumped just watching it...

Did you post the wrong video?

Quote from SamH :

Did you post the wrong video?

Umm.. no

Ahh.. hmm.. tbh, watching ANYTHING over someone's shoulder at an LCD monitor, from a camcorder is never gonna get me stoked.

Well I don't get why the track must be real to make the game more immersive
Eric can creat tracks that are so good or better for less money and less time of devlopment
Same thing for realy cars we don't NEED them the cars we have are really nice in my opinion and some look really awesome (RB4,FZR...)
And fictional cars and tracks are, in part, what makes LFS so special and so nice
Anyway Eric never comes here so he will never read what we say
What people demands is something different, new car classes (like LMP and touring cars for example), new different tracks (A giant track a bit like Sarthre).
For the physics people want to see night and rain.
But first of all we NEED to correct the actual bugs
Like wings damage, colisions (http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.s ... oHADdlOnFHOf0pZnnWhS&)

I dunno, the physics get touted a lot as great and then we talk about cars and tracks for immersion. You realise of course that the biggest aspect of racing still isnt simulated in any sim and giving me a V8 Supercars and Baathurst isnt going to change that.

Tbh I dont care how accurate the tyre model is, I dont mind if it's a little imperfect. You think a racing driver knows about the physics of race tyres? No, we go by feel and what we have is more than accurate enough. What we dont have is tyres behaving diffrently over a number of heat cycles, we dont have marbles on the tyre surface and importantly we dont have them on the track surface.

A race track is a living breathing dynamic environment that is always changing, the track surface grip moves, the temperature rises and falls, you dont need rain for these things - on a dry day the changes in surface conditions can be quite accute.

In LFS a great setup is always a great setup. In real racing the perfect setup is always moving because the environment is always changing.

This is more important to me than pounding around Le Mans in an Aston Martin. If I want to do that I can fire up rFactor or GTR2, i've got the mods to do that and to race V8's at Baathurst, yet I come back to LFS.

Quote from migf1 :

Saying "I lapped under 2 mins in Monza with the XR GTR" makes much more sense to so much more people than saying "I lapped under 1.08 in Blackwood with the XR GTR".

People will go "WTF XR woot???"

it doesn't make any difference. look at GTR2, look at WTCC, never did lap time in those sims on a particular combo represents anything related to the real world. in real life,a track can be several second faster or slower in coupe of hours, in a sim, your track always stays in the same perfect form, it's not a relevant comparison and people should realize that.

Quote from Sir moi 407 :

Well I don't get why the track must be real to make the game more immersive

People are fascinated by names. Brands, labels... Real tracks, real cars do not bring physics realism...but "names realism". Ask someone to try the best sim in the world with a fictional track, and the most crappy sim in the world with a crappy reproduction of a real track....and in most cases the person will prefer the second one. That's the way it is.
(did you notice there are texture packs with real advertisment to improve "realism" for most moddable games, and people like it?)

Power of names. Just names. Names like Monza suggesting an entire universe and bringing the player into this universe. It is so powerful it can hide most defects of a product. (and LFS has almost nothing to hide...)

"If you having great product and using power of names together...great success to you!"
Lao Tseu

Quote from migf1 :

For me real tracks are of equal importance with physcis, ffb and online racing in a simulator.

Real tracks not only give a huge boost to the immesrion part of the sim , but most importantly they are the absolute common ground amongst anyone and everyone involved in ANY KIND of racing (real life or simulated).

The blue part I can understand - personal preference and wanting real tracks; nothing to comment on that. As for the red part, the only thing that I can imagine as being common ground is the name and the general shape of the track.

However, I'd never walk up to some race driver and chat them up on the pretext of having driven on a virtual Monza in some sim - in fact I'd rather not chat them up, especially if I liked their driving.

And even in sims there is no real common ground apart from the common ground of debate and argument between fans of different sims as to which sim gets Monza the best.

Even with laser-scanned real tracks, the major benefit apparently appears to be something that IRL people try to minimize: surface irregularities. And even those change - on a real hot day the asphalt in a braking zone will eventually get messed up (especially if it's the quality of asphalt we get around here).

I think that which Becky mentions is by far more interesting and would be indeed unique (for a change). Imagine joining different servers and finding the track conditions different between them in various ways: "watch it - there's still dirt on T3 because of an off xaotik had in the last lap of the previous race", "this track hasn't been used for a long time, the racing line is filthy" etc

Forgive me for being hasty and crude with my grammar, but its 4 AM and my stupid back button has caused me to write this post THREE TIMES... :Eyecrazy:
Regarding the people arguing\debating(whatever) on comparing the simulators, LFS has to be the best SIMULATOR there is. It is even advertised as an "Online Racing Simulator" not game. The training machines or whatever truck drivers have to practice driving before they ever get into a truck is a simulator.(These Things) Those things dont have DX9 graphics and awesome shading options. Just bare minimums to get the intended input from the user.
All that matters is the realism of the vehicle being driven, And Live for speed surpasses all my expectations of a racing simulator being developed by 3 people, (or less if one is sick :shy Anyway ill probably edit this later cause im going to bed

Bryan

Guys, the opinions I expressed above are just my opinions, are what turn me on, what I'd like to see in the future in LFS, what I consider important in its evolution. I don't demand, I don't shout, I don't want people to like most what I like most.

I'm over 40 years old and I'm hobbying racing sims since GP2. If LFS was the only sim around, all I would know by now would be Blackwoods, Astons and Fernbays, which automatically takes away a great part of realism. Due to the existance of a lot other sims I can connect myself to the rest of the racing world (rl or simulated) with words like "Nordschleife", "Kyalami", "Spa", "Laguna Seca", "Goodwood", etc. I hear or read about Eau Rouge and unconciously I'm thinking "I've driven it, I know what this guy talks about". This is what I call immersion

The name XR GTR says nothing to people, yes, but once they drive it, it says a lot, and properly set it can be easily connected to the behaviour of a lot of rl GTR cars, while Westhill says absolutely nothing to anyone outside this community, even if they drive the track hundreds of times... it feels (and is) completely isolated to the rest of the world.

Sure, I can find real tracks in other sims but it was my understanding that this topic was about the progress pace of LFS, along with what we'd like to see the devs giving priority to.

PS. I have already mentioned dynamic grip change on the track surface, in my previous post

Indeed, one of the greatest skills of a racing driver is to be able to feel where the grip is, to adapt their car between sessions or knock some pressure out of the tyres in a pit stop, to read the road in changing ambient conditions.

In LFS we admire drivers and who somehow manage to drive 1 or 2 seconds a lap faster than us and we call them aliens, but we're failing to recognise that they are doing this because LFS is a sterile environment and they have the skill of repetition. If the conditions changed perhaps some different names might be at the top? We'd all have to learn the skill of adaption.

I was much more competetive in real racing than I ever have been in LFS because I learned to read the road and nail fast times as the conditions changed. I know to bring my tyre pressures down and adjust my castor after the heat of midday has passed, I know how to overtake on marbles, I know how to find the grip as the light fades when the car is set for the daylight hours. I had to learn that stuff, because I got beaten otherwise! (and me no likee that)

I'll never master the fine art of driving hotlaps in LFS' sterile conditions and I do not particularly care about doing so because it would be a useless skill to me if and when I return to the race track, though it might help me if ever I get a mindless repetition based factory job again.

I want a track that has debris, I want the day to come and go, I want to look at the sky texture and see a flapping flag and say, hmmm, i'll need to run lower pressures and adjust my suspension a little there's not much grip out there right now. I want to have to take a wide entry to T4 to avoid a fluid spill. I want the racing line to rubber in and warm up whilst offline stays cooler. I want to stick my surface probe on the pitlane and say "ye gosh, it's hot today". I want to follow Formula BMW's out on the track and say "WTF, those guys have got to start using harder tyres they're spoiling the track".

Quote from migf1 :

The name XR GTR says nothing to people, yes, but once they drive it, it says a lot, and properly set it can be easily connected to the behaviour of a lot of rl GTR cars, while Westhill says absolutely nothing to anyone outside this community, even if they drive the track hundreds of times... it feels (and is) completely isolated to the rest of the world.

There's a big contradiction in that post. So essentially:
XR GTR = unknown until you buy s2 and drive it
Westhill = unknown forever even if you buy s2 and drive on it for hundreds of laps

I think you're not getting your point across well - but I also think it's enough to say that you, like others, would like some real tracks and just leave it to that. There is no need for justification, once you move into the area of justifying something you leave it open to critique as people will be poking at your justification rather than your preference - which is what has already happened.

I have absolutely no problem with critisism! However you... blued out two uneven parts of my post. The correct ones are: "once they drive it (the XRR)" and "even if they drive it (Westhill) hundreds of times"

Edit: Good post Becky (although I do like hotlapping )

Quote from Becky Rose :

This is more important to me than pounding around Le Mans in an Aston Martin. If I want to do that I can fire up rFactor or GTR2, i've got the mods to do that and to race V8's at Baathurst, yet I come back to LFS.

I forgot to mention as much as I love V8Supercars and Bathurst I've probably done less than 12hrs total over the last year in GTR2. I would think I've done more than 12hrs in LFS in the last month and thats when I have no spare time

And I agree 100% about the dynamic track enviroment stuff that is far more important that a replicated track to me and I hope one day we will see such environments in sims.

Quote from migf1 :

I have absolutely no problem with critisism!

Well, I was referring to:

Quote from migf1 :

Guys, the opinions I expressed above are just my opinions, are what turn me on

Which does read like a "there's no need to criticize my opinion - it's just a personal opinion". Hence my pointing out that it's the justification of your opinion that will draw more attention than the opinion itself when put alongside each other in a post.

Quote from migf1 :

However you... blued out two uneven parts of my post. The correct ones are: "once they drive it (the XRR)" and "even if they drive it (Westhill) hundreds of times"

Right you are - I meant to do it in blue/red pairs, being in the fancy colouring mood that I am today, but forgot to by the end of the post. Fixed.

Regarding variable track conditions, the one type of racing that would gain blatant benefits from it would be rallycross ("oi! stop rutting the track you nutter!"). So maybe the whole thing will go hand-in-hand with deformable tracks. Sometime. In the future. Perhaps... in some sim...

It's my understanding that GTR2 already supports marmbles and variable track grip (online only), along with dynamic weather (it needs an external app to activate this). I hear GTR Evolution (a Race07 mod, expected real soon now) will also feature those things. Do we have a clue whether i-racing supports them too?

Quote :

It's my understanding that GTR2 already supports marmbles and variable track grip (online only)

GTR2 doesnt have a licence name based banning system or any kind of organised or structured server system so unless I commit to a league I have to play it offline, I tried going online for pickup racing and I even met 1 driver who was not a wrecker in the several evenings I tried to get some racing...