Obviously there are good reasons to have a track editor at some point in the future.

However, I think Scawens priorities are getting the physics and all the other stuff (e.g. graphics) released so he can finally stop switching between the "old" public LFS and his "development" version. I think he mentioned that a few times by now.
Scawen also doesn't seem to do anything half-arsed, so any work on a public track editor will probably take quite some time/resources combined with steady community feedback-loops. Just take a look at the current mod system and the time he spent working/improving on it.

LFSW name: three_jump
In-game name: Three Jump
Full team name: n/a
Nation: Germany

So that could in theory allow movable wings (active aero) on cars or also planes?
I guess first step is limited to purely optics, but later on it could be quite interesting / complex once physics get involved. Definatly a fun idea for later

11 Three Jump - XM-5 94 TURBO - I'm not able to join the host with 8% intake and 120 kg ballast...

EDIT:
Note for everyone: Check for tires... this has slicks.

Last edited by three_jump, Mon, 16 Oct 2023 17:58.

Now that this event is behind us, please never use this layout again.

One more thing I noticed in all views other than cockpit. If you cycle through the F09-F12 functions the speedometer will have one position for F09/10 and a different vertical position for F11/12.
I'm not sure if this is intentional, but seems to be related to the additional consumption bars.

Regarding the performance of the cars: It's difficult to judge. Some are fast on a straight but slow in the corners, for others it's very much the oppsite (driving the Fraud against some other cars on the straight was ridiculous). This makes it also very hard to judge braking zones and corner speeds of your opponents when racing. Some cars also seem to be easier to drive than others. Having that said I think we need to think about a better method to balance cars and maybe even drop some outlier cars (or class them together, so race A is just cars from class 1 and race B is only class 2). Rally cars come to mind here (Fraud, Talot, Starlin). Unless the URC is tamed, it should be removed though. A limited number on cars might also help the less skilled "setup-developers" or more time restricted drivers to close up the gaps between cars as having someone driving the same car / sharing setup is more likely.

Quote from Eric :

If this was an FIA event with 100,000 Euros worth of prize money, then track limits should be strict. But those types of limits would ruin what looked like a fun event, I think.

I totally agree, and it's nearly impossible to enforce all the time anyway (hello F1). Not sure that your solutions (FE Green Chicane ) are safe either, even though they enforce track limits rather hard

Not having raced due to other commitments (and neither will next week ), but I'd say it's a track limits violation/cutting for simply driving through track objects (pole). If it's over the white line, dunno - that needs a video/mpr.

But it seemed fun

I doubt this is as easy as it sounds. Scawen has stated multiple times, that his dev version and the public lfs version have drifted apart quite a lot. I doubt he want's to re-implement the old tire code and open another can of worms to make that work when the other option is working on the newer physics and getting those ready. In hindsight some other approach would probably have been better, but I doubt that he expected to work on that aspect of the physics/game on and off for a decade.

Some update would be nice, but I don't expect it. We all know by now where this is heading. If something big happens you'll get some kind of notification and until then you can do something else (like taking part in leagues )

Quote from Scawen :

Here is the same thing actually implemented, in EV and ICE.

Comments welcome!

Ok, so I finally managed to actually have a (longer) race with the setting (remaing fuel/laps display). It is a bit confusing to understand / use during a race, as you have to mentally calculate the remaining laps (doing math!!!) which is also constantly changing in order to know if your current/average fuel consumption will allow you to finish the race / stint.

So the number of laps (of fuel) is still going down while racing, just the speed varies. Would colorcoding (red: you'll need to refuel at this pace; green: push on) be a welcome help to understand if you can finish the race without stopping easier? ( A potential problem would be endurance / time based races where you'd need to set some kind of "stint length" or "expected number of race laps"). Or is this just me being out of touch with already existing 3rd party tools (lfs lazy?) which already do this and we don't need it?

Last edited by three_jump, Wed, 29 Mar 2023 18:04. Reason : Edit: Making clear what feature / display I meant

Please check:

Session: Race
Lap/MPR time: 1:04 onwards (end of lap 2)
Involved drivers: #1: kyr1l?, #2: Three Jump
Description of incident: braking zone at the end of the straight; #1 drives (accelerates?) right into the rear of car #2 causing #2 to spin off.

I'm not sure if this belongs here (and at this late stage in testing) but wouldn't it be a good idea to have some sort of optional telemetry for test patches? Something like pings to servers, avg. download speeds etc. or other "backend" specifics that need testing.

Or do you think that this isn't really worth the additional software/monitoring/work (in terms of someone would still have to analyse the results)?

I agree with johneysvk, that something like a 5 lap (or adjustable) average would be more useful to track driving style changes in practive. Also looking at the screenshot above I can't help but to ask if there is an standardized clutch icon we could use instead of "CT" with isn't as really self-explanatory as the rest (while also using a different font compared to the other "middle stuff").

On a personal side note (and this really is for later): It might be a good idea to make the "F9 view" either more customizable (like being able to hide stuff like the g-meter). It's kinda becomming crowded with additional information. As an alternative anything related to "damage" (Engine, Clutch?) could also find a home in the "F10-view"

Sounds like a reasonable idea.

That actually gets me thinking...
In combination with multiple commands (per line or script) it might also be useful to be able to assign a name (or just use the script name). So instead of having muliple returns in the chat you would get something like "pitconfirm: wet".

Oh yes please!
That would allow to use rotary switches for the cycle without having to do "advanced thinking". Just use /status next and /status prev

I think the carcass model Scawen uses is a bit more complex. See news from 12/2011: https://www.lfs.net/news/900

Anyway, back on topic.

I feel that there is this weird split between "classic pick up racing" (pick a server and race) and organised open events (rony's tuesday, gti thursday, fox friday etc.). Those events provide full grids and close racing. They have the significant advantage that you can join them if you have the time and don't have to commit weeks / months ahead to a shedule (especially if you have a family, or other irregular commitments, or work).

Maybe those open events could serve as a template for general racing? Like week long fixed combos with leader boards (with various categories, averaged by number of races) visible on the lfs pages (lfs world?).

(Ok not really on topic, but generally the idea is to bring the number of players up. Leagues should profit from this as well. Those week long events could be coordinated with leagues to get people familar to cars / tracks...)

Last edited by three_jump, Thu, 16 Feb 2023 15:37.

Quote from mbutcher :

play 303forever

I always prefered "ultra stomper" to be honest. Anyway, I don't think a Music player in this day and age is actually required in the car. If people want music they'll have a player of their choice running in the background anyway. But viccs music needs to stay available as download

Also, I had actually forgotten that there was an intro. Personally this is usually the first thing that I try to disable in a game. I also hate games that have non-skippable intros - those just waste time without any long-term benefit.

On the topic of being "wrongly assumed to be abandoned". It's a hard one. On the one hand I know this is false and that LFS is still being worked on. But on the other hand there are some aspects that are hard to justify to a person that is used to modern games. Some cockpits (FZ50, FXO) really show their age, as do some aspects of the GFX and sound. Online racing (apart from league/organised racing and the good old Blackwood Demo) seems mostly dead to me. I know that this stuff is being worked on hard and false information by youtubers (or similar) doesn't help. There are also videos of people revisting LFS and still saying how easy / fun and good it is.

I think a lot will depend on the next "big" release and maybe the LFS community / devs can prepare some promotional stuff / talking points (also known as PR), videos ahead of time for the release. Or link good videos on the website. The BF1 hype back in the day was huge for instance, or the mods system. This might also help in terms of promotion / sales down the road.

Session: Race
Lap/MPR time: 18:50 onwards (lap 13)
Involved drivers: #1: [MRc] PredroBR, #2: Three Jump
Description of incident: #1 turns into the right rear corner of the car of #2 causing #2 to spin off and take damage.

LFSW name: three_jump
In-game name: Three Jump
Full team name:
Nation: Germany

Quote from Eclipsed :

I would also vote for option 2 now,but with intention in future bigger update seperating the engine repair from other repairs per F12 menu setting,while also adding repair time for engine repair.

what he said.

Option 2

Ah, sorry.
I think it's a bit hard to judge, as a definitve value was not available previously. So I struggle a bit to understand what a 5% damage actually feels like / is in terms of performance drop off. So it's hard to know what a common noticable value would be on track.

As a first guess I think 95% should be fine. The threshold can still be adjusted on later patches / versions depending on more feedback anyway, so I don't think it's really an issue.

EDIT:
Actually this might be worth considering as editable server option (change minor/major, and time) at a later point anyway, so leagues could set the realism themselvess.

Quote from Scawen :

What about the point at which it changes from yellow to red? While that is not very important yet, it would become more important if we do engine repairs in pit stop. In that case the yellow amount of damage could count as "minor damage" and the red would would count as "major damage" and take longer. So then it becomes important to set that value correctly (currently 95%).

Although I'm still not sure about implementing engine repair, it seems simple enough and for for sim racing purposes and longer races, it would be good to be able to fix the engine.

By the way, for anyone who is worried about me working on the test patch, do not worry, I'm working on the dev version. Pausing to do a few minor changes in the public version (which also go into the development version) isn't really a problem.

I think for spectators / commentators of a race it would be good information on why someone is falling back, not sure if color-coding it would give away too much from a strategy point of view. But unless it's an endurance race I think having the severity displayed is not a disadvantage.

Regarding pit-stops, I think it's the same. Races long-enough to actually do pit-stops (refuelling, tires...) are usually a league thing. If you damage the engine during the typical 5 lap sprints it doesn't matter as the time loss with "limping on" is smaller than any kind of pit stop. In terms of longer races it would be nice to be able to fix "some engine damage" as it would keep the driver / team motivated to continue. You get a penalty, but still have some kind of chance on a decent result (this is a game afterall).
What would also be helpful (and that is for suspension damage as well) is a repair-time estimate in the F12 menu.

Last edited by three_jump, Thu, 19 Jan 2023 12:08.

Three Jump