In support of all points.

1-3 make sense for modding for sure.

Regarding 4-6:
Last update already saw an (much needed) improvement to AI. I hope Scawen will have time to improve the AI further (some time after time physics / graphics update).

A simple "championship" game mode were you can create (and save/load) a "season" with on which tracks will be raced and individually how many laps (or time) will be raced would be already great (editable point system would be great too).

Always was a fan of how the old Papyrus NASCAR / INDYCAR games had the possibility to setup a custom championship and how each AI driver had diffenrent strengths, depending on track type (short oval, speedway, super speedway, road course) and for performance in qualification and race. There was even a strength setting for the pit crew if I remember correctly.

Also their strenth varried from race to since the strength values were set as a range (min, max) and an average value within this range.
This made the whole season less predictible and gave each AI driver sort of a character.

Quote from Scawen :

Dear LFS Racers...

Good luck and have fun.

Quote from Scawen :

I always imagined that type of central deadzone could be set in the controller's...

No, not for Windows (using XBox Controller)

There seems to be be an app for XBox console users that works for some specific gamepads only.
And Steam seems to have the possiblity to define/adjust controller dead zones.

For standard windows usage, there is a third party software "XInputPlus" which can help but is from unknown source.
I rather have the built-in possibility within LFS, like many other simulators and games (not only racing and flight simulators, but also many casual games designed to be played with gamepads).

Thanks for consideration.

EDIT: Mentioning casual games that also very often have an option for a center dead zone.

Last edited by ksa_land, Mon, 1 Apr 2024 11:44.

Any chance we could get defineable deadzones around the (input) center of the axes too? (mostly needed for steering and "look around" - usually X, Y, RX, RY axes).
Would really help gamepad users, since the sticks very often have at least a slight inaccuracy around the center.

Related thread in "Improvement Suggestions"

EDIT: being more precise.

Last edited by ksa_land, Sat, 30 Mar 2024 10:34.

Great update. For me, especially the AI updates.
Have a well deserved rest and enjoy the holidays with your families.

I mostly skip or deactivate the intro video since it's just the start of the last race you did. Not quite interesting.
But having a good (somewhat professional) trailer for the next big update when it releases would be beneficial.

Regarding AI:
- I wished at least those sudden emergency brakes from the AI when they are slightly squeezed between wall and cars etc. would not happen, those are always cheap unfun overtakes and are triggered way too easily. They also cause "traffic jams" and accidents because they take too long to get to speed again.
- It also would be great if the AI would not try to get the optimal race line right after race start. It causes "traffic jams" and spinning cars, and you overtake like 10 cars right at the beginning .
- Lastly, some better AI behaviour when overlapping other cars would be great since the can get stuck behind slower cars, even on ovals.

If those points would be fixed you could say the LFS AI is somewhat decent, but currently it's not. Back in the day even my six'ish year old cousin would want to switch to racing GTR2 because it provided a more realsitic/fun racing experience.

Nonetheless, I'm not trying to complain or to push Scawen into doing things that are not his priority, just wanted to get those points out there to make it on a ToDo list.

EDIT: For those interested: NASCAR racing 2003 just turned 20 years (too), and it provides great offline racing against the AI.
The excellent youtube channel GPLaps just did a video on it very recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_gKDY3THcE

EDIT: Fixed spelling

Last edited by ksa_land, Tue, 14 Feb 2023 21:52.

Quote from BeNoM :

Yes, as mentioned above

Was really late for me yesterday.
Works perfectly for me, thanks

I'm missing being able to define a dead zone for an axis in LFS.
Is this something XInputPlus enables/supports?

Happy birthday LFS, congrats on 20 years. Glad to see LFS is still worked on, such a special simulator.
Thank you for the new screenshots and clips, looks promising

EDIT: rephrasing and thanks

Last edited by ksa_land, Thu, 18 Aug 2022 20:57.

Quote from GabbO :

Norbert Kiss (i think his user is "Norbi") is multiple Truck Racing european champion. IIRC he was very competitive back in the golden days and held a couple of WRs. He was even spotted through LFS.

Yesturday they raced at Nürburg Ring and he currently leads the championship:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU44hY_xHV4&t=13845s (#1 truck at pole pos; German commenting)

EDIT: 1100 hp, max. 160 km/h

Last edited by ksa_land, Sun, 17 Jul 2022 07:45.

Great, thanks for this new version.

Found a minor UI bug. I installed fresh full 0.7C setup. After the licence agreement in the car/setup view I opened the viewer. Here, the UI of the viewer is overlapping the back/next buttons (see attached image).

Anybody remember the slalom challenge with the LX4?
Not sure if it was organized by the devs, but at least supported by them.
It was like a 3 weeks event with a new layout each week and had a separate leader board page (maybe made by Victor?).
There was a prize for the fastest 3 I think.

But that was like 10 years ago (or longer). Can't find any posts or pictures about it on the LFS page or forum though.

I thought that was a great event that kept me login in every day (again not sure who organized this, but I'm fairly certain it was promoted/supported by the devs).

Anyway, liking the new 0.7C version

EDIT: spelling

Last edited by ksa_land, Sat, 9 Apr 2022 13:05.

Bumping old thread for awareness.
Please Scawen, add the possibility to configure a axis deadzone (best along with the memorization of connected controllers) when you find time. It really makes the game more user friendly.

Since LFS version V came out, I recently got back into playing a bit LFS with my XBox 360 controller.
I really wished there was a option to configure the deadzone since you never go straight when centering (or let go of) the stick for the steering axis.
Since it's cumbersome to setup my wheel on the table just for 30-60 minutes of racing, I often use my XBox 360 controller instead.
I play Assetto Corsa Competitione and Euro/American Truck simulator with this controller it too, which have a option to configure the deadzone. It helps alot.

EDIT: fixing misspelling

Last edited by ksa_land, Tue, 16 Mar 2021 19:07.

Great progress report. Thank you.

Quote from Scawen :

[...]
But I have worked on them in the new tyre physics system and I think they are more challenging now. I need to work on the tyre physics after finishing some more graphical updates. I hope to release the new tyre physics with the graphical update.

Not a high priority request, but just in case you further work a bit on the AI, could you please fix it so the cars don't break suddenly for example when they come close to the wall in lap one in SouthCity and similar situations. More awareness of the player when overtaking would be needed too, so they don't push you into the sand pits.

LFS is such a great simulator, but racing with AI is not that fun until those are fixed. I always stay away from them for the first 1 lap to give them time to sort them out (if this makes sense).

EDIT: fixed misspelling

Last edited by ksa_land, Mon, 13 Apr 2020 21:44.

I got them too. Was a nice surprise.

Got my shirts too. Thank you.

Hi,

I really don't understand the requests of keeping the current westhill track even when the new westhill comes out.
Eric optimized the current layout and added (one?) more layouts. It will look much nicer and more realistic.

How would the current, then outdated, layout fit into that? Why should LFS keep such an outdated track? Why should LFS keep two Westhill tracks (one new, one old)?
It only would work if Eric would take the current layout and raises the rest of the track to the new standard. But essentially Eric just did that, but saw areas to improve on. I trust him until I'm proven wrong by driving on it myself.

You currently have still enough time to drive the 'classic' Westhill all day long.

Regards,
Land

Not an actual feature request or something like that, but not owning a Rift myself, yesterday I wondered if it would possible to create a realistic helmet. Like could it be achieved that the rift user feels like he/she wears a helmet.

Would be interesting how it would feel when the visor is only half down, or rain drops are running down in front of your face (down the visor). Maybe something for the future?

It's nice that LFS receives some excitement again, and those videos make me want to buy a DK2. But will wait for the CV1 I guess.

Quote from Eric :

[...]
Before The release of S2 and GTRs, I was working with S1 tyre physics which had very little grip before Scawen improved on it. The classic case is Westhill which was challenging with the old Pre-S2 tyre code but just became a flat-out drive with the current physics.
[...]

Love current Westhill with the LX6 though

Hi,

did a quick test regarding:

Quote from Scawen :

[...]
Skin downloading when watching a replay :

If a car or helmet skin in a replay is not available at LFS World
when you start the replay (with low or high res skins selected)
but you already have the skin in the other resolution then that
skin in the other resolution will be used instead of a plain car
[...]

Worked well. Tested with the highres option (1024) enabled. Loaded replay. Some skins weren't found and LFS used the lowres skins from HDD instead Thx for patching that.

I also can confirm an increase of FPS with the new patch by roughly 20-45% with about 20 cars in the replay.

Land

Hey Scawen,

thanks for the progress update. Looking forward to drive on the new Westhill track.

And thank you very much for fixing this:

Quote from Scawen :

[...]
Skin downloading when watching a replay :

If a car or helmet skin in a replay is not available at LFS World
when you start the replay (with low or high res skins selected)
but you already have the skin in the other resolution then that
skin in the other resolution will be used instead of a plain car
[...]

Land

Tested the new patch with my Samsung 3D TV. Everything worked fine so far

---
@Scawen: Tiny offtopic feature request (or bug fix) I would like to see with the next patch if possible:
In a nutshell, I would like LFS to use the lowres skin in a replay in case the highres skin is not present and not available for download anymore.

Explanation: I love to re-watch older replays. Some of the replays are from a time I didn't pay for highres skin download. Therefore the lowres skin is stored on HDD.
So, when now having the highres skins activated and starting such a replay, LFS sometimes does not find the highres car/helmet skins used in that replay. So LFS looks online to download those files, but most of them may be not available anymore. The current result is white cars.
The thing is, in this case LFS does not look in the low res skin folder for the skin file. Can you change that, please?
When I deactivate the highres skin option (Multiplayer -> Car skins download: 512) and start the same replay, those cars have the corresponding skin loaded.

Last edited by ksa_land, Sat, 5 Jul 2014 12:49.

Quote from adamshl :

Connection list will be more readable if you show ping time in ms.

Can you improve this?

Don't want to spam, but I support this.

Hi,

I don't want to add this feature request to the test patch thread because it's not related to the current patch, but since there will be a long quiet time after this patch I hope Scawen could implement following fix into this patch:

When highres skins are activated in LFS and you watch a replay, LFS of course uses highres skins.
But in case the replay is quite old (or is from a time you haven't activated highres skins) often some skins are not available anymore and the skin download from LFS main server fails.
The result is a white car.

The issue I have with this is that in most cases I have the lowres skin for these cars saved in the LFS folder (thats because at the time the replay was recorded I didn't used highres skins and LFS downloaded the low res skin automatically, as usual).
Instead of using this lowres skin of a car it's just white.

When I deactivate highres skins in LFS and watch the same replay the skins are there (in low resolution), so the skins are really there and LFS could use them.

So, Scawen, to put it in a nutshell, I would love if you could teach LFS to look for a low resolution skin and use it when no high res skin is available when watching replays.

Thanks for reading this.

Land