I will go over my mods and plans for new ones. Since I modelling all my own models the readiness of the planned mods is considered as 50% model and 50% everything that is done in LFS Editor (physics, texturing, animation, etc.).

Nissan Sileighty (N.S80) Status: - Approved. Rating - 4,42 (208)
The mod is mainly for drifting. It has 4 different configurations with different bodykits. And it has been completed for a long time, one of the most popular mods in terms of downloads and number of ratings, but maybe it was because I made it one of the first, but on the other hand the rating is not the best mainly because of the objective shortcomings of physics and because of unrealistically extended body, but now it's been quite some time and the mod is loved by many people for its peculiar flavour of handling, and I can't decide what to do about it. If I change the body geometry to the stock wide, the handling is likely to change.

And I'm not sure what to do about it, so I've attached a poll. Is it worth changing the body width to fit the stock or is it better to keep it as it is?

Nissan 400Z (N.400S) Status: - Staff Picks, approved. Rating - 4.7 (109).
Finished the Z not too long ago and it turned out to be a very good handling and detailed mod. I've already had some competitions with it and received quite a lot of positive feedback. Also the developers considered this mod worthy to be included in the category "Staff Picks" where quite a few mods get, a big thank you to them from me

Nissan 400Z GT4 (N.400S GT4) Status: - Staff Picks, Approved. Rating - 4.7 (77).
The GT4 version of the Z was also recently completed. It received a lot of attention, including during the championship GT4 series where my mod was presented as single one in the class. There was a lot of feedback from pilots and scawen, which helped to make the final touches that optimised the mod. This mod is also presented in the "Staff Picks" category, which makes me one of two people who have 2 mods in this prestigious category at once For what again thanks to the developers.

Nissan 400Z Drift spec. (N.400S STREET DRIFT) Status: - Approved. Rating - 4,86 (38).
The drift zeta is still in the process of final tweaking, although it's my highest rated mod so far, probably because it has 5 different bodykits configurations, including Gocha new bodykit, Chris Forsberg's bodykit from last season and some others. I already know that the mod is loved by many drifters for its handling and for visual, and this fact I can only be happy.

Porsche 718 Cayman (POSCHER CAYNAM 718) Status: - Published. Rating - 4.74 (32)
The Porsche Cayman was also published the other day. A sports coupé with a centre-engined layout. The main updates have already been done and now it only remains to be finalised. But already now this mod has received probably the most feedback. I think maybe after a while this mod will be approved too.

- And then there are the planned mods. -

Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS CS. Ready to submiting: 80%
This mod will be a good addition to the GT4 series. An important clarification that this is the version for the competition racing series GT4. And not client GT4. These are different versions of the cars. This mod is my main priority for development right now. Although away from my home computer I have time to modelling other mods at work when i have free time.

Ford Mustang 2024 Dark Horse. Ready to submiting: 50%
The model is now complete. All that's left is to get it all into the editor and start making it.

Ford Mustang 2024 GT4. Ready to submiting: 50%
Also only the model is ready.

Porche 718 Cayman GTS. Ready to submiting: 45%.
A more powerful version of the Cayman with an atmospheric 6 cylinder flat engine. Since the basic model will be taken from the default cayman and will remain to do all sorts of little things on modelling, we can say that the mod is ready for about 45% But while a high priority on the development of this mod is not planned, because there are more important mods, such as the following in the list.

Ford Mustang 2024 GT3. Ready to submiting: 45%.
A racing version of the Mustang in the higher ranked GT3 racing series. Some of the parts I'll be able to take from the gt4 vers. This will be my first mod in this class, so I will need to gather a lot of feedback from the drivers of this series before publishing, I plan to make it before the summer. Hopefully it'll work.

Ford Mustang 2024 Drift spec. Ready to submiting: 20%
Drift Mustang with bodykit of RTR team which performs in Formula Drift series. Probably later will be made other bodykits.

Further already more distant plans, and to be more precise just some thoughts, for example to make in the future drift cayman . Why? Denofa did it, maybe I will do something like his version.

I have thoughts to make a client version Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS, essentially the same GT4 racing version only with the usual road interior. And a slightly modified body design.

Also there are plans for KTM X-BOW GTX. Somereason this car caught my eye, even though I'm not really into supercars. If everything goes smoothly with the GT3 Mustang, I will probably do it too.

Also planned further expansion of GT4 class, because in terms of mods now actively engaged in it only me. For example, I'd like to make an Aston GT4. And maybe even a BMW GT4. Despite the fact that I didn't like it initially and I didn't even include it in the poll. I've revised my views and I'm considering it too. As always I plan to do all modelling myself (except if someone wants to expand the GT4 series but has no modelling option and he already has a mod in LFS to fit the gt4 racing clas, then I could make a version of another existing mod in LFS (for example with an Audi R8 or BMW M4 model). I also wanted to make a Toyota GR86, but then something didn’t work out and it seems that it has already appeared in LFS. I was also thinking of doing a stock Nissan 180sx and a stock Nissan Sileighty. But such mods are already out there and I'm not sure if it's worth the time. Plans for further mods are constantly changing and therefore I may do something else in addition to the above or I won't be making some of the mods I had planned for the long haul.

Last edited by Aleksandr_124rus, Tue 16 Apr 2024, 17:59. Reason : updating some info

I can't really see what's going on there but maybe it's because roughness isn't supported in the public version of LFS. The new LFS engine is more advanced with material settings. The editor is a cut down of the development version of LFS.

I'm not sure if it's a bug or if I'm missing something, but I don't understand why I get such a difference between LFS Editor and LFS when it comes to "overlay or plain" textures (metal: 90%, 0.70 roughness). Shot attached in the post.

It's not because of the location of the object centre. That doesn't affect physics, but it does mean the setups are not interchangeable.

The editor cars have been updated to have realistic setups. I don't know the specifics, but maybe you could open two instances of LFS and look through side by side, to see what the changes are. That's the only way I would be able to tell you the changes.

If you replicated all the settings and confirm the wheel sizes have not changed then you should get the same handling. It's likely that rim width has decreased because most of the public LFS ones are unrealistic (long subject, watch the video if interested). But rim with in LFS doesn't affect much, probably just affects wheel heating a tiny amount over a long period.

Differences between current public version and versions set up for future release aren't something I will get involved in or take an interest in.

You add a texture page to the main object (not a subobject).

Click in the "type" column where it says "fixed" and select "dashboard backing"

Now you should see that texture on your dashboard when you visit the dashboard editor in vehicle editor "Textures" section.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

I just thought about LFS tire physics and realized that for some reason I...

Hello, my friend Alexey

1. All LFS default cars(except FBM, RAC and BF1 i guess) were made from scratch to suit the tyre physics parameters which are not obvious for people who has no degree in vehicle dynamics. As far as i understand, LFS vehicles are all about tyres they need to utilize. Weight balance, engine, suspension geometry, driver position, default setup values and all kind of stuff is strictly balanced by Scawen himself. We still have some good tools like Bob Smith's VHPA to dig into this mess, but VHPA has nothing to do with suspension geometry so thats not enough to be fair. Also, most valueable things related to tyres u can see in Editor are SA/SR and thats all.

2. 90% of real competitive drift vehicles are using so called "wisefab kits", so the suspension geometry and handling balance of these cars are far from what was done by car manufacturer and engineers. I'd rather say the "real" conditions u are talking about, well, its all about vehicles which just suck in handling the tyres in a right way. Im absolutely sure here, maybe except some cars like z05 which was engineered to utilize 18-19 diameter rims with wide tyres. As far as i can judge, in RU pro drift scene we have all kinds of japanese and european FR cars but the way those cars were "tuned" is just to add wide "grippy" tyres. Those kind of adjustments makes some drivers struggle when they are behind the wheel.

So, until we get more suspension info in LFS Editor + new VHPA in new patch and/or people who are interested to dig into physics part more than, lets say adding triangles into a wheel 3d mesh, u gotta enjoy your drift mods tuned by all kinds of teenager players


P.S. Houssem mods are not bad in terms of physics, gotta admit that. Much respect

Last edited by paket42x, Tue 2 Apr 2024, 18:32.

I had a look and I don't know a way to fix it while using compressed textures. It is 16 bit colour banding due to the conversion to DDS. You can see it in the editor too if you switch on compressed textures.

I have a few too many things to do, so can't really investigate further at the moment. I'm not sure but maybe it could be better to go for a plain colour as the best compromise within the current system.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

I'm wondering...the gradient looks stepped, is it possible to fix this so that it looks the same as in the LFS editor?

I feel like I'm in those games where you need to find a difference between two pictures and not see anything

Are you talking about shading and reflections? If so, isn't this due to the new LFS lighting method that the Editor is using? It's still not available in-game, this will be in the upcoming future update.

I'm wondering, in the LFS editor PNG the texture looks good, but when testing in the game, the gradient looks stepped, is it possible to fix this so that it looks the same as in the LFS editor?

Wikipedia states that a trailer is an unpowered vehicle towed by a powered vehicle.

I've been away from LFS and the forums when the mods were released, so I'm not sure if this topic was discussed (I searched, but didn't come across anything?).

Currently is there any possibility of coupling car with a trailer, providing that the necessary parts are designed on both the car and the trailer? Similarly, can a truck couple with a semi-trailer?

As per my understanding, with "fixed" parts this would not work. However, I see that some vehicles have movable parts (pop-up headlights, movable dump box, street sweeper attachments etc.). Along the same lines, if the tow ball attachment can be deployed and retracted, would that be able to attach to a suitably designed trailer coupler? Similarly, if the coupling on the semi-trailer truck can be deployed and retracted, would it be able to couple with a semi-trailer?

Would this work if the truck and the trailer were suitably designed in the LFS editor? Or would Scawen need to make some changes (to the collision model?) for it work? Or is this impossible?

Quote from Facu23 :

im not cruiser sry i race

That kind of argument is pretty much invalid. Sounds like all vehicles should stick whatever transmission LFS offers now just because you race? What is the "sry" for? What you are apologizing? Perhaps for your own comment yes.


---------------------------------------------

But yeah, back on topic. If we are looking from Scawen's perspective about this thread. And about what LFS Editor can offer... and looking real life vehicles as today, it is quite understandable about not taking this improvement suggestion as a high priority.

There can be so many different engines, transmissions and chassis layouts that it simply requires vastly to improve generally speaking, little bit everything and beyond. Furthermore, we are not have seen yet the announced things, which contains definitely a various things to modify with LFS Editor as well. ( Assuming, that those options are available as well. )


What I think most of this suggestion, is simply about fulfilling people's creativeness. As in history has shown, people tend to try and create what inmost craziest concepts, unique designs, "lightbulb moments" or even just plain blueprint ideas, regardless of it's practical use or not. LFS Editor as being a software, simply helps people to craft virtually basically whatever they want to. For example, I tried to make a monocycle back then and some other various things. Unfortunately I encountered some... "limits" and ultimately noticed some issues between realism and virtualism... and on top of that, my skill level reached it's limit, as well as my time.

Hello guys

I had shared an hb vehicle before and I wanted to make a new hb vehicle, I wanted it to be a little strong, and I decided to model a 207rc because I thought it was a pretty enjoyable vehicle.
i've been working on just the editor for this car mode for about 1 month and I've decided to share this with you because I've made a lot of progress.

Quote from gtamax89 :

race cars don't have automatic transmission.

Ummm When u say race cars, are u meaning factory race cars that dont have road examples ? Or track breed only type?

Imo if it can switch between automatic and tiptronic its an automatic. And if its a sports car or production mid sport/high performance car, it can be street raced or track raced

heres just a few production cars with automatic transmissions that are performance cars as well:

GTR35
Mustangs with the 6peed automatics
Mercedes 63's or any AMG from 2016

Cant forget theres a automatic transmission for every manual transmission production car,
their called "options" or "trims" in my country

Porsches, Lamborghinis, even alfa romeo guilias and jaguars F types and ferraris and BMW M4 M5 M3 M6 are all automatics with DCT or tiptronic(2008-present) u can find manual M3 or M4 to be fair

Audi quattro and all RS models all have either automatic 7speeds or 6 speed manuals, their all offered as options

Camaro SS from 2016-now is fitted with either 10 speed auto or manual 6 speed and its a track bread car
Theres even air shifting now in drag racing

Pressing buttons on the back of the steering wheel wins races. And theres no shortage if automatic race cars out here

I mean lets be real, in a drag race or street the automatic will outshift the manual and allows the driver to focus on the driving rather than driving + transmission operating.

just wanted to point that out. But i get where u coming from when u said "race cars arent automatic" hehe

Normally the mass production road versions debut first then the racing versions are made, unless theres an instance where thats not the case and we got race car first then production car after

After driving automatics for years i wouldnt expect Scawen to even attempt to incorporate automatic operations in the game, the automatic transmission is a really complex system tbf and if adding more gears is that technical, imagine making a automatic ECU operations in the game, since u can kinda trick the SHIFT + G into thinking 3500-4000RPMS is redline for now i think thats the way to go but the downshifting area in the tachometer would be nice to manipulate like the redline slider in engine editor so it doesn't aggressively downshifts into oblivion lmao

Automatic gearboxes would be so damn fun to race with because adds more realism. LFS claims its a racing simulator so it needs the automatic gearbox. And most people with S3 license cruise more than race. By automatics i would mean that you need to change into automatic in LFS EDITOR so certain cars have that feature and certain cars dont.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

...maybe I need to do something differently but either I don't understand how it works, or it doesn't have a significant effect.

The NCL can only have an effect when used within the same smoothing group. In that case it will give a higher weighting to the triangles with the higher number. So it affects only the normals at the boundary between two normal contribution levels, within the same smoothing group. But across smoothing group boundaries, separate triangles do not contribute to the same normal anyway so then it has no effect.

But I wondered about the slight shading errors, and had a look in game and in editor. I tried "flat" view mode, because flat shading shows a good representation of the triangle normals, that produce the raw data for the vertex normals.

As you can see in flat shaded view, there is a sort of dent here (attached image). Because of how LFS works, that dent is the cause for the undesirable normals at that location.

I forgot to mention flat shaded mode. That is another thing that Eric uses a lot. I think that by moving vertices around a few mm here or there, the flat shaded model can display more consistent lighting and that will affect the vertex normals in a good way. I don't know if you can use the same thing in blender (I know blender supports non-triangle polygons so I don't know).

EDIT: I just remembered, sometimes triangle rotations can also have a quite a noticeable effect on the normals. I mean rotating two triangles within a quad (select 1 triangle, SHIFT+click the adjacent triangle). The LFS importer doesn't always make the best choice of triangle rotation when creating two triangles from a quad in the imported obj file.

Last edited by Scawen, Sat 30 Mar 2024, 14:39.

Quote from Scawen :

I haven't seen the specific case you are talking about but there are some tricks...

Wow I didn't know about ncl, I tried it now, I made a high value of normals in the places I needed where there are visual artifacts, maybe I need to do something differently but either I don't understand how it works, or it doesn't have a significant effect. (pic 1-5)

Quote from Scawen :

I haven't seen the specific case you are talking about

I was just saying that the shadings in blender, LFS Editor and the game are different. (pic 6-7-8)

By the way is it possible to make blender shading support? In blender there are various ways to manipulate shading that conveniently to work. And while exporting obj there is a checkbox to export shading, but I understand now it doesn't work for LFS in the form of modifier WeightedNormal, which improves the appearance of the model. (pic 9-10)

Quote from Scawen :

I haven't seen the specific case you are talking about but there are some tricks...

Thanks a lot, this was exactly, what I was looking for Did not know that weighting can be adjusted in the editor.

My answer on the topic from mod review https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/2086322#post2086322

Quote from stuchlo :

professional modelling (as always ). I have a question about shading/topology. Do you have any suggestions, how to minimize artifacts in the attached image?

About the bumper, its hard to say exactly why this happens, but the shading algorithm is clearly involved. There shouldn't be any problems in the mesh itself. Regarding the space on the rear bumper, I suspect a strange operation of the normals. And of course it is quite problematic that LFS does not support custom normals because the shading algorithm always sets its own direction of normals. And it doesn't always look good. And I don't know how to deal with it. In blender the shading looks different than in LFS Editor, and in LFS game it is even more different. I gave examples of pictures and there is no such problems.

About the mirror mount, it apparently happens when the meshes are too close to each other, I'll try to fix it in the next version.

Quote from Evolution_R :

Very good mod! A few things I noticed that could be improved:

- The front track should be wider (to better fit the car width);
- Wheels with Rim protector option set to "YES" would look much better on this car;
- Brakes! Car need brakes (brake calipers are missing );
- Better gauge cluster (but you probably already planning to do that);

The attached screenshots are with rim protector and wider front track.

- There is 1515mm front track width and 1532 rear track width for 2016 Porsche 718 Cayman which I sized up when make the suspension, but I'm not sure what dimensions I found when making the model.
- Got it
-- Yes, I know, a lot has not been done yet, the dashboard will also change, just first vers in wip.

Last edited by Aleksandr_124rus, Sat 30 Mar 2024, 10:33.

Quote from Facu23 :

Those are all street cars...

number of gears in a transmission can be "racing things" too
Ford put 10 of them behind a 4cyl engine

Surely adding 2 more gears to LFS wouldnt take 3 months to add and honestly its a suggestion with actual irl applications, just cause its a racing simulator doesnt mean it should only have racing car gearboxes only, .. i mean we have pickup trucks, semi's, busses and WW|| tanks so coding a lil string from 1~7 to 1~9 wouldnt hurt anyone right? and also make it lock the amount from inside editor

Btw theres street car mods everywhere in the game. Not sure what u meant by those are all street cars when LFS has a ton of street cars proving my point if they in LFS why not allow more gears for them and future mods that may carry more than 7 speeds, i cant be demanding too much... am i?

Editor Patch E7:

Drag selection box:

Function to make drag box from points now available in points mode
Scale / rotate / shear axes are now hidden while making a drag box
Grey button shows drag info to avoid left buttons moving around

Typing individual values to align points:

ALT + click r/f/u numbers to set all selected points to same value
- relative values compared with last selected point not preserved

New modeller line guide:

Set up a trace then click "guide" to create a line guide
- the guide is visible in most editor modes and all views
- options to hide/show the guide or draw it open/closed

Merging subobjects:

You can now merge a subobject fully into another subobject
- this is a step towards moving a selection between subobjects
- triangles can now be transferred via an intermediate subobject

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/106792

I think Track Editor is not planned anytime soon or at all.
There was a screenshot that showed the editor but with an explanation that it is only usable for internal use.

I do not remember any posts about dynamic weather or rain.
Day/Night cycle is planned but iirc no weather.

By my reading, LFS is currently developed in two separate versions.
One version with the big changes, and one version that we are currently playing. Both get developed in parallel.
Sometimes changes from the "new" version seem to bleed over into the "public" version, for example the moving subojects. (pop-up headlights etc) or changes to dust effect. However the big plan is to combine into one version.

That version includes changes like:
-new tire physics
-new graphics systems:
--less stutter, especially in VR, by better syncing physics and graphics updates at 1000Hz (or something like that)
--day/night, dynamic lights
-new objects (signs with editable letters, more chalk marks, curbs etc)


Other updates in progress are:
-overhaul existing tracks
-larger area for South City
-two new tracks (Airfield Racetrack & Testing Ground)
-higher resolution for analog input

Last edited by Gutholz, Tue 26 Mar 2024, 18:10.

Rather than thinking what's next, I'd focus my attention to the updates that are already cooking in the pot. Scawen mentioned that after this last patch E9 he released today, he will work on tire physics, so we're closer than ever to the big one.

But if I had to play a fortune teller a bit, I have to say the next big thing would be track editor, not counting all sorts of small quality of life updates for LFS that will take place along side it. It's just a guess.

Quote from rane_nbg :

Let's revive it. I'll start:

- full 16bit resolution (65536 steps) support for all analog axes of game controllers (if they report it by HID)

I can recover this from a search, and I clearly remember that Track Editor was leading the poll by a large margin.

Quote :

What got me by surprise when I fired up LFS again after such a long time is, that I immediately felt at home when driving. It is insane how good it feels compared to all the other Sims I played in the last 15 years

I also played many (10+) years of lfs and the main reason is the game physics. You dont basically have to learn the physics of the game because it feels natural and what a joy that it is!

I did start playing rFactor 2 about 2 years ago and find that they are doing also something right there. I did played alot of BTCC and GT3 cars because they felt kind of nice and the car behavior is good and realistic enough at least when you had some hours on them.

I did yesterday shocked really badly. When i did get used to the BTCC and GT3 cars and then i suddenly did drive rear wheel drive BMW M2 car. Then i was thinking that what a #ell... this car feels so FAKE how it drives. I was always thinked of the BTCC and GT3 cars that they feel some kind of way natural.. but not perfect. Now i get it that the game delevopers and modders have to tweak/mod the cars some ridiculous way to perform "realistic enough" because the basic physics sucks in the game and i think that every game has the same problem. iRacing, ac, acc, am2, rr and so on... that is the main reason why in the game is going on always some weird #hit what dont feel nice and strating to irritate badly.

I never felted in LFS when i changed a car that game physics are done badly, only the vehicle is #hit if it is. There is always commonsense in the physics while you drive the vehicle and how it drives. LFS is the only game what has done the basic physics right. That is the reason why i am playing still the game.

Next thing what im waiting for the game is the track editor. Also the new tyre physics are important and many many many many other little and big things. Still the most what i need is the track editor.

The model is finished, it will probably still require some finishing touches for shading in the editor. But overall the modelling process is complete.



Edit: Forgot to add that there is 61k triangles.
26k on body.
35k on interior.

Last edited by Aleksandr_124rus, Sat 23 Mar 2024, 08:30.