Food for thought; this is what ChatGPT has to say...

Quote :

The lack of official track modding in Live for Speed (LFS) has been a point of discussion among the community for a long time. There are a few reasons why track modding hasn't been implemented:

Developer Vision: The developers of LFS have a clear vision for the game, and they've prioritized realism and quality control. By limiting track creation to the official team, they can ensure that every track meets their high standards for physics, visuals, and gameplay balance. This control helps maintain a consistent experience for all players.

Technical Constraints: Implementing track modding would require a robust set of tools for users to create and modify tracks, which would be complex and time-consuming to develop. It would also introduce potential issues with performance, compatibility, and game stability, which the developers might prefer to avoid.

Focus on Physics and Gameplay: LFS has always been known for its realistic driving physics, and the developers might be concerned that user-created tracks could undermine this realism if not designed with the same attention to detail. Maintaining the integrity of the driving experience could be a reason for avoiding track modding.

Community Fragmentation: Allowing track modding could lead to a fragmented player base, where some players are using modded tracks and others are not. This could make it harder to find races and reduce the sense of a unified community.

Do you agree with these points? Do you think the essence of LFS could be lost with the release of a track editor?

I agree that it would add some immersion. However, I'm not sure if it's possible to set steering wheel rotation angle in the editor independently of the actual wheel lock angle. In that case, implementation would require quite a lot of re-work. Someone with more exp in editor pls comment.

Additionally, I see a potential problem with driver hands animation. Extending the range would also need some re-work in the available points for hand positions. Truckers usually have a small handle to help them to do many rotations using single hand, so that would also have to be taken care of somehow I guess.

All in all, a lot of work for devs and modders If they're up for it, I'll gladly accept it, but chances of seeing this improvement are slim at the moment.

I just figured it out. It can only paste into image editor software...

Thx for the answers, my mod has been published now.

1 & 4 - Scawen has stated that the editor displays the car as it would be in the new (development) version of LFS and not the current (public) version so best to leave roughness at 0 for now
2 - If you have set a page in the editor as type 'skin' and have corresponding cutouts and mappings this should work
3 - I think this applies to whole vehicles based on an original LFS car - I think that small components would be OK (eg. original work)

Having a lot of fun with the editor software so far. Since I'm new to (non technical) 3D modeling I have a few questions:

1. Is there a way to make matte chrome textures (like brushed metal) show up in game? It works perfectly in the editor, but not in LFS. Seems to affect all cutouts with a "roughness" setting >0...

2. If I want to create a custom skin, I click "generate skin template" and the editor says "copied to clipboard". This means I can paste whatever has been copied anywhere, right? For some reason, my system can't. Am I missing something?

3. If I use parts of existing (original) LFS vehicles in my own creation and modify them, does that mean I need the "LFS vehicle license"? I'm talking about seats, steering wheels, switches, etc.

4. My headlights look bright enough in the editor, but in game the bright white looks more like a dark grey. I noticed that many mods have that problem, but none of the original cars. Is this because I placed a layer of tinted glass (S_windows ALP) in front of the lights?

Have fun! If you need help, you can check out the LFS Editor manual section: https://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/LFS_Editor

Hello can someone help me?
I downloaded the editor for mess around but, when i try to unlock it whit my name and password it give me this message.

Any tip are welcome, se ya boys!

I know it's weird that I'm drawing from the editor. But I'm very used to this editor. scawen has developed a nice program to create a perfect model. More software can be added for slightly more detailed models. Anyway, I started building the car at 00:00 yesterday. I used too much poly in this model. I'll finish the front part first, then move on to the back.

Made an interior. I wanted to get some more light into the cockpit, so the seats are not separated anymore. I chose to show lots of carbon fiber and aluminium. The middle tunnel is a bit to narrow for an AWD car, but I ran out of space. For now the steering wheel and seat are placeholders.

Is there any way to make dull chrome mappings actually visible in game? In the editor the chrome texture looks perfect but in the game it just shows up as black.


Anyway, I think it's ready for testing!

Parent-child feature in editor, when putting an object under another (not move up or down in list, just into parent object in hierarchy). For example, a pop up light mechanism, which has multiple different parts doing different things when opening. Parent will rotate and rotate the child object under it too, while child object is rotating or moving elsewhere. It could unlock more possibilities about pop ups or other mechanisms.

Unnecessary heated up discussions,however - such suggestion is very far away from being unique.
For those not following forum discussions often - Scawen did not rule out user created tracks in future,however he said LFS track editor is not suited for public use and he does not intend to update it for that in nearest future. Most can assume if it happens,then after the big tyre/lighting/1000Hz update,but this is just an assumption.

Toyota is up for review!

Ford Puma and Renault Megane is complete and ready to be uploaded next. Hyundai I20 in the editor soon. Only missing Citroen and Hoonigan Focus. from complete season-2 upload.

If you move around some smoothing groups in the lfs editor it should look a lot better.

Yes, it is not perfect, nor did I claim that it would be perfect.
I took the 0-255 range and converted it to 10-160 range.

If you have a better understanding of all the colors, please contact me, and I'll add you as an editor to the sheet so you can make the color codes correct.

Hi everyone,

I have been very busy on a huge QoL update. Updates on almost all aspects of the mod have occurred. This sprint took two months to complete.

The car is almost ready to get out of WIP. What remains is getting a proper LOD2 done and possibly a couple more visual goodies added.

Here's the update log:

- The interior has been completed and is highly detailed.
-> The sport seats, door cards and the steering wheel were from Automation. Polished both heavily. Modeled the door release handle in Blender.
-> Modeled in a T-Top for all models, done in LFS Editor. This is a selectible config.
-> Overhauled the gauge cluster, almost entirely. Did extensive re-model in LFS-E and Blender. Created gauge dials texture from scratch in paint.net.
-> Full dash rework, heavily remodeled, mostly done in LFS-E. Modeled in roll bars.
-> Fixed any remaining areas of mesh gaps on the inside.

- Overhauled and modeled out the lower rear of the car to show cooling capacity. Modeled two radiator fans, and they spin!

- Sounds adjusted for all cars, they are louder and more engaging.

- Implemented new nice looking door mirrors, from Automation. Added blinkers to them.

- Added wipers from the Automation model.

- Front wheel size increased for GT and GT-Turbo.

- All models Caster value was dropped back a bit. FFB was far too heavy and this helps with the issue.

- All models had engines tuned to feel a bit heavier and have more inertia. All models had the engines tuned for more noticable top-end.
-> XNS and GT-Turbo have had more power added in. The XNS lower on to help bolster its small displacement, and the GT-Turbo got a turbo upgrade.

- Frame edited to fix the front having more weight than the rear. This was unrealistic and needed fixing, now all models approach 50/50 distribution.

===

Enjoy some progress shots! These are in order from oldest to most recent.

Hello good evening, I need your help.
We are wanting to create a bodykit for our car that is already made in LFS Editor, and would like to know how to export a car from LFS editor to Blender.

I tried to do this but Blender is not reading .sre format, is there any way to change the file format to obj or even some way to export from LFS Editor to Blender?

Frankly, since my English is not good, I did not try to download an editor and make my own mod.
Volunteer translators can provide language support for the editor.
In this way, better quality mods may emerge. If developers are not considering this right now, they may reconsider their decision.

While I think it would be helpful for the editor users, it doesn't seem feasible at this point because it would take a lot of time for Scawen to extract every string of text into a translatable variable. I remember him answering this to someone else some time ago, but I can't find the original post.

Quote from v i n z :

Hello everyone, I don't know if this is the right topic to comment on (if not, I...

You asked what I wanted to ask, this is very good advice, if implemented, this can save time, and improve the editor's proficiency, affect the quality of the mods, etc

Hello everyone, I don't know if this is the right topic to comment on (if not, I apologize).

But I wanted to take the opportunity to ask, will there be language packs for the lfs editor later?

It would help a lot in the production of mods.

Alright,the modelling part is almost finished.

After remaking some panels for smoother shading, I modelled the interior and then tested in the editor only to find out that the vertices were over the limit.So I made some parts simpler and remodelled some.Then made some small things and filled some holes.

For some parts since they are very similar I will use the XRG ones.Specifically shifter, front seats,rearview mirror and wipers.

The last parts to model are: exhaust,License plates and Steering Wheel.

I also had the idea of making diffrent configurations for the 1989-1993 version and the 1994-1997 (Facelift).The main difference are the badges.

I want to model the remaining parts first before importing to the editor just to check if they're okay for the triangle limit.

The minor updates I did to dashboards and wheels were only in the editor. I didn't put them in public LFS game because hotlaps would be affected by the slight differences in wheels (old hotlaps would go OOS but for no really good reason). For example some have a slightly reduced rim width to make them more realistic for the size of tyre.

I did have, on a list, a thought about importing the dashboards into the public version. But minor game updates and editor updates could go on forever so at some point I had to just stop and do the release.

In 0.7E4 editor patch, the cars got updated dashboards and wheels, but in 0.7F LFS, they are not there as it seems.

Somehow I remember using the updated cars in LFS, but maybe I'm wrong and they were never actually shipped in the LFS test patches. Is that intentional?

Here's a comparison between LFS 0.7F and LFS Editor 0.7F:

Thanks for the info.

I've now corrected it, in a new installer you can download with this link. It has a different file name ending _install.exe instead of _setup.exe to avoid the CDN caching the old version.

Download: https://www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_EDITOR_7F_install.exe

For interest only:

The problem seems to be that NSIS stores the empty folders in some other location, not in the standard directory structure visible when you open the archive. So that's why you couldn't see them in the 7E installer, although they do appear in the fresh installation. That 7E, with editor patch applied, was also the source I used to create the 7F installer. I didn't know that before and annoyingly I forgot to test that installer, although I did test all the game ones.

Adding a misc folder worked and I have unlocked the editor now.

But still there are a lot fewer folders than in a fresh 7E editor installation.