1 dev + 1 artist can only produce things at a certain rate. Made worse by said dev being distracted from working on the sim by improvements to mod system, dealing with blowback from DDoSes and other maintainence tasks.
Heck, Valve's whole solution to DDoS with DOTA2/CS was to literally go and create their own private network that game servers live inside and you authenticate and connect through Gateway endpoints that then deliver your traffic to the game server. In theory, if LFS did have a Steam version, Scawen could actually place all of LFS' gameservers inside of Steam's private network and allow non-Steam users to access those servers but it's also a lot of work + Steam version.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/multiplayer/steamdatagramrelay
I would very much try to get a T300 or similar if possible. The difference between gear vs belt driven wheel is significant in terms of feel and enjoyment.
On PC, you can also mix and match so you don't need to get the G29 shifter (which is a separate purchase anyways AFAIK), you could look at a Thrustmaster or one of the cheap Aliexpress shifters instead which will be higher quality.
Could be GameInput which the latest (2024) T300 driver should fix. Without that driver, Windows 10/11 installed a runtime that proceeded to take priority of the FFB from other games (affected all wheel vendors and games). Most vendors released new drivers that addressed it or you can disable the GameInput Runtime service in Windows.
It should work fine in Linux, especially considering it's DX9, although at this point even DX11/DX12 support in Wine (via DXVK) is fairly mature and stable for even the newest AAA titles.
Just Z-fighting. Not much that can be done with that
Yeah.. I've just assumed that some of them are using old pirated versions. Especially as I think 1 of them specifically needed info for an older version of Lapper
The groove is purely visual. It's only updated on our client side and we all have our own version of the "groove", which we can even setup to be updated by only our car or by all cars on track. There should be consistent grip be it lap 1 or lap 101 with the only variance from surface types (assuming asphalt vs concrete have different grip). Additionally, the track has a constant temperature (although I can't seem to find what the LFS temperature is).
Unplanned work really is the worst. A few times I've been in the thick of having to run off and spend months rewriting systems where a flaw was discovered was big enough to need to drop everything and address it. People always seem to think that because features stalled that work wasn't being done but if they ever knew the half of it they'd change their tune.
It also doesn't help that recently Scawen has needed to take more web development tasks on either. There's enough PHP knowledge in the community that I think a trusted group might be able to help directly or at least give some informed advice. I'm not really a PHP dev anymore (outside of some contract work on a popular livery sharing site), but I do have many many years of knowledge and expertise with web dev.
It'll be interesting with the day/night cycle if there'll be even a rudementary implementation of dynamic track temps. Making the track hotter in the afternoon versus night would make longer races a bit more dynamic (in the absense of rain or other shenaingans).
For #1 I'm already reminded of old cheats that used negative handbrake force to act as a turbo boost
It's really not as deep as you're trying to make it although you do however have a tendency to try to make every puddle into an ocean.
It's not about hating Russians, it's just the bare minimum compliance to the law and a consequence of violating soverignity.
Just throwing a random thought out there but could your server/local be being blocked by cloudflare?
I mean the "not to russia" shouldn't be a surprise. Invading a soverign country isn't fondly looked upon.
Honestly having an open object library (where things go through a similar process to cars) might be a great way to avoid rights issues/theft from other games.
Hell, a refurb Steam Deck is relatively inexpensive (to me at least) and can run Windows along with many other games at 1080p. Can install the OS to an external drive as well as drive an external monitor.
I mean why wouldn't a simulator want to have dynamic weather? Even ignoring rain, tracks vary in temps based on time of day and usage and the grip levels change. It should be a good thing where racing isn't just hotlap simulator and you need to react to changes in grip levels (or moisture).
Speaking from my own experience, the addition of rain to iRacing has been an incredible thing as it changes everything. Every lap you're seeking the limit as the track wets or dries with real reward/consequence from getting it right or wrong. It makes the experience more enjoyable.
Even in dry, having a track evolve over a 3 hour endurance stint where the lap times get faster or slower based on track temps and tyre wear which is interesting to have happen.
Speaking from my own experience, the addition of rain to iRacing has been an incredible thing as it changes everything. Every lap you're seeking the limit as the track wets or dries with real reward/consequence from getting it right or wrong. It makes the experience more enjoyable.
Even in dry, having a track evolve over a 3 hour endurance stint where the lap times get faster or slower based on track temps and tyre wear which is interesting to have happen.
Kunos definitely wants to prevent as amny mods as feasible so they can sell all that content as DLC. Only the most obsucre tracks they'll never build will be allowed.
It's gonna be more funny when people realize they bought the exact same nordschleife in both ACC and AC2.
They never host the content. Third parties assume the risk of hosting and are generally protected by the DMCA (in the Us) if they honour takedown requests from rights holders.
Of course, that doesn't prevent folks from setting up sites where the DMCA (or similar) laws hold no teeth, and then rights holders don't have much to stand on other than suing the host itself in its country.
Obviously Scawen went a different route for mods with self-hosting to try to prevent piracy of LFS as well.
With tracks I think less is the risk of track copyright for branding and more for IP theft from other games.
Without a hybrid system implementation, the LMP2 car is more or less a light Hypercar. IRL the P2s would be faster than Hypercars if they weren't restricted as the LMDh/LMH cars are heavier than P2s
So a lot of ripped content (in AC's case) from various older games or Forza/Gran Turismo.
The one thing that GT _did_ have was the ability in certain cars (and certain tracks) to drive a lap IRL, download the data from the logger and replay the replay inside GT6. The loggers collected specific data for GT so it could support things like drifting which a GPS logger couldn't do (becuase it wouldn't know the cars AOT)
Cool feature but not a super great use of dev resources.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG