It happens I guess. You had a very eventful race but ultimately you got a podium and you take the lead in the championship. I enjoyed my race-long battle with Niko, but ultimately my race was written when I chose my setup before the start, the tyre pressures were too high and I couldn't keep them switched on after lap 40. Wasn't expecting to be on the podium today, let alone leading most of the race. I wish I had more time to practice and prepare these days.
Last edited by mbutcher, .
@scawen: Might it be worth adding a disclaimer to some of the screenshots (https://lfs.net/screenshots) saying that it's WIP and not actually part of the game yet. It seems some people are getting confused about that point, seeing it as false advertising.
Of course, but look at this screenshot:
https://www.lfs.net/static/screenshots/-1511439%206831570%20550636%2022144%20922%200.0%2060.6.jpg
That's some sort of water effect for sure.
Last edited by mbutcher, .
Is that actually water? It's in the wet grip area.
The real life image looks slightly over-exposed to me so that's why the kerb looks overly bright.
Nice comparisons again Mo. Stunning work Scawen and Eric, can't wait for what October has to show.
Nice summary and nice shots. Roll on round 2.
He started early.
That's the last free position I'm giving away so make the most of it!
I normally would, but I was limited in the practice I could do leading up to this race. It's been a while since I did any FO8 races where tyre life was marginal.
Amazeballs...
Good first round.
It was a shame about the terrible etiquette in qualifying and hopefully we don't get a repeat of that in the remaining rounds.
I was bamboozled by my tyre wear in the race and I'm kicking myself that I chickened out ultimately losing second place. Well done to Botsi and Adam though for having more faith in their tyres. Looking forward to a close points fight with you guys.
It was a shame about the terrible etiquette in qualifying and hopefully we don't get a repeat of that in the remaining rounds.
I was bamboozled by my tyre wear in the race and I'm kicking myself that I chickened out ultimately losing second place. Well done to Botsi and Adam though for having more faith in their tyres. Looking forward to a close points fight with you guys.
Sounds good! My eyes are ready.
There's plenty still going on if you know where to look.
Rony runs events every Tuesday night: RFTR & RTFR XL
(FM) GTi Thursday's happen at around 7:30pm UTC+1 and last for an hour
(FM) FOX Friday's happen at around 8:30pm UTC+1 and last just over an hour
Then there are leagues like the upcoming VERL
Generally check out the events sub forum and join the LFS Discord
Congrats, you've had iRacing for 5 minutes, now stop posting unhelpful messages here.
Rony runs events every Tuesday night: RFTR & RTFR XL
(FM) GTi Thursday's happen at around 7:30pm UTC+1 and last for an hour
(FM) FOX Friday's happen at around 8:30pm UTC+1 and last just over an hour
Then there are leagues like the upcoming VERL
Generally check out the events sub forum and join the LFS Discord
Congrats, you've had iRacing for 5 minutes, now stop posting unhelpful messages here.
Virtual Keyboard: Let us position it
I'm increasingly finding myself needing to use the virtual keyboard during races because although I have a wheel with many buttons, there are still times where I need to fiddle with other settings during the race via the virtual keyboard.
The current placement of the keyboard means I have to look into the sky and focus on where I'm pointing the gaze-cursor rather than looking where I'm going which, as you can probably imagine, is tricky, even on the longer straights. With the keyboard lower down, it would be possible to use the gaze-cursor and still be able to keep an eye on my general heading.
As I mentioned at 2:18 in my recent video, it's my only complaint with the virtual keyboard. It would be nice if we could adjust its position (along with the text input field) via a set of controls like the new mirror controls:
Or by just letting us set a Y offset.
Cheers.
The current placement of the keyboard means I have to look into the sky and focus on where I'm pointing the gaze-cursor rather than looking where I'm going which, as you can probably imagine, is tricky, even on the longer straights. With the keyboard lower down, it would be possible to use the gaze-cursor and still be able to keep an eye on my general heading.
As I mentioned at 2:18 in my recent video, it's my only complaint with the virtual keyboard. It would be nice if we could adjust its position (along with the text input field) via a set of controls like the new mirror controls:
Or by just letting us set a Y offset.
Cheers.
Just out of interest, what's the default UDP buffer size on Freebsd?
Run this and paste the output here:
This article might be your answer (see the BSD section on increasing the size of your UDP buffer): https://medium.com/@CameronSparr/increase-os-udp-buffers-to-improve-performance-51d167bb1360
Run this and paste the output here:
sysctl kern.ipc.maxsockbufThis article might be your answer (see the BSD section on increasing the size of your UDP buffer): https://medium.com/@CameronSparr/increase-os-udp-buffers-to-improve-performance-51d167bb1360
The LFS website and forum were only updated a couple of years ago. The LFS forum used to use vBulletin but Victor and the team decided to do away with it and rolled out their own forum which has simplified the experience at the expense of a few fancy (essentially unnecessary) features.
To say that updates to the forum and website are 'overdue' is daft, both are still fit for purpose. That said, I wouldn't be against a mobile site though, at least for the forum. It shouldn't be too hard to throw in a few media queries to make the forum more user friendly on mobile.
To say that updates to the forum and website are 'overdue' is daft, both are still fit for purpose. That said, I wouldn't be against a mobile site though, at least for the forum. It shouldn't be too hard to throw in a few media queries to make the forum more user friendly on mobile.
Last edited by mbutcher, .
Grids are small these days, start at the back and battle through, that's more fun anyway.
I got my S1 license 5 days after you! In that time, 314 others also registered accounts. Yikes.
Edit: Interesting, we passed 2m registered accounts in June.
Last edited by mbutcher, .
You really ought to add these races to your calendar and get it to remind you a few hours beforehand.
You can thank Lucas for that 
Poor Adam...
Poor Adam...
I have concerns, but hopefully also some constructive ideas and opinions.
Firstly, let's consider who your target market is. First and foremost it's demo users and from my experience, the long-term LFS demo users fall into two categories:
Now let me draw your attention to this ~700 post license giveaway thread. There is absolutely a market for gifting licenses, but I'm sceptical as to whether people would essentially enter a lottery for one, especially for the prices you've mentioned. You said it yourself, demo racing is a derby. That means that the demo users that don't want to pay for the game are unlikely to pay for half of an S1 license for a 7% chance of getting a license (The basic probability of winning in a 15 car grid, the limit for online demo servers). Similarly, those who can't afford a license are unlikely to part with cash for a shot at a license (maybe some of them will take the chance and do it once, but again, I'm sceptical). That leaves your only realistic potential market, the short-term demo users who are looking to buy the game and who might fancy their chances at winning one at a fraction of the cost.
The only way to know for sure is to get the attention of demo users and gauge their interest. I'd recommend doing this either by setting up a demo server and advertising the idea on there through some sort of InSim application, or by directing them to a webpage (or at the very least a cut-down version of this forum thread with a succinct description of the idea and a poll). Before I say any more on that, let's consider your other potential market.
In my honest opinion, the current climate of LFS and its online community of S1/S2/S3 license holders simply isn't active enough to get the critical mass of paying drivers for paid events/leagues unless it's extremely well organised and potentially backed by the devs. I must stress that this is only due to LFS' current activity levels and who knows what sort of spike and drop-off we can expect when the new graphics, track updates and future content updates land, but right now, getting a paid league/event off the ground for licensed users is going to be a hard sell. The only way this works is if you're running it at the calibre of a league like CityLiga with a website statistics system, livestreams and a team of staff administrating the races etc.
Then there's the prizes. S2 to S3 upgrades are going to be a hot topic when we get more S3 content, but without a realistic timescale estimate from Scawen, that's not a smart horse to bet on at this stage given the investment of both time and money you'd be putting into this. Given that there are very few S1 mode servers, let's assume that the majority of the non-demo online community have S2, right now, an S3 upgrade will only be attractive to a small number of these people. Why? S3 has 1 track and for an S2 license holder, it's only a small amount of money to upgrade compared to what they've already spent so if they really wanted to get it, they'd have it already. As soon as we see more S3 content I'd definitely consider offering S2 to S3 upgrades. Then there's S3 license holders, what can you offer them? To really encourage existing license holders, your prizes have got to be substantial and if you're really considering committing to an idea like this, my advice is go big or go home.
VR is growing in popularity and LFS does VR brilliantly, as I've explained here, then there's cheaper prizes like wheels and accessories like shifters and pedal sets. Honestly, if you're considering asking people to pay for your event/league, make it something people want to enter and put lots of effort into the organisation.
Speaking from experience, I've run many LFS leagues over the years and even back at LFS' peak when we were considering leagues with paid entry, we were sceptical of whether we would be able to entice enough people to cover our own costs. Unfortunately for you, we never actually tried, so I have no benchmarks. That said, I've always been interested in the idea and was extremely close to throwing caution to the wind and running a paid league with nice prizes. Remember that back in the day, when LX Week was a thing, the devs ran events with prizes as substantial as Logitech G25s, not to mention the actual VW Scirocco they gave away at the 2018 Leipzig Gamescon! (VW provided the car!)
You then need to look at the geography of the demographic you're aiming at. You're based in the US and the majority of the online community in LFS is based on the other side of the pond, so you're probably going to want to consider running your servers over here. You also mentioned that if you target demo racers you'll need at least 12 racers to cover costs. As I mentioned earlier, bear in mind that demo servers can only accommodate 15 cars on track at once so to get 24, you'd need 2 servers.
I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg, but I felt I needed to at least voice my opinions before you get too far into planning all of this, I hope you at least find some of it useful.
Many of the community have been in your position over the years, wanting to provide racing opportunities to the community and you've taken it one step further by taking your trailer into the wild and it's honestly amazing, but unfortunate that luck's not always been on your side so far. To that end, my inbox is always open and my interest is always there if there's a good idea being floated around with other enthusiastic people. If you'd like to discuss the paid league/event idea with me further, please do get in touch.
Either way, I wish you the best of luck.
Firstly, let's consider who your target market is. First and foremost it's demo users and from my experience, the long-term LFS demo users fall into two categories:
- They don't want to pay for the game and get enough enjoyment out of the demo content.
- They simply cannot afford a license.
Now let me draw your attention to this ~700 post license giveaway thread. There is absolutely a market for gifting licenses, but I'm sceptical as to whether people would essentially enter a lottery for one, especially for the prices you've mentioned. You said it yourself, demo racing is a derby. That means that the demo users that don't want to pay for the game are unlikely to pay for half of an S1 license for a 7% chance of getting a license (The basic probability of winning in a 15 car grid, the limit for online demo servers). Similarly, those who can't afford a license are unlikely to part with cash for a shot at a license (maybe some of them will take the chance and do it once, but again, I'm sceptical). That leaves your only realistic potential market, the short-term demo users who are looking to buy the game and who might fancy their chances at winning one at a fraction of the cost.
The only way to know for sure is to get the attention of demo users and gauge their interest. I'd recommend doing this either by setting up a demo server and advertising the idea on there through some sort of InSim application, or by directing them to a webpage (or at the very least a cut-down version of this forum thread with a succinct description of the idea and a poll). Before I say any more on that, let's consider your other potential market.
In my honest opinion, the current climate of LFS and its online community of S1/S2/S3 license holders simply isn't active enough to get the critical mass of paying drivers for paid events/leagues unless it's extremely well organised and potentially backed by the devs. I must stress that this is only due to LFS' current activity levels and who knows what sort of spike and drop-off we can expect when the new graphics, track updates and future content updates land, but right now, getting a paid league/event off the ground for licensed users is going to be a hard sell. The only way this works is if you're running it at the calibre of a league like CityLiga with a website statistics system, livestreams and a team of staff administrating the races etc.
Then there's the prizes. S2 to S3 upgrades are going to be a hot topic when we get more S3 content, but without a realistic timescale estimate from Scawen, that's not a smart horse to bet on at this stage given the investment of both time and money you'd be putting into this. Given that there are very few S1 mode servers, let's assume that the majority of the non-demo online community have S2, right now, an S3 upgrade will only be attractive to a small number of these people. Why? S3 has 1 track and for an S2 license holder, it's only a small amount of money to upgrade compared to what they've already spent so if they really wanted to get it, they'd have it already. As soon as we see more S3 content I'd definitely consider offering S2 to S3 upgrades. Then there's S3 license holders, what can you offer them? To really encourage existing license holders, your prizes have got to be substantial and if you're really considering committing to an idea like this, my advice is go big or go home.
VR is growing in popularity and LFS does VR brilliantly, as I've explained here, then there's cheaper prizes like wheels and accessories like shifters and pedal sets. Honestly, if you're considering asking people to pay for your event/league, make it something people want to enter and put lots of effort into the organisation.
Speaking from experience, I've run many LFS leagues over the years and even back at LFS' peak when we were considering leagues with paid entry, we were sceptical of whether we would be able to entice enough people to cover our own costs. Unfortunately for you, we never actually tried, so I have no benchmarks. That said, I've always been interested in the idea and was extremely close to throwing caution to the wind and running a paid league with nice prizes. Remember that back in the day, when LX Week was a thing, the devs ran events with prizes as substantial as Logitech G25s, not to mention the actual VW Scirocco they gave away at the 2018 Leipzig Gamescon! (VW provided the car!)
You then need to look at the geography of the demographic you're aiming at. You're based in the US and the majority of the online community in LFS is based on the other side of the pond, so you're probably going to want to consider running your servers over here. You also mentioned that if you target demo racers you'll need at least 12 racers to cover costs. As I mentioned earlier, bear in mind that demo servers can only accommodate 15 cars on track at once so to get 24, you'd need 2 servers.
I've only scratched the tip of the iceberg, but I felt I needed to at least voice my opinions before you get too far into planning all of this, I hope you at least find some of it useful.
Many of the community have been in your position over the years, wanting to provide racing opportunities to the community and you've taken it one step further by taking your trailer into the wild and it's honestly amazing, but unfortunate that luck's not always been on your side so far. To that end, my inbox is always open and my interest is always there if there's a good idea being floated around with other enthusiastic people. If you'd like to discuss the paid league/event idea with me further, please do get in touch.
Either way, I wish you the best of luck.
Last edited by mbutcher, .
LFSW name: MButcher
In-game name: [TC-R] P.Butcher
Full team name: [TC] Racing
Nation: United Kingdom
In-game name: [TC-R] P.Butcher
Full team name: [TC] Racing
Nation: United Kingdom
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG