Uninformed reviews do my head in. I can understand the frustration that this one would cause.

"The community keeps bringing new mods, wheel support, VR..." wat...

Even though this review was only short, that sort of thing doesn't help LFS' image at all, and it's quite a wide-spread problem on YouTube, though most of the time it's less obvious than this video.

People who make review videos generally aren't hardcore players, they're casuals who drop by and give their face-value opinion. The problem is when they go into details that they haven't properly researched or articulated.

Quote from Avraham Vandezwin :

What I mean is that it would probably help if the community got together to post recent S3 videos that make you want to play the game. And unfortunately, even if such videos exist, this videos are not visible enough.
I think that collective reflection and action on communication about the game would be useful.
(sorry for my English)

I started an LFS review (not just a review, more of a showcase/discussion) video about 4 years ago, but I stalled on progress and never finished it. That was mainly because I didn't think it would be worth the effort if it only bounced around the LFS community. Every time I watch a "review" of LFS that gets it wrong, it makes me want to finish it... Maybe this time I will, even if only a handful of non-LFS players watch it. At least it will be based in fact, from a long time fan.

EDIT: Don't listen to Michal, LFS forever

Last edited by mbutcher, Tue 7 Feb 2023, 16:29.

Quote from Avraham Vandezwin :

Perhaps there is something to do with the communication on the news of the game?

What do you mean? Please can you make that comment clear, as I don't know what you are saying.

We have a highly active twitter, and a website that clearly shows updates and news from recent times. Constant involvement with the community. It may be a cool narrative, but LFS is not abandonware that has been kept going solely by the efforts of the community. That has been the case for some other games but that is not what is happening here. The community do have a huge involvement but they have not added wheel support and VR support, it's total rubbish.

Nice that the guy was complimentary about LFS, but I think it's a bit lazy for a journalist not to even spend 1 minute to check their facts.

Strange how people can't understand that we are still working on this game.

What's the logic? The community must have been adding wheel support and VR support, because there's no way it could possibly be that the developers added that themselves, to this game from 2002?

I do hear a lot of that. They download the latest version then say, wow this is so amazing for a 20 year old game.

Loving the mod so far. The steering ratio seems a bit low to me (especially with how much caster there is -- turning feels far too weighty yet numb) but I'm not certain what is realistic for these Kei cars. Gut just figured they wouldn't need so much wheel turn and force applied.

Other than that, I can't find any faults except maybe that the centre console has a few bits that seem a bit too shiny. I'm not even sure if they're visible outside of VR. Very nice mod!

does Reshade work with VR Quest2 ? (oculus/meta)

(without steamVR)

OK. Have reshade working in VR. Have googled but no help.......
Can reshade access the depth buffer of LFS?

i talk about the interior floor disturbing in VR cause too flashy white ;-)

hello Timdecnodder
cold you please give the possibility to change the interior color ?
or just to turn in to grey
the problem is when you are in VR, the interior is so fleshy white :that is disturbing

we have a race this tuesday, do you think any possibility to fix it please ?

1000 thanks

We had a good race yesterday.
There is still some detail that could be polished. The white pedals show up in VR would be better much darker. The abs doesn't feel period correct even though we used it! The suspension travels feels a bit too much in both directions and the rear wheels can go through the bodywork.
I did not tweak the mirrors especially the center one and I did not see anything behind...
The winner had a very soft and high setup and did good with it (I would have finished on the roof), the second did the fastest lap with a super low set just a bit harder.
All in all it is a fun car to push to the limit!

Will reshade work in VR. .
Pimax in particular?

DUDE!!!...I'll pay $60 for this game as is if only the VR thing would get sorted out. But it looks like it's all going to come as a package. Yes, keeping the community informed goes a long way, I'm surprised you don't have a patreon or something, you need to get paid brother. It's the social media era...

A little information about how VR is better in the 1000 Hz / multithreaded version:
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/2019060#post2019060

So this was a bit fun to fun to try out. So basically thought to try getting OpenComposite to work with LFS as it tends to resolve some of the "warping" issues in VR that LFS suffers from (fixed it for iRacing particularly), because this is my second favorite sim of all time and I thought to promote it more in my streams.

However, after looking over https://mbucchia.github.io/OpenXR-Toolkit/opencomposite#headset-compatibility it seems like using OpenXR is a big no because certain headsets do not support 32bit applications.

Which means that even if there was OpenXR support via OpenComposite, it's essentially impossible to use with LFS because it's still a 32-bit app afaik.

Is there any chance on it moving to 64-bit and possibly just moving to OpenXR support since OpenVR is basically done in terms of overall development?

As much as I'm sure some folks would complain about losing support for older hardware, it's a bit of an issue with the game not supporting newer hardware already

Also holy crap I have not updated my profile picture. Man I was a weeb. I guess I'm still kinda a weeb but I'm like... "refined" weeb.

Well LFS is so we'll optimized including VR that it is not the best excuse to change CPU or graphic card.

In VR, the render target per eye is always bigger than the headset's resolution per eye. This is because of the distortion. The render target is compressed more and more as you go further out from the centre. As an example, see this attached early VR image from 2013.

Back then, the application did the distortion. These days, the VR headset software does the distortion.

But the render target size you stated is not what I would expect if you set 225% resolution. 225% should multiply the X and Y dimensions by 1.5. That should usually be 1.5 times the size at 100% resolution. What RT size do you get if you set 100% resolution?

Also, where have you set "resolution scale" ? In LFS the option is called "Resolution adjustment" so I'm not sure if you are using the one in LFS or another one in external software.

For your questions about VR software, I don't know but maybe someone else can help.

With "Monitor view - none" you get a black screen. I'm not sure what you expected! That option is to save GPU power by not rendering to your windows desktop. If you want to see a representation of the view on your monitor, you can select single or double. Single is probably the best for most uses.

Can't wait to drive this car (on VR)!
Maybe make two internal mirrors as one subobject? I know it will cause problem with left to right adjustability but...

These reports have been great and shows how busy Scawen is!
Multithreading became a necessity to switch to 1000Hz 1ms physic steps. Even if the tire model remained the same it would absolutely remove the tearing or micro stutter at whatever frame rate. In some case like 60 o 90 fps VR it will be perfect whatever point of view. 60fps screen are still common and will get butter smooth now.
Anyway I have no idea about tire physic progress and I wish Scawen the best because it is a killer project!

Short layout I made in April and have used primarily with my Oculus Rift VR.



Short track, which is 1.81 miles / 2.91 km overall.

Made video of me driving cement mixer at the time I made the layout, which I loaded on YouTube...



The layout I drove on in the video was the reverse of the one I've attached.

The cement mixer is one of the configurations available on the LINE RUNNER IV mod by bayanofmansorofisky.

Because I'm astigmatic (can't focus my eyes, so blurred vision) and can't wear my varifocals in my Rift headset, can't see the signage next to the corners from far away (I know, my layout, but I still find it easy to get lost) so there's more signage further from corner than would be used in normal track to give me more of a chance to line up the corner.

These don't appear in the video as I drove in normal 2D (using keyboard) with my specs on.

My time (approx. 2:10) should be easily beatable, as I always turn in too late.

Just, WOW..

So much detail, very interesting to read. Thank you, Scawen, for this insight in to game development and LFS.
Very humbling to read how much you can get done in a day, I'm no coder, by I did try to learn some python. Just getting a few simple lines of code to work took hours, creating my first very simple app took days. And then it would not work properly..

I hope you don't mind me opening a thread about your locked thread, you didnt lock it for no reason, but I think there are some knowligable people on here that might give some cool insights on the stuff you posted.

And to the community, I was wondering if we could chip in together and give Scawen an modern pc Seeing as he is still on some old duo core system with a 60 hz monitor


Great read, specially since now I spend way to much on iracing just so I can race in VR. (The grapics being tied to the physics background stutter thing maybe me choose iracing over getting back in to LFS when I got a VR HMD)

Per my other thread : https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/100689-DIY-Motorcycle-simulator

And my bike build thread :https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/100622-YIKES-YKS-R6-GFYS

I've been spending a lot of time riding bikes in LFS lately, and I'm very impressed. I will say that the FFB destroys the steering feel MXBIKES gives you.

I created this thread so we as a community can compound suggestions, I'm shocked there isn't a bike one already?

As of right now my only complaint is the lack of manual rider lean control. I can live without it in this game but it will always hold back the entire bike experience. I would love to be able to control the lean and use my VR headset/trackir to do so.

I love this class of car, and this one is pretty fun to drive! However, there are a number of gaps in the geometry (between dash and hood, where you can see through to the hood's backside, plus the sides of the dash) and the brakes are by default far too strong -- over 600Nm/wheel is pretty much wasted and locks up the wheels too quickly.

Extra visual oddities are some odd bits on the shifter and gaps between the back shelf and rear windshield, but those aren't really visible unless in VR.

I also prefer the sound if the turbo volume is dropped to around 1.4 but that's personal preference -- it just gets a bit irritating to listen to after a while for me.

I'd also love to see some higher poly improvements and then it would be outstanding in my eyes!

More gradual progress to report. I don't think this is very interesting reading to most people but at least it shows the sort of thing I have to look into each day.

Attached an image of the updated timeline graph. It has some new colours. The reddish brown colour on the graphics thread is while it has called D3D 'Present' to apply the fully rendered image to the screen. It seems to take a long time to do that each frame because it is with Vertical Sync enabled, so it has to wait for the screen refresh (avoids tearing, and there is no point in having a higher frame rate than the monitor's refresh rate). But even during that time, the graphics card may still be rendering. The end of the blue part is only where LFS has finished sending draw instructions. The nice thing is that, with multithreading, that wait is no problem now, the physics updates keep going on as you can see.

Some gaps in the game/physics thread I believe are because my computer is so old it only has two cores (although it is a good, smooth running PC). I guess the operating system or another program wants to do something, so Windows gives a time slice to that other process instead of continuing with the LFS physics. I believe this might not happen much on a quad core.

Another thing is the audio code (yellow). Although better timed now, seems to take some time and bunch the physics updates. But this is the debug version of the code, it's a lot slower than the release build. So it might not be a problem at all.

Here's the diary of updates for any who are interested.

30 Sept
Graphical timeline showing what happens on the two threads over one second
- displays concurrency and shows where one thread can hold up the other
- reveals processing time differences between physics updates
- shows the bunching of physics updates by audio updates
- suggests better timing of audio updates

1 Oct
Timing investigation guided by the new graphical timeline
Improved accuracy of the system timer using undocumented ntdll functions
Improved the timeline a bit by adding new elements and adjusting exiting ones
Adjusted the timing of audio updates to avoid interference with the sync point

2 Oct
Adjusted game code to allow interruption of bunched physics updates for a sync point
Noticed that downloaded mods and skins are not reloaded in the best place (noted)
Made wait for sync point *always* interrupt overloaded physics (avoids visual hangs)
Noticed that game reset while physics objects moving calls D3D code 'illegally' (noted)

3 Oct
Investigating a known fault related to timer resetting when no guests are connected
Noticed some sync check values had not been updated for the 1000Hz physics update
Made some general improvements, simplified the timer reset code and fixed the bug
Moved reload of downloaded mods and cars with updated skins to the sync point
Fixed an already noted issue with auto restart on exiting the pits in hotlap mode

4 Oct
Spent some time looking at ways to delay the loading of textures when loading a car
- it would be better not do so any D3D work while loading a car but it's complicated
- some of the physics code (aero positions) depends on the 3D model being built
- possible solution is for the model to be built by game code but delay texture loading
Put that on the back burner for a while and looked at VR in the multithreading system
- found some issues including time appearing to slow down
- realised this is due to an oversight in the changes made on 2 August
- corrected that, continued VR testing, fixed a couple of bugs
Continued VR testing, looking at timing graph, experimenting

5 Oct
Another VR day, did research, testing, tried a different approach from yesterday
Ended up with good smooth results on tracks where my computer is fast enough
Did a substantial test on VR and FF wheel, driving at Bancroft and Fairfield
Force feedback can also be output at 1000 Hz with the physics updates
Seemed to feel higher resolution on the G27, I guess it could be good on DD wheel
Read through lists of things to do, would like to get a few crossed off tomorrow

Last edited by Scawen, Thu 6 Oct 2022, 07:24. Reason : not August... it's October - thanks Yisc[NL]

Ah I see, well, Googling for the VR SKEWED issue brings mostly links to LFS, but also one here for a flightsim https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/topic/68846-weird-keystone-skewed-distortion-in-vr/ And that one is with a Reverb too, just like the topic on this forum that solved it for my Odyssey.. so I think it's not really an LFS bug after all, and also not a Odyssey bug, but more of a weird combination of WMR code + some specific games?

Either way, it's good to know to always put that setting on 'best quality'

Edit: also found one for War Thunder: https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/515231-fix-for-view-distortionbarreling-in-windows-mixed-reality/

I've been trying to find out what this setting does in the first place, just out of curiosity, but can't find any information either. It sounds to me like Microsoft shouldn't have included it in the first place, as it only causes problems, without actually improving performance (as far as I can tell). Ah well.

Last edited by bitplane, Fri 16 Sep 2022, 12:51.

Nice job like always, i have sent you a message, just one thing, in vr the hand is touching the dashboard

It'd be really nice for OpenXR headsets if LFS natively supported OpenXR. It's the clear future for VR and removes unneeded layers.