The online racing simulator
It is cleaner racing because you dont want to lose points in the SR, iRating yourself and so you take more care on track.

That's exactly what's missing atm in Lfs, but it doesnt automaticly mean that there's no clean racing in lfs too. I had many great battles so far this year in different leagues.
Maybe it is just easier to join a league and stay completly away form public/non-league servers

I started using mates@track (http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=8568) about 2 weeks ago(yes, I know Im slow :razz
and I am the first to admit that it made a huge difference, much cleaner racing.....or maybe Im just lucky

But agreed I hate those Bangers!!!

edd

Quote from menantoll :I believe he means a shame because it therefore will not be on all servers as not all want to pay for the full version. Not a shame that it's a pay for product.

Yeah, this is what I meant. EQ Worry makes something really useful, then makes it so only a fraction of the servers will have it. Obviously everyone could pay, but realistically that'll never happen.

Quote from dawguk :Indeed, it is cleaner racing. I don't think it's just the SR or MPR that make the biggest difference though - I think part of the reason there is less wreckers in iRacing is because wreckers don't want to pay money to drive like a dickhead.

Yes... that was the entire point of my post. Cheaper = more people who don't take it seriously.
The only rot going on in LFS is users' attitude.

From my outsider perspective, with experience (>10 years) in another sim community where realism is at least as essential to gameplay, and where there's arguably much more importance to community bonds, it's safe to say that racers are by nature cocky and that the critical point in avoiding "rot" is tempering that cockiness. Keeping competition healthy. Unfortunately, driving and racing cars is easy enough, and LFS is so well designed from an accessibility standpoint, and racing itself is so popular, that you have a much larger proportion of young users who are inarguably more immature on average. So that they don't yet grok that notion of healthy cockiness. Instead of airhead cockiness for its own sake.

That's the root of it. Not LFS' development scheme or whether you get banned or not for (intentionally or not) acting like a prick. The inability to entertain and accept the idea that even if this is a sim, it's a game beforehand - you're playing with other people - is what precedes all these "rot" issues. You can't play LFS (race, other than hotlapping) without those other people; you can't poop where you eat.
two answers imo

1. join iracing. nothing is free in this life, if you want something of quality, you have to pay for it.
iracing isnt that expensive.
want a nice 42" tv? would you expect to pay what you would have to pay for a tiny portable?

sticking with lfs, could a system be used where your car has to be repaired with credits?
100 for a front wing, for example.
each racer is given, say, 300 credits in their account and have to manage their repairs.
if they run out of credits, they cant repair the car and no racing.
to earn new credits they have to run offline in time trials similar to iracing.
this may teach hotheaded newbies/idiots that there is a concequence to unsafe driving and hopefully being forced to drive clean offline will raise the quality of driving standards.

just my thoughts, now im off for a pretty damn clean race on a certain paying race sim, good luck LFS racers!
What a thread... Just a few comments from me:

1) Why not ban people causing crashes in T1? Problem is you get crashed in T1, you say "idi*ts", but that is so simple! But who in fact is the idi*t responsible? When you check replay (which obviously no one ever bothers), in 75 percents (or even more) of cases there's no one specific to blame, it is simply small lags or small mistakes leading to HUGE crashes because of LFS collision detection.

2) InSims like Airio can help to get rid of laggy cars, but what would need to be changed is the collision system itself. Here I completely agree with cargame.nl and others - new car/track/physics may be nice, but collision detection needs substantial correction NOW. Cars flying 60 meters high when before hitting a barrier they were moving at 30 kmph? Huh! That says it all.

3) LFS EI (experience index) and SR (safety rating) as implemented in Airio have their flaws, no doubt about that. But on average they work surprisingly well taking the limited-usability data they need to rely on. EI uses LFSW data only and Franky is right winning your category on a multiclass server doesn't mean you've won a race in LFSW stats. But there's nothing I can do about that. On the other hand such a win is one minute part of the overall index and it really does not influence much. Same with SR. No doubt people can be taken out by others (resulting in SR drop), but average SR value of decent drivers will be much higher than of the careless ones.

4) Best LFS racing is without any InSim. Well, no doubt for some people. But insims are actually adding things to LFS that you have in real races - timing data, points, etc. Also such systems could make server administration much easier with things like easy recall/ban of recently disconnected people or custom banning system that let you see who is banned by whom and for how long. Server admins usually find such things (and many others) rather useful.

5) LFSEI is to a large extent an experimental thing. Because it is based purely on LFSW data the best thing possible would be when it is calculated and available right at the LFSW. If Victor wants to add such a thing, I'd gladly submit/discuss the way it is calculated (and which looks very reasonably). But recently I was sending some other ideas to both main developers (direct support of some restricted cars like GT2s or UFBs, both in game and stats, time-limited demo but with REV BL tracks, completely open sites for custom tracks) and I got no response. So...
The good news is that Scawen has stated that better collision detection is one of the things required for S2 to move from alpha to beta and beyond. The bad news, well, beta could take a while..
Quote from mr grady :two answers imo


sticking with lfs, could a system be used where your car has to be repaired with credits?
100 for a front wing, for example.
each racer is given, say, 300 credits in their account and have to manage their repairs.
if they run out of credits, they cant repair the car and no racing.
to earn new credits they have to run offline in time trials similar to iracing.
this may teach hotheaded newbies/idiots that there is a concequence to unsafe driving and hopefully being forced to drive clean offline will raise the quality of driving standards.

really nice idea. But it has some problems. Like if you want to drift/crash/city driving you will lose credits on it what isnt so fair. But it would be nice if you would get that much credits for finished race what would spend average-beginer driver for damages during race. So everyone wouldnt have problem if he get off the track or so but crashers could not play more.
I like the "credits for repairs" idea too. If only LFS reported damages it could be fun developing such a system, either server-based or "global", implemented using some InSim app or (maybe) LFS World...
Quote from mr grady :
1. join iracing. nothing is free in this life, if you want something of quality, you have to pay for it.
iracing isnt that expensive.

just my thoughts, now im off for a pretty damn clean race on a certain paying race sim, good luck LFS racers!

The answer isnt to run away & play another sim i already tried that. iRacing isnt just expensive its a rip off. You cannot even begin to compare the two (financially speaking). Dont join iRacing.

I really dont know why people worry about the quality of racing in LFS servers. If you want quality racing join a decent league, simple as that. LFS league racing is even better than iRacings in that if you make a silly error you wont end up pissed of cause your SR took a massive hit & now your gona have do another five races in the crappy slowstice.

Im glad i left all that SR rage & the wingers on the forum behind. Its so money orientated over there they cant see the wood for trees.
My thoughts on this;
Airio improves the standard of racing and is welcome in my book.
iRacing is too stuffy for me, I just want a place to chat and race with my friends all day.
Friends aren't online often anymore because they're bored with the same old stuff.

I certainly got my money's worth out of LFS though. Thanks to the devs!
Quote from EQ Worry :What a thread... Just a few comments from me:

1) Why not ban people causing crashes in T1? Problem is you get crashed in T1, you say "idi*ts", but that is so simple! But who in fact is the idi*t responsible? When you check replay (which obviously no one ever bothers), in 75 percents (or even more) of cases there's no one specific to blame, it is simply small lags or small mistakes leading to HUGE crashes because of LFS collision detection.

2) InSims like Airio can help to get rid of laggy cars, but what would need to be changed is the collision system itself. Here I completely agree with cargame.nl and others - new car/track/physics may be nice, but collision detection needs substantial correction NOW. Cars flying 60 meters high when before hitting a barrier they were moving at 30 kmph? Huh! That says it all.

Well, I dont know if it is actually attainable without filtering all racers lagging even a little. Any lag makes it inevitable when car "appears" to be in the barrier thus creating burst of energy (in fact it should be only possible between cars not car and barrier, because car/barrier hit happens on local PC). Maybe it would be achieved if collision detection took into account lag: so it not only calculated vehicle dynamic between packets but also solved situation of big difference between not only position of the car but also enormous difference between ie. speed calculated and received. That doesn't change the fact of cars in collision position after synchronizing packets.
Quote :
5) LFSEI is to a large extent an experimental thing. Because it is based purely on LFSW data the best thing possible would be when it is calculated and available right at the LFSW. If Victor wants to add such a thing, I'd gladly submit/discuss the way it is calculated (and which looks very reasonably). But recently I was sending some other ideas to both main developers (direct support of some restricted cars like GT2s or UFBs, both in game and stats, time-limited demo but with REV BL tracks, completely open sites for custom tracks) and I got no response. So...

Does it mmean that with my stats since 2004 I dont have to climb on ladders with your insim?

REV BL? no way online drifting for free!
Yes true I think it needs general remake. Its starting to be boring if i go throught someone and then get kicked away or side to side and kicked away or barrier kicks me to 20 metres just because of 3kmh touch. I really dont know how it could be done because it logically doesnt looks so easy to code. Some people who I know claims that they dont like lfs for those bugs.
Quote from AndRand :Does it mmean that with my stats since 2004 I dont have to climb on ladders with your insim?

Go online on a cargame.nl or ironhorse server and type: "!ex" without the quotes.
You´ll see your personal experience factor. Server admining of these 7-8 server run by two different groups of people is a bit different, so you´d need to have a look on their individual requirements to be able to find the car class, you´d be allowed to drive. It´s not only about the experience but also about your saftey rating. Last one is easy to get by having a few "very" careful races on their servers.

LFSEI in combination with the SR is a great invention or application and gets all racers in danger of getting pretty LFS addictive once more. Try one of these servers and you´ll see..

Sorry if this post is slightly off-topic.
When something these days should be destroying LFS - this def. isn´t - it´s a masterpiece from EQWorry, actually.
I have to somewhat agree with the main topic.

Im a fairly slow driver I admit but I pay a lot of attention on the track and driver as cleanly and consistently as I can. Thanks to that I have won a few races which involved people who are a lot faster than me.

But its really annoying when some push too hard to gain a place or try to race you in places where its a bit inappropriate. Its not even because they dont pay attention where you are but because they just take stupid risks. Racers need to be fast AND patient. You cant win if youre stuck in the gravel.

Also, most drivers should know by now that the first corner is extremely crowded and that they should start braking a bit earlier when they are behind someone. So, why dont they? The distance signs are beside the tracks for a reason.
Quote from dumbass0 : Racers need to be fast AND patient.



Too bad that in-patience can't be penalized though. There should be a safety rating for people hitting other cars. Like I mentioned before.

Sure, little accidents can happen but too many 'little accidents' should give a low rate.

Now, most of the time, the victim also gets penalized because he is causing a yellow flag.
Quote from dumbass0 :...But its really annoying when some push too hard to gain a place or try to race you in places where its a bit inappropriate. Its not even because they dont pay attention where you are but because they just take stupid risks. Racers need to be fast AND patient. You cant win if youre stuck in the gravel...

Exactly.

And it's not that LFS is lacking an iRating, it's the fact that the users just don't give a rat's ass.
Too many players have no sense of pride, and take no responsibility for their actions.
Quote from z-ro 8 :And it's not that LFS is lacking an iRating, it's the fact that the users just don't give a rat's ass.
Too many players have no sense of pride, and take no responsibility for their actions.

To the contrary, I think that more people would take pride if there was a safety rating in LFS and I'd love to see one implemented.

In all, I think that if LFS had more structure (outside leagues that people set up themselves) that you'd find less destructive behaviour online.

The dickhead racers invariably hang out on pickup race servers because the races don't really mean anything to them. If the game had some structure, and each race had a meaning (contributed to rating for example), then I think a lot of them would be better behaved, and/or their behaviour would be less tolerated.

OT - this thread title is exaggerated and provocative, and should be changed. If there was a rot destroying LFS, then it is thread titles like this one!
Quote from AndRand :Does it mmean that with my stats since 2004 I dont have to climb on ladders with your insim?

Indeed, that is why LFS EI was created in the 1st place. Of course all depends on the particular server admins and the way they choose to do things, but both IHR and cargame are currently using EI to enable faster cars based on rank (points) OR past experience (EI).

Latest Airio (2.3.9) can even assign initial safety rating based on EI, meaning e.g. people with experience of 700 can drive GT2 and all slower cars (GTL, TBO, STD, ...) straight away and they also get say 80% of safety rating on 1st connect. But SR is another limiting factor and if it goes down car classes may become unavailable regardless of EI.

Quote from farcar :OT - this thread title is exaggerated and provocative, and should be changed. If there was a rot destroying LFS, then it is thread titles like this one!

Yup, despite the title (and initial post) this thread is surprisingly calm and serious and may even lead somewhere.
Im an aggressive driver

I dont enjoy driving 2 laps behind the same guy because I dont want to risk bumping him.

But yet Im not a crazy driver, I know when to push and when to hold back, and if I see somebody braking too early I rather steer off the track than hit him

Am I destroying LFS? : (
Quote from EQ Worry :Indeed, that is why LFS EI was created in the 1st place. Of course all depends on the particular server admins and the way they choose to do things, but both IHR and cargame are currently using EI to enable faster cars based on rank (points) OR past experience (EI).

Latest Airio (2.3.9) can even assign initial safety rating based on EI, meaning e.g. people with experience of 700 can drive GT2 and all slower cars (GTL, TBO, STD, ...) straight away and they also get say 80% of safety rating on 1st connect. But SR is another limiting factor and if it goes down car classes may become unavailable regardless of EI.

Good to hear because for now I just dropped even checking multiclass servers
:bowdown:

Finally somebody actually agree's with what I posted, last year, the year before, oh and guess what.........yep the year before that.

How come's the OP doesn't get flamed like I did.

Anyway, great thread, about time something was said

+1000000000000000000000000 from me

Fordie
Quote from Fordman :Finally somebody actually agree's with what I posted, last year, the year before, oh and guess what.........yep the year before that.

How come's the OP doesn't get flamed like I did.

I'm guessing because people actually understand the OP's post. No offence Also, the OP's points are much more specific than what you said in your last thread where you just complained that the fun was gone but didn't really adress any specific issues.

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG