The online racing simulator
Is LFS Dying?
(289 posts, closed, started )
Do I really need to post my previous statement.....

if so, I will start slapping morons....
Quote from PMD9409 :You know what the sad part is? People claim how iRacing is so much better. But its not when you truely break it down.

Content: iR
Physics: LFS
Online fun: LFS
User friendly: LFS
Wide range of ability: LFS


"Online fun" and "User Friendly" are completely subjective, and I'm not sure what "wide range of ability" really means here.

Quote :The reason I put LFS ahead in physics is very simple. I've been in iRacing since beta and all I can say is that they haven't done one decent step in the physics department that I thought was truely significant.

I'd agree with what you're saying (I was in the first round of invite-onlys), but that's a bizarre way to measure the physics. The cars absolutely feel more authentic (not sure about the downforce cars in either sim mind you) in iRacing, so I could argue that much less change is required.

And although I'd prefer to have visible deformation as well, relating "black blocks" to physics is quite askew. What matters is how they perform - and that's already ahead of LFS.

I agree about the transmission model though, that was the first thing I noticed when I first tried iRacing because it wasn't long after Scawen implemented all of his transmission magic / clutch heating business, so it seemed like a glaring hole and still does. Hopefully iRacing's approach will be in the next build.

Quote :When the cars don't feel utterly "faked" anymore then I'll race on it frequently, but until then its a screenshot generator, and nothing more.

Transmission model aside, if "black blocks" make the cars feel faked to you... I don't know what to tell you. Would be like saying the LX6 feels faked then since it rides on a grey cylinder for suspension!

Quote from SparkyDave :if comparing Iracing to LFS, one very important point springs to mind,
LFS= single payment (assuming current model, s3 will be £36 (you pay once and can play forever))
Iracing you have to keep on paying and paying and paying
so over time LFS offers far better value for money

SD.

Well that's probably true, although value is in the eye of the beholder. iRacing and LFS don't really offer the same things and aren't trying to. For example Wyatt Gooden didn't wind up driving a real Jetta in a real series through LFS
Quote from SparkyDave :Iracing you have to keep on paying and paying and paying
so over time LFS offers far better value for money

SD.

Depends on what you are looking for in a sim..
Quote from mtrein :Yup, he did show IHR. Cargame.nl created a playground for unclean and immature racers with dubious and unsportsmanlike attitudes. I hope it continues to gather that kind of crowd so IHR can stay as it is, top quality racing... And CLEAN. Amen to that

My apologies to bring this back up 'cause it's off topic but I just thought I'd say I find that comment rather amusing as for the past couple of days I checked the number of players on the IHR server a few times - just out of curiosity - and it never had more than 3 or 4 players on (of which 1 or 2 are just idling there and not even racing) So yeah... obviously the racing will be fairly clean that way if you have just 1 or 2 people going round the track

No doubt you'll tell me that I checked at the wrong times and that there's always plenty of people on at the right times and whatnot, and I'm not going to argue about that as that may well be so. I'm just saying it never had any significant amount of people on at the times I checked, including right now which is generally considered to be more or less the busiest time on LFS servers.
IHR is quite dead now afaik
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :And although I'd prefer to have visible deformation as well, relating "black blocks" to physics is quite askew. What matters is how they perform - and that's already ahead of LFS.

both models handle rather silly
one has too much oversteer the other some really weird induced understeer
on the whole from my experience id say the tyre models are equaly bad yet equaly way ahead of the competition
Quote from obsolum :My apologies to bring this back up 'cause it's off topic but I just thought I'd say I find that comment rather amusing as for the past couple of days I checked the number of players on the IHR server a few times - just out of curiosity - and it never had more than 3 or 4 players on (of which 1 or 2 are just idling there and not even racing) So yeah... obviously the racing will be fairly clean that way if you have just 1 or 2 people going round the track

No doubt you'll tell me that I checked at the wrong times and that there's always plenty of people on at the right times and whatnot, and I'm not going to argue about that as that may well be so. I'm just saying it never had any significant amount of people on at the times I checked, including right now which is generally considered to be more or less the busiest time on LFS servers.

Nope, not going to tell you that you checked at the wrong times because you are quite right, IHR is not a busy server any more. If anything it's a lot more like your favourite server these days (spends a lot of time empty and at it's busiest has 10-15 racers). Therefore it is a lot cleaner. I've seen it posted many times on here, if you want a clean server then join one with about 10 racers or less. The fact we don't even allow newbies to race helps this. How much it helps will always be open to debate.

It's actually the point that I've been trying to make for a while as loads of people still judge it on how it was a few months ago before we put the minimum standard in place. Cargame WAS growing well and when we stopped all the newbies from racing and recommended cargame to them, they went there. I'm NOT saying cargame only got busy/became the busiest because of what we did but I am saying it helped.

RenvoN, it's not dead. It may be dead TO YOU, if you call any server that hasn't got grids of 20+ cars dead. You are entitled to your opinion but your opinion is not fact.
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :"Online fun" and "User Friendly" are completely subjective, and I'm not sure what "wide range of ability" really means here.

Yeah I know I did that late.

By wide range I mean the types of leagues as well as what you can do with insim etc. I guess you can throw in drifting, autocross, and cruising into the mix just for the giggles.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :"
I'd agree with what you're saying (I was in the first round of invite-onlys), but that's a bizarre way to measure the physics. The cars absolutely feel more authentic (not sure about the downforce cars in either sim mind you) in iRacing, so I could argue that much less change is required.

And although I'd prefer to have visible deformation as well, relating "black blocks" to physics is quite askew. What matters is how they perform - and that's already ahead of LFS.

On the road side it isn't as noticed surely, but on the oval side you can tell there is a clear problem with the tires. If anything it could just be something on the car they have modeled wrong. But there is no reason to be going into one corner with a setup and have the front end understeer like a dump truck. Then take that same thing to another track and lose the rear end in the tri-oval .

I think it feels "authentic" is because of the tracks in general, not because of the physics if that makes any sense to you (I'm not good at expressing in words as you can see. :razz.

I'm no expert on the stuff, I just know it doesn't feel like it should and many racers (meaning real life too) feel the same way. It's always felt wrong and I defended it on here (LFSF) for over a year, not really because it was better but because it had the potential to be. Both sims have their flaws and make even nkp looks outstanding in some ways, but I wouldn't claim iR's tires to be anything near superior to any other sim. Hopefully that'll change with the new update.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :"
Transmission model aside, if "black blocks" make the cars feel faked to you... I don't know what to tell you. Would be like saying the LX6 feels faked then since it rides on a grey cylinder for suspension!

Oh come on, that's not what I was getting at all and you know that.

Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :
Well that's probably true, although value is in the eye of the beholder. iRacing and LFS don't really offer the same things and aren't trying to. For example Wyatt Gooden didn't wind up driving a real Jetta in a real series through LFS

You came into this trying to prove something to someone who doesn't care which wins.

LFS had the FBM thing, which had drivers test a FBM I believe (don't think this happened). Also Jay won a VW Scirocco and Husky won a BMW M6 through LFS.
Quote from Shotglass :both models handle rather silly
one has too much oversteer the other some really weird induced understeer
on the whole from my experience id say the tyre models are equaly bad yet equaly way ahead of the competition

Curious to know which you think has which characteristic, I could think of situations where both of those problems occur in both sims.

Quote from PMD9409 :
On the road side it isn't as noticed surely, but on the oval side you can tell there is a clear problem with the tires.

Well that's a lot of experience you have over me then since I don't run the ovals, though I've though of trying it. Problem is there's a chance I'll like it and then that's a whole other tier content to... rent :P

Quote :If anything it could just be something on the car they have modeled wrong. But there is no reason to be going into one corner with a setup and have the front end understeer like a dump truck. Then take that same thing to another track and lose the rear end in the tri-oval .

Maybe there is, I don't know. Oval cars have strange setup options, scares me.

Quote :but I wouldn't claim iR's tires to be anything near superior to any other sim. Hopefully that'll change with the new update.

Even Shotglass disagrees with you and he hates everything! Joking aside, I'm really looking foward to trying DK's physical model. I'm surprized iRacing could even get this far and feel as good as it does using an emperical one (I shudder to think it's a spreadsheet sim, but clearly it's redefined how well one of those "things" can perform with enough actual testing and real data).

Quote :Oh come on, that's not what I was getting at all and you know that.

I was wondering; but that is how your text read

Quote :You came into this trying to prove something to someone who doesn't care which wins.

Not really, I came into this in the desperate attempt to have a decent converstation with an intelligent being, since many of those beings have gone on posting strike the last years. If both sims get good updates this year I'll be rejoicing since they offer different experiences overall.

Quote :LFS had the FBM thing, which had drivers test a FBM I believe (don't think this happened). Also Jay won a VW Scirocco and Husky won a BMW M6 through LFS.

That's true, I forgot about the M6 - that was really cool. My point being though that iR is attempting (and so far succeeding) to really bring people into the world and culture of motorsport, and make inroads to real life competition a possibility. That's pretty cool I think.

Also, yes these post are off topic but the topic is shit anyway so who cares.

Here's my on topic post:
"Who cares if you think LFS is 'dead' you ignorant fruitcakes, stuff your pieholes with cheese for your whine"
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :Lots of quotes and texts that I don't feel like seperating...

Yeah I'm not going to argue with Shotglass, I like his posts normally.

Anyways call me biased but I dread the "spreadsheet sims". They give me a headache. Maybe thats why I feel like it drives wrong.

Anywho I don't like this thread, so I'll roam around for now.
Quote from Ball Bearing Turbo :Curious to know which you think has which characteristic, I could think of situations where both of those problems occur in both sims.

well yes but lfs is widely known for its oversteer (fwd econoboxes with plenty of it... where else have you ever seen that?) and all kaemmer games are known for requiring some rather silly driving style involving load of induced understeer
also from what i remember of the breif time i tired iracing the roll bars seemed to have **** all inlfuence on handling so im guessing the load sensitivity in iracing is far too low in the same way that it seems to be too high in lfs

Quote :Even Shotglass disagrees with you and he hates everything!

:bananadea especially canadians
Quote from Shotglass :and all kaemmer games are known for requiring some rather silly driving style involving load of induced understeer

Have you ever played GPL?

I agree about silly driving styles though, pretty much all the very fast GPL drivers use setups with ridiculous forward brake bias, they throw cars at the corners using the brakes, transfering all the weight onto the fron wheels, then hold the slide using the throttle, there are drivers who drove like this back then (Mark Donohue), but not to that extreme, quite a lot of record breaking setups are impossible to keep under control under heavy braking.
I'll start by saying I only read the first page or so.

I can only race so many times round a track in so many different ways before I become hopelessly bored. Repeating a track in a different car is not that interesting. I have no problem with the number of cars, but the number of tracks. I simply can't be that excited to see the starting point again after 5 or 6 corners. I've always really liked the longer tracks, but even there, after 10 or 12 laps, sameness enters in. If there were twice or three times the number of tracks, or a couple really really long ones (a nurburgring knock-off) I wouldn't have written this paragraph.

For a while there, LFS Tweak offered some excitement. Building a car with 2000+ bhp per tonne offers a new challenge. But then its gets boring as well. You can only do so many 19 sec Ring passes or 4 sec drag times before you get really really bored.

So I tried the dismally small rally tracks for a while with every type of car. This offered excitment till I finally got setups that worked.

I realize the aversion to usermade tracks and cars. Because 90% will end up being garbage. But if the program was opened up to custom made tracks and cars, the production focus could remain on the physics and code that made this program exciting in the first place. When I started playing LFS back in 2002 or whenever, the graphics were subpar, the sound atrocious, and the gameplay awesome. Why? The physics were good and that made the gameplay good despite the lack of graphics and sound. These have now caught up, but with only one track and couple cars since S1.

A lot of other games out there have plenty of usermade "products" (for lack of better word) with little to no tweaking of the code. If this program was opened up to user-submitted cars and tracks (even with a selection committee of some kind to keep out subpar product) it would provide a jolt of energy and momentum to keep it sustained between patches. There could even be a $0.99 download fee of new cars and tracks for example to keep revenue coming in (with a % of sales applied to the submitting users account as credit against future Sx releases).

Just my rambling thoughts. No offense intended in any way. I generally play a "game" and uninstall, LFS has been on every computer I've owned since I came across it 8 years ago.
This community dies more than the sim itself, imho. Quality-wise, they are both degrading as time passes though, where obviously the devs cannot keep up with the evolving competition (mostly iRacing for now, but also some great rfactor/gtr2 mods too and hopefully nkpro). As a result LFS seems to keep failing in attracting or keeping old-timers.

The point is, each one of us (or each "generation" of us, if you prefer) have different points of reference and/or eras to compare with the current one.

Oldtimers keep leaving from LFS but newcomers keep coming in, so objectively the sim is not dying. Quality and seriousness levels is another story, though.

I believe that simracing in general is not that high at the moment. Apart from the fact that it is not as exotic as it was, say 3 years ago, it seems to me that the only company that really brought something fresh in the sim-racing scene and keeps improving it constantly & frequently during the past months is iRacing.

That being said, I really-really hate their pricing policy. Honestly, I find it insulting (I'm purely speaking for myself here, so plz don't take it as a side attack to all iRacing subscribers and start the usual rant). Never tried iRacing, never will as long as they keep charging their sim more than all the others together (time span included in the math).

rFactor2 is the next big thing most simmers are awaiting for right now, I guess, but I hold my breath until I see it happening (I think it will get released along with the Scirocco and/or lfs s3 :razz

Personally, I've stopped racing frequently about a year ago and I've redirected my energy mostly to organizing stuff. Every once in a while, I jump into the driver's seat for some hotlapping and/or online races in several sims, mostly in LFS though since I'm leading its Greek community.

This doesn't mean LFS is dying of course, it mostly means that I'm getting more and more of an old fart as time passes

On a serious note, I'm not optimistic for the future of LFS (according to an old-timer's standards). I hope I'll be proven wrong, but I really don't see how it would be possible now to bring back the old sparkle (inside the devs' spirits mainly, which will most certainly motivate the community again). I honestly hope, wish and want to see it happening again. I for one will be always around (not so active though).
Quote from Michalxo :I've just payed 12 pounds for upcoming S3 license. I hope that money will be transferred to S3 very soon... I hope..

The current payment system doesn't allow purchase S3 license or voucher at this moment.
If you put extra credit on your LFS account, can be used only for extra services like high res skin downloads, sms, or LFSW premium pubstat.
I'm not sure, but it seems to me that you will not be able to use an extra credit for purchase S3 license or voucher when will be available.
Quote from adamshl :The current payment system doesn't allow purchase S3 license or voucher at this moment.
If you put extra credit on your LFS account, can be used only for extra services like high res skin downloads, sms, or LFSW premium pubstat.
I'm not sure, but it seems to me that you will not be able to use an extra credit for purchase S3 license or voucher when will be available.

I don't see why that money couldn't be used to purchase an S3 license once it's released. Sure, it may very well cost more than £12, in which case you'll just have to add a few extra £ to your account and then just purchase a voucher for a S3 license
Quote from PMD9409 :The reason I put LFS ahead in physics is very simple. I've been in iRacing since beta and all I can say is that they haven't done one decent step in the physics department that I thought was truely significant.

The only way I can make this quote not sound utterly non-sensical is to assume PMD is an LFS beta tester and has witnessed first-hand the marvellous improvements of the new tyre model.

No rational person would state that no physics updates in the last 2 years (undisputable fact) is better than many small improvements (decency subjective)
Quote from migf1 : Apart from the fact that it is not as exotic as it was, say 3 years ago, it seems to me that the only company that really brought something fresh in the sim-racing scene and keeps improving it constantly & frequently during the past months is iRacing.

That being said, I really-really hate their pricing policy. Honestly, I find it insulting (I'm purely speaking for myself here, so plz don't take it as a side attack to all iRacing subscribers and start the usual rant). Never tried iRacing, never will as long as they keep charging their sim more than all the others together (time span included in the math)..

So you praise the rate of improvement and development of iRacing and then slate the pricing policy which makes that very improvement and development possible!!!!! I love forum hypocrisy!
Quote from SparkyDave :if comparing Iracing to LFS, one very important point springs to mind,
LFS= single payment (assuming current model, s3 will be £36 (you pay once and can play forever))
Iracing you have to keep on paying and paying and paying
so over time LFS offers far better value for money

SD.

I doubt S3 will be £12. Inflation will push it nearer £20. Giving a price for a future not-in-existence product is a massive mistake because of inflationary pressures.

The nature of LFS pricing has meant it;s development is limited and you get diminishing returns on investment. iRacing's price model gives them the economic stability to continue development at a frantic rate.

LFS isn't dying however. But what you are seeing is a product of their out-of-date pricing and business model. They need to put in 10x the amount of work for a fraction of what it that work earned them 3 years ago. BUT this is not telling the devs what to do... they can do what they want. Personally, I would just now re-think the situation.
Quote from obsolum :I don't see why that money couldn't be used to purchase an S3 license once it's released. Sure, it may very well cost more than £12, in which case you'll just have to add a few extra £ to your account and then just purchase a voucher for a S3 license

You're right, but at this moment there (Buy a LFS license) or there (why pay extra?) is no any official information about this possibility.
Example for current situation, someone have S1 license and wants to use extra credits for buying S2 upgrade, it seems to me that current payment system doesn't allow such an operation.
Maybe Devs can officially confirm or deny this possibility?
Quote from Intrepid :So you praise the rate of improvement and development of iRacing and then slate the pricing policy which makes that very improvement and development possible!!!!! I love forum hypocrisy!

They brought fresh air to the scene but for an outrageous price. You see something hypocritical in the above phrase? If so, you should look up in the dictionary what "hypocrisy" means.

Being and staying fresh is one thing. Charging more than all the competition altogether for it, is another. And you trying to downplay my right to have my own judgment about when and where I'll spend my money is pretty pathetic.

You don't have to agree with my opinion, but you ought to at least respect it (keep your fancy targeted "adjectives" for your friends or even better for yourself).
Quote from NightShift :The only way I can make this quote not sound utterly non-sensical is to assume PMD is an LFS beta tester and has witnessed first-hand the marvellous improvements of the new tyre model.

I wish, then I wouldn't have to create things in LFS myself.

I never said LFS is far better or anything like that. Sometimes you need to understand there are arguments that neither sim will win. In my personal opinion I think both tire models (iR and LFS) are wrong by a fair margin. I do think the overall physical model in LFS is better however, as well I think the overall feel of LFS (meaning comparing to a real car) is more accurate. BBT and I have both mentioned the spreadsheet model instead of emperical, and that is probably why I have such a dislike for iRacing (whereas 2 years ago I would of probably of been called a fanboy).

Not everyone is going to agree. Some people probably think iR has come a long way, but with the resources they have I don't think that at all. Maybe I expect too much. Maybe I think they should focus on physics instead of content. Maybe you think the complete opposite. What matters is that its someones opinion and you gotta accept it in the end.
Wow! 10 pages already?!

After some time I finally overcome the resistance of posting on this thread.

Strange I'm not having a feeling of pride or something...
This thread is closed

Is LFS Dying?
(289 posts, closed, started )
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