Hi Guys,

I'm fairly new to this place and must admit am loving all of it, IMO this is the best simracer out there and i've tried the lot. But i only stumbled upon this game by accident.

I've been through this forum and cannot seem to find an answer to why LFS isn't mentioned in any of the sim magazines. They all appear to be dominated by rFactor and GTR. The only half valid reason i can find is that LFS is still considered an Alpha. Surely this can't be the only reason.

I've also read that LFS needs some sort of script to be created before its allowed into the FILSCA which i'm sure someone could whip up quickly. Just wondering what other reasons there are for not allowing this fantastic sim into more of the mainstream press/competition?

installed interest. under the table liaisons.
also we dont need the establishment for jackshit. so there's no licky licky.
**** the middle men.

autosimsport is covering LFS here or there....

Yes there's a sort of 'underground elitism' going on here

I would say common misconception and ignorance. The alpha status of LFS being one of the "reasons'. The fact that LFS is a great piece of programming, is very playable and has very few bugs seemingly doesn't matter. Well, it beats taking the nKPro route. That's an early pre-alpha labeled as 1.0

The Sim Racing Press is mostly derived from Filsca results and articles, and LFS does not currently export to the Filsca website.

It could be done, Scawen's done his part with his in/out sim ports, but Filsca havn't done theirs which I pressume is because their admins dont play LFS. Instead Filsca have asked us (the community) to do it, but we dont use Filsca ... So we're at an impass.

Things could change however, Virtual Motorsports and I have been in discussion over covering the STCC which, touch wood, will hopefully start happening in a couple of issues time .

There's no lack of respect between LFS and Filsca, just a lack of motivation to sort out the communication issue between league servers and the Filsca website.

LFS won all the latest simracing awards, the problem is rather the fact that you dont get money for writing some good stuff about LFS.
Other publishers pay money, you can specially see this when looking at the german Games Mag PC Games, which are always faking the stats for Counter-Strike. They put Counter-Strike/Source into the votes, and all CS 1.6 players vote for this. In the newspaper, they put Counter.Strike:Source as most played, best, and most successful computer game, even though its a bugridden piece of crap, which is played by nobody.

I'll interpret Kid's post - LFS has seperated itself from the main sim racing community and the biggest sim racing forum (RSC) this has its pros and cons but one of them is that we tend to get missed by the sim racing eZines. That may not be a bad thing seeing the amount of BS about nK in ASS I doubt anyone takes them seriously.

Just read the latest news over at rscnet.org and you know why LFS isn't covered like the other (Simbin) games.

Who cares if its published or not. We all live for live for speed.

If they are a true sim racer they will probably end up here anyway, sooner or later.

Quote from Chopst1x :

But i only stumbled upon this game by accident.

Yeah, I only found out about it because a friend mentioned it to me, been playing it ever since.

I think it's because there's no modding of tracks etc. here
The simracing community is certainly polarised when it comes to LFS, a bit like Marmite

Quote from BrandonAGr :

Yeah, I only found out about it because a friend mentioned it to me, been playing it ever since.

Mouth to mouth advertising is the most effective marketing tool there is I found out about LFS through a topic on a tech forum I visit.
So go tell all your friends and spam forums kids

Quote from joen :

Mouth to mouth advertising is the most effective marketing tool there is I found out about LFS through a topic on a tech forum I visit.
So go tell all your friends and spam forums kids

Similar to how i found it too!

Then found out about other sim racers from here, tried them, and came back Just waiting to buy

mouth to mouth: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=47

i thought one of the writers said that they wouldnt mention LFS because it is still labeled an alpha and they wont untill it is a full game... whatever that means

Half the mods for other games are 'alpha' too, funilly enough... I think it's more a case of dual standards and opinions. Not trying the game, or having tried it and got thrashed because woe be - it's actually hard to drive a race car than arcade games make out!

IMO there's no reason why LFS should be tagged as an alpha. Software in beta state has got all the elements that make it what it is, but acknowledges that code is not final and changes/additions/fixes/improvements will still be made.

afaik, LFS is not missing any elements that will be in a final release, and the beta tag will still indicate that there are things that still need work (AI, sound, etc).

If that's all it takes for LFS to get some more coverage, then that can only be a good thing.

S2 is still in alpha stage because it misses features that are planned for final S2.
Once they are all in place we begin beta testing phase till devs and testers are pleased with consistency and label it final.
Hope this is not hard to understand.

Quote from ste_ :

IMO there's no reason why LFS should be tagged as an alpha. Software in beta state has got all the elements that make it what it is, but acknowledges that code is not final and changes/additions/fixes/improvements will still be made.

afaik, LFS is not missing any elements that will be in a final release, and the beta tag will still indicate that there are things that still need work (AI, sound, etc).

If that's all it takes for LFS to get some more coverage, then that can only be a good thing.

The problem is not LFS's alpha tag, it's people's conception that alpha means unstable.

So there is a reson the Alpha tag is correct. Alpha means feature incomplete. And S2 is not feature complete. Once S2 is feature complete, it will go into beta stage. After that goes final we will enter the S3 alpha stage.

Quote from ste_ :

IMO there's no reason why LFS should be tagged as an alpha. Software in beta state has got all the elements that make it what it is, but acknowledges that code is not final and changes/additions/fixes/improvements will still be made.

afaik, LFS is not missing any elements that will be in a final release, and the beta tag will still indicate that there are things that still need work (AI, sound, etc).

If that's all it takes for LFS to get some more coverage, then that can only be a good thing.

iirc Scawen said that to him beta meant almost all the features were there, but needed some ironing out, whereas alpha could still have lots of features added, now, i think id rather LFS was an alpha!

What features are missing to justify the alpha status?

Quote from ste_ :

What features are missing to justify the alpha status?

AI completion for instance

Quote from joen :

AI completion for instance

I mentioned that in my original post.

If there was NO AI then alpha state, sure. But there is AI in, it's just very very poor. So that arguement doesn't cut it really.

Alpha if a feature is to be added.
Beta to refine what is already in.

From what I know, all features of LFS are present, some just need much more work.