The online racing simulator
My retrospective look at Live For Speed
Well here we are nearly 10 years on from Life For Speeds initial release and people are still enjoying close wheel to wheel racing. I myself have just recently discovered a renewed love for this great sim, and I'm happy to report Live For Speed is still very much alive and kicking.

So lets rewind a few years back to when I bought into the LFS dream. My account history shows I made my initial purchase of S1 on the 25th of July 2003 (8 days after it went public), I remember it like I was 33 years old, oh wait, I was. Setting my age to one side for the moment let's look at the Sim racing situation at the time. Richard Burns Rally was still over a year away, nKPro was some 3 years away as was GTR 2. rFactor still had another 2 years to go before it showed itself on the market, but please don't think it was all desolate and barren back then. Grand Prix Legends had been king of the shop shelves for some time by then, and it also boasted a a very healthy and well supported mod-scene. Also not forgetting that it was actually a great sim for both online and off line racing. But If classic 1967 F1 cars weren't your thing then there was always Nascar Racing, which also had a good online scene, as well as commanding a good sim physics engine. We also had Grandprix 3, by the legend himself Geoff Crammond, but I was soon to discover a new programing legend that In my opinion has surpassed his status.

Life For Speed was brought to my attention via a very popular Sim racing forum of the day, and after trying out an early build I was happy to buy into Scawen, Eric and Victors dream upon release. At the time there was a limited amount of cars, and there wasn't as many tracks as there are now. But it was easy to see the basis of a very rewarding sim were set in place. This would only get better with each and every update, thus my LFS wheels were set in motion.

LFS seems to me to have everything you need from a sim, and many "other" sims have come close to the high level that LFS has set, but sadly all fall short in one area or another. This sim allows you to have custom music tracks, you can create your own car skins or download from thousands of ones created by some very talented artists online for free. The sim will also download other peoples car skins when you join an online race, thus allowing you to see there artistic skills or the given skin they like to race with. This type of feature is often overlooked by many other sim companies yet really adds to the whole sim racing experience.

The car set up section is like a dark art allowing you to tune the set up of your car to what best suits your type of driving style, but yet again you can swap set ups with people with ease. The garage set up screens are also some of the most comprehensive I've seen, and unlike a lot of other "sims" you can feel the difference once your out on the track racing. You can even set how the wind blows, which will also effect how the car reacts on track. The tyre dynamics and force feedback are still some of the best I've played, and yes I am involved with "other" sim beta/alpha developments and realise what I'm saying maybe hard for some people to understand, but upon reflection it's how I feel.

One of the most over looked part of LFS is the Live For Speed World website, the use of the site as we now know it was made much better back in April 2004. On the 5th of that month we saw the public release of the data web site that allowed us all to view whom we had raced, our lap times, send other drivers messages and many other features. The wealth of data on this site is amazing, and in my opinion can still hold it's head high today above every other sim on the market. The amount of information that you can actually look through shows a real passion on the part of the developers and I take my hat off to them.

Shortly after the launch of the new "World" site we saw the launch of a new look website, again the new site was clean, easy to navigate and really put LFS on the map in terms of professionalism. By this time the LFS forum was a hive of activity and there were plenty of active members, and lots of friendly bantar being passed around by it's members. I myself started using the forum in July 2003, and think even to this very day it's one of the longest running forums I have been using.

Now I know there has been a lot of questions brought about the promised S3 update and the new tyre physics model, lost cars and new tracks, and I also understand where a lot of people are coming from, but for me I don't see LFS as an alpha or beta sim that follows a weekly or monthly update schedule. For me I see LFS as a living development, yes I know since it's conception it's been 10 years (yes really), but I still have 100% faith in the continuation of this massive project. Each time I read some of the negitive posts about the lack of communications I step back and count all of the other sims I have owned over that time period, I then look at the little icon on my desktop for LFS and smile to myslef.

I have no communications with the developers what so ever, but I do feel that something may happen on Live For Speeds 10th birthday, and If it doesn't well "C'est la vie", I won't be deleting it off my computer, I will just carry on playing it and smiling to myself.

Live For Speed for me just works, here's to the next 10+ years.

Thank you Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey and Victor van Vlaardingen.
Nice post! I have pretty much same opinion on LFS, atleast at the moment altough I have much shorter history in this sim and I'm only 17 year old. It's just the most amazing and really realistic sim! Also it's very affordable compared to some other sims which makes it even better for me. I only drive with mouse and I am loving it, no matter how much anyone tells me that it "Can't be fun without a wheel" or something like that...

Anyways, good post, good sim, have a nice day
Quote from paulinho :

Live For Speed for me just works, here's to the next 10+ years.

Thank you Scawen Roberts, Eric Bailey and Victor van Vlaardingen.

Challenge accepted!

To the ScaViEr team
@Paulinho: i joined LFS 3 months after You did (october 2003). I have a different opinion about LFS because it was the best racing sim I've ever tried (and, believe me, I bought all racing sims/games). LFS has the best multiplayer system, the best physical feeling and so on...

But the lack of communications from developers, the fact that they ignore all lfs lovers working (for free) building 3rd party apps, they ignore also league managers asking for very very easy questions (in my case, userbars... ), the delay of promised improvements et cetera have caused that I now not use anymore any type of driving simulator. LFS because I'm bored of it, but, unfortunately, no other simulator has a physics that can stand the comparison with lfs

P.S. sorry my bad english but it's saturday night...
Thanks for this post, I really enjoyed reading it.

And a big thank you from myself Eric Bailey, Scawen Roberts and Victor van Vlaardingen.
Quote from fatalunfair :Nice post! I have pretty much same opinion on LFS, atleast at the moment altough I have much shorter history in this sim and I'm only 17 year old. It's just the most amazing and really realistic sim! Also it's very affordable compared to some other sims which makes it even better for me. I only drive with mouse and I am loving it, no matter how much anyone tells me that it "Can't be fun without a wheel" or something like that...

Anyways, good post, good sim, have a nice day

This, sadly, sums it all up for me too

Just want to say I'l always love LFS, it feels like my little baby.
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(CheerioDM) DELETED by CheerioDM
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(CheerioDM) DELETED by CheerioDM
@CheerioDM: I don't understand what You mean...
#8 - col
Heh, yep, it's good to look back.
I remember reading a discussion on rec.autos.simulators back in 2002 about a new demo that had been discovered. I was sceptical, but downloaded to check it out. That was the beginning of the end for GPL and Sports Car GT (forerunner of rFactor) for me, and I completely forgot about the much hyped and anticipated 'World Sports Cars'. The last few months of 2002 up to the release of S1 were a great time, only equalled in enjoyment - so far - by the CTRA era. Remember the old LFS page on RaceSimCentral as well.
Good times

(NB. For those who don't remember, World Sports Cars was the game project West Racing worked on before Racing Legends. It was supposedly almost complete, when the publishing company they had signed with shelved the game. They had to start again from scratch as they didn't have rights to the code or assets, and they never did manage to get Racing Legends off the ground. It's is an interesting history lesson for those who don't like Scaviers go-it-alone approach)
Great post Paulinho. It's nice for a change
I'm nowhere near your history, but on my desktop also, while everything else changes, LFS "stuborns" to be as present as the My Computer icon for years now..
Lovey write up, thanks for that.
Quote from Breizh :Except players.

Monthly online licensed users graph

if these arent players what are they then?
Quote from lysergic :@Paulinho:

But the lack of communications from developers, the fact that they ignore all lfs lovers working (for free) building 3rd party apps, they ignore also league managers asking for very very easy questions (in my case, userbars... ), the delay of promised improvements et cetera have caused that I now not use anymore any type of driving simulator. LFS because I'm bored of it, but, unfortunately, no other simulator has a physics that can stand the comparison with lfs

P.S. sorry my bad english but it's saturday night...

Your English is fine my friend , and I do understand your points, and at times a basic lack of communications can leave us all feeling a little empty and over time some people see it as a lack of interest on the part of the developers and thus walk away.

I'm currently involved in a few "other" sims that are in beta/alpha development, and we receive regular updates and communications from the programmers, but each company is different.

Personally I feel that LFS is well supported by both the developers and the community and like yourself have invested in "other" sims that have come and gone over the years. But I always come back to LFS as like I said before, it just works and works very well

In general I accept that people buy the sim or download the demo and move on to other things, that's life. But as you posted yourself, you can't really fault the LFS physics engine. I'm also glad to hear you say that the multi player system is one of the best, as again I concur. I walked away from P.C sims and stepped over to the dark side of "sim" (cough) racing on console, and although I can't fault products like GT5 or Forza 4 I still keep coming back to LFS. The main reason for this as posted above and I keep saying, it just works. Yes there are other games or sims that looks nicer, but LFS just has a certain look about it which I love. Running wheel to wheel, door handle to door handle with other racers from around the world is just simply an amazing feat. Then to finish a race, pop onto LFS world and look at all the stats (I suspect the stats side of things is down to now being 41, and I like data and numbers (used to hate it as a kid)) is again a very unique feature that LFS does very well.

I also like some of the 3rd party plug ins that are coming onto the market, and can't wait to try one that allows me to have data on a second monitor next to my LCD gaming/sim screen. Community add-ons and support is a great part of any sim, and only yesterday I downloaded a massive amount of car skins for LFS. I then spent most of the afternoon just looking at them via replays (again a sign of getting older lol).

On another note I have emailed the LFS team and offered my own time and involvment with any beta test programs, as not trying to sound to egotistical (lol) it's what I do outside of my paid job. I won't be offended if I don't hear anything, but just want the developers to know that there is a "pro" LFS community that are keen to help push this amazing product forward, which will be better for everyone
#14 - col
Quote from paulinho :
I'm currently involved in a few "other" sims that are in beta/alpha development, and we receive regular updates and communications from the programmers, but each company is different.

When LFS was at that stage in its life, there were regular updates, and Scawen seemed to be involved in forum discussions almost every day - certainly weekly.
The reality is that as this kind of project matures, updates become less regular and take longer - it's a normal process. There comes a point where you have to settle with a particular version to allow other aspects of the game to develop - stats and records are a big part of LFS, in the early days, they were reset fairly often. As the community grew and LFS world was introduced, this dynamic approach to updates had to change.

Additionally, as the game grew in popularity, and more people joined the forum, the responses became more and more negative to the point where the devs felt that discussing new features or future plans here was putting them in a no-win situation.

Maybe those other sims you mention have communities more like this one was in it's early days - open to change, and not hyper critical and negative.
I dunno. Everything's good and all. I'm just glad I didn't pre-pay for S3.
I found this game out completely by accident. I'm not a big race game fan. It's always been my experience that they were full of hyper wreckers or hyper realists and going around in a circle listening to people whine about trivial matters just wasn't my thing. But LFS was a lot different. it wasn't all wreckers and whiners. and as far as online gaming went, it wasn't just whoever clicked the button the fastest wins like in FPS or RTS games. I rarely ever won a race online, but that didn't matter. It was fun. That's what mattered
And the funny thing is, LFS has helped me career wise The stuff I learned from making skins was put to use.
That being said, I quit playing for a few years, recently installed it again, getting hooked again but still wondering why aside from the Beemer cars and some banner ads on the tracks, not a whole lot more has been done since I last played. I guess I can find comfort that the game hasn't changed drastically... I'm just inclined to think that this would be finished by now.
I still think they could have a working train on south city, Flaming trash cans instead of cones, and After the Dubai Grandprix, Signs of political unrest at Fern Bay.
Quote from col :
The reality is that as this kind of project matures, updates become less regular and take longer - it's a normal process. There comes a point where you have to settle with a particular version to allow other aspects of the game to develop.

Yes I concur, every alpha or beta program I have been involved with over my time in sim racing follows the same pattern. It's pretty much the excepted process of development within the industry.

Quote from col :Additionally, as the game grew in popularity, and more people joined the forum, the responses became more and more negative to the point where the devs felt that discussing new features or future plans here was putting them in a no-win situation.

I do suspect that is the case, your hardly going to enter or try to enter into a conversation about a project your working on if all that's going to happen is people shout you down. Personally I still have 100% faith in there being an update.

Quote from col :Maybe those other sims you mention have communities more like this one was in it's early days - open to change, and not hyper critical and negative.

Again I concur, although already people are starting to get a little flustered about updates and the direction the software is going.


All of this aside, I just thought it magical that given how long we have all been playing this great sim, the majority of us are still enjoying the experience some (nearly) 10 years on
@Paulinho: ok, You convinced me, I'll try to give lfs another chance I'll buy a new a/c adapter for my wheel and I'll make some laps... Maybe the love will come back
Quote from Hahmo :Monthly online licensed users graph

if these arent players what are they then?

Let's be real. Open up LFS at anything but peak time (I'll admit I may or may not have been doing that, I'll try and play at peak time next time), you have.... Nothing like even half of the track and car sets being used, and just a handful of servers with ~10 players. And most of those (ignoring cruise/drift) are with the same tracks and cars, usually FBM and demo content.

A joke.

I remember playing LFS way back, and you could usually, albeit with a bit of work, find or start populating a server running something less routine like LX4/6 and so on.
Quote from Breizh :Let's be real. Open up LFS at anything but peak time (I'll admit I may or may not have been doing that, I'll try and play at peak time next time), you have.... Nothing like even half of the track and car sets being used, and just a handful of servers with ~10 players. And most of those (ignoring cruise/drift) are with the same tracks and cars, usually FBM and demo content.

You are obviously not familiar with cargame.nl s2 server . Its has more than 20 ppl most of the time (not at night offc, i'm talking gmt time). On peak times usually there are over 40 people on server, sometimes you cant get on it because its full . It circulates most of the tracks using track voting every 5 races (10-15min races, one track can be voted once per day), and allows most of the cars (including lx) using multiclass racing.
Great post - I also downloaded the demo in the early days, and was amazed by the handling : wow FWD production cars actually understeer like real life!! Alas my PC was too slow to handle more than 3 vehicles, so I held off buying S2 until I could buy a decent rig (500MHz PIII, principally to play this amazing game )..

10 years on I just pick up and play offline occasionally, and still keep checking back on here for updates, which will no doubt get me back online again. LFS has categorically been the most enjoyable and best value for money software I have had in over 20 years of gaming.. (I did play Geoff Crammond's "Revs" to death tho on my BBC Micro back in the day).

Anyway, it's encouraging to read a thread without people bitching

Cheers

Rob
Can't really decide. I still love it, but something changed. I reinstalled the wheel some time ago and the racing was fun as ever. But probably because the fellow racers are gone now, the competition and the encouragement isn't the same. Maybe I am also not willing to train anymore that much for an event. I just miss things like the Ocarina race challenge, the times when we were preparing and racing for endurance events, good singleseater fights in the OWRL, etc.

I somehow just need some motivational kick to get really into it again.
Quote from fadeaway :You are obviously not familiar with cargame.nl s2 server . Its has more than 20 ppl most of the time (not at night offc, i'm talking gmt time). On peak times usually there are over 40 people on server, sometimes you cant get on it because its full . It circulates most of the tracks using track voting every 5 races (10-15min races, one track can be voted once per day), and allows most of the cars (including lx) using multiclass racing.

I'm not familiar, if that means I haven't played recently. Is it still just a cruising server? Or does it have actual races rotating thru the car/track-set like you seem to be describing?
heres to 10+ years of sims with devs who will support their community.
LFS has the physics, no doubt about that but it has nothing else.....

LFS will be the same thing in 10 years just with a couple of new "updates" and false hopes of a future.....
Very touching...Thanks for the post)) I think this "wheel to wheel" racing you mention here, will always be popular, just because the flow of competitiveness and adrenaline is a magic mixture of happiness and joy...well, for most of us

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Quote from bongst3m :heres to 10+ years of sims with devs who will support their community.
LFS has the physics, no doubt about that but it has nothing else.....

LFS will be the same thing in 10 years just with a couple of new "updates" and false hopes of a future.....

Perfection doesn't need to be changed
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