Quote from Racer X NZ :

2: - Better track detail, I enjoy (RS)RBR, GP Legends and Automobilista as games, not for their awesome graphics.....
Track detail is nice, but it's only icing on the cake.

The currently-in-work update isn't only about rebuilding track surroundings and object details, but it is a requirement to refresh all definitions of materials and textures to work correctly with the new lighting model.

With the new lighting model you get not only more track detail, but also time-of-day graphical effects which is important for the 24h races being a possibility in the future.

I hope we can agree endurance races with sun-movement is more than just a "track detail" (IMO it's substantial part of the gameplay experience with endurance racing, even if it would "just" graphical effect and nothing more). The current patch is of course only one step toward that, so it may feel like "meh, just details", but without this step there wouldn't be the following ones.


BTW, with regards to modding... so after this new shader/lighting system will be released, guess what would happen to all the mod-content out there, if the LFS would allow modding. Yep, it would render in wrong colours/lighting and generally talking it would be broken and each piece would need fixes from the community.

I don't think that would be accepted very well either (I don't want to guess what is worse, if not allowing modding, or breaking all mods at the same time with new version, I have no idea, I just don't see any fully-happy scenario except "release tomorrow new version with new content, shaders, physics, modding tools, curated leagues, etc..." and that's obviously not going to happen).

I was wondering, is there a complete list of things planned to be added to LFS in the future? Things that are being worked on, and what's planned?

I keep reading about so many things here that's it's easy to forget half of it.

Quote from Ped7g :

I hope we can agree endurance races with sun-movement is more than just a "track detail" (IMO it's substantial part of the gameplay experience with endurance racing, even if it would "just" graphical effect and nothing more). The current patch is of course only one step toward that, so it may feel like "meh, just details", but without this step there wouldn't be the following ones.

I fully agree with your post, however given that;

A: There has been no online racing in this region for a long time, so no active user base.
B: The AI do not encourage short single player races, let alone long ones.

This isn't a complaint and for the online racing that is happening in other parts of the world then this will be great.
I can't really see it increasing the user base in this region though.

Do you have a TBE on the update release date?

Quote from BerdyGaming :

Do you have a TBE on the update release date?

"to be edited"? They have it all the time on any release date/content.

If you meant it like "expected", then this was expected long time ago (by most people, including the devs themselves):
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/91876

I somehow hope there will be October progress report with SC .. then there's how many track left? one or two or three? Hm... if it's more than one, then I guess my contest-guess of 03/2020 is slowly getting on the optimistic side of things... but maybe the test-patch will still make it.

But there was no new info on tires physics for long time, and depending how much Scawen will push for that, this may easily take another year or two, if it feels like it's almost done, but it will turn out to be broken in one way or another after every fix... Sometimes the development of these things can be quite unforgiving and "unlucky", and they are done only when they are done, no matter how many deadlines you write down and how you plan your development. If the reality has different plans...

I honestly feel that the tracks should've gotten released when they got finished and not every map update waiting for the others to be finished and they can only get released when the physics update gets finished.

Quote from BerdyGaming :

Do you have a TBE on the update release date?

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/51274-VW-Scirocco-release-plan


(Ducking for cover )

Like all LFS releases, it will happen when it happens. You just get to be patent like the rest of us.
I've found that breeding Aldabrachelys gigantea hololissa and watching them grow to maturity works. /s

It's done when it's done.
We're discussing a planned 2008 update in October 2019 in July 2019 progress report thread, something to think about.

Quote from BerdyGaming :

I honestly feel that the tracks should've gotten released when they got finished and not every map update waiting for the others to be finished and they can only get released when the physics update gets finished.

Not possible becourse there is new lightning system. So all has to be updated.

Quote from bmwe30m3 :

It's done when it's done.
We're discussing a planned 2008 update in October 2019 in July 2019 progress report thread, something to think about.

Incorrect. The update announced in 2008 has nothing to do with the content that has been shown and discussed in this thread. It is a progress report for an update that will be available somewhere in the future while Scirocco will be released in early 2009.

still gonna play lfs just because I can spectate easily and the chat interface is nice. 10/10

Yeah, those are the only two reasons people still play LFS

Why are you even wasting your time on creating anonymous accounts just to mock players and a game that you don't even have any hope for and probably won't even play no matter what they release or don't release.. seems a bit dumb if you ask me. Why don't you go play Arcado Corsa instead or something?

Quote from JSHuiting :

I was wondering, is there a complete list of things planned to be added to LFS in the future? Things that are being worked on, and what's planned?
I keep reading about so many things here that's it's easy to forget half of it.

would be nice with a thread with some overview of everything going on honestly.
many side tracked comments and so in most threads giving it more confusion in some cases than benefits. but then again. would probably also get alot of off topics in that as almost any other thread made.

Quote from Ped7g :

BTW, with regards to modding... so after this new shader/lighting system will be released, guess what would happen to all the mod-content out there, if the LFS would allow modding. Yep, it would render in wrong colours/lighting and generally talking it would be broken and each piece would need fixes from the community.

could backfire as many people made alot of effort into making some mod content that will be completely unuseable after the updates. as i understand it, scawen means to keep the DDS files possible to alter. but not sure how everything else will go. kinda like taking the breath out of peoples files and perhaps they then dont feel like making new.

Quote from Ped7g :

I somehow hope there will be October progress report with SC .. then there's how many track left? one or two or three? Hm... if it's more than one, then I guess my contest-guess of 03/2020 is slowly getting on the optimistic side of things... but maybe the test-patch will still make it.

i believe fernbay and south city is the last remaining tracks.where south city is the most difficult because of buildings and such. most were originally made in 2D aswell as most things on Fernbay.
that could take awhile to redo everything 2D to 3D.

Quote from LakynVonLegendaus :

Why are you even wasting your time on creating anonymous accounts just to mock players and a game that you don't even have any hope for and probably won't even play no matter what they release or don't release.. seems a bit dumb if you ask me. Why don't you go play Arcado Corsa instead or something?

who do you mean here ? you could use Quote to specify.

EDIT:
btw about MKV not playing in windows media player. in case you didnt know Scawen (a decade later) K-Lite Mega codec pack for WMP can actually play MKV files. it also lets WMP play a bunch of other formats not installed from the basic WMP. but that pack takes almost all formats.
Referring to this closed thread post one :
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/51274-VW-Scirocco-release-plan

and its a free pack to download and install too.open source
https://codecguide.com/

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :

...
could backfire as many people made alot of effort into making some mod content that will be completely unuseable after the updates. as i understand it, scawen means to keep the DDS files possible to alter. but not sure how everything else will go. kinda like taking the breath out of peoples files and perhaps they then dont feel like making new.
...

dds mods will probably somewhat work, depends also how much original set of dds files will change, and how much the colour profile will be important. And some materials will now require alpha channel data I guess?

"keep possible to alter" ... wait a second, it's your computer, you can alter any part of LFS, just some parts are easy to alter (like dds), and some parts are more difficult (like changing parts of code), but Scawen can't stop you, he can only make it more/less difficult (like for example signing dds files with private key and checking the signature before load to refuse to load modified ones.. then you would have to remove the check from the binary to allow modified dds to load).

Anyway, this situation (big change of LFS internals) was expected and envisioned, and it was the main reason why "no mods" policy is in place. To save people from the feel of having their many-hours hobby projects destroyed by next update of LFS. So it's just happening as envisioned (wouldn't say "planned", but it was more like "inevitable". It wouldn't happen only if the project would be abandoned sooner).

May backfire... may. This whole thing of S1/2/3 and updating one game ad nausea IMO did backfire a bit. Other car-sim games developers are instead releasing "new games" when they finish these bigger patches (netkar / rFactor / ...). That makes also the loss of mods probably a bit easier to accept? "it's new game, of course my mods don't work any more"? But LFS is hiding this behind "patches", so it may feel different (although it's practically the same thing happening, you just get the new "LFS2" for free as you already have license and it will be still named "LFS").

Quote from Ped7g :

dds mods will probably somewhat work, depends also how much original set of dds files will change, and how much the colour profile will be important. And some materials will now require alpha channel data I guess?

"keep possible to alter" ... wait a second, it's your computer, you can alter any part of LFS, just some parts are easy to alter (like dds), and some parts are more difficult (like changing parts of code), but Scawen can't stop you, he can only make it more/less difficult (like for example signing dds files with private key and checking the signature before load to refuse to load modified ones.. then you would have to remove the check from the binary to allow modified dds to load).

Anyway, this situation (big change of LFS internals) was expected and envisioned, and it was the main reason why "no mods" policy is in place. To save people from the feel of having their many-hours hobby projects destroyed by next update of LFS. So it's just happening as envisioned (wouldn't say "planned", but it was more like "inevitable". It wouldn't happen only if the project would be abandoned sooner).

May backfire... may. This whole thing of S1/2/3 and updating one game ad nausea IMO did backfire a bit. Other car-sim games developers are instead releasing "new games" when they finish these bigger patches (netkar / rFactor / ...). That makes also the loss of mods probably a bit easier to accept? "it's new game, of course my mods don't work any more"? But LFS is hiding this behind "patches", so it may feel different (although it's practically the same thing happening, you just get the new "LFS2" for free as you already have license and it will be still named "LFS").

very true indeed. i dont remember when or where. but scawen did say at some point he would atleast try to keep the dds files possible to edit. hence it could for some files be possible they actually fit still. but thats about it regarding the info i remember. but other things than dds files i have no knowledge on how that will go after the updates. and yes i think it would be more "acceptable" too if it became a new game. so yes, youre right LFS does somewhat hide it in being patches
forexample will files like the small house on the hill near the fernbay beach chicane be unuseable as this was made in 2D. i made that into some cowboy jail for fun. but that file is defo not going to work in the new update forexample.and yes i wrote "may..." because it also could tricker a whole new modding era. kinda a 50/50 bet there. however i think in time and eventually newcomers atleast will give some things a go as their first try or likewise. so we will see new things i think. but perhaps not from users who already made some things from the past.

Given DDS is a graphics format, it's unlikely that they'd become unmodifiable.

Quote from Oliver Feistkorn :

Incorrect. The update announced in 2008 has nothing to do with the content that has been shown and discussed in this thread. It is a progress report for an update that will be available somewhere in the future while Scirocco will be released in early 2009.

It has everything to do with 2008. As Scawen stated before he wants to get rid of the two different internal development versions. Remember that Eric refuses to work with the old tire physics ("our" version).

Bring back the old westhill. This was my favorite track.

We don't need old stuff... we need new ones.

Quote from matze54564 :

Bring back the old westhill. This was my favorite track.

You can download old lfs version that have old westhill.

Quote from RC-Maus :

Not possible becourse there is new lightning system. So all has to be updated.

there could have been a parallel test patch version with not all the tracks available

Quote from THE WIZARD DK :

but LFS servers today is governed by people who always have some issue either user vs admins or vice versa. being server owner is more or less also misusing peoples identity and ip tracing has been seen often in

I agreed with most of what you said but would like some explanation on this one, i part own-run MRc servers and what you claim here has never been the case at all for the 9+ years i have been at MRc(we may keep hold of someones ip that has been banned to attempt to trace any new accounts they make but only a trusted limad 5 (supads) ever get to see the logs containing such info , I agree about cargame servers, i also at first used to like going to cargame's servers, the setup of the server gave a different experience which i enjoyed. Many racers that i met there still race but are usually seen at any decent event races being held

Quote from Bose321 :

The big difference with a lot of sims is that their content is community-made. So that's something that keeps things interesting. People still play rFactor because there are loads of good tracks/cars, even though the last update was a few years ago. I think the same will go for AC for example when it will age and no longer receive official updates.

So they keep interest by allowing community made content while LFS is here nearly 20 years later without having done that, i very much doubt AC will age as well

Quote from bishtop :

I agree about cargame servers,

lol, raised an eyebrow because no idea where this was referenced to.. But now I see its one of DK's (lengthy) postings. Well, may come as a shock to you but I skip those most of the time because of too much fantasy. Server adminning has nothing to do with development other then that server admins can request and/or can cause the introduction of new features. If you are against some kind of feature and have proper arguments then you should have been there at the time of the feature request. "Someone got beaten up", I don't know what nonsense this is but I never heard of such a story. Wild gossip should be put in The Sun, not this topic.

Most of feature requests are very well used (and not misused). It's an indication that they where good. Sort of satisfied to see this although not using them myself anymore. The elite has left the scene, quite hard to get this back, I even would claim it will be impossible because it's much more then just sending an email. However some sort of new elite can rise after some massive patch update, still interesting to follow developments because LFS racing subcommunity was more like a big family and not this trash talk what I read now here.

Do not fabricate your own stories to force your wish to have some global "official" LFS server environment. Maintaining servers cost a sh*tload of time and psychological energy. Not possible to be done by a development team, they have other stuff to do.

July has been one long month.