yes pls, make it accurate place and time too. maybe we can have red super moons in LFS, and we can actually see them instead of clouds getting in the way like irl!
by late 2026/early 2027 we'll be contacting alien life through LFS (though gabor exists already). If we hit that blackwood fence fast enough we can fly to kepler 22b.
Im actually curious why not just release it abit. These two track look wel dome and ready to go. Sure you may want it to be 100 percent perfect, but I guess many players would like it to just be released, and some tiny bugs can be fixed later.
You can even release it and when players are in the loading sceeen of the new south city or kyoto to show "THIS TRACK IS WIP" so people dont complain about minor bugs on these maps
Lighting would be a good potential example of an incompatibility. In our current version of LFS, tracks have a handful of prebaked lighting+skybox situations to choose from. If the new version has removed the way that works in favour of a dynamic solution for time then the old tracks straight up might not work or otherwise have massive issues until revised.
And no amount of "THIS IS NOT FINISHED" will silence people. Cyberpunk2077 had a ton of videos with "THIS IS PRE RELEASE FOOTAGE THINGS MAY CHANGE" and people still think that things like wall running was cut content/broken promises.
You could sell a car with some nice improvements and also a leaking fuel tank, some holes in the bodywork, faulty electrics and an uncomfortable seat. Or you could fix the known issues and release it at that point instead. Which is better?
This is an entirely new version. There is no compatibility between tracks in the old and new versions. The old version cannot possibly load the new tracks, and the new version looks terrible with the old tracks. Good news though, they have all been updated, as you can see by reading the previous progress reports I linked to above.
The new version is not a patch for old LFS. It has to be released all at once, and it will be released with flaws, in as a test version. But there is absolutely no point releasing it when it is not ready for testing and we are working full time trying to fix all the issues we already know about.
There is a point to release it before it is perfect (and will never be perfect anyway) but we aren't at that point yet.
EDIT: As mentioned, some important things are simply not done yet. Also, at some point I need to build a public version, actually exporting everything from the development version into a publicly releasable folder. Even that will take me a few days, probably a week by the time I've added some code support to help me build a clean version a few times during the testing stages. To move from a development version to release isn't simply a matter of declaring it ready. It's a careful process of exporting and encrypting the necessary files, possibly stored a bit differently from the current public version. It's not a big deal, I'm just trying to illustrate that there isn't a version to release yet, even if it was ready which it isn't.
Is this the front of the vehicle before any damage deformation?
Also, would it be possible to get the offset of the front of the car (or better yet, extremities in general) in an InSim packet? Or is that only known client side?
Your work looks so good i cannot wait. My only concern is, that if I understood it correctly, I will never ever get my dream come true, seeing old Westhill as extra content of the game. The only track besides oval, where I was actually fast. *sigh*
And added to that, Kyoto Oval will have a very narrow pit entry, meaning I will definitely go to the grass and retire from the lead every time i want to pit. Because I am a bad driver
I don't consider that as a problem for you, because when you look at the images of new Kyoto, I think Eric wanted to do very similar job how Indianapolis Motor Speedway does work about drivers pitting there.
How does it work? If you are doing a practice session, or qualifying where one driver at a time does their qualifying laps, drivers normally enter the pitlane using the narrower pit entry. But, during races, I expect all drivers dive into the pit immediately after turn 3, as that part is still as wide as before.
Of course, rules about pit exit may differ from series to another: I expect some series will allow drivers to immediately join back on main track after exiting pit lane, which is much more dangerous. And other series will require drivers driving that narrow pit exit lane before joining the main track, which is obviously much safer.