Quote from Alex111111111 :

you are the face of LFS here, and the accusation you make as a moderator is an accusation made by your employers,

Alex, I think perhaps your unfamiliarity with the LFS community is showing a bit here. The moderators here are no more the "voice of LFS" than the rest of us - Scawen and Victor post here pretty regularly, and they are the only users who speak for the product and the company.

I find the routine accusations of cracking pretty tiresome myself, but I can understand why some of my friends here are a bit over-zealous. It's a small company, with a frankly underpriced product that we're all very, very pleased with, run by developers that we're all quite fond of. That's all there is to it, and I'm sure no malice was intended.

I'm sorry your visit here has ended like this. I enjoyed chatting to (arguing with) Jon, and I felt (rightly or wrongly!) that he took some of our concerns seriously at least. I think some people (Linsen especially) have presented you with genuinely important issues and I found your disregard for them a bit surprising. I feel that your response has gone some way toward undoing some of the good work that Jon did earlier, which is a shame.

Good luck with your magazine.

Quote from Alex111111111 :

The last reply by the moderator Gunn, and directed at Jon, who took Gunn's asinine assertion to its logical conclusion, smacks of such condescension that I find myself having to keep my temper in check here - I am sure, fella, that it takes vasts amounts of imagination and talent to post such replies without fear of reprisal, and you make it clear that your wit and intelligence match your moral fiber.

Condescension? That was clearly belittlement. Fear of reprisal? WTF are you on about? Who here has fear of reprisal? Reprisal from whom or what does anyone fear? Why and how would I be treated any differently than other people posting here? Don't talk to me about moral fibre, princess, you are out of your depth already by assuming you even know what the discussion is about. You people can't see the forest for the trees and can't consider that their might be flowers and shrubs in the forest too.
None of my responses here have even mentioned your mag, I've been speaking generically about articles and reviews and my opinion stands. Have you seen the title of this thread mate? It isn't about you or your publication so don't wander in here babbling at me. Your man can't tell the difference between a preview and a review according to what he posted here, he admits that he doesn't really read reviews anyway and he can't seem to fathom the idea that an article might be successfully written in a style other than what he is used to. I'm not even sure what he is trying to defend but it doesn't appear as if I was attacking it, whatever it is. Get angry all you like but it will be for no good reason.

If you can't accept that people might have interesting ideas then I will never get through to you. You might as well go back to wallowing in mediocrity.

Good point from Boris. Alex Of The Many Ones goes to the trouble of typing a large and detailed post responding to, well, just about everyone who had said anything up to that point and expressing himself and the ASS position quite clearly (from which I learned things I didn't know about ASS) and he gets the "zomfg t3h craX0r" incendiary-bomb straight away! Very respectful, well done team. Given the flaming he's received I'm not a bit surprised, in retrospect, that he didn't sign in with his actual S2 credentials and let everyone know his "real" LFS name. If you don't agree with someone, try and be a grownup and disagree without being a dick about it. If this is how people are going to treat a guy they want to give their sim of choice more publicity & attention - someone they want favours from - it's little wonder this community has the reputation it does.

I can't say I've agreed with everything I've read in ASS (which isn't much, I should say) but to simply mash one of its staff who shows this community enough respect to come here in respond personally and at length to all the attacks on his project is a bit childish. After this treatment by the community, does anyone expect a glowing article about LFS coming from Alex Ones? If an article came out tomorrow, identifying and magnifying every fault & flaw in LFS some people here would be up in arms, lighting their torches and polishing their pitchforks, but they'd have only themselves to blame (not that I think an ASS writer would be that petty though).

Quote from SmokinBob :

And I really don't think we need to be slammed for 'previews' as LFS is, as advertised by the very developers themselves, Alpha.

Somehow I think that Alpha tag is one of the reasons for the lack of coverage. I've heard that argument many times before and to be honest it annoys the hell out of me everytime I read it.
There's a lot of attention for nK Pro, which in my opinion in it's current state could only be called a technology preview or something like that considering all the major flaws it has making it impossible to consider it a finished product. Yet, it is labeled as 1.0 so that seemingly makes a lot of difference.
LFS, while not feature complete, is a very stable, usable product with no major problems. I consider it a for more finished an polished product. Yet, it is haunted by that one word.

Quote from joen :

Somehow I think that Alpha tag is one of the reasons for the lack of coverage. I've heard that argument many times before and to be honest it annoys the hell out of me everytime I read it.
There's a lot of attention for nK Pro, which in my opinion in it's current state could only be called a technology preview or something like that considering all the major flaws it has making it impossible to consider it a finished product. Yet, it is labeled as 1.0 so that seemingly makes a lot of difference.
LFS, while not feature complete, is a very stable, usable product with no major problems. I consider it a for more finished an polished product. Yet, it is haunted by that one word.

I would agree with you on that.

However, in my humble opinion, offline--netKar Pro is a much more enjoyable and immersive experience for those who appreciate driving around a meticulously modelled car in a detailed world and it is a complete product in this regard, in my opinion, and in the opinion of folks who drive for livings. I have done the same with LFS, hours offline, and must conclude that netKar Pro is the better product offline. A moot point, perhaps, as it (nKP) is touted as the 'Professional Online Simulator', the fact remains that it does so many things right in the replication of driving a race car around a track--albeit by oneself--it must be considered in this regard as well.

Online? No contest, LFS is so vastly superior as to be on another planet. And for those who may have read my netKar Pro review, you may remember I was much less than kind in my thoughts regarding the net code.

Quote from SmokinBob :

in my humble opinion, offline--netKar Pro is a much more enjoyable and immersive experience for those who appreciate driving around a meticulously modelled car in a detailed world and it is a complete product in this regard,

I wouldn't quite go that far. Maybe you don't have the problems I have with it but it seems pretty sloppily coded to me. Sure the tyres feel nice, with a couple of exceptions at the extremities, but at my end at least it exhibits horrible performance problems, eventually reducing my frame rate to slideshow figures the more I use it. It's frustrating because I'd like to like the product, but apparently Kunos is too busy doing whatever the hell he's doing to take time out to fix the ****ing thing.

Quote from SmokinBob :

It is ineresting to discover that the LFS community wants little to do with AutoSimSport which is too bad. However, after reading this thread--and some of the things that Becky mentioned, well, I am starting to not be too surprised why the coverage is 'lacking' for this product and wish you all good luck in your magazine endeavours.

Actually, I think that's not quite true. Or at least the way you put it makes it sound a little wrong. If you try to blend out those not-so nice posts and the accusations (I know it's hard ), you might find that most of the people posting here actually do want a lot from ASS, which is: reliable, objective information about what's going on in the sim-world and in the surrounding communities. It's just that many, including me, feel that they're not really getting that from ASS the way it works right now.

Edit@Kev: Judging by the latest news on the netKar Pro site, what Kunos has actually been doing was setting up a deal with a Hill-climbing team to get their car into nKPro -- don't know if that's good or bad, though.

Quote from Alex111111111 :

The accusation of theft is a serious one - think carefully before you make such assertions, you are the face of LFS here, and the accusation you make as a moderator is an accusation made by your employers.

Just to get your facts straight (again), it wasn't myself, as a forum moderator (nothing more) who accused you of not having a license, it was another forum member. I merely gave reasons as to why so you wouldn't get too offended by his actions. It seems you've been too busy ranting to notice.

A few bad attitudes here do not do LFS any favours at all. I don't know people here well enough to name names (I wouldn't want to), but it seems whenever sim related characters from without venture in here, they get mauled. They may have their own agendas for coming in, they may genuinely want to help, but the end result often seems be a big falling out.

As a member of this community myself, the impression is that some folk here can be a litttle too defensive, and difficult to communicate with. It shouldn't be that hard to remain reasonably polite. Even people who try to better this sim from within get a really hard time.

Again, I know it's not the majority, and it's just my perception, but the devs ought to be concerned about the impression being created by it's own community. The vast majority are positive and courteous, but I'm afraid that LFS is getting a sim wide reputation for being unfriendly, uncooperative, insular and just basically not very approachable.

Quote from Linsen :

Actually, I think that's not quite true. Or at least the way you put it makes it sound a little wrong. If you try to blend out those not-so nice posts and the accusations (I know it's hard ), you might find that most of the people posting here actually do want a lot from ASS, which is: reliable, objective information about what's going on in the sim-world and in the surrounding communities. It's just that many, including me, feel that they're not really getting that from ASS the way it works right now.

Edit@Kev: Judging by the latest news on the netKar Pro site, what Kunos has actually been doing was setting up a deal with a Hill-climbing team to get their car into nKPro -- don't know if that's good or bad, though.

Fair enough.

Everyone has taken this thread a step to far. Its only a sim, so chill out. Sure it may seem like people are being accused of stealing, but who cares?

If they use their friends account, they are violating the TOS

Quote from dontsimon :

A few bad attitudes here do not do LFS any favours at all.

That's what communities are like. Not everybody is a happy, smiley prozac advertisement. At the same time you'll tend to find the people who get attitude are the people who provoke it - either intentionally or not.

You'll note that I'm always pleasant and encouraging to the newbies, it's a handful of very well-established arseholes that I don't get on with.

The way this thread has gone is quite disappointing, considering it follows some positive coverage of LFS in the latest issue of ASS. If Alex, Bob and the rest of ASS give this forum, LFS community and LFS in general little attention, it will be hardly surprising after some of the posts here.

Sometimes confronting 'demo racers' about their license status is appropriate (although it can get tiring), but in this case, after Alex had gone to the trouble of contributing to this forum, it was a little embarrassing to see the first reply from the LFS community wasn't addressing any of his points, but was an accusation of using cracked software. Although Alex was mistaken in believing a moderator was making the accusation, it is understandable he was upset about the implication.

Although the thread didn't initially start off as a discussion of ASS this seems to be the way it went. Although the replies of Alex should have been treated with a little more respect, there were a few legitimate concerns about ASS that have not been answered in an entirely satisfactory fashion by Alex.

Linsen's concerns about the way in which the GS-1 seat article was presented are quite valid, in my opinion. The initial article outline was quite reasonable (i.e. seat inventor takes his seat to Indy to get the views of real race car drivers), but then again I read it after being fully primed by reading here. It would be quite easy to miss the fact it was written by the maker of the seat, especially as he refers to himself in the 3rd person and quotes himself during the article. It does read just a little too much like a press release, which is a shame as the seat looks like an interesting solution to the lack of g-forces without the need for a huge hydraulic or pneumatic monster. Had the article been written by a 3rd party who went along with the seat maker to Indy to get some knowledgeable feedback, it would have seemed much more objective. A magazine such as Wired does this regularly with technology, and the reader is much more likely to trust the resulting article.

It's a shame it wasn't written by a 3rd party, because sim racing hardware and technology (whether high-end professional, amateur, mass market, or in development) is an interesting part of the sim racing world. To see more objective articles concerning hardware would be good (whether it's reviews, set-up advice, maintenance and repair tips, etc.) to balance out against the multitude of software mod reviews.

SmokinBob's lack of online LFS stats may not tell the whole truth about how much he's used LFS, it does make you wonder how he can truly compare LFS online to any other online sim. Private servers with a few other ASS contributors (which must be on a LAN not to generate stats??) is not really going to show off how truly impressive the online netcode is or how great the racing can be with regular LFS racers. rFactor may be able to handle more racers on a server, but I've also experienced far more 'hovering cars' and prediction errors with rF online than with LFS. Also, the wide variety of mods for rFactor just makes finding a pick-up race in rF difficult.

As to nKpro, it's sold as an online sim, and it is truly broken in this mode. I, like Bob, do find it very immersive offline, but it is hardly a 'complete product'. Even offline it has it's share of problems and a painful slow clunky front end which doesn't allow car, track, graphics or sound changes without basically exiting the main program each time.

Back to the positive about ASS - it was good to see LFS represented well this month (thanks to a Magnus, Bob and Becky). The only criticism I have is that some of the photos in the STCC review and reports were 'stock' LFS shots, rather than of the STCC.

Wow... I go to work, come home, get a little sleep and come back to this
Well... I am (as some know) the writer Magnus Tellbom, and as you can see, I do have a proper license I'm very pleased you liked the little thing I wrote about LFS for this month. There will be more, I promise. Don't know in what shape or form, but it will be there.

Now... Please put any and all hard feelings away and go do some racing

Just to add a couple of other little points to the discussion as a AutoSimSport contributor and LFS racer.

There was actually a discussion on our forums recently (there is a lot of off topic stuff in the thread but that ALWAYS hapens, sorry, lol )about why LFS did not receive more coverage in AutoSimSport and what we bascially concluded was : What exactly would we write about? I have had a couple of ideas myself, one of which I did write up about the Drifting scene in LFS I had another idea about naming the corners at Blackwood as a way of giving it some 'soul' but it just never happened, it is still a possibility though.

As would a look into the Car Sound Remixer or a look into why LFS has an 'arcade' image to some people, something which has always confused me, hence the article idea.

The reality is we can only write about what we are actually driving, plus we are only doing this for fun. I have not been in the situation often but having to drive something to review it when I am really not in the mood to fire up the computer is much too reminiscent of homework at high school for my liking. Reading what Bob went through to do his RACE review certainly put me off going anywhere near it, I could not cope with that much frustration!

As for contributing, well, I had a desire to try and give something back to the community, so I put together my first article which hopefully, helped a few people get into sim racing. Now I have been sending Alex articles for over a year, he has a look, a few grammatical things get fixed and bang its in the magazine. Now if I dont get around to doing anything for a month, well, no biggie, thats the beauty of doing something electronically, its very flexible, plus its not like they can fire me!

Now I feel like I am actually a member of the community, not just some one who races on my own. Of course not everyone can do it, not everyone needs to, but the more people that do the better it is for everyone.

There is a lot of very good stuff in the sim-racing community, none of its perfect which is why we can all pick it to bits if we like, but I have an absolute blast racing, it is my favourite hobby and something I devote a lot of time to, as we all do.

I have wondered for a while why there is so much angst in the sim-racing community (I don't mean here, in this forum, but everywhere) and I have a bit of a theory: 99% of us, if not 100%, would much prefer to be doing this for real as full time professionals whether it be like Kimi Raikkonen, Craig Lowndes or Jeff Gordon etc We are all frustrated real racers first sim-racers second and its that frustration that spills over.
Maybe there is another article there?
Anyway thats enough of my dribble and I really need to arrange my desk so I am not typing around my G25...

Quote from SmokinBob :

I would agree with you on that.

However, in my humble opinion, offline--netKar Pro is a much more enjoyable and immersive experience for those who appreciate driving around a meticulously modelled car in a detailed world and it is a complete product in this regard, in my opinion, and in the opinion of folks who drive for livings. I have done the same with LFS, hours offline, and must conclude that netKar Pro is the better product offline. A moot point, perhaps, as it (nKP) is touted as the 'Professional Online Simulator', the fact remains that it does so many things right in the replication of driving a race car around a track--albeit by oneself--it must be considered in this regard as well.

Online? No contest, LFS is so vastly superior as to be on another planet. And for those who may have read my netKar Pro review, you may remember I was much less than kind in my thoughts regarding the net code.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong but ASS main focus is on the "sport" in sim racing, which means drivers competing online. So coming from that perspective I really don't see nK being a finished product since it has so many problems in the online part. Just comparing the number of active racers and the amount of leagues around, LFS plays a much bigger role. Sure, I can see nK has several immersion features over LFS and I certainly think it's doing really nice in the graphics department.
The main focus of LFS is on the online part (and judging by it's title so is nK), so it really should be judged on that. I'm glad that (for now at least) more attention goes out to the online qualities because that's what it's aimed at in the first place.

I think we pretty much agree on this but I guess what I'm trying to say is it's fine what you think of a sim personally, but from the point of view of a magazine dedicated to online sim racing, I think LFS deserves at least as much attention as a (presently) pretty much offline bound sim.
I can understand LFS' lack of modding abilities gives less to write about than for instance rFactor in that regard, but on the other hand there's a lot of league activity in LFS worth to write about, plus there's a lot of creativity in the LFS community by some really talented people which I think deserves attention.
I read the STCC article in the latest issue and it was a good read. So it would be nice to see more of that.

LFS people can be a little over protective about their sim, and sometimes the choice of approach and words can be a little...harsh. On the other hand, I think that's to be suspected in many other (sim related) communities. I certainly see a lot of that on another well known sim forum. I guess you should try to filter out the positive and/or constructive negative feedback and try to value for what it's worth. There's no sense in getting overly defensive yourself as that will only have a tension increasing effect. Respond to comments you can use, and put everything else besides you.
Anyway, just my unstructured 2 cents. Good luck with ASS.

Quote from BlackEye :

It sure sounds nice but a whole magazine about one game?
I don't think it would work for to long, I mean, LFS News is surerly (spelling?) enough?

Its spelled "shurley"

Quote from Rob76 :

Back to the positive about ASS - it was good to see LFS represented well this month (thanks to a Magnus, Bob and Becky). The only criticism I have is that some of the photos in the STCC review and reports were 'stock' LFS shots, rather than of the STCC.

i raised this with Becky, she sent lots of STCC pics in to the magazine, unfortunately it seems that the layout editor said "LFS - i've got some pics of that somewhere..."

Shame, because a pic like this woulda looked much better

Quote from PLAYLIFE :

Its spelled "shurley"

no it's not, it's spelt "surely"

Jakg - you don't get the whole sarcasm thing, do you?

Quote from Jakg :

i raised this with Becky, she sent lots of STCC pics in to the magazine, unfortunately it seems that the layout editor said "LFS - i've got some pics of that somewhere..."

Shame, because a pic like this woulda looked much better


no it's not, it's spelt "surely"

I have two pics, sent by Becky, in my mailbox. It is possible I never got the email with the other pics you claim inside of it, but I got the first pic, the one where she is holding a sign, and another pic, a track overhead I believe. I will check again, but I am doubting this at the moment.

Highly.

She may have sent them to someone else, but the ones that were sent directly to me are in the article.

Is there always a 'negative' to be found over here? I get the impression graphics really aren't everything, now I am getting 'the business' due to not having more pics in the article??

I would ask Becky what exactly she sent, and where she sent them because it certainly wasn't to me so if you have something to contribute--such as the truth, or, proof--I'm all ears. I would have ran every shot she sent me, I assure you.

So, let's find out what happened to the shots allegedly sent before you start putting more lies on my back, and on the back of my editor.

Actually, it turns out to be quite simple. Rather than attaching the screenshots to the email, they were hyperlinked in the article itself for you to download and include in the magazine. I think it's actually a misunderstanding, Bob.

Links to the screenshots that she'd proposed for inclusion, finished up as links in the article itself (at the bottom), so although it didn't play out exactly as intended, nevertheless the images are available FROM the article, even if they're not embedded IN it

Quote from SamH :

Actually, it turns out to be quite simple. Rather than attaching the screenshots to the email, they were hyperlinked in the article itself for you to download and include in the magazine. I think it's actually a misunderstanding, Bob.

Links to the screenshots that she'd proposed for inclusion, finished up as links in the article itself (at the bottom), so although it didn't play out exactly as intended, nevertheless the images are available FROM the article, even if they're not embedded IN it

Thank you for posting that, it is definitely a misunderstanding, and my apologies for my brusk previous posting.

She also certainly sent us a (fantastic) race report and that is most likely the confusion on my side--I sent the report straight to editing shortly after reading it for any obvious glaring errors,since my main task was on the interview replies, which, given the immense and fantastic replies, was a bit of work Looking it over again, I see what was sent in terms of pictures for the article--the two links at the end--, and would certainly hope we can, in the future, write another article and get more pics. In other words, two textual items were sent, and at least we got the links to the shots in there, if not the actual laid out images. Naturally, I am going to blame someone else for this But, as you say--they were available, if not readily visible and my apologies.

I am now going to spend a few hours time going through each issue since the beginning and determing what, and to what extent, our LFS coverage has been. Some of you may recall I was buried to my neck in Sim Binnery for about all of 2005, and much of 2006 as well as new tasks--no LFS tasks aside from the review in collaboration with Shrapnel, (score 83%)--assigned to me. I am not the boss, I am a freelance writer--emphasis on 'free'--who is trying to get some sort of start in the writing business, so I do what I am told for fear of ruining a career I do not have yet. That is why I am still working as a chemist, to buy ink and stuff. That is my story, and I know the others had their tasks as well, and we had much to learn to work as a team, and a 'lack' of LFS coverage is not unique to that sim as you will soon discover. And, I assure everyone reading this--we have actively, and aggressively, sought a full time LFS writer for over two years now. I can not show the private discussions for obvious reasons, but I assure you, nothing was more frustrating that having folks there, giving committment, then not showing up ever again.

I would hope that this months issue, while maybe not to everyones taste regarding LFS coverage desires, was at least a step in some direction, and I hope we can do some more in the future.

It reminds me of HEAT--a colossally popular sim with a HUGE audience and we got word that we needed more coverage of it and through some fantastic efforts of....Magnus, we now get that coverage Just because we are not writing about something doesn't mean we don't like it, but, more likely, there aren't enough hours in the day.

To get to the nuts and bolts of it, since our creation, we have had a core group of 3 people who have contributed to every single issue. That is certainly not the case now, and it is a good thing because when you put in 150-200 hours a month on something, on top of the 160 you already have with your real job, well, it can get difficult at times, if not a bit nervewracking.

I am now going to do a thorough search of our back issues, and find some things out. Again, please accept my apologies for the previous reply.

It really shouldn't be that important, how many pictures who sent and why they were not in the magazine :sigh: It's really not that big a deal, imho, and I would find it rather sad, if this thread would now go back to the state which I thought we had overcome in the last posts . Let's try to keep this constructive.

Edit: I guess the above can be disregarded now, as we seem to be on track again after that's been cleared up .

@Jiminee: I like the idea of an article about how sim racing is a substitute act for real racing. Actually, that's probably a rather large portion of what sim racing is about for me: The lack of money and opportunity to race in real Life (If I won a ton of money in the lottery tomorrow, I would probably soon only be racing LFS to cater for my racing needs during off season). ASS had a couple of articles that went in that direction already (a racer who switched from sim racing to real racing, the self-test whether sim racing helps for real racing, just to name the two I noticed), so I think that would be a nice addition to that theme.

Quote from SmokinBob :

Thank you for posting that, it is definitely a misunderstanding, and my apologies for my brusk previous posting.

What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.. in future STCC submissions, we'll (whichever STCC representative it is) ensure that we provide visual content that will be easy to make contextually relevent, for placement within the article.

It didn't take hours, but here is a somewhat thorough result of an 'lfs' search of each issue to date.

V1I1

Turn One: Golf, Bread & Livin’ for Speed with Victor van Vlaardingen

V1I4

LFS S2 Preview

V1I7

LFS FFS WTF OMG!!! News item/post of the month

Turn 3: Live for Speed Reviews, 83%
Dom Duhan, 85%.

V1I8

Happiness is a Warm Sim, strong references to LFS

V1I11

The Year of the Sim—LFS section

V2I5

T2: Live for Speed — The Formula 1 Kind!?

Sauber me Timbers, news item covering the new BMW for LFS.

V2I9

BMW vs. BMW—ISI vs. LFS—AUTOSIMSPORT Road-Test …: we get inside both cars and both sims and compare. (This one was a pleasure for sure!)



V3I1

Comment, by Magnus Telbom

Sim Motor Racings Premiere League


This was a cursory search using the letters ‘lfs’ scanning each pdf issue, so there may be some I have missed.