Are all of these planned upgrades?
DX9 or DX10 graphics? what about sampled sound?
How is "sampled sound" an "upgrade"? I prefer synthesized to sampled, even if it doesn't have the "WOW" factor, it gives more information on the car.
There is nothing like real sound, it should give you even more info about the car (if done right). What makes you think the opposite?
Not at all. Canned, presampled sound give you way less info, because they are *drumroll* PRESAMPLED. The sounds we have now are generated dynamically, thus really giving info about what the car is doing.
GTR2 - i always get EXACTLY the same "VROOM" noise. It gives NO feedback at all, it's just "at RPM x play revxxx.wav", LFS gives me more information because the sounds are actually tied to the car itself
The synthesized sounds are getting fairly close to the quality of sampled sounds anyway. Take DaveWS's latest XFR/UFR sounds- they sound pretty much like something out of CSR. The base engine needs to be worked on at some point (lows are especially lacking) but I'm now pretty convinced that you can get a decent result from the synthesized method.
Nothing is announced at this time...
Nothing is announced at this time...
What makes me think the opposite? Every single racing sim with sampled sounds. They all sound dead; sure you get a pretty sound, but it's flat. It doesn't tell you what the engine is actually doing. [Edit] However, I think LFS should get samples for things like brake squeals, pebbles hitting the bottom of the car when going through the grass/gravel and all that kind of thing.
As for graphics, I prefer LFS' graphics over any other games' I've ever seen. LFS has a very nice look to it. It doesn't have all the special effects and flashy stuff; but that stuff is not realistic anyways. It all looks like crap as far as I'm concerned. Not to mention the added strain on PCs to produce these needless and ugly special effects. LFS looks best as it is now; the added strain is best reserved for other things; allowing larger fields, more advanced physics calculations, more complex AI, etc etc. These all take processing power, too.
I think the most I could ask for in the graphics upgrades would be cars with a higher polly count. Nothing extreme really, just better than what it currently is 
I would suggest Normal Mapping onto the same poly models instead of upping the polycount since they are high enough as it is, or use an extra texturemap as a bumpmap to show relief on the surface area of a car, like u can see in NKpro where the grooves between all the panels on the car are bumpmapped. This gives way more detailed effects and requires no more poly's at all. Good sample is Doom3 engine where extreme low-poly models are being used and made look quite nice with some sort of bumpmapping (almost like the effect of normalmapping) that almost make things look round-shaped when it's actually square. Doom3 let us show what can be done with very low poly models combined with this texturing. Now take any car u see in LFS, it already has loads of poly's, combined with the same texturing method will allow for far more details. This kind of texturing will be perfect for simulating grooves on a tyre surface whithout the need of them to be added in the model. Now we simulate them with basic 2D images. They don't react to the direction of light at all, so they don't give an impression of depth.
Graphical wise, it's okay to me now, but it could be made much more neat and also efficient using more advanced shaders, thus not only to be used for extreme eye-candy but performance is a factor too. We need better multitexturing possibilities. High-res textures as they are being used now is totally ridiculous. We need more layers to work with, not just one. LFS is quite like Quake2, but it should be near to Quake3 graphicswise which is already old too, but allows for much more detailed- and texture effecient behaviour.
These types of maps have to be high res to look any good IMO. I see these in rF constantly, and they look like crap because they make small grooves in the bodywork half an inch wide. Looks stupid, so you'd have to use a high res map to get the grooves to look the proper size.
As for DOOM3 graphics; I Thought they looked pretty bad, to be honest. I'd take a higher poly model over one with all kinda of fancy shaders and maps any day. The different maps make things look fake and plastic-like.
What's the big fuss about DX10? There have been like 3 suggestions this month of people suggesting DX10.
Agreed!
Bumpmapping should be used un track surfaces though, but not cars. But Highres bumpmapping can laaaaaaagggg down a 3d engine!
Its the 3 people that have purchased Windows MEII (Vista by its internal MS code name) once they realised that there is no real DX10 games to shout about. They have realised that MEII runs all their old DX based games at the same speed as their old rig did even though their new rig is twice as fast on paper. At least with all the resources that MEII uses it looks like the PC is doing twice as much
Speaking of Vista, what the hell are MS's plans for us gamers? I've heard it says right on the packaging that Vista is not a gaming OS. XP is no longer sold in stores, so are they just selling us up the river or what?
Thankfully here, XP is still sold in stores, not sure how much longer that'll last though..
XP64 is still for sale iirc...?
M$ NEED Vista to take off, and with all the "Vista hate" on the internet (you buy 2 GB of RAM and then complain when the OS has the nerve to use it!) they need to make stuff like DX10 Vista-only to give you "an extra incentive" to get it.
Every time a new OS comes out people will complain about it being slow, buggy, useless for gamers etc - it happened when XP came out, and here we are, 6 years later, with a VERY nice OS out of it. If we all cared about performance that much we'd be running 2k/98/Server 2003.
This is why all the piracy BS, especially with Microsoft, is just that, a bunch of BS. I have a store-bought PC, which came with XP. I paid for XP, I use XP, yet I do not receive an installation disk for XP. If I was to build a new computer, I have to pay for another crappier operating system because I can not transfer XP over to my new machine.
And Microsoft wonders why Windows is pirated so much......
And Microsoft wonders why Windows is pirated so much......
Hello!
I have 3 years ago LFS S2.But the new patches have a very terrible "singing enginesound by formula 1 (BMW)What can I do that I have a sound like RFACTOR ??
Please help me Georg
Stop playing rFactor - that should cure it
I hope no one takes this personal. I see fanboyism here. True, LFS is the best sim, but some of you talk as if any kind of improvement would be wrong.
Sampled sound are A LOT better than syntetic ones. I guess those who oppose dont know about sampler for music? Syntetic sound of instruments, say a violin, are awful. If you want the sound of a violin you need to sample it and then integrate some algoritms to change the form of the wave to resemble a real player. FYI, the music of some movies and games are done this way, even when we hear a full orchestra.
Every sound in LFS should be sampled. End of discussion.
Regarding graphics, the light effects on LFS are really dated and need to change to dynamic. Textures could be improved too.
Note that I recognize the effort of the creators of LFS, they have done an admirable work, but still I do wish they had the resources to improve the game.
Sampled sound are A LOT better than syntetic ones. I guess those who oppose dont know about sampler for music? Syntetic sound of instruments, say a violin, are awful. If you want the sound of a violin you need to sample it and then integrate some algoritms to change the form of the wave to resemble a real player. FYI, the music of some movies and games are done this way, even when we hear a full orchestra.
Every sound in LFS should be sampled. End of discussion.
Regarding graphics, the light effects on LFS are really dated and need to change to dynamic. Textures could be improved too.
Note that I recognize the effort of the creators of LFS, they have done an admirable work, but still I do wish they had the resources to improve the game.
It would be true if we could isolate sample sounds from each part of the car. It is possible with some of them but the majority can only be heard with all the other sounds. Thus, for the sake of simulation we are better off with the synthetic ones.
...how is you showing YOUR opinion "end of discussion"?
Every sound in LFS should sound exactly like real life, and also sound like the car is actually MAKING the noise (unlike GTR etc). End of discussion.
For sample you need the car to exist, which majority of LFS' cars don't. Also you need a huge amount of resources to do the recording. Which why Scawen went on creating the a synthetic sound engine instead of using samples. Besides fully synthetic sounds seem to do the job quite well.
Also as other people have said you need millions of samples to make even remotely as flexible sound engine and it still will end up being repetitive. Repetitive is the keyword here, sure it may sound good first couple of times while you are not doing anything unusual. But after a while the samples will start to 'shine' through and they will reduce immersion.
The more I play LFS the more I like the Synthetic Sound. Especially since the last Updates and the new Sounds they are really very good. Not because they make you shouting WOW when you hear them first, but because of the Feedback you get.
I played Test Drive Unlimited a few times and i.e. the Sound of the Corvette Z06 made me shouting WOW the first time I heard it. But while driving around with it I realized that I never knew what the Car did, if the Engine was under load or not etc.
If you would have asked me a year ago what I think is better the answer maybe would have been different. But at the current dtate I prefer the Synthesized Sound of LFS because they are really nice now. And I am sure the Sound Engine will get better over time. There are still a few things which should be "modelled" by the Sound Engine and increasing CPU Power and developing of your Devs will lead to much better Sounds, I am sure!
I played Test Drive Unlimited a few times and i.e. the Sound of the Corvette Z06 made me shouting WOW the first time I heard it. But while driving around with it I realized that I never knew what the Car did, if the Engine was under load or not etc.
If you would have asked me a year ago what I think is better the answer maybe would have been different. But at the current dtate I prefer the Synthesized Sound of LFS because they are really nice now. And I am sure the Sound Engine will get better over time. There are still a few things which should be "modelled" by the Sound Engine and increasing CPU Power and developing of your Devs will lead to much better Sounds, I am sure!
DX9 or DX10 graphics? what about sampled sound?
(52 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG