There is a Czech automobile news website, that published a few short reviews of racing simulators (GT5, GTR2, GTL, F1R, RBR, LFS, rF, Race, TOCA and others). I took the liberty of translating two (IMHO) most interesting reviews for this community - LFS and rF. However, if you speak good Czech or Slovak, you can read the whole article on this page in Czech language.

Now...

LFS
...and here we are. I was looking forward to write about LFS. It is a very interesting game, literally unique. You cannot buy this game in no store and in fact, you will never hold it in a hand and read the short description in the back of the box. The thing is, that this game is some kind of a shareware. From the developers' web site, a little studio of passionates, you can download and try this game for free. The testing version contains 2 vehicles, one FWD and one RWD. There is also one track, quite short, where you can try out the cars. Perfect controls' physics, sounds and little details (the dash has a clock synchronized with Windows time, so that you always know, that time really is) are au contraire balanced with bad graphics and non-licensed cars. Whoever doesn't mind, can buy a full version at 12 pounds (again, at the web site of the devs), that will unlock more cars, tracks, championship and mainly the multiplayer. That will offer many hours of fun and with almost perfect physics even a certain dose of "training".

rFactor
A game, that does well and purposefully what is was made for. It is an ultra-realistic simulator in the style of GTR or Live for Speed. rFactor contains already mentioned real physics and unbelievable details in settings(?) - tyre wear, different fuel consumption depending on driving style, collision system, detailed settings of all car parameters, wings, shock absorbers, springs, height and position of driver's seat, stability control, ABS - in short, everything you can imagine. What is also worth mentioning is worse graphics and overall the environment is sparse. On the other hand it is a pure simulator, in which the already mentioned graphics can play a minor role. Definetly for true fanatics.

I personally find the LFS part a bit inaccurate, maybe a little biased too and it definetly doesn't offer as much information about the game, as the other parts do.
Please keep in mind, that these are my personal translations, so there might be plenty mistakes, but I however tried to provide the most precise and literal translation, while keeping the original meaning.

Enjoy

I really don't wanna flame about LFS vs rF.
It's like Firefox vs Opera - I like both of them, because they are better than IE (NFS).
But it's really inaccurate - there are three cars in demo and full version cost 24 pounds. And he says great things about rFactor, but he didn't mention that quality of rFactor depends on quality of mods.

Díky za link :-)

I'm sorry, but I can't figure out why this would be worth of a thread?

This is a bad review, there are many mistakes in it.

the championship mode in LFS? Haven't found that yet.

Rf and real physics? I don't think so

This thread wasn't meant to be a flame war. It's just to show you what people think of racing sims abroad.

Why does it say in the Czech review that demo has 2 cars available to try? when it is in fact 3 cars????

Not a very good review in my opinion. It doesn't tell you much about the actual game and it gives you inaccurate information.

edit: just looked at the screenshots, OMG, awful, low res and don't show off the game well at all.

The pictures are from S1, aren't they? Wtf.

And WHAT track is that in the first picture?

Quote from zeugnimod :

The pictures are from S1, aren't they? Wtf.

And WHAT track is that in the first picture?

It does seem that they got all their info from an article dated 28/4/2003. Hell, they even have Ubisoft's f1rc3 in their list...

Quote from LFSn00b :

1. Imo they're not that bad
2. There is RAC, MRT and BF1

That article is 4 years old, so all those cars weren't there let alone S2 graphics...

I can't read these articles, but if they really got all their information from a 4 year old article then they're just dumb. You have to play a game yourself before reviewing it, or else it's not really your review it's someone else's.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

I can't read these articles...

Well, you obviously can No offense.

Now, I guess that the morale of this thread is that there is too little known about LFS and many, many people are being misinformed by these cheap reviews.

we all know lfs is awsoem, but rfactor isnt too bad either. the latest version of the 1979 mod is pretty fun. i can actually feel what's happening with the car thx to realfeel.

Quote from Gabkicks :

we all know lfs is awsoem, but rfactor isnt too bad either. the latest version of the 1979 mod is pretty fun. i can actually feel what's happening with the car thx to realfeel.

yeah that damn 1979 mod kept me away from practicing for LFS events to often lately. It's not as good as LFS is but those sounds and the kind of immersion you get, is wonderful. Still if it comes to serious racing, I'm doing it in LFS.

Seems they changed the screenshots now. Did anything in the text change? Or did they still copy and paste an old article?

Quote from SpikeyMarcoD :

Did anything in the text change? Or did they still copy and paste an old article?

They did some corrections, like the price (12 pounds or 24 pounds if you don't own S1)

Praising rF again. So they changed the pictures to S2 (much better graphics) but the text graphics are still bad?

I still can't agree with those saying LFS doesn't have nice graphics. It doesn't have all the bling - HDR, bloom, reflections. But it doesn't hurt your eyes and doesn't use too lowres stuff.

I quite like the LFS graphics. With some AA and AF they can be very good.

I'm with you two above about LFS graphics. All the bling with others starts to make it look fake. Things just aren't that shiney, bright, and cheery in real life. LFS is easy on the eyes and allows you to concentrate on what is important, the racing.

I'm a bit biased for LFS graphics though. All that bling just wouldn't do well on my machine. Before my new to me, but ancient tech, graphics card, I ran LFS easily at 45-60 FPS with a full server (old 23 slot patch), and when I tried GTR/GTL (the original, not even GTR2) I wouldn't have even called it a slideshow. It was too choppy to be a slideshow even dumbed down to ridiculous settings.

Somewhat unrelated to the discussion, but mrodgers, did you actually try GTR2? They say it's WAY more optimized than not only GTR/GTL, but than its own demo as well.

Quote from breadfan :

There is a Czech automobile news website, that published a few short reviews of racing simulators (GT5, GTR2, GTL, F1R, RBR, LFS, rF, Race, TOCA and others).

<snip>


Enjoy

Thank you

Both rF and LFS has things that the other doesn't

For example:
LFS has good physics, rF has passable physics

rF has realistic engine damage and failures, LFS doesn't have any substantial engine damage (which annoys the heck out of me but I learned to live with it)

Both of these things are very important for me (while others doesn't give a crap about them). So for me, it's a bit of a tie. Therefore, I just play both. (But i lean more towards LFS because of its organized community )

It is old, the lfs review is bout s1. and why only 2 cars in demo? AFAIK there are three. And there is more than one track. AFAIK there are 2 tracks + reverse. So what the hell was he/she/it writing there??

I demonstrated LFS to friends lately and first thing they said was wow, nice graphics. One of them was a gamer the other not. But they both where like hey that looks natural, the way the cars move.

Quote from Stefani24 :

It is old, the lfs review is bout s1. and why only 2 cars in demo? AFAIK there are three. And there is more than one track. AFAIK there are 2 tracks + reverse. So what the hell was he/she/it writing there??

He said in discussion under the article, that he played demo with only two cars. It seems like he then checked out czechlfs.net and found an actual S2 demo so he corrected few things (like this with cars).

Quote from LRB_Aly :

I demonstrated LFS to friends lately and first thing they said was wow, nice graphics. One of them was a gamer the other not. But they both where like hey that looks natural, the way the cars move.

I showed some screenshots from the main page to a friend some days ago, and the reaction was "nice graphics" too. So I don't think we're too badly served in terms of that