The online racing simulator
Quote from migf1 :It's my understanding that GTR2 already supports marmbles and variable track grip (online only), along with dynamic weather (it needs an external app to activate this). I hear GTR Evolution (a Race07 mod, expected real soon now) will also feature those things. Do we have a clue whether i-racing supports them too?

Yeah, maybe GTR2 supports these but if it's not realistic then it's not very good, just another random factor in the physics. AFAIK iRacing doesn't even handle dirt on tyres.
Quote from migf1 :It's my understanding that GTR2 already supports marmbles and variable track grip (online only), along with dynamic weather (it needs an external app to activate this). I hear GTR Evolution (a Race07 mod, expected real soon now) will also feature those things. Do we have a clue whether i-racing supports them too?

I have all notion it's variable when offline as well however it's pretty predictable still. When marbles build up they seem to be in predefined areas of some turns always and the racing line never actually seems to change, it just gets cleaner or dirtier, dryer or wetter - the latter I witnessed myself when being the only car on a drying track I would purposely take a different line always for a few laps, there was a dry line forming, however not where I was driving for some reason. So it bsically seems it's defined by how many laps cars have done on the track and no other factors seem to get in the equation (for example, wind is not even factored in the game at all), not even which line they were driving.

From what I read in the iRacing thread - there is no such feature in iRacing.
I've never noticed this, was it a patch or does it not work with some mods?
Quote from Becky Rose :I've never noticed this, was it a patch or does it not work with some mods?

That "new advanced weather" mod thing seemed to kick in the weather action I mentioned - it's a resident app that changes the weather.txt file on the fly or something like that. Previous to that nothing really seemed to change during a session - wet was wet, dry was dry.

EDIT:
However I don't know what it does to the AI - it probably makes it crap its pants.
'Live Track' is the name of the advertised technology in GTR2. It should be mod independant, but I don't know for sure. AI are supposed to adopt to that.
Yeah - but in races, for some reason, variable weather was disabled by default (or just not activated - or perhaps it was but was really really really too slow to notice?). When I first searched to find out other people's experience with it I stumbled across multiple threads and such on various simracing forums that all pointed to it being a known issue that is resolved by using that mod.

Note: livetrack doesn't work with modded GTR2 tracks, it only works with the tracks that came with the original

(anyhow - we've really gotten this thread on the marbles now I think)
Can you imagine the moaning (and crying) if and when variable track grip is introduced in LFS?
Oh don't worry. It would be pretty similar to the moaning when tyre temperatures, tyre dirtiness, the nerfing of keyboard help, auto blip/cut or clutch heating was implemented. Can't wait to see the moaning when the wings fall off after a contact or crash damage in general is implemented
Since simulated lumbago is impossible then the whining about structural failure after slamming a car on a kerb with impossibly stiff suspension will make my day.
Quote from migf1 :Can you imagine the moaning (and crying) if and when variable track grip is introduced in LFS?

Oh you bet I can! That makes me want it even more though
I anticipate that community modding will be an option when Scawen is satisfied with the physics and underlying game engines to the extent that no _fundamental_ changes will be made to the physics and game engines (ie, not gonna happen in S2).

Why not now? Just look at the whinging when he makes a change and something as piddling as a hotlop is wiped. Now how many moaning gits would be posting if he made a change that led to their new/modded vehicles no longer working? This is also (in my opinion) why we won't see official new vehicles in S2. It's simply not worth the time and effort to develop new vehicles and then to have to tune and tweak them everytime you make an underlying change. I'm honestly surprised we've got the number of vehicles we do.

The way I see it (and of course this is just my theory and hope ), Scawen plans to develop the underlying physics to the point that creating 'new' cars or recreating real world vehicles will be simple because all the input values you'll select will be rational, real world type values. Contrast this to RFactor where the underlying physics engine is a piece of crap and where the result is;

a) some good mods where people have tweaked the input values completely outside of what you'd call rational in order to achieve a feel that's somewhat realistic
b) a whole heap of crap mods

Then consider the online situation. If modding/vehicle creation was possible now (ignoring LFSTweak etc), the end result would likely be a huge number of different and almost completely unbalanceable vehicles and the userbase could be fractured. You'd need to race a league to get any real parity in racing and outside of places like CTRA, pickup racing would disappear. This (the way I see it) is the lifeblood of LFS and a great differentiator versus other racing sims/games.

Finally, a lot of people seem to be hung up on the idea that the only possible reason for Scawen (and Eric and Victor of course) to develop the game is to make a HEAP of cash and that he must be crazy because he's not implementing every improvement suggestion on the forums and won't build the development team and won't accept offers of cash to add 'feature X' or 'feature Y'. In contrast, I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere that he said he wasn't actually keen to advertise or promote LFS to any great extent right now, was happy with the 'limited' distribution and was certainly happy with the rate of development. Is it not possible that he wants a project that he can make _some_ money from (if not a mint) for a number of years into the future while his children grow? Is it not possible that he's content to do something that he finds satisfying and to live a reasonably comfortable life instead of having to go corporate and maximise profits?

Finally x2. There's absolutely nothing stopping him from selling more S2 licenses, finalising his physics and game engines, never releasing an S3 and instead selling the engine to a development house. I know if I had to deal with a lot of the whingers around here and was made a good offer I'd certainly consider it.....

Anyways, those are my thoughts for now. In reality Scawen probably hates to be at home, wants to make a million yesterday, wishes he could expand Scavier into a game development house and would love you to mod his game but he just can't figure out how to open source it...
Quote from Alias Driver :but he just can't figure out how to open source it...

that might actually be true
there a good chance that after 6-7 years of one man development its nearly impossible for anyone else to work out what the code does
im sure he does but i kinda doubt that those 6mb are 50+% comments which would probably be necessary to make such a large codebase understandable for anyone who hasnt been working on it for years
a comment that helps you understand what you did when you still remember roughly how the code works is different from one that helps someone whos never seen the code before
That's the whole point of OOP, you dont have to know what half the stuff does or how stuff happens.

However i'm not a great fan of open source. Especially in systems where a single 9 year old with a social disorder can ruin years of hard work with a speed hack.

I've never understood the mentality of people in the open source community who think everyone should work open source. I dont get it. It's not commercially viable, it's insecure, and no you cant take my fancy landscape system and put it in your MMO... etc etc.
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(JamesF1) DELETED by JamesF1 : A page too late!
Quote from Becky Rose :That's the whole point of OOP, you dont have to know what half the stuff does or how stuff happens.

except his "classes" arent protected or anything which could lead to some major problems when others start adding bits without reading the entire rest of the code first
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=852931#post852931

Quote :It's not commercially viable

eg redhat seem to do fine... granted its not the same ballpark as microsoft but theyre not exactly struggling either at 400 million of revenue
although i cant think of a business model that would work with open source in the game industry
I'm not keen to open source, either (although i've been a programmer for a while, long ago, when pascal, unix and C was the norm... that was long before the object orientated wave).

As for Scawen's vision, it's well respected by me! But this has nothing to do with constructive suggestions and/or critisism. If my memory serves me well, he also seeks for them.

The argument of no more vehicles until the physics are complete is quite vallid!

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG