Last I read, there are about 50,000 current accounts at iRacing. I don't know what the average activity level is per player. iRacing is expensive, and I never liked the combination of paying for in game content in addition to paying a monthly fee. It always seemed like marketing ploy to extract as much money from the player base as possible.
The most popular racing game in the last decade was Need For Speed World, which ran from July 2010 to July 2015, with millions of accounts, a free to play, but pay to win game. My impression is only a small fraction of the player base were truly interested in the multi-player racing.
I was never that big of a fan of LFS. I started with LFS S1 because of my interest in the Caterham, but the S1 physics was clearly an issue. S2 fixed much of this, but then exaggerated the effects of flat spotting and clutch overheating, and by then, I moved on to other racing games. Back around 2006, I estimated that S3 would take until 2009 based on the pace of development.
Like others here, I've lost interest in racing games in general. The last racing game I bought was Shift 2 Unleashed in 2011. The only games I've bought since then were the 3 most recent Tomb Raider games. As for the Need For Speed games I own that still have online servers, most of the online activity I see is players running career mode events while logged in, as opposed to doing multi-player events. From my own experience and what I read on forum sites, the number of multi-player races, arcade or sim-oriented has greatly diminished from it's peak around 2006 through 2008.
I started back in 2003 with S1. S2 fixed up S1's quirky physics, mostly due to switch from viscous differential to limited slip differential. I occasionally browse the forum to see what is going on, but haven't played LFS in quite a while. I recall being called a pessimist for posting that I thought S3 wouldn't be released until 2009 or later (based on S1 2003, S2 2006)
So for me LFS is almost 12 years old, and few games remain popular for that long. As mentioned in an earlier post, probably 1 to 3 or 4 years is the typical amount of time a player spends on a particular game.
I got started with LFS because I had a Caterham at the time, and wanted to try out the LX6. This was version S1, and the physics wasn't so great back then. The biggest improvement in physics occurred with S2, patch T, back in April, 2006. Since then, the changes have been small steps. I never considered LFS's physics to be the best, as there were some mods for rFactor which I felt were better. Others considered NR2003 to have bettter physics. It's more a case of player preference instead of which game is more realistic.
Another bit of history I recall is that I was considered a pessimist when I posted at RSC (the old one) back in 2006 that I though S3 wouldn't get released until 2009 because of the small development team.
For me and many of the older players, LFS is a 5 to 7 year old game, that a few of us still play sometimes, but it has the feel of a trip down memory lane, especially with the lack of updates since October 2008 (the original Scirocco announcement).
If and when something significant happens to LFS, I and many other of the older players will check out to see what's changed. In the meantime, I pay occasional visits to the LFS forums.
But it's a relatively small community that's been stuck at around 10,000 "active" members for well over a year. There have been complaints about sparse fields in some class / track combinations.
I rarely hear much about iRacing anymore, or for that matter for any sim oriented racing game in general. The only new thing in the works is rFactor 2, and who knows how long that will take?
Autosimsport, the sim-oriented racing game online magazine, hasn't published an issue since December 2009. Seems that PC based racing games reached a peak around 2006, and popularity has been declining since then.
LFS is also caught up in this decline, and with no significant update in over 2 years, a lot of the older players have simply moved on to other things.
realistic sim - My guess it will only be slightly more "realistic" than Shift. The SMS developers seem to be looking for a "realisitic driving experience" rather than duliplicating the real world behavior of the cars, so some stuff is going to be exagerated, such as the excessive amount of oversteer that was such a big part of Shift, where it looks like your drifting through turns, somewhat reminding me of Grand Prix Legends, but with dumbed down physics via hidden assists so driving isn't as difficult as GPL. Maybe not realistic, but you get a sense of what the rear end is doing, and it looks cool. They're targeting a much larger audience that isn't as hard core as the old GPL and current iRacing players.
Personally, after playing racing games since 1997, realism has lost some of it's appeal, and I find a balance such as Shift to be enjoyable. I still play some of the better rFactor mods, like PCC 2007, or go back and play one of the GTR games, but for an overall game, Shift is close enough for me. I also enjoy the arcade games (but I'm skipping Hot Pursuit 3).
One of the nicest features in NFS Shift is the replays, but you can't save them, so I made a video of a collection of replays. In this video you can see the exaggerated oversteer that's part of the Shift experience:
In some, or at least one of the cars, you can redline the engine (to avoid clutch damage) while in gear, hold down the shift up button, then tap the clutch button for a near instant shift. The shift won't take place until you tap the clutch button, even though you're holding down the shift up button. You'll have to release and then repress the shift up button for the next gear shift though.
Without getting into a lot of details, the "another model" is more like a "canned effect" that operates at the macro level (entire vehicle instead of it's components). It may not be truly realistic, but it will keep or restore the similated vehicle within the operating range that the core model can emulate accurately, and the final combined behavior ends up being reasonably realistic with no user noticable transitions between the core model and the "canned effect" model.
Although not a great analogy, a racing game could use a classic Pacejka tire model, but that fails at near zero speeds, so using an alternate spring like model for near zero speeds with a smooth transition between the two models solves the problem.
This was based on a discussion with another person looking into vehicle simulation. Without getting into too much detail, this persons model is good enough to simulate complicated interactions like wheel hop from rear wheel tire spin, and the same changes made in the real world to fix the wheel hop issue also works in his simulation.
However, there are boundary conditions where the core model fails by exhibiting non-realistic behavior. It turned out that some of these issues couldn't be reasonably fixed by tweaking the core model, but instead required an alternate model when non-realistic behavior was detected. This is what I meant by the feedback and switching to a "canned effect" which is really just an alternate model to handle some boundary conditions.
Sorry for the late response, I rarely pay much attention to LFS forums anymore. My point wasn't to change the new physics model, but to add a sanity check for unrealistic behavior along any axis of rotation in the model. I wasn't proposing how the model should deal with the unrealistc behavior, just to have the data available as feedback.
I doubt that any equation and/or table based approach is going to be able to simulate how a wide variety of cars and tires behave at the limits of traction. No matter how unpleasant it sounds, it seems that the equivalent of some canned effect is going to be needed to prevent cars from exhibiting unrealistic behavior when at the limits.
Taking a cue from the radio control model world, more and more computerized assists are being placed into model aircraft. Helicopters have had heading hold (these maintain orientation despite any side loads) gyros for yaw control for decades and more recently, pitch and roll have been added, which eliminates the need for mechanical fly-bars, making the helicopters more stable and at the same time more manuervable since the fly bar no longer limits roll and pitch response. Similarly model aircraft pilots are using heading hold gyros for yaw control during takeoffs to deal with issues like p factor and gyroscopic reaction from the prop during pitch changes on tail draggers.
Getting back to the tire model, a similar type of pitch, yaw, and roll feedback process in the car and tire physics model would solve some of the issues with unrealistic responses of a modeled car at the limits. Yeah it's a "canned" fix, but one that can be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.
It's been 2 years since the tire physics model has been getting worked on. For most players the current model is good enough, so why not just move on with the other features announced 2 years ago and save the new tire physics for S3?
As mentioned, that tip was in made in reference to Underground 2, which has quirky physics with magical nitrous that does increase rear tire grip. Underground 2 models oversteer in turns, but it's not an issue unless the car is on grass or cobblestones (shortcuts), and using nitrous if on a slick surface does prevent the cars from excessive oversteer (or spinning). Otherwise, nitrous is used conventially to increase speed on the straights.
NFS Undercover has magical nitrous that greatly increases downforce, so much so that it is best to use nitrous in turns and over jumps (to reduce or eliminate air time), even with partial throttle, and for Undercover nitrous is mostly used in turns.
There was also a reference to using nitrous similarly in NFS World in an older "Ask Marc (DeVellis)" video, but in this case the effect doesn't exist, or it's masked by the fact that oversteer and understeer are virtually non-existant (perhaps through some hidden assist).
I'm not aware of any other NFS game where nitrous has a direct or otherwise unexpected effect on handling. NFS Shift only uses nitrous on the lower rated cars, which includes 3 of the 5 online classes (4.0, 6.0, 10.0). The top classes don't have nitrous (14.0, unrestricted).
As far as comparasons between NFS Shift and the console "sim-oriented" type games. the PC version of NFS shift is reasonably realistic. NFS Shift exaggerates the amount of oversteer used in turns, but it gives you a sense of what the rear end of a car is doing, and it looks cool. Control inputs aren't very sensitive either, as once in 3rd or 4th gear, you can take most turns at full throttle without fear of oversteer because of internal hidden assists preventing excessive yaw. You can spin out the faster cars in lower gears, but there aren't that many slow speed turns in the tracks used in NFS Shift, and in some cases steering inputs are enough to control oversteer with a minimum of throttle modulation.
As far as the future of NFS racing games or racing games in general, I'm not so sure. Autosimsport, a sim-oriented racing online magazine, hasn't published a new magazine since about a year ago. iRacing is in a somewhat niche market with about 10,000 active players. LFS has been stuck for over 2 years trying to fix the tire physics, and it's essentially a 5 to 7 year old game (S2, S1). I'm not sure when rFactor 2 will be released or what it will be like. I'm wonder how many more NFS games or at least PC versions of NFS games will be made after Shift 2, my guess is perhaps 1 or 2 more.
In terms of sales numbers, the NFS series has been dominant. In the heydays of racing games, NFS Underground 2 and Most Wanted sold 9 million copies each. Carbon, ProStreet, and Undercover about 5 million copies (took longer for Undercover to get to 5 million sales though). I don't know the numbers for NFS Shift, but it's more than any console specific racing game.
That could be an issue with textures. Try setting ansiotropic filter to max settings in CCC to see if that makes a difference.
I recall a similar issue in Toca Race Driver 2, but that turned out to be a low visual polygon count for track textures, and anti-aliasing seemed to have no effect on this.
I think this is the key point. No game physics is never going to truly emulate real life, so developers need to "draw the line" at some point when it's close enough. Scawen has spent about 1 1/2 years probably trying and abandoning various approaches only to run into issues that occur when driving at the limits, and having to start over again with yet another approach. The lack of real world data for various types of tires and cars under various real world conditions isn't helping either.
Racing cars (and street cars during development) are often instrumented (temperature sensors for tire surfaces, sensors (acceleration and position) placed on every moving part of the chassis and suspension, then taken to test or race tracks to gather data, but this data is seldom released to game developers, so at best, the game developers manage to get some data for perhaps just a few cars.
iRacing has also gone through it's growing pains in terms of physics and car parameter tweaks, in spite of it's huge team and budget, for example, the excessive engine braking effect on the spec racer Ford, causing it to spin at even a hint of lift throttle in turns was fixed about a year after release.
In the end, the differences between the sim oriented games, for example iRacing versus Live For Speed, will be a difference in "feel", as opposed a difference in "realism".
We can only hope that "drawing the line" will translate into an update for LFS sometime later this year.
There are some serious soccer fans that would like to see this change. It's not like hockey scores are much higher than soccer scores, so it wouldn't change the game much. What it would prevent is teams moving defenders up to near mid-field after a score or if in a tournament where a 0-0 draw allows a team to advance. It would force teams to play a clean game rather than exploit the offsides rule. From what I understand they've already changed the offsides rule slightly from what it was several years ago.
despite the momentary hype, most in USA don't care about soccer. Most of the best USA atheletes go into USA core sports, USA football, basketball, baseball, track and field, ... , so USA ends up "importing" many of it's soccer players.
Personally, I find soccer somewhat boring, and the "offsides" rule somewhat annoying. It should adapt something similar to hockey's rules and it's blue line, which would eliminate "defensive" play accomplished by moving the defensive players upfield.
I don't play LFS anymore (or if so, very rarely). Still. I follow the forum to watch what is going on, sort of like following a story and waiting to see how it ends. Patch or no patch, how many games survive for more than 5 years, much less than the nearly 7 years LFS has been going on? I think we knew all along with just 3 people on the team, that the pace was going to be slow and that ultimately it would become an outdated game, but that doesn't mean it's not interesting, and there are still over 1000 players online at peak times, although it's not the same players from back in the peak days of racing games 2003 -> 2006.
I would expect the graphics in HP3 to be better than previous NFS games, except for NFS Shift. I'm not sure how the gameplay will be, other than the videos, but my guess is that it will end up being one of the better NFS games.
Shift has bad AI, but otherwise it's an enjoyable game, with great graphics, and reasonable physics, especially if you like drifting through turns which is the preferred method with some of the cars in Shift like the Zonda.
So far, the best AI I've seen in a NFS game was in NFS World's March 5 beta session, on the highest driver level tracks, where the AI were competitive enough to require the player to use nitrous to win races, without the AI collisions that occur with NFS Shift. Since the March 5 beta, the AI have been slowed down, so few players will realize the potential that is in World's AI.
Back to hot pursuit 3, too soon to really tell how it will turn out.
Originally hip hop mean disco oriented rap, not rap in general. The terminology has changed.
Not all of it, but much of it. The later versions were done with permission, it's the early versions that were literally stolen that bothered me, since it reminded me of some of the musical rip-offs that pre-date disco as I mentioned before.
Anyway, probably because I'm old, I prefer disco and all it's descendants type of music (house, techno, trance, ....) versus most rap songs. I tend to like certain songs because I find them interesting as opposed to the type of song. For example, I like "chris rea's" "looking for the summer", even though it's essentially a country song. The video does have a caterham though.
Is this a thread about rap music or hip-hop? Aren't these two different types of music?
Being an old guy (58 years) old, I went through the mid to late 60's and early 70's rock era. Started earlier than most with disco in 1975 which lasted through early 1980's and still the basis of house type music. I like a variety of music, but rarely is there a country western or rap song that I actually like.
The first popular rap song, "rapping to the beat" simply ripped off the music of "good times" by "chic" (without permission in that case), starting a tradition of chatting to some old disco song (superfreak -> can't touch this, forget-me-nots -> men in black, I wish -> wild wild west, under pressure -> ice ice baby, ...)
Then again recyling riffs from other songs predates the disco / rap era, for example "spirit in the sky" is a recylced version of "on the road again" by "canned heat".
As far as complicated songs go, it's not required to be popular. There are a few one chord or nearly one chord songs that were popular. "Tommorow never knows", is two chords, C and C with Bb added. Beck's "Loser" is not only a one chord song, it's mostly a one riff song. On the other hand you have song's like Crosby's "guinnevere" with alternate guitar tuning.
"... if only I had waited until turn 2 before I tried to pass those 6 other players ..."
The online play isn't dead, it's just changed, from what it was back in 2003 when I started with S1. As mentioned there are still a large number of players online, more so than most other racing games.
I always knew that with just 3 developers, progress was going to be slow, and my guess back in 2005 was that S3 would get released in 2009, which probably would have been true had it not been for the tire physics redo.
I've never understood why they call it "alpha", since it's really a "beta" release, since the public or a sub-set of the public are testing the game, as opposed to an "alpha" release which is "in house", hired game testers, and/or consultants, but not the general public.