I wasn't talking about bugs but faults in the track design.
Real track has been proved to be good in real life (excluding Tilke tracks). Otherwise the track would have never been built in the first place. If there is some stupid corner, it gets fixed and so on. When for example the last corner in Aston, the weird prank of a chicane before the main straight gets fixed?
99% of the players will never drive there IRL so inaccuracies doesn't matter.
Brands was just an example. What about Spa, Nurburgring, Laguna... all open to the public quite frequently... They would need to be accurate for it to be worth the bother. I don't see how 14 miles of Nordschleife could be at all rewarding or exciting unless every little bump, camber, hole, rise and fall on the track, kerbs and grass is modelled... It would just be 14 miles of track that is a bit like Nordscheife, but so different it might as well not even have the corners in the same order or even at all...
What about that track in last seasons a1gp with the stupid hairpin.. that was a very stupid corner design and it was almost impossible to get around it.. Thats a real track and damn it was stupid!
Personally I don't care for real cars or tracks. Despite the fact it has less content so far than most contemporary racing games/sims, I am far more happy with LFS's content because it isn't inaccurate.
How can you say some of the tracks have design faults? I'm pretty sure all of the circuits in LFS are 100% accurate to their original designs. I haven't found a corner in LFS yet that I thought was 'wrong'. Interesting or challenging maybe (last chicane at Aston and the KY Long chicane for example), sometimes it seems some people here always complain about the corners that are just difficult to perfect in driving. Sore losers?
Agree with what ^ said, at least some.
LFS don`t need new tracks, but it needs more track imo. This doesn`t nessesary means they need to be real life tracks, but just...tracks lol.
i agree, the nordschleife track for rfactor is rightly in the hall of fame and yet even without ever visiting the real one, it just does not feel quite right even when compared to the on board videos. geof crammond used the proper maps / plans etc for gp4 and yet they didn't match what you were seeing during the season on tv.
what worries me is that if you have a real life circuit in LFS, or more readily experienced real life cars than bmw f1 or the race about, all you will get posted is loads of requests / demands for "the third kerb stone on the inside of the second bend at monza to be raised an inch or "the transient turn in at 95mph feels slightly less precise than my car" all of which will detract from the overall abilities of LFS, and could give the wrong impression to a casual visitor to the forums who is thinking of trying LFS.
I have to agree with him. absolutely no way they could make real tracks. Think for a second, to make a track you actually have alot of data about it. Wdiths, angles of corners blah blah. you also need to know where all the surface bumps and stuff are. I believe the GT team and Forza actually walked around the tracks collecting that sort of data about bumps and such. This team simply doesn't have the resources to implement a real track @ 2007 standards. and if it doesn't have that then it might as well be a fake track.
And Forza and GT don't exactly have realistic representations of the tracks. Sure the corners are in vaguely the right place and of the right radius/widths, but that's only the first 10% of building a circuit (imo).
Scenery - important for immersion, blind corners and brake/turn markers
Bumps - CRITICAL. Can only be developed by driving on the circuit in question
Surface changes - different tarmac type/age. Dusty areas
Wet surface - again, see the track in the wet, to see where rivers and puddles form, and where dries quickest
Kerbs and chicanes - real drivers cut some corners a bit, but avoid cutting others. This is because of kerb design (and car fragility), and needs to be spot on.
Wind - different parts of the track get blown about more - ties in with scenery and wet weather (drying/mist dissipation).
That's just off the top of my head. I could probably add more about pitlanes, gravel traps, run off areas, track details and what not if I sat down and thought about, and didn't currently have a head full of snot...
Edit (much later in the day): Having ALL of this is absolutely necessary for a real life track in a sim. Way more important than working damage on the cars, or even 100% tyre physics. If you want REALITY is has to be absolutely spot on. Anything less (at Forza/GT4/rFactor/GTR levels is a complete waste of time and energy in my opinion. I'd rather drive a perfect Aston National than a rubbish Spa.
think the point being made here is, unless you want to pay for Eric to fly to Germany or to what ever track. Pay to have it shutdown for a week so they could collect the above data. simply not possibly
GT4's tracks are actually really well made compared with most, but again, the fictional tracks are just as good as (if not better) than the real circuits.
Well, well, well, I certainly have started a debate here. Frankly I cannot understand why anyone who runs LFS wouldn't want a real track from anywhere put into LFS. I read your responses and except for some programming issues, and perhaps licensing problems, I'm astonished at the reasons why you don't want the tracks. In particular the accuracy of the track. What The F? I don't believe for a second that you know all the details of the real track, and doubt that you could even tell if it were slightly off camber in turn 1 for example. As long as it's a close resemblance of the track, I'm down with it, and if you're not, then you don't run the sim, you play a game.
I mean cmon! Imola! Monza! Interlagos! Suzuka! Spa-Freakin-Francorchamps!
Just imagine running those tracks (or your favorite real track) in LFS and there is nothing more that needs to be said.
But if it wasn't 'accurate' why would it give you any more pleasure to drive a 'real track' over a 'fictional' track. Without accuracy, even the 'real tracks' would be 'fictional'.
And bear in mind that I am a purists purist, who wants sims NOT games. Inaccurate real tracks are the stuff for games, not sims.
You do not need an 100% spot on representation of a real track to feel the thrill…
But after all I agree that firstly the developers have to make sure the sim's engine can support a much higher detailed track than these we see in all recent sims we have.
Also there comes the need of more people in order to map accurately a real track and that is the most difficult thing in LFS’s evolution.
It is a step ,I think, that will never happen for lfs… maybe at a future platform after it...
what about some not WORLDWIDE known tracks which would be real but not expensive to get licence for and there wouldnt be much ppl complaining about realysm becouse they wouldnt see it on TV.
or car ... for example alfa romeo 146 or bmw 3 or opel astra modified version for LFS cup (that wouldnt be same as ones from real touring car cups )
Real world tracks would be a fantastic addition to LFS. If people complain about flaws, just ask them to go to McLaren or Williams and purchase their simulator for a few million dollars (which still aren't 100% accurate).
You will always have critics when there is new development, so that's not a good/bad thing but a naturally occurring event. Taking one step back and looking at the big picture.. I think real-world tracks will attract more people to LFS hence more revenue for the devs thus making the effort worthwile & cost-effective.
I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for some sort of a "Level 2" upgrade with real world tracks (S2.5?) I'm sure many who criticize now will also go for it.
Besides just having new tracks, you have consider one more thing.
The intrinsic and emotional value. People will now feel connected (even if loosely) with their favorite moments in motor racing at another mental level. That's a priceless experience, in my humble opinion.
no one who is against it is truly against it. The point is as much as we would love to have it, it can't be done to the extent that would justify it. whats the point of driving on monoco when its not accurate.
Same thing still applies, 99% of the players will never drive IRL on those tracks anyway.
That was a street track. As far as I know the city wasn't build just for the A1GP event, was it?
You misunderstood. A weird/stupid/dangerous corner in unlogical/wrong place is a design fault. There's lots of those in LFS tracks.
Absolutely spot on reality? Obviously games will never be that, why or how could the tracks achieve reality? Can you drive the BMW-Sauber in LFS when you know that it's not 100% accurate copy of the real one?
Lebaron answered that question with this:
Besides just having new tracks, you have consider one more thing. The intrinsic and emotional value. People will now feel connected (even if loosely) with their favorite moments in motor racing at another mental level. That's a priceless experience, in my humble opinion.
The obsession with 'reality' round these parts just leaves me utterly bemused. Come on, if you want REALITY don't **** around on a simulator... Buy a car and go racing (and in that respect, Tristan, you have led by example!).
Despite its graphic limitations, GPL remains utterly immersive, because in my opinion, it is a 'proper sport' that relates to the real world via its limited ability to represent reality.
In other words it doesn't ache, like an adolescent hankering after his first lay, to be 'real'. GPL will always be more immersive than LFS for me, because of the historical depth and the very adult way in which that history is related (just go and have a look at the drawings that were done prior to producing the Montjuich track...). But, Tristan, you are absolutely right in saying that the physics model doesn't mean anything if the tracks aren't right. And LFS' tracks need to be related to something 'real', just in the same way that every kind of artwork needs to be drawn from real life, not adolescent fantasy.
Even with pixel perfect, virtual accuracy, so long as you're looking at a screen (whether its a 360 degree wrap-around, spherical surface, or a snazzy pair of glasses that trace holograms into your eyeballs), you are going to be in a fiction.
All im going to say is Let the Dev's do what there doing atm (aka S2 + later S3) and once they have done that-it will proberly become open for modding then you can have anything you want.
And then you can all come back here and complain about how crap most of the tracks,cars and helicopters with 20mm outboard guns will be as well...
I can accept that some people want the emotional attachment of racing on a known track. These are the people who will never go racing themselves I reckon.
From my own point of view, having the turns about the right radius isn't enough (and that's as close as ANY track in a game has got to reality so far). 99% of the challenges of a track are in the details, none of which have been modelled as yet.
I've stated time and time again that it's my opinion.
Why do people use the monitor excuse? I don't even notice I'm looking at a monitor, just like I don't notice a visor and helmet, or the surface of my eyes. I have very few limitations with it being on a screen. I don't 'see' the distortion. I can percieve depth. Because my brain is now 'trained' to work with moving 3D images on 2D screens.
and there wouldnt be much ppl complaining about realysm becouse they wouldnt see it on TV.