The competition is closer because there are more average racers than alien racers. Except for Botsi and Excellent, they are rather active and capable of doing gr8 hotlaps.
It's great to hear about WR racers on servers, leagues, etc. I'm really pleased that LFS still has the rich, full online life that I remember many, many years ago.
But, as I get banned for having a ping greater than 100, welcome to the rest of the worlds LFS online experience.
I'm sure that 'when' the game finally get's it's physics update ( Plus whatever else is coming, VR for more immersive online racing.........,) It MAY start to grow in actual racer numbers. But till then it's a great cruise simulator. As it has been for many years in this part of the world.
FYI, don't bother telling me I haven't been online for ages, I am aware of that as I prefer to actually play racing games, rather than cruise/drift sims.
Randomly brought up memories of [AMG] AS3 w/ GTRs. The diversity back then was insane. Having servers both for GTRs, TBOs, GTIs and Open Wheelers to choose from and play on was too much fun. Falken Drift Server was a blast too, no bs, no dumb insim with a drift scorer, just everyone having a blast. Now even the drift servers have a biased community.
I also am not in favor of this whole Steam thing.. But.. LFS lacks heavily with paying options though.
Last week I was in Riga, visited Cryptocash with help of coinatmradar.com (actually wanted to use ATM @Moscow but this one I needed to report as disappeared), could convert some cash Euro's into bitcoin. Its the cheapest and quickest method to transfer money around. One of the things why Steam got so popular is because of the global supported paying options. LFS also needs something like that otherwise it never gets removed from the dark side of the internet anymore. It must be really made easy for people to get rid of their money and get a license.
I totally agree, for exemple the only way for us in our country to buy games and software legally (since Steam has some creative soft available) is to use the Steam gift card, which can be bought through some computer parts retailers here.
Scawen started it already by making variable price according to geographical position, and it’s great as I don't see any other games that are doing the same thing without their respective stores, but he can't change the fact about currency convertibility, and that's our main problem here.
I don't like steam monopoly, I’d hope for other stores to make some competition with improved flexibility and less constraints for indy developers, maybe then Scavier will be convinced, but that doesn't mean LFS cannot improve its popularity without steam, it's just that I can't think of another efficient way for LFS marketing.
Steam is also quite unique in that it also offers regional based pricing, provided the publisher takes advantage of it. There's multiple zones in SEA and EU I believe for pricing.
Like it or not, Steam is still the best platform in terms of features as well as DRM for a storefront. It's up to you whether or not you actually want to interface with steam's API for DRM, there's countless other services available to a developer AND you can actually generate keys to sell on your own storefront to be distributed by Steam.
Steam knows that both the developer/publisher and the consumer are their customers. As a result, they treat both parties with respect.
It seems to me that the shadow map, which is in "Carname"_Default, must be separated from the skin of the machine and multiplied by it.
But it looks like the next progress report will come out with the sirocco
I can hardly wait for its introduction into LFS, first announced on 12 December 2008. /joke
"Hello LFS Racers.
We are pleased to announce that we plan to release the new VW Scirocco in Live for Speed during the week ending Friday 19th December.
If you'd like to have a look at the car in 3D or start working on a skin.." https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/51274-VW-Scirocco-release-plan
Seriously, lets just look forward to the physics update.
I know it's hard for you to understand, but no one cares about the production date of the car, more so the fact that new content (in the form of a car) is being added to LFS after a long time.