[Samor]

http://www.liveforspeed.net/

Cool stuff; by the end of the week I should even have time for it. Note, this is about the full version, that one has to purchase.
Chances are the demo version will be updated too by that time, for the people that aren't so eager to buy it

 

[Player-X]

are you going to buy is and use more car-fu on cloud?

 

[Samor]

yeah, I'm getting it; I don't think cloud will though

Finally, it seems the game will live up to it's name - one of the problems of the original LFS was that it didn't feature very fast cars at all.
As you can see in my current signature, that's about to change

 

[Metalmurphy]

/me wishes he had VISA.

Ill see if i can get this one now xD

 

[Samor]

it's out now, and it kicks ass

note - it's not free. Just so you know.

 

[Katsuya]

How are the vehicle physics? And does it work well with gamepads?

 

[Metalmurphy]

Vehicle physics is one of the highlights in this game. At least in S1 it was. Nice car btw samor xD

 

[ViperXtreme]

hmmm, do i need to make another folder in extracting or just overwrite the old S1 files to acquire the sub S2 license?

 

[Samor]

How are the vehicle physics? And does it work well with gamepads?

they're excellent; each car differs a lot in handling.
It's a simulation rather than an arcade racer

I play the game with an analog gamepad myself. It can be really sensitive on some cars though, so make sure you have an accurate one.
I use a thrustmaster dual power (revision 3 or so) myself. Saitek analog gamepads also work excellent in the game; can't comment on others.
A regular joystick would probably work well too, and of course it's very steeringwheel friendly. Using the keyboard is NOT recommended.

hmmm, do i need to make another folder in extracting or just overwrite the old S1 files to acquire the sub S2 license?

nope, new folder. It has all the S1 content in it, but everything's revised. If you have an S1 license, AFAIK you should be able to unlock all the S1 content in S2.

 

[ViperXtreme]

hmmm, so it would unlock the cars from S2 thats available already in S1?

 

[Samor]

indeed. same tracks too.
I can recommend the new stuff as well though.

Note: because of licensing, LFS uses many fictional cars closely resembling real ones,
but the one in my avatar/sig is actually real: http://www.raceabout.fi/

 

[Samor]

some more on the controls (maybe this will help a little, if you're reading this, n_w) - I recently tried tweaking a little.

An analog gamepad has somewhat of an unfair advantage, but at the same time a disadvantage.
The axes on an analog gamepad have the same functionality as one on a wheel, or joystick.
So, turning full left with an analog stick is the same as turning full left with a steering wheel.
As the analog sticks are rather small on a pad, this allows for some VERY quick steering, much faster than realistically would be possible. The advantage is you can recover from some slides very easily; the disadvantage is, because the sticks are so small, it's also easier to get into a slide. That's nice for drifting, but it can be difficult with normal driving, especially with some of the faster cars.
The game has 2 compensations for this:
- you can lower the max wheel turn. Thats nice, but that makes it difficult to get around certain corners. Not really handy (the default setting is quite adequate)
- analog steer smooth in the MISC options. Very similar to the analog (steer) smooth setting in MAME. This will "lag" steering response a little. I'm currently experimenting with this and set it at 70 in LFS. At 70, it's still possible to do really quick reactions with a gamepad but not as insane as when it's set to 0. The max setting is 90, but I found that to be too laggy to be comfortable.

A sort of disadvantage of LFS is that one can't set deadzones (it seems to have some automatic setting for it). It depends on the pad used, but this can make the car very twitchy with the slightest movement on a pad. It works quite well with my pad though because the axis is very well aligned, which means it's actually centered when it should be, but if the center of your pad is even slightly off, it can be quite annoying, and it's not uncommon for a pad (or joystick) to have that.

 

[n_w95482]

Sorry for the mini-revival but I felt I had to reply to this .

When I tried the new 0.5P version, it seemed like the controls weren't quite as twitchy (I use a gamepad so I suffered from the lack of a deadzone setting in S2). However, because of the change (did it actually change or is it just me being weird? ) it made the game a lot easier to control. As a result, I was able to have some more fun with the game than was possible with the earlier S2 releases. That, and the acquisition of a debit card D), led me to buy an S2 license. For those that have any interest in simulation racing games: get the game. I've been having a blast with the online play, and single player is fun to mess around with (AI-controlled F1 cars on dirt? Yay ). With the much larger selection of cars and tracks versus the demo, it's like playing a whole new game, even if you've been playing the S1/S2 demos for a while like me . Every car is vastly different from one another and the different layouts for each track is cool. The physics are pretty nice, especially the tire physics (48 sampling points on each tire, enabling simulation of flat spots and whatnot). It's pretty cool to see the sidewalls on the tires flex around a lot when the tires are flat, as well as having the car feel like it's driving on gel.

Some criticisms I have of the game so far is that some of the cars sound odd (like the Formula V8 and FXO Turbo). They don't sound like what I would expect them to. The damage modeling is rather light as well, particularly on the Formula cars. You have to hit a wall going at a very high rate of speed to get severe amounts of damage and even then the car is still quite drivable. If you're driving the XF GTI and the front end of the car is almost to the windshield, the car should be stopped, not driving along at 180 kph . Those aren't very serious downfalls though and they're understandable as the game is still in alpha stage.

As for the deadzone problem, I was able to fix it using the Logitech Profiler software's dead zone adjustment. I still have to tweak it a little bit but it feels rather nice at 15%. So if you have a Logitech gamepad and you're having problems controlling cars in S2 (super sensitive controls or wandering cars while not touching the controls), try messing around with the program .

Edit: Here's a funny picture of a glitch or something weird I encountered while in the Formula V8 car. I had AA set to 8xS and AF set to 16x in that picture . That reminds me, the game is rather CPU limited with a bunch of cars onscreen. I guess all of the physics added up gets rather demanding...

 

[Samor]

hm, dunno why but I don't have problems with the lower wheel turn setting anymore. Dunno what I did wrong before. I guess it helps a little...