LFS Mods Support - Coming Soon!

This is extremely exciting. Because the (very) small dev team can only do so much content while working on the core software. BUT the community can fix that! Methinks it might be time for me to get around to buying a S3 license for LFS.

If I understand correctly, no track mods, right? If not, that's not a huge biggie for me, given that LFS seems to have a nice selection of varied circuits by default, but hopefully that's on their list for the future.
 
If I understand correctly, no track mods, right? If not, that's not a huge biggie for me, given that LFS seems to have a nice selection of varied circuits by default, but hopefully that's on their list for the future.
Even if they had to go the fictional way would add to the game, there's some very good ones around that the creators might allow to be converted.
 
So the vehicle editor is out


Pleasently surprised by how instinctive everything is. I feel like it could be a great platform to learn vehicular modding or test random experimental projects, even if you're not interested in LFS itself.

The fact that all the important stuff is in plain text(at best) in platforms like AC makes it hard to learn what everything does if you don't really know what you're doing, but here you can just move random coordinates and change random values and see what happens on screen. Exporting your test car to LFS is very easy too.

There's even built-in support for 3-wheelers, 2-wheelers(looks very experimental, don't expect much), and non-vehicular objects with no wheel/no drive, among other things.
Screenshot_4.jpg
 
I happened to open LFS and saw the update say "mod support" and thought was seeing things :O_o:. Really expected some coverage on here though. This is huuuge news if you've followed sim racing since it was S1. Although the mods look visually primitive I'm sure the underpinnings of everything are well thought out. LFS always had the most polished experience in any of the small sims from that time.
 
Although the mods look visually primitive I'm sure the underpinnings of everything are well thought out
Exactly. Plus, since this is a new feature, and the sim doesn't have a huge userbase, you wouldn't expect amazing quality instantly -- it'll take a little while to get 'warmed up', I bet.
 
I used to love this but other sims moved on quite a lot after the scirocco business. It feels like one of those abandonware alphas on Steam. These days I'm happy enough to drive the tracks in AC instead.
 
I used to love this but other sims moved on quite a lot after the scirocco business. It feels like one of those abandonware alphas on Steam. These days I'm happy enough to drive the tracks in AC instead.
it absolutely didn't help that the main users for the last ten years were those "Cruise" server people playing vehicular cops&robbers.
I dunno what Scawen expected from this new mod system, but it was probably not people literally scavenging sketchfab and other 3D model repository sites for anything on wheels. You can drive your same five track environments with tractors, hamburgers and motorcycles now. Or rips from other racing games "laundered" by being uploaded to sketchfab...

In my eyes the LFS Editor is basically designed to prevent quality mods,. You can import obj models made in real 3D tools, but it discards the UV map and materials, needing you to create these in an abysmal, against-all-standards-just-for-the-hell-of-it-system inside the Editor. You can't bake textures, you can't do high to lowres baking, tiling something like carbon fiber seamless over your interior turns from a ten minute job into days of work, needing something like setting up 12 artificial cameras and selecting individual triangles based on its angle - as someone who's made stuff in Blender for 7 years now, I can't accept this. I can't make a model to the quality I aim for, hence I stopped the two ideas I had for new cars. I told this to Scawen and Eric on the forum but got only half assed reply. They don't like me anyway I guess, as I've been critical on the route the whole sim went for years now.

Outside of the 3D models, that Editor is basically "Automation" by Camshaft Software. You can't enter exact numbers for things like CoG or engine power, these are calculate inside the Editor. To define car weight and CoG you create and move engine, tank and frame elements around, same with suspension points. Regarding suspension, LFS apparently can't do wishbones that are inclined, or rather wishbones are defined by just two points, meaning no anti-dive or anti-squat (but it can do motorbikes now..)

The way these cars are distributed through an in-house server system is brilliant. You don't need any external site and tool, you can see other peoples car even if you had not used them before, offering the same simpolicity LFS always had with skins. In theory this meant that like a league could have set up guidelines, and participants could then build there own cars for it.

All of this may be attractive for someone totally new to racing sims, but for the rest of the simracing world its just an oddity. Could have worked in 2010, when LFS was still full of life, but not now.
 
Last edited:
Yeah it's a real shame the sim can't get the quality mods it deserves. I still think it feels great to drive all these years into it.

Oh well. LFS is what it is, take it leave it.....
 
Yeah it's a real shame the sim can't get the quality mods it deserves. I still think it feels great to drive all these years into it.

Oh well. LFS is what it is, take it leave it.....
Try now. After few months there are so many good mods out there, but.. more has to come.
LFS is about to finally get adult after 20 years and we will very soon see:
Game physics at 1000Hz and not 100Hz anymore.
Multi threading.
Directx11.
New small tracks and some old tracks heavily updated.
New lighting system.
Updated tire physics.
New echo sound generated.
I call it LFS 1.0 and the developer is finally getting there, also he is now posting weekly to detail what he is doing: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/100464
 
Try now. After few months there are so many good mods out there, but.. more has to come.
LFS is about to finally get adult after 20 years and we will very soon see:
Game physics at 1000Hz and not 100Hz anymore.
Multi threading.
Directx11.
New small tracks and some old tracks heavily updated.
New lighting system.
Updated tire physics.
New echo sound generated.
I call it LFS 1.0 and the developer is finally getting there, also he is now posting weekly to detail what he is doing: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/100464
Super excited to try that out when it arrives!
 
Try now. After few months there are so many good mods out there, but.. more has to come.
LFS is about to finally get adult after 20 years and we will very soon see:
Game physics at 1000Hz and not 100Hz anymore.
Multi threading.
Directx11.
New small tracks and some old tracks heavily updated.
New lighting system.
Updated tire physics.
New echo sound generated.
I call it LFS 1.0 and the developer is finally getting there, also he is now posting weekly to detail what he is doing: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/100464
only like a decade too late. All that's left of the community are a couple hundreds dudes playing cops'n'robbers and a few dozen flooding the new mod system with ripped drift cars. There's no place for racing left in LFS.
 
Back
Top