Live For Speed

John Thawley's post about his slot car hobby http://www.theraceforums.com/forums/...bler-cure.html made me think about my sim racing hobby. It is similar in that both of these hobbies incorporate our passion for motor sports.

I think John wanted to share some information and also try to get a few more people interested in participating. There is a shared joy in shared experiences. I thought that I would do the same thing, except my hobby is Live For Speed.

I only started getting interested in motor sports a few years ago. I had always been a computer game geek, so I bought a game for my kid's Playstation called Gran Turismo. It was a racing "sim" game that had a bunch of real life and fantasy tracks and a bunch of real car models. Well, it was fun to play with, but it just didn't give you that satisfaction of really racing.

So, I had bought a newer computer, and I started looking around for a good computer simulator to use.
I first found the old classic, Grand Prix Legends. This game was based around the late 60's Formula 1 cars. I bought a steering wheel and pedal set and got started. It was very difficult to drive. It was very complex. It was pretty darned realistic from what I could tell.

GPL did have an online mode but I never used it. I saw lap times posted by other players and thought that I would never be able to keep up with them. I couldn't even beat the computer drivers.

I generally do prefer tin tops to open wheel cars and I wanted something with lower powered cars that would be slower and not so touchy.

I tried a bunch of games. NASCAR 2003 was OK, but I am just not much of a fan of oval racing. The cars were hard to drive and you start figuring out that knowing how to setup a car is very important.

The Simbin based games like GTR and all the rest just did not have the right feel. The were loud, they had cool tracks and cars, they had awesome graphics, but they just lacked that realistic behaviour. You could tell you were driving a game. Plus, those awesome graphics come at a high price. The need to have the latest and greatest graphics cards and monitors is very expensive.

I finally found a game called Live For Speed (www.liveforspeed.net). It was an independent game created by just three people who used to work for the big game developers. They wanted to build a racing simulator their way and on their schedule.



At first I wasn't too impressed with it. The graphics were kind of dull. The cars were fairly limited, the tracks were all fantasy tracks (in other words, they were not modeled after a real world track), and the cars were not easy to drive.

I tried it for a while and then went back to GPL.

But, I then read online that the next version of LFS was due out soon. I went back to the trial version I had and gave it another go. I knew that the sim was really designed for online racing, but I still had not tried it online. I didn't think I would be fast enough. I kept working at it and started to get the hang of it.

I bought the full version which added more tracks and cars. There were front and rear wheel drive street cars, two models of Lotus 7 type cars (very cool), higher prep versions of the street cars, a little kart like car, a car called the RaceAbout that is a real car, and a few others.



I practiced with the street cars, read up on the forums, and then decided to race online.

What a rush! Racing against other real people in real time was a blast. I just joined a server that was doing short sprint races, what we call "pick up" races. It was open to anybody who wanted to join up for a while. People would pop in for 15 minutes or an hour and race. It was a blast.

I was hooked. I bought the upcoming second version, called S2, before it was released. When it came out, we had new tracks and new cars and better physics. Several open wheel cars were added and later on, a model of the 2006 BMW Sauber F1 car. We got race versions of the street cars and a few other fun cars. Only a couple of the cars are real world cars and none of the tracks are. But the tracks are well laid out and are a blast to drive. We have everything from wide open European style F1 tracks, to basic little club racing tracks.

There are two things that really drew me to this game. The online racing and the physics.

The online racing can be as simple as pickup races or full blown leagues with multiple races and a points system, penalties, championships and sometimes prizes. There are even 24 hour endurance races with driver handoffs with teammates.

There is a dark side to online racing. There are a lot of children out there and others who think it is fun to crash cars and generally wreak havoc. But, you really only run into that in those pickup races and there is a good control system within the game to keep things like that to a minimum.

The physics, while not perfect, are better than any other racing sim out there, period. Of course, that is my opinion, but I am sticking to it. I don't know everything about car physics, but I have done a lot of research on the subject. When you make a small tweak in suspension or tire settings in the game, you can feel it. You know what to expect from those changes. The car behaves believably in most situations. After some experience on a real track in a real car, I am now even more confident that LFS is getting it right.

There are many people out there who just don't get it. "It doesn't have real cars" is one argument. Well, neither does any other game. You drive a Caterham or a Corvette in GTR, you might as well be driving the same car. They don't feel any different. Sure, the engine noises change and the absolute speed changes, but the way the car handles and turns is always the same. In LFS, each car has a distinct feel that matches exactly with the type of car that it is. It is quite amazing really.

The other argument is that there are no real tracks in LFS. This one is harder to counter. It would be nice to have some real world tracks to use. But, the provided tracks in LFS are so good, that you don't notice it much. I would love to have PIR, my home track, in the game. That way I could try different lines and different things to see about improving my lap times. But, there are licensing fees and copyrights that make that a pretty unlikely thing for a small independent game company.

Part of the reason the LFS is so attractive to me is that it really raises my understanding of racing in general. I understand why some drivers make boneheaded dives inside when trying to pass. I know how hard it is to keep track of other cars around you. I know how hard it is to keep your concentration up for several hours at a time. I know just how hard it is to be fast yet to manage you tires at the same time. Sure, all of my experience is based on a computer simulator, and I know that I really don't have knowledge of a real race driver, but you do understand better what is going on during a race. It is a bit like being an amateur golfer watching a pro go at it. You have a firmer understanding of just how hard that shot was.

If you are interested, check out the LFS website linked above. You will find links for downloading the demo version, links to the community forums that has a wealth of information, and pictures of the cars and the tracks.

Contact me if you want information about good wheels to get and what you will need for your computer. I will tell you that LFS will run quite well on a mid range graphics card, something less than $150. Although LFS physics don't have a lot of bling, they are very good and are not overdone so you can race with a pretty limited computer.

Come join me in racing with The League of the Americas (www.lfs-lota.net) and see if you can beat me. I am currently running in the Street Stock mini-series.

Oh, and don't be put off if you get the demo and see that your lap times are seconds off of the world record pace. This is normal. The great thing about LFS is that you will always find somebody about your speed to race with. And, you will improve with experience... it doesn't come easily.



PS

I just learned that there will be an update of LFS before Christmas that will include a model of the Formula BMW car. LFS will be used as part of a promotion for a European Formula BMW team's search for a new driver. Pretty cool!