rec.autos.simulators

Anyone who blames Timmy instead of Tammy for the first lawn not getting
mowed is lacking intellectual resources and possesses an inadequately
developed reasoning faculty for someone of an age of eight years old,
much less an adult.  I don't know any more polite way to say it.

Seriously, read that story to your kids and at the end, ask them why
the first lawn didn't get finished, and why it is probably going to
take a very long time to get the second lawn done as measured from when
the first one was started.  Sadly, I would bet the kids are smarter
than the adults on this one.

Or, just cop out like someone else here did and say the story doesn't
reflect the picture as closely as your version would,  which implies
either that I'm lying, stupid, misinformed and gullible, or that they
have better, more accurate sources of information than I, much less
Ashley McConnell and Gregor Veble, do.  The last option is not likely.
Tony and I have been working together for a year and a half, I've
chatted daily with Chris, Gregor, and Ashley for at least that long,
and had dinner and beer with Chris and Tony.  If I'm not mistaken,
Gregor attended Ashley's wedding, and Ash has spent quite a lot of time
cavorting around with Chris and Tony.  If you think Chris, Tony, and
Gregor are lying to Ashley and he's too dumb to figure it out, please
say so.  I must warn you though, Ash is a pretty big guy :-)

Before forming an opinion about any subject at all in our lives,
whether it's racing simulator development (which you and the
Joe-Red-Bob's of the world don't do for a living, I must point out),
politics, money, or anything else, we should all really consider the
sources of our information, don't you agree?

One poll they took was asking the community if they would consider
purchasing the product while it was being developed in fractions, with
equally fractional pricing along the way, to help pay for food and rent
and so on while working towards the end product, which even after at
least two years of working on that demo that popped up out of nowhere,
would still require several more years to create.  I remember when this
was going on and watched eagerly what the community's reaction would
be.  They overwhelmingly said yes.  The LFS crew then took a typical
price and divided it by three, then intended to release it in thirds as
it was being developed.  You need S1, S2, and S3 licenses to have the
full product they were planning.  Had the community said no, they would
most likely have worked straight through S3 and then released it as the
full priced product it will one day be.  In other words, you would not
be able to buy Live For Speed yet because they ain't done!

Bottom line:  They won't be finished with the full priced, completed
product they envisioned and originally set out to make until after S3
is released.  LFS is NOT finished.  You aren't paying $60 for it.
You're paying 2/3 the price of the full, completed, final Live For
Speed version 1.0.

What year did they start?  If I'm not mistaken, it was about two years
before RL began, wasn't it?  They still aren't finished and won't be
probably for another year or two.  That'll be something like a six or
seven year development cycle for their final, "full cost" product,
which can then be fairly compared with RL, which is being developed and
is to be released in one step rather than three intermittent steps.  RL
is sitting at about three years development now.  Right on course.
They aren't releasing RL in three one third priced stages like LFS is.
That's all.  Want a demo in the mean time?  Well, a demo is a product
in itself and takes considerable extra time to create.  Rest assured
that LFS S3 would have been released sooner than it will be had they
not done S1 and S2 as separate steps along the way.

Will that be out before RL?  That remains to be seen, but that is the
time to judge who finished their product first.  And don't forget, LFS
has a two year head start.  So if RL is released any earlier than two
years after LFS S3 is released, RL was finished faster!

And if one is to point at WSC as part of their development time and say
these time frames are inaccurate, read the kiddie story again.  Hint:
WSC was lawn #1.  And the bitch took the lawn mower ;-)

Racer:  That's a tough one to guage because it isn't a finished game,
and was never intended to be.  It's an ongoing hobby project that
again, started well before RL did, and it isn't finished either.  So
again, this is a poor comparison.  Ruud has been working on other
things that have sprung from Racer for several years now.

I'd also like to point out that Chris West and Gregor Veble had a
TREMENDOUS influence on some of these sims you're talking about, such
as Racer, Netkar, and the full-sized hobby project I had going before I
got into Virtual RC Racing.  We all used to send emails back and forth
about how to model certain things, and in the "old days of RAS" we held
many of those discussions right here at r.a.s..  I think you were
around then, Francois, so probably remember.  That was back when there
were 11,000 posts a month.  And none of them were as rude, insulting,
or ignorant as many of the posts in this thread have been.  There were
plenty of devs involved in those discussions.  Ranging from Chris West
himself to Gregor, Ashley, Ruud van Gaal of Racer, Petri Blomquist (who
showed me how to calculate rigid body rotation from angular momentum
vectors properly), Dave Pollatsek (Viper Racing and possibly others),
Doug Milliken ("Race Car Vehicle Dynamics"), Matt Jessick (Championship
Burnout, IHRA Drag Racing, and a couple other titles), Stefano
(NetKar), Sebastien Tixier (the VRally and possibly some other games),
and several others that I don't remember off the top of my head.

In a sense, we all taught each other how to develop sims, and many of
us still communicate.  Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent...

Any other titles to compare?

Let's take my own and Tony's:

Virtual RC Racing...  How long did it take to develop?  The information
is out there, so let's test your resourcefulness in this area right now
and see if you can find the correct information and pass it along to
me.  This may be an eye opener for you.

NetKar:  Great product.  Again, NetKar started before RL did.  Is it
for sale yet?  I know, I know, there's a demo.  Well, if somebody wants
to skip the extra time consuming step of producing a demo and instead
wants to go straight to the end product and make a demo at or after
that time instead, they are indeed speeding up their development,
aren't they?  To me that doesn't seem to be a dumb move at all.  The
end product will be released faster without a "half way point demo."
Period.  Don't even argue with me on that one, ok? :-D

But when you

<I am smiling BIG while awaiting this answer! :-D>

 Sure one of them was very good in 3d modeling and you

Tasks:
1.  Programming
2.  Art/3D modelling

Personell:
1.  Programmer
2.  Artist

Now, unless I'm mistaken, the organizational decision that is being
pursued is to have the programmer do the programming and the artist do
the Art/3D modelling.

That was bad organization?  How would you have done it differently?

One of those two things will require more time than the other will.
That means there is some left over time for one of the people to do
other things, such as a transporter (again, how long did that take to
where we're still hearing about it a couple years later?), twenty three
tracks and probably fifteen or twenty cars for Virtual RC Racing plus
tons ...

read more »

Every time Timmy thought he was finished he saw that the part of the yard he
had started with was now to long (for his intended vision) again.   ;o)

Elrikk

Look, nobody here really think it takes 6 months to fiinish a quality
product.  We all know the time it takes, how consuming the task is.  Nobody
is pointing fingers at them going "Haha you are taking your time".  We're
shouting vapourware because they bragged long, long before it was even
necessary, about things that were just the wrong ones.

They wouldn't be bragging us with teddy bears, leather wallets and rendered
shots of things that we clearly don't think are that much important ;)  With
the West Brothers, we all, each and every one of us, called "SHENANIGAN!!!"
at one point or another.  And we're forgiving them for the whole WSC fiasco.

That's the difference, somehow.  Nice info btw.  Btw I still respect the
West bros. for having the guts to do such thing.  I respect their love for
racing, and heck we all here share it, especially their attachment to the
historical values of racing series of the past.  For me it was all
vapourware anyway until I put my hands on my wheels and it would do
something on the screen.

No that's not it.  You know if X feature is made before Y, and one way or
another it'll take the same development time, nobody cares.  But you don't
go bragging to the community about the marvellous 3d renders you have, and
talk about various pricing schemes, when you know it's years ahead of a
remotely good product.  They did that with WSC also.

They should have left us alone a long time ago.  And start braging when you
know... it's time to do it.

--
-- Fran?ois Mnard <ymenard>
-- This announcement is brought to you by the Shimago-Dominguez
Corporation - helping America into the New World...

Bruce.

And yet it's amazing how many people claim to either "not care" or
"know better" get worked up each time this happens. ;)

??  Which facts am I denying?  That people are getting worked up over
meaningless postings in a fringe newsgroup?  (and we are a fringe) I'm
fully willing to admit that.

Not being an investor, I'm not fussed by what you may or may not have
done with your money.

Please proceed to call me names now to prove my point.

Gregor

There are enough of the old guys who are doing just that.  We simply don't
post.  Unfortunately, don't even really have much time to check in here in
the last years.  I've always admired Chris and Tony's vision, never felt
they promised anything to me personally, enjoyed their screenshots over the
years, and if something good comes out of it, then I will certainly buy the
product.  If not, I'll just go on enjoying the other fine things in life.

cheers,
Stephen

great to hear from you again! Has life been treating you good (well,
apart from making you older, naturally)?

Exactly, racing sims are supposed to be one of the finer things in life,
not something to get worked up about. Also, if one projects everything
one ever wanted out of a racing sim onto its release, there's bound to
be disappointment when it is out. I am pretty confident that the people
who are most negative about it are also the people who are least likely
to "get" what it will all be about, as it will not strive to be a cookie
cutter sim that would simply try to be bigger and better.

Cheers,

-Gregor

Andrew McP

I've been dubious that the westies have thought all this thru and can
pull it off, and I've made my share of cheap jokes at he cats expense
because they've left the door open for it with no-update update sites
and graphic masterbation etc..

But it's their idea, their money and if they have attracted money from
investors who are over 18 and legally in charge of their own financial
decisions (don't know if they have or not, haven't followed it), more
power to them and good luck.