SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Preview: Live for Speed S2 Alpha

Frame rates and overall performance is very good. Adding AI cars results in a hit in fps and if I add some 12 - 15 AI cars the fps drops to approximately 20 - 25 fps which is the area where my system begins to struggle. In this respect I find it comparable to GTR.

On my test machine, LFS S2 Alpha was silky smooth under more normal loads with no stuttering, hiccups or hesitancy in any way.

GUI

For the screenshots of the Graphical User Interface I had to select English as my language, but LFS offers menus in many different languages, including Danish.

In LFS S2 the User Interface still isn't very intuitive, but I've finally learned how to do it the right way, and the interface offers a great deal of control and opportunities to set up your controls.

From the main menu you choose whether you wish to hot lap by yourself, race with the AI, or race online.

When you are done racing or if you wish to pause because you wish to study your driving technique, pressing escape will bring up a menu that lets you view a replay of the action on track. You can save and name your own replays, and this part works very well without being overly "flash" or spectacular. More on replays a bit later in this preview.

AI?

When describing the AI in Live for Speed it is common practice to point out that LFS is an online simulator. Perhaps I should call them "bots" as they seem a bit robotic, and at times not too bright. You have to drive around them and give them a clean berth because if you try to race them, they will generally push and shove their way through. Sorry, but in this case I suspect AI is an abbreviation of Atrociously Incompetent.

One nice tip I picked up about the AI though is that you can get them to use any skins you want in replacement of the one color only default skins; Just name the AI driver the same as the skin you wish the AI driver to use. Voilá!

Multiplayer

The focus and main purpose of LFS is to be an online simulator, and this purpose is served admirably. With a multiplayer code which ranks up there with revered Papyrus it really does lead to the community asking the unavoidable question to other developers; why they can't get multiplayer right, when LFS has had this department checked, sown-up and covered to near perfection since day one.

In addition to the MP code itself, LFS World offers a place that tracks your online stats, lets you upload your own skins and lets you download other players' skins so that you won't have to set up your own web sites or post skins between yourselves. This is absolutely brilliant and serves as an example to follow for future racing sims. No more hunting for skins. Hurrah!

The new options for driver changes in endurance racing have not yet been tested by us. We're keeping an eye out for endurance races where we can test how it really works.

Graphics

As mentioned previously, the evening variations of the tracks look stunning, but actually everything in LFS looks stunning.

Track graphics look real and organic, crisp and true to life. Trees sway and personally I like the fact that the colors are vibrant and slightly more saturated than seen in some other simulators. When I look around me in real life I see Mother nature being fairly generous with saturated colors.

One small wish for improvement from my viewpoint would be thicker steering wheels for the Formula V8 car as well as a more realistic dash in the formula cars. The analogue gauge could well be replaced by something a little closer to the arrangements seen in real formula cars.

LFS offers considerable scalability graphics-wise, so you can de-tune the eye-candy if your system is having trouble handling all the options being set to max.

Perhaps you think that there are many, better looking racers out there, and to some extent you may be right. But LFS has the eye-candy that matters, plus the physics plus the mulitplayer capabilities.

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