S3 Suggestion (Live streaming of weather conditions via LFSworld)

[J_luo88]

I dont' think this has been suggested yet, and this suggestion is based upon the fact that we will have day/night, dry/wet races in S3.

I was watching the Sanddown V8's here in Australia and noticed something that would be great for LFS. Commentators kept refering to the weather map as it was predicted to rain, and then sunny and rain again, and what not (Melbourne Weather) but what i'd thought would be cool is to have a live stream of weather from LFSworld onto all the hosts that have .. lets say weather 'enabled'.

To add to this, each circuit has it's own weather map as such, which racers can access via LFSworld and watch as the clouds (or just those red and blue shades of colour, i dunno what they're called) roll in and cover the track, and in sync, the weather on the track changes accordingly.

Maybe even have a 7 day forecast?

[bobvanvliet]

This would be cool, especially because it would put weather out of the hands of race organisers, just like in RL.

We just need to make sure conditions do not get unraceable :smileypul .

[Blackout]

Its way too early to talk about S3, as S2 isnt even in the final versions. But...I really would like to see constant server weather, weather and track condition wouldnt be resetten when race restarts. That just would be cool. But dynamic weather may just be long away, maybe years, who knows :)

[ORION]

LOL you're dreaming a BIT too far imo :D

But something like this would be nice of course! Let's get the basic weather first, though ;)

[tristancliffe]

Dynamic weather, whether based on real weather reports, or just 'random' would be nice. Just as long as we get puddles, dynamic drying lines, slippery white lines, grease and oil (especially at road courses like South City), plenty of spray, and more grip off the usual racing line then I will be happy. EDIT: And nice modelling of aquaplaning too...

I'm sure Scawen will do all of this and more, but perhaps not in the initial stages.

I would also like to see wind options being removed. Wind off for hotlapping, cos it's fairer. But online wind should be on, and random, with no option to turn it off. Would add to the theoretical side of driving... mmmmmmm

[Shotglass]

i already suggested something similar ie adjusting the weather on the server so it resembles the weather at the servers location
the downside of this would be that most people have the choice of either racing through the night most of the time or join a laggy server somewhere on the other side of the earth

[danowat]

It's completely feasable, assuming weather is added to LFS in the future.

We currently have programs for FS2004 that do the exact thing, one of them in particular is ActiveSky, http://www.hifisim.com/activesky5.htm , basically you run this program in the background, it downloads and decrypts real-time weather info on the fly and squirts it into FS2004, works really well too.

Dan.

[LRB_Aly]

Real Wheater would be a real nice feature espacially for leagues. For the unracebale condition, i think it would lie in the hands of the pilots to decide wether they're driving or not. The difference between simdriving and rldriving is that we don't have to think about our life an the dangers, so you could possibly try to drive in very nasty conditions. But as blackout said: It's way to early to talk about this.
greets

[Shotglass]

think of the possibilities ... virtual shovels salt and sand in the autocross editor to prepare a track for a race during winter ... this surely would make the rb4 a lot more popular that it currently is ...

[Vain]

I believe random weather is better for normal racing, because if I want to race a dry race, I want to race a dry race and don't wait in front of my computer for Blackwood GP to dry out within the next 3 hours.

Vain

[Bob Smith]

Heh. Yeah this was all mentioned on RSC but it's a very cool idea. I'm sure it will turn up eventually.

[Huru-aito]

think of the possibilities ... virtual shovels salt and sand in the autocross editor to prepare a track for a race during winter

No need to carry salt or sand with you, just get proper tyres :nana:

[MyBoss]

Maybe the same thing could be set with wind settings?

[ajp71]

and more grip off the usual racing line

? Suppose it would make the racing better but shouldn't it be the other way around, marbles off the line would be a better improvement IMO.

[tristancliffe]

In wet weather, you actually have MORE grip ON the marbles, which is what I was referring to ;)

[XCNuse]

yep.. i believe i was the first to suggest this a while back ago when i had gotten S1 a couple of years ago, and still cant wait to see if its ever put in or not ;)

[1993S14]

I believe random weather is better for normal racing, because if I want to race a dry race, I want to race a dry race and don't wait in front of my computer for Blackwood GP to dry out within the next 3 hours.

Vain

how about when you race alone (single player) you pick what weather you want.

[J_luo88]

i already suggested something similar ie adjusting the weather on the server so it resembles the weather at the servers location
the downside of this would be that most people have the choice of either racing through the night most of the time or join a laggy server somewhere on the other side of the earth
Yep, that's a problem i see as well, so maybe just weather conditions? and on the server side have a race starting time, so you can set it to midday or something and race on from that time, while the host takes the weather settings off LFSworld.

Orion, i know i'm dreaming, but you must if you want to live for speed :)

[Shotglass]

Yep, that's a problem i see as well, so maybe just weather conditions? and on the server side have a race starting time, so you can set it to midday or something and race on from that time, while the host takes the weather settings off LFSworld.

i think the best solution would be to give the admin the choice to either use real time weather, random weather and constant weather condition and the same for the time on the server ...

[WorldFamous]

Assign each track a real world location, Aston in the same area as Donnington for example, and then have LFS World pick the weather data for Donnington off any number of forecasting sites on the web and in turn relay that to any LFS game with the option enabled.

Day/night cycles should always be in the hands of the host in my view.

Granted, I know there must be far simpler ways to do it but that's how I'd like to see it done personally.

[Boris Lozac]

Assign each track a real world location, Aston in the same area as Donnington for example, and then have LFS World pick the weather data for Donnington off any number of forecasting sites on the web and in turn relay that to any LFS game with the option enabled.

Day/night cycles should always be in the hands of the host in my view.

Granted, I know there must be far simpler ways to do it but that's how I'd like to see it done personally.

That's a great idea.. :) And when you wanna race, you check LFS world to see what is the weather on the track you wanna race.. IT would be great, like if it is going to rain or not, it's cloudy, you must decide what tires do you want ;)
OMG, this whole idea of real weather is SO great! I sure hope it can be developed!

[--==Gogo==--]

And what will will you do in winter? *g*

[Boris Lozac]

And what will will you do in winter? *g*

Snowboarding.. ;)
Winter will not be in the calendar.. :) Simple as that..

[J_luo88]

Assign each track a real world location, Aston in the same area as Donnington for example, and then have LFS World pick the weather data for Donnington off any number of forecasting sites on the web and in turn relay that to any LFS game with the option enabled.

Day/night cycles should always be in the hands of the host in my view.

Granted, I know there must be far simpler ways to do it but that's how I'd like to see it done personally. That's a great idea.. :) And when you wanna race, you check LFS world to see what is the weather on the track you wanna race.. IT would be great, like if it is going to rain or not, it's cloudy, you must decide what tires do you want ;)
OMG, this whole idea of real weather is SO great! I sure hope it can be developed!
Yeah, what i said at the bottom of my first post, except in more detail. It'll be heaps fun, and i agree with the idea of having day/night settings on the host side, maybe like what the lap and qual function is now, where you change the starting race time by hours.

[durbster]

It sounds like a good idea but I'm not sure it would work in practice.

If you picked a real world location for a track, e.g. Donington, then that's fine for me because I live down the road but for the vast majority of users it might as well be completely random. The extra resources required to get live weather information could be better used elsewhere, and it doesn't really achieve much other than being quite clever.

It would definitely have to be an option if anything. It could be bloody frustrating if you hated wet weather driving and we were having a wet British Autumn (and don't say, well if you can't handle the wet weather blah blah - new users will get put off). Or you could set it in Barbados instead :)

The same goes for night/day. An Aussie would have to race at night time continuously...

It sounds too much like a feature that would impress programmers, rather than users.

[J_luo88]

Yeah good point. Maybe not having weather monitors from real places but more of a virtual LFS world, where the weather repeats every 30 days or something with some randomness.

As for the day/night, yes definately. i dont' want to be racing South City in the dark all the time :D

[afastest]

This can only be an option. You could place any track to any location you like. For example there would be many Blackwood servers, each of them would have different locations, Europe, Japane, USA etc. Then the racers could pick any location they like, based on the weather conditions of different locations etc. Of course there would also be 24/7 shiny, no wind servers just like now. So the racers could choose any conditions they like, either virtual 24/7 shiny/cloudy, wind/no wind, or the servers with real locations and weather conditions.

Also leagues could choose a location for an event, say Italy, some place, and on racing time, the real weather from that location would be generated on the server. Including rain, wind direction and velocity. Also the position of the sun, and even the real time pictures can be taken from the location, for example of the sky, and being sent to the server.

[johnmcaulay]

We've all got to remember that lfs S2 Alpha is that, Alpha, being the first stable test version of S2, give the developers a break, I'm sure they'll have weather included eventually, afterall, we've still got S2 Beta to look forward to (if lfs keeps to programming traditions and releases a Beta test version) before the final build of S2.

[the_angry_angel]

As for the day/night, yes definately. i dont' want to be racing South City in the dark all the time :DUnfortunately you're right. Only spods will be interested in GPS/IP-to-location based weather :( which sucks, cos I want it :(

[Gunn]

To be realistic, racing would be forbidden in areas where extreme weather was occuring. So if their was a cyclone happening in one part of the world, you wouldn't be able to race there. What about all of those racers who live in snowy environments? Would their servers be down in winter time? Food for thought.

[the_angry_angel]

What about all of those racers who live in snowy environments? Would their servers be down in winter time?I wasnt thinking in terms of absolute replication of server location's conditions. If that was the case then we'd all be racing in a room with air con running flat out, with an air temperature equivilent to 30+ celsius (presuming most servers are in datacentres).

I was thinking more in terms of hinting to the conditions. If there was snow, we'd get a moderate amount of snow. Of course, server side settings for random, or specified conditions, would have to be there for those who dont like racing with wind / snow / rain.

[Gunn]

Lol, I meant "would their racetracks be closed in winter time", I wasn't referring to the room the server was in. A weather report says a blizzard is occurring, then no racing would be possible in a blizzard.

[tristancliffe]

I reckon some of us would give it ago.

[Gunn]

I reckon some of us would give it ago.Hehe, I reckon you'd be right.

[Hyperactive]

Probably the most influental (never used this word before ;)) values about the wheather are a) rain b) track and air temperature (and pressure? *) c) wind and d) lighting. The system sound nice, but some people would really suffer from it.


*maybe some track in LFS should have lower air pressure, so that the cars would suffer from this as they would simply produce less power?

[darthweasel]

I think it's a great idea and wouldn't need to be overly complicated. Someone mentioned 'extra resources to get live weather information'. What resources? Wind speed is 2 figures. A weather chart can be captured in a 256x256 texture and read by the engine. That's all the data that needs to be passed from weather site to server to client regarding the weather conditions.

Of course, getting weather conditions at all (non dynamic) implimented very well should be the first concern, and this a neat after thought.

I've always thought the realtime day/night cycles should be implimentable, though.

[the_angry_angel]

Hehe, I reckon you'd be right.
:doh: Well, it could be fun :)

[LRB_Aly]

Yeah that would be great. I already see the scene. You drive in a league and have your races, let's say, on sundays. The weather forecast says that it could be raining on the weekend in GB. Now your race is on Aston, so you start making a wet weather setup. Sunday comes, and the race starts in rain and then after a few laps it stops and the track is drying. now those who started with dry setups are getting faster and faster, you slower and slower.
now this is the point where the thrill begins: someone closes the gap to you and you are in close combat with him, knowing that you have to fight like a lion to stay in front of him, well you can imagine the scene.
Man that would be thrilling :) .

[Hatemaker]

I think the whole dynamic, LFSWorld-controlled weather thing would be SO awesome. Allthough IF it were to happen, it would be very far off in the future... but I'd still probably be playing LFS :thumb: