SimBin/Blimey Tried to License LFS Engine?

[BuddhaBing]

I just read a thread over at RSC (http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=247848&page=2) discussing SimBin's recent acquisition of the FIA WTCC license in which someone mentioned that SimBin/Blimey! Games wanted to use the LFS engine. See post #39 in that thread: "And I just learned that Simbin/Blimey tried to get the engine from the LFS-team, but they wanted to create their own game before selling the engine..."

Anyone know if there's any truth to that?

[Funnybear]

Fiar play to the guys for not selling out if it's true.

Good business sense too. Why give your competators your engine to make a fully licensed game, when you have the best thing out there and would like the best thing out there when you release your game . . .

Hey you never know, maybe someone can give them some licences's.

[danowat]

Would'nt believe everything you read, seems like a pretty spurious statement "I just learnt they tried to license the LFS engine".

Dan,

[AndroidXP]

I would've done the same (read: not sell the engine).

Selling it when it is finished is another story, but until then the competitors have to do the thinking by themselves. When super awsome S3 is finished, then sell it for a few million so you never *have* to work again, but not earlier.

:thumb:

[Vykos69]

I actually am not surprised, that SimBin looks for a better engine than that ISI-"thing" :P

[inCogNito]

sounds like total bulls**t

[deggis]

sounds like total bulls**t
Indeed.

[Tweaker]

I once heard SimBin/Blimey was asking SEGA permission for their "Sonic The Hedgehog" character to be spinning around on the race tracks.... not sure how that ended up :p

(my example of bs)

[Vykos69]

sounds like total bulls**t
I might quote Ian Bell from 2004 GamesConvention here (chief of Blimey, former head of studio of SimBin): "Yeah, I wanted to have Scawen, Eric and Vic in the team, but their game is simply to succesful, I cant pay them"

[danowat]

Here we go, another excuse for the LFS zealot clan to slam the ISI engine, wayhay :pillepall , thought people would have got bored with doing that already :thumb:

Dan,

[Hyperactive]

Psst! I heard that EA wanted to use the ISI engine in their NFS: GTR drifting dud exzhibizion(zxzx) kewl simultron. The ISI didn't want to sell their best benefit to their worst competitor :D

[SamH]

This kind of rumour is typically the responsibility of sexually frustrated journalists who, having no opportunity for real-life procreation, are naturally drawn to give birth to something/anything and watch it take on a life of its own.

The LFS engine must be highly desirable to any company interested in creating a sim that is based entirely on real-life physics/mathematics. It exists already, and it works extraordinarily well. It's also the creation of just three extraordinarily talented people. From the outside in, I'm sure it must look extremely attractive and, to any project manager, a sound purchase and fast-track to an ultra-realistic sim.

Against that, you have the natural belief that exists in programmers' minds that THEIR simulation model is the best. I have little doubt that SimBin's perception of their own model, at programmers' level, is the way forward.

We will probably never know if SimBin have approached the LFS guys and for the same reasons, I think it's safe to say that the source of the RUMOUR that they have is absolutely false.

[EDIT] to:
I might quote Ian Bell from 2004 GamesConvention here (chief of Blimey, former head of studio of SimBin): "Yeah, I wanted to have Scawen, Eric and Vic in the team, but their game is simply to succesful, I cant pay them"

Oooer!!

If that's a genuine quote (and I trust Vykos implicitly!) that is a heck of a thing.

Not that it's a surprise, just really that it's a big concession from Bell. Perhaps from a user's level, we perceive a friction or conflict between the sim companies that, at development/company level just doesn't exist. Games/sims aren't in as direct competition as many other products, like car manufacturers for example. If I go about buying a car for my family, I'm out to buy ONE family car. If I want a driving sim, the likelihood is that I'll buy them all. Which I ultimately CHOOSE to play is very much after the fact.

[Vain]

I would actually appreciate it if someone bought LFS. We'd get real cars, real tracks and the progress on the engine would be much faster.

Vain

[Jonesy_]

I would actually appreciate it if someone bought LFS. We'd get real cars, real tracks and the progress on the engine would be much faster.

Vain
Yea, and the nos button would be kewl, and the drifting points.

[Vykos69]

I would actually appreciate it if someone bought LFS. We'd get real cars, real tracks and the progress on the engine would be much faster.

Vain
[_] you have full understanding of Sim-Development

Sorry, Vain, but it's not that simple.

[Vain]

I know. I just wasn't in the mood to write a 2000 word post.

Vain

[SamH]

I would actually appreciate it if someone bought LFS. We'd get real cars, real tracks and the progress on the engine would be much faster.

Vain

The problem is that LFS would quickly stop being LFS, if LFS is entirely physics-based.

The pressure would be on to create "hacks" to emulate the physics, rather than the longer way around which is to get to the bottom of the physics and apply them.

The difference between LFS and everyone else's sim is essentially Prescriptive versus Goal:

LFS is entirely prescriptive based. You prescribe the application of physics to achieve a result. Everyone else sets out with that intention, but when they get bogged down in those physics and can't get a realistic result QUICKLY, they switch to Goal-based development. They hack, in other words, to achieve the APPEARANCE of physics.. but they're not real physics, and we (the critical public) can tell.

Design-time pressure, which doesn't exist for LFS, forces the hacks. Programmers who are EMPLOYED by a company don't feel they can be meticulous and take their time to get things right. They're burdened with an overwhelming need/desire to come up with results. Soon. Lots of them. Quickquickbusybusyworkworkbangbang, to quote an old Penguins ad on ITV.

[EDIT] Why do I always have to write a feckin essay on every feckin thing? :-\

Sorry everyone :-x

[ORION]

I know. I just wasn't in the mood to write a 2000 word post.

Vain
stop moaning, start helping ;)

[SamH]

Don't worry, we don't read them ;)

Nurghhh!!! :x

[Funnybear]

I did.

[DasBoeseC]

Mahlzeit.....

Against that, you have the natural belief that exists in programmers' minds that THEIR simulation model is the best. I have little doubt that SimBin's perception of their own model, at programmers' level, is the way forward.

Usually that would be true but as Simbin did not develop the engine themselves they will take no pride in it.....if they feel the engine is not sufficient, swapping it would not be like giving away a baby.....

On the other hand the consideration alone would express quite some unhappiness of SimBin with ISI and/or their engine.....SimBin knows the ISI-Engine and is by far the best developer when it comes to exploiting it to the limit.....swapping the engine would cost lots of money and time as they would not only have to buy the engine, but also take their time to get used to it.....

But I have to admitt.....as an owner of GTR, GTL and rFactor.....I can fully understand the wish to swap the engine.....

CU, Sebastian

[Hyperactive]

Yes. ISI and Simbin are two different things. Or are they?

LFS is a very attractive product. It has huge amount of dedicated players, servers and the forum is quite "live" as well. It's a working concept which produces money every time you blink your eyes. Just make it a monthly fee -based and keep the updates coming (updates :)) and people will love it. With no problems with mods being made the devs have total control of the product and its features. This is a golden piece of product.

I could also see that the devs might be more willing to make a such deal as they probably aren't that dedicated to LFS alone as they might have been some time ago.

It is just the fact that bigger corporations aren't interested in making simulations. They are making software to make profit to their share owners. If share owners are not happy the product is bad.

[Vykos69]

I could also see that the devs might be more willing to make a such deal as they probably aren't that dedicated to LFS alone as they might have been some time ago.
That's simply not true.

[Hyperactive]

By dedication I just meant that how much time they are ready to invest in LFS development. Doing extra long days when you have just become father...

[Vykos69]

Eh, a day has 24 hours, if that aint enough, there is still the night ;)

[severin_schoepke]

Would'nt believe everything you read, seems like a pretty spurious statement "I just learnt they tried to license the LFS engine".

Dan,

Hello,

I'm selle at RSC and I might have better not written that this way ;-) "I just learnt" means I have read it in a thread in a forum (I think in the netKar forum at RSC). There was a discussion about how cool it would be if Simbin would create content for netKar, then someone (not an official) said that Simbin wanted to license the LFS engine...
So it's all speculation...

[Hallen]

I'm sorry, but making a racing physics "Engine" out of existing code is not that simple. Just for Scawen to produce something with a reasonable SDK and API would probably be a pretty monstrous task.

Software is ultimately malleable, and so the perception is you can unplug something, plug it into a different product, and POOF, you have cool new functionality. It is rarely that easy and usually takes a lot of pre-planning to be able to use code in that way. There are lots of simple seeming things that take a huge effort to code, and lots of seemingly complex things that are very easy to code. Software development is a contradiction in logic at times and is horribly complex.

So, in a nutshell, if you want LFS to move forward, you better hope that they don't want to sell the "engine" because it would take a lot of work just to prepare it for sale.

[Funnybear]

Eh, a day has 24 hours, if that aint enough, there is still the night ;)

Not if you've already used up yours hours. I'm not sure which planet you are on (Does your ISP know your tapping in from off world?) but Earth has a 24hour rotation and an orbit off 365 of those 24 hour days.

[Hyperactive]

Yeah, it's real pity that there are only 24 hours per day. I have been thinking about moving to the Pluto (one Pluto day is 168 hours :p) but the pings in LFS would be just disastrous ;)

[Funnybear]

Personally I'm thinking of setting up a server on Jupiters Moon Europa. You should See Io as it passes though the magnetic field of Jupiter. Talk about Aurora.

Hopefully that should improve you ping somewhat. But I still think you'll be talking in a ping of hours, not seconds.

Not unless you can do some fancy Quantum entanglement thingy. That might improve things somewhat.

[Eldanor]

You don't have to sell the engine, they can license it so they keep control, this approach works fine with FPS engines.

[deggis]

http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?p=2946835&posted=1#post2946835

No one mentioned Vykos' quote on that thread so I had to do it. :)

[tinvek]

Why do I always have to write a feckin essay on every feckin thing? :-\




because you enjoy it :)

go on admit it:) :)

try to deny it:) :) :)

see you cant :) :) :) :)

[deggis]

Do you sell smilies because you seem to have lots of 'em? :D

[Fordman]

Call me thick, stupid of what ever but I have a plane and simple question for all you programmers out there, as I am game / sim player not a maker.

Now if somebody, say like Simplebin or Crapmasters or Electronic Farts wanted to copy the LFS Engine, could not they just hire some super duper coder to hack and strip LFS and find out how it works? :shrug:

As I said, I am not from a coding background ( chose not to at an early age as I fell asleep to often ) so basically I don't know.

[Vykos69]

ha, no, not that easy.

[Fordman]

ha, no, not that easy.

OK, not for Vykos, as I know he is off to bed :D but I am now going to be that annoying little kid and ask.......


BUT WHY :D

[Hyperactive]

Well, Fordman, you know that a baby elephant can fit inside a vw beetle but when she gets little older she don't fit in any more. It's the same thing with the coding, once the devs get out the beetle they just can't go back in because the keys are missing!

Hope that clears it out for ya :D

PS: Devs =! elephants

[dUmAsS]

OK, not for Vykos, as I know he is off to bed :D but I am now going to be that annoying little kid and ask.......


BUT WHY :D

they could stick the exe into a disassembler (sp?) but then they will only get machine code. and that will be nearly impossible to tell apart from sound, physics, graphics etc. and even if they could only get the physics code, they still need to then translate it back into c++ and that will be totaly stupid.

much faster / cheaper to write it from scratch, its only maths

[sil3ntwar]

It would be faster and less expensive for them to build an engine from scratch.

[Woz]

they could stick the exe into a disassembler (sp?) but then they will only get machine code. and that will be nearly impossible to tell apart from sound, physics, graphics etc. and even if they could only get the physics code, they still need to then translate it back into c++ and that will be totaly stupid.

...

Dont believe a word of it. Debug/crack tools now allow huge control over execution. Also machine code is not that bad if you know what you are looking for/at. All code has to call the various windows API's to do anything and these API calls leave signatures that are simple to spot. This makes it easy to find where sound, gfx etc are done. You can even get debug tools that allow you to break an app when it calls different API calls to make it easier. Its more a case now that people coming into development now have not had to work in machine code/assembler, like us oldies :), so are not used to reading it.

If the code is encrypted and then decrypted on load then breaking on API calls means the code is in memory decrypted so can be dumped so it can be pulled apart. The war becomes trying to spot debug tools before you decrypt code so you can halt execution if you want to protect against debugging but that is hard if you rootkit the debug tools so you hide them from task list and directory structure, Sony know all about this one lol.

Also compilers translate similar code in similar ways so as long as you know the compiler used you can find out how it structures that code when converted from source to MC.

Just make a search on Warez to see how much cracked/hacked apps there are out there. Most of these would have involved someone pulling apart machine code to see what is going on so they can patch the code.

So if someone wanted to see how it worked they could find out. And with the budgets for games today the cost of adding a dev resource to pull apart another product for a year is cheap in comparision.

As for general hacking of LFS to allow warez version you will find reason that LFS is not hacked like other games is that it has an online part of the code. LFS World is very tightly coupled with LFS so unless the hacker can hack LFS World people can't play online which is what LFS is about. The same happened with Q3, hacks that allowed offline were available but nobody hacked master server so could not use online until iD disabled master server checking later in the product life.

[inCogNito]

I might quote Ian Bell from 2004 GamesConvention here (chief of Blimey, former head of studio of SimBin): "Yeah, I wanted to have Scawen, Eric and Vic in the team, but their game is simply to succesful, I cant pay them"

but that's a completely different thing. He was talking about licensing the engine, not the devs ;)

[SamH]

but that's a completely different thing. He was talking about licensing the engine, not the devs ;)

And.. did he REALLY call LFS a "game"!?!?!? If he did, and meant it, then I'd say that he's missed the very point that's made LFS so very much our favourite pastime.. that very realism for the sake of realism, over entertainment. :x

I dunno about (some of) you guys, but for me, it's the realism in LFS that's the pull. The entertainment value is entirely subsequential while being entirely inevitable. Realism FIRST.

[danowat]

Except the setup system in LFS is totally unrealistic, as opposed to the GTL setup system where they actually have capped settings.

LFS isnt the be-all and end-all, it has some way to go before its truely realistic.

All that said, doesnt make me love playing it any less :).

Dan,

[Mikey]

Prolly a good reason is working for yourself or somebody else. When your working for yourself your setting the priorities and have control over everything, working for someone there setting them. look at what happened to west bros and empire, thats an extreme situation but things can go off the rails at any point.

Im sure that must be in the devs minds too about where they go after they have finished LFS. Maybe they will go on todo licensed material (wasnt there talk about licensed rally material?) with a solid game engine they have created, maybe incorporate licensed material into the already existing frame work. :scratchch

[Tweaker]

Except the setup system in LFS is totally unrealistic, as opposed to the GTL setup system where they actually have capped settings.
They have real cars to compare with. LFS has mostly fantasy cars and some real ones. Even if the real ones can have impossible values, Scawen leaves us with a chance to experiment with car setups. I am pretty sure that realistic setting restrictions will be in effect later on for LFS, but right now, everything is just purely a test-based feel.

Kind of nice if you ask me... you can test the physics A LOT further than any other simulation because of this. Whereas other simulations are just leaving you to defined amounts... and you really could not determine the full range of physics (like with suspension).

[Shotglass]

uncountable infinite (well actually finite) setup options is realistic in principle you can set dampers to any value you please

id like to have a restriction (or options for it) on how much you can adjust from session to session though

[danowat]

Yes, that is true for a fantasy simulation, but for something that is and should be so deeply routed in a realistic representation of real world racing, the fantasy aspect of the setup system, and the "pick and choose nature" of LFS fans when this game is realistic and is not, is a bit of an oxymoron.

Is it a realistic representation of real life racing, or is it a fantasy simulation?, LFS needs to make its mind up in this respect.

Dan,

[Jonesy_]

Except the setup system in LFS is totally unrealistic, as opposed to the GTL setup system where they actually have capped settings.


You mean those damping 1-4 settings?
No values or whatsoever, is not realistic.

[danowat]

Sure neither is 100% realistic, but at least they have fixed gear ratio's.

Also, I never maintain that either is the holy grail of Sim racing, it just grinds my gears when people harp on about the fact that LFS is more realistic than X or Y, when in certain departments it is pure fantasy.

Dan,

[colcob]

Although on the plus side, LFS is the only sim I've ever played that gives you ALL of its setup parameters in proper, physical, SI units, so you can actually make meaningful calculations.

[danowat]

That is also very true, but what is LFS?, a physics playground, or a realistic racing sim?.

Dan,

[Tweaker]

It of course gives you the chance to fool around with physics, but when you mention a realistic racing sim... it seems you are looking for something with real cars and real tracks... AND cars in particular that have only "allowed setup guidelines". Any simulation could be a realistic racing sim regardless of these requirements you expect... even something that is fantasy should still be trying to make things realistic. Just because LFS has the ability to choose some options that would take require an engineer to work overtime on, doesn't exclude it from being in the club for attempting realism.

This is NOT a little X and Y comparison, this is an explanation. Big difference between those two, and I think people just can't explain correctly why they think LFS is more realistic or vice versa. So don't make us all seem like we are soley into LFS and dislike other simulations... many simulations have strong points and weaknesses over each other, that should be known by now.

As I said about the physics and wide range of setup options (some beyond what a normal mechanic would/could do), it is purely test based. I mean... surely the RAC couldn't be made into a rally car that easily. So I think that the way the setups are currently, they do not limit much, not at all. However, you may notice that since LFS's beginning, the setup options have been changing... and mostly being limited as newer releases come out. I think it is only due time until we have proper limits for how high or how low we can set things. It is just that we have a sort of "experimental" game at the moment. Which is fun, so you can see the depth of the physics, but when it comes to serious restricted racing settings, I think LFS will be there soon ;).

[Switcher83]

I think THAT would be the coolest ever :)

Just think about that:

you drive the WTCC with the Graphics of GTR2 and the physics of LFS... i think the netcode will be like in LFS too...

*dreaming*

I hope LFS is getting ready soon... :)

Oh, i forgot the SOUND of GTR :)

[Racer Y]

SimBin with the LFS engine? Sounds like another boring rumor....
Now if like Rockstar Games wanted it, then I'd be curious about it.

[Bob Smith]

Sound of GTR? No shitty samples please. :)

[Shotglass]

Yes, that is true for a fantasy simulation, but for something that is and should be so deeply routed in a realistic representation of real world racing, the fantasy aspect of the setup system, and the "pick and choose nature" of LFS fans when this game is realistic and is not, is a bit of an oxymoron.

Is it a realistic representation of real life racing, or is it a fantasy simulation?, LFS needs to make its mind up in this respect.

Dan,

agreed on the gear ratios they only be available in realistic values from rational numbers but any other setting can in principle be tuned in any increment you might want to use ... id like to have a fixed setup a limited time and a limited money (aka less values) serverside option though

[col]

Dont believe a word of it. Debug/crack tools now allow huge control over execution. Also machine code is not that bad if you know what you are looking for/at. All code has to call the various windows API's to do anything and these API calls leave signatures that are simple to spot. This makes it easy to find where sound, gfx etc are done. You can even get debug tools that allow you to break an app when it calls different API calls to make it easier. Its more a case now that people coming into development now have not had to work in machine code/assembler, like us oldies :), so are not used to reading it.

If the code is encrypted and then decrypted on load then breaking on API calls means the code is in memory decrypted so can be dumped so it can be pulled apart. The war becomes trying to spot debug tools before you decrypt code so you can halt execution if you want to protect against debugging but that is hard if you rootkit the debug tools so you hide them from task list and directory structure, Sony know all about this one lol.

Also compilers translate similar code in similar ways so as long as you know the compiler used you can find out how it structures that code when converted from source to MC.

Just make a search on Warez to see how much cracked/hacked apps there are out there. Most of these would have involved someone pulling apart machine code to see what is going on so they can patch the code.

So if someone wanted to see how it worked they could find out. And with the budgets for games today the cost of adding a dev resource to pull apart another product for a year is cheap in comparision.

As for general hacking of LFS to allow warez version you will find reason that LFS is not hacked like other games is that it has an online part of the code. LFS World is very tightly coupled with LFS so unless the hacker can hack LFS World people can't play online which is what LFS is about. The same happened with Q3, hacks that allowed offline were available but nobody hacked master server so could not use online until iD disabled master server checking later in the product life.
The real problem for someone who tried to reverse engineer LFS wouldn't be getting past encryption, or tracing windows api calls.

I would have thought that the big difficulty is that the one thing that you really want - the physics engine - is also by far the most difficult to translate from machine code back to a human readable form.
The problem is that the maths involved are extremely challenging even with fully annotated source code, reams of documents and reference literature :)
The original source code will be structured in such a way as to clarify which parts of the calculations apply to which attributes of the physics - tyres, aero, temps, wear, forces.. etc. Taking optimized machine code and analysing it to the point where you could seperate these math based components in a way that would allow you to maintain or update them seperately seems like a huge task to me ?

Basically, its not 'machine code --> c++' thats the biggest difficulty, its 'machine code --> math'. Thats a much higher level of abstraction, and there won't be 'WAREZ TOOLZ' to help you with it either ;)

col

[Hallen]

That is also very true, but what is LFS?, a physics playground, or a realistic racing sim?.

Dan,

It seems like there can be two different definitions for a realistic sim. One definition states that the constraints of the real world like suspension settings, ability to see a track map, real world cars, and real world tracks make the sim realistic.

On the other hand, the other definition is that a sim is realistic if it closely models the physics of the real world and is a pure environment... in other words, as little as possible is scripted and controlled by the program.

Both of these definitions require quality graphics, sounds and other features.

There is a blending of these two definitions at times too. There are some people that want both in one and there are some who want nothing in the sim that they could not have in real life, like a moving track map.

So, you can have your own definition for realism, but please understand, we get tired of reading definitive statements like "Except the setup system in LFS is totally unrealistic, as opposed to the GTL setup system where they actually have capped settings."
I would argue that they are not unrealistic at all. All of those settings can exist in the real world. That is my definition of realistic. It is not physically impossible to do. Is it not plausible in an engineering and cost perspective? Sure. But that is a cool feature of simulators.

And LFS settings are capped. You can't set a value of 5000psi for tire pressure. And can you argue that you can't set 0 tire pressure on your real car? Sure you can. It would be stupid and the car would drive like crap, but it is realistic. Try it in LFS... I think you will find the car drives like crap. :D

[Huru-aito]

You mean those damping 1-4 settings?
No values or whatsoever, is not realistic.

Usually you don't even have the numbers, you just have to turn a knob or something one way or the other and listen to the damper going *click*..

If you're lucky you might have the specs of the dampers that'd tell some of the range's dampening values in pure figures - maybe all.

Not unrealistic at all though.

[SamH]

...a sim is realistic if it closely models the physics of the real world and is a pure environment... in other words, as little as possible is scripted and controlled by the program.

Very specifically, this is what I mean when I describe LFS as realistic. I don't personally mind if the cars are not actual cars, or if the tracks exist on some moor in the southeast of England/Coast of Jamaica or not, etc. Once I'm in the simulation, it's the representation of physics for me. If I want more than that, I also have to do something about the fact that my entire field of view is only 17" diagonally across and that there's a cup of coffee where my wing mirror should be.. that I don't have a seat belt on, and that despite the 167mph in an FO8 that I'm doing, if I turn my head to look to my right, it's my street that I see, and it's not moving at all.

In the study of literature, they talk of "the suspension of disbelief" when reading a novel, or watching a play, or sitting down to a TV drama. In LFS, I can easily condition myself to suspend all disbelief once I've focused on those 17" as the world I'm in, at that moment.

[Forbin]

Although on the plus side, LFS is the only sim I've ever played that gives you ALL of its setup parameters in proper, physical, SI units, so you can actually make meaningful calculations.
Since when are degrees SI units? :scratchch :D

[Shotglass]

Since when are degrees SI units? :scratchch :D

degrees are not a unit

[AlfaLover]

degrees are not a unit

yes it is a mesurement angle unit , but you need to set radian or sexagesimal systems, computers floating units(i want say the logical device that do floating points operations) works in radians because are more "friendly" computable.