About LFS

An internet multiplayer race in S2 with the Formula XR

The amazing tyre flex physics in Live for Speed S2

Choose between various setup settings

An old LFS logo

An early development version of LFS

The GT Turbo in LFS v0.1 at an unpublished city track in Miami.

Live for Speed is an online racing simulator developed by Scawen Roberts (game engine), Eric Bailey (tracks & cars) and Victor van Vlaardingen (music, website, sales). Its main features are the realistic physics engine and internet multiplayer with up to 40 players. The game is only sold at the official website http://www.lfs.net. You won't find it in any shops as the developers want to stay independent from any publisher, so they can include exactly the features they want to have in the game and do not have to change the game according to some manager's opinion. Starting as a demo in August 2002 more and more people tried the game and joined the internet community. With a lot of development progress the first stage (S1) of the game was published in July 2003. Two years later (2005) the S2 Alpha version was released and was under development with fresh new updates every 6 months to a year, not including test patches. Now the S3 license is available with Rockingham, a new laser scanned track (more content scheduled for the S3 license). VW Scirocco and a completely re-written tyre physics engine are planned for the future. The three developers have a close connection to the community and they frequently visit the official forum to get ideas of what the players want to see in the game. All the new updates to the game are accessible by the auto updater from within LFS.

Physics engine

The outer loop of the physics and environment checks run at 100 Hz, but with 20 uninterruptible sub-updates inside that (tight loop on each car) so in one sense it's 2000 Hz physics.

History

• Sometime in 1999: Working on Lionhead's Black & White, Scawen starts to write a small stunt simulator with mouse steering in his free time
• Spring 2001: After the release of Black & White, Scawen and Eric leave Lionhead to work fulltime on LFS
• 18.08.2002: A user of the West Racing forum finds the demo test 0.04k on the internet and spreads the word about LFS: https://web.archive.org/web/20090302121825/http://www.west-racing.com/forum/index.php?topic=958.0
• 19.09.2002: The official LFS forum starts at Race Sim Central: http://forum.rscnet.org/forumdisplay.php?f=205
• 17.07.2003: Release of Live for Speed S1, the first full LFS release
• 29.07.2003: The LFSWorld website goes online http://www.lfsworld.net
• 25.06.2005: Release of the Live for Speed S2 Alpha
• 10.08.2005: The new official LFS forum goes online: http://www.lfsforum.net
• 28.05.2007: LFS Merchandise website: http://www.lfsshop.net
• 05.09.2014: LFS website is revamped: http://www.lfs.net
• 19.12.2015: S3 License available
• 18.08.2022: LFS turns 20! 20th anniversary progress report: https://www.lfs.net/20th-anniversary

Major releases

• 18.08.2002: 0.04k - The first public LFS version ever
• 06.09.2002: 0.1B - Demo test with added reversed track configs
• 22.03.2003: 0.2A - Demo test, similar to S1 but without the new cars & tracks
• 17.07.2003: 0.3A - S1
• 05.04.2005: 0.5K - S2 Demo Alpha, features work-in-progress S2 physics but with only demo content
• 25.06.2005: 0.5P - S2 Alpha, physics improved since 0.5K but still in development, full S2 content available
• 19.12.2015: 0.6K - The S3 License is available with Rockingham racetrack
• 16.12.2021: 0.7A - Vehicle Mods support, LFS Editor (vehicle editor and modelling tool) also released

The development team

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  fltr.: Eric, Victor, Scawen

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  Scawen Roberts (and Leo)

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  Eric Bailey

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  Victor van Vlaardingen

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  The dev team presenting the S2 Alpha in Denmark 2004

Interviews

• Dec 1994: Victor, demonews, section 2b
  • Archived (Sep 11, 2003)
• Feb 2001: Scawen, planetb&w
  • Archived (Jul 20, 2001)
• Nov 2002: All, BHM
  • Introduction, Archived (Aug 11, 2003)
  • Miscellaneous, Archived (Jul 1, 2003)
  • Cars and Tracks, Archived (Aug 22, 2003)
  • Multiplayer, Archived (Aug 22, 2003)
  • Gameplay, Archived (Feb 24, 2004)
  • Hardware, Archived (Oct 19, 2004)
  • Graphics and Sound, Archived (Oct 19, 2004)
• Apr 2003: All, doupe.cz
  • Archived (Jan 28, 2021)
• Dec 2003: Eric, Boomtown
  • Archived (Jun 3, 2004)
• Jul 2004: Victor, ZockerTempel
• Sept 2004: All, teamnic
  • Page 1, Archived (Aug 26, 2007)
  • Pages 2, 3, 4 are missing unfortunately.
• Mar 2005: Victor, planet3dgames
  • Archived (Aug 28, 2005)
• Mar 2005: All, simracingportugal
• Mar 2006: Victor, lfs.dk
  • Archived (Nov 23, 2007)
• May 2006: Victor & Scawen, Autosimsport, p25
• Sep 2006: All, lfs.no

Logos

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  An early logo

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  LFS logo from 2003, by Nicolas Grignon. The overall style is still the same to this day.

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  The most recent version of the LFS logo (2024), used on the website and in-game

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  Alternative logo supplied in the official logo pack (2024), with different coloring