Racer v0.8.40 released

Textures don't load from subfolders anymore - ie, the shader call "map=txt/brakelight.tga" isn't working and qlog reports "can't load 'data/cars/69ccz28/txt/txt/brakelight.tga'". This applies to both cars and tracks.

Hope it's a quick fix, because I'm not too keen on changing around all my content structures just to have a decent picture again and do proper testing ^^

Nice to see a new version!

Ruud, what happened to the plans of getting the 0.9 final out? A stable enough platform for modders to base their content on?

I downloaded the 0.8.41 .exe and cubemaps still don't work in subfolders.

Code:

Thu Jun 07 14:24:41 (WARN): [racer/4156] QImage ctor: can't load 'DATA/TRACKS/CARLSWOOD_NT/CUBESKY/CUBESKY/SKY_lt.tga'

If the file's actually in /cubesky/cubesky/sky_lt.tga, it still fails though.

Code:

Thu Jun 07 14:26:14 (WARN): [racer/5068] QImage ctor: can't load 'CUBESKY/CUBESKY/SKY_lt.tga'

Anyway, maybe this'll be of interest: a sky that uses a cubemap instead of textures. (note that it ignores texture coordinates of the skybox dof)

(skybox texture from http://reije081.home.xs4all.nl/skyboxes/images/skyboxsun5deg.png )
cube_sky_f.cg

Code:

//
// Sky shading - single cloud texture
//

#include "atmosphere.cg"

// Vertex to pixel shader structure
struct v2p
{
	float4 Position			: POSITION;
	//float3 Color 			: COLOR;
	float4 RayleighColor	: TEXCOORD2;
	float4 MieColor			: TEXCOORD3;
	float3 tc0              : TEXCOORD0;
	float3 Direction		: TEXCOORD1;
};

void main(
  // In
  in v2p IN,

  // Out
  out float4 outColor : COLOR0,
#ifdef CSM_MRT
  out float4 outShadow: COLOR1,
#endif

  // Constants
  uniform samplerCUBE dayMap   : TEXUNIT0,
  uniform float3    eyePosW,
  uniform float3    lightDirection,
  uniform float3    lightColor,
  uniform float3    lightAmbient,
  uniform float     atmosRayleigh,
  uniform float     atmosMie,
  uniform float     exposure,
  uniform float     clouds,
  uniform float     sunny,
  uniform float3    Kd,
  uniform float3    Ka
)
{
  float3 skyColor;

  skyColor=GetSkyColorAtm(lightDirection,IN.Direction,IN.RayleighColor,IN.MieColor,atmosRayleigh,atmosMie,lightColor,lightAmbient,sunny);

  // Add textures
  //float4 dayCol=tex2D(dayMap,IN.tc0);
  float4 dayCol = texCUBE(dayMap,IN.Direction);

  // Cloud cover modifies alpha
  dayCol.a=CloudCoverAlpha(dayCol.a,clouds);

  // Atmosphere outside
  float3 atmosColor=skyColor;
  // Clouds are much closer than the outer atmosphere
  float3 cloudColor=dayCol.rgb;

  // General light
  cloudColor*=(lightColor*Kd+lightAmbient*Ka);
  //cloudColor*=clouds;

  // Mix of inner & outer atmosphere
  float3 mixColor;
  float  mixClouds,mixAtmos;

  // Determine mix of atmosphere and inner ring of objects (clouds)
  mixClouds=dayCol.a;
  mixAtmos=max(1.0-mixClouds,0);
  mixColor=mixClouds*cloudColor+mixAtmos*atmosColor;

  // Output
#ifdef CSM_MRT
  outColor.rgb=finalColor.rgb+dayCol.rgb*dayCol.a;
  outColor.a=1;
  outShadow.rgba=float4(0,0,0,0);
#else
  outColor.rgb=mixColor;
  // No blending normally
  outColor.a=dayCol.a;
#endif
}

Use as fragment shader - put your cubemap into layer0 in the track.
(for the screenshot I bypassed the rest of the shader and just wrote outColor=dayCol*50.0; - with transparent clouds that wouldn't be necessary)

Avoids the stretching issues with UV mapped skies, just do up a tesselated half-sphere so that the atmosphere has enough points to work with. Can also go below the horizon pretty easily.

Great job! Downloading and testing now!!!

Scripts still require "reload scripts" command from the console to work.
Did you see any reason why my scripts shouldn't work Ruud?

Alex Forbin

P.S. Nevermind I didn't read the post in the old thread first.

Funny thing, with the same settings as before (copied racer.ini from my old 0.8.34), it's very CPU-intensive. When I press Ctrl+6, I can see that 75% of CPU time is used for the mirrors, as opposed to 10% for main rendering.
If I turn off mirror texture with F4, it goes back to normal.

Somethings changed with AI in this version, the applied throttle isn't as smooth as before, and the Lambo & other cars seem to spin out in places they didn't do before.

Another frustrating bug are the skid marks which sometimes aren't correctly projected to the surface. It also appears some of them are incorrectly generated in wrong places. Could be cool to have them baked somehow & reused/assembled afterwards.

About replays, would be nice to have a 'pause' button, just pressing P while replay is on, will just slower the motion...

Although not a showstopper, but I would be great if the static car shadow (ambient shadow) was also properly "shadered" - meaning that it would get the fog (mie or whatever) applied to it and that it would be correctly z-sorted.

Ruud, does fixed time step work with NVidia's vsync set to adaptive?

EDIT: ...got it...

Nice work Ruud!

A bit of a shame about the LDR envmap's... I suppose that if we end up at position "envmap" then chances are the scene will be exposed consistently, so the envmap will represent what we would generally see.

I guess they are also faster and smaller in memory vs HDR data... and blurring them also gives us some flexibility for creating certain effects like faking soft reflections on track-side objects!

I know this sounds crazy, but it might be cool to simply store certain track camera locations and render the env-maps at load time (set to the current TOD) in the HDR format that live envmaps use. In theory the system to generate envmaps with 16bits is in place, you just need to do a lot more at render time to a variety of locations. You could even add a blur factor too perhaps. So just store a load of xyz coords, a reference name, and a blur amount maybe, and even perhaps an update rate (so we could update them every 1 minute or so so they worked with TOD)?!
Then reference them from the shaders... we never even have to touch/see them just like the car envmap...
Maybe something for the future!


Stereo, I like the idea of a cube map system for clouds. Storing the data that way is more efficient (much less waste than a circle with empty edges), and also no stretching.
I believe the Racer sky should move towards the mie/ray 'dome' for all the colouring and appearance from day to night and so on... the current 'clear day' in Racer looks great imo... then the cube-map can do the clouds only... ideally with normal mapping data and alpha doing opacity... the rgb should be a function of how they are lit and their opacity.
That way we can have dark clouds (opaque), light clouds (half transparent alpha), and they also get nice tints at sunset, or whatever else (rather than being white all the time as is currently the case)
As for the moon/stars on the night, I guess even they could be programmed in to the sky.shd file?!


Hmmmmm


Dave

Yeah it is, I did a quick and dirty hack
dayCol = tan(1.5*dayCol); // 1.5 is a lower bound on pi/2, which is 1.57something
which curves it up nicely and looks much better, albeit I have no idea whether it's realistic.

(the seam in the texture is my fault, I think)