Racer v0.9.0 RC6 Released

[Ruud]

It's been too long... Now the new version is at www.racer.nl/dl_beta_win.htm

I'm working on stereoscopic rendering; with Quadro's this is relatively easy, on Geforce not so much, but I've read that driver 314.07 supports it suddenly out of the box?! There should be an Oculus Rift on its way soon (these next few months?) so that should be fun.

The changelist:

- Fixed Tracked white menu background
- Camera toggling (with the C key) had an extra mode that should not be there (this was an entity mode)
- Fixed bug in shadows_f.cg full screen shader.
- dbg_car.flip_tan option removed from racer.ini.
- Fixed audio pitch bending frequency to use the original frequency of the loaded sample, instead of the audio engine output frequency.
This could lead to incorrect pitch shifts for example with samples that were stored in 48kHz but played back at 44.1kHz.
- Added warnings for missing LOD models (which could cause disappearing models when generating the shadow maps)
- Modified scaling of racer.ini's dbg_controls.throttle/brakes/clutch/steer to use normalized values (0..1) rather than 0..1000
- Added filtering around wheel (tire) forces; a 2nd order Fz Pacejka input filter (fz_filter_frequency/fz_filter_damping)
and a 1st order Fy (lateral) Pacejka out filter (fy_filter_frequency). Both in data/cars/default/car.ini.
- Also added a 1st order Fx (longitudinal) Pacejka output filter (fx_filter_frequency).
These are useful when dealing with high-fidelity surface data (Lidar or high-frequency road artificial noise)
to prevent very spiky lat/lon accelerations (giving unrealistic grip loss).
- Added dev.opengl_checks to check lots of times for OpenGL errors.
- Added dev.run_first to be able to start a command (like a batch file) before starting Racer.
- Added audio options in car.ini; understeer_oversteer (experimental) and damper sounds. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/car_sounds.htm
- Added spline.ini option lines.lateral_divisions to tesselate the spline laterally. This highly improves cambered curves in the road. Values around 6-20.
- Fixed panorama_f.cg shader to light up the texture (would quickly become either black or whitish, never showing the texture image itself).
- Added rtd2ascii.exe tool to convert binary RTD (telemetry) files to ASCII.
- Added fmod() and abs() functions to Onyx, next to improved error/crash reporting.
- Onyx now requires all code to be defined in functions. For independent running of Onyx scripts (onyx_run.exe), you'll need to create a 'void main()' function.
- Added friction_circle_method 10 (similarity model/Marno Hopmans variant) which accepts per-wheel lyka and lxal tuning parameters.
(wheel<n>.pacejka.lyka and wheel<n>.pacejka.lxal). These define Fy influence on slipratio (ka=kappa=slipratio) and Fx influence
of Fx on slip angle (al=alpha=slip angle). Normally you'd use values lower than 1 (and larger than 0) for these lambdas.
- friction_circle_method can be overruled per-wheel (so per-car) under wheel<n>.friction_circle_method.
- Removed dbg_car.use_slip2fc option (obsolete).
- Revised the rendering path to be able to override the main FBO's size. This for surround rendering with split rendering for all 3 screens.
See also www.racer.nl/tutorial/surround_rendering.htm
Current issues: Z-buffer is shifted between split screens (screenCenter uses screenLeft's depth buffer).
- Added quad-buffered stereo support (see racer.ini:resolution.stereo.quad_buffered). nVidia Quadro only currently; 3D Vision may follow for Geforce cards.
See also www.racer.nl/tutorial/stereoscopic.htm
- Added 'vsync <n>' command to set vsync live.
- Autoexposure data/renderer/fullscreen_shaders_hdr/luminance_downsample_f.cg now detects NaN onscreen to avoid exposure spikes.
- nvidia_perf_path added in racer.ini, which needs to point to nVidia's PerfKit DLL. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/profiling.htm
- Motion blur taken out for the moment by default.

-----

RC5 Buglist:

- Gearbox shift times not working properly, step from 0 > 1 clutch position over the time rather than smooth linear transition.
- Water reflection not rendering, needs clarification on functionality.
- Qlog discrepancies (I'll let Boomer clarify those).
- Odd console readouts about tyre slip angles or something popping up (same goes for gearbox manual/auto setting, doesn't need to be console displayed imo)
- PerfSDK not working as advertised, broken?
- Multiplayer joining to IP's seems glitched, the person joining has their brake stuck on and are unable to shift
- The Multiplayer Lobby does not let you connect, and subsequently let you host, despite the right ports being forwarded. (Anyone else experiencing this bug?)
- The particles pop-out of existence at the end of their specified lifetime instead of fading away smoothly. It would be nice to have some better control over the fade-in and out over the lifetime of the particle since tiresmoke starts out thick and opaque then disperses and becomes more transparent over time, while gravel or dirt fades in a bit at first then eventually fades away.
- Smoke flickers in the reflections, as though it's missing every other frame.
- Replay bugs: No smoke effects, ghost car is left on track.
- The starter sound plays all the way to the end of the sample instead of stopping when you let off the starter.
- Ghost doesn't work on endless tracks.
- track special.ini: timeline.point_to_point=1, timeline.auto_return=0 - The auto_return setting doesn't seem to work here. I have a point to point track and the car resets 3000ms (3s) after crossing the finishing line, but I don't want it to.
- No reflection in the Racer garage when selecting a car.
- The unsprung weight apparently applies a downforce, try making a 150kg rear axle with the front suspension lighter and the car will act as though it has high downforce when jumping off of a ramp.
- If the wipers are set to rotate in opposite directions then the intermittent position does not rotate back and forth smoothly. It snaps back.
- In RC5c at least, the camera bug is still evident, and on Carlswood (spline based cameras) you can often get stuck so you can't get back to the in-car camera view which is really annoying! - Courtesy of Dave

-----


The Buglist (currently known specific to RC6):

• Try going in reverse, the front brakes appear to lock. After further examination it looks like in reverse the rear tires will lose traction completely if they spin at all. Alex Forbin
• Brakes on, car pointed downhill, car creeps forward and to right. Boomer541
• The physics are screwed up, just try to drive the Baja on the Cloverleaf Highway track and compare with ver090RC5. Try the Lambo also. Details & Details 2 Boomer541
• Problems with surfaces as the water in my Surfaces and sounds track makes the car float up/down. The water under the bridge flickers which appears to indicate a problem with textures. Boomer541
• Carlswood has flickers on the tirewall tops. Boomer541
• Cars wheels go above/below the surface and can make violent bounces. Boomer541
• There are NO skid marks generated. Boomer541
• Freezing my system, forcing a hard reset.The freezing even prevents qlog from leaving any hints as to what is going on. More info in post. Cosmo°
• Physics issues, see post. Chronus
• At night, everything has a red tint to it, can also be noticed during the day on the darker parts of the track or car. Harey (due to nVidia drivers?)
• Reverse doesn't work right, seems you have to slip the clutch to get it to go in reverse otherwise you just spin your tires and sit there. Harey
• Can't run strict=1, can't check car/track for errors!!! Boomer541 post
• When trying to use tracked to check key cameras the only yellow track section that appears is with the first camera (On carlswood). the p-key does nothing and the splines are different than on ver 090 RC3. Boomer541
• The three speed wipers Don't do three speeds. pos 1 - off, pos 2 - nothing (S/B intermitant.), pos 3 - normal sppe, pos 4- fast speed. Boomer541
• In a replay if you use the console you can't send a console command because the enter key has turned into a slow-mo toggle. This means as soon as you use the console in a replay, you are stuck and need to close Racer a 'messy' way. Ie, escape key no longer exits the race. Mr Whippy
• Multiplayer broken!

 

[Mr Whippy]

Ah ok, sorry. I thought you'd just changed the mixing method.

I think that thing you changed is important but I can't remember why. I'm not really sure why some of these options are left open to us in racer.ini because I don't really think they should be toggled any more.

The camera pointing direction with steer worked last time I tried it. But Ruud has been playing with car cameras a bit again recently so maybe it's not working due to those changes.

What camera are you trying to make it work with?

Try it with the default car maybe, usually that is correctly maintained.


PS, what vehicle are you trying to test? It looks like it might be quite old from some of the errors above so it'd be a good idea to try fix most of them up before moving ahead with it and physics testing!


PSPS, Racer is very flexible. I've made go-karts to monster truck inis, I've made the thrust SSC car, jet-cars and all sorts. Everything generally works ok in practice with realistic values.

Maybe 4-5 years ago that wasn't the case at all, but in the last 4 years or so Racer has really become quite reliable with these super-light or super-heavy cars/vehicles!

It is a good sign of a good engine that it is possible to make these crazy vehicles work ok... just weird bugs like this reversing one (and the diff reversing one too) that make it a pain to work with sometimes!

Dave

 

[luislucas]

So no progress with the bus/hummer suspension overload problem. That being said, it's probable that is the fault of the car model itself, since no other cars have got the same problem (even the renault espace) and it does look a bit like some lazy port, so I won't hold it against the program. In the midst of my testing however I did uncover another bug. The lambo sometimes starts spinning out of control when it lands slightly sideways, increasing the shock intensity rather than reduce it as it is supposed to, and the same happens in RC7 (which btw didn't suffer from the reversing problem). However, I haven't been able to replicate it on other cars so it could be due to a faulty impact zone or something, since the regular crashing (with the same car) feels good enough. So much for the shining example from which we must build.

I've also finished setting up the graphics; despite vital stuff like the anti-aliasing not being identified as such, considering how it eats up fps like a lion with no warning, I decided on 2X antialiasing (just to avoid horribly jagged edges), a touch of 8X8 blur just to avoid cardboard cuts between things, render once the live map, and finally mirrors with no extra antialiasing, that update every frame (looked weird otherwise) but work at a lower resolution, and with 0.2 of LOD. As it is, it manages more than 30 fps over even the more detailed tracks. The only persistent problem is that in Lienz the mirrors seem to flicker and perhaps give a wrong reflection? I don't know probably something to do with the track.

That, and I needed to reduce texture quality in order to be able to play in Mioveni without some unannounced crash during loading, despite the 2.50 GB of memory available. A 64 bit version might help on this department (since 32 bit can only use like 2 GB of memory?), but maybe it would be worth looking into some sort of on-the-fly loading of the track, either because of bigger complexity of future creation or in order to make the game less resource heavy.

Related to the Live Mapping/HDR though... If I may be so rude, did any of you guys ever look at real life? Because no mirror can give a perfect reflection from something 500 meters away, let alone a car. I thought those videos were just development fun, not the regular deal... Anyway, as soon as I changed
; Size of FBO (width & height)
size=512
to
; Size of FBO (width & height)
size=30
It looked a lot more natural; I just strained it a bit to 40 just to imagine what would a perfectly clean car look like...

On the physics department, I am sure that I found a mistake tough. Either Lime Creek winter is supposed be a wet track on white tarmac, or the snow/gravel/sand/mud physics do not apply; there's none of that tire "biting into the ground" feeling, or squirreling under high power. It may work for Ice, but for loose ground there are some other rules to apply.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Lime Creek Winter is meant to be snow, and snowing weather conditions.

I really quite like that track because all in it feels like a winter road and you have to really take care in a powerful rwd car!

As per some of your other content, I can't really say because a lot of it sounds like it needs updating for the latest versions before you can really judge it


But I noticed you mentioned RC7... we are on RC6 right now with no RC7 released... did you mean RC5?

Feel free to post download links to the content you are having trouble with and I'll take a quick look if you want?


Cheers

Dave

 

[luislucas]

Oh it's slippery all right, but it feels more like really oily tarmac than exactly snow, or at least the sliding and the tire slippage don't feel as they should. It's just that unlike say ice, which is really a slippery surface worse off by the water on top, snow is more liquid, there's always that small digging in and rowing forwards. Then again, apparently there's a control called viscosity, maybe that would help? But I'm no expert.

Hum... did you check the download page recently (wow just 4 days ago... guess I went there right on time, huh)? http://www.racer.nl/dl_beta_win.htm the most recent download available is RC7 "Oculus Rift" edition, which is both twice the size and is meant to run on 3D.

Or at least, my computer can't render it properly; even with the stereoscopic 3D disabled, there's no textures (perhaps due to different shaders?), so the whole thing looks like an amiga game even though it runs; that's how I checked the reverse had been fixed (although not the same way I fixed it), as well as the persistence of the "endless spinning" bug. Regardless, the racer.ini had slight differences like the collision settings, which I used on mine and do feel better.

So if you to check it out the questionable (But Safe For Work) content for yourself, this is the bus (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=782 and this is the Hummer (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=711). The circuits are Lienz (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=685) and Mioveni (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=1015).

Funnily enough, the last one is not even the biggest track in terms of size, but is the only one that needed extra memory... Anyway go ahead and have fun, that's the whole point isn't it?

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yes you are right viscosity parameter might help... give it a try!

Not many people seem to use it but it should really be used for anything like sand/snow which are a viscous surface!

Hehe, I didn't see the Oculus Rift version.

I'm sticking with RC5 for now as it works ok for me. If I get time I might try RC6 again but I really don't want to get bogged down in tweaking variables randomly.

I'm waiting for Ruud to clarify a few things. Also it'd be nice if he can say how we use the new water/reflect shader as I'm sure it's still broken... but I can't be sure if it's just us using it wrong (again need clarification), or the shader/rendering is just buggy... hmmm

Dave

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Oh it's slippery all right, but it feels more like really oily tarmac than exactly snow, or at least the sliding and the tire slippage don't feel as they should. It's just that unlike say ice, which is really a slippery surface worse off by the water on top, snow is more liquid, there's always that small digging in and rowing forwards. Then again, apparently there's a control called viscosity, maybe that would help? But I'm no expert.

Hum... did you check the download page recently (wow just 4 days ago... guess I went there right on time, huh)? http://www.racer.nl/dl_beta_win.htm the most recent download available is RC7 "Oculus Rift" edition, which is both twice the size and is meant to run on 3D.

Or at least, my computer can't render it properly; even with the stereoscopic 3D disabled, there's no textures (perhaps due to different shaders?), so the whole thing looks like an amiga game even though it runs; that's how I checked the reverse had been fixed (although not the same way I fixed it), as well as the persistence of the "endless spinning" bug. Regardless, the racer.ini had slight differences like the collision settings, which I used on mine and do feel better.

So if you to check it out the questionable (But Safe For Work) content for yourself, this is the bus (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=782 and this is the Hummer (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=711). The circuits are Lienz (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=685) and Mioveni (http://www.tracciontrasera.es/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownloaddetails&lid=1015).

Funnily enough, the last one is not even the biggest track in terms of size, but is the only one that needed extra memory... Anyway go ahead and have fun, that's the whole point isn't it?

Hi, my MCI Bus is still a verry early beta, not good for reference...there are many others with a better quality and better data...

 

[boomer541]

RC7 might be good for those that have the equipment to run it, but what about the bugs that haven't been fixed. Are they in that version also?

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Bob that RC7 is a "special" version for oculus rift...look here...

http://www.oculusvr.com/

 

[luislucas]

Like I mentioned, my brief stint with it showed that the reversing problem had at least been fixed, but I didn't bother with it any longer because I wasn't able to see any textures even after deactivating everything I could.

Say, would it be possible to implement a "radio" feature in which there's a file that contains music we might want to play, and by pressing the right button in the middle of the game a script would start playing them, while we could skip to the next music or "station"? It would probably be nice for some cruising.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

you can have already a sound/music in game, look in to the racer.ini under music...

music
{
  ; Several section with music choices
  ; Menu music (MP3/WAV etc)
  menu
  {
    ; song1=menu.mp3
    song1=
  }
  lobby
  {
    song1=lobby.mp3
  }
  replay
  {
  }
  race
  {
  }
}

but for the mom i think not to aktivate or stopp with a script...

 

[Mr Whippy]

There is an option for RC7, I think, in racer.ini, that turns on/off the Oculus output...

Take a look, it's a 0/1 toggle I think.

That might work. No idea. I haven't tried it myself but know such a value exists... I think


Yes, the most helpful post of the day

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

PS, is this a bug?

In a replay if you use the console you can't send a console command because the enter key has turned into a slow-mo toggle.

This means as soon as you use the console in a replay, you are stuck and need to close Racer a 'messy' way. Ie, escape key no longer exits the race.


I'm sure it wasn't like that in the past, it seems like the enter key has been bound to slow-mo in replays, or the enter key isn't released by the replay when the console is opened?!

Dave

 

[Alex Forbin]

PS, is this a bug?

In a replay if you use the console you can't send a console command because the enter key has turned into a slow-mo toggle.

This means as soon as you use the console in a replay, you are stuck and need to close Racer a 'messy' way. Ie, escape key no longer exits the race.


I'm sure it wasn't like that in the past, it seems like the enter key has been bound to slow-mo in replays, or the enter key isn't released by the replay when the console is opened?!

Dave

Yeah, that bug has been around for quite a while but I keep forgetting to mention it, I'm glad you did.

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

Haha, I've spotted it a few times but it really annoyed me this time so thought I'd post it

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Was just digging, and despite William saying flags for the sky were 0
http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/atmosphere.htm

That page was updated in Dec 2012 (so about 6 months ago) and is still saying flags 72 along with some other settings that are not in Carlswood.

I wonder what the 64 and 8 flag do then... it'd be useful to know... I wonder if they have a bearing on the pushing to infinity of things like lens flares, or the specular being out of line sometimes etc?!

Hmmm

Dave

 

[William Geuze]

Sky flags like that aren't used anymore. It's a variable in the sky shader (sky=1) which makes sure the sky is the first thing rendered on screen and everything else on top.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Ah ok.

Just trying to get it clear here.

We really could do with the racer.nl having a wiki framework so users can submit updated pages pending Ruud's approval of course.

That way we could write superior pages for these things and try keep the central reference totally up to date.


Thanks

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Well I just tried those old flags out on a WIP track thinking maybe they'd get the flare graphic behaving, but they don't

I even have the lens flare graphic under the horizon in some cases, moving around as I drive about the track hehe.

A shame there isn't a flag (all about flags isn't it ) for objects so they can avoid being rendered in the envmap... that way I could just make a sun graphic decal and stick it to my sky

Hmmm

Dave

 

[boomer541]

Dave,
On that atmosphere.htm page there are references to gfx parameters for special.ini.

They DON'T have any effect and can be commented out in the special.ini file, try it.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yeah, those params are now in the TOD curves.

I guess my point is it's hard to keep up with what stuff does when the change log, Racer, and the racer.nl reference are all saying slightly different things
Generally if I get stuck I go to Racer.nl because it's usually updated all the time... just I was surprised this page was quite recently updated and was so wrong it seems.


Anyhow, RC6 generally... anyone else finding the shadows are usually jittering in and out of surfaces, and almost all the time they are under the road for cars...

Basically the shadows are now broken.

Dave