BTB Improvements?

[Brendon Pywell]

Believe it or not, I get quite a few emails with suggestions on how BTB could be improved. Rather than me simply “sorting” them in my own Inbox, I’d like to openly ask the BTB community for their suggestions, allowing suggestions to be discussed and workshopped. I have a few ideas (pages of them) myself but it's always refreshing to get other people's ideas.

Aside from the next patch, I pretty much know what I am going to include in the next version. Beyond that I also have some great ideas as I address what I perceive to be BTB’s most common “annoyances”.

So please, feel free to offer your ideas on what you’d like to see in the upcoming releases. I’ll refrain from comment, but I will be taking notes.

 

[Erwin Greven]

Another bug that could be addressed is the next one:

BTB crashes regularly when working on cross sections in roads. I think it happens more often when working on bigger tracks. (memory?)

 

[R Soul]

Hmmm, it appears the global rotation tool has no option to prevent rotating SObjects. Example in this thread:
http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/rotate-track-without-rotating-sobjects.87517/

 

[SmashingPants67]

A tool like the Sketchup's "Add Geo Location", but 1024x1024 DXT1 DDS instead of freely-sized JPG's.

 

[RichardHessels]

a function to distribute selected nodes or point placement.
Just like we have the line-up functions.

 

[R Soul]

Some settings in XPacker don't get saved. I'm making an SObject, and for each part I select 'add randomness', set a value for rotation and click on Save. The value doesn't get saved.

edit: Today it seems to be behaving differently. Now it does remember the radonmess checkbox. It also remembers the 'Jiggle' values. It doesn't remember 'Rotation'; it uses the default values (2,2,180) instead. Since the tags are written to the XML file I can edit the rotation values in there. Then, XPacker shows them. It doesn't remember 'Scale', or even write default values to the file.

 

[UPCPC-IvanThaDriver]

Besides grid snap in road profile/wall creation one more thing came to my mind - ability to bevel vertex to smooth sharp edges. Maybe some more basic shapes like arc/curve with controlled smoothness beside straight line would be cool Thanks for your work Brendan

 

[marcobost]

It can be nice to have the track exported to rFactor1 enhanced by RFE Plugin Series to enjoy the variable weather conditions. Basically it means to add few lines into few files like the AIW and SCN plus an updated TDF files and an updated SKY.MAS to have different levels of animated clouds and rain (no problem for compatibility: tracks ready for RFE can be used with or without the plugin).
In addition, a native management of object's reflection on wet surfaces.
More shaders used by other games can be also very interesting to enlarge the use of BTB.
Thank you Brendon.

 

[R Soul]

It would be nice if SObjects could include Complex Objects. I tend to use COs to make objects that gain or lose detail based on viewing distance (via LODin and LODout values).

 

[marcobost]

I do not think I have to suggest to Brendon to add the:
Binary FBX Exporter
so BTB will open its features for making Assetto Corsa tracks!!
This scenario is what I hope in the closest future:
- make tracks from scratch in BTB
- direct export into the Kunos proprietary tool for adding shaders, etc...
- save the track into Kunos proprietary format and enjoy it

 

[UPCPC-IvanThaDriver]

Concerning 3d glasses shader - do you think it could be possible to force RBR to work with Oculus Rift?

Combined with this

it would be amazing

EDIT : Sorry, I've just found this https://developer.oculusvr.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=3236 I see there is something going on

 

[Ghoults]

Sorry for posting a bible length post of suggestions. I always get carried away when people ask my feedback...

Road surface and terrain:

- show what track is currently selected somewhere on the screen all the time
- allow different parts of the driving surface in different parts of the track have different amounts of track vertices without having to add additional line of surfaces for the entire track. And this would be nice for walls as well
- allow terrain nodes to be connected to the ends of open ended track. Now the terrain can only be attached to the side of the road.
- some kind of tool for adding access roads would be a real time saver!
- option to make some tracks to be "copy slaves" of the main track. This would mean that if you move the main track nodes or adjust the control points the slave tracks would be moved and edited automatically to match the main track. This would be good for kerbs creation. Basically the copy track has the same camber, road nodes but different road surface mesh and texture.


Relatively simple sounding additional options for already existing features:

- option to make the car/helicopter view to travel the track backwards as well so you can see how the track looks when going in "wrong way" (for reversed track configurations)
- option to disable the 3d view from moving and zooming into object you are editing when using the < and > keys for moving to the next or previous track surface/object.
- add the forementioned < and > buttons into the camber window as well.
- option to numerically adjust all the pink control point properties instead of just z, y and z. For example one node would have these values: x, y, z, direction1, direction2, strengthIn and strengthOut. X, y and z are just the location of the node. Direction1 and 2 are the direction to which the pink handles are pointing at. Direction1 could be angle from x and direction2 could be angle from y. StrengthIn is the radius of the corner that is before the node and stregthOut is the radius of the corner after the node. The longer the pink line the bigger the strength value.
- in addition to get/copying road node xyz positions also make it you can get/copy control point vectors in/out lengths and directions ("the properties of the pink lines of the nodes" - control points/handles?). This would be amazing when you have created a copy of your main track for making kerbs but you want to move the main track. Getting the "kerb track" to align with the main track is really really difficult/impossible. You can now match the locations of the nodes (xyz) but not the other properties.

New export options:

- export to rfactor2
- instead (or in addition to) of fbx export for assetto corsa I'd rather have btb output ac tracks directly like with rfactor. Call it btb_acrf2 and I'll pay for it!

Long live btb!

 

[R Soul]

Nice feature: Hide the Export window when the Export button is clicked. It can take a long time and if we forget to move the window, it makes it hard to do other things like web browsing while we wait.

 

[RichardHessels]

Nice feature: Hide the Export window when the Export button is clicked. It can take a long time and if we forget to move the window, it makes it hard to do other things like web browsing while we wait.

Just hit alt-tab...

 

[R Soul]

The window remains on top. Maybe it's changed for later versions of Windows but I'm sticking with XP at least until my BTB license runs out.

Another problem to report. When an object is marked 'moveable', rFactor's 'show in mirror' property is set to false, despite the checkbox in BTB being selected. This might be for performance reasons, but I think it's best to leave it up to the user.

It would also be very nice to have a Billboard option. I recently created a load of individual people objects and would like them to rotate about their vertical axes to always face the camera. Billboarding requires the objects to be 'moveable' so disabling 'show in mirror' is not always a good idea.

edit: I've just noticed another bug. When the shader for a material is Diffuse, Bump and Specular, each channel has the same MIP Bias as the diffuse channel.

 

[marcobost]

New export options:

- export to rfactor2
- instead (or in addition to) of fbx export for assetto corsa I'd rather have btb output ac tracks directly like with rfactor. Call it btb_acrf2 and I'll pay for it!

Long live btb!

I asked for the FBX as a chance for Brendon to make it easier than exporting directly into KN5.
The current editor of Kunos is really poor and not depending of the first beta version, but the development choices made by Kunos cannot bring to us a way to use that editor in an easy way. Just for instance, to move easily into the scene, like we can do in BTB or other 3d editors. But that tool I think must be intended as a forced choice to apply shaders, properties, etc in case we are managing a track.
If Brendon can do it (like for rFactor), I'll be really happy, because, notwithstanding several persons that feel themselves professional track makers, do not like BTB. On the contrary I think it is in any case at a very good level also for professionals and for sure it is the best present Brendon brought to us! Thank you Brendon, once again!

 

[Erwin Greven]

The window remains on top. Maybe it's changed for later versions of Windows but I'm sticking with XP at least until my BTB license runs out.

In Win7Pro the window remains on top too. As if the export consumes all the RAM and proc. power.

I hoped BTB would perform better on Win7 with 8GB ram, quad core and an HD5750 GPU (no pun towards Brendon) but somehow it almost makes no difference.

 

[Brendon Pywell]

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Feel free to support other people's ideas if you also want to see them implemented, that way I get an idea of how many people want a particular feature.

Also if you could post bug-reports in their own thread that would help me keep track of them and also help keep this thread clean.

Cheers, Brendon.

 

[SmashingPants67]

A 64-bit version of BTB would be a good sugestion (like the 4GB patch for rFactor).

 

[R Soul]

Here's another idea: Allow us to include randomness in the terrain panel distances (e.g. we set a distance of 5 + or - anything between 0 and 1)

 

[Csg2]

- Merge BTB and Zaxxon method. Tools in the BTB to facilitate the method. Zaxxon remains alive BTB, what better than merging to facilitate the work?

- Improve the use of textures. Posibility to rotate the textures on the terrain like the road.

- Export RBR original format.

- More languages like Spanish, French, Italian..