New version 0.8.9 is out!

[frank11]

Get it at www.racer.nl

Thanks Ruud!

 

[Mr Whippy]

I agree Alex. I guess it's still early days but it's way better than it was from a performance POV. Seems that as smoke really builds up the actual FPS drop isn't anywhere near as bad as it was...

I think it's not so much tyre temp, which could be implemented somehow, but if we assume road tyres at least heat up and cool down almost in line with slip angle/ratio, then we could tie the transparrency/size/life of the particles to the slip angles. Right now under hard ABS braking I get full on 'puffs' of smoke, when in reality at that kinda slip ratio they would be tiny wisps of smoke from the tyre.


An easy fix I assume, as the old smoke was generated something a bit like that, just needs tying to these nicer newer particles

Dave

 

[boomer541]

I'm getting blinking shadows in the distance on Carlswood. It could be my GTX285 not set right or something in the racer.ini. I have no clue what, can anyone help!

 

[Mr Whippy]

I've got some blinking going on too... I think it's just the stepping for the shadows or something. I guess the system still needs optimising somewhat... it doesn't do it all the time, just some times on distant objects.

Carlswood DOES seem to do it more than other tracks though, not sure why.

Dave

 

[camsinny]

How do we run scripts?
I couldn't find the "scripts" tree in racer.ini so i added it with a child of auto_load and set it to 1 but my scripts aren't loading...

 

[Mr Whippy]

I'm confused about shaders still.

We have a load of them in the Racer renderer folder, but no idea on the syntax on how each one should work unless we can 'read' shaders and then work it out.

Ie, how does dyn_standard_bump_speca_f/v.cg work?


It just doesn't seem to be working here no matter how much I mess about. Why does it have to be so hard

The shaders themselves are great to exist as ones to choose from in a library, but without the actual application syntax they are rather useless for mere mortals


Dave

 

[Stereo]

I guess you need to read through the shader to get it... I haven't looked at any shader documentation. They are fairly well commented though.

layer0: texture
layer1: normal
// Take specularity from normal (!) map's alpha channel
Ks = normalCol.a*Ks

So as well as being bumpmapped, you can vary the specular sharpness via the alpha channel on the normal.
Which I guess leads to the name "speca" (specular on alpha channel).


So to use it, in car/track.shd you'd set specular=max spec you want on the material, and then use the alpha channel to multiply that lower. I haven't tried it though so I can't confirm whether it actually works

I'm still hesitant about doing up a cg shader tutorial because they might change. The basics are very basic though (copy shaders from Lamborghini/Carlswood, rename materials, done)

 

[Mr Whippy]

So the alpha map controls the sharpness of the specular...

So we have

specular = r g b a
shininess = Ks

Then the actual output of Ks = Ks * alpha (is that normalised 0...1 from 0...255?) so alpha = 0 (black) means very dull, and alpha = 255 (white) means the shininess you input in the shininess input...

Also, do these variables go in the head of the shader, or under the specific texture inputs? I'm not sure what is possible here (ie, tinting a specific texture by using diffuse = 1 1 0 for example to remove the blue from it), or more importantly what is 'allowed' or best practice.



Makes some sense.

I tried it, but it just didn't seem to work nicely on my tyre.

I'll try again without the bump map (if I don't use a bump map will the same shader work essentially as a diffuse/speca only?) and also on a plain sphere to better check the effect

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hmmm,

It still doesn't seem to look/work elegantly. I wonder if the smooth group is kinda distorting the normal map and making it just not look right.

Is there any chance anyone can take the bump speca map and just make it speca (using the diffuse alpha channel, NOT the normal map alpha channel)?


Ie, a dyn_standard_v.cg, but with CSM added (this one doesn't appear to have had CSM added into it), but with specular support on the alpha channel (Ks)


The normal maps have never really worked nicely in Racer, they always seem to fuzz up really badly somehow... my tyres look 'ok' at say 5-10m, but as soon as you get close they get all crispy looking and they appear to just become wrong (ie, the tyre tread blocks that were nicely lit with a shine, suddenly go dark and have a crispy shiny edge)!?


More testing to do. Would be nice to have most of these shaders written with small examples in each one (of the code we use in car.shd), and some example values and comments, and also maybe have all the combinations, so I can use spec.a with or without bump... right now there is only one spec.a map and it is using bump (and I have no idea how to take it out )



Cheers

Dave

 

[AMGfan(BPM)]

Hmmm,

It still doesn't seem to look/work elegantly. I wonder if the smooth group is kinda distorting the normal map and making it just not look right.

Is there any chance anyone can take the bump speca map and just make it speca (using the diffuse alpha channel, NOT the normal map alpha channel)?


Ie, a dyn_standard_v.cg, but with CSM added (this one doesn't appear to have had CSM added into it), but with specular support on the alpha channel (Ks)


The normal maps have never really worked nicely in Racer, they always seem to fuzz up really badly somehow... my tyres look 'ok' at say 5-10m, but as soon as you get close they get all crispy looking and they appear to just become wrong (ie, the tyre tread blocks that were nicely lit with a shine, suddenly go dark and have a crispy shiny edge)!?


More testing to do. Would be nice to have most of these shaders written with small examples in each one (of the code we use in car.shd), and some example values and comments, and also maybe have all the combinations, so I can use spec.a with or without bump... right now there is only one spec.a map and it is using bump (and I have no idea how to take it out )



Cheers

Dave

Dave, are you using my beemer? my shaders are ok to newer versions?

 

[Mr Whippy]

No I'm tinkering with the Murcielago because it's the default Racer car, and not a conversion (I'm guessing the BMW is?), so it can be released/updated to the latest standards and enjoyed in the Racer package.
Just a shame the Murcielago doesn't have a nice interior to enjoy, but I might be able to fix that if I can model one

Dave

 

[KS95]

Yes.. the Murcielago being Racer's default car needs to show off Racer's abilities. No interior is quite a let down for some people. That'd be really great if you did give it an interior.

 

[mbw13]

Oh dear. This new version is...well...disappointing. I've been running ATi for years! Only have problems with Racer.

Is this a bias of the creator, or a legitimate problem? After numeros releases with little to no 'acceptable' support for ATi, one gets to thinking.

Either way, for me I will stick to the non-CG version of Racer.

 

[camsinny]

It's really ATi's fault for leaving OpenGL in the dust. They decided to concentrate on DirectX to try to beat NVIDIA and have done well in recent releases but because of this OGL has suffered.
This is by no means Ruud's fault, it's not like he decided to exclude ATi cards, it's just AMD's downfall.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Oh dear. This new version is...well...disappointing. I've been running ATi for years! Only have problems with Racer.

Is this a bias of the creator, or a legitimate problem? After numeros releases with little to no 'acceptable' support for ATi, one gets to thinking.

Either way, for me I will stick to the non-CG version of Racer.

Blame Microsoft.

Nvidia created CG, MS used it to run under DX but added their own layer of silliness which means that a card that fully supports DX might not fully support CG, despite DX just sending commands to CG eventually anyway (from what I read)...

If you want CG support, full support, you need an OpenGL card, which is open source on all OS's... which is what Racer is.


If you want full support in a multi-platform game/sim/app, you need hardware that is fully-featured, and the ATI stuff isn't basically. It's cheap and missing features. Great if you just hammer DX games all day long, but not so handy if you want to use an API other than DX.


So either shout at MS for being retarded, and not just using CG in a way that means card manufacturers need to fully support CG AND DX...

Or blame ATI for being cheap.

Or blame yourself for buying a card that doesn't support the common high-end gfx API's fully


I think this is a legitimate problem of big corporates like MS trying to keep control while CG is trying to innovate open-source stuff (yay Nvidia!), and consumers who chase benchmark numbers rather than feature sets and compatibility... ergo ATI offer lacking products.

Dave

 

[Some1]

Unfortunately, things are the way they are.

I think the lowest common denominator here is definitely ATI, so if Ruud developed Racer with an ATI card, we probably had a few less GFX features, but Racer would work on lot bigger set of hardware configurations.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I think the problem is that the API that Mac and Linux can use, is OGL. It is cross-platform supported.

CG is fully supported in OGL.

DX doesn't support CG, despite operating on it, and ATI choose not to fully support OGL, hence no full CG support.


The only alternative is to limit the quality of the graphics down to what an ATI can handle through OGL, despite it being able to handle the same code probably (underneath) fine in DX...

I'd just buy an Nvidia for your next gfx card. OGL support has always been important for Racer (thats what it runs on), and personally I'd prefer NOT to be limited in what we can do in Racer because ATI won't support OGL properly... we are then always limited by what DX does... what if the next-generation of DX/ATI removes even more OGL support? Fine for 99% of users who just run DX all day long, but terrible for Racer users on CG.


That said, OGL is starting to make DX look stupid (I guess that is why DX/MS run CG through DX haha), so ATI will probably start to support CG directly in future because of pressure from developers using OGL/CG?
That said, they probably don't want to support it because it was developed by their arch nemesis Nvidia... happier instead to be stubborn and ruin choice for the consumer.


Thats why I won't buy an ATI card personally. Ignorance of the wider niche market that Nvidia is happy to develop for, while also leading with next-gen API's like CG!

If Racer folds to the pressure and goes DX, or limits the CG implementation, then will it fold again when the majority are happy to have less support for non-DX related stuff?

Dave

 

[mpsco]

Ruud did you inform/ask ATI/AMD about this "CG" problem ?

 

[Sorbus]

I think the problem is that the API that Mac and Linux can use, is OGL. It is cross-platform supported.

Now that it's been mentioned, not wanting to thread-jack, has anyone had any joy with 0.8.9 under WINE? I'm still super pleased with 0.8.8, but surely getting future releases 'WINE friendly' would be an easier way to keep OS X and Linux support. After all, some commercial games use similar WINE wrappers...

*lurks again*

Sorbus

 

[KS95]

I run Ubuntu and 0.8.9 runs fine for me under wine. No graphics errors or anything.

 

[Sorbus]

I run Ubuntu and 0.8.9 runs fine for me under wine. No graphics errors or anything.

Hmmm. that's interesting. I've tried winetricks with direct x 9 and 10, but no joy. I've an nvidia Geforce 8600m GT. I've attached the error message.