Racer v0.8.10 is out

[Ruud]

Yep, v0.8.10, another step towards 0.9 final. The most important thing is that I normalized special.ini's sun.intensity, so that should be around 1.0 now. Otherwise tracks will look white (very over-exposed). I could maintain compatibility with older tracks but really, most content will just need a bit of work to match 0.9.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/dl_beta_win.htm
(the version before 28-6-10 around 12pm contains exe's that are licensed; redownload to get tracked.exe, modeler.exe etc that don't give the 'license invalid' error)

v0.8.10 (25-06-10)
-------------------
- Using Newton 2.22 which fixes bugs in track collision meshes sometimes
- Modified shader sorting a bit - decal objects such as skidmarks on roads should use layer0.depthwrite=0
so that they render AFTER the road itself (which does depthwrite=1)
- Added csm_f.cg which is bloom_shadows_f.cg without bloom (just a bit faster)
- 'reload car' would crash sometimes. Also, 'reload car <name>' now works correctly due to the same issue.
- The 'join game' dialog was invisible (though active)
- Driving in reverse no longer causes the brakes to heat up
- Fixed bug with VBO's which could cause crashes while painting
- Failed DOF loads could cause the next models to be loaded without generating VBO's (slower rendering)
- Added support for DDS files which don't supply all mipmap levels
- LDR no longer supported; the hdr.enable option is gone
- 'strict' mode (dev.strict=1) now also catches shaders without vertex & fragment shaders; v0.9 will require Cg shaders
- Lambo rear wheels were unshaded
- Atmosphere shaders optimized. Also normalized the sun intensity, so special.ini sun.intensity should now be around 1.0!
- Started documenting on how to convert for v0.9, see http://racer.nl/tutorial/updating_v09.htm
- Added 'racer_nocg.exe', which loads track_nocg.shd and car_nocg.shd files instead of track.shd/car.shd
This enables you to provide simple shaders for old machines/cards. See http://racer.nl/tutorial/nocg.htm
- 'show carpoints' now also shows the backfire points
- Added 'envmap.live_track.render_once' to generate a single envmap at start time, then not update it again (for speed)
- Added 'scale' parameter to shaders (shader_<name>.scale) which is passed to Cg shaders
- Added 'standard_mix2_f.cg' for mixing of 2 textures using a control texture. Useful for tracks.
- Also added 'standard_mix1_f.cg' and 'standard_mix2w_f.cg', see http://racer.nl/tutorial/shading_tracks.htm
- Fresnel properties for GPU shaders can now be set: shader<x>.fresnel.bias, scale and power.
See http://racer.nl/reference/shadereng.htm#matglobal

 

[Stereo]

Got my 9500 GT, CSM looks great, so is not having thousands of errors... but the dithering method for the asphalt decals doesn't seem very random?

I inset an enlargement of it, you can see the same pattern repeating. Is this some setting I'm not familiar with or how can I improve this? I did take a bit of a look at dithering methods, I don't know if this is an artifact of how cg works (the nicer looking dithering algorithms are not easily parallelized - I guess this is Bayer dithering) or if I just have to increase CSAA setting or something.

 

[Mingus]

Hey, I'm running racer with wine and it works quit fine, but I can't change camera views. When I press 1-9 I got those text stuff (see pic) Does anyone know how to change it?
Also, how can I start racer in wine? Do I have to use terminal everytime?
And last question: How can I lock 'server=localhost' to make it work everytime?

Great release, glad you made that non_cg thing Ruud, dankuwel

 

[JagerMan]

I get this when i start racer. Didnt have this trouble with 8.8 and could run HDR and CG. Does anyone know how to help?

 

[Alex Forbin]

Thanks for the update, but there are many bugs yet.

The "c" camera switch still doesn't work properly .It randomly decides when to let you back into the car.

The exterior camera "autoswitches" back to the "cinematic?" camera from the trackcam. (the cinematic camera is really only useful in replay)

The collision sounds don't seem to work if you define your own sounds. When I replace a standard sound with one of my own it will cause the sounds to quit after the fist collision. (sound length problem?)
The collision sound system in general seems very odd, most sims seem to let you just define sounds and materials and the program will work out the pairing. The current system will be a major pain as more sounds are developed, as you will need to define ALL interactions between ALL materials!

If the car is sliding upside down gravity suddenly becomes relative to the car instead of the world. The result causes the cars path to wander around like a drunken sailor. If this is the case when the car is on it's wheels then there are some very wrong forces being directly applied to the car body.

dyn_standard_bump.cg is broken.

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

The c camera button is annoying

The new rain/rooster tail particles look nice in the wet.


Just been playing more with TOD and the sunsets/sunrise looks you can get are fantastic IF you tweak the mie/rayleigh at those times of day...

Please please please Ruud, if you offer TOD curve editing then tracks will look really stunning! The values used by TOD right now are just not perfect really, the balance seems off at all different times of day. I'd love to release a track and just say use whatever TOD you like because it will look good, rather than optimise for a fixed TOD because it's the only way I can get it to look how I want it to!

Dave

 

[Alex Forbin]

Oh, Tracked seems to be broken as well. Anyone else had a problem with it crashing on startup?

Alex Forbin

 

[luthobu]

Oh, Tracked seems to be broken as well. Anyone else had a problem with it crashing on startup?

Not crashing, but I get an error and it exits..

 

[boomer541]

The tracked, modeller and other utilities have a "license" error the really need fixing.

FPS increased from 66 to 130 using carlswood and NO blinking shadows.

I get a problem with gravel turning black which I thank is a shader issue and I'm still having problems with skies being too bright on older tracks which makes cars too bright!

Otherwise a great improvement over ver 0.089!

 

[mpsco]

I get this when i start racer. Didnt have this trouble with 8.8 and could run HDR and CG. Does anyone know how to help?

Normal ATI/INTEL error :]

"We work almost exclusively with nVidia cards (and drivers), so those are highly recommended for the best compatibility with Racer"
http://www.racer.nl/download.htm

0.8.8.1 - Last "universal" version or 0.8.10 + "basic" from luthobu

EDIT: It works just great here, the light improvements and reflections are awesome. I have uploaded a "basic" racer.ini-0810-nocg to alge. Also, check the screenshots section for a nocg screenie.

 

[BVSX]

great release Ruud!! Thx!

Someone has problems with the smoke? CG version don't even have it!!!

 

[Cobra]

Well I have the lowest of low end machines, but a great big desire to play Racer. Since I discovered the sim in 2005 and downloaded it, a '23 T-bucket and a track called "The Country Quarter". I forget which version, but it was after "05.final". I am just giving some background, as I have downloaded the newest of the new, and haven't upgraded my machine, as I plan to get a whole new system-key starting point an Nvidia card capable of handling the final Racer version. I'll probably keep this old PC on the 'net to surf/download.
I'll let everyone on here know how I make out. To quote "Memphis Raines-Gone in 60 Seconds-"Don't start,no-please Start!..Start!, come on Elanor-I need you.... oh Thank you!" BTW, I love the GT-500, and will have a major job of updating her if this works.:wink:

 

[JagerMan]

Normal ATI/INTEL error :]

"We work almost exclusively with nVidia cards (and drivers), so those are highly recommended for the best compatibility with Racer"
http://www.racer.nl/download.htm

0.8.8.1 - Last "universal" version or 0.8.10 + "basic" from luthobu

Figured it out, just have to turn off shadow mapping to run racer. A bit annoying considering its an high end ATI but at least it still runs at all, cheers

 

[boomer541]

Black gravel was a shader problem, fixed!

I went to: http://racer.nl/tutorial/shading_tracks.htm and downloaded the test track (in the "sand and grass - mixing" section).

Checked out the sky section and looked at the track shader and special.ini files. They look a bit different than in ver 0.089.

Ran the track in ver.0.089 and the sky was very bright which also made the car look too bright.

To get a nice looking sky I changed the rayleigh and mie settings to 0.00008. No dark night sky available. I tried the same settings on an old track and there was no difference, sky too bright!

Something for Ruud to work on! I want good skies, please!

 

[Mr Whippy]

Try tweaking the sun intensity value...

I've asked Ruud what the rationale was for normalising this, but the mie/rayleigh values run directly through it, so perhaps their scaling is now out?

Either way, we need to know this bit isn't buggy because it kinda doesn't feel as nice and intuitive as it did before he normalised the sun intensity...


I'd like to know how you normalise the sun intensity when it's clearly a non-dimensional number running in a HDR environment... I ran sun intensities from 500 > 3000 in the older betas, so what is 1 now equivalent to? Ruud? Can you clarify (changelog with more detail) this change as it's really important we understand it!

Thanks

Dave

 

[Ruud]

0.6.6.5 old gpu Last normal "non-Cg" old engine,

0.8.10 non-cg no problem only with CG tracks? (fps ok) [Polish Roads 2a, Lime Creek South Loop]


It's possible to mix ?

1) 0.6.6.5 + Newton 2.22 (old non-cg)
2) 0.8.8.1 + Newton 2.22 (ATI)

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

Not sure how much use reporting to ATI would be.
On the track problems, check QLOG.txt. In the old v0.5 days, a DOF had materials (it still has, but they're overruled by the .shd files). In each material there was a texture name. That's the image that it's looking for. Now, the material *name* is important, and used from the .shd file.
However, the non-Cg version loads track_nocg.shd. If that doesn't exist (and it won't for just about all tracks currently) it will just have loaded the texture in the .dof's material definition. Check QLOG.txt; it will probably complain on those geobs which don't have textures defined. If no texture was defined explicit in the DOF material (and I've seen some of those models) then you get the red/purple stub texture.

Each track will need to be updated to work with v0.9. Too much has changed to keep it reliably compatible with v0.5.

 

[Stereo]

- Added 'envmap.live_track.render_once' to generate a single envmap at start time, then not update it again (for speed)

Hmm, maybe this should come with a console/script command, to force a render to the envmap. It helps performance a lot, eg. I get about 4 times the framerate, but when taking screenshots (or tweaking light settings) it makes sense to regenerate a more accurate one on the spot.

 

[Ruud]

Noticed another thing.. newer racer versions has weak beam (or projected lights).

8.10

088 (the best one - the beam really light up.)

In HDR/CSM it should be ok-ish. Check data/renderer/shaders_hdr/projected_texture_f.cg -> 'const float diffuseLighting=1.1;' (it's probably at 0.6 now).
Do note it blends through all texture alpha channels, so on Carlswood with the alpha focused on two lanes it doesn't look as good anymore. Another shader flag needed? Hm.

 

[Ruud]

Just noticed this.. tracked and modeler give me a license error.. it is better than crashing,
but... is it supposed to be like that? I really miss using tracked..

Re-download the 0.8.10; it now contains a working TrackEd/Modeler without licensing.

 

[Ruud]

Got my 9500 GT, CSM looks great, so is not having thousands of errors... but the dithering method for the asphalt decals doesn't seem very random?

I inset an enlargement of it, you can see the same pattern repeating. Is this some setting I'm not familiar with or how can I improve this? I did take a bit of a look at dithering methods, I don't know if this is an artifact of how cg works (the nicer looking dithering algorithms are not easily parallelized - I guess this is Bayer dithering) or if I just have to increase CSAA setting or something.

It isn't random no. See nVidia's coverage sampling on how it works. It will improve if you use more anti-aliasing (coverage_samples=16), or perhaps you even need to increase the regular 'samples=...' since downsampling the aliased buffer downto your resolution is where alpha is converted into the dithering pattern. If nVidia made it really random, you'd get noticable noise.

 

[Ruud]

Hmm, maybe this should come with a console/script command, to force a render to the envmap. It helps performance a lot, eg. I get about 4 times the framerate, but when taking screenshots (or tweaking light settings) it makes sense to regenerate a more accurate one on the spot.

Added 'envmap render' for v0.8.11.