Racer v0.8.26 released!

[Ruud]

The usual, but 2 big things: a garage when selecting the car (getting rid of the white cars) and an important bugfix if the CG is not at the nullpoint.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.26.zip (100Mb, due to the extra garage track!)
CG movement patch (only the racer.exe) is at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0826b.zip (1.5Mb).

The garage is still a rough preview but you can plugin your own garage1 track (I might add the possibility of multiple garages). The CG bugfix is optional; in racer.ini find 'move_cg': 1 is the new default, 0 is the situation as from v0.8.25.

Changes:
v0.8.26 (10-12-10)
-----------------
- Skidmarks tweaked to be more opaque.
- Some bumpshaders modified the normal map's alpha, giving funny reflectiveness issues.
Resolved using an extra 'common/utils.cg' file with UnpackNormal() and used in all bump shaders.
- Best line tweaked; fades out near the car, green lines are faded. Less intrusive.
- Added Logitech G25 wheel preset file (thanks to QuadCoreMax)
- Modeler can now export a template shader (.shd) file for a loaded model
- Pressing P in replay a few times doesn't mess up the volume (on/off) anymore
- Non-Cg version still created mirror and live track FBO's
- Particle system would crash with some car/track combinations. Seems related to culled single-poly fences.
The road is culled and single-poly, and really hitting the track seems a problem for Newton.
- Same change for the particle system done to the exhausts (arrays instead of std:vector)
- Not all collide polygons were used for Newton's collision tree. Rebuild trackcollision.bin
- Car selection screen now loads 'garage1' track as the environment. Pitpos0 is the car location.
- Tracked spline selection now accepts Shift-[,] for multi-select (local grip editing)
- Default font made a bit smaller, since everyone's running at least 1024x768 anyway.
- The Ctrl-9 screen could show bad load balance when the nullpoint was outside
of the front and rear wheel susp<n> locations (extreme CG movement tests).
- CG translation bugfix in the physics; an important one! Use move_cg=1 in racer.ini.
- Ghost car playback didn't work correctly.

 

[luthobu]

One quick question.. the skydome in no-cg, is it still broken or is it possible to fix
or replace with the old one? Have not tested so it might be working now for all I
know.. but I think I will revert to no-cg for development, and then add the cg stuff
as a final "artistic" touch. As of now it (CG) really is killing my FPS (old GPU, I know).

 

[Ruud]

One quick question.. the skydome in no-cg, is it still broken or is it possible to fix
or replace with the old one? Have not tested so it might be working now for all I
know.. but I think I will revert to no-cg for development, and then add the cg stuff
as a final "artistic" touch. As of now it (CG) really is killing my FPS (old GPU, I know).

The sky used to be drawn by switching projection matrices halfway rendering. With Cg that's not needed anymore, and things become simpler. As the NoCg version is mostly there to allow people to get a glimpse Racer, but not really meant as a viable solution for the longer term (after v0.9) I'm not too inclined to put much effort in it...
For Cg, if you kill CSM, bloom and just use the passthrough.cg for fs_filter1, then it should be pretty quick (perhaps twice as slow as without Cg; perhaps mainly due to HDR being used).

 

[krsman3d]

First bugs found. After selecting a car in the cool new Select a car menu and clicking Free race, the shaders go crazy. Or if I click exit, Racer crashes. The strange camera position has probably something to do with the CG fixes. Take a look:

 

[Some1]

Hmm... the bug with shadow splits not following the camera properly is still there

 

[Mr Whippy]

The strange camera position has probably something to do with the CG fixes. Take a look:

Hmmm, I think this is also in 0.8.25?!

We had this before in the recent past where cameras were all screwed up. Spawn to the start/pits positions and the camera offset changes around inside the car.

Dave

 

[krsman3d]

After setting move_cg to 0 all was fine.



In this version I sometimes get strange stuttering when the framerate gets close to 30 fps, just like a few versions before. All was fine in v0.8.25 though.

 

[KS95]

Might be auto-exposure, I have a constant stutter every 5 or so seconds unless I turn it off.

 

[luthobu]

As the NoCg version is mostly there to allow people to get a glimpse Racer, but not really meant as a viable solution for the longer term (after v0.9) I'm not too inclined to put much effort in it...

That makes sense, and I do not in any way require a no-cg compatible mode
(as opposed to what I stated in some of my previous posts).

For Cg, if you kill CSM, bloom and just use the passthrough.cg for fs_filter1, then it should be pretty quick (perhaps twice as slow as without Cg; perhaps mainly due to HDR being used).

Ok. I'll try filtering out stuff I don't need for development, and see what I end up with.
Thanks for the reply, really appreciated.

Edit: I stand in awe! This release is nothing less than.. uhm.. awesome.. heh..

I followed the advice given, I even replaced the same offending bump_reflect*f.cg's
and tweaked and tweaked until there was no more left to tweak. And what did I get?
This! (see attachment). Thanks Ruud.. I was just about to give up on Racer, and then
you go ahead and do it again. Kudos! With sugar on top

 

[krsman3d]

Might be auto-exposure, I have a constant stutter every 5 or so seconds unless I turn it off.

Yes, you are right. With auto exposure off, Racer runs much more fluent than before. Strange, in 0.8.25 everything was fine.

Ruud, would it be possible for the fuel consumption not to show 99.9 when the car is standing still? It's a bit annoying when the car has a fuel consumption readout. Also, I noticed that the consumption is related to the gear you are in. For example, I get 50 l/100km in the 1st gear and 15 in 6th.

 

[KS95]

Anyone else find that driving into a wall sends you shooting off in another direction? A bit unrealistic looking lol

FPS upto mid 40s! I'm a happy bunny.

 

[luthobu]

@KS95: Why are you driving into the walls??

 

[DavidI]

Anyone else find that driving into a wall sends you shooting off in another direction? A bit unrealistic looking lol

Maybe delete the existing cache folder from tracks and let racer recreate them. Collisions with objects flagged 2 work fine for me now once that is done once.

 

[KS95]

@Luthobu, I was exploring the handling limits of the Lambo - a bit of understeer and I skimmed the wall, that's when I first noticed, so I continued testing.

 

[DavidI]

Front wheels don't seem to generate skid sounds, tried Lambo & a few other cars. Either it's missing, or a very low volume.

 

[luthobu]

@Luthobu, I was exploring the handling limits of the Lambo - a bit of understeer and I skimmed the wall, that's when I first noticed, so I continued testing.

Ah. ok. It sort of reminds me of when I started to do Small City 2009..
that's a looong time ago it seems. Well, you know how I love the Cuda,
and I sort of got all worked up.. and it did not go too well.. heh..

And to stay on topic.. handling seems to be very good. I have been testing an AAR and
a Stratos and they both act and behave incredibly good.. I have no complaints with this
release. I did do some changes though: replaced bump*reflect*f.cg, tweaked away lots
of the fancy stuff and optimized others. move_cg=0 (that seems better as krsman3d says)
and I never use auto-exposure..

 

[camsinny]

So...how come the lighting is different in the car selection screen to the "garage" track? (clicky for bigger)


Also did a SUPER quick mockup of the car selection screen. IMHO we don't need a list as well as the buttons down the bottom.


I might do a quick mockup of the entire menu system...Though the UI elements might need to be updated (to something like what Some1 suggested? idk what benefits Qt actually has) I believe the UI elements are too static and clunky atm.

 

[luthobu]

@camsinny: very nice, i like it.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

hmm...all generic objects are on the wrong place....

 

[krsman3d]

hmm...all generic objects are on the wrong place....

View attachment 32697

You have to change move_cg to 0 if you want them to be in the right place. But this is just a temporary solution. You should change the placement of your objects, Ruud fixed a bug with the CoG so we'll have to adjust them.