Racer v0.8.29 released!

[Ruud]

For a happy New Year, v0.8.29

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.29.zip (75Mb)
** BEFORE using, set racer.ini's mastervolume to 255 to get a bit of sound

Changelist:
- Added surface 'forbidden' field (in special.ini); if set to 1 (default=0) it will reset your
car to the road if you set racer.ini's assist.time_allowed_offroad. See http://www.racer.nl/reference/tracks_surfaces.htm
- Car and track version checking is now updated to '090'. If your track/car doesn't match this
compatibility info, you'll get a warning in QLOG. All content must be updated!
- Autoclutch RPM now only really hunts for max torque in 1st gear. Other gears are the old way (more subtle).
- 'Ini' tool can now modify references ('ini wheel0.pacejka pacejka_front' for example).
- Clutch mechanism revised since some clutch-controlling subsystems (gearbox/anti-stall/controls)
would not mix correctly, giving hard jerks when shifting up/down.
- Added dbg_car.max_brake_reduction (=0.2) which determines the minimum brake torque reduction when wheels stop spinning.
- Added car.ini engine.launch_control to specify autoclutch_rpm=0 behavior in 1st gear.
- Added X-tree shaders for nicer X-tree shading, see http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/xtrees.htm
- Cg parameters Kd, Ka, Ke and Ks (diffuse/ambient/emission/specular) expanded to pass RGBA instead of just RGB.
Not used in the Cg shaders yet though; the use is a bit unclear still.
- Minimap painting was bad when car select screen was called first. Same for mirrors.
- Minimap paint could cause statistics paint to become transparent
- Added 'graph step 0 1 clutch' option to visualize clutch behavior.
- Wheel heat shader gives more light
- View elements get lit at night.
- panorama_f.cg had a syntax error.
- Just loading a controller profile would save it if controllers were missing.
- Newton.dll is back, since that got rid of NaN errors when colliding cars with the track. It's also Newton 2.29 now.
- Added 'timing.pause_every_step' to optionally step through each iteration
- Fixed a bunch of replay sound issues (engine/horn/indicatorLeft/indiRight/hazard). Replays are now definitely
incompatible with older replays; also may change before v0.9 comes out to fix further things (gearwhine?).
- The NoCG version was giving a lot of QLOG warnings.

 

[fsr]

LSD diffs recently got a fix for braking behavior. Most tire models will struggle with donuts since Pajecka, for example, is really only targeted at low angles. An extract from a real .tir file:

Slipangle is in radians, so you can see that it only really defines -17..+17 degrees of slipangle. That's where trouble and creativity come in. I'll be looking into other tire models next year to see if we could make a bit more sense at extreme situations. The main things to tweak (globally for now) are these in racer.ini:

; Maximum slip length for combined slip calculations (5=understeery, 15=snap oversteers)
max_slip_len=6.0
; Maximum tan(slipAngle); default is 0.75 (+/- 36 degrees), 20.0 (87 degrees) seems to work better
max_tan_sa=20.0

The max_slip_len affects combined slip (except when using MF5.2 tires); the max_tan_sa is quite high now. 'max_tan_sa' being high might mean that the Pacejka forces get unrealistically low at extreme slip angles, thus giving a very skiddy feeling. Try setting it to 0.36 for example (tan(20 deg)=0.36). Should keep tires from entering a really skiddy territory.
Tires are a complex area though, and difficult.

Funny thing. Lowering it actually messed things up. However, raising it to 25 fixed pretty much everything...