Racer v0.8.30 released!

[Ruud]

A relatively small update, as I've been busy with lots of things.
v0.8.30 is availabe at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.30.zip (75Mb)

*NOTE* The Carlswood track looks very color-corrected - probably just a one-time thing to demonstrate color-grading.

Changes:
- Car selection would crash after a race
- Car flare light blending modified - alpha,1-alpha (was alpha,one)
- Menu images were sometimes dark - was a 'linear vs srgb init' problem
- F1 stats scaling corrected vertically
- standard_xtree_f.cg didn't use 'sunny' parameter
- Made the menu image a bit more transparent to see the slideshow
- Added color grading per track; see http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/colorgrading.htm

(also added standard_xtree_scale_f.cg, but that should collapse into standard_xtree_f.cg probably as the only real change is that scale is used, and with scale=1 they should be the same).

 

[boomer541]

Ruud,
The menu overlay.tga image I use is a 24 bit compressed image of about 1.9 meg and works very well with NO problems. I tried to post it but racedept won't accept 7z files above 148.1 kb, mine was 152 kb, just over the limit.

My menu overlay does have an alpha channel, it was made using your image and changing the alpha value and saving it in the 24 bit compressed format in Paint Shop Pro.

Thanks for looking at tracked, hope it works ok in the next version.

 

[DavidI]

Boomer a tga is stored in 8 bit channels;
for a greyscale image one 8 bit channel is used;
a colour image has 8 bits each for R G B;
and for both greyscale & RGB possibly another 8bit channel for the alpha.

A 24bit imae can only store RGB info; a 32bit has RGBA.
i.e. if your image has an alphalayer its 32bit, if theres none its 24bit.

 

[Ruud]

Ruud - It seems that textures aren't cleared from memory after changing car (yet to test track).
i.e. I ran the 458 at carlswood then the lambo - but the 458's textures are still in memory. They mightn't be being used or mightn't make a difference but I was just wondering if there might be a performance increase possible there?

Also - I agree that a 2048 shadowmap is OTT. It does indeed generate a 4096 texture which just eats the VRAM.
I'm just trying to optimise things as much as possible...I'm currently using gDEBugger which came with the perfKit but it seems that the perfSDK page (2x ctrl-f6) doesn't show anything. I know you said there were problems with x64 OS and that feature...was just wondering how to PROPERLY set it up to optimise content.

Oh and heat affects brakes WAAAAAAAAAY too much. The settings I had were much more subtle and better.

How did you come to the conclusion that the texture are still in memory? I did a test and they were released nicely after a run, also after selecting a car.

PerfKit requires the instrumented drivers (195.21? only a relatively old driver version is available) and you need to turn instrumentation on. Did you do that?

What settings did you use for heat brakes? I noticed that they seem to give too much heat, hm.

 

[camsinny]

Perhaps when "heat" was changed to klux it messed up my settings, might have to take out that *3

I was using gDEBugger and the textures were still there - but that might just be left over from the debugging, I'm not sure.

I did have instrumented drivers and inst. on but didn't work. I do have a new GPU though so maybe inst. isn't available on it yet. I'll try re-installing drivers.

 

[DavidI]

Glad to see your not floating off the coast camsinny

 

[Mr Whippy]

What settings did you use for heat brakes? I noticed that they seem to give too much heat, hm.

Would it be possible to use a nice curve for the colour and heat?

I think a problem might be that they glow orange only, and need to get too intense in kLux to go white, and also never really glow red.

I'm not sure how you'd do that elegantly in a shader, but it might be a problem when trying to get a realistic behaviour because although the heat/cooling part works ok numerically, the visual response is a bit incorrect.

http://hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/Temperature_when_metal_glows_red/

That little table is handy as a reference.

The metal starts to emit quite early in temp, a very dull red (just out of infra red), and then ramps up into reds and oranges, and yellow, before then, I guess, emitting the full visible light range as it gets stupendously hot (or perhaps it just 'blows out' at orangey yellow and looks white)

Either way, might be worth trying to more closely approximate the colour and intensity change with temp. I guess it's just finding a nice expression for the curves for each colour channel and the overall intensity (probably linears mainly, just different ramp rates?!)

Hmmmm

 

[camsinny]

Ruud, are you using the depreciated GL functions for any particular reason or you just haven't gotten around to updating yet? Is there really much point updating to OGL 4.1 if you're going to keep using the old functions?

 

[Cosmo°]

Would it be possible not to draw generic models when the camera specifies model=2?

 

[Mr Whippy]

I'm using 0.8.29 here still, but I'm guessing this 'feature/bug' is evident in 0.8.30 too?

If I graph wheel0.road_noise, and then turn the AI control on (shift A), the plot of my road noise disappears, and it visibly isn't there any more wrt suspension movement, then shift A again to get back control, and the road noise returns.

Is that intentional because the AI wouldn't be able to cope with the bump variance maybe, or is it a bug?


Thanks

Dave

 

[boomer541]

DavidI,
info abut my menu_overlay.tga image.



Have a bug with replay being saved using a track other than carlswood and saved movie sound gone. Great fps though!

 

[camsinny]

Hmmm...I believe a 32 bit UNcompressed TGA is 8mb(dependent on the dimensions of course), as per the _orig tga...compression would help get that down but I'm not sure what program you're using to get your image down to 1.19MB with alpha :S. Their definition might be different...but as stated earlier a 32 bit image is 3x 8bit channels (R,G,B) plus the 8bit alpha channel.

David, indeed, not washing away yet. High and dry...literally. Might post some images in the off-topic thread, simply an astonishingly large amount of water. Totally incomprehensible unless you've seen it.

 

[DavidI]

David, indeed, not washing away yet. High and dry...literally. Might post some images in the off-topic thread, simply an astonishingly large amount of water. Totally incomprehensible unless you've seen it.

Would like to see, some of the videos of the flood running thru brissy on news sites is just amazing. The friends we stay with in Brissy over New Year are ok too, but seems like theres thousands who aren't so lucky.

Sorry for OT, but where camsinny live's has been hit by some MAJOR flooding, 75% of his state is classed a disaster zone.

I think PSP's stating its a 24bit image +adding an alpha to it. I remember there were reasons I started using Photoshop from PSP.
The reason it's saying its 24b is that it's RGB. It could also be CMYK, which would be 32b.

 

[ZATRACERDUDE]

hi everyone i was wondering if their any fixes for ATI affliction other than a new card which i cant afford i seem to have huge lagging and issues with shadows and smoke on the newer versions is their a setting i can change to fix it ?

 

[Ruud]

I'm using 0.8.29 here still, but I'm guessing this 'feature/bug' is evident in 0.8.30 too?

If I graph wheel0.road_noise, and then turn the AI control on (shift A), the plot of my road noise disappears, and it visibly isn't there any more wrt suspension movement, then shift A again to get back control, and the road noise returns.

Is that intentional because the AI wouldn't be able to cope with the bump variance maybe, or is it a bug?

Intentional; AI doesn't see road noise. Not because they couldn't cope, but since the noise function is THE most expensive function in the whole of Racer.

 

[Ruud]

Ruud, are you using the depreciated GL functions for any particular reason or you just haven't gotten around to updating yet? Is there really much point updating to OGL 4.1 if you're going to keep using the old functions?

Which functions do you see that are deprecated? For simple quads and such (dials...) I use direct mode indeed, something I think they want to remove at some point. But it's damn useful as it is for small things. Doing a single quad with vertex arrays is quite a bit of overkill.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Intentional; AI doesn't see road noise. Not because they couldn't cope, but since the noise function is THE most expensive function in the whole of Racer.

Ooo, I'll have to do some tests to see what the impacts are.

Is it a fairly linear hit the more levels of noise you use too? More = worse?

I might have to try use just one noise level for the medium stuff, ignore the very small stuff, and then try get the other noise into my mesh!

Dave

 

[boomer541]

I use PSP to compress 24 bit tga images, I don't understand exactly how they make them so much smaller than the way Ruud made his. Just know they work very well. Someting else for me to look into.

Evidently photoshop doesn't have the ability compress tga images as PSP does or it isn't being used!

I think the black screen in replay on a track other than carlswood is due to the track/car cameras switched off because pressing C-key turns the track camera on and then the car cameras work too. Great fps for a few seconds.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Hai Ruud,
i got the BOT working.....the main problem was the weak PC Power.....so i got a new one....ATM is running [DF] Racing, with the default lambo and carswood....only...
I was surprised...after my good old 8600GTS is gone in smoke, i have to use the HD4250 (1GB) onboard grafik and i run racer with the default settings verry well....

The new PC got a ASUS M4A88T-V EVO USB3, with a AMD Phenom II 945 and 4GB Ram....all for only 280€.....

If some is interestet, please try it out and report if there are some problems...you can join via the Racer Lobby....

THX for this great sim!

EDIT:
...hmm...after some times...he disconnect...
QLog:

Thu Jan 13 20:42:29 (INFO): [noqapp/3984] --- application start ---
Thu Jan 13 20:42:29 (INFO): [noqapp/3984] 4 processor(s); setting affinity to 0xf
Thu Jan 13 20:42:29 (INFO): [racer/3984] Racer version: 0.8.30 (Jan 6 2011/14:56:44) - customer: Internet
Thu Jan 13 20:42:30 (INFO): [racer/3984] DGPUShaderManager::Init() Geometry shading is not supported on this card (ATI?).
Thu Jan 13 20:42:30 (WARN): [racer/3984] DGPUShader:Load(data/renderer/fullscreen_shaders_hdr/passthrough.cg): The profile is not supported.
Thu Jan 13 20:42:30 (INFO): [racer/3984] WorldRenderer: you have an ATI graphics card (ATI Technologies Inc.). Working around some long-term bugs.
Thu Jan 13 20:42:30 (INFO): [racer/3984] Physics engine: NEWTON v2.29
Thu Jan 13 20:42:33 (INFO): [racer/3984] QNClient:Connect() attempt to lobby.racer.nl:28100
Thu Jan 13 20:42:33 (INFO): [racer/3984] QNClient: connected to server (our clientID=71)
Thu Jan 13 20:42:58 (WARN): [racer/3984] QNServer: disconnect from client 0; not found in our own admin
Fri Jan 14 05:38:56 (INFO): [racer/3984] QNClient 71 disconnected from server