Racer v0.8.32 released!

[Ruud]

After a small break (where I broke nothing except 1 snowscooter), a new Racer.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.32.zip

Changes:
- The Lambo differential ratio was a bit low (1.75) - reverted to 2.53.
- Differential could become unstable when the 2 wheels got opposite reaction forces.
- Removed obsolete wheel<n>.friction_road values from data/cars/default/car.ini.
- Replay audio (replay.wav) was empty when recorded.
- Multiplayer fixes (billboard nodes/car names)
- Smoke tweaks (soft particles, improved motion)
- Shadowmapping normal dependency improved for shadow acne reduction

 

[KS95]

How dare you, I'm not touching you.

But yes, that would be handy, although would it not be noticable to the performance?

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Good question !!

Hope they'll give a try...or find an alternative if that's too fps greedy.

 

[bandit82]

I wonder about the lighting and shading. I don't know why Racer still looks unrealistic. Looking at the position of the sun sometimes the car looks like glass and the liquid metal. After all, even Forza looks more realistic. Why we have bloom not HDR?



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[Harey]

I wonder about the lighting and shading. I don't know why Racer still looks unrealistic. Looking at the position of the sun sometimes the car looks like glass and the liquid metal. After all, even Forza looks more realistic. Why we have bloom not HDR?



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I've noticed the samething when trying to get get chrome looking right, looks great in the sun. but in the shade, its too glossy.

 

[Stereo]

It does depend what the chrome's reflecting. The scene needs the right brightness in order for the chrome to reflect the right thing. I've found chrome to look pretty good on the whole. Though it would benefit from being able to use mipmap blurred versions of the reflection map for sure (real chrome's generally not a perfect smooth surface, it has small level imperfections that blur stuff slightly. And the Aronde's hubcaps aren't supposed to be fully chrome, they're a much less shiny surface).

I said before that I'd post the code for my chrome so here it is. (vf_reflect is standard, as seen in Lamborghini etc.)

vf_chrome~vf_reflect
{  
  fresnel
  {
    bias=0.8
    scale=0.2
    power=2.0
  }
}

shader_chrome~vf_chrome
{
  reflect=0.9
  shininess=15
  specular=0.2 0.2 0.2
  layer0
  {
    map=chrome.tga 
  }
  layer1
  {
    map=$trackenvmap
  }
}

chrome.tga is #00000d, a very very dark blue. Could just as easily be black.

I guess I'll look at the mini's shaders a bit later, it does seem a little off in the pictures.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Fresnel coefficients are out a bit as default in Racer right now. Also, material appearance is all about the mix of ambient/diffuse in the TOD curves (they need to be well balanced), also tied to the sky appearance (clouds)... and the texture intensities even.

Basically, the environment in which you calibrate your cars shader and textures needs to be correct. Carlswood isn't a good place to do that.


Hopefully soon I can release my track which is very accurate and well balanced in this regard. My recent Lambo re-release car materials are a good guide, they were set up on a very well calibrated track (lighting/intensity wise)

Or even try my studio track. Very basic, which removes unknown variables, which makes it good for tweaking the basics of a car shader!


The Mini shader needs work... ideally needs the scale fixing first though

Dave

 

[boomer541]

Can some body, perhaps MitchVL, Ruud or QCM tell me what the Bip01 refers to in an animated object, thank you?

 

[camsinny]

In 3ds Max Bip01 is the default name of the skeleton. Bones are then referenced from that (I believe Bip01 would be the root node, which isn't technically a bone but a helper of some sort IIRC) which you should be able to see in the .anim file. i.e. Bip01 L Forearm

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Since you talking about skeletons, here's new ways/techniques that I've tested recently :

- you don't need any WC (world coordinate) bone placed @ 0,0,0
- don't bother with too many bones => 7 bones just for the 'closed' arms skin mesh should be fine for example. => quicker / less Skin Weights painting etc...
- constraining the 'hand bones' to a 'wheel point' (typically 2 points on the wheels for both hands) & then also applying a 'orient constraint' to those, should make boost your production to +500% since it's all linked to the wheel, so once it's done, rotating the steering wheel will 'automatically' move & orient everything correctly !
- lastly bake/transfer the whole animation & get rid of all the rest...Ik handlers etc...
- a little final adjusting on the rot of bones if hands aren't aligned 'perfectly' can be done.

So yeah, it looks great, even better than what Mitch showcased, my new F1 have 'everything' & really nicely 'aligned' to the steering wheel !

Enjoy guys !

P.S.: Feel free to PM me, if you need advices for skeletons exports & set ups....

 

[boomer541]

Thanks camsinny and QCM,
I had noticed that the Bip01 appeared after every "*BONENAME" in the .DSkeleton file for danceguy but I can't get anything other than the bone name out of Blender. Don't know if its really needed in the .DSkeleton file or not. If it is I can just add it to the file when I get my exporter for Blender working.

Like those hands, QCM.

 

[KS95]

After playing LFS, I'm going to have to request in-game editing of audio and maybe even physics/car.ini values. I think it would be a good addition, it's very handy.

 

[bandit82]

When recording video using Fraps screen goes black.

 

[boomer541]

It's about time for the next version, imho. It just might get a little action back into the forum with identifing all the bugs and how to fix them.

 

[Some1]

It's about time for the next version, imho. It just might get a little action back into the forum with identifing all the bugs and how to fix them.

+1
.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yep.

I'd like to see a few shader improvements/tweaks.

Firstly is there a way to reference an environment map that isn't the live one? Ie, generate a cubemap and reference it, or several cube maps and reference them?
I'd like to make buildings with glass in them, but right now there is no nice way to do that that I know of.

Mipmap biasing the live envmap would be nice too, as with the above cube-maps too (so we can soften our reflections per shader)


Still not happy with clouds really. Imo, since cloud maps rgb is white it's a waste. Would be cool to have rgb as cloud normals, and then alpha for coverage in the sky. The clouds are then forced to be rgb 230 or so, and then coloured appropriately as per sun position and sun/sky colouring.


Would also be nice to have the throttle input/output accessible in scripts, so we can read the input, do some maths on it, and then alter the output appropriately (fake throttle lag, turbo lag, superior traction controls etc)

That's about it from me for now

Think of those as the bug-bears with Racer tinkerings from the last 2 months or so

Dave

 

[Stereo]

Still not happy with clouds really. Imo, since cloud maps rgb is white it's a waste. Would be cool to have rgb as cloud normals, and then alpha for coverage in the sky. The clouds are then forced to be rgb 230 or so, and then coloured appropriately as per sun position and sun/sky colouring.

Fairly easy to write the shader - I did something similar with the smoke particle shader back in 0.8.9 or so. It's hard to generate good normal mapping textures for smoke/clouds though.

 

[Alex Forbin]

It's about time for the next version, imho. It just might get a little action back into the forum with identifing all the bugs and how to fix them.

LOL I told myself that I wouldn't be the one to mention it this time.
However, I've been about to eat my eyebrows waiting for someone else to say it.
Thanks Boomer!

Alex Forbin

 

[FiftyOrange]

When was the last time Ruud or Mitch even posted here?

It's almost like it's been abandoned, we went from a new version every two weeks, to nothing at all for three months.


Is it time for me to get rFactor?

 

[DavidI]

This is just Racer. How it's always been, how it probably always will be. Usually the longer periods of silence are followed by larger leaps forward in something, usually good

 

[Some1]

I just want a new Racer final version that would be solid enough for new content!