Racer v0.9.0 RC6 Released

[Ruud]

It's been too long... Now the new version is at www.racer.nl/dl_beta_win.htm

I'm working on stereoscopic rendering; with Quadro's this is relatively easy, on Geforce not so much, but I've read that driver 314.07 supports it suddenly out of the box?! There should be an Oculus Rift on its way soon (these next few months?) so that should be fun.

The changelist:

- Fixed Tracked white menu background
- Camera toggling (with the C key) had an extra mode that should not be there (this was an entity mode)
- Fixed bug in shadows_f.cg full screen shader.
- dbg_car.flip_tan option removed from racer.ini.
- Fixed audio pitch bending frequency to use the original frequency of the loaded sample, instead of the audio engine output frequency.
This could lead to incorrect pitch shifts for example with samples that were stored in 48kHz but played back at 44.1kHz.
- Added warnings for missing LOD models (which could cause disappearing models when generating the shadow maps)
- Modified scaling of racer.ini's dbg_controls.throttle/brakes/clutch/steer to use normalized values (0..1) rather than 0..1000
- Added filtering around wheel (tire) forces; a 2nd order Fz Pacejka input filter (fz_filter_frequency/fz_filter_damping)
and a 1st order Fy (lateral) Pacejka out filter (fy_filter_frequency). Both in data/cars/default/car.ini.
- Also added a 1st order Fx (longitudinal) Pacejka output filter (fx_filter_frequency).
These are useful when dealing with high-fidelity surface data (Lidar or high-frequency road artificial noise)
to prevent very spiky lat/lon accelerations (giving unrealistic grip loss).
- Added dev.opengl_checks to check lots of times for OpenGL errors.
- Added dev.run_first to be able to start a command (like a batch file) before starting Racer.
- Added audio options in car.ini; understeer_oversteer (experimental) and damper sounds. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/car_sounds.htm
- Added spline.ini option lines.lateral_divisions to tesselate the spline laterally. This highly improves cambered curves in the road. Values around 6-20.
- Fixed panorama_f.cg shader to light up the texture (would quickly become either black or whitish, never showing the texture image itself).
- Added rtd2ascii.exe tool to convert binary RTD (telemetry) files to ASCII.
- Added fmod() and abs() functions to Onyx, next to improved error/crash reporting.
- Onyx now requires all code to be defined in functions. For independent running of Onyx scripts (onyx_run.exe), you'll need to create a 'void main()' function.
- Added friction_circle_method 10 (similarity model/Marno Hopmans variant) which accepts per-wheel lyka and lxal tuning parameters.
(wheel<n>.pacejka.lyka and wheel<n>.pacejka.lxal). These define Fy influence on slipratio (ka=kappa=slipratio) and Fx influence
of Fx on slip angle (al=alpha=slip angle). Normally you'd use values lower than 1 (and larger than 0) for these lambdas.
- friction_circle_method can be overruled per-wheel (so per-car) under wheel<n>.friction_circle_method.
- Removed dbg_car.use_slip2fc option (obsolete).
- Revised the rendering path to be able to override the main FBO's size. This for surround rendering with split rendering for all 3 screens.
See also www.racer.nl/tutorial/surround_rendering.htm
Current issues: Z-buffer is shifted between split screens (screenCenter uses screenLeft's depth buffer).
- Added quad-buffered stereo support (see racer.ini:resolution.stereo.quad_buffered). nVidia Quadro only currently; 3D Vision may follow for Geforce cards.
See also www.racer.nl/tutorial/stereoscopic.htm
- Added 'vsync <n>' command to set vsync live.
- Autoexposure data/renderer/fullscreen_shaders_hdr/luminance_downsample_f.cg now detects NaN onscreen to avoid exposure spikes.
- nvidia_perf_path added in racer.ini, which needs to point to nVidia's PerfKit DLL. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/profiling.htm
- Motion blur taken out for the moment by default.

-----

RC5 Buglist:

- Gearbox shift times not working properly, step from 0 > 1 clutch position over the time rather than smooth linear transition.
- Water reflection not rendering, needs clarification on functionality.
- Qlog discrepancies (I'll let Boomer clarify those).
- Odd console readouts about tyre slip angles or something popping up (same goes for gearbox manual/auto setting, doesn't need to be console displayed imo)
- PerfSDK not working as advertised, broken?
- Multiplayer joining to IP's seems glitched, the person joining has their brake stuck on and are unable to shift
- The Multiplayer Lobby does not let you connect, and subsequently let you host, despite the right ports being forwarded. (Anyone else experiencing this bug?)
- The particles pop-out of existence at the end of their specified lifetime instead of fading away smoothly. It would be nice to have some better control over the fade-in and out over the lifetime of the particle since tiresmoke starts out thick and opaque then disperses and becomes more transparent over time, while gravel or dirt fades in a bit at first then eventually fades away.
- Smoke flickers in the reflections, as though it's missing every other frame.
- Replay bugs: No smoke effects, ghost car is left on track.
- The starter sound plays all the way to the end of the sample instead of stopping when you let off the starter.
- Ghost doesn't work on endless tracks.
- track special.ini: timeline.point_to_point=1, timeline.auto_return=0 - The auto_return setting doesn't seem to work here. I have a point to point track and the car resets 3000ms (3s) after crossing the finishing line, but I don't want it to.
- No reflection in the Racer garage when selecting a car.
- The unsprung weight apparently applies a downforce, try making a 150kg rear axle with the front suspension lighter and the car will act as though it has high downforce when jumping off of a ramp.
- If the wipers are set to rotate in opposite directions then the intermittent position does not rotate back and forth smoothly. It snaps back.
- In RC5c at least, the camera bug is still evident, and on Carlswood (spline based cameras) you can often get stuck so you can't get back to the in-car camera view which is really annoying! - Courtesy of Dave

-----


The Buglist (currently known specific to RC6):

• Try going in reverse, the front brakes appear to lock. After further examination it looks like in reverse the rear tires will lose traction completely if they spin at all. Alex Forbin
• Brakes on, car pointed downhill, car creeps forward and to right. Boomer541
• The physics are screwed up, just try to drive the Baja on the Cloverleaf Highway track and compare with ver090RC5. Try the Lambo also. Details & Details 2 Boomer541
• Problems with surfaces as the water in my Surfaces and sounds track makes the car float up/down. The water under the bridge flickers which appears to indicate a problem with textures. Boomer541
• Carlswood has flickers on the tirewall tops. Boomer541
• Cars wheels go above/below the surface and can make violent bounces. Boomer541
• There are NO skid marks generated. Boomer541
• Freezing my system, forcing a hard reset.The freezing even prevents qlog from leaving any hints as to what is going on. More info in post. Cosmo°
• Physics issues, see post. Chronus
• At night, everything has a red tint to it, can also be noticed during the day on the darker parts of the track or car. Harey (due to nVidia drivers?)
• Reverse doesn't work right, seems you have to slip the clutch to get it to go in reverse otherwise you just spin your tires and sit there. Harey
• Can't run strict=1, can't check car/track for errors!!! Boomer541 post
• When trying to use tracked to check key cameras the only yellow track section that appears is with the first camera (On carlswood). the p-key does nothing and the splines are different than on ver 090 RC3. Boomer541
• The three speed wipers Don't do three speeds. pos 1 - off, pos 2 - nothing (S/B intermitant.), pos 3 - normal sppe, pos 4- fast speed. Boomer541
• In a replay if you use the console you can't send a console command because the enter key has turned into a slow-mo toggle. This means as soon as you use the console in a replay, you are stuck and need to close Racer a 'messy' way. Ie, escape key no longer exits the race. Mr Whippy
• Multiplayer broken!

 

[Mr Whippy]

It does seem faster here on FPS.

I might give it a whirl again in the next few days, but I really want to get to the bottom of my floaty drifty cars feeling. I bet it's in those default car.ini damping predict lat long/length values or whatever they are! The fact the old values make a car float sideways at 1mph suggests they are a key value to tune per-car... but how/why and by how much etc etc etc

Dave

 

[William Geuze]

......

Agreed, the spline system isn't really flexible when it comes to actual roads and crossings, you're still stuck with the circuit or point to point type of deal. That is unfortunate I must admit, like to free-roam from time to time myself if there is the possibility as well.

Lidar type meshing for rally and dirt tracks is absolutely awesome indeed, but I feel you are making assumptions here on why spline based tracks couldn't work. First of all, you do need some resolution in your visual mesh to avoid those hard edges showing up. For some corners, especially with lots of camber, or as you said, stepped ones, or crowned pieces of road, you do need the bilateral resolution as well*. Those vertices are in place in the visual mesh anyway and you still can edit those to invent potholes and give a more believable feel to the surface you are driving on. This doesn't change anything to the spline, but it does give you the benefit of having a separate visual road mesh, and a spline. Of course, you don't want to have too big of a distance to and from the spline per vertex, but it is very well possible to achieve these effects without lidar meshing.

Sure the standard circuit racing is what seems the one-trick pony, but that doesn't mean cool rally tracks can't be made. It's all a matter of dealing with limitations, every piece of software has them one way or another.

Your last remark makes me want to say something which will probably not make me popular, but maybe the community should deliver a track which doesn't look like it is built in 1995 first. Then there might be a benefit from lidar type meshes for the track. The couple of tracks I have seen and installed, very long way to before this is going to make sense.

*
It would be nice however, if there was a way to 'snap' to lateral_division created vertices to the first surface they find in the z-axis. This way you can solve floating across big potholes and can confirm the spline to stepped corners. If this value could have a range, instead of being just an integer, you can play with the depth of the vertices on the spline. For example:

lateral_divisions=12
lateral_snap_z=0.8

 

[Mr Whippy]

Not sure about that lateral division stuff. Basically, if it's made to be easily authored then yes, suddenly the limits of splines in totally linear cross-sections is gone. Yay

But I don't get why we can't just smooth interpolate the track mesh, which can be given a new flag. Racer could just regenerate a new spline from the mesh it sees, draw the mini map etc, and the lateral interpolate points could simply be checked from the mesh as actual values.
All it needs is the spline method to work with more than one lateral cross-section. Bi-lateral interpolation with z-snapping just sounds like another fudge to make an old creaky system fit modern requirements.
Isn't that basically what rFactor does?




I generally agree with what you are saying, every system has it's limits, so you work around them. Problem is with Racer many seem arbitrary or legacy, and they make very little sense being the way they are now a decade later.
Sometimes you just need to start again with certain things. Splines/surfaces are one in my view. As soon as I deviate from a super smooth race course I struggle to come up with a good compromise except making my own driving mesh to drive on.
Issue there is poly density. GPU is already slow due to CPU bottleneck so the last thing you want to use is a mega dense visual mesh to drive on. Lidar solves that problem. Even if you only sub-divide your 5 poly wide road mesh by 2 iterations for example, you will get a much better feeling for driving and you will save GPU memory not storing visual data you don't need.

Even for a lumpy rally course you could use a low poly mesh and normal maps but have a high density lidar format mesh (use the same one you'd bake from for the normal maps)



I agree that many tracks are not great. Such is the problem with people converting content rather than re-authoring it from the ground up with modern techniques in mind.

There are the good bits and pieces now and again but they are rarely finished due to lack of understanding by the authors or the idiosyncrasies of the Racer engine.



BUT, remember where Racer used to be. Back in 2002 with Stecki and Sven and many others making cars that were the envy of all the commercial stuff out there!
Then we had Tor Arne making his road courses that were the same again, as good as the decent commercial stuff out there. FPS were often great too on reasonable hardware.


If we are to be critical of the content developers we need to be critical too of Racer being able to support them.

Racer is better than ever, but at no time in the past has it had so many little annoying bugs that seem to persist way beyond what they would have done in years gone by.

I'll be honest, I think I can whip up a pretty good Racer track and even I'm not happy with the looks I can achieve and the limitations imposed. OK, I'm never happy until it looks like a photo, then I'm probably still not happy... but I think Racer could look sooooooo much better and run faster, and be NICER for developers, if we just spent some time fixing these silly little things.

There is no reason Racer couldn't be worrying AC/rFactor 2 right now just by tidying up the back-log of bugs and re-defining some of the basic systems... but it's just not happening which is the sad thing


I just think it's harsh to say community stuff doesn't need lidar.

I wonder how many authors left for greener pastures years back with the same attitude, but levelled at Racer not being good enough.

Dave

 

[William Geuze]

What you are describing is in fact exactly what gMotor does, it probably does a lot of post processing for the driving surface, especially now with real road. This stuff isn't implemented in 5 minutes, and as I said before, the advantage between having a separate spline is you can have a difference in resolution there, saving some resources, which you can use to have the visual mesh more detailed.

Of course it would be great to have a lidar type mesh for rally and dirt tracks. I already see one limitation. Sand, gravel or dirt isn't static, but a dynamic surface. The lidar type mesh isn't dynamic, just as the splines aren't. So even when this used, we still have a limitation somehow. But yes, it would be quite nice to have.

I don't know about old racer stuff, as I don't know the software that long actually, which probably allows for a more objective view I suppose.

Sure you can think it is harsh that I think community stuff doesn't really need lidar. When even modelling a simple road up to 2013 spec is apparently too much to ask in most cases, how would you expect this to be different for a scratch built dense road mesh? This sort of request reminds me of someone who can't keep his car on the track, but is asking for a fast setup. It doesn't make sense, and there will be zero to none benefit.

Even more so, indeed there appear some bugs, maybe those should be fixed first before implementing new stuff.

To me it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you take a look around at the screenshots of the general work, this is a big turnoff and talented people go another direction apparently. But the lack of quality content doesn't mean quality content can't be had with this software. Sadly, I see this in rF2 at the moment as well. People moaning about the graphical quality of it, but 75% of the track are old rF1 conversions sometimes even converted from other games, using only software like 3dsimEd and nothing in between. No wonder it looks like crap when you put zero dedication in it, what the hell do those guys expect!!! Frustrating like there ain't no tomorrow...

 

[Mr Whippy]

I agree in many respects. We've had the old discussion over converted cars here many times and it always ends in tears.
The same can be applied to tracks I suppose, in any sim/game.

The problem is we can't use that as a benchmark for what we should expect from Racer. Just because a lot of content is lacking doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for more.

I'd simply like to try the lidar format if for no other reason that for me it'll save me on GPU overhead which at the current time is one of the biggest issues with Racer. FPS are slow and the last thing I need is a high density gfx mesh. Splines are flat, so lidar data is a really good option at the moment... also I think it'd be good to try out probably because we'll find some bugs Ruud hasn't spotted and can maybe try get them fixed hehe


I think there are a lot of talented people here right now, but many are just using Racer as a sandbox for ideas and concepts right now rather than making finished content.

It's sad, but that is what it has become. I keep wanting to release my Z4 but every time a new Racer arrives I'm rethinking my unwrap (can we get a 2nd uv channel for interiors or AO maps on tracks for example!?), or I drive the car and feel bad about the audio system compromises I'm making (wind sounds too loud outside my car if I have it sound realistic inside the car, oh for a proper split for in/out sound sets!), and the handling in RC6 now feels terrible vs what I was fairly happy with in RC5c...

It'll never make a release while Racer is changing too much hehe.


I'd still love to see a period of calm where Ruud just adds bug-fixes or feature-fixes ONLY for 6 months, with a monthly release. At the end of that period of content production and testing we call that version 9.

Ie, get the multiplayer and resetting and script scopes all working harmoniously, maybe the CPU bottleneck for GPU's fixed up somehow. Fix up fundamentals like the point to point/AI/spline logic limitations (nearly useless, alongside the current bugs in that system)


I keep hoping at least


In the end, if you want to make a car that you drive only (not watch replays), on a smooth racing circuit, with no other drivers around, then Racer works ok and can look pretty good.
BUT, in the past it's been more than that... that is what is so sad. In the past I used to play multiplayer quite often because it worked. FPS were good even with 6 drivers in nice looking cars for the time!

Overall it wasn't as good no, but as a package to make content to enjoy with friends or doing the weekly hotlap competitions it WAS better

But today all we get is photo competitions which says a lot I think

We need back the solid platform that lets us make good consistent content that stays solid and working well for at least a year after download, with our friends, or with AI...

Dave

 

[William Geuze]

Yeah sadly it not only applies to racer... this will only get worse since every engine is evolving, and so is the content.

It'll be fun to play with obviously, that's for sure

In another perspective, a period of calm of 6 months for Ruud might be good for the people here, but less good for the people that pay the bills..

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hehe, I guess everything changes. But things right now seem pretty bleak from a "community" pov.

I'm not sure on the free time element Ruud has for Free Racer any more, but I guess what the Free Racer community will be is a function of the time everyone puts in including Ruud. It seems at a low all round right now which is a trend that I hope reverses


Free Racer is impressive really... you can have a go at a jet car, or a low-gravity race course, or make a Unimog and drive it on all terrains, or code a lorry trailer, or make a loop the loop stunt track.
Racer is great for that. It has oodles and oodles of potential and is fairly convincing at everything you approach.
I could see Free Racer being the Unity 3D for anything with wheels, from go-karts to monster truck racing or simulating the Bloodhound supersonic car!


But to get it there will need some time from Ruud because beyond a certain point he is the one with the code. The Onyx stuff etc is really great, if we can see less hard-coding and more modular systems it'll be great.
Ie, I'd like to see car sounds scrapped and replaced with similar looking fragments that are then linked to certain car/environment variables.
Ie, damper shaft speed or engine rpm speed, or wheel rotation speed etc, are all just global variables played against a sound set. Why hard code them when they could just be left up to the authors requirements. Don't need gear whine, fine, don't have it. Want to make the steering wheel squeak when you turn it, then link a squeak noise to the steering wheel rotation hehe




But any way, the single biggest reason I don't release much content right now is mainly because my FPS suck, while in something like Shift 2 I'm getting 10x more stuff on screen at 50-100% more FPS!

The second is no multiplayer support. It'd be great if we could just get a few dedicated servers going with a set car/track list and then have the lobby come up with them. Better yet have it so the lobby will check and download content for you if you set it to

Two things imo that would revive this community a bit. Well, that and making it so you can reverse your car


Dave

 

[Alex Forbin]

Hi William,
You seem to be new here but you appear to know a bit about Racers engine, are you associated with Ruud and/or Cruden, or are you just a longtime lurker? The reason I'm asking is Ruud has been absent quite a bit lately and it would be nice to know if there is someone else we can talk to that might be able to at least pass along some ideas/bugs to.

Alex Forbin

 

[William Geuze]

I am indeed a colleague of Ruud, but me posting here sometimes is solely because of personal interest. I'm not a spokesman or messenger, and Ruud is definately reading the forums from time to time. Fact is he/we are quite busy all of the time, which is a good thing. The free version of racer is a favor towards the community, and updating it when there is some time left in the schedule I believe, after all, a free product does not pay any bills. Therefore, it can be extremely frustrating when in the very little time available an update is released, and all we get to see is complaints.

 

[Alex Forbin]

True, there are some that do nothing but complain it seems, but the most likely reason for that is the fact that most of the more productive people have become frustrated over the years due to long periods of inactivity, they are by their nature impatient. This has a tendency to leave only the most stubborn and vocal people.
As for Racer being a favor to the community, I appreciate that Ruud has kept a free version for all of these years (over 11 now), but I think it only fair to point out that many of us have spent countless hours chasing bugs, doing research, generating content and debating the best way to help Ruud achieve his ultimate goal.
I wish that people would be a bit more diplomatic in how they express themselves sometimes, but it seems to only be a real problem when the frustration level rises to a certain point, and this is almost always due to a lack of communication.
In a nutshell, I think any feedback from the coding side would be very helpful and welcome
your input.

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

I like to think that Ruud sees this community as more than just somewhere to pass Racer over as a gift.
There has been a tight relationship for as long as I can remember where we invest many hours of our free time and report back really valuable information to Ruud for future development. Bugs, content, new ideas, etc etc.

We are all here, still, because we are passionate about Racer. We don't load up the latest Racer release to complain about it's bugs, we load it up because we see the value and want to help Ruud make it better!


But as a community we have nowhere else to release our frustrations (my wife wouldn't understand haha), our only release is on here to like minded enthusiasts! So a mix of the good and the bad can be seen... and as Alex noted, when Ruud is more notable by his absence with a huge pile of bugs from the version before un-addressed, our investment of free time can begin to feel under-valued.
That is frustrating for us too... we might have a rant about it but usually it's just releasing steam while we then go away and spend 8 hrs of our weekend!! tweaking some new tyre variables.


I'm sad William that you feel that way, so I'm sorry if I have caused you some offence.


And remember it's not all negative. There are great examples on here where people are very protective of the work Ruud does and what Racer has become and will proudly stand by Racer despite only ever having invested their own free time in it!


Dave

 

[William Geuze]

First of all, you haven't offended me in the slightest, you'll have to try harder

As I'm relatively new to the 'scene' indeed I have a more objective view, so I'm only describing my observations. Obviously I know this is a two sided coin as I know both sides of the story. Don't worry, the ISI and pCars forums look roughly the same

I was actually spending a couple of minutes this morning to update documentation on a shader, when I discovered a driver breaking bug, much to Ruud's pleasure of course.. (I'm starting to get a reputation for breaking stuff...)

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yeah I guess it can look a bit odd at first, but it seems to almost be a tradition now when Racer is released that we have a period of frustration and then towards the end of the very long release threads it's all super positive and productive.

I'm glad you found a bug that Ruud needs to fix, fixes are good and we all know Ruud likes fixed bugs to add to his change log entries

May I ask what your role is? Are you helping with the entire Racer software system alongside Ruud or do you have a focus in any specific area?


My main desire for Ruud right now is to outline exactly what we do and don't need to include in a car.ini for the new tyre model/mixing.
I may have to read over Racer.nl again to see if there is any new clarification but it seems some old legacy entries are back (but with much different values to before), and the optimal sr/sa values are gone for physics needs but maybe still needed for audio/skids?!

Thanks

Dave

 

[William Geuze]

I'm 'just' an artist, that is why I break stuff in the first place from time to time

 

[Mr Whippy]

Ah very good.

You can help pester Ruud on the merits of getting a true fresnel, energy conserving shader working hehe.

Right now I've got diffuse/normals/spec/gloss working fairly elegantly, more so with energy conserve on, but right now I'm coming up short on the fresnel for the specular response and making the ambient lighting also adhere to that logic.

But it looks like Ruud might be busy with the Oculus VR right now haha... which is a fair swap as I can't wait to try that out in Racer (assuming we will eventually get a commercial headset coming out! Fingers crossed!)

Dave

 

[Alex Forbin]

Ah very good.

You can help pester Ruud on the merits of getting a true fresnel, energy conserving shader working hehe.

Right now I've got diffuse/normals/spec/gloss working fairly elegantly, more so with energy conserve on, but right now I'm coming up short on the fresnel for the specular response and making the ambient lighting also adhere to that logic.

But it looks like Ruud might be busy with the Oculus VR right now haha... which is a fair swap as I can't wait to try that out in Racer (assuming we will eventually get a commercial headset coming out! Fingers crossed!)

Dave

+1 for the Oculus support here too, I've debated on getting the developers kit myself since I've been into VR for years and this looks like some really worthwhile hardware. The only problem is
I know I will spend WAY too much time with it and it's summer, I must keep my priorities correct.


AlexForbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

I'd buy the dev-kit if possible, if Ruud adds support. Even if a commercial one comes later that is better overall quality and higher res I'm sure a huge chunk of the appeal will be still there with the early dev-kit versions!

Yep, it's summer time, kinda haha.

It'll be nice coming to winter 2013 with 3D Racer


Dave

 

[boomer541]

Now it is time to fix all the bugd and get to a 090 Final version!

Forget about 3D, lidar meshes or anything else new until we have a bug free stable version which was the goal 10 years ago. When I became a member of the Racer Community 4.9 was the first version I encoutered and shortly later 5.0 was used and I could see the potential of racer being the best sim available. Ten years is along time to wait for a bug free stable version.

I have a tendency to be quite critical and not to diplomatic when running a new version of Racer and finding bugs that were fixed no longer working. This is due to my years of working in the computer industry and dealing with software engineers that did sloppy work and getting them to be a bit more careful when writing code. Simply having them check a bit of code and seeing it work properly was all that was needed to get the projects done.

Hopefully I won't have to wait another 10 years to see a bug free stable version of Racer. I may not live that long.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yep, it's scary to think it's around ten years ago since the audio beta version arrived on-top of V0.5 final.

Part of me would like to see it changed so it's a framework that we can innovate with, so we don't need to rely on, or expect Ruud to have to work on it for us to add new features etc.

I think a lot of Racer should move in that direction via the Onyx type system so we can take Racer where we want it to go without using up Ruud's time.

He can then build a framework that is robust and simply copy the stuff we come up with for implementing what I'd call 'trivial' elements (ie, non-physics), like audio and visual candy stuff.


I keep meaning to re-write the glowing brake shader so the colouring and temp are aligned properly to real units... I think it'd make a big difference to the realism of that effect. Then you can just use an offset value (or scale) to reduce the temp and thus intensity for the rears glowing shader for example.

Hmmmm, easy implements, just getting the time and getting them into Racer releases

Dave

 

[Cosmo°]

As a follow-up to my post from page one, where I was describing system crash behavior: after a few more attempts at narrowing down the possible culprit in racer.ini, my graphics card stopped working altogether that sunday afternoon. Since nobody else reported similar issues, I have to assume that it was simply my turn with bad luck in hardware (apart from a wonky laptop once, I've had sixteen troublefree years so far, but alas). I hope Ruud didn't lose any sleep trying to figure out what might be going on

Would be nice to get some news from Ruud in any case, as trying to develop content is hardly enticing with the current state of affairs. I'd love to get into the changes to the friction circle method etc, but with no proper documentation on the scaling parameters, buggy differential behavior and FFB shimmy effects you can't tell what's what, let alone do serious setup work.