0.8.8.1 bugs or problems and fixes

[Stereo]

Loads and loads of potential, and those scripts that develop really nicely could then be wrapped up by Ruud as 'default' features you can toggle on and off, run in a more streamlined fashion inside the sim engine proper.

How about making the 'flare' objects rotate in direction and/or flash vs sim time, so you have lights for an emergency vehicles...

There really are a lot of options that open up if you can define variables in terms of scripts as well as constants. Even having the inertia or centre of gravity as a function of fuel level + engine/wheel rpm. Or the Veyron's wing flaps that increase rear downforce, but only pop up at high speed/braking. Just write a script to move the generic model and change the drag/downforce coefficients.

In terms of the drivetrain and brakes the ABS/TC could move mostly into the form of scripts, if the forces at the transmission and wheels were available to the script. Want locked 4x4? Just add scripted output to all 4 wheels "power" equal to a fraction of the engine. A button to toggle locked/open differentials? Simple...


Of course the real reason I'm interested in this is so I can put a fully operational blower on one of my projects. And maybe have the engine shake when you rev it

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hehe, yep. You have the idea.

Veyron that does all the air braking thing properly using brake pedal input.

I'm not sure how big a job it is for Ruud, but it would be one big job that then removed LOTS of little jobs for all these features to be seperately and accurately developed and integrated into Racer!
Ie, we develop all the little code and refine it and bug test it over months while Ruud concentrates on the big stuff.

Afterall, the features/coding are content creation, and just like car gfx, tracks, sounds and physics, the fun little features/scripts could well be community driven this way too!

Ie, we waited a LONG time for ABS, and when we got it it's still kinda flawed (if rears lock up, the fronts do, no biasing etc)... with this coding system, by now we would have developed scripts for every different type out there... two channel, four channel etc


Yep, active aero moving parts and some kind of turbo simulation... along with better tcs/abs would be much better

Dave

 

[FiftyOrange]

How much electronics does, or should, Racer simulate, as opposed to mechanics? Simulating a Bentley Mulsanne, for example, would be easy, because the ride and handling are controlled by mechanical components; springs, dampers, anti-roll bars, and so on. The power is done the same way, by some steels cogs in the differential. But for a car like the Nissan GT-R, not only is the suspension fully computer-controlled, but so is the power distribution. Put it in the right mode, and it'll read what each wheel is doing, 200 times per second, and adjust the dampers, the power distribution, the torque, and so on.

I know to a certain level it's possible to fake the suspension values in Racer to create similar handling as you would get if Racer simulated the full effects of the computer on cars like the GT-R. But should we? How much of this electronic stuff do games like Fora Motorsport 3 and Gran Turismo 5 actually manage, or do they fake it as well?

 

[Tiberius]

Another couple of bugs I've noticed, AI cars seem to be speed limited at around 170-180kmh, no matter how fast the AI line is, is anyone else getting this? Also, force feedback seems to be partly switching off at between 170-180kmh, not completely switching off, you still get tyre forces but it feels like it's switching the wheel friction off? Noticed this with several cars/tracks, hover around that speed and you can notice the wheel feel like it unlocks then locks up again as you go below the speed, enough to throw you off road in some places.


EDIT: Turns out the AI speed thing isn't a bug. From racer.nl:

ai.max_velocity; when loading a default AI file (data/tracks/<trackname>/ai/default.ini), the velocity must match the capabilities of the car. An AI file was probably created by driving a specific car, not always generating suitable velocities for the car you're editing. When no specific AI for this car is present, default.ini is loaded, all velocities are normalized (the fastest speed becomes 1.0) and the velocities are then regenerated using:

So, putting max_velocity=70 in the ai section of car.ini will let the car top out at 150mph, just like it used to do :tongue:



Also the car select screen still seems to crash sometimes, usually after quitting a race and trying to select another car.

Also, I put the old X-Type on track with the new one, the old car always uses the new one's steering wheel model/shader. If I load it on its own it renders with its own steering wheel like normal. Both cars have different IDs and names, both models are AR'd. Haven't noticed it with other cars - it doesn't matter because I'm not keeping the old version, but I'd like to work out what's causing it.

And there still seems to be some issues with gauges. a couple of times I've had cars spawn with no incar gauges or 2D HUD or otherwise some controls (such as the lights) will suddenly stop responding - again, this seems to be caused once the ghost car spawns, usually once that happens Racer crashes when I try to exit the race.

How much electronics does, or should, Racer simulate, as opposed to mechanics?

Any computer based physics simulator is using mathematics to try and mimic the behavior or something in the real world, whatever you try and simulate it's going to be 'faked' to some extent - you're trying to get numbers to match what happens in reality. The point is about being able to add parts of that simulation which are missing, or simulating some parts closer than we're able to at the moment.

Ruud has said for a long time now that the source code will remain locked, even if it was available there would be very few people who would have the knowledge to use it for a genuine reason. At least with some kind of plugin/script system we'd have something to work with.

 

[FiftyOrange]

Snow

It only works when you're facing in certain directions, and I think this also goes for the disappearing dashboard dials.

 

[Tiberius]

Well, I've got an automatic gearbox working, and a kinda CVT version. It's not perfect but it proves that the idea can work. A lot of things I need to sort out, nothing that I could share yet - but if I can work out some way of finding the memory addresses each time, it could work.

Didn't have any luck with the telemetry output (it's only really for making data sets afterwards, after all) so instead made a program which goes directly into memory and fetches the variables from the memory addresses Racer stores them in, does some maths on them and then replaces the ones to be changed (shift RPMs etc in this case) - Racer then updates the car with them within half a second or so, voila you've got a working autobox.

The downside is that Racer uses dynamic memory so every time you restart racer or even quit to the main menu, most of the addresses change and you have to update the program, which is a major PITA :frown:. Also, I'm guessing that Ruud would take a dim view of reading/writing into Racer's memory (maybe that's part of the reason for the dynamic memory?), but it's the only way I could think of getting some kind of compatibility for an external plugin, just to prove the idea can work really.

The autobox script just modifies shift_up and shift_down RPMs vs throttle input, different function for each so you get a region mid throttle where you nudge a partial downshift just one gear usually, full throttle will shift it down as far as it can without hitting the limiter. A lot of values to tweak, I need to clean up the code a bit. The only thing is that Racer will only shift one gear every time it reads the var (which it seems to read every 250ms or so), so it seems fine with a 3 speed 'box but if you get to 5 or 6 speeds it might take a couple of secs to step up/down to the correct gear and the steps get annoying, for instance if you brake into a corner in 5th and exit the corner at full throttle and the car needs to be in 2nd, it will shift 5 > 4 > 3 > 2 instead of straight into 2nd. But for simpler boxes it works well.

The CVT is simpler, I'm not 100% certain it's a true CVT but it is a single variable gear. It modifies the diff ratio based on a min and max RPM ratio, tries to keep the engine at the optimum RPM by increasing or decreasing the gear ratio (only 1 gear plus reverse of course). So you start off with a gear ratio of 32 from a standing start and the script updates the ratio depending on the difference between the current engine RPM and the 'desired' engine RPM, depending on throttle etc. So at full throttle it keeps the engine at the RPM where peak power output is, at light throttle it'll keep the engine at 2200rpm or so.

Performance is great, I had it running on a 95bhp 1.6 litre which I'm getting 0-60 in the region of 10 sec with a close ratio 5 speed, with the CVT it will see 60 in under 8.5 sec and feels much faster in general. Midrange acceleration is great too because the engine is constantly held at its peak RPM, where small engines need help most when they're out of their power band. It sounds like a schizophrenic bumble bee and you can hear the 'steps' where the new ratios are loaded each time, but some more engine inertia and tweaking of the code would probably improve that a lot.

If you want to add a torque converter, that's all the code you need for it :smile:. All a basic torque converter does is boosts engine torque by decreasing the effective gear ratio by a certain amount, exactly what the CVT script does. Add some kind of one way clutch and there's your torque converter. Not to mention being able to simulate other types of single gear transmission..

I haven't searched for everything but there seems to be a lot of usable variables stored in logical format, think of the possibilities..plugins for brake balance and fade, better ABS, crawler gear sets for offroaders, switchable spring/damper settings, speed sensitive steering, the list is endless..

Just my 2c, anyone think this could work? :smile:

 

[Tiberius]

Snow

It only works when you're facing in certain directions, and I think this also goes for the disappearing dashboard dials.

Hehe, think rain ;-)

It rains inside cars, pan the camera sideways and it rains sideways. Pan the camera so it's upside down and it will even rain upwards ;-)

 

[Tiberius]

Thought I should update my last post about the autobox/CVT script..

Reading/writing static stuff like shift RPMs seems to work fine with no side effects. However, changing stored gear ratios unleashes some pretty funky bugs, down to the way the whole drivetrain is computed I suppose.

Depending on what the gear ratio is when you start, you either get a huge amount of power or a car which can't even hold 25mph. My 1.6l test mule, with standard 5spd box it can sprint to 60 in about 10 sec, tops out at around 110mph. With the CVT script the performance low down is still pretty believeable, however as your speed increases and the CVT script re-writes steadily lower and lower gear ratios to memory, power and acceleration increase more and more. I clocked 355kmh on the speedbowl, the car showed no signs of stopping there but due to spring rates and aero becomes uncontrollable at that speed. Not bad for a 90bhp 1.6l saloon :-/

Huge lesson learned about how programming and physics work

 

[insane666]

How to fix the gauges probleme ?

 

[boomer541]

read post #i on page 1 of this thread, it usually works.

 

[luthobu]

Not sure if this is a bug or not, but if I set the mirror update_rate to anything other than 1 it applies to the screen update as well.. i.e. if the mirror is set to update_rate=5, then the screen update rate becomes 5 as well.. and /that/ looks bad.. and makes it really hard to drive. Not a big deal, works fine with 1, but was just trying to increase the framerate (heh.. and so it became even worse with changing the mirror update rate.. lol.)

 

[Alex Forbin]

I'm surprised no one else has mentioned this bug. If the car slides on its roof and rocks back and forth (or slowly spins) it's path will vary like it's on ice skates. Slowly rotating makes the car perform a large circle on it's roof.

This appears to be friction related which has always been a problem with Racer, why not let Newton figure the friction?

Alex Forbin

 

[boomer541]

Never mind!

 

[Eholov]

When playing in a network it is impossible to choose different cars

 

[Eholov]

Somebody know how to choose different cars in online race?

 

[Minion3425]

When playing in a network it is impossible to choose different cars

Yeah my friends and I are having this problem as well. When they try to join my server using a different car a message says "[Insert car folder name here] is not found in the hosts directory" or something along those lines. We all have the cars we wanted to use in our cars folder but the game doesn't seem to read them. Only if the person joining the game has the same car as the one the host is driving does it allow them to join. I wish direct connect wouldn't have been removed as it was a simpler way of hosting small private games.

 

[Ian Strom]

minion, your problem is different. What Eholov is talking about is when users select the car they want and connect then find themselves in-game with the same car as the host and no error messages.

 

[Minion3425]

minion, your problem is different. What Eholov is talking about is when users select the car they want and connect then find themselves in-game with the same car as the host and no error messages.

Its hard to say whether or not its the exact same problem but either way you can't use different cars in multiplayer and that kills most of the fun...

 

[Ian Strom]

Since you are the only one getting errors about lacking the same cars I think perhaps it might be different.
I have never seen any error and can connect without trouble. Eholov too.

 

[AMGfan(BPM)]

Ruud, please, check the problem about interior needles... it annoys a lot me, new racer always missing it, and it is a known bug. i am doing interior needles for my civic ek9, and cant do it, in the last racer i cant find the dials, needles, whatever. please