Is it possible to add default animations for drivers/cockpits ?

[justasimfan]

Hi there! I lurked in the forums since the glory days of racer before even the 0.50 final version.Sadly less and less people stay with racer and one of the reasons i strongly believe are that there are no default animations for drivers/cockpits/objects etc... or a way to load a seperate file for cockpits....

So many years have passed and the majority of cars either don't have a cockpit at all or they have a static cockpit with no driver animations.It's sad after looking at other games like lfs,the gtr games,rfactor and even netkar and iracing.

All needed to do is make it possible to have a seperate file for cockpits (to save framerates) were there would be default physics based driver's head view movement affected by the car's movement.(look to apex ,g-forces,line of sight) along default drivers animations steering the wheel,changing gears,pulling the handbrake and operating the pedals.And some decent real mirrors would be nice too.(And animated pop up lights been seen by the cockpit in cars that have them would be nice too)

Sorry if i seem to bash the game but this is one of my major gripes for its decline through the years...(along the absence of some universal constants to keep cars and tracks playable with each new version)

 

[asasinuxp]

drivers animations

This it's planned for the next version.

 

[Harey]

I think your belief that people aren't sticking with Racer because of cockpits is kind of silly. modelers usually leave Racer because they model for fun, and are more driven by the community. Last I knew there was a animated driver already able to be used, just no one has done it because I think its kind of complex. Everyone does have different reasons for leaving Racer though, some have left to deal with their personal lives, some have left because they felt some game was superior.

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Hi there! I lurked in the forums since the glory days of racer before even the 0.50 final version.Sadly less and less people stay with racer and one of the reasons i strongly believe are that there are no default animations for drivers/cockpits/objects etc... or a way to load a seperate file for cockpits....

So many years have passed and the majority of cars either don't have a cockpit at all or they have a static cockpit with no driver animations.It's sad after looking at other games like lfs,the gtr games,rfactor and even netkar and iracing.

All needed to do is make it possible to have a seperate file for cockpits (to save framerates) were there would be default physics based driver's head view movement affected by the car's movement.(look to apex ,g-forces,line of sight) along default drivers animations steering the wheel,changing gears,pulling the handbrake and operating the pedals.And some decent real mirrors would be nice too.(And animated pop up lights been seen by the cockpit in cars that have them would be nice too)

Sorry if i seem to bash the game but this is one of my major gripes for its decline through the years...(along the absence of some universal constants to keep cars and tracks playable with each new version)

You can have a separate cockpit file (dof) & sure animations can also be done, custom pilot head movements along with your shifting animation & all the stuff you want really.

The trick for now (will be easier in future) is to combine the power of scripts + animations, so you'll end up with something which could be theoretically better than any game out there & highly 'dynamical'.

Everything I'm telling here, was tested by myself, so actually, I have a 'real driver', babes along track (need more variations) & now finishing a real pit area. My bushes & trees are now simulating wind, I'll try to record the real sim in my 3D app (rigid bodies + forces) & extract the keyframes for final vegetation sim in Racer. Really crazy stuff

The skinned shader works great & will probably support more bones in future, I'll probably tweak it, so that you could then plug another bump texture unit for example.

It's not difficult if you have knowledge & experience, so Racer needs more 'experienced' peops, imo, like animators, physicians (shaders equations), engineers (car.ini / pacejka) & programmers who can compile code quickly for Cg shaders for example.

 

[DavidI]

My two cents...
Racer is evolving in the same way as the car industry has, in the early days, it was possible for one person to design a car, the expectations of the consumer were a lot lower, compared to the alternatives at the time. The knowledge and expertise required weren't that high comparitively. Nowadays, we don't just want a car thats a better experience than a horse & buggy, it has to be fuel economic, have a smooth ride, have performance, be reliable, look good, have safety systems & features to protect the occupants, have entertainment systems etc etc etc.

Racer is very similar, in pre 050 days, it was comparitively easy to put reasonable looking, drivable cars in Racer. Nowadays, there are very few that have the knowledge of everything required to make 'top notch' content for Racer, I see nowadays there are more 'teams' of Racer creators; people specialising in modelers, suspension, animation etc.

As a long time content creator myself, I personally don't have the time atm to do much, and while Racer is still such a 'moving target' as far as features and configuration, I don't see the point in getting too serious with major projects. It's going to take a while for a lot of the new ways of doing things to become less 'bleeding edge'.

 

[justasimfan]

Hi there! Thanx for replying through i wish ruud had taken notice on this...Ofcourse the decline of racer is not contributed only to missing cockpits and animations but as i said many many other things like the lack of constant variables for vechicle driving parameters...and the fact that most content is not even loadable every new version...

And as Quadcore Max said and asasinuxp showed it is possible to make animations for people and drivers and there are some cars that have some decent cockpits out there.THE PROBLEM is that there is no easy way to do them and the majority 99.9% of modelers out there don't have a clue about complex scripting and physics equations.....

The answear lies easily on having a default seperate file for cockpits and car interior that has a pre scripted physics based driver head view movement that takes into account all physics attributes(line of sight,g-forces,look to apex etc..).The modeler should have only to set the placement of the driver inside the cockpit and the rest will be already made.The same will apply to reflections for mirrors,driver body movement ,hand animations while steering ,shifting and pulling the handbrake.Games like R-factor,LFS and Gtr 2 do the interiors with the above way so it was VERY VERY easy for modders to make some amazing cockpits for their cars...

Also if Ruud read this just have a look or talk with Eugene as he did the same thing for xmotoracing.He initially just had some static 3d cockpits and after some improvement suggestions he made some great default cockpits.

 

[Ian Strom]

I actually do not give a hoot about driver hand&arm animation because I can see my own hands and arms in real life working the wheel and shifter.
I do like interiors though, and most cars have them, but I am fine with "ghost cars" that have no driver model.

Also, "look to apex" is not needed when TrackIR support makes it into Racer. (Though g-forces would be fine)