Racer v0.8.18

[Mr Whippy]

http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.18.zip

Ruud didn't do an official thread for this, but he did post up the link on here somewhere, so I guess he is happy for us to use/test it if we like!

Anyway, I'm using it and there are some useful changes, and also some bugs I wanted to note.


Release notes:

v0.8.18 (20-08-10)
------------------
- The Lobbyserver wasn't updated to use the new ENet version, so older version could connect
but were refused, and newer versions couldn't connect. Fixed.
- Autoexposure formula revised to exposure=gradient/luminance+offset. Thanks to Colin Pan.
It's much better but somehow the scene luminance doesn't seem to be calculated correctly
for non-power-of-two resolutions (glGenerateMipmap).
- Added a 'loading' or 'busy' indicator (data/images/loading_*.tga and the loading.indicator_pos setting)
- Rain was invisible in bright times of the day
- Some particles were dark as a result of the switch to klux lighting
- Tonemapping (in hdr.cg) used a 0.1 factor - removed that and for auto_exposure this means
gradient should be set to ~1.0 instead of ~10.0 (exposure=1/luminance).
- Added special.ini parameters under 'sun': azimuth_offset (rotation wrt North),
year, day, month, latitude, longitude and timezone. The sun XYZ TOD curves disappeared.
See also http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/newtrack.htm#sun
- Added 'sun azimuth <x>' command to change north angle live.

 

[MitchVL]

Again, I don't get where the hate for the old system comes from.

Remember ATI?

Don't worry, Ruud is working on other great developments like the new HDR system.
The latest CSM update was a 2day effort, so that's not much at all

And PCF blur is way better than the old Fullscreen blur.. I have to agree with Some1

 

[Mr Whippy]

Okay, I'm a little confused. Depth blur? I know, the first attempt at shadow mapping used shadow blurring in screen space and that just looked plain wrong. I mean, the further the camera went, the more noticeable the blurring become and it looked like many light flares, just inverted colors.

Current system, where the shadows are blurred in texture space is much better, IMHO. Yes, we need blurring between cascades, and the parameters need to be tweaked to avoid artefacts like when the angle between the surface and the sun gets low...but still...

The blur went from screen space to depth space with the old CSM didn't it, then we went to this 'new' system with lines everywhere and interiors not looking so nice

I don't know the technical terms, just what I see hehe.

Well, if the new system can look as good as the old system, but retain the higher quality (that I haven't actually really seen yet?! anyone have any before/after pics?), then I'm happy enough.


Ah yes Mitch, ATI, haha. Damn those ATI's

 

[DavidI]

ATI's just a brandname, it's DAAMIT nowadays

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I know this may sound strange, but this seems to be caused by missing the Visual C++ runtime.

Especially if you keep getting "This application failed to start because the application information is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem." (or similar) for restart.exe.