Racer v0.8.20 is out

[Ruud]

Yep, just these changes (Mitch has been working on a GL wrapper, mostly for debugging, I've been doing mostly work on other versions):

- Set gamma to 1.0 in data/renderer/common/hdr.cg - gamma is done in your display!
- Added shader texture option 'mode' to specify linear or SRGB maps. Default is 'srgb'. Bumpmaps need 'linear'
otherwise their normals will be un-gamma'd (an SRGB image has gamma~0.45 where Racer works in linear light, gamma=1).

It's at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.20.zip

Check out Carlswood's track.shd and the Lambo car.shd to see 'mode=linear' being used for linear textures.
As for bugs, we're having some issues where sometimes we get a 'cgiChopArrayReference' or something creeps up. Mitch is looking into it.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

THX Bob,
i got it^^
To play with the courves and add this linea mode to the car shd was the secret!
THX for help to all!

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

evil shadowmapping !

I agree! Makes Racer slllloooowwww!

 

[boomer541]

Anybody else having tracked all white when loading carlswood?

Works ok on other tracks with proper tod curves and .ini settings.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

yep, me too...all white....oh..is there a limit of files in the geometry ini?
I'm working on a track and after ~1k files tracked wont start.....no QLog entree....

 

[Alexander Knoll]

hmm...any ideas?


EDIT:
ok...after 2-3 times hit "ok" and restart Racer it works again...but i changed noting....

 

[camsinny]

Yeah I get that from time to time.
Make sure you don't have anything else running openGL in the background...3ds Max, Photoshop, etc.

 

[Alex Forbin]

Yeah I get that from time to time.
Make sure you don't have anything else running openGL in the background...3ds Max, Photoshop, etc.

Zmodeler is usually the culprit for me. Normally it's not a problem, but some really large tracks with
big textures can do it. Time for a larger (GB) video card I guess.

Alex Forbin

 

[boomer541]

Cause of tracked being all white found! It's the special.ini settings, change exposure to =0.35 and intensity to =0.2 and auto_exposure off!

I am attaching images and files for those that want to use them for carlswood. The curves need to be better, lambo lights too dark at night.

I like a nice clear sky as that is what I see when I look out my window!

 

[mafosh]

hi guys, i have Q...

my error seems like this>

Wed Sep 15 22:13:16 (INFO): --- application start ---
Wed Sep 15 22:13:16 (WARN): DGPUShader:Load(data/renderer/fullscreen_shaders_hdr/passthrough.cg): CG ERROR : "The profile is not supported."


i can play without any prob, but when trying to hit ECS to go back into menu, game crashes with this error... ATI Mobility 5870, shadowmapping off, bloom off, texture quality very high, distance as well...

when i had shadowmapping and bloom on, game runs also OK, however it gets different errors ( always releated to shadow or bloom)

Dont you guys know how to go around my passthrough.cg issue, thanks

Also i tried several tracks to download, Nordschleife, Sppedtest3 or other... and basically all of them are giving me list of several errors... :/ even if i didnt touched the files at all, just copied the folder into track directory and choose it in Raven 1.31...

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7427/17976676.jpg

 

[DavidI]

I had my PC die yesterday, ended up being the power supply, once changed all good again PHEW...

Which led me to an interesting discovery. When fault finding my PC's deadness, when I got it working fully again it was running with a Pentium D 3.4GHz processor, it normally has a Core2 D @3.04Ghz OC'd. When I tried Racer with the PD cpu, I got between 5~25 FPS on Mugello, with the C2D I usually get 25~50+ FPS. I swapped back in the C2D cpu running at stock 2.8GHZ, and got 25+ FPS's again. I changed BIOS settings so the CPU was running at the same FSB as the PD CPU (800MHz), but eveything else the same, and got FPS's similar to the PD CPU.
A C2D is more efficient clock for clock than a Netburst based CPU, & so the FPS's were about 1~5 FPS better.
My conclusion is that Racer is sensitive to the FSB speed and memory subsystem moreso than pure CPU clockspeed. In my case for Racer a 2.8GHz C2D with an FSB of 1500MHz is far faster than a PentiumD 3.4GHz @800MHz FSB, everything else unchanged.

 

[boomer541]

I found that car headlights are not the same when using auto_exposure=1 (on) vs. off in carlswood. Changing the value in the projected_lights_f.cg file didn't reallly work for both cases. I would really like to have the headlights/rearlights work correctly day or night when driving carlswood track!

Found another bug? when using lod0_z=x in geometry.ini file the mirror does not work properly! If lod0_z=x is commented out the mirror works ok. You can see the effect on gyral track!

 

[KS95]

I'm getting much better FPS now I'm on Windows 7.. although I am getting an odd problem. It's really jumpy, and I noticed, that it looks as if the time goes backwards slightly every second. It's as if it jumps back then jumps forward again. It's really annoying, especially now that I'm getting a perfect 30fps all the time! Any ideas?

 

[DavidI]

I get the same I believe, my FPS shows 30+, but it looks like its running at <20 FPS stuttering. If I turn off the shadowmapping, I get 75fps+, and no stuttering.
From what I've seen it seems like the shadows are drawn at a lower framerate than the rest of the scene, and as that is below 30fps on my system I see the whole scene stuttering, even though it is only the (inverse) highlighting that is stuttering.

 

[KS95]

Hmm.. it's strange. I actually have turned off shadowmapping, and I still get it. I guess I'll play around with some settings until I can sort it

Edit: Well changing settings didn't seem to help. I tried non-cg, I got no stuttering at all. I also got on average about 160FPS (130fps more than on CG!) and even hit 298FPS at one point. Surely I should be able to get better FPS on CG than 20-30?!

 

[DavidI]

Which do u have, a DAAMIT or nVidiot based GPU? I'm running a NV9600GT oc'd a little, 3ghz C2Duo CPU & 6GB ram. Not a top end system, but no slouch either. I'm running 1280x1024 32bit, which shouldn't be too taxing on the GPU.

Did some more investigating, turned vsynch off, with shadowmapping off on Mugello I'm working on with Cg, I get between 170~250 FPS, If I do donuts in sand I can still bog it down to under 30 FPS after five seconds of dust flying, but generally its high FPS. If I enable shadowmapping, I get between 30~50 FPS depending on where I am on the track, and sand donuts knock it down to <10 FPs after ~2 seconds. As Mitch mentioned previously, Shadowmapping could use some optimising.

 

[Stereo]

With shadowmapping on my ATI cards (have HD 4350 and HD 5450 now, didn't pay for both) I get the stuttering in cg. The 5450 gets around 40FPS but it's stuttering to the point it's only equivalent to about 10-15fps.

Thu Sep 23 12:41:33 (INFO): --- application start ---
Thu Sep 23 12:41:33 (WARN): DGPUShader:Load(data/renderer/fullscreen_shaders_hdr/bloom_shadows_f.cg): CG ERROR : "The profile is not supported."

Also get this on the 5450. I haven't been playing Racer much recently though so not sure what's up.



EDIT: Swapped over with a Geforce 9500GT, left racer.ini alone and saw a jump to 59+fps, no more stutter. It's not that much faster of a card, it just runs this stuff a lot better.

 

[boomer541]

Lucky me. I get consistantly 100+ fps with no problems with my nVidia GTX 285. Now if we could only get the little annoyances fixed...

 

[KS95]

I have a nVidia GT210, Celeron.. something, and 2GB of ram. Hate this stuttering! Also starting to doubt CG..

 

[DavidI]

Not meaning to be insulting to you, but unfortunately while the GT210 can run Cg shaders, it's processing power could barely pull the skin of a rice pudding so to speak. Deal of the century currently is the GTX460 1GB, I'm getting one (or two) soon. First really good product nV have released in many years.

 

[KS95]

I know, it's a £35 graphics card, I'm not exactly surprised. But to be honest, even still, if I can get a steady 100FPS on LFS, way more on non-cg Racer, then frankly 20-30FPS on CG.. is.. well.. pretty terrible, in my opinion. I'd honestly rather play non-cg with those figures..