Racer v0.8.33 released

[Ruud]

Things have been very busy, lots of things going on at the edges of Racer (not really core Racer), but here's an update finally.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.33.zip (75Mb)

Known issues:
- The current replay should be re-recorded
- AI training is very alpha, it currently s*cks

Changes:
- Added 'gfx.show_traffic_lines' option to visualize track grid
- Added 'show traffic' and 'hide traffic' console commands
- Traffic improved to be usable
- Added 'gfx.bestline.source' which determines whether the bestline is derived from AI or the ghostlap
- Added log.buffer_time to be able to change the log buffer size
- RTD logging improved
- DXT3 dds format was flipped incorrectly (bad detection of DXT3 format)
- dbg_controls.throttle/brakes/clutch/steer now work again (if dbg_controls.update=0)
- Multiview camera were slightly off wrt eye position
- Added 'show log' and 'hide log' console commands to show live log details
- Cg dll's updated to v3.0.16
- Added log.database.dir for eternal logging of RTD telemetry files (customer)
- Added ghost.time_scale for slow-motion ghost laps (mostly for testing use)
- Changes in thread creation (handle leak fix)
- Added data/images/fadeout.tga where Racer fades to in menus and other situations
- Added 'show ailines' (and 'hide') to visualize AI lines
- Pressing Ctrl-F6 to drive an AI lap now accepts AI cars; they will try to train themselves.
Use 'ai learn save' to save the trained lap.
Let it run for quite a number of laps. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/newtrack.htm#default_ai
- Added 'ai reset' console command to reset AI velocities to 50 km/h (for AI training purposes)
- Added 'ai scale <v>' console command to scale AI velocities
- Experimental friction circle method added; #6. Is like #3, only without clamping max_slip_len (dbg_car.friction_circle_method). Doesn't seem too viable though.
- Per-wheel tweaking of 'max_slip_len'; an addition to the tire model to constrict large slip lookups
See http://www.racer.nl/reference/wheels.htm#combinedforces

 

[camsinny]

Don't forget driver skins!!

 

[QuadCoreMax]

+ 1 driver/car skins !

@Dave

you're right, forget about the snow textures, best is creating some 'dynamic' snow effect with some Cg UV maps/channels algorithm...

@Ruud

For skin tracks, Racer doesn't find the skin01-99 folder when there's a 'textures' folder in the track folder. I tend to use/create folders for each purpose (sound, textures, curves, ase...) & put the files there. In my track.shd file, I have something like :

map=textures/my_texture.dds

 

[Stereo]

Well, more than track skins, I've been wanting car skins for ages now. I'd like to change the color in the car selection screen.

Also, it would be great if it was possible to share textures and meshes between cars.

It is actually possible to share them between cars, as long as the other car's folder is an expected name you can write file=../lambomurcielago/body.tga and so on.
By eliminating all this repeated stuff from the Lamborghini ghost folder you can bring it down to about 1MB without any QLog errors. If I remember right, the sounds are the only thing that you can't reference out of another car's folder. Since you'll never want the ghost folder without the original car it works okay. Not sure it's such a good idea with other vehicles though, since people might only want one version installed.

 

[Mr Whippy]

BUG?

Pretty sure that the rain grip reduction isn't working.

Yes, I've seen there is an entry in racer.ini, but just set rain=1 on a track and drive around. Doesn't seem slippy to me. Snow grip reduction is working, but not rain.

Been like this for a while now, but doesn't seem to have been picked up elsewhere. Anyone else finding rainy weather is still very grippy (as in dry grip levels)?

Dave

 

[KS95]

I haven't tested in the current version, but I did notice that in the last version.

 

[Alex Forbin]

I've been having an issue with the Pacejka player ever since the new fmodex.dll was implemented, in that the window flickers horribly.
Has anyone else had this problem?

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hi Alex,

I had that in Win XP for years, with many Racer versions and GFX driver updates etc.

Not doing it now in Win7 64, new pc etc.

Was bloody horrible while it did it though... made using it really really tough, despite it already been a bit flawed/buggy.

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

BUGS?

If you use 'reload track', the next time you try use the "C" key to change camera, Racer crashes (can post screen showing info if needed), are others getting this?




I'm developing a track and have, currently, 162 movable cones. It's been working fine for days here at high FPS, but Cosmo has been getting about 5fps, resolved at his end by changing flags=1024 to 0 or 6, and suddenly he gets normal FPS.

Weird.

Today I was adding more cones, playing around running them all over, cool, fast FPS etc... went out for the day, came back, now my PC is slooooowwww as well. Goes fast when reverting flags to 0 or 6, but 1024 (movable is slow) Weird why now it's doing this.

Stumbled up 'reload track' making the FPS shoot up and work as it was before. Weird. Some kind of Newton initialisation issue? Doesn't explain why it was ok before, and now it's not. Such is Racer I guess haha!


Also noticed if I use "wireframephys on", I can see all my cones are using a proxy convex mesh. Setting "shape" as 0 or 1 has no effect, or doesn't use a sphere or box bounding...

Something in the physics is broken I guess?! Weird why mine was ok then suddenly wasn't after a sleep/restart with exact same content.

Maybe something to do with the recent Newton dll/version update with respect to the 'shape' definitions not doing anything?


Cheers

Dave

 

[Christopher Junkins]

My question here then, is why isn't the code associated with the graphics/rendering options a separate "shell"? Back when I did what little coding I did with Q basic, I was in the habit of putting anything that had to do with graphics or what not in entirely separate loops (as I didn't know how to incorporate separate files... but had I known how I would have been doing so. In doing so, you allow the options to be completely separated from anything to do with the rest of the game, including track and car files. Which, of course, means that bugs like the disappearing track parts when you turn off AA wouldn't occur generally speaking. This would also make it easier to debug... you wouldn't have accidental errors due to mixing stuff... then again, this whole argument could be mute... I should ask, is it already separate?

-Inmate, making an ass outta myself all the damn time!

 

[Alex Forbin]

Hi Alex,

I had that in Win XP for years, with many Racer versions and GFX driver updates etc.

Not doing it now in Win7 64, new pc etc.

Was bloody horrible while it did it though... made using it really really tough, despite it already been a bit flawed/buggy.

Dave

Thanks Dave At least I know I'm not alone. Hopefully it's an easy fix.

Alex Forbin

 

[boomer541]

QCM,
What's wrong with .tga textures? I have no problem with them, .dds textures are useless for me as I have no software to work with them as I do with .tga's. I also use quite a few .jpg's.

 

[Christopher Junkins]

Btw, I don't want anyone thinking I'm being confrontational in the way I ask and say things here. I'm just curious and a bit frustrated at things (along side myself).

 

[camsinny]

.tga's can take up quite a bit more space as .dds's while doing essentially the same thing.
I still tend to use tga's during development but then if i'm going to release things i'll convert to .dds - well that's the plan anyway.
.jpg's are quite old though :eek:

 

[Some1]

.tga's can take up quite a bit more space as .dds's while doing essentially the same thing.
I still tend to use tga's during development but then if i'm going to release things i'll convert to .dds - well that's the plan anyway.
.jpg's are quite old though :eek:

TGA or uncompressed DDS comes handy for materials that need high quality, such as the interior. Also, bump-mapping looks bad with compression.

 

[FiftyOrange]

More applications will open a TGA than a DDS, for end-user customisation purposes.

Does optimising to DDS make Racer faster?

If it does, then the solution would be to make everything DDS for the sake of Racer, and have an easy way of converting DDS to TGA for customising. Is there a program or application that will do that?

 

[KS95]

+1

And by how much? If it's not that big a performance increase then it could just be a waste of time :|

 

[Cosmo°]

Alex Forbin: When I switched over to Win 7 there were issues with all the little helper apps that come with Racer not displaying pop-up boxes correctly, flickering or being blacked out - it turned out to be an inability to display all these OpenGL items in an overlay. Initially I had to disable the Aero theme to get the apps to show up correctly, but Ruud included a fix within Racer quite quickly after a few mails back then. It's nothing concrete I know, but perhaps a starting point for you.

.dds discussion

.dds file format (dxt3 and 5 as intended in Racer use, to my knowledge) can bring a significant reduction in file size, but this compression also comes at the price of colour banding artifacts so it's not a free lunch.
.dds in itself doesn't offer any additional features over .tga in Racer at the moment. If you want the same quality, .tga seems to be the better choice especially for textures with fine gradients. Plain colours or blocky patterns might not visually suffer as much in .dds, but it's always something you have to check manually - not so in .tga.
If you're using uncompressed .dds files, they're just as huge as uncompressed .tga versions, so no gain there either.

There are free plug-ins for Photoshop (from nvidia's homepage, 32-bit only, as far as I know), Gimp and maybe others available on the net.

Dave's bug reports

On the framerate issue with movable objects - like Dave mentioned, there's a big performance hit associated with them it seems. It's always been like that for me, so I'm not sure why it only started doing this for Dave now.

I can also return to normal framerates (60fps+) by using the reload track command, but it is negated again when I reset the vehicle for example. The framerate after using "reload track" is on par with what I get by setting all cone objects from flags=1024 to flags=0 (fresh cache generated between trials).

Normally I run Racer with vsync enabled, but I experimented with it disabled for these cone issues. Interestingly, without vsync my framerates doubled from 12 to 24fps with one particular vehicle, before using "reload track" and I get similar doubling with other vehicles as well.



I'm not getting the crash when cycling cameras after "reload track" has been used.

EngineOfDarkness' bug report

Same OS here, but Racer doesn't stick around when I close it - perhaps a firewall trying to do something with the open port still?

 

[QuadCoreMax]

@Ruud/Mitch

- traffic lines == splines lines ?
- show log => nothing's generating ?
- leak fix on ATI with same settings from 0.8.32 with same ini options => 30% fps increase
- waypoints (WP) in Tracked => how do they work exactly & what's the constraints ?

 

[Stereo]

Normally I run Racer with vsync enabled, but I experimented with it disabled for these cone issues. Interestingly, without vsync my framerates doubled from 12 to 24fps with one particular vehicle, before using "reload track" and I get similar doubling with other vehicles as well.

Vsync was doing something like that for me as well, it seems like it aimed for fractions of the total possible frames that could be hit consistently (60 = 1:1, 20 = 1:3, 12 = 1:5). It would be nice if there was an intermediate mode where it would only enable vsync with fps >=60, and just go for maximum framerate below 60.

 

[Alex Forbin]

Alex Forbin: When I switched over to Win 7 there were issues with all the little helper apps that come with Racer not displaying pop-up boxes correctly, flickering or being blacked out - it turned out to be an inability to display all these OpenGL items in an overlay. Initially I had to disable the Aero theme to get the apps to show up correctly, but Ruud included a fix within Racer quite quickly after a few mails back then. It's nothing concrete I know, but perhaps a starting point for you.

Thanks Cosmo, I'm still running XP due to other software requirements, but the overlay does give me some idea where to look.
I may build another I7 machine for win7. How does it run Racer compared to XP?

Alex Forbin