Racer v0.8.34 released

[Ruud]

Racer v0.8.34 is out! Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.34.7z (48Mb, note the 7z extension; you'll need 7-zip from http://www.7-zip.org ).

Enjoy!
Ruud

Changes:
- Bugfix: Director cam didn't work
- Bugfix: Rain didn't affect grip (snow did)
- ENet upgraded to v1.3.3 (small change to avoid unreliable packet regression, and disconnect fix)
- Added input limiters for Pacejka curves for slipangle/ratio/camber/load (see data/cars/default/car.ini)
(wheel<n>.pacejka.slipangle_min/max etc); see http://www.racer.nl/reference/pacejka.htm#inputsoutputs
- Bugfix: Replay was never painted; no camera was defined.
- Bugfix: particles in replays were not animated in reverse mode. Now they are (although not entirely correct)
- Turning AI on while offroad would cause a crash.
- Added ai.spring_factor in car.ini to add some magic forces to keep the car on track (use 'ai scale' for example
to add some speed to the AI line; check out 'ai save' and such).
- CurvEd import of ASCII txt and CSV added.
- CurvEd imports were buggy (zero) if more than 50 points were imported.
- Added textures.stub in racer.ini to optionally load a single texture for every loaded shader; useful
when testing mipmapping (if you're using mipmaps effectively, see http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/stub_textures.htm)
- Added data/images/texture_stub.dds as a default images for the feature above
- Added dev.fast_fade in racer.ini to allow quick fades while developing
- Added wheel roadnoise filtering to simulate rubber; see http://www.racer.nl/reference/wheels.htm
- Added ai.rc_factor in car.ini to be able to help AI if you give it a high grip_factor as well. See http://www.racer.nl/reference/carphys.htm#ai
- Added ai.cg_factor in car.ini to lower effective CG height to help AI drive faster through turns without flipping.
See also http://www.racer.nl/reference/carphys.htm#ai
- susp_implicit_integration now set to 0 for explicit physics. It seems stable for F1 cars with tire_damping,
and the implicit method creates buggy load values in the tires.
- Added ghost.update_if_loaded (defaults to true) to determine whether to update the ghost lap (if you're faster),
even if you've explicitly loaded one with ghost.load.
- Materials without names in DOF files used to get the exact texture name (ie 'body.tga'). The extension is now cut, so it'd become 'body').

 

[KoshTheSnowman]

Hello! I finally got a decent computer to play Racer but I got this possibly stupid question. Are trees supposed to look like this in CG with FBO? http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9895/treealpha.jpg

 

[Mr Whippy]

That looks a bit weird... but the Carlswood trees are not the best in the first place... hmmm... Carlswood isn't the best full stop hehe

The new X-type tree shader is very nice generally, and looks much nicer than that.


These are my X-trees with nice textures and the right shaders...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYU8Rdv06OQ



Hmmmm

Dave

 

[Stereo]

The dotted pattern is pretty normal for a lower-end card (or ATI, which doesn't do CSAA), the FBO alpha isn't great so you see that instead of alpha blending.

The texture's low quality as well, so don't expect too much improvement by tweaking it. This is with samples=4, coverage_samples=16, as recommended in racer.ini. http://i.imgur.com/XDLTt.jpg

 

[KoshTheSnowman]

So geforce 9800gtx+ is just too old? Damn

 

[DavidI]

A GF9600GT I have doesn't do that, maybe nVidia drivers update, have a look at the settings in nVidia Control panel?

 

[boomer541]

That GTX9800 should be good enuf to do racer without problems. I get the same effect with my GTX285 on ver 0.0833 as well, latest drivers and all.

Could be that the xtree cg are defective with the textures used.

Mr. Whippy's trees look good, perhaps he can try the carlswood tree images with his shader and post any differences.

 

[KS95]

The dotted pattern is pretty normal for a lower-end card (or ATI, which doesn't do CSAA), the FBO alpha isn't great so you see that instead of alpha blending.

The texture's low quality as well, so don't expect too much improvement by tweaking it. This is with samples=4, coverage_samples=16, as recommended in racer.ini. http://i.imgur.com/XDLTt.jpg

Relatively off-topic: I see turbo!

 

[camsinny]

Any chance we can have a skid_in and skid_out sound set?
It's really hard to balance the sound of the car inside and outside when the tyre squeal is the same wherever you are...

 

[Mr Whippy]

What we really need is 'HDR' but for sounds...

Simply define the dB of the sounds rather than the 'volume' as currently, and then let a system attenuate for the given scene volumes automatically (equivalent of exposure control for our HDR now)

We are kinda where we were with graphics a while ago. You just can't get good sounds while you try squash things into a low-range environment.

Of course, the current system works fine IF you can run your speakers so loud that the dynamic range is equal to real life, but then when your car at idle suddenly gets 10x louder at 200mph, your wife complains haha


HDR sound is evident in games like GT5. I think it works really well and is logical, and would help audio realism a great deal. It's frustrating to not be able to balance sounds properly in Racer. It's annoying because in today's hardware environment sounds are so relatively cheap we could be doing loads more with them. A more flexible or well thought out system would help audio innovation.


Generally, I'd also love to see track cameras sense an audio delay due to the speed of sound. It sounds weird to instantly hear things despite the car being maybe 300m away (about 1s time gap in real life!)

Dave

 

[camsinny]

I imagine sound would be easier to overhaul compared to graphics too, but it's probably one of those things.

I was thinking about the whole dB thing a few days ago. The Jag compared to my Mazda are in different ballparks...and you don't realise what a car sounds like 1m from the exhaust until you film it. If we could define a dB level (say normalised to 1m) and a falloff value (or perhaps a dB level at 10m) it'd be nice I think.

One can dream can't one?

 

[Mr Whippy]

Exactly, dB would work great in that case.

Mazda driving along, sounds loud, then the F1 car pulls up along side. Total volume at PC isn't 10x louder, but suddenly the Mazda is un-audible over the F1 car

It makes total sense to work in a high dynamic range, or high bandwidth I guess we might say for audio!?

Dave

 

[Alex Forbin]

Any chance we can have a skid_in and skid_out sound set?
It's really hard to balance the sound of the car inside and outside when the tyre squeal is the same wherever you are...

+1 Thanks! Another one of those things I gave up asking for.

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

I'd prefer some kind of equaliser system for interior and exterior sounds.

That way you can just define the sound 'change' properties and if you are inside it just plays them all at the appropriate levels.

A skid in/out set isn't useful on it's own, without a wind in/out set, and gear whine in/out set too, since we need to balance all sounds.


It's just getting messy then. We need elegance and logic, not brute force. dB rating and equaliser inside the car... pump some frequencies, kill out others etc... is it something you would just define in curvEd? A crv file from 0 > 22500khz and -10 > +10 dB?

That way when we are in our convertibles and put the roof down, or windows down on any other car, then we can tweak the curve hehe

Trust me, if we make sounds better, lets do it right!

Dave

 

[Stereo]

That reminds me, we have the physical road noise, how about some audio to go with it? Hearing the suspension bumping along on the kerbs, with the noise filtered depending on the damper setup, would be nice, esp. if it worked automatically for the various types of surfaces defined.

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=3D
It's good to take a look =D.
A different AA , and less costly.

 

[Alex Forbin]

I'd prefer some kind of equaliser system for interior and exterior sounds.

That way you can just define the sound 'change' properties and if you are inside it just plays them all at the appropriate levels.

A skid in/out set isn't useful on it's own, without a wind in/out set, and gear whine in/out set too, since we need to balance all sounds.


It's just getting messy then. We need elegance and logic, not brute force. dB rating and equaliser inside the car... pump some frequencies, kill out others etc... is it something you would just define in curvEd? A crv file from 0 > 22500khz and -10 > +10 dB?

That way when we are in our convertibles and put the roof down, or windows down on any other car, then we can tweak the curve hehe

Trust me, if we make sounds better, lets do it right!

Dave

I agree, using an equalizer would work fine. When making interior sounds I normally just pass exterior sounds through an EQ and filter the freq. that would be dampened by the cars insulation (or amplified by the lack thereof) and boost the harmonics transferred by the body resonance.
Fmod supports realtime EQ functions, so I would think it would be pretty easy for Ruud to implement.
Suspension sounds, as Stereo said are sorely lacking right now and probably need to be hooked to the relative motion of the suspension.
While on the subject of sound I wonder if there is a way to apply attack/decay to the reverb function so that we don't get the "click" sound when we leave an area with echo to one without.

Alex Forbin

 

[Mr Whippy]

Good points there Alex!

In theory we could do an EQ and some reverb/chorus effects and get a really nice sound variance from inside to outside.

It keeps the audio sample count down, and is probably much more likely to result in better quality audio from an authors point of view as it's easy to just copy someone elses EQ settings if they like them!


Suspension/braking noises would be nice.

I'd prefer to get good tyre noise in there, but again, it's limited mainly by the poor volume system. Tyres get REALLY loud, probably exponentially so. The current system is too basic in that regard. We probably need two or three samples we scale through as velocity builds (like I have done in the new Lamborghini Murcielago)
Then per car we can just scale that sound set from 0...1... perhaps even do the same with wind noise...

So ideally we just have

car engine acc/decc
interior is an equaliser adjustment to that set, with perhaps a volume scale too

wind is from racer.ini sounds, and scale that with a volume 0...1 for int/ext

tyre noise same as wind...

then gear whine as it is now maybe...


Hmmm

Dave

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

Racer could have integration with fmod designer and load .fev and .fsb for cars , in fmod designer we can tune the sound with all effects , and fmod do the rest =D

 

[Alex Forbin]

Racer could have integration with fmod designer and load .fev and .fsb for cars , in fmod designer we can tune the sound with all effects , and fmod do the rest =D

Duh, why I didn't think of that is beyond me. I was working with that just last week!
Good idea Raphael.

Alex Forbin

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

that tool is awesome and we can use more samples to cars , and we can pick directly from need for speed shift ^^