Wanted - community feedback

Cruden are currently at the Automotive Testing Expo in Stuttgart, with one of their motion platforms, but more importantly, very friendly staff. I took the opportunity to visit them today and had a highly informative chat with Edwin de Vries, who's their senior modeling and simulation engineer. We talked physics, bugs, projects and ideas for the future. Edwin kindly offered to keep the discussion going, and - if work permits - that might lead to him and Ruud looking into some of the most urgent points that we raise in the community. I figured it would be helpful if we were to collect everybody's ideas in a single thread, so that it's easier to manage and then pass it on.

Post here what you think are the most urgent bugs that need fixing, which existing features you want to see developed further and also what kind of new features would bring Racer forward. If one of your points has already been mentioned, you want to quote or refer to it otherwise, so that we can get a sense of the popularity. Also, please spread the word among fellow Racer communities to participate as well.
 
Making the scripting languages work easily with multiple vehicles mainly (you'd have to ask Dave about specifics) and getting whichever is the 'script language of the future' full featured (is it Onyx?)
 
Making the scripting languages work easily with multiple vehicles mainly (you'd have to ask Dave about specifics) and getting whichever is the 'script language of the future' full featured (is it Onyx?)
Basically making scripts useable in multiplayer. I'd like to see multiplayer more useable because right now I feel like I'm basically stuck with using RC4 to do any multiplayer. I'm sure there is a bug list somewhere I can't remember the bugs off the top of my head though.
 
Keep it coming, that's all good so far :) I'll put in my own thoughts when I get some more free time.

boomer541: Yes, I'm aware of the list that Scott put together in the RC6 release thread and I'll comb through the RC8 thread again, too, to implement that here if nobody else gets there first :)

tormento19: Can you elaborate a little on what you want to see regarding the damage model? There is a physics level damage system in place already, perhaps you're looking for separate mesh files or other visual approaches? Similarly, what are you looking for in movables exactly?

Stereo: Maintaining proper scope is indeed an issue with some of the current scripting languages that limits what we can run in scenarios with multiple vehicles. As far as I'm aware, Ruud was last working on yet another scripting language... my main concern right now is that we already have three of them, none of them giving us access to all the relevant parameters and potentially causing issues when mixing etc. It's definitely something Edwin and I talked about and that Cruden are aware of and looking into.

Alex Forbin: Noted :)
 
Did you get any idea why it's been over a year since we've had an update? I just figured
that Racer had petered out, like many sims seem to be doing nowdays.
I had hoped that the new water and skies would be implemented as well.
Anyway it's great that things are still moving forward and they still want to talk to us. ;)

Another bug I just remembered...
the "double start" bug, where the start sound gets played twice.

Alex Forbin
 
The last update was in November I think, but for sure it feels like an eternity, especially when we can't even use the latest version due to critical bugs. I didn't ask for any specific reasons, because I could tell that the Cruden guys are very much motivated and simply busy with a variety of projects. Talking with Edwin definitely showed me that things aren't slowing down for them.

Ruud apparently doesn't want to bring us "bad news" of no updates, but I told them that it's better for us to get a notice that things are going to be slow for a few weeks/months, rather than not hearing anything.
 
They are all very friendly and welcoming every time I have met them at shows too Alex, they love cars and love Racer just as much as we all do.
Unfortunately they also have to do actual work with Racer, unlike us who just play with it hehe. So I guess their priorities are work work work focussed, and I can see why Ruud doesn't always want to get home late on a night after being busy at work for weeks and months on end and then do Racer stuff for us too :D



So I'm generally still feeling that there is loads we can do for Racer with content and stuff.

Ie, get more cars updated, good inis, sounds etc, and some nice updated tracks, or just new ones.



So with a really realistic single thing in mind that would help *us* progress Racer more in Ruud's absence, it would be scripting stuff really finished up (qscript, onyx, panthero, whatever) so we can start to do a lot of the things we request Ruud for, but do them ourselves in scripts.

I think Ruud said the latest one was Panthero now, so to have that system would be cool I suppose.

The only other request would be so that scripts automatically scope to their parent folder owner.
So scripts in car folders should only impact that car, and that instance of a car too. Ie, if two guys in multiplayer play with the same car, their scripts should be their own and impact no others.
Cosmo and I had some great fun with my steering adjusting his rear wheel steer script haha! That made for fun racing ;)




All the other bugs for me but don't really stop us from really making good content, getting things mostly updated, and enjoying Racer and building the community more.

The one thing that really does stop us developing the content/community is being able to enjoy content together and I think multiplayer/scripts would be core to that.


I think in RC5c Cosmo and I can play in multiplayer without any issues (sharing IP, not using the lobby), just those scripts are the real problem.




Others may have different priorities but for me some of the best days in Racer were driving in multiplayer when it'd just been fixed up and working really nice, and that was also the period when we had piles of Racer unique content added every week!

It motivated me so much I actually released a car back then too haha ;)


Cheers

Dave
 
I always assumed that our version of Racer was basically the same as Crudens version only minus a few features, so it wouldn't seem to be a separate project.
I don't expect a lot of content will be developed until we have a fairly stable final or semi-final version.:unsure:

Another bug or two..
Glass on dash prevents gauge needles from showing up. (view element transparency is hosed).

Specular highlights are present in shadowed areas on bump mapped surfaces i.e. tires.

Alex Forbin
 
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I think the gauges shader needs some work, with motion blur it's not working nicely too.

Probably something relatively easy to fix ourselves. I keep meaning to have a look but forget hehe.


Also the specular highlights on top of tyres shouldn't be a problem either, I'm certain I've managed to avoid it with the correct shaders/settings.

I have this feeling one of the shaders people might use for tyres is a bit broken.



I think really we need fixes to issues that we can't fix. I have this feeling the above ones are something we can sort ourselves.

That said, the shadows still seem buggy (blurry closer to the camera vs further away, shadow cascade centre vs car offset issues?)... but again I think I'd prefer to focus on stuff that really makes Racer not usable, or makes making content and fine tuning it really hard.



The only other obvious thing I noticed with Cosmo was the MF5.2 tyre model seemed to pull to the left via FF when braking... we tried a fully symmetric car and removing all kinematics etc, and the FF still pulled left only all the time when braking. Not a huge issue but MF5.2 is too good a feeling tyre to have a weird bug like that, especially as it may be hiding other bugs that are inter-related!


Dave
 
Also the specular highlights on top of tyres shouldn't be a problem either, I'm certain I've managed to avoid it with the correct shaders/settings.

I have this feeling one of the shaders people might use for tyres is a bit broken.
If I remember right it's a shadowmapping issue, there's a fudge factor to stop a surface that's near-perpendicular to the sun from shadowing itself and on the sides of tires it can grow large enough that it ignores shadows from the body of the car too.
 
I know that Ruud was playing with z-buffering and shadows recently (since RC5c) and perhaps things are now not as ideal as they were.

For example I know the shadow map size is down from 1024 > 512px iirc, or was that the envmap.

In any case such backward steps on defaults seem really weird. Maybe if you're desperate for extra GPU power, but on our hardware? You'd have to make really inefficient content to need to trim back those settings these days!

Hmmm

Dave
 
I know that Ruud was playing with z-buffering and shadows recently (since RC5c) and perhaps things are now not as ideal as they were.

For example I know the shadow map size is down from 1024 > 512px iirc, or was that the envmap.

In any case such backward steps on defaults seem really weird. Maybe if you're desperate for extra GPU power, but on our hardware? You'd have to make really inefficient content to need to trim back those settings these days!

Hmmm

Dave

You're right it was the shadowmapping, I bumped my shadow up to 2048 and it didn't seem to make much difference on framerate.
On graphics, I've wondered why motion blur works well normally, but seems to have
problems when dealing with transparencies.

Alex Forbin
 
The motion blur is fine *I think*

I made some tweaks again based on Stereo's tweaks I think, and I'm generally happy. OK it's not cinematic quality and really it needs a new shader for the best possible appearance, but it's much better that some motion blur is there imo, than none!

Just car gauges and some transparent materials have issues... but logic would suggest that as other things work ok the issue must be in the shaders for those things having issues.

I'll take a look again at those shaders and see if there is anything obviously missing.


Oh I also think the mirror shader needs a tweak to the colour toning thingy works on them... though I was certain that was done in the screen shader... hmmm...


I'll try release a bunch of stuff sometime soon with these simple tweaks/fixes :D

Dave
 
I like the motion blur as well, I just wondered if we could fix the way it smears behind
transparent objects.

FAULT.jpg


Alex Forbin
 
Hmmm not sure.

I guess you have motion blur turned off for the wheels objects?

Or wheels/tyres?

I'll take a look and do some tests over the coming weeks. I can't promise anything but I can have a see :)

Dave
 
Hmmm not sure.

I guess you have motion blur turned off for the wheels objects?

Or wheels/tyres?

I'll take a look and do some tests over the coming weeks. I can't promise anything but I can have a see :)

Dave

Yes, motion blur is off for the body and wheels+tyres. It may seem to be a minor issue
to some, but if you are going behind a row of bushes or a fence it's very noticeable.
Hopefully you can kill the bug.

Alex Forbin
 

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