rec.autos.simulators

Hi all,

I've just uploaded a new version of Racer (it's getting a bit complex
at the moment, 3 platforms to support, hm).

Get it at: http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Note that work is slowing down a bit; I've been enjoying the sun and
pumping through real-life work. But that's life. ;-)

Racer v0.4.5 BETA
-----------------

Changes from v0.4.1:
- Rendering optimized a little.
  It now sorts by material, made some 10% difference on my O2.
- Texture loading optimized.
  Multiple occurences are only loaded once. This was previously only
used in TrackEd. Should load (much) faster now and use much less
memory. If you previously tried to convert tracks like Monza, try
again; this version should be much better.
- Differential code has been placed in. It's quite beta, and will
exhibit quite a few problems while driving (or should I say trying to
drive).

New features:
- Linux version added! Not a fully compilable version probably (mail
me your problems; it SHOULD be doable), but perhaps interesting for
future serving of races. Strangely enough, the Linux version was up &
displaying in 3 days. No sound yet though. Any takers?
- Collision detection (car vs. track). A bit crude still; no angular
impulses yet (and no angular rotation collision prediction). Thanks to
Dave Eberly for his OBB-Triangle detection code.
- Power oversteer.
  Note the Ferrari is quite heavy and requires some pushing to make it
spin out from a start. The addition was possible thanks to a friction
curve which specifies maximum friction based on the slip velocity. But
oh gosh, ofcourse there's too much oversteer!
- Lit tracks; some lighting can be added to the tracks (it's on by
default).
  Although subtle, it does add a bit of flavour. To get lighting to
work on old exported tracks, use TrackEd, select your track, and click
'Add Lighting'. This will process all track .DOFs and add normals so
that lighting works correctly.
- Transparent track objects (fences and such).
  Although the rendering order is not be correct in all cases, alpha
rendering is supported. For .BMP texturemaps, any purple pixels are
made transparent. The bridge rail in Carrera for example. Note that
half-transparent textures (if you use .tga files) will not render in
the right order.
- ACT Labs wheel control sets were added (thanks to Dedlast)
- Logitech wheel axes support.
  The Logitech wheel used slider axes and these could not be
specified. Support was added. Use 'slider0' or 'slider1' as the axis
name in the control set files (no Logitech ctrlset exists yet; please
send one to me if you get it working)
- More axes are supported; the Logitech wheel uses a slider axis, and
this was not recognized. Now if someone can do a control set that I
can include... (use slider0 or slider1 instead of the regular axes,
X/Y/Z/RX/RY/RZ).
- Full compilable source available for Win32, SGI and Linux.
  I might have forgotten things (I'm almost 100% sure), or getting it
to work is (very) unclear. Mail me with what you had to do to get it
to compile, or what your problems are in getting it up, so I can make
it easier for future releases. Warning: it might be a bit of a mess
right now; didn't put enough time I guess into testing and searching
for omissions.
- Force feedback improved.
  I now have friction working to get rid of the loose feel at low
speeds. Look at the msff_ff.ini file in data/ctrlsets for some new
parameters.

TrackEd changes:
- AI waypoint editing now possible (consisting of direction markers
and left/right road markers; possible speeds are learned by the robot
drivers).
- (Track) Camera handling is now a bit where it should be; not too
much funny alpha stuff. It's ok to do your own track camera's now, in
fact, I'd love to see what you make of it, since I don't really put
time into those much. Surfers' Paradise needs them, badly.

BONUS BONUS BONUS:
- The track 'Surfer's Paradise' has been uploaded. This is originally
an SCGT conversion of the Microsoft Cart game. It's not really
complete; adding track cams is left as an excersise for the user (and
those skyboxes!). If you have created a nice track cam set, please
mail the 'special.ini' file to me so I can include it in a forthcoming
release. Thanks to Gary Johnson for letting me premier this track.

Enjoy!
Ruud van Gaal

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.racesimcentral.net/
Free car sim  : http://www.racesimcentral.net/

good stuff ... just have to wait til i get home to try it.

Shane

I'll do some Beta testing for the Linux version if you want.  I just
installed Linux and am now only using Windoze for GPL and MS Office.  My
newsgroups actually work now!  Linux hasn't crashed yet!  I thought my DSL
connection was crappy but it was just Windows.  I'm reading up on
networking stuff now so maybe I could help with the multiplayer.

Kirk House

Thrustmaster Nascar Pro Digital Wheel

I can't get it to work!!  :(

On Mon, 14 May 2001 16:39:49 -0700, Kirk House

I'll have to cook together some Linux exes very soon and put those up
for download. I don't know however how compatible it will be across
versions, so some compilation may be necessary; I'll make that easier
in the future too.

Ideas are always welcome. There's no multiplayer on the list as yet,
but as I now have 3 platforms and they're all in the same network, it
should be at least possible to test some, ONCE some code gets in. But
remember, network play may be the toughest thing to get working yet.
I'll probably do some AI first. Hm, might have to make it networked
AI, hm.

Thanks,

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

I don't have this wheel, so it's hard; if anyone can do a control set
for this one, please send it to me so I can include it for future
releases.
Note there's a small tutorial on control set files on the site (in the
section 'tutorials'; you might figure it out by yourself.

Good luck!

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

I've  never get your baby to work above 1 (one!) fps on my computer (celeron

in qlog.txt, i read that it can t import DOF files, and can t load FLG.BMP
from the image directory. I've only done a basic install (the package with
"carrera" and the ferrari), tweaking or not the resolution with config.exe
always give me the same painfully result.
someone can help me ?

Yes, two .dof files that it can't import ("Can't import DOF ''") and
FLG.BMP. Have that here as well, but the DOFs that it can't find are
the skyboxes; if it's annoying you can remove the geometry entries in
data/tracks/carrera/geometry.ini (where probably a line "file=..." was
changed in "_file=...").
The FLG.BMP files are not missing actually, but they are animations in
SCGT, so you have FLG00.BMP-FLG09.BMP. Not too worry, these are
replaced by a red texture, so they are easily identifiable onscreen.

As for the 1 fps, hm. It does much more on my GForceIIMX, but on
Win2K. One possible thing to check might be to hook up a terminal on
COM1 and see some more debug output at the start (where it selects a
visual/pixelformat). One thing that might be the cause is that
window-rendering isn't h/w accelerated. Try running fullscreen. If
that doesn't work, try tweaking the #bits. Or set your desktop at
800x600x32 for example. It seems the s/w rendering is used.

Hope this helps,

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

This looks awesome!  Really great work.  I played
the Ferrari Arcade simulator yesterday for the first
time, and Racer looks a lot like it.

Is it supposed to be raining at the Carrera track?  There
is very little traction.

--
Pat Dotson

Thanks for letting us try out your work-in-progress...
It's looks good, coming along nicely.
When I try it on my Athlon 1.2GHz 266FSB with RadeonDDR it's really fast and
looks good, but the physics are having a hard time.  The car slides like
it's on ice and many times started bouncing (or teetering, see-sawing,
vacillating?... hmmm you know what I mean) uncontrollably until it digs
itself into the ground and eventually disappears and the program crashes.  I
know it's beta, I just though I'd let you know...
Alain.

On Wed, 16 May 2001 12:36:31 -0500, Pat Dotson

Thanks. :)
It should definitely get environment mapping to get a shine on the car
though before I really think it looks good.

Ah, that's the excuse I was looking for! Rain! ;-)
Actually, the traction is not that bad when just going straight, but
the lateral forces get killed pretty quickly. I noticed you can even
turn into an eternal spin. Something to do with the brakes, and has
the highest priority, except for the source code adjustments (for
people trying to compile it) I'm going to do this evening.
But you're right, when turning, things are getting way off realistic
scales. My brain is trying to crack it this evening again. :)

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

The ice sliding is the biggest problem at the moment. Hope to get that
out somehow. Difficult sometimes to debug, although I did do a 'Save
race in progress' feature yesterday so I can more easily get at
situations and look more closely at what the car's doing.

Yes, esp. when hitting the kerbs it can do this. Has to do with the
collision detection; this isn't quite right and can get you stuck, not
only in the fences, but also in the ground itself. I might have to
manually decrease the box size (the black box drawn around the car),
so that it doesn't get stuck into the ground that easily.

Thanks anyway; I'll keep working on it. Once that damn tire sliding is

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

Sorry I didn't mean to discourage you... I guess you knew about these
issues, I just though maybe it was something that was only happening on my
machine because of the clock speed or something.

Well, I have to say that I'm envious of what you are working on... that's a
great project.  I think simulating real physics (well, at least Newtonian
physics) on a PC in real time is one the most impressive things for me.  I
really believe it is the key to an immersive experience on the PC.

Good luck, don't give up and have fun!
Alain.

You didn't discourage me, not to be afraid. :)

No, it should run fine on machines >=1.5GHz. ;-)
(unlike GPL :( ).
Actually, it runs on Onyx supercomputers as well (SGI), and those can
have 256 CPUs. I don't know whether it WILL run on those, but actually
I don't see why not, but in any case I have a screenshot of an Onyx
which have at least 2 CPUs I think. The clock speed should really
affect little; I can tell because it's about 5x slower on my SGI O2
than on the PC here.

I must say that Windows2000 makes you think your computer is slow,
while if you program these physics things they actually turn out to be
the fastest damn things you ever saw since the 'look at what we can do
in 1 frame' attitude on the C64. ;-)

Thanks!

Ruud van Gaal, GPL Rank +53.25
Pencil art    : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/
Free car sim  : http://www.marketgraph.nl/gallery/racer/

That's so true... I remember when I programmed in assembly on the C64, Amiga
and PC to try and do primitive 3D vector graphics (no textures) and I had to
optimize to death to get a decent frame rate.  I went on to have a full-time
job and life (so little time for play :-( ) and I assumed that todays
programmers must be brillant to squeeze such incredible visuals out of
todays PCs.

Well recently, while I was on holiday, I tried to write a quick C++ D3DX
program which had full 3D objects and real-time gravity (objects fell to the
ground, but simple stuff)... I finished writing it and thought "I'm going to
get seconds per frame instead of FPS with this code..." well the thing ran
so fast it was ridiculous!  All this unoptimized C++ code with floating
point data was flying at an incredible rate...  today's CPUs are real
beasts!

Now's the time to have a full-fledged real car simulator!

(sorry this was a little off topic)
Alain.