rec.autos.simulators

Hi all,

I've just released v0.4.6 of Racer for Windows/Linux/IRIX. Get it at:
http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Note that if you can tweak the setup of the car
(data/cars/ferp4/car.ini) to get it to behave more forgiving, I would
be most glad if you could send it to me! ;-)

Bugfixes:
- Last-minute fix of a major bug on Linux where you would get
  only 1 texture for the track and 1 for the car (ugly!).

New features:
- Environment mapping on the cars; nice reflections.
- Splined surfaces; much smoother surfaces. Retry the oval!
- Separate specular highlights; creates specular highlights
  on cards that support it (on the car for example).
- Differential improved; viscous locking (but slippery).
- A horizon is now possible (the original sky is included
  in Carrera, although I also tried a sky from GPL's Silverstone
  with success)
- Ferrari 312 '67 car added, thanks to Neil Bainbridge
- Lotus John Player Special '72 car added, thanks to Christoper
  A. Landt and Christopher M. Steed
- Modeler can now import .3do objects (from GPL for example).
  It converts from a tree to a flat object, so don't think
  it can import tracks. Only recommended for small objects.
- Modeler can now select materials (reflection mapping
  is defined per material).
- TrackEd has been enhanced for spline surfaces, better
  trackcam editing (preview) etc.
- Further enhancements here & there (it's not so easy anymore
  to get Racer to 'lock' when the car gets out of control)
- Source of D3/QLib library and EGL (extending OpenGL for OpenGL1.2).

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 Ruud ... now i just have to wait until i get home :)

Shane

looks very cool, but what's:

glblendcolor()
not found

mean?  and is that the reason for sub 1fps in Win98 w/ a radeon.

Jon

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 05:04:43 GMT, "Jon Van Ginneken"

Hm, a dialog you mean at about the first rendered frame? That would
mean your driver doesn't support the glBlendColorEXT() extension. I'm
not too sure, but turning off environment mapping might help here;
edit gfx.ini and set envmap.enable to 0.

Might be. I'd think ATI's should work great. Anybody else with ATI's
with these kinds of performances?

You could test Modeler with and without the environment mapping turned
on. Just load (Import DOF) data/cars/ferp4/body.dof for example and
see if FPS stays up either way.

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/

And make sure you read the note stating:
- Use the Ferrari 312 (download it)
- Set debug.ini's friction_circle_method to 1
- Use the Oval

For a less slippery experience.

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

love the intro too Ruud ... great stuff

Shane

That was it...200fps now :-)
Although what am I missing without the enivronment mapping?  The only
difference I can tell (mind you the drivers disagreed with it) is that the
car look like a metallic purple blob rather than the currently textured car.

Now all I gotta do is find in-car...and a device that works asside from my
mouse (some reason my sound card doesn't like the idea of using directx for
the wheel unless I uninstall and reinstall the drivers every
start-up...getting time for a new Win98 install)

Jon

On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 16:48:48 GMT, "Jon Van Ginneken"

Good to hear, and wow, 200fps. :)

Yup, just the reflection on the car. Nothing else is affected.

You start in carcam mode (pressing C will toggle trackcam mode). In
carcam mode, press 0-9 to select from a wide variety of camera angles,
of which 1 and 0 are the nicest ones. 0 is almost incar. :) I could do
incar, but hey, I don't have any car models with incar view. I'll need
that in the future, also to get transparent windows and such.
And perhaps separate door models, to be able to open them just like
WSC, but that's fancy future stuff for now. ;-)

That's not really handy now is it. :) Make sure you get it working,
the mouse is really difficult to play with.

Glad it works now...

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

<snip>

You mean when the car suddenly starts flipping about?  For those unaware
of this, just hit the esc key real quick and it quits out before the
game locks.

Btw, can you just install over a previous version Ruud?
--
Peter Ives
Remove ALL_STRESS before replying
If you know what's good for you, don't listen to me
GPLRank Joystick -50.63 Wheel -17.06

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001 01:58:07 +0100, Peter Ives

Strange that it still locks; I did limit the rotational velocities, it
should just tumble and tumble and tumble. Still, better yet, press
Shift-R or Shift-P to get you back on track, instead of really
quitting. I just had a great idea btw that it should put you back onto
the track where you just spinned off, lol. Should be possible now that
I have the curved surfaces in (which give me longitudinal positions
actually). Although there is a tricky bit for the future there, hm.

Yep. Make sure to redownload previously downloaded cars and tracks
though. The old tracks usually don't work with the new version (the
new version requires at least a track cam and such).

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

The problem has nothing to do with the ATI. I had the same problem and
solution with my Creative TNT2 Ultra. Maybe an outdated OpenGL library!?

Kind regards
Anton

I had the low fps prob with a Radeon 64DDR on Athlon 750. Turning off the
env. mapping sorted it.
Using the latest official radeon drivers.

--

Ian P
<email invalid due to spammers>

On 3 Jul 2001 08:41:17 GMT, Anton Norup Soerensen

Outdated drivers perhaps yes, but maybe my crappy checking of the
glBlendColor() extension still. The TNT2Ultra doesn't do envmapping on
my Linux box too (although the drivers lack 1 generation), but it
still runs ~15fps with all these errors being generated. Ah well, the
PC version spits the error out on COM1 at 9600n81, that may be the
total slowdown.

Still, mostly this problem is reported by people with ATI boards;
perhaps the nVidia drivers are a bit in front when it comes to
glBlendColorEXT().

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