We hope you are keeping well in these unusual times. LFS online activity has been higher than usual due to the lockdowns so I hope most of you can find a good race!
We don’t want to do a full progress report this month but I can tell you a few things that have been going on this year.
Eric has been continuing to work on South City. He has been updating a lot of the buildings to give them a more detailed three dimensional structure. Progress is good but there are still holes and unfinished objects around. For this progress report he wanted to stay focussed instead of stopping to clean things up for another big round of screenshots.
On my side the main news is that LFS has been converted to use Direct3D 11. A lot of developers have had to go through this process at some point and we are later than most. It is a quite long and meticulous process because it’s not as simple as renaming a few D3D9 functions to a new D3D11 style. Some parts of the update were relatively easy like that but other areas of code needed to be done a completely different way.
After all the graphical glitches were sorted out the frame rate was notably higher than the D3D9 version. I don’t know exactly why that is but I did take time to do the proper restructuring so that D3D11 would work cleanly. There are various other possibilities in D3D11, although there are no visual changes in LFS yet. For example you can request information from the graphics card without slowing things down. It could be used to read back some data about the current image to adjust the brightness (eye adaptation / auto exposure). I’d like to try a live ‘audio render’ to create the reverberation more accurately depending on your car’s location instead of relying on pre-generated echo maps.
This change does mean that some older graphics cards will no longer be supported. At the moment LFS can still be compiled to use D3D9, but it will be hard to maintain the two versions, specially when we start to use the possibilities that D3D11 offers. For now I am using the D3D10 feature level, which means it works on D3D10 graphics cards. There is no guarantee about that at this point but that’s what I’m aiming for now. I know that some people don’t have a D3D10 (or later) graphics card and in that case I don’t think LFS will work on their computer. But I think that’s quite rare so it seems like the time has come to drop support for D3D9 graphics cards. I’m not exactly sure when Direct3D 10 support became common but it has been around since 2007 and Direct3D 11 graphics cards were available in 2009. According to the Steam Survey most gamers have a D3D11 or D3D12 GPU and a few percent have a D3D10 GPU.
Apart from all that technical stuff I did one visual update. The individual tree objects can now move with the wind. Not only the old auto-generated trees (which have been improved) but all the other individual trees and bushes too. It’s a fairly subtle effect but it does make the place seem a bit more alive.
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
Don't they realise everyone wants more content and not the original content looking 1% nicer. Knock out a new track and watch people suddenly give it another go.
I think the team working on it are well aware their heyday has passed, but they're working on this for themselves and the rusted on folks. That they're keeping all the infrastructure going and still chipping away at it, I think is a pretty impressive thing. All the more power to them. They're improving their product, learning new things by implementing modern features and they're allowing everyone who bought it over a decade ago to play with it. I don't see any negative here.
What's more, anytime FNF announces an LFS night, I'll drop my drawers to be there.
It's the same as it ever was. When they used to go dead silent while doing work, people complained that it was all abandoned, so they started letting people know where they were with progress and do beta releases to the public. Now people complain that they're being told about stuff that they can't have yet, and these days the interest levels in actually using it are pretty low.
Cursed wrote:It's the same as it ever was. When they used to go dead silent while doing work, people complained that it was all abandoned, so they started letting people know where they were with progress and do beta releases to the public. Now people complain that they're being told about stuff that they can't have yet, and these days the interest levels in actually using it are pretty low.
Remember the days when we weren't so spoiled for sims and this was a regular debate?
I presume the LFS lads have other jobs and this is just a hobby now. Anyone know what they do?
probably living off the S3 money. I reckon a few people would have given them cash, I did, just because of all the fun I had over the years in the game.
In the March report I described how Live for Speed has been converted to use Direct3D 11. I've now started to use some of the features that Direct3D 11 allows.
Most interesting is the image-based automatic exposure. As we have moved to more physically based lighting, allowing day to night transitions and realistic brightness for artificial lights, there are many reasons why the exposure level needs to be adjusted. Not only for different times of day but also for the lighting conditions at any location. An extreme example is when you enter a multi-storey car park on a sunny day. The exposure level must adapt to what you can see, just as your eyes or a camera would do in reality. This is demonstrated in the video below. If you don't notice it happening too much then it's working well. Without the automatic exposure it would be very dark inside or totally overexposed outside.
On the technical side, a reduced copy of the output image (that has already been generated for the bloom effect) is transferred to memory that the CPU can read. Direct3D 11 allows this to be done without waiting. A histogram is constructed so the program can estimate the exposure level to use. The brightness is then adjusted to that target over several frames.
These car parks don't have a path with pre-generated lighting values or any light probe information (yet) so I added a system to allow the ambient lighting to be calculated in real time by analysing a copy of the car's unique environment map. In the video, this allows the car to be lit by the artificial lights and avoid being lit by the sky. It's probably not the best way to get the diffuse lighting in car parks but it is a good fallback when there is no data available.
Eric has continued working on South City. It's a longer process than any of us had imagined, because he has been updating most of the buildings with more detailed architecture and opening up new roads around the city. He doesn't want to show a lot of new areas yet because there are too many holes around but some night and day shots of similar scenes are attached below.
Other updates I wont try to cover in detail include some features to help Eric in the editors and completing the conversion to Direct3D 11. Support for Direct3D 9 has now been dropped as it was not reasonable for me to try to maintain the two versions. The GPU requirements are higher now so I wouldn't expect it to run well on a Direct3D 9 graphics card anyway.
We're getting there gradually. It's a lot of work on the programming side and the content side but we like the results!
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
Hello Racers,
Since the September update we have kept working hard. Eric has continued with South City, which is now a very open town area with many connecting roads. There are car parks, squares, back streets and new roads. It has taken longer than any of us expected because of the size of the area and amount of detail. My work has also taken many turns, supporting the new open city area as described in previous reports. Eric will now be starting on Fern Bay although there are still things to be finished at South City and Kyoto. I decided to present this progress report as a cut down list of updates from a few development versions since September. It gives a little insight into the process without going into too much detail about many other minor changes that there are in each version. Be warned, although cut down it's still a list of technical changes! It may be best to scroll down and look at the screenshots. Smile
23 Oct - Lighting updates
More accurate baked lighting render for artificial lights. Drawn at higher resolution which allows more accurate results from small, bright lights in the middle distance, but with changes that allow it to run faster. Other track editor improvements. Some changes so that the apparent brightness of lights corresponds exactly with their actual lighting effect. Improved automatic exposure quality by analysing a larger texture in the compute shader.
30 Oct - Turbine updates
Wind turbines now use static vertex buffers, similar to the way a car is drawn. This allows higher resolution turbine models. The turbine code was generalised to allow 3D clock hands for city buildings.
02 Nov - Editor updates
More editor updates to allow easier positioning and alignment of objects.
13 Nov - Updates for sections
Physics enabled for the triangles on sections. Sections are the cross-sectional objects between the segments which are used for most physical surfaces in LFS (e.g. road, fences, walls). Some sections have their own surfaces (e.g. at the end of a wall) but previously they were non-physical. Editor updates to allow easier selection of objects. Slight changes to ensure that triangles on some types of connected objects are in exactly the same place, to avoid light bleeding through cracks.
20 Nov - Various editor improvements and fixes
Doubled the speed of the offline occlusion render by use of batched rendering. Enabled lights on turbines and clocks. Shader optimisation, using 4x3 matrices instead of 4x4 where possible.
18 Dec - Updates for collision with unmovable objects
Updates to the physics of unmovable objects (e.g. buildings, grandstands, smaller objects). Previously, unmovable objects used the same system as as movable objects. Now they have a more compact mesh which saves memory and CPU usage. They are now stored in the same map square system as the sections and segments. The map square system has been upgraded, to reduce the CPU time for detecting nearby objects. A discontinuity in the trunk physics calculation has been removed.
A new visualisation for the track editor shows the physical world clearly, including the physics meshes and trunk objects. Objects now have a 'surface type' that was previously only available for segment surfaces. More surface types have been added, such as rubber (tyres and some barrier linings), wood (several fences) and plastic (various barrier signs and temporary barriers). An intermediate scrape sound effect has been added for wood and plastic, avoiding the soft impact sound and the metallic scrape. The calculation for the stereo effect of the scrape sound has been improved. The colour of dust kicked up by tyres is now either white or beige depending on the surface, instead of taking on the average colour of the surface.
Eric has sent some screenshots of the latest version of South City. We hope you like the pictures.
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
It'd be cool if this sim could eventually be turned into a sandbox type racer...
They're tuning the tracks we have had into full environments, and we might then just use the track editor to create our own layouts through the city/Fern Bay sands/Kyoto stadium/etc.
That would help LFS live on past all our lifetimes...
We have had requests over the years to allow more possibilities for rallycross and drifting. We were able to implement these changes by making a new version that could not connect online with the old version. Wider steering angles and a wide range of tyres are now possible on the GTR cars by selecting a new ALTERNATE configuration in the setup screen. This also allows some interesting possibilities for hard track racing as narrower tyres can be selected, which can help when creating lower powered racing classes for some events.
As we were making an incompatible version, it was a good opportunity to improve the prediction system that allows you to see remote cars driving on your screen. Every car’s position, velocity, fuel load, damage and so on are transmitted frequently to all the other racers on a server. We have used various methods to make this information more accurate so the cars appear to move more smoothly. We were also able to improve some things about pit stops. For example you can now change tyres without being forced to repair body or suspension damage.
There are really a lot of updates in this version. They include improvements for force feedback, controls including steering wheels and handbrake, more layout objects, VR, views, InSim and OutSim.
Changes from 0.6U to 0.6V:
Multiplayer:
Maximum packets per second (/pps) has been increased to 12
Rolling resistance included in catch-up phase of prediction
Wear and temperature packet is more frequent and more accurate
Position packet now includes contact patch offset for each tyre
Reduced steering glitch each time a position packet is received
More accurate transmission of fuel load from local to remote car
Position packets are sent more frequently in response to steering
You can now add up to 32 local drivers (real + ai) in multiplayer
Easier to set up LAN race: local IP address is shown on host screen
You can enter the local network computer name instead of IP address
FIX: Remote cars with worn tread could wrongly get a puncture
FIX: Car on pit speed limiter sent maximum packets per second
FIX: Stop-go penalty caused car to get stuck in custom pit stop
FIX: Remote car’s tyre temperature over 200 appeared black (cold)
FIX: Remote tyre temperatures increased too slowly in skid or spin
New ALTERNATE setup configuration for the five GTR cars:
Selecting the new config in XRR/FZR/FXR decreases tyre width a bit
With ALTERNATE config, narrower tyres may be selected (adds offset)
Also ROAD_SUPER, ROAD_NORMAL, HYBRID, KNOBBLY tyres may be selected
High “Maximum Lock” is possible in XRR/FZR with narrower wheels
XR GTR in ALTERNATE config has H-pattern shifter
Tyre choices and steering lock:
XFR and UFR maximum steering lock increased to 30 degrees
LX4 and LX6 maximum steering lock increased to 45 degrees
Single seater racing cars can now use ROAD_SUPER tyres
Steering:
Steering wheel turn amount changes with maximum lock
Road cars now have 900 degrees steering range with default setup
XF and UF GTR have 540 degrees steering range with default setup
Updated and fixed steering animations to cover new steering range
Removed option “Move view with animation” which had little effect
Commands:
Command /canrefuel (no/yes) to set refuelling allowed in pit stops
Command /showfuel (no/yes) allows remote car fuel load to be seen
Most admin commands with parameter omitted now report current value
Command /block (0/1/2) to block user messages (like the minus key)
Command /spectv (no/yes) prevents selecting TV camera on spectate
/press and /shift commands now support ‘minus’ as parameter
/mprlag X simulates online packet delay of X ms (+ no smoothing)
/mprsmooth X (0 or 1) to disable or enable input smoothing
Interface:
Pit speed limit is shown when car speed is below 2/3 of limit
Yellow and blue flags now alternate with RCM or penalty message
Virtual steering gauge hidden if live settings or pit instructions
Blocked messages remain blocked when returning from game to lobby
Prevented auto-repeat on block message and light switching keys
Momentary flick to rear view after SHIFT+R is now avoided
Avoided downshift after pressing SHIFT+X to exit free view
In fact any ‘key held’ function after SHIFT+key is prevented
Saving replay name now shown beside option in Game Options
Minus key (block messages) now works in all screens
Many updated translations – thank you, translators
Garage:
Tyre size displayed in Tyres tab in Garage
Brakes / TC tab in garage separated into two columns (e.g. FZ50)
FIX: Heat in garage car’s tyres was not updated when tyre changed
F12 pit instructions:
Damage repair not required when changing pressure or compound
Pressure change with new tyre no longer counts as SETUP CHANGES
When alternative config is selected F12 display shows tyre size
A new ‘cancel’ option beside the ‘setup changes requested’ line
Settings that will be adjusted are now shown in light red colour
FIX: rear tyre pressure was limited by front tyre pressure limits
FIX: symmetric pressure/camber request remained after pit stop
Skin downloads:
Faster skin downloads when joining server (and auto updater)
Slightly faster skin downloads when driver joins race in-game
FIX: Skin downloading could get stuck after a large header
CPU usage display:
In Graphics or Misc options (in-game) click car icon then ‘P’
You can now see CPU usage for Physics, Draw, Prediction, etc.
The “Pred” line shows CPU usage for prediction of remote cars
Prediction time also shows up in an MPR if /mprlag is set
Support for live multiplayer replays:
Replay identified as live when starting to watch an unfinished MPR
Does not exit replay after fast forwarding to current time
Catch up to live position by clicking >| button
Skins can be downloaded while watching a live replay
Save replay while temp_mpr is being viewed – copy instead of rename
Start new mpr while temp_mpr is in use – tries temp_mpr_1 (up to 9)
/mprflush X to flush mpr to file every X seconds (0 = disable)
MPR / SPR are prevented from being named temp_mpr / temp_spr
VR:
Updated OpenVR to version 1.10.30
Improved timing of obtaining view each frame
New “Antialiasing” option to select 4x or 8x multisampling
New “Resolution adjustment” slider (also known as supersampling)
Names over cars could fade differently in each eye in Pimax headset
Virtual keyboard is shown at dialog height if no dialog is visible
Space bar VR click auto disabled when you type with real keyboard
FIX: Head tracking / mirrors wrong if car leaned with horizon lock
FIX: Free view FOV was wrong after entering VR in free view
FIX: Names above cars looked wrong in Pimax headsets
FIX: Some trees looked wrong in Pimax headsets
Views:
Horizon lock now has a strength slider option
View filter time maximum value increased to 1 second
Improved key control (4/5/6/7) of free view field of view
Three screens are now assumed when aspect ratio is 4:1 (was 3:1)
Free view mode minimum field of view reduced from 10 to 2 degrees
FIX: Filtered view went wrong with low filter time + replay speedup
Graphics:
Avoid upward lighting related to ground colour in internal views
Car shadows now use anisotropic filtering to reduce shimmering
Increased distance for car subobjects to become invisible
Controls:
Handbrake strength is now separately adjustable
Gearshift debounce setting now applies to all controller buttons
Mouse X and Y sensitivity (in Axes tab) lower limit reduced to 0.5
FIX: Rare manual shift at high speed to 1st/rev during auto shift
Force Feedback:
New settings are available under Axes / FF in Options – Controls
FF Steps maximum value is now 10000 (the maximum in DirectInput)
FF Rate is now controlled by a user setting (25 / 50 / 100 Hz)
New handling for ‘CAR.lfs’ and ‘shift_type.lfs’ scripts:
LFS runs ‘road.lfs’ / ‘sequential.lfs’ / ‘paddle.lfs’ directly
(previously these scripts were called from a CAR.lfs script)
This is done after loading a car and immediately before CAR.lfs
Commands to run these scripts from another script are ignored
Training:
FIX: AI changed to low fuel load if overtaking lesson restarted
FIX: AI skill / admin commands no longer processed during training
FIX: Training lesson did not end if replay saving was interrupted
FIX: Logo was visible under title during lesson replay
InSim (for programmers):
Config byte added to IS_NPL packet indicates setup configuration
IS_CPP Pos is now relative to “Centre view” not the user setting
IS_NPL RWAdj / FWAdj indicate rear / front tyre width reduction
New bytes set if /showfuel=yes: IS_NPL Fuel / IS_PIT FuelAdd
IS_SPX and IS_LAP new byte Fuel200 indicates fuel remaining
IS_RES: TTime in qualifying now indicates time in session
IS_RES: PLID is now zero if the player has left the race
IS_CPP: FOV can now be used in-car but not smoothed (0 = no change)
InSim NLP / MCI minimum time interval reduced to 10 ms (was 40 ms)
FIX: It was possible to miss IS_PSF packet after taking over car
FIX: STime in IS_PSF packet was wrong after car was taken over
FIX: Free view roll is now reported in InSim IS_CPP packet
More telemetry data for OutSim:
New data fields documented in docs\OutSimPack.txt
Enable by setting the OutSim Opts value in cfg.txt
All data options can be switched on with OutSim Opts 1ff
Misc:
Maximum number of layout objects increased to 2400
When LFS is set to close the reason is logged to deb.log file
Added a little more logging about D3D initialisation to deb.log
CAR.lfs scripts are reliably run when user car is spawned or reset
Restored code preventing 2 cars joining autocross within 3 seconds
FIX: Wrong warning “Road tyres on rallycross track” in hotlapping
FIX: Memory leak related to threads (most often for skin download)
FIX: Replays from old Westhill before 2015 now marked as obsolete
FIX: Driver names ending with a lead byte could corrupt text
FIX: Issues with driver names ending with caret character
Dukester
norbs diplomacy lesson 101: "If I was putting words in your mouth, you'd know."
Like is this just someones passion project now? Like I know we all keep saying this, but I have zero understanding at why we getting these news snippets and no really releases, like surely they haven't sold enough licences in the last yeah to support even a single developer
It's been a passion project forever as far as I recall. In any other area of gaming they'd call them dedicated indie devs, but people continually pour the hate on these guys because they're not churning out what you can get from four other sources on any given day.
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