Racer v0.9.0 RC8

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.20 is out

Yep, just these changes (Mitch has been working on a GL wrapper, mostly for debugging, I've been doing mostly work on other versions):

- Set gamma to 1.0 in data/renderer/common/hdr.cg - gamma is done in your display!

- Added shader texture option 'mode' to specify linear or SRGB maps. Default is 'srgb'. Bumpmaps need 'linear'

otherwise their normals will be un-gamma'd (an SRGB image has gamma~0.45 where Racer works in linear light, gamma=1).

It's at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.20.zip

Check out Carlswood's track.shd and the Lambo car.shd to see 'mode=linear' being used for linear textures.

As for bugs, we're having some issues where sometimes we get a 'cgiChopArrayReference' or something creeps up. Mitch is looking into it.

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.21 out!

It's been a while. Enough bugs still that need to be squased but let's not keep things too long.

v0.8.21 is at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.21.zip (63Mb).

The Blackbox DLL isn't used anymore -now I'm using VLD (Visual Leak Detector), which gave a few important memory leaks.

Known issues:

- Tracked displays Carlswood badly (white); something with the klux lighting

The changes from v0.8.20:

- Added improved process control for physics.async=1; the original process.cpu_affinity_mask now controls

the entire process (all threads). 'process.main_thread_affinity_mask' was added to control the main

thread cores. Additional, when physics.async=1, physics.thread_affinity_mask then controls

the cores on which the physics thread may run.

- 'cache_geodes' didn't work well when cars used data.ar to store .dof models. Common names like 'body.dof'

would conflict and different cars could use the same 3D models.

- Shadowmapping splits are now blended to make smoother transitions

- Shadowmapping per-split filtering can be turned on/off using renderer.shadowmapping.blur (0/1)

- renderer.auto_exposure.filter_gain was read incorrectly and thus had no effect (defaulting to 0.05). Fixed.

- Added wheel<n>.tire_damping_lowspeed and tire_damping_threshold for car.ini. Tires physically stiffen

up when rotating, but at low speed they get a lot of damping. Real life values arond 5.0 for the threshold

velocity and 2500.0 for tire_damping_lowspeed. See also http://racer.nl/reference/wheels.htm#tireforces

- dev.log_last now set to 0 by default since many people will not know what to do with QLOG anyway.

For content developers 1 is highly recommended.

- Removed the 'can't create envmap' error message on some DOF files - it isn't useful anymore.

- Switched Newton from v2.22 to v2.24. Small objects seem to have difficulty when colliding with cars.

- Modified dyn_standard_bump_speca_f.cg to accept 'scale' float parameter. This scales the normal map's

texture coordinates.

- Some large memory leaks fixed inbetween races.

- Renderer could crash in certain mixes of static geometry and custom geometry (particles/skidmarks etc)

- Ini keys with a dot (.) are found and warned about in QLOG. Some cars (F458 test version) had 'fresnel.bias'

defined directly in the ini file, which won't work (use fresnel { bias=xxx } ).

- View dials now have Cg shaders - data/renderer/shaders/viewelt_*.cg. Needed for klux lighting to avoid

very dark dials.

- Added bounce_amount and bounce_alpha properties for shaders to allow for lighting to not mix with the

alpha channel (Carlswood's road incorrectly reflected light; not enough light was reflected/bounced).

See also http://www.racer.nl/reference/shadereng.htm#matglobal

- Added surface 'grip_decline_driveline' property to allow grip to decrease when you go off the driveline.

Needs more work though.

- mirrors.texture.lod_factor set to 1.0 to avoid quickly disappearing geometry in the mirror

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.23 released!

An important one.

Troubles expected with this one:

- linearity of the steering wheel (you for one now need to specify the wheel lock in the setup screen before starting to judge things)

- a new parameter ('sunny') in most fragment shaders (any typos?). For a simple 'overcast' type of thing where you allow less sun to shine through.

- dbg_car.flip_tan=1. Perhaps a major breakthrough on the physics end. Where I always used a tan(SA), it might have needed to be atan(SA). Ouch, we're going to test this on our high-end sims later today, see how it feels (easier to do than with a G27).

- steering controls are now in degrees, rather than normalized. How about center_squeeze (and related) for Mz reduction near 0? Haven't looked at that yet.

The download: http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.23.zip (67Mb)

Then get the latest exe flip_tan bugfix (only exe): http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.23b.zip

(5Mb)

*after some testing, it appears than dbg_car.flip_tan should be 0* (the older situation)

The changes:

- Steering revised quite a bit - the controls for steering left/right now use degrees, instead of being

normalized. This changed some things inside the physics engine to use rotation more directly.

The idea: set your controller's lock correctly. With cars that have a steering lock that is smaller

or equal to that of the controller lock, the steering is direct (1:1). If a car has more lock defined

in its car.ini, linearity will be applied on the controller's steering output (now in degrees) to let it

use the full range of the car's steering wheel (linearity=controllerLock/steerLock).

This all targeted a bit for 900 degrees where you no longer then have to tweak for a lot of cars.

The controller setup screen is being worked on to visually check the lock (press F5 twice in the setup

screen to show the 'Wheel' page).

- Controller lock is now saved in the setup screen.

- A new important physics tweak is available: dbg_car.flip_tan. Defaulting to 0 (the v0.8.22 behavior),

setting it to 1 modifies the slipangle calculations for each wheel to use atan() rather than tan().

The tan() has been in there for a long time, to stabilize high slipangles. But, tan() makes values

worse as they grow, instead of flattening them like atan(). So, this needs to be investigated;

probably it has quite an influence on slipping behavior (with big slipangles).

- bloom_shadows_f.cg accidentally had bloom turned off

- Flare Cg shaders tweaked for nicer looks (alpha changes)

- log file position group added 'lap' (ASCII format)

- Added motion_blur.stencil option - use 1 for the old projected shadows, 0 for shadowmapping (faster)

- Added dev.nvidia_perf option that will try to access nVidia PerfSDK counters if installed.

Install an instrumented driver for this to work.

- Added a profile debug page (Ctrl-6, may have to press twice for the 2nd page) to see some nVidia performance counters.

I must say it bluescreened my XP machine more than once, so be careful with instrumented drivers.

- Added envmap.live_track.frames_per_update for more live track mapping control

- Fixed some tough render engine bugs that messed up Z-buffer usage (mirror on made the screen flicker)

- Generic models weren't transforming; fixed.

- Added wiper modes (off/interval/normal/fast), use 'w' to switch to the next mode (see also Ctrl-4 for the current mode)

- dyn_standard_bump_reflect_f.cg now also lets bumpmap alpha affect specular (next to reflectiveness)

- Sky_f.cg and sky_daynight_f.cg modified so clouds=1 now gives the normal effect (and does not raise

cloud regions to 175 klux!)

- A track's exposure in special.ini is now correctly used as the initial exposure (no more starting

with white, then coming back to a normal exposure if you set this one to a nice value; like 0.02?)

- Fixed a bug in the fresnel calculation in dyn_standard_bump_reflect_v.cg, which gave bad looking

reflections.

- Selecting Bloom/Shadowmapping from the menu gave problems with undefined 'gammaFactor' errors.

- Surround Gaming mode camera aspect fix (director mode)

- A surface's 'grip_decline_driveline' now defaults to 0 (was 1). Fixed issues with grip declining by default.

- Panorama shader's extinction now uses 'scale' Cg parameter instead of hardcoded value (5). Add 'scale' to

your track.shd file.

- Backfire would sometimes not work. This and a bunch of other uninitialized data fixed.

- 2D elements in the render engine could mess with motion blur blending (OpenGL state cache).

- When bloom was on, the aliased buffer was anti-aliased twice! (for bloom and at postprocessing)

- blur_alpha didn't work; the fullscreen shaders didn't output correct alpha. Using a bit of blur_alpha now

by default (0.3).

- Auto exposure sampling did an anti-alias pass; now it uses a previously anti-aliased result (faster).

- Dropped config.exe for now - anybody using it actively? Most should be settable ingame.

- Added 'sunny' in special.ini (tracks); 0=totally overcast, 1=super sunny. For ground objects.

Needs to be added to all fragment objects though. Also adds script cmd 'sunny <x>' to set it live.

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.24 released!

v0.8.24 is out.

Expected problems:

- Carlswood's kerbs seem to have a problem with bumpmapping. They're using static bumpmapping which haven't changed yet (to world space). Might be the tangent creation, hm.

Get it at: http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.24.zip

Changes:

- dyn_standard_bump_reflect_*.cg rewritten to work in world space. Faster & reflection

is now also affected by the normal map (quite noticable).

- Same for dyn_standard_bump_*.cg; it now also takes the bumpmap's alpha for reflectiveness (specular).

- dyn_standard_bump_speca_v/f_cg was removed; use dyn_standard_bump_reflect*.cg instead (which does

the same thing).

- Controller stick_friction threshold velocity decreased from 20 m/s to 5 m/s (hardcoded).

- Added 'u' to position logging (normalized lateral position on the track)

- Added projected lights intensity: car.ini's lights.light<n>.color (default=4 4 4). In klux. Check

the Lambo's car.ini.

- async now runs the physics thread full throttle; it must run on a separate core if you want to avoid

it impact the other threads.

- TrackEd reworked to use the full render engine. Flashing also works again. Stack overflow fixed.

- Wheel setup screen now includes friction/stick friction/damping/inertia sliders.

- Added car.ini car.ff_friction, ff_stickfriction, ff_damping and ff_inertia factors to tune force feedback.

- Also added car.ini car.ff_gain, which modifies the ff_friction etc values directly (default=1.0)

- Added console commands 'ff friction <x>', 'ff stickfriction <x>', 'ff damping <x>' and 'ff inertia <x>'

for live setting of FF values. Absolute numbers for the controller, not car relative (0..10000).

- Fixed typo in NightSaturate() (no green in B&W color) in hdr.cg

- Tangents now generated in 4 coordinates (was 3). Mirrored UV seams are now being duplicated

to avoid tangent trouble where UV and mirrored UV parts meet.

- Modeler can now show tangents (T to toggle). It already did normals (N to toggle).

- Tangents were never used as VBO's; now they are (slightly faster).

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.25 released!

Another one, esp important with the tangents problems (white spots/dark triangles):

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.25.zip

Changes:

- Setting racer.ini's textures.compression to 0 had an effect on visuals (no SRGB).

- Ctrl-1 now shows when the force feedback is saturating the wheel (>20 Nm).

- Controller setup screen now removed POV and added horn and wiper controls.

- 'sunny' default was 0, should have been 1.

- standard_bump_f.cg now takes specularity from the normalmap's alpha channel (2nd layer)

- Only 3/4 of the tangents was passed for each objects. White spots and black triangles.

- Baja shader bug fixed (dyn_standard_bump_speca.cg was used)

- ff_damping (in car.ini) was applied to the wrong FF setting (friction instead of damping)

- Small change in spline triangle checking for road surfaces; in Carlswood doing Shift-F

4 times failed to recognize the underlying spline triangle.

- Y offset in viewelt_f.cg removed; dials were slightly moved up a centimeter.

- Using Cg 3.0 toolkit (was 2.2) from July 2010.

- smCor for the 3rd shadow split slightly increased

- Only angular 3D view elements (dials) were painted correctly. Other texts could appear rotated.

- 'show splines' and all debug lines & points were rendered in HDR mode thus dark. Now drawn in LDR

after postprocessing to remain visible at all times.

- Live track envmapping anti-aliased the whole main FBO on each side update (ouch). Faster now

when setting render_once to 0.

- Mirror was anti-aliased twice. Slightly faster now.

- Exposure gradient changed from 0.5 to 0.35 (darker exposures)

- Music & background image handling in all setup screens now supported.

- More live track options in the graphics setup screen.

- Added bestline_v/f.cg for visible rendering of the 'best line' (F3 to toggle bestline)

- Added bestline.tga in data/images as an overlay image (uses alpha channel).

- 'sunny' included in sky shaders (GetSkyColorAtm) for the sun disc

- Undetected controllers would crash the controller setup screen in a few places.

- The lobby was painted incorrectly when using 3 monitors.

- Fixed stack underflow in car selection screen.

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.26 released!

The usual, but 2 big things: a garage when selecting the car (getting rid of the white cars) and an important bugfix if the CG is not at the nullpoint.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.26.zip (100Mb, due to the extra garage track!)

The garage is still a rough preview but you can plugin your own garage1 track (I might add the possibility of multiple garages). The CG bugfix is optional; in racer.ini find 'move_cg': 1 is the new default, 0 is the situation as from v0.8.25.

Changes:

v0.8.26 (10-12-10)

-----------------

- Skidmarks tweaked to be more opaque.

- Some bumpshaders modified the normal map's alpha, giving funny reflectiveness issues.

Resolved using an extra 'common/utils.cg' file with UnpackNormal() and used in all bump shaders.

- Best line tweaked; fades out near the car, green lines are faded. Less intrusive.

- Added Logitech G25 wheel preset file (thanks to QuadCoreMax)

- Modeler can now export a template shader (.shd) file for a loaded model

- Pressing P in replay a few times doesn't mess up the volume (on/off) anymore

- Non-Cg version still created mirror and live track FBO's

- Particle system would crash with some car/track combinations. Seems related to culled single-poly fences.

The road is culled and single-poly, and really hitting the track seems a problem for Newton.

- Same change for the particle system done to the exhausts (arrays instead of std:vector)

- Not all collide polygons were used for Newton's collision tree. Rebuild trackcollision.bin

- Car selection screen now loads 'garage1' track as the environment. Pitpos0 is the car location.

- Tracked spline selection now accepts Shift-[,] for multi-select (local grip editing)

- Default font made a bit smaller, since everyone's running at least 1024x768 anyway.

- The Ctrl-9 screen could show bad load balance when the nullpoint was outside

of the front and rear wheel susp<n> locations (extreme CG movement tests).

- CG translation bugfix in the physics; an important one! Use move_cg=1 in racer.ini.

- Ghost car playback didn't work correctly.

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.27 released!

Changes:

* - move_cg=1 didn

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.31 released!

Just before the weekend... v0.8.31

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.31.zip (75Mb)

Changes:

- Added racer.ini dev.note_ini_unused to check for unread car.ini parameters. See also http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/development.htm

- Color grade shader improved.

- The wind could get stuck in growing infinitely, making particles shoot away after a while

- Differential reworked, since it had a bug (it accepted ratios <1.0).

- Clutch wasn't restored after shifting when autoclutch was 0 in racer.ini and the car.

- Flare colors could dip below 0 (weird colors) when using non-klux flare color values

- Flare default color is now '40 40 40' (was '1 1 1'), see also http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/car_lights.htm

- TrackEd would save splines where lines.paint_end would always be the number of splines, even if you specified less

- TrackEd would overwrite the gfx.sky values in special.ini with generated values (when saving)

- TrackEd still used Newton 2.26, so loading any track would recreate trackcollision.bin. Upgraded to Newton 2.29.

- Flare billboarding now screen-aligned by default; see http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/car_lights.htm#flares

- A multiplayer client pressing Shift-R would get stuck waiting for a race start. Now modified to let Shift-R behave as Shift-F.

- Smoke/grass particles no longer spawn when a wheel is off the ground.

- Traction control gives a warning if a ratio is <=1.0 ; that gives serious jitters.

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.32 released!

After a small break (where I broke nothing except 1 snowscooter), a new Racer.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.32.zip

Changes:

- The Lambo differential ratio was a bit low (1.75) - reverted to 2.53.

- Differential could become unstable when the 2 wheels got opposite reaction forces.

- Removed obsolete wheel<n>.friction_road values from data/cars/default/car.ini.

- Replay audio (replay.wav) was empty when recorded.

- Multiplayer fixes (billboard nodes/car names)

- Smoke tweaks (soft particles, improved motion)

- Shadowmapping normal dependency improved for shadow acne reduction

This post has been promoted to an article

[VELOCIPEDE]

Racer v0.8.33 released

Things have been very busy, lots of things going on at the edges of Racer (not really core Racer), but here's an update finally.

Get it at http://www.racer.nl/download/racer0.8.33.zip (75Mb)

Known issues:

- The current replay should be re-recorded

- AI training is very alpha, it currently s*cks

Changes:

- Added 'gfx.show_traffic_lines' option to visualize track grid

- Added 'show traffic' and 'hide traffic' console commands

- Traffic improved to be usable

- Added 'gfx.bestline.source' which determines whether the bestline is derived from AI or the ghostlap

- Added log.buffer_time to be able to change the log buffer size

- RTD logging improved

- DXT3 dds format was flipped incorrectly (bad detection of DXT3 format)

- dbg_controls.throttle/brakes/clutch/steer now work again (if dbg_controls.update=0)

- Multiview camera were slightly off wrt eye position

- Added 'show log' and 'hide log' console commands to show live log details

- Cg dll's updated to v3.0.16

- Added log.database.dir for eternal logging of RTD telemetry files (customer)

- Added ghost.time_scale for slow-motion ghost laps (mostly for testing use)

- Changes in thread creation (handle leak fix)

- Added data/images/fadeout.tga where Racer fades to in menus and other situations

- Added 'show ailines' (and 'hide') to visualize AI lines

- Pressing Ctrl-F6 to drive an AI lap now accepts AI cars; they will try to train themselves.

Use 'ai learn save' to save the trained lap.

Let it run for quite a number of laps. See http://www.racer.nl/tutorial/newtrack.htm#default_ai

- Added 'ai reset' console command to reset AI velocities to 50 km/h (for AI training purposes)

- Added 'ai scale <v>' console command to scale AI velocities

- Experimental friction circle method added; #6. Is like #3, only without clamping max_slip_len (dbg_car.friction_circle_method). Doesn't seem too viable though.

- Per-wheel tweaking of 'max_slip_len'; an addition to the tire model to constrict large slip lookups

See http://www.racer.nl/reference/wheels.htm#combinedforces