Quote from SpikeyMarcoD :

Well lack of drivers seems biggest problem to be honest.

Well, the lack (or better loss) of drivers is a problem in every league. It is a pity that it affected the eTM so hard.

hi haelje,

I think the 2 PC approach as envisoned is the best solution to get best quality with maintainable effort. One PC can run LFS without the risk to loose fps or connection to the server due to a second encoding task. And the other PC has 100% CPU time available for encoding. This is also the way how esport-racing does it (read here: http://www.esport-racing.com/t ... hp?postid=3280#post3280):

Quote :

... About the way it's done:

We have one PC with LFS running, and one which is capturing sound and pic, streaming all that to the web. At the very same PC there is the control window of the TV director, which has a map of the track, moving buttons of the cars and a positions list....

For encoding they are using the VLC player (www.videolan.org).

Quote from Brilwing :

... that capures the video and encodes it to a 300kbit/s VC-1 video stream. The video quality is not the best, but viewable.
...

I think for a decent video quality you would need at least 600kbit/s (@384x288), because in racing you have a lot of camera pan and fast movement. With about 800kbit/s and 640x480 it was hard to read the gaps in the standings list of the last esport-racing broadcasts.
Nevertheless good luck with your project

with kind regards
Soeren

Quote from StickyDark :

If I use in Single Player, the game say: The password doesn't match with your multiplayer admin password

read here.

regards
Soeren

Quote from Campos_MIC :

From the remote acess a friend of mine could control the cameras on the GUI acessing my IP?

Yes, this is possible. If you are in the same network, it is no problem. If not then maybe you need to configure your router (if you have one) for port forwarding.

regards
Soeren

Last edited by Soeren Scharf, Fri 30 May 2008, 23:11.

Quote from z3r0c00l :

.... The saxo/106 has the single worst chassis I've experienced. ....

...compared to what? .... a 2CV?
Ever driven a Trabant?

Chassis: If you mean springs, dampers, anti roll bar .... Do you really think that we drive slalom without modification of these parts?

...?

Quote from BURN :

well default its here set at 32300
im not sure if we talk about the same.
here is how mine looks now

hope it helps. Otherwise i dont know. Its workin on Y20 too.

Oh, indeed the GUI port number and the Insim port number have to be different. Do not mix them, they mean completely different things.

• The GUI is communicating with the TV Director, here you use the GUI port number.
  
• The TV Director is communicating with LFS, here you use the Insim port number.

I just wonder why I have written such a detailed tutorial with screenshots included

Ok, here the picture (well a draft of a picture):

graphical GUI ===32301===> TV Director ===32300===> LFS

I will make a note and improve the tutorial in the next release.

With kind regards
Soeren

Quote from Leprekaun :

...
InSim - TCP : did not receive InSimInit packet
....

Unfortunately I do not have any clue about this. I have seen this already from a german user too (on a screenshot), but I could also see the chat messages from the TV Director on this screenshot. So the program must have been connected correctly, at least I guess so.

Maybe some more information about your environment would be helpful, especially LFS version/patch/testpatch, Windows version, GUI check box enabled or disabled, any other insim addons running, .... do you can also see the chat messages from the TV Director?

Quote from Feuerdrache :

Gives it a way to edit the onboard cams?

you can find all onboard camera files in the views folder of the TV Director. For Patch Y look into the cvw6 subfolder (the subfolder is determined by the file cvw.ini). So you can of course create your own custom camera file, then rename the file according to the file names in the cvw6 folder and copy this file into this folder.

I think the main difference between simracing and real life is the feedback that you get from the car. After years of simracing (mainly Grand Prix Legends) I was nearly overwhelmed by the huge amount and especially of the immediacy of the feedback, when I tried my first meters in a race car (slalom). It is not comparable to a street car because of the different car setup, so it took me some time to make use of the new experience. But now I think driving in real live is much more easy because you can react a lot faster than in simracing, where you first have to learn the "6th sense" for what the car is doing.
But at all the behaviour of the car is the same, LFS does a very correct job in simulating car physics.

Oh, and of course I have a replay (it was a training day on the kart track in Oschersleben, so we were allowed to drive with passengers. So I was able to try an onboard video but I have canceled after 23 seconds because it was too hard to keep the camera still). More pictures (and information, but in german) can be found here.

kind regards
Soeren

Edit: That's me

Last edited by Soeren Scharf, Tue 27 May 2008, 19:59.

Hello,

maybe you have seen a stream that was made using this tool?

regards
Soeren

Update:

everyone was asking for onboard cameras... here they are (see first post).

with kind regards

Quote from Byku :

Hi there i've got a problem with running LFS Director(like most of others insim apps). I'm doing everything what is told in howto but simply nothing happens. TVDir is running in the background(with insim 32300), i'm going into LFS, typing /insim=32300 and no welcoming message appears. On the track, when watching replay. Nothing .

Does LFS report an error message when you type /insim=32300 into the chat of LFS?

Quote :

3) SHIFT + F now has 3 states if you are in a replay (the 3rd state hides everything including all messages and replay controls)

ok, but how do I check the SHIFT-F state via insim now? There is only one bit ISS_SHOW_2D available to report the SHIFT-F state.
And how do I change the SHIFT-F state with insim now? In the IS_SFP state flags packet there is only 0 = off and 1 = on defined.

regards
Soeren

I did not check every car, but the BF1 is also affected.

:bump:

nobody who knows details about the offset values? I was hoping to be able to release the Version 0.3 of the TV Director this weekend, by just copying the values to the cvw files for patch X. But now I have to check the positions in all these cvw files again, and these are 72 files

Quote from Scawen :

... Would that be helpful for programmers?

The main advantage for the addon developer is, that an addon has always a matching pth file available. This will increase usability because the user does not need to take care of the pth version, it always matches the LFS installation.
!!! This requires that a changed path file leads to an incompatible patch. I am not sure, but I would expect that this is anyway the case. It would be kind if you, Scawen, confirm this.

@Scawen: there is no need (for me) to determine the exact patch, when you first included the path files into the smx folder, since they only contain the forward paths (I did not know that before), but my tool needs the reverse paths too. Just make a note when you are going to include all (forward and reverse) paths into distribution. For all previous versions I have to distribute the pth files nevertheless.

PS. I think you have introduced it in U35.

kind regards
Soeren

just noticed that in the latest LFS versions the pth files are included in the smx folder, so there is no need to include these files any longer in my distribution. Nevertheless I have 3 questions about this:

• What is the first LFS version where the pth files are included in the installation?
  
• are these pth files also included in the smx folder if a user did not used a fresh installation but only upgraded everytime (from P to S, then to T, U, V... and so on)
  
• how reliable is it that the pth files match the replay that is playable by the LFS installation (in other words: is it possible that pth files may have changed or change in the future with a compatible patch)?
  

thanks and kind regards
Soeren

hello,

Currently I am creating the custom cam files for the onboad cams in my TV Director tool. I have finished all custom cams for Patch Y and now I am creating the files for Patch X (because both patches use different file formats for the cvw files). I have used the same coord values to get the same camera positions. But I am surprised to see that the position of the camera is different from the position in Patch Y (see screenshots below, front wing cam examples for FO8).

I am not sure what has changed?
The car model? I would doubt.
So the origin of the coords? If I adjust the cam position by just a few centmeters I get the same view? So this might be the case.

Who has more information on this topic?

thanks and regards
Soeren

ok, for everyone else with the same question: it is not possible to do this with a script. It has to be done by an external insim application (see here: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=774605#post774605)

Quote from Scawen :

...
At the moment, there is only one way to run a list of replays, and that is through InSim. You detect when LFS is back in the entry screen then play the next replay - that's what LFS Show did I think.

Quote from Scawen :

.... I think you missed me saying that in my previous post... ...

you are right, I missed this.
So finally all my questions regarding the replay list are answered, and I can start to implement this feature in my TV Director.

thx and regards
Soeren

Quote from Scawen :

.... This non-looping was originally done so an external program could run a series of replays. But with the new InSim, most InSim programs do not start replays so it doesn't make much sense any more.....

hello Scawen,

thank you for the explanation, now I understand why there is no ESC menu in MPR. And of course I would like to see this implemented.

Nevertheless my TV Director should be able to run a list of replays (later, it is on my list). This is not to ask you you to stop implementing MPRs looping. But now I have to think about a convenient solution how to detect the end of the replay, and then issue the /end command. First idea is to check the values of SMALL_RTP packets. What do you think about it, maybe there are other (more) simple detection methods, without the need to flood LFS with TINY_GTH packets? Will an insim application still receive a TINY_REN, even if the MPR/SPR loops instead of returning to entry screen?

BTW: I was hoping that LFS can handle a list of replays on its own (maybe with a script). But there was no answer to my thread (http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=41290), so I am afraid this is not possible. That's why I have to implement it in the TV Director to run the list.

with kind regards
Soeren

Last edited by Soeren Scharf, Sat 19 Apr 2008, 12:34.

Quote from SpikeyMarcoD :

Has this issue been mentioned in the LFS bug/fix/improvements?

I don't know. At least not by me.

Quote from TFalke55 :

one question:
Is there any way to avoid these black spaces? When I'm using TVDirector, sometimes it happenes that during the race, and I'm watching the race, the track doesn't appear in total, parts of it are just black.

Unfortunately there is nothing that I could do. I assume it is some kind of fps optimization in LFS. From a given position it is not necessary to draw a texture that is not visible from this position. This works well for the LFS TV cams, because all camera positions are known by LFS and so all visible parts/textures of the track from this camera are known. But in Shift-U mode this is not applicable. It seems that LFS uses this optimisation nonetheless, if Shift-U is controlled by an insim application (this is only a guess).

As stated one post above by burnsy1882 there is a workaround to trigger LFS to draw all textures. Switch into edit mode, move the camera a little and then just leave the edit mode. Then you can enjoy the rest of the race without the texture issues.

However, this workaround will be useless with the next release of the TV director, when the onboard cameras are introduced (incar, front, rear cams). Because everytime when the TV director switches to an onboard cam and then back to Shift-U, then the texture issue will arise again.

All I can recommend is to design your cam file carefully. Do not put the cameras too high and try to prevent the cameras looking over far distances. Test the cam files carefully, sometimes the issues do not appear during a short test. Restart LFS and test again. I hope these hints will help you a bit.

Now you may understand why I have not yet added cam files for all tracks

kind regards
Soeren

is it possible to write a LFS script to run a list of replays and if so, how would I do this?

I remember with LFSShow there was a Replays.txt, but that was not based on scripting, it was controlled by LFSShow. Unfortunately LFSShow is no longer available.

So I have written into autoexec.lfs the list of replays:
mpr replay1
mpr replay2
....
and so on, but this does not work as expected. It will start replay1 but for all other replays I get an error message and then LFS plays replay1 in a loop again and again. So I hope somebody can give me a hint how to solve this.

With kind regards
Soeren

Congratulations! I see, everything you start doing, you make it perfect, not only LFS .