I need to bump this thread:bump:

nobody with an idea? I have investigated the issue, but I found that comparing the RTP value against 200 will not work reliable. If I load a replay that starts in the middle of a multiplayer race (or if I join a multiplayer race in the middle), then the returned time value is immediately higher than 200, and so the TV Director will switch to Shift-U too early .

kind regards

Quote from Richard Torp :

If just I was from UK or IRE...

As long as there is no Danish eTM, would it be possible that Danish people can join the UK eTM too? There is also a german driver in the Balkan eTM, so why do not ask if you can join as well the UK eTM?

Quote from anttt69 :

I just tried the app for the first time but i get error message 'bind failed'? when i type in the insim= part
Anyone?

Go to the multiplayer settings (Menu: "Multiplayer->Start new game") and clear the IP address field.

Good luck and regards

Quote from SpikeyMarcoD :

Watched the eTM germany race this week. Were they using a new beta version with incar cams?

Yes, incar cams is what I am working on currently And as you can see in these eTM broadcasts, this feature works already quite well

Quote from Feuerdrache :

Hello,
i've a little problem with the TV Director.

How can i save the edited cameres?
If i saved them, they are deleted at the next time.


Answer (if possible) in german, because it's easier for me to understand.

There is a small bug in the version 0.2 of TV Director. I found this bug 2 or 3 weeks ago. Because I have devided the application into 2 parts, the TV director does not recognize changed camera paramters, if they were changed only in the GUI. So the changes are used but not written to the disk. And the next time they are lost.
Small workaround: after changing the cameras, go to LFS and add there a camera and then delete this camera, this will trigger saving the cam to the disk, when leaving the edit mode.
It will be fixed in the next release (and this is not too far away )

German translation:
Es ist noch ein kleiner Bug in der Version 0.2 des TV Director, den ich vor 2 bis 3 Wochen entdeckt hatte. Aufgrund der Trennung des Programms in 2 Programmbestandteile bekommt der TV Director nicht mit, wenn Kameras ausschliesslich in der GUI verändert wurden. Nach dem Verlassen des Editiermodus werden die Kameras zwar benutzt, aber nicht auf der Festplatte gespeichert. Damit sind die Änderungen beim nächsten Mal verloren.
Abhilfe: Nach den Änderungen in das LFS-Fenster gehen und dort eine Kamera hinzufügen und danach wieder entfernen. Dann bekommt der TV Director auch mit, dass die Datei geändert wurde und schreibt sie auf die Platte.
Beim nächsten Release wird der Bug natürlich behoben sein.

kind regards
Soeren

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

Even so, my solution would work. Just make a simple little program that makes a button with your co-ordinates, run that, and drive around to the brake markers

hehe, now I understood your suggestion. Nice workaround, much less complex than my suggestion

regards

Quote from dougie-lampkin :

... I'm not too sure what you're looking for, ...

he stated it clearly:
- He does not want to know the braking point but
- He wants to know the position of the brake markers (the plates some meters above the track with the big numbers painted onto)

I could suggest one solution, where you would get the exact positions. They are stored in the smx files. Unfortunately all other objects are stored there too, so you would need to be able to identify the objects as brake markers. That's why I would not call this a solution but a very strange and complex workaround.

kind regards
Soeren

Quote from wsinda :

... (I guess it would be derived from the data in the PTH file.) ...

all I know, these points are definitely not stored in the pth files. Pth files are the wrong place to search for this type of information.

regards
Soeren

hello,

maybe all of you know this: after loading a replay it will take some seconds until LFS is drawing the scene. What you see is some light blue background (see attachment). After 2 to 3 seconds LFS starts to draw the scene.

Now when you try to activate the TV Director, while LFS is still in this state, then LFS draws the scene as expected for a short moment, but then LFS switches back to this blue background screen and stays there. This seems to happen at exactly this moment when LFS would usually leave this screen and start to draw the scene.

I do know know why this happens and I do not know anything about the technical background of this behaviour. But the worst is, I do not know how to detect the state of LFS (is LFS already drawing the correct scene or still in this "loading" or whatever screen). But this detection is important to able to let the TV director activate automatically. But similar to race start (green lights) there is no packet about this state change.

What I found up to now (relies on mpr):
1. after loading the replay LFS sends an IS_RST packet
2. LFS starts sending IS_MCI packets
3. on request (TINY_GTH) LFS sends a SMALL_RTP with content 0
4. later (about one second) the content of the SMALL_RTP starts to increase as time elapses.
5. when SMALL_RTP returns a value about 200 (2 seconds) LFS starts to draw the scene.
Notes:
- You may pause the replay while steps 3-4. But then LFS will not change the state, it is really waiting until race time elapsed 2 seconds.
- tested with S2X

Much text for explanation, now the questions:
- Can I rely on the 2 seconds? What about different (and future) LFS versions? What about multiplayer mode? In spr this value is not 2 seconds (much smaller).
- Does anybody know something about the technical background (Scawen of course)? Where does this value come from?
- Can I avoid the issue by setting different values in my CPP packets or some other packets to trigger redrawing the scene?
- Or is there a different method to detect the state of LFS regarding this screen?

Hopefully somebody can give me a hint. I do not like using a method, when I do not know how reliable this method is.

kind regards
Soeren

Quote from noel_cr :

...and if i want to make my own cameras in Autocross area how could i do it without *.pth?

currently this is not possible. But I am considering this for the next version.

setting a wrong IP address in multiplayer mode (host) leads to the known error message "bind failed", of course.
What I wonder is why this also applies to the insim port? So if there is a wrong IP address setting, LFS is not able to initialize the insim port too.
Maybe it is not really a bug but more a kind of GUI design decision to devide the setting into 2 settings, because insim and host are 2 different servers running in LFS and not related to each other.

:bump:

And again they start their engines in 5 minutes, so again we will see good live action :banana:

ok, for all movie makers I have recompiled the program and attached here a special version without any output.

kindly

Quote from BabyOnWheels :

The program checks pit stops. If it was made in right time = when pit the stop window is opened. Otherwise it isn't counted in requested pit-stop counts.
...

ok, the main fact is, that you do not need the exact time immediately, you need it at a later time.

So it is possible to wait for the first car crossing the first split time, then you will receive an IS_SPX packet where the elapsed race time is included (started counting at the same moment when green light flashes). I doubt somebody is able to enter the pitlane before crossing at least one split time

Nevertheless it is still a rough estimation, because you get the packets with some network delay. But as long as you get the IS_SPX and the IS_PIT packets with the same delay, the error cancels out.

with kind regards
Soeren

Quote from A.Fedorov :

using TINY_RES
if (ISP_RES.ETime > 0) { GreenLigth = true; }

does this work? I doubt.
When I have tested this, LFS only answered to a TINY_RES when I have requested the IS_RES after a race but not during a race. It seem there is no chance to receive a IS_RES during a race.

I suggest you tell us, what do you need the detection of the green light for? Maybe someone has an idea for a different solution.

Last edited by Soeren Scharf, Mon, 4 Feb 2008 18:39.

Quote from GeForz :

Well imo the easiest way to deal with disconnects(your example) is to save the data on the client side until a restart occured... Probably depends on how you notice disconnects in your program and doesn't work with data while the client is not connected :/

Aut afaik there are no possibilities to know what happened while your client was disconnected, and I don't think there are any workarounds :/

Hehe, that sounds easy BUT.... its quite useless..... BECAUSE if you reconnect, how does the insim app know, that is connected to the same race? Even if you can detect that it is the same server, the race could be restarted. And even if you handle this by requesting RTP packets and check the race time.... what are you going to do if you missed the first half of the race completely?

I know that there is unlikely a solution that will work in all cases, but I would be happy if it would work in one case reliably.

I wondered if it would be possible to request IS_RES packets during the race, there is a field for best lap. But when I tested this, LFS did not answer to the TINY_RES request.

But to return to the topic of this thread: do you know other information that might become lost in terms of insim?

kind regards

Do you have a replay of this?
If not, what color was it?

I have started the Insim Gateway project here: http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 925&highlight=gateway

It is not yet completed, but you are kindly invited to continue the project

Success may depend on the requirements of the insim addon application. Outsim and Outgauge tools might not be critical, but it still has to be done. Lap logging tools seem to be much more critical because of the old connection numbers in insim v3.

I expect that you only need to add further conversion functions to InsimConversion.cpp and add the call to these functions in InsimGateway.cpp, that should be all. The main body of the application already exists.

Good luck and regards
Soeren

you are right, of course there might be other possibilities to obtain the required data. But I am talking about insim, because any other workaround (and it is nothing else than a workaround) may depend on circumstances. In case of accessing a local log files on the LFS server it requires that the insim tools are running on the LFS server (or have access to the server).This might work for tools like laplogger, but there are lots of tools running on client side. Therefore I think it is necessary to distinguish between the insim part and workarounds.

Let me describe a simple example:
I am considering to show fastest lap times in LFS TV Director (in qualification split times too of course). But the TV director is running on client side. On the last DeTM broadcast Vykos had 2 disconnects while broadcasting. So he had to join the race again in the middle. And now the question is: what was the fastest lap before the disconnect?

As developers of client side insim applications we need to be aware of a mid race join, and then we need to consider that a lot of information might be "lost".

The interesting questions now are:
1st question: can I request a certain information at a later time (example: requesting a RST packet at a later time is possible, so it doesn't matter if the addon missed the start of the race)
2nd question: if the answer is no, what would be possible workarounds to obtain these information at a later time.

I hope this description makes it a bit cearer what
I am going to ask.

regards
Soeren

Quote from Andrei221 :

I would like to remove the buttons that say what lap is and who are the racers, can i do this? Because i want to make a movie

I would need to send you a slighly modified version. How urgent do you need this?

You can download the old version V0.1 here http://home.arcor.de/soeren_sc ... irector/TvDirector.7z.htm
but it does not yet support the manual control.

regards
Soeren

a list of ^# codes ==> http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=27840

regards

Quote from GabbO :

...
Btw: is there a way planned to get more cam files, i.e a community upload platform/you collect and include them, or only by making them yourself?

Of course I plan to include cam files for the other tracks too.... later.
And of course you can also share your own cam files with other users in this thread.

kind regards
Soeren

I use (of course) the LFS TV Director so it is shift-U mode.

Quote from CSU1 :

...whats the point of knowing what view everyone is using anyway?

This is a very, very interesting information for me. Now I see that it is much much more important to include onboard cams (in car view) into my TV Director tool, much more important than ever supposed. So thx to evilpimp for starting this poll.

kind regards
Soeren

Quote from duke_toaster :

...Will qualifying functionality be added at any point?...

of course, it will. I have planned to do this already in the next release, but until then I need to verify some things.

Very often I am thinking about how to obtain data from LFS, if an insim addon would connect e.g. in the middle of a race or quali. There might be a lot of information "lost". As an example an application might want to detect the split times of the fastest lap. I do not see any way to obtain such information if the application connected after the event has occured. This is what I would call volatile data, just for further discussion in this thread.

I am interested in what do you think are volatile data. If someone disagrees, it would be kind to tell how to obtain the information if is not evident.

Let me start with:
- Lap time of fastest lap
- split times of fastest lap
- drivers who left the race


kind regards
Soeren