Small improvement of the dashboard's geometry as well as the dash "visor", and I went ahead and made an actual dash - not that easy to work around some of the limitations, I used the LED tacho from s_clock_formula, and tweaked the mapping's colors to make the green and orange segments (not exactly satisfied with their color, but I won't be able to get much better than this).
In addition to my previous post, instead of allowing multiple clock types, an alternative would be to have a single "superclock" type which could enable or disable individual elements (clock tacho, LCD tacho, LED lights, basically everything unique that can be found in all clock types), so we can actually choose what we want instead of compromising one thing for another.
I assume the current clock types are actually shaders that use game state as input to draw the corresponding texture? In that case, it doesn't sound too much of a stretch to have a supertype (but of course would require moving all vehicles to that, unless a new type is added while keeping backward compatibility).
For my Clio Cup mod, I will try using LED rev lights to emulate what can be seen in the above screenshot, not currently sure I'll be able to turn the red LEDs green, in which case I would also like to ask that the color be editable (at least so we can make them white and edit the colors through mappings).
EDIT: To illustrate that last point, I added screenshots to show how the rev lights look right now, both off and on - I did manage to get red, orange and green, but just barely, orange and green are both green mappings with no blue, full green, and a varying amount of red, so control is rather limited here, plus as you can see, they all look green when off.
I assume the current clock types are actually shaders that use game state as input to draw the corresponding texture? In that case, it doesn't sound too much of a stretch to have a supertype (but of course would require moving all vehicles to that, unless a new type is added while keeping backward compatibility).
For my Clio Cup mod, I will try using LED rev lights to emulate what can be seen in the above screenshot, not currently sure I'll be able to turn the red LEDs green, in which case I would also like to ask that the color be editable (at least so we can make them white and edit the colors through mappings).
EDIT: To illustrate that last point, I added screenshots to show how the rev lights look right now, both off and on - I did manage to get red, orange and green, but just barely, orange and green are both green mappings with no blue, full green, and a varying amount of red, so control is rather limited here, plus as you can see, they all look green when off.
Last edited by Bokujishin, .
I forgot something important: the roof intake! Now taken care of. I also started detailing the plastic bits around the windows, including the rear door handles, and added the sun visor to the cup version.
That's all I did on the exterior modeling, as I wanted to start the interior a bit. The dashboard of the cup version is basically a pre-2023 RS Line version dashboard with some of the lower-end buttons and controls, the rest will be more different between cup and road versions.
But I also found documents on Renault's website that give very juicy technical details, which really helps in the vehicle editor. For instance, they have damper charts for cup, rally (asphalt/gravel) and RX versions. Unfortunately, the dampers are more or less bilinear in their behavior, so I had to go for the middle ground as LFS only allows linear damping.
Another example is gear ratios: I now have the exact same ratios as the real car (since those appear to be fixed), and all shift points are around 5800 to 6000 RPM, as they should. My only concern is the very long first gear, which makes it difficult to start the car gently without stalling or overheating the clutch.
Anyway, with those changes (and more as I find data in the documentation), the car now lifts its rear inside wheel very easily in corners (in BL1 for instance, it will basically spend the entire hairpin and right hander after the back straight on 3 wheels).
That's all I did on the exterior modeling, as I wanted to start the interior a bit. The dashboard of the cup version is basically a pre-2023 RS Line version dashboard with some of the lower-end buttons and controls, the rest will be more different between cup and road versions.
But I also found documents on Renault's website that give very juicy technical details, which really helps in the vehicle editor. For instance, they have damper charts for cup, rally (asphalt/gravel) and RX versions. Unfortunately, the dampers are more or less bilinear in their behavior, so I had to go for the middle ground as LFS only allows linear damping.
Another example is gear ratios: I now have the exact same ratios as the real car (since those appear to be fixed), and all shift points are around 5800 to 6000 RPM, as they should. My only concern is the very long first gear, which makes it difficult to start the car gently without stalling or overheating the clutch.
Anyway, with those changes (and more as I find data in the documentation), the car now lifts its rear inside wheel very easily in corners (in BL1 for instance, it will basically spend the entire hairpin and right hander after the back straight on 3 wheels).
I think another way to try and improve engine sound specifically, would be to know how LFS uses the WAV sample and how the parameters affect it. When looking at the waveforms for default cars' engines, they all fade out and the second half of the sample is almost silent. I did manage to create a couple "proper" engine sounds in Audacity by layering sine waves and some white noise then fading out, but they're not very good, and don't seem too different or unique anyway, plus they tend to clip very easily.
If anyone knows more about this, I'm interested (would also love to know how Scawen or Eric generated the official ones).
If anyone knows more about this, I'm interested (would also love to know how Scawen or Eric generated the official ones).
While sunlight can be considered to be parallel because of the distance, its enormous size is still relevant for umbra and penumbra (and in the case of solar eclipses, the penumbra area can cover the entire Earth even when actual umbra is a much smaller spot). This probably goes quite a bit off topic though
but you can still see this effect in plain sunlight. Another light source that would show this effect very much is a car's headlights, though this is much more complex to do because of the spotlight source instead of the sun light, and much more expensive to compute.Still, as we are on the subject of lighting, I do wonder what kind of tone mapping, and maybe HDR Scawen is using? Several screenshots seem to show very washed out colors on brake lights for instance, while in real life, they appear very red. I would personally recommend investigating tone maps such as ACES or AgX for instance (AgX being more realistic, and Blender offers a "punchy" variant that has more contrast). Then again, the brake light issue might just be an issue to do with the emissive textures, which are probably additive.
And while I'm on brake lights, I wonder if the various lights are more visible in the new version? On some cars, it's currently very difficult to tell when the driver in front is braking, unless you're right behind them - again, in real life you could spot a brake light from several hundreds of meters no problem, but in games, they're difficult to see because they appear so small they literally don't get displayed properly.
Good to know you're using cascaded shadow maps, do you also blend them to avoid the sharp transitions?
Also, does "about half way down the page" include PCF?
I would also like to ask Eric a small question regarding Kyoto: where does the original Kyoto's Japanese come from? Since some of it seems to be a bit grammatically broken (see this recent addition to the manual), I was curious, and on the new screenshots, the Japanese looks correct so far.
Also, does "about half way down the page" include PCF?
I would also like to ask Eric a small question regarding Kyoto: where does the original Kyoto's Japanese come from? Since some of it seems to be a bit grammatically broken (see this recent addition to the manual), I was curious, and on the new screenshots, the Japanese looks correct so far.
I have a very old spare PC (built in 2010, i5 2500k, Nvidia GTX560Ti, 8GB RAM), the thing is so old the GPU does not support Vulkan (but does support DX11), it struggles with basic multitasking and eats through its RAM, even on Linux. Well guess what, LFS runs fine even on that hardware (at least in single player with 20 AI, I never tried multiplayer on that PC). Even a 500€ laptop you can buy today would run better, we can't cling to obsolete hardware and expect software to not take advantage of more recent technology.
If your PC is old but supports DX11, I would even expect performance to be better on the new LFS graphics, or at least very similar, as multi-threading means the CPU should use more cores and not be limited by single-core speed; yes the GPU will be working more, but DX11 optimisations over DX9 should help, so unless you're already GPU-bound, you shouldn't see a significant drop in FPS.
And to add to gu3st's point: I built my current PC in January 2023, it is pretty beefy, and yes, LFS runs better on the CPU's integrated GPU than it does on my very old PC.
If your PC is old but supports DX11, I would even expect performance to be better on the new LFS graphics, or at least very similar, as multi-threading means the CPU should use more cores and not be limited by single-core speed; yes the GPU will be working more, but DX11 optimisations over DX9 should help, so unless you're already GPU-bound, you shouldn't see a significant drop in FPS.
And to add to gu3st's point: I built my current PC in January 2023, it is pretty beefy, and yes, LFS runs better on the CPU's integrated GPU than it does on my very old PC.
We can't try them yet!
You may also receive some repair bills from people crashing in the right hander after the bridge in KY3...
More seriously though, I'm looking forward to trying those changes, and wondering how things will turn out for Aston layouts coming from the Club or Grand Touring configurations and turning left back to the north (Cadet or North reversed configs, leading to the climbing chicane), since it's now a tighter left into a right and a very tight left.
Last update of the year: bodywork is more or less finished \o/ (just need to cut the space for the fuel door).
I also added the radio antenna for the road version, now I need to finish the tail lights as well as the front grilles of the road version. Then windows and the various plastic parts to finish the exterior.
I also added the radio antenna for the road version, now I need to finish the tail lights as well as the front grilles of the road version. Then windows and the various plastic parts to finish the exterior.
LFSW name: Bokujishin
In-game name: Cyk
Full team name: Mudsnails
Country: France
In-game name: Cyk
Full team name: Mudsnails
Country: France
The built-in mods are the only ones that are supported, if you're trying to download mods from other places, chances are they were made for older versions of LFS (most likely cracked versions of the game).
With the layout editor, it will definitely be possible to reach the water, but given that cars go through (visually) solid ground in some places, there is absolutely 0% chance that they interact with water IMO.
The new Kyoto looks great! Looking forward to trying the updated tracks and configurations as well.
Chances are framerate will actually go up, especially if your problem was the number of cars, as this should be a CPU issue, and multithreading will help there (although I don't know how many threads Scawen plans to use, if it's one for the game/physics and one for rendering, it may not change that much, but if it can use more threads for multiple cars, that would help).
Graphics will be more demanding, but it definitely won't double the GPU usage.
Chances are framerate will actually go up, especially if your problem was the number of cars, as this should be a CPU issue, and multithreading will help there (although I don't know how many threads Scawen plans to use, if it's one for the game/physics and one for rendering, it may not change that much, but if it can use more threads for multiple cars, that would help).
Graphics will be more demanding, but it definitely won't double the GPU usage.
Back to bodywork, front fender and doors are done.
Screenshots are from Blender as I messed up smoothing groups when importing the doors into the editor.
I also fixed the roof's missing recess and adjusted shapes here and there, so I should be able to complete the bodywork soon.
Screenshots are from Blender as I messed up smoothing groups when importing the doors into the editor.
I also fixed the roof's missing recess and adjusted shapes here and there, so I should be able to complete the bodywork soon.
I made a base vehicle in the editor and imported the current Blender geometry. There seems to be several conflicting bits of data on the Internet (maybe different versions of the car), so I may have some wrong numbers here and there, but this is a start.
Decided to venture into rim modeling for a bit, so I made both the cup rim and the Esprit Alpine road version's "La Flèche" rim (this one was a huge pain, shapes are all over the place and the spokes-hub transition is different for every single spoke...).
Rear bumper is also finished, I started working on the trunk and tail lights, not sure how much time I will have in the next few weeks with end of year festivities approaching.
Rear bumper is also finished, I started working on the trunk and tail lights, not sure how much time I will have in the next few weeks with end of year festivities approaching.
Front is now done on the Cup version, with headlights modeled and working. I will need to adjust the slight overlap between the headlights and the hood. On the road version, day lights are modeled and working, front grilles still need work.
In other news, since I own an actual Clio 5 (though pre-facelift), I went ahead and took pictures of my car on a cold frosty morning to make a photogrammetry model, the results are pretty nice but unfortunately still quite noisy in the doors area, even though the frost helped reduce reflections, but after scaling and rotating the result, I managed to fit the blueprints quite nicely, and will be able to adjust some overall shapes using this. This should help me finish the general exterior model so I can then move on to cutting the panels and modelling the rear lights properly.
In other news, since I own an actual Clio 5 (though pre-facelift), I went ahead and took pictures of my car on a cold frosty morning to make a photogrammetry model, the results are pretty nice but unfortunately still quite noisy in the doors area, even though the frost helped reduce reflections, but after scaling and rotating the result, I managed to fit the blueprints quite nicely, and will be able to adjust some overall shapes using this. This should help me finish the general exterior model so I can then move on to cutting the panels and modelling the rear lights properly.
If you want a car to have day lights that also serve as turn signals, which is not that rare in modern cars, you can use a slider subobject to fake this (got the idea from the Protech mod, which however does not hide the side lights):
You can use the same trick to dim the DRL when the low beam is turned on, instead of keeping them as is or turning them off, but this will require a texture to properly dim them.
- Move the triangles to separate subobjects, e.g. DRL_R, find_R and same for left side.
- Make sure the origin of each subobject is on the correct side of the car (so it is properly detected as left/right indicator)
- Make the subobjects sliders, connect them to left/right indicator, and adjust their slide axis and distance to hide them somewhere.
- For the indicators, do the opposite: move the triangles to the hidden position, and make the slider show them.
You can use the same trick to dim the DRL when the low beam is turned on, instead of keeping them as is or turning them off, but this will require a texture to properly dim them.
Another one: it would be nice to be able to use multiple clocks types at the same time, 2 or maybe 3 would be ideal, so we can mix and match (analogue tacho, fuel and oil temperature with digital speedo, or RPM lights mixed with other displays).
I would also like to ask for digital RPM (seeing the actual numbers, not gauges). For instance, the Clio Cup displays the RPM as numbers as well as rev light style, plus gear and digital speedo.
I would also like to ask for digital RPM (seeing the actual numbers, not gauges). For instance, the Clio Cup displays the RPM as numbers as well as rev light style, plus gear and digital speedo.
I would like to see a new mapping type added (or rather a special texture?), similar to s_mirr, but for an internal rear view monitor that you can see on e.g. GT3/LMP cars. This mapping would then display the already existing virtual mirror, or maybe a manually placed camera object if needed (might need to tweak position or camera FoV, but default virtual mirror should be a good start).
This would help greatly with cars that have no internal mirror. Also, if you look at the 4M GT3 mod for example, its right side mirror is almost completely obstructed, so you can basically only use the left mirror currently.
This would help greatly with cars that have no internal mirror. Also, if you look at the 4M GT3 mod for example, its right side mirror is almost completely obstructed, so you can basically only use the left mirror currently.
More progress on the front, now only missing the upper grill and headlights.
Progress on the overall mesh is slow as I spend some time modeling more detailed parts, such as the bottom part of the rear bumper and its fake grills, as well as the side mirrors.
I also improved the front bumper, and added details I was missing before; I'm not satisfied with the bumper's blade part yet though, so it's not included here.
I also improved the front bumper, and added details I was missing before; I'm not satisfied with the bumper's blade part yet though, so it's not included here.
#42 will race.
Yeah, I think I will do both normal and cup versions, the cup version only differs visually in the added spoiler and roof intake, the removed front daytime running lights and the interior being almost entirely stripped, as far as I know. The road version will certainly be based on the TCe 140bhp engine of pre-2023 though, as after that it's either 90bhp or hybrid.
Back to Blender, I ended up purchasing the blueprint I was using for reference, instead of using just the low-resolution preview, so I'm revisiting the entire thing to fix the shapes that were sometimes off quite a bit. I'm also using this as an opportunity to model cars in more detail, not just for LFS, so I'm going for a high resolution model, from which I will make the LFS geometry.
The screenshots show the overall shape of the car, it's now a single mesh with much cleaner topology, but I'm still missing some of the front bumper and door details, and still fixing the trunk and rear fender shapes around the tail lights and the C pillar. And of course, I'm now extending the mesh over the lights and will have to cut them out properly.
Once I'm done with this overall mesh, I will start making the various panels again - I've made the hood already (quick and dirty test), just because it looks so different with the guide mesh extending toward the front grill. I'll probably try to make a low-poly version of the hood pretty soon, to get an idea of how many triangles I can get away with.
Back to Blender, I ended up purchasing the blueprint I was using for reference, instead of using just the low-resolution preview, so I'm revisiting the entire thing to fix the shapes that were sometimes off quite a bit. I'm also using this as an opportunity to model cars in more detail, not just for LFS, so I'm going for a high resolution model, from which I will make the LFS geometry.
The screenshots show the overall shape of the car, it's now a single mesh with much cleaner topology, but I'm still missing some of the front bumper and door details, and still fixing the trunk and rear fender shapes around the tail lights and the C pillar. And of course, I'm now extending the mesh over the lights and will have to cut them out properly.
Once I'm done with this overall mesh, I will start making the various panels again - I've made the hood already (quick and dirty test), just because it looks so different with the guide mesh extending toward the front grill. I'll probably try to make a low-poly version of the hood pretty soon, to get an idea of how many triangles I can get away with.
Reworked the geometry around the pillars and roof, still need to tweak the volume. I turned on the subdivision modifier to start hunting bad curves and topology (which is still a big mess for the most part).
Added the top intake and "rear wing", drafted the roll cage as I came across a figure describing it in the Clio Cup technical rulebook.
Also added the rough shape of the central brake light to work on it later, as its support helps close the rear window.
Added the top intake and "rear wing", drafted the roll cage as I came across a figure describing it in the Clio Cup technical rulebook.
Also added the rough shape of the central brake light to work on it later, as its support helps close the rear window.
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