For qualifying the option to enforce HLVC, where a fail means the laptime gets deleted, would probably be the simplest solution - though that would involve fixing the HLVC bugs, if they still exist, and presumably wouldn't help for open configs - maybe having checkpoint/circle objects that can trigger HLVC fail would work there.
I suppose a time-penalty option would be needed for one-shot quali.

For races, I like the idea of being able to set somewhat arbitrary time penalties, to be served either at the next pitstop or by a race time adjustment (F1 rules).

However, I'm really not a fan of instant off-track/cut penalties during races as it's often not fair. When racing in close quarters with others, you could end up running afoul of it through no fault of your own and/or without gaining an advantage.
This is usually handled IRL by having a number of strikes where you can trigger a cut timing line x number of times before gaining a penalty. In endurance races, this is usually defined as x per hour.


tl;dr for some "easy" (hah!) wins:

1. Arbitrary time penalties.
   - a) Race: issued by admin/InSim for served at stop/race time. (HLVC is too strict for this, we're not MSV I hope)
   - b) Quali: issued by admin/InSim/HLVC.
   
2. Option to have HLVC delete a lap or add time penalty in quali
   
3. Control objects to trigger HLVC (behaviour as #2)
   

For racing, I think there are so many variables, it may be too complicated for LFS to have a good general solution. InSim preferred IMO (helped by 1. above).
An x strikes system based on race length *may* be doable without settings getting out of hand, but I'm not sure how useful it would be without built-in less-strict-than-HLVC detections.

Quote from Scawen :

How to use it:

- create a text file in your data\script folder
- add a line in the text file like /ff 30 (whatever force value you want)
- rename the text file SKINID.lfs (Skin ID of the mod you want to set)

That's exactly how I used to have my setup back in the day, it works well (though not tried it with mods).

Quote from Ped7g :

So you want to rename the increase/decrease FFB hotkeys to power steering setting? What's the point exactly? Maybe that it leaves global ffb power intact and resets after changing car? Can't see other difference.

IIRC, the idea with the power steering was to make the steering weight more consistent between cars. Like an overall target weight, rather than just a global force multiplier (which is all the ffb setting is).

The high res physics seems to fix the "dancing" car issue we had on the E-Challenge grid (tested by turning on/off in the replay)

The increased CPU doesn't seem to have much of an effect on my PC, which is nice

Quote from Eclipsed :

I would oppose this suggestion - When racing in high numbered field,it's a valuable information from map to see if a driver ahead is lap down or a driver behind is chasing me to lap. And if there are 2 drivers behind me (lapping car and direct opponent),it's a valuable information to know which is which as mirrors are not always showing everything.

Yes, hence it would need to be optional as a server setting.
It would only really be useful for organised events where you can enforce racers to have the *default* colour at the beginning of their name, which would mean the old colour behaviour (ahead/behind/lapped etc) would still apply to racers' arrows, but course cars with coloured names would show that colour instead.

Thought of a potential use for the arrow colours even when lap timing is available - though it would have to be a server option:

From what I can tell, if people use the default name colour, it uses the default arrow colour?
If so, it might be useful in organised races with safety/course cars to be able to enable the arrow colours. Racers would start their name with the default colour & have the default arrow colours, and course cars would pick up the custom colours. This means racers can easily see where the course cars are.

Quote from Scawen :

The SBTV car football event is coming up soon and I thought, with the new mini map at LA1, it would be nice if the car arrows had the team's colour. I'm not sure if it might help with situational awareness, but I'm sure it's better than all the arrows being the same colour.

Will be interesting to see how that goes

Quote from Scawen :

So when lap timing is not available, I've coloured the arrows the same as the first character in the player's name. I think it works for football. It also affects cruise servers. The mini map is now quite colourful. I think this might be quite useful, but is it too colourful?

Not sure how good it would be for chases on cruise servers, as it will make it even easier for police to follow where a car is going on the map. Given the highly competitive nature, it would change the balance a bit.

Quote from Scawen :

The other new feature is a long requested one: the redline speed for each gear is displayed in the setup screen.

Nice, especially now GRC/VHPA seems to have problems saving setups correctly these days.
Would it be simple to also mark where the shift point (ie when the shift light comes on) is for each gear? Maybe some kind of marker on the sliders?

Quote from michal 1279 :

I got to ask one question regarding the concrete objects:

Is it possible to make them procedural/parametric? So the users could select own length/height/possibly radius and other geometric parameters instead of relying on few predetermined sizes and shapes the editor currently offers. Making a long straight eats up so many 16m wall objects and creation of a smooth curve with many short walls also cuts deep into the object count limit. I got into replicating some real life street tracks recently and this became a huge bottleneck in what can be made.

Or would that require complete overhaul of the layout editor system for this kind of object?

To add to this and throwing it out there for the potential future overhaul:

I've been thinking for a while that it'd be really handy to have parametric objects, especially for anything linear like the armco/barriers. Being able to have (somewhat) arbitrary length & curve radius would be really handy.
Also adding a request for 3-high armco (ie F1 armco walls) while I'm here

Quote from Scawen :

I've adjusted the code so I can generate at different sizes.

So here is a zip file showing the current versions of:

South City (4096)
Fairfield Test Centre (4096)
Bancroft Autodrome (2048)

https://www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=SO_FA_BA_bitmaps.zip

Bonus top down comparison:
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/38

Quote from Scawen :

Eric has sent me a daytime version of the same South City view (attached).

Thanks

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/37

Quote from RacingSOUL :

Btw, has anyone been able to make LFS work with full motion rigs?

Several, LFS has had support for a very long time and as I understand it, some major studios have even borrowed LFS OutSim protocol.

Quote from Eclipsed :

17 years - if I can read from version history correctly,South city was released 17. july 2003 (ver 0.3A) while seems the current state of South City has been released 25. june 2005 (ver 0.5P).
People around here correct me if I wrote something wrong.

There was another South City refresh since 2005 (added a couple of new configs as well iirc), but I forget exactly when.

Edit: Test patches started Dec 2007

Last edited by Degats, Sat, 20 Aug 2022 16:52.

Updated the "before" South City overview image using a modified shader to remove the haze (thanks Martin)

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/05

Same link, you may need to ctrl+f5 to see it if you've opened it before

Have fun, I think I've got them paired properly

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/01
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/02
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/03
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/04
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/05
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/06
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/07
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/08

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/09
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/10
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/11
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/12
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/13
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/14
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/15
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/16

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/17
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/18
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/19
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/20
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/21
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/22
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/23
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/24

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/25
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/26
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/27
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/28
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/29
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/30
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/31
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/32

https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/33
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/34
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/35
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/36

Bonus:
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/37 (same view as 05)
https://imx.tc-g.uk/20th/38 (SO top down)

Last edited by Degats, Sun, 21 Aug 2022 22:30.

Quote from Flotch :

Now the question is : where is @Degats for the comparison screenshots of South City ?

Been having some trouble with this batch, the processing order was a bit funky so I needed to manually sort them and I'd managed to break my screenshot code. Hopefully uploading shortly

Update for #8 if he notices in time

Last edited by Degats, Sun, 6 Feb 2022 15:52.

LFSW Name: Degats
In-game name: SBTV Elmo
Full team name: Sim Broadcasts

Quote from Scawen :

3) Are there actually any four wheel drive EVs in reality that use a single motor and a central diff? It sounds far better to have two motors (a separate one at front and rear). Less drive train loss, and the ability to control torque to front and rear in a better way. If, as seems reasonable, the LFS version (single motor driving four wheels) doesn't even exist in reality, or is extremely rare, then it seems there is even less point in coding a 'realistic' regen braking for a drive arrangement that is itself unrealistic.

Only some conversions as far as I know. OEMs use 2 or more motors because it's simpler and a front to rear transmission takes up valuable battery space.

Quote from Scawen :

Is it not possible to set deadzones using the controller's software? I seem to have a vague memory of this from the past.

Depends entirely on the controller. Some software has it, some don't, some don't have software at all (XBox controllers being the highest profile), some old controllers' software won't run any more but generic drivers still allow them to be used.

Skin kit (for v002)

This was mentioned a while back, but was there any further thought on separating unlocks between the editor and LFS? People who use the modeller will be burning through twice as many unlocks now.

Quote from [OD :

Jardim;1976519"]Would it be possible to give this a no lightbar option as well so i can use it on TC as civilian? thanks

Ah, I forgot to add that config when I updated the body. Done

Quote from Gutholz :

Thanks gu3st and Flame.
For 3h_enf_cars I did not find a suitable verbatim translation that fits the character limit.
So I went with "Autos aussortieren" ("sort cars out")

Maybe "Autos aufräumen"? (cleanup rather than sort)

Quote from Gutholz :

When making skins, I always used wireframes together with the info from this thread: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/64975-The-Stretching-of-Skins

Be careful with the values in that thread, several - especially in the first post - are quite wrong. Some were corrected in text some posts later.

I have to agree that having the numbers auto-generated would be nice, however how useful they are does also depend on the angle of the specific body panels vs the map's projection. It would give a good guide to the roughly perpendicular ones though.
A value *per polygon* would be most accurate, but that's probably not practical

Quote from Scawen :

If you use the reflected points function then you should only need a single mapping for the two sides. In that case you use a main cutout and an opposite cutout, in the same mapping. This is the case for all the official cars.

If you are not using reflected triangles then you could type in the values and it should be quite simple to replicate them on one side or the other.

Or you can copy the drag box from one side then paste the drag box and adjust the mapping.

You can also link side mappings to top mappings, etc.

So, yes, there are various ways to either not need multiple mappings, or make mappings match each other. There shouldn't be any need for a lot of messing around. You should only need to get one of them right and the other one will be an exact copy of it.

Just to add, (not that I've tested this) even if you're not using reflected triangles I think you should be able to copy the mapping and the cutout, change the new mapping to the new cutout, then move the new cutout position to immediately below the previous one on the skin page.

Not entirely sure how flipping the mapping for the sides works in the various mirrored/not mirrored situations, but you should at the very least be able to rotate the new mapping's heading (h) through 180 degrees.

Edit:
The tricky thing with the cutout/mapping combination is getting them the same aspect ratio to avoid stretching in the skin file. As far as I know, this *does* require fiddling with values and doing calculations. Nearly all the default LFS skins are are wrong aspect; most of them are different on the front/back vs the sides (though the top and sides are usually the same).

Last edited by Degats, Tue, 14 Dec 2021 01:10.

Hard to find proper info, but it should be at least one full turn lock to lock, probably more.