I had a website with articles (in Russian) on PHP programming, called "PHP in details" with URL "detail.phpclub.ru", so everyone started calling me by the first part of the URL, and I decided not to resist and started using this name. I think, it looks like a silly nickname in English It's 3 years since I handed over the project to other people, and maybe if I were to register now I'd have invented something more creative like Dettaglio

Last edited by detail, Thu 19 Oct 2006, 07:34.

Problems with translation strings: "Replay not recorded" can be the same in English for 2 meanings ("replay hasn't been recorded" and "replay is not being recorded now"). In other languages, Russian in particular, it must be said with 2 distinct phrases. So we need one more string.

Minor error fix

[ EDIT by Scawen : thanks, I've put it in my U23 folder ]

Last edited by Scawen, Thu 19 Oct 2006, 12:33.

Quote from 510N3D :

nice track but its not the perfect oval imho. Tally or Dega is what we need and then a short oval.

IMO, Kyoto oval is almost the same big and quick as Talladega. We need just a short oval.

Watched an IRL race on TV recently. Oh, that's bloody boring! The same problem: only 1 good raceline. If someone manages to get left or right of another car, they go that way 10 laps. The third car rambles behind them with no chance to pass. No slip-streaming like FO8@KY1, no bumpdrafting, just formation flying ...and I'm not an oval basher, I love FZ5@KY1(R)!

Quote from [RCG]Boosted :

the only thing what lil "sucks" on ror is , that u need a real good cpu.
i dont. obviously.
athlon xp 2600+ and i get about 17 - 35 frames

I have XP 2600+ too. Will try it today later....

I'm going to download RoR tomorrow. Looks promising both in the sence of playing myself and in the sense of development. Reminds the good things of Hard Truck II and 1nsane. It only lacks Kamaz trucks

Quote from seggons :

Detail, how did you get round the rule?



Sorrys to be a spoil sport and all that.

Besides the mod only worsens the characteristics. You can't make a quicker lap in any of these cars at any track. If someone goes online, he risks a ban for too high speed on the straights, though he won't have any advantage on the entire lap.

BTW, I think, it's possible to make a PHP app. to check the uploaded hotlaps. Run LFS with InSim opened, then run the replay at 32x speed and delete the hotlap if there would be an OOS error.

Last edited by detail, Mon 25 Sep 2006, 19:34.

Quote from mrodgers :

Er, I keep reading everywhere about Nascar and having no downforce on their cars. Nascar cars have downforce. [skip]

And you should use the FXO body rather than the RB4. That would look more like stock car racing.

Yep, I know that NASCAR vehicles are very different, and that's why I've written the keyword: "loosely resembling".

As for setups, I've figured out that the most important thing for these terrible open wheellers is tyre pressure. Max pressure potentially gives more speed, but it makes them undrivable. Over/understeer regulations distribute tyres heating.

The file swap mentioned here by [RCG]Boosted has been developed further: here is a sketch of a mod. I think, I'll make a separate executable when I install the necessary software (searching for a standalone C++ compiler for WinXP).

It makes
1) something loosely resembling a NASCAR vehicle: XRR with RB4 body, without downforce.

2) something resembling classic F1 cars (like those in GPL):
FO8 without downforce with MRT5 body (can do 380 km/h)
BF1 in the same style (440 km/h :tilt

Think again: NO DOWNFORCE, very hard to drive on non-oval tracks.

Unpack this file into your LFS folder. There are two .bat files which handle files in data\veh folder. Backup that folder to be safe.

Run CARS.bat. It renames some .vob files in data/veh, runs LFS, and when you exit LFS, it rolls the files back. If your system crashed or you closed the batch occasionally, just run rollback.bat.

WARNING! You may spoil your normal setups if you modify them under this mod. Make new setups and adjust them so that modified cars were drivable.

Last edited by detail, Thu 14 Sep 2006, 20:45.

Here is a sketch of a mod. XR GTR => NASCAR (XRR skins look quite normally), MRT5 body => BF1 & FO8.

Last edited by detail, Fri 15 Sep 2006, 18:12.

Interesting to try F1 without downforce. It can do 360 km/h at BL1

Thanks for a nice idea.

Here is my tuned Supra overtaking ordinary Supras
http://rapidshare.de/files/33015187/Supra.avi.html

BTW, we can try NASCAR now!!! WOOOT!!! Any GTR car with RB4 body.

I watched F1 since 92 till 2003, and never was Schumi's fan. I wish he were a real man and after retiring from F1 came to DTM or FIA GT. There we'd see what he's worth. I know he won't.

Schneider is 42, is aimed to win 4th title and NOT going to leave after that. Kristensen is 39, you know how many Le Mans titles he has. I don't think he quits either. Veterans aren't getting older.

Indeed, I agree with the idea that Schumacher could make these years legendary like late 80s, had he accepted a strong teammate. Good point, J.B.!

Last edited by detail, Thu 7 Sep 2006, 18:40.

Oh, yes, forgot about that. My minimum sleep setting is 1, but I haven't noticed any difference when changing it.

Athlon XP 2600 (don't remember the "name", it was the last version of 2600), GeForce FX5200 128mb/128b.

I've also noted a significant FPS increase (in my usual settings 72 => 120 fps) after I changed view from [incar] to [custom]/[nothing].

Last edited by detail, Wed 6 Sep 2006, 20:36.

Driving alone in single player I can get 125 fps if "limit framerate" is [off]. But if I set limit to 100 fps, LFS makes only 92. Set limit to 90 fps, and get 84, and so on downto 50 fps when the limit and the result meet.

Is it just fps limiter that limits the performance more? Or, maybe, when the limiter is [on], some action additioally consumes GPU/CPU resourses?

I support the idea of starting with warm tyres on track for hotlapping. It shouldn't be a timewaste. On the contrary, practice session is better to start from pits. Nobody starts it from the starting grid on the straight.

The picture is from my spring trip to Omsk city. Their downtown is damn beautiful.

Quote from z3r0c00l :

Anyone who oval's the BF1, or drives it all for that matter should check out Yamakawa's awesome new LFS mod:

http://www.k5.dion.ne.jp/~yama-p/ESM_002b.zip


BF1 is so much better because of this ap.

5MB download... What is it?

Looks nice, but placing barriers to separate lanes is discussable. Pro: robbers can make U-turns safely, the cops will need to do that too. Con: people need to learn themselves to drive in proper lane.

Here are updated descriptions of driving lessons.

Last edited by detail, Mon 4 Sep 2006, 10:23.

Oval rocks, we've figured it out at the race this sunday. FZ50 @ KY1R. Porschari is the only car that has to brake on Ky1. This combination, among ovals, is the most requiring.

Replays and stats
(qual1 and qual2 are 2 parts of the same qualification. the 1st part was made when everyone did their laps. Then came I (being late) and made my lap)

We had a lot of fun. I think, it could have been a close race if everyone were prepared and had proper setups. We had never made "serious" races on oval before, but we just came with open minds and enjoyed it. Watching "NASCAR Back in the day" makes me sleep, but driving on oval among fellows is quite interesting experience.

A suggestion: translatable lessons names, for example as the first part of lesson .txt file. It can be done with translation strings in the language file too, but then it would need to be flexible to handle a different order of words.

Quote from filur :

I've got pit exit penalty going on all tracks in my insim stuffs by simply grabbing a clients current x/y and testing if they're currently inside a predefined 2d polygon. My WYSIWYG polygon editor is LFS itself.

Good news!

How do you define a polygon? Do you split it into triangles?

Quote from filur :

Some finish lines can be crossed inside the pitlane/before actually correctly leaving the pits.

I know. But the next tick the app will notice that the car is inside pits and will rise that flag again. Dropping flags at splits would prevent punishment for occasional crossing, for example, if someone spinned in the beginning of the lap and crossed the line, he can safely enter pits the same lap.

Last edited by detail, Tue 29 Aug 2006, 10:21.

An idea for a pitlane exit (and enter) AI steward. I post it here, because it contains more technical details than general discussion. Besides, there are many other tools and marshals, so I think it's better for their authors to make this feature, than for me to start another narrow-purpose InSim tool.

Everybody has seen the oval tracks on public hosts: the pit entrance and exit lanes are separated with barriers along the turns, because few drivers follow the marks. Usually a driver joins and at the pits' exit goes straight into the racing line.

The similar, though not that dangerous things may take place on the other tracks.

The idea is to punish those drivers. For usual races, drive-through penalty would be enough. Also there is a quite typical case: a noob joins a host during a race at oval and exits straightforward to the racing line. In this case, it would be safer to make him spectate instantly.

Forcing to spectate can also be applied to those who use the known bug wiyh Kyoto ring pits, which allows resetting from pits on the racing line.

How I'd make the app work

In each case there are two actions together: entering or exiting pits and crossing the line. Line crossing takes place on the same lap with entry/exit. So, for each player we keep an array of data:

1) XY(-1) coordinates
2) XY(-2) coordinates
3) "crossed the line" flag = 1
4) "exited pits" flag = 2
5) "entered pits" flag = 4
6) "joined race right this moment" flag (i.e. the player joined the race or shift+s-ed and hasn't yet left the pitlane) = 8
7) "abnormally accelerated" (to catch car reset) = 16

When a driver enters pit lane, the program sets the player's corresponding flag to "1", and the same for exiting pits. When the driver crosses the separating line, that flag is set to "1". If someone has joined the race (IS_NPL packet received), he also "gets" the flag 6). When crossing a splint or finish line (IS_LAP, IS_SPX packets), all flags are set to 0.

If someone exits pits and crosses the line, we'll have a set of flags: 1 + 2 = 3 (see the list above). If someone enters pitlane crossing a line, it will be 1 + 4 = 5. If someone joins the race and exits from pits, he will have 2 + 8, and if he crosses the line, he will have 2 + 8 + 1 = 11. Kyoto ring pitlane trick: 1 + 2 + 16 (the separating line should continue along the pit lane).

And so on. Simple binary operations. If someone gets a special combination, he is punished. As you see, entering pits may be distinguished from exiting, and punished in a different way, if one cares.

So, the algorythm is the following:

1. get packet of data
2. process it: calculate coordinates, check some conditions and set flags
3. check flags and set punishments to those having specific combinations

Defining the line and pits if needed

I suppose, it should be a set of vectors:

[1: [x1][y1][x2][y2]]
[2: [x1][y1][x2][y2]]
[3: [x1][y1][x2][y2]]
...

that would draw the line. It should be, of course, unique for each track configuration.

Crossing the line basically means that car's movement line crosses this line. We have 2 straights, each set by 2 points and check if they cross and where is the crossing (one point of each straight would be 0, another 1, and we check if the crossing is in this range for each straight).

Acceleration checking is also simple:

speed vector: (vx(t), vy(t)) = (x(t) - x(t-1), y(t) - y(t-1))

acceleration vector: (ax(t), ay(t)) = (vx(t) - vx(t-1), vy(t) - vy(t-1)) = (x(t) - 2x(t-1) + x(t-2), y(t) - 2y(t-1) + y(t-2)).

I haven't found any packet to report pits exiting and entering when driving. So, if pits are needed to be defined, they can be made as set of triangles. Each triangle should have apexes coords and normal vectors per each side (directed inside of the triangle).

(coords of car) - (coords of an apex) will give a vector of car's relative position. Scalar product is positive (not negative) if the car is to the inside of this triangle side. The same for all 3 sides. If all the scalar products for each normal vectors are positive, the point is inside of the triangle.

Another idea: SMX track co-ordinates operating utility

An application that would draw a track and let the user place points and vectors in WYSIWYG mode and give the necessary information:

For a single point:
XY co-ordinates, Z coord of the ground in the place

For 2 points:
1) vector between the 2 points
2) straight line equation coefficients3
3) normal vector to the left and to the right (drawing the normal vector on the map)

For 3 points (triangle):
1) size, square, perimeter, angles
2) normal vectors

For 3 points (angle mode):
1) degrees, radians
2) cosine, sine, tangent and so on
3) bisector vector

Well, maybe even without the latter, but with a possibility to export the values (or just open/save).

P.S. Going to sleep right now. If illustrations are needed, ask me, I'll make them.

Last edited by detail, Mon 28 Aug 2006, 21:17.

There is a problem which is related to all the translation.

When loading a track for a replay, in the end LFS writes "FINISHED" (3a_fnshload) (meaning "finished loading the new track"). I've noticed that after a change of language, LFS shows this string from the previous tranlsation.

Way to reproduce: select one language, open a replay so that LFS would need to load a new track. Let it load and then go back to entry screen, change language in the options and open the same replay. You may select another language and load the same replay once again, and again see that string from the first language.