Quote from Gutholz :

How does skinning mod cars even work? Can LFS-Viewer open them?

No, the LFS Viewer uses the old CMX file format which is not compatible with the editor. The CMX exporter was very complicated code mixed in with the car drawing code and the tyre drawing system. It was not easy to maintain the exporter. Scawen has always been a big supporter of LFS skinning and a new solution is required going forward.

Quote from manran :

Thank you for your valuable input. I know the sim universe a bit and what are the limitations. I play against AI on a daily basis alternatively with AC,ACC,RF2,AMS2,RF2 and defintely don't get rammed in every single session like in LFS. Time on time but not everytime. It's so obvious that I ended up writing here.

I'm glad that you understand the truth in my statement. I don't get rammed every time in any sim either, including LFS. They all suffer the same issues to varying degrees and none of them do a good job of AI and probably never will.

Quote from manran :

I think if it's a full online game, AI race mode and AI drivers should be removed from the game to avoid misconception.

There can hardly be any misconception since every single race sim ever made has terrible AI - and this is not so surprising since it is very difficult (perhaps impossible) to make AI act truly like human drivers. For sure AI is something that could be improved, but developers of online race sims don't see this as a high priority. Developers of arcade racing games DO see it as a priority, but even in that case you have AI that use 'rubber-banding' to catch up unrealistically, and their 'realistic' overtaking and blocking moves become very predictable in a short time.

I'm not sure if it is still the case with LFS, but the AI drivers used to get better the more you trained them. It was possible to train some a lot and some not so much to create a greater spread of lap times and skills. It is still possible to use unique setups for the AI which would be another way of creating different performance levels.

As for AI drivers running into you or pushing you off the track, this is not something that has been solved to a satisfying degree by any good sim. I always thought that making the AI keep a bigger distance from any other car would help to solve it, but seemingly it isn't as simple as that or it would have been solved by now. Especially with online play, the fractions of a second where a collision could be avoided by an AI car could be lost simply through latency. We can probably look forward to better AI in the future, but how realistically AI can race may be pie in the sky stuff.

Quote from FlyingStudios :

I have played a few racing games in the past, but for some reason (even though I get started) my car seems to go so much slower than the others. Shifting from gear 1 to gear 6 takes like 7 seconds, however, my car is slow.

What type of controller are you using?
Which car are you driving? (pit limiter)

Last edited by Gunn, Sat, 11 Dec 2021 01:00.

Quote from Scawen :

I have a question, should both the black wireframe on white background, and the white wireframe on black background, both be available? Or is one of them definitely better and so I shouldn't even have the function for the other one?

That's one of those things for which there is no perfect solution, unfortunately. I don't think one will be better than the other. They each show good contrast, so I want to say it doesn't matter which you choose - though for some reason the black frame on white background seems to appeal more to me. Not sure why.

Thanks for trying the AA alternative.

Quote from Scawen :

Well the thing about supersampling is you could overwrite it 100 times with the same line and it would still look exactly the same as if you drew the line only once. That's because the original image is generated without antialiasing - the antialiasing only takes place as a resize of the completed image. Compared with multisampling which changes the result a little each time an edge is added in the same place. It's worth a quick go if I have half an hour spare.

I understand it isn't a high priority and I appreciate the consideration you are giving to this topic.
If you do get around to playing with it, I'd be keen to test it in Corel if you could generate a WMF for this purpose.

Thanks for your continued work on our favorite sim.

Quote from Scawen :

I see. This may be because the wireframes we generate by default (the easy way) are simply triangles drawn in wireframe mode. At most of the internal edges there are two triangles sharing each edge, so each edge gets drawn twice. At the outer edges of the visible object you may only see one triangle (as the other triangle sharing the edge is facing away) so those edges may look cleaner.

I can think of one solution for this. Instead of rendering the wireframe with MSAA, the wireframe could be rendered at 4 times the size (double width and height) with no antialiasing at all then reduced to the required size. So that would be supersampling instead of MSAA and each edge would look the same regardless of how many triangles shared the edge. Though they might look a bit too fine in this case.

I have had this issue in other games, so it isn't unique to just LFS, but I think you are right about the triangle theory. Often the outer edges of a mapping only have two stacked wires, while most of the inside ones have four. Never (pretty much never) is there just one.
My starting resolution for a freshly-exported wireframe is something like 65000 pixels (metafile), so it is pretty big. I resize it down to 2048 so I can work without losing my mind. I also convert the line thickness to the thinnest I can (0.004 points). I think the same issue would occur even if you used a different method of AA, but I'm certainly no expert in this regard.

**EDIT: as for the possibility in future of being able to export the wireframe - I would prefer a format which can be imported into my software as the final product needs to be vector with no background so that I can include it in a PSD skin kit. I don't use Photoshop myself but I make these kits in that format for others, as PSD is a very common format in most graphics software these days. The kits include everything you need in layers, and a wireframe with no background means you can overlay the wireframe and switch it on and off as you work on your skin. The flattened skin templates in LFS are useful for basic skinning, but for precision and high quality they are not so suitable.

I hope this helps.

Last edited by Gunn, Wed, 8 Dec 2021 10:50.

Here is a better representation. The top image has extra wires, but the bottom one has had several removed. You can see the difference in clarity. Keep in mind that this is a screenshot using vector software. In raster software the jaggedness is much more pronounced. In a JPG wireframe the difference is even more pronounced.

Quote from Scawen :

By shadow image, I assume you mean the image I have called 'black and white' skin? Or... are you talking about faked ambient shadows, such as below mirrors, etc.

Yes the default skin image.

Quote from Scawen :

Do you mean that you would prefer to have antialiasing disabled? So each line looks a bit like like a series of steps if you zoom in on it? Like the top line in this image?
https://jpgraph.net/download/manuals/chunkhtml/images/aalias_line.jpg

When you export the wireframe you are actually exporting several versions of it stacked on top of each other. This seems to be the case no matter which software exports the wireframe and nobody has been able to tell me why it happens.
Each individual 'wire' is actually several wires stacked on top of each other. By removing all but one of each stacked wire you end up with a very clean wireframe without the jaggedness. The only way I know to do this is to export the wireframe in a format compatible with vector software, then individually removing the extra stacked wires.

If you examine the wireframe on the left you will notice that the centre line is thicker than the one on the right. It is thicker because it is actually two lines stacked on top of each other. Originally it was four lines and looked even thicker. With angled lines the affect is even more noticeable. The image on the right has had these extra lines removed so that only one remains.

For the Master Skinnerz kits I made all the black masks 'by hand'. You can go pretty close to the wireframe without bleeding, at least within a few pixels.

You might also notice that your generated wireframes are a bit 'dirty'. By this I mean that each line actually is several lines stacked on top of each other. When creating the Master Skinnerz kits I manually edited the extra lines out so that the wireframe is 'clean'. As you can imagine, this takes a while to select each individual extra line and delete them one by one (see explanation further below).

Back in the day when I started making the kits I discussed this problem with Eric, and as I recall there is no easy solution (or there wasn't back then). other people who have produced wireframes in the past have the same issue.

I have a unique piece of software (made by Andylec) that extracts the wireframe directly from the CMX files and exports them as a metafile (either WMF or EMF).
I then load this metafile into Corel Draw so that I can edit the wireframe to get the 'clean' result. Being a vector file I can resize it to any resolution without loss of quality. This method produces the best results.

So for me at least, the best thing I could have is a way to produce a metafile from your new mesh format. That way I can continue to produce high quality kits. I realise this isn't going to be a popular request, but it is the only way I know how to get the best result for the skin kits.

As for the shadow image; when I first produced the earlier skin kits I didn't include the shadow layer, but pretty soon I realised that a lot of people wanted it, so from then on made all the kits with the shadow layer.

Last edited by Gunn, Wed, 8 Dec 2021 05:53.

I concur with the above two posts. It is probably best to keep such content in the same place as the mod on the forum.

Here are some officially-released older versions:

https://www.lfs.net/archive

That's really quite good! Well done.

Quote from Rallyer_Rac :

Well, I was trying to buy the game with my national debit card (I'm from Brazil) and I couldn't make the purchase, is there any way I can do that without needing a credit card, or an international one? I only have a national debit card and a pay pal account

Welcome. The LFS store has a PayPal option, and that should work for you.

Is your skin a JPG image?

Looks great. But please post smaller images next time.

Quote from Scawen :

It's unlikely that any existing object converters can load our SRE files. I've never published the format as they are in no way intended for other software to read. Plus the format has recently changed, so even existing VOB readers won't be able to read our files.

The only sensible way I know of to get objects out of LFS into other programs, would be if I made a OBJ exporter.

Thanks for the info.

I have a special app to convert CMX files to EMF or WMF which I use to extract the wireframes to make skin kits. I'm not sure I will be able to do that with your new files, however.

You could try 3D Object Converter. Pretty sure there is a demo version available online. Not sure if it will work for you, but may be worth a try.

I am waiting on clarification of this issue. Thanks for your patience.

Quote from Tazka :

You did all the pro kits? Thank you sir. They have been very helpful for the last 15 years.

Comments like yours are the best reward for my hard work and patience. Thank You, it means a lot to me that I invested my time into something that has been useful for so many years.

Hi, and welcome to LFS. You will need to purchase an LFS license to use the skin upload feature on LFS World.

From the FAQ:

Quote :

If you have bought any LFS license then you can upload your own skins to the LFS World website.
When you then wear these skins on your cars when you drive online, other people (including demo racers) will be able to automatically download your skin.

Quote from kagurazakayukari :

It is possible to know the provider by checking ip address from each hop. I recommend using BestTrace as it can shows each hop provided by whom automatically.

Sure, but that won't change anything.

Quote from kagurazakayukari :

Maybe you can do a traceroute to see the routing. I also seen AS6453 have access to Sydney.

I did a Traceroute the other day expecting the hops to go up the east coast through PNG and Micronesia, but instead it goes to Sydney, then Melbourne, then across to Perth, then up to Singapore, then Japan. It's about eight hops. When I ping through my VPN (which is in Sydney) there is an added hop between Singapore and Tokyo via Hong Kong for some strange reason, but I wouldn't be gaming through the VPN anyway. The round trip to Tokyo and back via the Eastern route would be about 20,000KM, the Western route I have to use is much longer than that.

I've played LFS on Japanese servers before and it wasn't great, almost as slow as connecting to a USA server.
To a Sydney server I get about 40, and 60 to Melbourne, 90-ish for NZ. These are all OK for racing with NZ being only just OK. I'm about 1000KM North of Sydney and my packets have to go there before they go anywhere it seems. I don't think I'll be racing on a Japanese server because when players join the server or teleport to the pits it is enough to throw you off the track if you are cornering at the time. I've done most of my racing on US (200-260) and European (300-350) servers over the years and the experience has always been frustrating.

Quote from CarlosSanchez43 :

Sorry about that

No worries

Welcome to LFS.