Quote from Qurpiz :

But did you really have to make a new thread about it?

when i got my license i was very excited too it makes you desire to tell it everyone

PS welcome wheelnut

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

Yeh,
a bit clean but could be used fopr other tracks which are supposed to have more clean track.

There so many updates for LFS in hi-res or better looking what about to make some project(with website) where we create a team working on this and discussing the updates.sharing the files we find for replacing the orginal textures and then came out with something more final.

So many updates and I am loosing it what could I use or not and what is good looking.

Could you think about this idea guys?

your idea maybe good, but it seems that everyone (except you) is trying to upscale original textures with some filters and imho it is not worth at all...as i said in first becky's thread it was good to understand what an higher resolution texture may bring, but it's not the way to go imho.

the following picture is one of my very first attempts with gimp (very unusable for texturing) and while it is more realistic asphalt it is still unacceptable to me...if a project should start it has to aim at very high quality, such as your test or similar to the nkpro (nurburgring) screenshot posted before in this thread.

if i can borrow the web developer workstation at work i can use photoshop and maybe i will be able to do something better, but obviously i cannot spend much time on it.

maybe if we try to continue make tests, give opinions etc. we may share different experiences and resources in order to converge to something good.

imho creating realistic asphalt from scratch is not so much difficult, what is important is to learn (i'm asking help to more expert photoshoppers ) how to reproduce asphalt imperfections, broken sections etc. to make it more real, for instance what is really great in your texture, Devil, is the imperfections of tarmac that makes the texture fell so realistic (even if maybe a bt excessive)

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

Just a test.Texture is 2048*2048.Affect on FPS is 0%.

amazing!!! i also did few tests on aston (because it's the most recently updated) creating new textures from scratch (less than a minute with the crappy gimp) mostly at 1024*1024, i had quite good results: mostly the side near the white line was much better, the center of track was only slightly better than originals....but guy you clearly spent some time to do that and let me say you achieved a very professional result especially for the "consumed effect" of the white lines

even i concluded that the FPS is affected for 0% (even at 2048) i tried also at work with a crappy compaq with very crappy graphic card (i think it's the crappiest in the whole world )

to be honest i have to say that Eric did a masterpiece work for optimization -> it's not so easy to achieve a better result at 1024 compared with 512 eric's textures, so again here we are not blaming lfs in any way, we only hope to have the possibility to get out the most from lfs for PC's that can stand more resolution.

Devil, let me make my complients again, i hope you will continue with this amazing work

Quote from Scawen :

I have no idea about that.

Personally I wouldn't be making LFS write to the registry. My job would be, if possible, to make LFS run when passed a spr or mpr filename as a parameter. Maybe it comes in like a command line parameter? I haven't even looked into it, never done something like that, so I don't know.

I think you can manually set up file associations, and hopefully that's not too hard.

There's my vague thoughts on the matter.

i always liked very much your approach to don't touch the system (zip file, no interaction with registry) and i really hope lfs remains as it is.

accepting spr/mpr filenames as command line paramenters and NO file associations is the best, btw for those who wan i already have batch scripts that add or remove file associations in the cleanest way -> just a double click on two files: "set_lfs_associations.bat" and "remove_lfs_associations.bat" or as others suggested using the windows explorer interface to set associations, but i reaaly hope lfs will not start interacting with registry...also as it is now linux users can run lfs, but if it becomes more windows dependent, i think also linux compatibility will cease.

just my 2 cents

Quote from Shotglass :

hmmm auto spectate for laptimes higher than say a minute (depending on the length of the track of course) above the average of the other players might be a solution

...i was going to say "wow! that's a smart idea!" but there is a big BUT: if i am at the middle of a race and an accidents happens or i blow a tire, i need to go very slow to the pits...you know i'm very stubborn :P i always want to finish races (almost always), many times a crappy race of mine ruined by accidents or wreckers ended with me at podium -> u'll never know how a race could end

Quote from Fordman :

I feel for ya Tiger, and Welcome Back ( I think ). What we need is for all server admins is to instigate the "Auto Spectate if Driving wrong way " option through the server options. Maybe this is a more feesable option to begin with.

If the "idiots" cannot go the wrong way, then maybe they might think, "damn this going around the right way is kinda fun" Its easier to avoid people going the right way than it is going the wrong way?

Maybe this is a good option?

Whats your thoughts on this Guys & Girls

surely the autospectate on wrong way is a must (better than the autodisconnect imho), also if possible it would be nice to have a server message that warns for "campers" like it was on unreal tournament (a friend of mine's idea )

Quote from Execution Style :

Quote from Honey :

to me a solution could be a server based crash recording (maximum 10 or 20 seconds) in mpr format wich the server will upload directly to lfs master server. such thing will record usernames involved in car by car contacts and scores a negative point for each of that player. crash record and report will be triggered either by "high speed" crashes automatically or by at least 3 users voting for "crash report".

I would have loved an option like this a week or so ago.. I was home for lunch and a 5 lap race on Aston North before heading back to work. Right at the end of the race some ass parked on the verge drove in front of me just as I was coming up the backstretch hunting down 3rd place.

to me this is the only way, because bans are not reliable: too many times i saw the innocent victim being banned instead of the crasher, some times i saw the wrecker making his team mates join the server to do a ban vote -> the worst thing ever...

also the uploading of the crash replay will keep into the lfs database the hystory of accidents of every user so that devs or server admins may decide to ban for a very long time the irriducible worst wreckers...

i agree the problem of wreckers on S2 licensed servers is going every day worse since months.

i mean real wreckers, not "noobs" a noob is slow, have a crappy setup, can't control his car, but don't rush into corner at full speed every time (especially at t1), don't drive in the wrong way, don't do impossible manouvers to block your perfectly prepared pass and very far from him, don't insult you when he just rammed into you, don't await to enter the track (from either a off-road or pit exit) just the exact moment that someone is passing and at full speed obviously.

to me a solution could be a server based crash recording (maximum 10 or 20 seconds) in mpr format wich the server will upload directly to lfs master server. such thing will record usernames involved in car by car contacts and scores a negative point for each of that player. crash record and report will be triggered either by "high speed" crashes automatically or by at least 3 users voting for "crash report".

i know negative points will be given also to innocent people, but here's th solution: the master server keeps updated the statistic distribution of users crashes and flags as a "dirty racers" those who have a number of crashes greater than the standard deviation of the crashes distribution and "clean racers" those who have less.
this is a smart (imho) way to distinguish innocent victims from active wreckers or simply "very guilty" people.
also every 3 complete races with at least 5 racers that are completed without any car to car crash, the master server delete one negative point from the user, this will guarrantee the possibility of redemption for bad or unluck people.

Last edited by Honey, Thu 18 May 2006, 16:19.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I wouldn't say that making fresh 2048x2048 textures is exactly 'almost no time'...

i don't know of any graphic artist that work directly on low-res textures...surely eric have hi-res textures as source.

Quote from wheeler :

Anyone saw the screens of Nordschleife in nKpro already? The textures look amazing and it's not these are very hires... just add some effects (bumpmapping) and to me it looks fantastic

yep nkpro looks damn nice...but it's mainly because of texture resolution and graphic detail, you can see it on crappy games like nfsumw and toca: adding effects the asphalt looks more realistic but you can still see the crappy low res textures behind those effects.

adding graphic effects will require devs to do some work, pack hi-res textures as an additional download will require them almost no time, i see no reason for them to not give it to us, it will also can be an advertisement itself as long as reviewers can test lfs at its best.

Quote from Becky Rose :

High Quality Texture Pack for Fern Bay, this is a bit of an experiment and i've taken pains not to spoil the original texture style of the game - sadly that means i've not made full use of the extra detail available, but it's either that or a lot more work totally retexturing the track.

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=129376#post129376

as i said in the other thread too, your work proved to be better and with zero impact on performance, now it makes evident that hi-res textures are a must imho actually the problem is not much the texture size bui rather the image detail...but the latter of course would mean real and hard work by Eric.

even with the detail "trick" the textures look much better than the originals.
making the comparison make more evident the "huge" lack of detail of the originals.
Also the performance impact was neither a fps...in other words: none!

even if adding detail artificially isn't the right way (Eric surely have the "masters" at much higher res), it proved to be better than originals...thanks for the work

Quote from ORION :

Show me a game that uses 4 times the texure res of LFS, thoughout, and with the same amount of textures.
NO WAI :P

DX10 games like Crysis dont count btw

All the games use Detail Textures to circumvent this problem.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/DetailTexture

as far i know Quake 4 at highest settigns uses more than 500 MB of textures wich is 20 times more than LFS...

very true about the causes, but i hope devs will someday use the AI engine to drive when there are more than 100ms between packets for cars nearby...that will greeatly smooth things imho

i will be really happy if a Hi-Res Pack would be available for separate download.
since eric as every graphic artist surely have the original textures at much higher resolution, so why don't let us push our PCs to use all the power they have?

i agree that the official LFS must be optimized for the wider audience, but an unsupported hi-res pack, will make many users very happy.

i have always at least 130 fps in lfs as many others...and that's a waste!

also such hi-res pack would require very little work, only a resizing script i guess, so less than a day...so i really hope we can have it

i would like to have ANY texture at high res, then everyone of us can choose wich texture to update...

Quote from Gunn :

What has that got to do with the quote you just posted? Taller tyres are more prone to flex, so what's your point actually?

he meant that while the fact that sidewall flex is very true, the sidewall stretching is very false.

in real life stretching is very limited and a sim model could neglect the "tire stretching" and still being very very accurate.

the other thing that is wrong imho is the "tire folding" effect wich makes teh central part of the tire to fold innerwise and this is not clear if it's due to because of the wrong "tire stretching" alone or is also due to the excessive amount of modeling of sidewall load effect.

to answer to danowat: to me is very clear that the sidewall stretching affects phisics, because if you put very low pressure the car behaves like if you were lowering the roll bars value.

another thing i would say is that comparing with previous patch P, this problem seems to be already there but the stretching effect is much much less, the car that seemed most affected in patch P is the xfr.

i made the conlcusion, also reading between the lines of the autosimsport interview, that scawen knew he had to tune longitudinal and lateral grip and (imho) he tuned the laterla grip by increasing the sidewall stretch...but of course this is only a speculation of mine...

PS i always want to remark that i think that lfs is always the best sim with the best phisics and the latest patch was overall a huge improvement, but this do not mean we have to shut up and not trying to give the much as feeedback as possible to help devs make lfs everyday more close to perfection

Last edited by Honey, Sat 13 May 2006, 14:18.

Quote from Greboth :

Ive had this happen once, thought it was my pedals though guess not. I clipped the tyres coming out of the blackwood chincane just after first corner. I thought id run out of fuel but was first lap, lifted, pressed again and i went.
is weird

to me everything was unsuccesful only pitting made things go normal.

did you lifted pedal before stopping?

i think the most appropriate thing to say is "smile and wave...just smile and wave..."

it is sad when work screw up our lifes making impossible to enjoy our free time how we want...i sympathize with you.

btw be happy! ...surely you will come back before S2 goes final

it happened to me two times. it was once after a crash (dont remember where, maybe blackwood) and once after going out the first corner at westhill, my car stayed stuck into the ground (either on green at westhill and either on tarmac) and surely aren't my pedals...because i use mouse+keyboard

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

sometimes you might be suprised there is no single entry in process list or autorun but the vir,trojan or whatsoever is in your system.

just to be clear "process explorer" and "autoruns" from sysinternals shows the very hidden things and not the classical keys in registry or task manager list...you can never understand how deep those apps are until you try.

maybe you can try rootkit revealer from sysinternals.com it's free and may help to find if a rootkit is installed (i forget that starforce too is a malevolous rootkit), unfortunately interpreting its report is not an easy task but on the site there should be some info or some faqs.

i never tried sygate, i suggest to do some google search with "sygate arp" or similar (it is obvious but many times i forget it also ), so you may find if it's a firewall false alarm or bug

hope it helps

EDIT:
on that site you find other useful tools like "process explorer" and "autoruns" (and many other) that may help you see a detailed insight of current processes and dependencies and what is actually instantiated at every windows boot

Last edited by Honey, Mon 1 May 2006, 20:27.

Quote from biggie :

@aDRENOcHROME: (love it when you have to copy&paste people's usernames to address them :P) Thanks for your insights into networking. Anyway, for some reason I completely overlooked the line that said "ARP"... of course this isn't at all dangerous. I was aware that the target IP was my router so actually no harm could have been done.

i guess you never heard about "arp poisoning" (arp IS dangerous), lfs has no reason at all to send arp packets even for normal online activity, so to me (from the info you gave) sounds like a virus trying to reprogram routes into your lan to be "the man in the middle" ...but this is also unlikely to me, are you sure you cannot give more infos?
what firewall do you have? do you listen audio cd on pc (remember sony rootkit)?

Quote from danowat :

For the record, my PC can have issues changing from full screen to windowed, its not new to this patch, I am pretty certain its down to the ATI GFX card though.

Dan,

thanks to witness i'm not a visionary...
i have an asus nvidia 6600.

the strange thing i've never had any issue in any game/app when switching fullscreen/windowed and in lfs only occurs if i execute the exact 3 steps i mentioned before, if i do anything else i can switch lfs fullscreen/windowed like a mad and nothing bad happens...definately one of the less important bugs

Quote from CHR20000 :

getting better, but i often get a "crash to desktop" or even "crah to "computer off"" ...in most cases @ changing windowed > full screen mode ...(got newewst driver updates n everithing else is fine , but W2K!)illepall

that was in almost every version since s2 came out...local prob?
(no...the grfx card doesnt overheat, its active-coooled)

maybe some of u came across same probs this can be annoying...very !

[sarchasm mode on]
that must be caused by your ISP, everything's fine here
[sarchasm mode off]

Quote from Shotglass :

hmmm goof point ... ried both neither of the two caused a crash there is a slight delay though after clicking back the second time maybe lfs doesnt recover from whatever it does there on some pcs

the new patch set the window while connecting and that was causing the problem, i set it to "NO" and never crashed til now (10 test done).
but it only occurs for the 3 steps i indicated, if i switch to full screen to desktop and viceversa many times after i do something, everything is fine.

i think it has to do with some directx initializations.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Doesn't crash here Honey. What settings are you using to make it crash? And why is it you that always has these problems - I'd say something is seriously wrong with your PC, perhaps try reinstalling (perhaps a second OS) and see if these problems you have reoccur?

honestly (nothing personal with you tristan) i'm sick of this.
patch S never crashed, now patch U crash randomly crash and i reported, should i shut up?

made few tests and crash only occur if:
1- open lfs
2- display online list
3- i push 2 times the back button

the three steps make lfs crash 99% times if i do anything else different no problem til now, so if so it's not important, so for those interested i told how to reproduce the bug.

since everyone seems upset by me reporting problems or bug, i will not post anymore anytime soon so everyone will be more happy i will save my time...because as you say it's always my fault, not lfs'

remember occam's razor principle and think about it... >_>