At such high FPS's I wouldn't be too worried about drops, however one thing that LFS seems to lack is proper LOD levels for the cars. Currently there appears to only be a few LOD levels, with the second most detailed one being a quite big drop in detail from the highest one. Because of this with a full grid of cars the performance drops quite alot as most of the cars are drawn with full detail, while alot of the detail drawn is unnecessary and not visible.

I believe it could help performance alot if there would be more, better LOD levels. It would be more work for Eric though.

They still didn't seem to improve the crappy flight model at all. Same bugs and mysterious behaviour when AOA is higher than a few degrees appears to still be there.

FS 9: http://junk.kegetys.net/MSFS-747_failed_takeoff.avi
FS X: http://junk.kegetys.net/MSFS_X-747_failed_takeoff.avi

Great work for MS once again illepall

This?

Instead of removing the map from the arenas, the map could instead be made more useful there by displaying autox objects in it.

Quote from Becky Rose :

With regards shaders LFS is DX8 so isn't that only shader 1.3? ...

1.4, but something this simple is possible even with 1.1 shaders with a single instruction. For example some thing like:

Where t0 is the skin texture sample with the glossmap in the alpha channel, and t1 is the environment map sample should do the trick fine. The pixel shader or the static multitexturing pipeline do not know or care how the texture is mapped, all they get is already mapped and sampled pixels.

Quote from Becky Rose :

Simple Explanation
It doesnt work like that. The alpha channel cannot be used to modify the display properties of the reflection map, which is completely independent of your skin picture.

Sure it can, and it would be in fact very easy (with a very simple pixel shader, might also be possible with the static pipeline).

Quote from wsinda :

The lfs.com site has no ads about Linux From Scatch, the London Film School or the Landesfeuerwehrschule. They must have done some marketing research.

They propably just do not have any advertisers about those subjects

Advantage of having an alpha channel would be that it could be used as a gloss map, ie. stickers and other parts could be made less reflective.

Domain Name: LFS.COM

...

Record created on: 1998-09-22 00:00:00.0
Database last updated on: 2006-06-01 02:09:59.597
Domain Expires on: 2006-09-21 00:00:00.0

They've had it for quite a while The racing simulation stuff on that page is most likely just because the keyword "LFS" in google for example comes up with racing simulator related links, so they display ads based on that context.

AA in Direct3D 8:

set MultiSampleType of the device presentation parameters to the AA level you want, and the SwapEffect to D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD.

AA in Direct3D 9:

set MultiSampleType of the device presentation parameters to the AA level you want, and the SwapEffect to D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD.

AF in Direct3D 8:

set the D3DTSS_MAXANISOTROPY with SetTextureStageState to the level of AF you want, and D3DTSS_MIPFILTER/D3DTSS_MAGFILTER/D3DTSS_MINFILTER to D3DTEXF_ANISOTROPIC

AF in Direct3D 9:

Set the D3DSAMP_MAXANISOTROPY with SetSamplerState to the level of AF you want, and the D3DSAMP_MIPFILTER/D3DSAMP_MAGFILTER/D3DSAMP_MINFILTER to D3DTEXF_ANISOTROPIC

Very hard in Direct3D 8 indeed, especially compared to the D3D9 one

I got a TrackIR today and upon testing it with LFS I encountered a few (hopefully) simple issues that would be nice to have fixed:

- When activating TIR, the 'pitch view' setting for custom views doesn't work anymore. I have always liked to keep a few degrees of downward pitch in my view, and with TrackIR enabled(Even only with X axis enabled from the TIR properties) this is no longer possible.

- The rear view key doesn't work anymore either, I would still prefer to use it since it is a much faster way to take a quick peek behind you, especially since by turning the view with TIR the car model is on the way unlike with the 'ext 2.' view.

This would be very welcomed while driving also, spectating other players from incar view with a high steer look sensitivity setting currently makes the view rapidly jump left and right which is pretty annoying to watch.

Quote from Scawen :

If in future there was a way to write small programs in LFS, this would be the basis of it

This would indeed be good, especially if it would be made to be able to fully control LFS, ie. it could be used to implement new rules for some totally different type of racing... However, I do wonder if creating a new "language" for it is really worth the effort as there are plenty of lightweight, free "scripting" languages that could easily be implemented as part of LFS and thus get a full featured language with minimal development time.

Quote from bLaCk VaMpIrE :

somehow i managed after recording a lap to a raf file to stop at the the background screen.

Dunno if it has anything to do with this, but something similar happens when you pause during replay and then restart the replay; The game pauses on the blank loading background screen, which can be a bit confusing sometimes. Simply unpausing will continue it though.

Quote from Scawen :

But now I think I've found an answer...

That would seem to be a good system, especially if there would be commands for setting other settings too, like force strength, fov, look sensitivity, wheel turn compensation, FF device (some freak could use different wheels for different cars ), etc. Maybe even the number plate so you could have different plates in different cars.

While on topic of controls, would it be difficult to also slip in ability to bind some "nonstandard" keystrokes to controls. For example, the win32 api defines function keys all the way up to F24. The VK_F13-VK_F24 range is unused in PC keyboards (as far as I know) so they could be used by external applications to send input to LFS. I could make my FF shifter application send those instead of regular keyboard keypresses, bind them to the gear changes in LFS, and the shifter wouldn't flood the chat text entry dialog with junk anymore or stop me from quiting the game. Ideally they could also ignore shift/ctrl/alt states...

Quote from ORION :

2. The amount of energy is calculated by how far the cars overlap when colliding.

A big part of this energy should be "used" in crushing the cars, but it would seem the damage isn't taken into account at all...

I think fixing the collision problems should be quite high on the to-do list, though it seems everyone has sort of gotten used to it and try to even avoid driving "door to door" in the fear of a slight lagspike throwing both cars to orbit.

Quote from Scawen :

I assume that from a coding point of view, a sequential lever and a paddle shifter are exactly the same.

I'd prefer separate control settings for paddle shifters and sequential stick shifter too. Ie. for a paddle shifted car I could bind some other actions to the sequential stick shifter and vice versa.

I do not find HDR (As I have seen it done in games and some tech demos) to be that realistic. It makes the game world look like I'm watching it through a cheap digital camera with a very crappy dynamic range instead of a human eye.

A little bit of "bloom" effect can often make things look better, but the games that have it usually apply way too much of it which again looks unrealistic.

It might be impossible to control the leds on that wheel, or the command could just be different, but I have no means to find out what it possibly could be

Quote from Batterypark :

Wow, thanks to this thread I found out there's a NoCD-exe for LFS. I can't imagine how I've managed without it!

I guess I'm lucky since my LFS has never needed a CD

Quote from Blue-Ray :

Well, frankly said it seems so. I don't know why...

I fixed the archive today, for some reason the dll didn't get updated in the archiving process

And nothing else? That's really odd, it would mean it gets stuck somewhere while going through the devices (It should at least say 'done.' at the end)... I have no idea what might be causing that though

Quote from wheeler :

too bad I can't figure out why it's not working with correct HID device ID... do you need any more info kegetys to let it work on Logitech Formula Force (with ff). I can't imagine it's not working cos it's using same drivers as Momo.

Odd that it doesn't find the device at all... Try running this, it should list all HID devices it finds with their device ID's etc.

Quote from neRu :

Ketegy - it cant find my Wingman Formula Force, which controller ID do i have to use? I can take screenies of things you want me to.

The DeviceID can be found in Windows XP from the device manager, the wheel should be under Human Interface Devices. In the properties go to the details page and in some of the properties it says something like VID_XXXX PID_XXXX, the VID is the manufacturer ID (0x046D is Logitech) and the PID is the device ID. Then just convert the hexadecimal value into decimal with windows calculator for example. Note however that I have no idea if it will work with that wheel anyway.

For DFP the best bet might be for someone to ask the Wingman team if there is some HID command to disable the internal LED control from the wheel or the driver, which would be my best bet on why it doesn't work with it (It appears the command does turn the led on/off but the wheel will just immediately put it back to what it was)...

I updated it a bit to version 1.1, you can now have two actions for each LED with logical XOR/OR operations. (So, for example you can have one LED work as a shift light and make it flash when the speed limiter is on). There's also a new actions for flashing low fuel light and a flashing shift light.