Got you, very useful again, thanks. (I promise I have been reading the docs and watching the vids, many times over... there's just lots of it )

Ahh, yes, I had missed the divider in build mode, thanks for that. The slider will be helpful, and there's more fusing options too. (At the point it appears I'm usually trying desperately to keep track of that one last point in the cloud )

I can't see a 'rotate triangles' in tri mode though?

Quote from Scawen :

1) Are these names "subdivide" and "subdivide radial" known names for these functions? If they are known names then I should stick with them. Otherwise I can make up my own names if needed.

2) The one you called "subdivide radial" looks more useful to me. I want it to quickly improve my football. Are you sure that the "subdivide" would be particularly useful? I'm not a very experienced modeller so don't really know what is most useful.

1) They're not known things, unless it is by accident. I've very little modelling experience either

2) The idea behind the first is to add smoothing with as few new triangles as possible; the idea behind the second is to divide the edges in order to add features (a fold to represent the door edge, in my case).

I think the radial version covers the uses of the first, albeit for more triangles.

The division of the edge is the most important thing, I think. Every other operation can be done easily enough manually once that edge is divided with algorithmic precision

Quote from valiugera :

The problem is that i tried to use "double sided" option to make my xrt windows visible from both side but here comes the problem.

No matter what i use - different object, different textures or same textures always some of windows are not visible when you look them from outside.

I don't know if it's a good way to solve this problem or not*, but I wanted a darker tint looking inwards than outwards so I copied all my glass, moved the copy a fraction inwards, flipped the triangles.

Now I have two sets of glass that appear to be in the same place, and I can control the textures for viewing in/out separately.

(*I haven't crash-tested it yet, maybe if the two layers get mangled into each other the artefacts will return?)

Top job again Jake, these are so much fun and a yet another new technique to master

I'm with those who would like a no shell config - seems a waste to hide all that, and my local club always have one or two without a shell in practices.

I only use /o on local insims

I love the 'fuse to average' and 'fuse to green' functions in points mode, that really helps balancing the workload between the modder and the gouraud

I thought 'subdivide' and/or 'subdivide radial' functions would be equally helpful for triangles mode, for those times you need just a tiny bit more control of the curves than you thought you would. I took some screenies of doing it manually.

They could delete the original triangles, make the new points at the average positions, make the new triangles with the same properties as the replaced one, and then select them.

If it could cope with multiple selections we could stack the operations too.

**Friday 3rd** at **20:00 UTC**

A brutal build up to mod-time, with some classic carnage-inducing tracks. *Not for the faint of heart!*

The mod round itself will be trucks on a **brand-new track!**

*Please form an orderly queue at the toll booth and come to a complete stop before paying*

**snip**

Last edited by Racon, Fri 17 Dec 2021, 14:16.

The testing went well enough to make it to my official in-progress list

Last edited by Racon, Mon 14 Feb 2022, 12:54.

Yeah, the Devil Z is another Z altogether... but you can't have too many Zs!

Slow, but steady progress on this one continues with more setup tuning, and a start to the modelling proper

That's awesome, thank you!

It goes through the gears much more naturally now, and the sound is amazing. Top job

I will add a before-and-after vid with the next update.

(I might turn the turbo sounds down a little - just personal preference, but I can hear the looping in the sample a bit too much at that mix)

iiiiiiittttttt's MOD time!

We're switching to the test patch for our DD event this week by popular demand, so that we can race mods!

Friday 26th at 20:00 UTC

So... easy-does-it with the first ever mods combo then, Jon? No, apparently not! If you thought the opener of the first Trial of Champions was crazy...

TOC#1 Review
TOC#1 Full SBTV Coverage

*Don't worry if you're on an S2 licence - we'll leave the mod round until last and leave the mods disabled until then, so you can still join the server and race a full 6 of the 7 rounds!*

*snip*

Last edited by Racon, Fri 3 Dec 2021, 09:55.

I don't think the bars affect deformation - only the suspension components and the bodywork get mangled. I appreciate it would be easier to bundle up the weight with the engine file for others, but the workaround is easy enough that it's not a show-stopper.

I'm not going by cost on anything

The engine weight is done automatically in the editor from the engine size/type - this one comes out at 150kg, but those engines are somewhere around 225kg. I couldn't see anywhere to adjust the engine weight itself (I may have missed it), but I've used the black mass-distribution bars to add weight in the engine area to compensate. (I used four side-to-side members top/bottom/front/back to adjust F/R balance and COG height to match the specs, but starting with a very chunky bottom-front for the extra engine weight).

That other engine looks and sounds good, but I don't want to go too far with the modifications or stray too far from common Z mods - taking a newer engine from a later model in the same series seems more authentic to me. There's a lot of 280s out there with 300 engines

Zedd - my idealised version of the first car that made me buy a poster, the Datsun Z series (aka Fairlady).

Visually, it's all my favourite features from the 240Z, 260Z and 280Z, with some bodykit parts and low-profile tyres (snippet of my reference images below).

The car's specs and major geometry are closest to the 280Z, with a V6 Turbo borrowed from the later (Nissan) 300ZX.

Done so far:

- Suspension
- Wheel size / position / tyres
- Mass arrangement
- Engine specs
- Default set (Cruise)

(It might just be a slab with wheels, but it's a slab that behaves as I want it to! No mean feat for me )

To do:

- Modelling (skinnable)
- Engine sound
- Aerodynamics
- Other sets (Race/Drift/Derby)

Last edited by Racon, Thu 13 Apr 2023, 11:32.

Nice work, I love driving this thing in every setting

Re: carrying the car, I'm wondering if 24 points is enough to make a collision box with a hollow section and a couple of ramps trailing behind...

It's the numberplate of the first person who joins with that mod, I think, rather than a timer. The other day everyone joining with mods had my numberplate on their car, after I had joined first. (IIRC correctly this was a bug that happened before mods and was fixed)

An updated version, 0.1f, that now works with mods! Use the mod's skinid as the car's basename in the data file, ie, e90da5 for the UF Bean.

All staff-picked mods (at the time of publish) are included in the supplied data file.

Also the fuel-check bug has been 'fixed' (ie, carlim no longer supports fuel-level checks, so there are no more fuel-checking bugs. I asked nicely, but this is the way the code wanted it Nobody I asked was using that feature - if you need it, let me know)

**20:00 UTC Tonight!** (Fri 12th) :boom::ambulance::ambulance: :checkered_flag: The extra ambulance is for Jon's theme of bone-breaking jumps - bring all your spare suspension parts tonight!

** snip **

Last edited by Racon, Thu 25 Nov 2021, 00:12.

... if you don't wheelspin

Quote from sinanju :

Thanks for the link to your distance tracker, but I couldn't get it to work due to "Insim: password does not match your multiplayer admin password".

Ahh, it used to be that if you'd left an admin password set in the 'start new host' section, InSim would require it to allow a local connection even if you weren't in that mode. I'm not sure how that works now that the host is not local any more, but you could try connecting without a password before starting the host, or changing adminpass in the .cfg file to the host password. (That applies to all local InSims, not just this one.)

Quote from sinanju :

As for the hosting bit, that's all beyond me, and I can't seem to get things to work. Think I'll raise that as a query elsewhere on the forum.

Aye, best ask Lapper people about Lapper... but it should be changing those two things is all you need.

Quote from sinanju :

Unfortunately, due to changes in hosting, can't use my LFSLapper to get overall length of track.

You should be able to point Lapper at the server IP/port you get in the control panel, 'access control' tab and connect it.

... or you migght like this: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thre ... odometer-distance-tracker

Can I be the voice of lumpiness here?

I appreciate that surface texture is harder to make, let alone deciding how much lumpiness is right, but a mirror-smooth surface like AU1 is lacking something, IMHO. (IE, taking a track and rotating the entire thing 180 degrees would make no difference on AU1, but would make it different to drive on WE3). I'm planning to move all my favourite AU1 tracks that will fit to WE carpark for this reason.

I have on my suggestions-to-flesh-out-before-making list an idea about auto-generating a 'very nearly smooth' surface from a seed number, in order that we could have unlimited variations to fit custom tracks into, but I'm presuming that there would be too much work involved in that.

Maybe a lumpy tarmac corner next to the possible dirt corner, in with all the flatness?

1km x 1km would certainly be big enough for me for a dirt area - the two Westhill grass areas are both long enough to get a long track into, and those are only about an eighth of that each.

Dunno about doing it with the keyboard that way, but "/allowmods yes|no" works

Would it be possible to get notifications when a mod is approved? Maybe just a thread somewhere that we could subscribe to.