Are they quoting "Angels and Demons"? (I know because the fax he is turning 180 degrees is actually on the side of my computer case in plexiglass and illuminated). That actually IS a very inventive way... But hasn't been given too much thought.
Eric? He's waiting for us to finish texturing the tracks properly... Then starts sending us updated versions of his tracks, and asks us to texture them . I wouldn't mind that at all, gives him more time to model the tracks.
I'm currently working on high-res textures for Westhill (should be acceptable for release sometime next weekend). You can read the other thread if you wanna see some WIPs.
Of course, I'm of the opinion that Westhill needs to be lighter, because it's an old-style track back when they were using a lot more concrete for surfaces.
By the way... I don't mind you making Westhill textures... I think some other tracks need better textures too (in fact, all of them), so I'll be doing those too. I AM however of the opinion that you should post unedited pics, so the realistic look is not due to any filtering in Photoshop.
There's a couple of things that I'm afraid of with your textures, Honey.
1) The amount of grains in it will make it glitter like mad when there's no AA/AF filtering... And will show a lot of mipmapping artifacts in the distance.
2) The white lines are too perfectly white... They really need to be multiple shades of grey.
I would suggest you select a range of grey colors from the texture (so you select about 70% of the texture) and make that 1 uniform grey color. The imperfections you create later on will make it look real anyway.
That is not the purpose of a UPS... You have it manage a "clean" windows shutdown, by sending all processes a shutdown command and then shutting down windows gracefully after a preset time. If the Master server can be gracefully shut down while cleanly disconnecting from the hosts, then this wouldn't be a problem. And since the Master Server is at Scawen's house, I doubt it would require anything heave... An APC Smart-UPS 1000 would do.
As a rule of thumb we could use the amount of people "clearly remembering Scawen saying so"... I'd say 4 would do it... In fact, I remember Scawen or Victor saying back in the pre-S1 days that development would go something like this:
S1 - Basic simulator done. Physics and graphics engines in place but not nearly finished. Game engine working and playable.
S2 - Physics engine finetuned, racing rules and classes defined. (maybe a rally stage patch during the S3 development).
S3 - Physics engine update with more variables (like weather), Eyecandy implemented (including backfires), Sound engine finalized.
S3+ - Updates to the LFS engines, possibly modding tools released.
"The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred characterattributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.....
When it's fall in New York, the air smells as if someone's been frying goats in it, and if you are keen to breathe the best plan is to open a window and stick your head in a building."
The problem is not so much that he did it... It is how he did it...
Even if it was not deliberate, it was a stupid move that he knew would have people frowning. It's not like Ferrari have a shortage of parts, so what he should've done was simply hit the barrier and break the front wing. That way it would've been much less controversial.
That was a fun race... I was cheering for Danica right up until 10 laps to go... Then figured it was an Andretti's time to win, so cheered for both of them.
And that's what makes a great champion: Letting the other guy pass because you want to win fair... I would probably crashed Hornish and slid across the line in first Just hook your front wheel around his nose, and let it slide.
Edit: Never mind... But I wonder if her sister is still available
I'm slowly starting to realize that anyone creating high-res textures for use on racing tracks in a certain game we all play has serious mental problems (or will develop them soon enough)... But I'm having fun doing it...
I'm using 4096 sized textures at the moment because that's what I'm using for the originals (which are partly upscaled from lower res textures, including Eric's originals for luminosity layers) and I can't be bothered to downscale them everytime... But there's absolutely no noticable loss in quality when going from 4096 to 2048... Not unless you put a camera straight down at 2ft high, anyway.
There is almost no drop in framerate as of yet, but I haven't done extensive framerate testing... A bigger concern will be the filesize... 4096x4096 = 16MB per texture... I'm afraid that's going to be a problem (and according to the file info that is without mipmaps and using DXT3 compression).
There is repetition at this point... But that's mostly due because of strange mapping in the texture itself. I need to clean that up.
This is turning out to be more work than I initially anticipated, but I love doing it
Up next is the other grass textures... Good thing is that the grass I'm using for a base is almost infinitely tilable with very little cleaning up to do afterwards. All I need to find is some good tiretracks, and different types of dirt.
I'm afraid this is kinda what will have to do until Eric remaps the track sides on the other side of the track so they both transition from grass to tarmac at the same width. It looks kind of funky with dirt on one side of the track.
This texture is 4096, and needs to be cleaned up a lot (there's visible lines on grass transitions) but it gives a basic idea.
The problem is not in the size of the texture, but in the mapping that's being done with it... I'm working on resizing it, and it's getting better
In fact, Eric's textures have the exact same problem, but it looks less shaky up close because there's so little detail in them... It's virtually impossible to see which pixel goes with which strand of grass. And then there's the obviously shoddy mapping on the hillsides which has really huge strands of grass even in the original...
Rest assured though, that I will be keeping you all updated on the progress... As soon as I have something worth showing you, I will.
Not that I know of, but the filenames are mostly consistent...
AC_* = Autocross
AST* = Aston
BW* = Blackwood
City* = South City
CTY* = South City
GW* = Aston (originally named Greenwich?)
HGA* = Kyoto
JA* = Fern Bay
KYO* = Kyoto
RALY* = Blackwood
WST* = Westhill
The other textures seem to be global textures. linesALPHA.dds, for instance, is used as the pit markings on every track.
Some of the textures may be used on different tracks though.
That's the problem I've mentioned a couple of times before (and aswering your question)... There are mapping issues on the models that cause the texture covered area to have different sizes... So, yes, sometimes the area is 6x6m, but a few meters further down the track it's 12x12m.
Part of the funny look is the color... That'll change. Part of it is probably the size, so I'll change that too...
Here's a screenshot of the weird mapping you get at times.
The sky never bugged me like the closer textures did... I won't make high-res sky textures, since I know you did those... And I'll be using those when mine are done
Well, for one it's logical that good looking textures won't look as good from really close up... That's because textures have a finite resolution, and a finite amount of detail... When you go close up with textures of 1024x1024 you lose some detail because they are starting to pixelate a lot... Problem is, I would love to use really high resolution textures, but going over 2048 squares will have a serious impact on texture memory. Creating mipmaps for them will use well over 7MB... And since with my textures pixelation occurs only a few feet in front of the car, I'm not going to sacrifice that. You're mostly driving, and the amount of detail in the textures is enough to make it look really cool at anything over walking speed.
I took a shot for you from the wheel cam... The grass still looks flat, but that's mostly because there's not real finished edge yet (I'm working on that, but looks worse than what I have atm). I'm considering doubling the grass texture in size, so the grass strands get smaller, but I think this looks fine for now.
Glad you like how it looks so far... I'll get some different shots when the grass is done, including trackside cameras, ground cameras, cockpit views, and wheel views...
I know things look a little bright at the moment, but these are just the basic textures... I work on textures the same way I work on videos or movies... I first get the editing done, and then go on to grading so the colors match. The advantage of working this way is that you can eventually just take every texture of a certain object and match the colors for each texture in one go, and make sure that all the colors throughout the track kind of match. It's basically like creating a library of color sets that you assign to different tracks. I find texturing locations is a lot like grading a movie, you can use different colors to create a different feel...
I'll keep the exposure adjustment in mind... Thanks for the tip... I've not used Photoshop that much, but I'm used to other Adobe software (like premiere and after effects), so I was going to look for similar functions in PS
The repeating effect can be avoided by creating flat textures with no hard spots in them. Unfortunately that means getting rid of a lot of things that make a texture unique. You can't have cracks in the asphalt that are really overly noticable, because that will make it repetetive, but you need some cracks or it'll be dull... Same goes for grass... I can't put too many details on the grass textures since that would make them look repetetive (especially from cockpit view), but I need some detail because that's just how grass is. It's always a compromise... I'll have a look at your attached grass texture to see if it looks good... I hope it maps great throughout the texture, and not just the edges, because I need some good examples of fully mappable grass right now...
One of the things I've noticed is that no texture pack in LFS is going to look perfect at the moment. Eric's mapped the same texture over different sized areas, and used no tiling whatsoever in some parts. This means that the same texture sometimes gets mapped twice in 20 yards between the armco and the track edge, and the next 20 yards it gets mapped only once without tiling, causing the effective resolution to be cut in half (or the grass strands to be twice the size).
Look in the other high-res textures thread for a very early WIP shot of westhill... ("soon to be released" is between parenthesis because I have no clue when they'll be done, but they will be done)
lol... There are some more textures that I have no idea about where they are used... One of them is in the linesALPHA.dss where the pitroad lines are defined... There's 3 boxes in the lower right corner, but what they are for I have no clue (and they're only in the alpha channel, so they're planted over some other texture).