I'd say not, because then he would see the regular backgrounds like that, wouldn't he? :P
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.
What do you think?
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).
Yeah, but the problem is that if I do a perfect transition for the right side of the track, the left side looks bloody well awful :P I'm going to go for the dirt... I have some dirt textures here that would look pretty nice...
The grass is too brightly green, but that will be fixed once I finalize all the grass textures... I'll be grading the textures once they're all done (at least the ones that have the same objects in them), so that the colors will be all in the same tone throughout the track.
EDIT: The way the textures are mapped doesn't exactly leave much room for playing with other colors... That's one of the things I don't like about computerized circuits... You have a max of 4 types of grass in most of them, and basically, when you put different types of grass around the track it just shouts "repetition!!!" at you. I know it's meant to be a race sim, and not a screenie generator, but I'd love to have about 6 or 7 different types of grass on the trackside alone (and another 6 or 7 behind the armco, and another couple on banks where the crowd walks and sits).
Last edited by TagForce, .
So, since this is turning into a "community high-res texture" thread now...
This is what I have on Westhill so far...
The funny looking grass is due to a mapping error by Eric on the left side of the grass/road textures where the grass is mapped about 50cm too far onto the road leaving absolutely no transition whatsoever... With the longer right-side asphalt there is at least some transition on both sides, but the long side needs improving.
Edit: Oh, and the start/finish line wasn't high-res yet, so that's just a quick mockup to see the mapping
This is what I have on Westhill so far...
The funny looking grass is due to a mapping error by Eric on the left side of the grass/road textures where the grass is mapped about 50cm too far onto the road leaving absolutely no transition whatsoever... With the longer right-side asphalt there is at least some transition on both sides, but the long side needs improving.
Edit: Oh, and the start/finish line wasn't high-res yet, so that's just a quick mockup to see the mapping
LOL... Been drinking?
@Kotan:
Having bigger textures has absolutely 0 impact on performance unless you go overboard with it. The only noticable difference I see is the part when LFS says "Loading textures" upon start... That takes longer (maybe it scans all the textures for caching). And of course if you start using my "soon-to-be-released" high-res textures, you'd need at least a 128MB videocard (because the textures for each track are about 70MB)
Would I be out of line to ask for more female LFSers when that is implemented? :P
I'm all for trackside seat cameras, but the problem is that none of the sims I've ever played (and most of them had these modded in one way or another) has ever produced realistic images from the stands. You're either hovering 12 ft over the crowd, or there's huge amounts of clipping spectactors when panning.
LOL, maybe you should learn to drive, yes...
Personally, I don't mind it one bit if the textures are changed on a daily basis... The thing is... When you have high-quality, high-res images of everything that makes up a track, it's just a matter of copying those images over the original textures (even if the mapping changed) and your textures are good to go.
If the devs create high-res textures for us, then great! We'll just have to see if they look better. Personally, I think some textures need to be replaced completely, because even in high-res they look weird.
There's always a use for high-res texture packs in one game or the other... If we don't need them, then give them to the rFactor community or nKpro community, so they can develop great tracks too. Or better yet... The TrackMania Nations community needs some asphalt textures.
Personally, I don't mind it one bit if the textures are changed on a daily basis... The thing is... When you have high-quality, high-res images of everything that makes up a track, it's just a matter of copying those images over the original textures (even if the mapping changed) and your textures are good to go.
If the devs create high-res textures for us, then great! We'll just have to see if they look better. Personally, I think some textures need to be replaced completely, because even in high-res they look weird.
There's always a use for high-res texture packs in one game or the other... If we don't need them, then give them to the rFactor community or nKpro community, so they can develop great tracks too. Or better yet... The TrackMania Nations community needs some asphalt textures.
The detail in the LFS textures is enough... It's just that the textures are stretched too much... It looks like there's entire boulders in the road.
I'm currently trying to create new textures using community rFactor tracks (wasn't supposed to be released, but might need to dig up some names and give credit/ask permission) and remapping those (low res) textures to create entirely new highres textures for LFS. Unfortunately, most textures are repetetive to the max, so it's turning out to be a lot more work than initially expected.
But isn't that track mostly concrete?
But yeah, tracks come in all kinds of shades of grey... Or, more accurately, the older the track is, the lighter it will be. I've always seen Westhill as an old track, and it just looks awesome in a lightish color with all the concrete parts on it and all... On the other hand Kyoto is a very modern track, and that looks a lot better in a very darkish color. And Blackwood is somewhere in between... Not Westhill old, but definitely older than Aston and Kyoto, with large parts of it resurfaced, so it would be dark in some parts, and light in others.
One thing I've noticed is that when you start updating tracks with some high-res textures, you'll find the low-res ones sticking out more, just screaming for a fix... Take Westhill for example... I've updated it with my own high-res road textures, but now the grass looks terrible, and the tirewall when you enter the pits... gawdawful!!! Oh, not to mention the max speed sign... and the pitbuilding textures look horrible now too! Track looks great though...
(I guess I'm saying that once you start updating one texture, you'll have to update them all to at least have the same area covered by each pixel as much as possible)
rofl... Well, to be quite honest, I hope that we'll never have to find out, because she is hella cute, and I have a thing for cute women from the southern part of our country... And if she fell for one of those, at least I have a fighting chance of being to her liking :P
Looks like a 6800GS, but I really can't tell without some kind of writing to see.
Oh well, apparently one of our singers is now involved with one of Lordi... And by that I mean romantically... So we kinda won anyway...
Forget zipping the file... Just create a self-extracting RAR archive... Double click, and it asks you where, and then does the job...
But seriously, people that don't know how to unpack a zip file should read the Windows manual, because these files extract in native windows through compressed folders.
Ayrton...
Just provide him with the folder in a self-extracting archive format... It's easier...
If you want him to extract the zip anyway, tell me what he doesn't understand, or what error message he gets.
But seriously, people that don't know how to unpack a zip file should read the Windows manual, because these files extract in native windows through compressed folders.
Ayrton...
Just provide him with the folder in a self-extracting archive format... It's easier...
If you want him to extract the zip anyway, tell me what he doesn't understand, or what error message he gets.
This is NOT true... It is possible that an HLVC legal lap will get rejected by LFSW. Or at least, that's how I understood it ages ago from Victor.
(it is possible to sign a non-HLVC legal lap as being HLVC legal, since it's just one byte in the replay, and they'll get rejected by LFSW anyway)
I have no idea if they were the same as the MOMO pots... I've never owned a momo. But yeah, they are different pots, and they are fastened differently... But nothing worth changing the price for... (maybe $0.03 extra cost). In fact... My old pedals were exchanged for the newer ones at no cost at all.
What do you mean? Kids forgetting the language of the country they are currently living in? Or kids that live in a country that they were not born in forgetting the language of the country they were born in?
If it's the latter, then sure... I know plenty of those. It's only natural that you forget large parts of the language if you don't ever actually use it. Funny thing is, they don't forget it truly... It just gets transferred to a part of the memory that is very hard to reach (so they'll forget a couple words at first, then some more, then they start messing up grammar, and then it's completely gone)... When they grow old, the brain starts to rewire and you start forgetting stuff from the recent past... But in reality it's being rewired to parts of the distant past. So very old people with alzheimer's disease very often start speaking their 'born' language, and forget their current language.
EDIT: Never mind, I need to learn to look at dates before replying...
Last edited by TagForce, .
Actually, the proof of concept is that it was deemed HLVC compatible by LFS, and registered as a full lap by LFSW... (LFSW does indeed perform checks as I understand).
It's a proof of concept...
And here's how it's supposed to be done:
You do something that you should not be able to...
You tell as few people as possible, and inform the responsible people (or have them informed)...
You give them a friendly ultimatum to fix it.
If it's not fixed: You spread the word to as many people as possible, so the responsible people soon find their stuff compromised because of their own mistake and neglect.
And usually it ends with you being arrested by the feds for a computer crime...
And here's how it's supposed to be done:
You do something that you should not be able to...
You tell as few people as possible, and inform the responsible people (or have them informed)...
You give them a friendly ultimatum to fix it.
If it's not fixed: You spread the word to as many people as possible, so the responsible people soon find their stuff compromised because of their own mistake and neglect.
And usually it ends with you being arrested by the feds for a computer crime...
What wheel? If you use the Logitech profiler for assigning buttons, just start LFS from there using its profile... Usually, the buttons don't get assigned when the profiler doesn't understand what executable is running for LFS... I lose my button maps when I run LFSGhost to start LFS. Or when I run LFS through a batchfile it messes things up. So I usually start LFS from the profiler itself, and set LFS as the default settings in the profiler just so it works 99% of the time.
LMAO "technically improved" in this case meaning they fastened the pots better so the pedals aren't so sensitive to lose their calibration.
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG