Quote from axus :

Errr... I don't think noemfie was refering to your comment. Relax.

i apologise, but the question period of his post was a new line and seemed a statementent rather than a feature request, it completely changed the sense of the post, i pologise anyway

Hi all,
i installed the first version of patch S.Now i must install all these patches T1,T2,T3,T4....or only the new T5?Help pls

Quote from Honey :

Scawen, i'm sorry to bother but may i ask if fixing the "invisible car" bug is planned for patch U?
is just to know, i understand you have much pressure right now

No, that is some strange problem with your ISP, not sending your UDP position packets to the host. Nothing I can do about that without some major changes.

Quote from hijacker(GR) :

Hi all,
i installed the first version of patch S.Now i must install all these patches T1,T2,T3,T4....or only the new T5?Help pls

Only the latest.

Quote from noemfie :

Probably not the right place to ask , but the 23 client limit , is it something the devs are working on to try and increase or is it just not possible atm ?

I expect to increase it in future but it is a big change, not just a number.

Quote from Krane :

Speaking of optimizations, can you also disable the wheel disappearing, or alternatively put it as last resort to gain more FPS. I find it highly distracting when it goes away.

Please can you give an example? The idea of the disappearing wheel is that it only disappears when you can't see it anyway.

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

Or could we have at least some option to turn on/off this optimizations?I bet a lot of guys would like to have as much as possible vidible if the power is in theirs PC`s.

As I said in my above post. One of the main things about graphics engines is, not drawing things that you can't see. There are loads of optimisations in LFS and that's why it has a good FPS. We don't actually draw all objects on the other side of the track, which are hidden behind billboards and mountains, for example. And I don't mind how good your graphics card is, the driver bodies and steering wheels have their polygons sent to the card all the time, they aren't using hardware vertex shading (though the wheels *should* - they don't - and the driver can never, as they are flexible, like flags). So they are a significant slowdown at the start grid and this causes problems.

Please give me the examples, of where you are seeing disappearing bodies, anyway. I have tried to make them only disappear when you can't see them anyway. If I have failed, you should be showing me where I have failed, not just ask me to remove the optimisation. You really can't see the driver's body in a BF1 unless you are near and above the car, so why draw it?

Quote from Scawen :

As I said in my above post. One of the main things about graphics engines is, not drawing things that you can't see. There are loads of optimisations in LFS and that's why it has a good FPS. We don't actually draw all objects on the other side of the track, which are hidden behind billboards and mountains, for example. And I don't mind how good your graphics card is, the driver bodies and steering wheels have their polygons sent to the card all the time, they aren't using hardware vertex shading (though the wheels *should* - they don't - and the driver can never, as they are flexible, like flags). So they are a significant slowdown at the start grid and this causes problems.

Please give me the examples, of where you are seeing disappearing bodies, anyway. I have tried to make them only disappear when you can't see them anyway. If I have failed, you should be showing me where I have failed, not just ask me to remove the optimisation. You really can't see the driver's body in a BF1 unless you are near and above the car, so why draw it?

I dont consider it very important so please focus on more important things and bug cleaning.I can for sure leave without some graphics eye candy .

I understand that in normal 3d engine are used a lot of optimizations and that LFS doesnt draw everything on the apposite side of the track for example.

I think there will be soon time for major 3d engine upgrade to use more power of our PC`s....but let my mouth I know you much better Scawen then me.

Quote from Scawen :

Please can you give an example? The idea of the disappearing wheel is that it only disappears when you can't see it anyway.

This is not directly related to this, but:

Whatever the graphics options in LFS the wheels always get octagonal: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=5995

Could it be set that when using the maximum settings in LFS it would draw the wheels always rounded, and never octagonal? So that the distance couldn't affect their shape at all?

Quote from St4Lk3R :

If you have that much fps, simply increase the level of all your "graphics options"-sliders

Oh yes they are, LOL... not a big thing really.. it can wait.

Quote from Scawen :

No, that is some strange problem with your ISP, not sending your UDP position packets to the host. Nothing I can do about that without some major changes.

i'm fine if you not plan to fix it for the near future (and thanks for answering me), but i cannot accept your statement that it's my ISP problem, it not happens only to me, also to people from other countries/ISP...if it's the isp, why exiting lfs and restarting solves the problem? and why it never happened till S2K and started since S2L? why happen also with other isp?, why other udp apps continue working fine without a glitch?
please do not jump at conclusions: if i'm losing time writing here, it's because i already verified it's an lfs problem...

Quote from Honey :

please do not jump at conclusions: if i'm losing time writing here, it's because i already verified it's an lfs problem...

LFS hasn't changed in this area.

As I've said before, every time there is a new patch, there are a few people claiming that the patch has caused them some new network problems. Usually the problem goes away miraculously a few weeks later.

It's just a coincidence. Let's say 1 in 100 people with an internet connection, is having a problem with it, at any time. Now a new patch comes out and 10,000 people try it. 100 of them will experience connection problems at exactly that time, and they may blame it on the patch.

Quote from DEVIL 007 :

I think there will be soon time for major 3d engine upgrade to use more power of our PC`s....but let my mouth I know you much better Scawen.

Why do you want the 3D engine to use more of your PC's power? I think it's great how good the LFS graphic engine runs even on old PCs. Just compare S2 with the first demo test 0.04k. The current version runs a lot faster despite increased track and car details. I think that's a great archievment.

Quote from Scawen :

No, that is some strange problem with your ISP, not sending your UDP position packets to the host. Nothing I can do about that without some major changes.

@ Honey: What about CTRL-T, does this help?

Ahh, I'm with DEVIL there, but time will tell, and at one time, a DX9 engine is as uptodate as the current lfs-gfx-engine was last year

Quote from Honey :

i'm fine if you not plan to fix it for the near future (and thanks for answering me), but i cannot accept your statement that it's my ISP problem, it not happens only to me, also to people from other countries/ISP...if it's the isp, why exiting lfs and restarting solves the problem? and why it never happened till S2K and started since S2L? why happen also with other isp?, why other udp apps continue working fine without a glitch?
please do not jump at conclusions: if i'm losing time writing here, it's because i already verified it's an lfs problem...

The only time I had similiar problems was when I had uploads running or heavy packet loss.

Try to ping the host IP when you have that kind of bug. Don't leave the server or track, minimize LFS and run command line. Then ping the host for example one hundred times. On windows it is ping -n 100 IP. Then you can go back to LFS and play and let the pinging run. Later see what ping is and how much there is packet loss, if any.

I know you said restarting helps, but you can still try that just to see what kind of ping you will be getting.

I use netlimiter to get host IP, and I can also see traffic graphs in it from LFS.

Quote from Scawen :

LFS hasn't changed in this area.

As I've said before, every time there is a new patch, there are a few people claiming that the patch has caused them some new network problems. Usually the problem goes away miraculously a few weeks later.

It's just a coincidence. Let's say 1 in 100 people with an internet connection, is having a problem with it, at any time. Now a new patch comes out and 10,000 people try it. 100 of them will experience connection problems at exactly that time, and they may blame it on the patch.

i know what you mean, but i'm not such kind of person and i try solve anything by myself first...as i said it's many month i'm experiencing this problem, there is also an old thread in the bug section related to this, as you can quickly verify here -> http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=115379#post115379 (and the very next reply) an not the only one, it's an hard to recognize bug and it comes at least from patch L.

so fix the very urgent things and take the deserved rest, but please do not forget this bug, because people who experence this, simply don't figure it out and thinks that every s2 licensed racer is a stupid wrecker because everyone's ramming at him.

Quote from GP4Flo :

Why do you want the 3D engine to use more of your PC's power? I think it's great how good the LFS graphic engine runs even on old PCs. Just compare S2 with the first demo test 0.04k. The current version runs a lot faster despite increased track and car details. I think that's a great archievment.

Hi GP4Flo,
You might know that I am in LFS very,very long time and went thru all these changes to the LFS so there is no place to "teach" me .

And why not use more if there is such a possibility?That was a bit "stupid" question.Sorry I dont know better word in english so please dont take is as something bad.

The current LFS to be honest doesnt stress much current or even some years old graphic cards really much.I had same FPS on ATI8500 as on the current GF6600(now low end card) except I am now able to use 4xAA+16AF without penalty to FPS drop.

At the end I have to say that LFS has really nice graphic and I am enjoying it but sometimes I would like use more...better textures(for example Don`s and Kidcodeas`s hires sky packs)etc.

Its not that I am negative about current LFS 3d engine.

Quote from Honey :

i know what you mean, but i'm not such kind of person and i try solve anything by myself first...as i said it's many month i'm experiencing this problem, there is also an old thread in the bug section related to this, as you can quickly verify here -> http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=115379#post115379 (and the very next reply) an not the only one, it's an hard to recognize bug and it comes at least from patch L.

Have you followed the threads that avih had posted about similar problems?

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=80487#post80487 (the summary line on this)

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=76763

I had the same problem you mention in the past on specific servers, one that I recall was on an italian GT-only server. Do you get it on all servers at any time? Did you turn on network debug to see if there's something there?

Quote from GP4Flo :

@ Honey: What about CTRL-T, does this help?

never tried: what's that supposed to do?
(i will try it anyway the next time it happens)

Quote from afastest :

The only time I had similiar problems was when I had uploads running or heavy packet loss.

Try to ping the host IP when you have that kind of bug. Don't leave the server or track, minimize LFS and run command line. Then ping the host for example one hundred times. On windows it is ping -n 100 IP. Then you can go back to LFS and play and let the pinging run. Later see what ping is and how much there is packet loss, if any.

I know you said restarting helps, but you can still try that just to see what kind of ping you will be getting.

I use netlimiter to get host IP, and I can also see traffic graphs in it from LFS.

last summer when most was on holidays (and nothing on my schedule) at work i got a clean pc -> it happened again, then i programmed the company routers to guarrantee such pc 100Mb bandwidth ...-> it happened again and from router logs i didnt see any packet from such pc, then -> i installed ethereal on such pc and the next time the bug showed, ethereal logs (according to a collegue of mine who is a geek for such application) revealed that no udp packets where sent by lfs.

so the problem is either lfs alone or some sort of stack overflow lfs causes to windows driver.

tests at work were done with windows xp sp2, but at home i experienced it also with windows xp sp1, never tried other windows flavours

Quote from Vykos69 :

Ahh, I'm with DEVIL there, but time will tell, and at one time, a DX9 engine is as uptodate as the current lfs-gfx-engine was last year

I cant bealive me eyes Vykos .

Sorry I have to say always soemthing more.Its georgeous achievement how LFS looks with current 3d engine even its only DX8 one.
The thing is world is slowly moving with development of the upcoming titles to DX10 and we still sitting with DX8 and DX9 is almost at the end of his life.I dont blame Scawen for this as I said I am in LFS long time and I have no words for what was Scawen able to do.Its great.

I have just in my mind that in Vista there will be only DX9 support (will we have even DX8? support)thru software layer for games(that what is Micorsoft claiming) and most of us will move to that system even we dont want(I just still hope that Vista will be somethinbg like WindowsMe and will disaaper quickly as it was a big mistake).
Hard to say how the software DX9 layer support will be effective for games or not.Its just something to consider as well.

I dont see too deep into 3D LFS engine but as Scawen give some info from time to time here in forum there could be moved more work to GPU and saving CPU cycles thus increasing FPS,eye candy but I know its a "run for a long time".

Quote from Honey :

never tried: what's that supposed to do?
(i will try it anyway the next time it happens)


last summer when most was on holidays (and nothing on my schedule) at work i got a clean pc -> it happened again, then i programmed the company routers to guarrantee such pc 100Mb bandwidth ...-> it happened again and from router logs i didnt see any packet from such pc, then -> i installed ethereal on such pc and the next time the bug showed, ethereal logs (according to a collegue of mine who is a geek for such application) revealed that no udp packets where sent by lfs.

so the problem is either lfs alone or some sort of stack overflow lfs causes to windows driver.

tests at work were done with windows xp sp2, but at home i experienced it also with windows xp sp1, never tried other windows flavours

That is very good you tested it thoroughly. Often people report bugs before proper testing, OC'ed, faulty hardware, bad connection and what not. This is not the case with you here, but one has to state these things from the beginning so Scawen knows what kind of fault he is dealing with. Or maybe you did it already and I missed it.

Quote from Honey :

revealed that no udp packets where sent by lfs.
so the problem is either lfs alone or some sort of stack overflow lfs causes to windows driver.

You mean LFS client didnt send UDP packets or server part?
If I understood that was test made on LAN?

That clearly sounds like the client, LFS, didn't send them.

Quote from afastest :

That is very good you tested it thoroughly. Often people report bugs before proper testing, OC'ed, faulty hardware, bad connection and what not. This is not the case with you here, but one has to state these things from the beginning so Scawen knows what kind of fault he is dealing with. Or maybe you did it already and I missed it.

i'm in the "ict" area of my company and you cannot believe the absurd stories and the most subtle problems that come out everyday.
my home isp has not the best performance, but is one of the most reliable (in the past used to work at home and had embedded net prototypes working 24/7 flawlessly with hundreds of connections), moreover my connection is "interleaved" and not "fast" so delivery of packets is supposed to be "guarranteed".

i remember i've reported this bug on an already started thread, but it died without conlusions iirc, i always assumed scawen put that on his "to-fix list"

Quote from Honey :

i'm fine if you not plan to fix it for the near future (and thanks for answering me), but i cannot accept your statement that it's my ISP problem, it not happens only to me, also to people from other countries/ISP...if it's the isp, why happen also with other isp?, why other udp apps continue working fine without a glitch?
please do not jump at conclusions: if i'm losing time writing here, it's because i already verified it's an lfs problem...

With your experiencies probably you should know that all ISP sometimes shaping UPD packets very lot.If there is too much on network of UDP they can automaticly shape it down.Its really easy.
And you should know that if UPD packet is lost you never get the same one again as its possible with TCP but just the next one.

There are always some priorities on ISP`s network and to be honest its not the home user.