Quote from N.OzolS :

I hope it wont be disturbing. The Connection box was already annoying for me, as a mouse user, and thats the only view where I can see the mouse.

I don't really understand. Are you saying you do want to see the mouse cursor? I thought that the mouse cursor would the the thing you did not want to see at all - because if you use cockpit view you can see the steering wheel. If you use a custom view with steering wheel invisible, you can turn on the virtual steering gauge. If I am wrong about this, and a mouse user does want to see the mouse, please let me know.

Other bug reports, crash reports and relevant requests :

Thank you for the reports. I have made notes about them. I'm trying to get another test patch out as soon as possible - hopefully Friday or Saturday. Not all requests will be done but if I can get the most important issues fixed it will be worth releasing another test patch. If things work out more tricky than expected then it should be early next week.

I wanted to get back to the physics but of course could not do so while there are crashes in the test patch. I did spend the last three days on another important update to the views system. There are two new sliders in the multiple views system : monitor angle and view offset. This makes a dual head view quite reasonable now (see attached pictures). This is with a main screen FOV of 65 degrees, a side monitor angle of 30 degrees (the true angle of the side monitor relative to the main one) and a main screen offset of -0.5 (to move the steering wheel half way to the left edge of the main screen).

For triple head users the new system allows you to use a wider FOV without the need to set your side monitors at such a large angle. It took a while because the maths is a bit tricky - each view is not centred on its own screen but they must all line up perfectly along their edges. It gives a lot more flexibility with the views than the previous system.

Much love Scawen, you guys are working flat out at the moment, your efforts are greatly appreciated Don't forget to stop and have a beer or something!

Wow great, more multihead features
From Z16 on, LFS offers by far the best multi-head support of all sims and games I know of.

PS: Enjoying the G27?

Quote from Scawen :

Thank you for the reports. I have made notes about them. I'm trying to get another test patch out as soon as possible - hopefully Friday or Saturday. Not all requests will be done but if I can get the most important issues fixed it will be worth releasing another test patch. If things work out more tricky than expected then it should be early next week.

very nice thanks dude have you taken my small off centre fix i showed you? (rev counter goes over clutch temp) i only pointed it out because i thought it would be only a minor bit of coding.

Regarding mouse cursor:

The current implementation is perfect for me.
When driving with mouse, cockpit view, I set steering wheel + hands to show.
Outside cockpit / custom views the virtual steering gauge does the job.
Pressing "N" to get the connection list does turn the cursor on, that allows me to click on the setup send / receive or "T" for team races.
It would somehow alter immersion to get a cursor flying around the screen in my opinion.

I do not see a need to click on a car in the minimap with the connection list turned off, you would obviously want to know which driver you are spectating.

Any other opinion regarding this cursor display?

Quote from Mille Sabords :

Regarding mouse cursor:

Any other opinion regarding this cursor display?

I think maybe (this might be too much work) that we could have a button like "page up" to turn cursor on and "page down" to turn cursor off...that way, if you want it on at any given time, it can be, while keeping your current view setups. or maybe even allow it to be customizable in the "Views" menu.

Quote from Mille Sabords :

I do not see a need to click on a car in the minimap with the connection list turned off, you would obviously want to know which driver you are spectating.

There is a problem with that - if you join a host with many connections, the connection list is so tall, it overwrites half of the small map so this often obscures many of the car arrows.

Not a problem when watching a replay, because the mouse appears when you move it, but it does make the new feature less useful for live spectating.

Quote from Scawen :

There is a problem with that - if you join a host with many connections, the connection list is so tall, it overwrites half of the small map so this often obscures many of the car arrows.

Not a problem when watching a replay, because the mouse appears when you move it, but it does make the new feature less useful for live spectating.

Make so big and add scroll bar to it? as to not over lap.

Edit: Or can't have scroll bars?

Hey scawen are you relesing patch Z18 today??? (curious)

Quote from J03130 :

Hey scawen are you relesing patch Z18 today??? (curious)

...

Quote from Scawen :

I'm trying to get another test patch out as soon as possible - hopefully Friday or Saturday. Not all requests will be done but if I can get the most important issues fixed it will be worth releasing another test patch. If things work out more tricky than expected then it should be early next week.

Quote from J03130 :

Hey scawen are you relesing patch Z18 today??? (curious)

I can only refer you to my previous post :

http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1279890#post1279890

By the way, thanks for your point about the CT gauge being overlapped by the virtual gauges, but that is a low priority one as I can't see an easy way to fix the alignment.

Quote from Scawen :

I did spend the last three days on another important update to the views system. There are two new sliders in the multiple views system : monitor angle and view offset. This makes a dual head view quite reasonable now (see attached pictures). This is with a main screen FOV of 65 degrees, a side monitor angle of 30 degrees (the true angle of the side monitor relative to the main one) and a main screen offset of -0.5 (to move the steering wheel half way to the left edge of the main screen).

For triple head users the new system allows you to use a wider FOV without the need to set your side monitors at such a large angle. It took a while because the maths is a bit tricky - each view is not centred on its own screen but they must all line up perfectly along their edges. It gives a lot more flexibility with the views than the previous system.

Thanks so much for these improvements it's making a world of difference to me already, very much looking forward to testing the next patch with the additional view sliders

Curious did you have to pretty much rewrite a lot of the graphics subsystem or did you find an easier way, as I remember a few years ago you were thinking it was too much work at the time to create separate viewports.

Quote from adamlfs :

Ok, I hope this is not already known.

But after sitting in the Driver menu I saw that the LOD reduction on the cars was lowering the detail on the cars viewed in TV mode.

I have all lfs options at max and the Dynamic LOD reduction set a 0.00.

After asking others and the fact that they saw the same it seems this seems to be bug.

Thank you for this.

After looking into it, I think the reason for this is also the key to the frame rate loss that some people experienced.

The bug is due to an important LOD adjustment that increases the level of detail when the camera is zoomed in and its angle is less than 90 degrees - very often in TV cameras because they are normally zoomed it, and also does happen in mirrors because their angle is less than 90 degrees (about 53 degrees).

The new bug is that this lod adjustment is now affected by the previously rendered image, rather than the image currently being rendered.

- For the driver options bug, the level of detail is high although the car is far away. But when you enter driver options, the on-screen 3D driver is drawn at a wider FOV, so the bug means that the LOD drops when drawing the car.

- For the frame rate issue, the mirrors are drawn at less than 90 degrees, and that is the "previous image" drawn when rendering the main view. So apparently, anyone who has mirrors switched on and their normal view is more than 53 degrees FOV would have an unexpected LOD increase with this latest version, causing a loss of frame rate if there are several objects in the view that are affected by LOD. You can verify this by sitting at the back of a grid with several AI cars in front of you (with a single screen render and FOV of perhaps 90 degrees or more). Press SHIFT+M to turn mirrors off and on and watch the cars - you will see that with mirrors on, the level of detail is too high on distant cars.

- One other way to see the bug is, pause the view on a very zoomed in camera then cycle through the views. When you switch from heli cam to tv cam, the first frame is drawn at lower LOD. It's very quick so it's hard to see but you can sometimes just see that brief flicker.

Quote from Scawen :

There is a problem with that - if you join a host with many connections, the connection list is so tall, it overwrites half of the small map so this often obscures many of the car arrows.

I know it not exactly related, but would it be possible to have the connection list sorted by ingame name? It's annoying to search for a driver in big leagues with driver changes or when applying a penalty.

Quote from Scawen :

I don't really understand. Are you saying you do want to see the mouse cursor? I thought that the mouse cursor would the the thing you did not want to see at all - because if you use cockpit view you can see the steering wheel. If you use a custom view with steering wheel invisible, you can turn on the virtual steering gauge. If I am wrong about this, and a mouse user does want to see the mouse, please let me know.

First of all, that might just be me. I usually use the chase view, and drive with mouse visible (connections list visible), its easier like that, for me (but i cant view stuff like F9 and so). Maybe it would be nice to have a binded key to show the cursor any time (or hide it)?

Hey Scawen,

I have the official release (not release candidate) of Windows 7 Professional.
I got it earlier via school.

I will try LFS on it when I come back home today

Quote from rockclan :

Hey Scawen,

I have the official release (not release candidate) of Windows 7 Professional.
I got it earlier via school.

I will try LFS on it when I come back home today

If the beta and RC works with lfs. Then im sure that the next patch also will.

Try to seek more attention from other threads

Quote from N.OzolS :

First of all, that might just be me. I usually use the chase view, and drive with mouse visible (connections list visible), its easier like that, for me (but i cant view stuff like F9 and so). Maybe it would be nice to have a binded key to show the cursor any time (or hide it)?

Yeah, that would be good. Like Shift+M (if not taken already), or just by an option in the menu(probably in misc). I would like such thing, because when I drive in LFS on windowed mode, I often go out of the screen(when I can't see the position of the mouse) and then when I maximize it again - you can guess what happens. I would also like it if mouse clipping space is lowered so you can't actually reach the edge of the window and change it's size.

Anyway, if it's harder to make then it could wait till there's more free time for minor things like that.

Shift-M is Mirrors Toggle.

If this happens.. My thoughts is <space bar> would be logical because it's space bar in the Shift-U view

Space bar is usable in controls, and I personally am using it.
Not to break LFS' tradition - something with shift in front would be good, no matter what it would be.

Quote from rockclan :

Hey Scawen,

I have the official release (not release candidate) of Windows 7 Professional.
I got it earlier via school.

I will try LFS on it when I come back home today

lol @ your signature as well. I have been using the full version of Windows 7 ultimate x64 for a couple of months since it RTM'd. It's nothing to brag about, make a thread somewhere else and see whether you get any pats on the back, I speculate not.

A post relating to the mouse pointer issue

I am one of the disabled users of LFS and couldn't play the game without mouse support.

From my experience I would not want the mouse cursor to be visible any more than it already is while driving. I personally find it difficult to drive with the connection list visible, I find the cursor very distracting with my eyes automatically want to follow it rather than pay attention to the in-cockpit steering wheel or the steering gauge when I am in an external view.

I don't really know what solution there can be to keeping a mouse out of the way when you are driving/not showing connection list but then being able to click on the mini map without the connection list.

I would keep it as it is.

Obviously this is a selfish opinion but I think the wishes of people that use the mouse while driving should take preference. I too admin, and I understand the problem with the list going over the map. Currently I am using the new click on the map feature to jump to hotspots rather than specific cars then I can tab backwards or forwards just a few cars to find the troublemaker.

Obviously as a mouse driver I cannot drive and Admin at the same time. I really do understand why people that use a wheel and have admin rights would drive with the connection list open in order to deal with somebody as they are going along. I hope those people understand why having the cursor visible even when the connection list is not could be a problem for some users.

Quote from SmegFirk :

From my experience I would not want the mouse cursor to be visible any more than it already is while driving. I personally find it difficult to drive with the connection list visible, I find the cursor very distracting with my eyes automatically want to follow it rather than pay attention to the in-cockpit steering wheel

+1
Sorry for OT

Quote from SmegFirk :

I too admin, and I understand the problem with the list going over the map.

This is quite easily solved by having the map on the left rather than the right.

Quote from Bean0 :

This is quite easily solved by having the map on the left rather than the right.

It is not solved, it is avoided. To be solved, a solution has to be thought of for the devs to work it out, but I can't think of anything.