EDIT : New test patch 0.6E8 is now available...
https://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=84776


WARNING : THIS IS A TEST

NOTE : THIS DOES NOT CONTAIN NEW TYRE PHYSICS / VW SCIROCCO / ROCKINGHAM

PLEASE TEST BEFORE YOU POST

NO OFF-TOPIC FEATURE REQUESTS

NO UNRELATED COMMENTS


Hello Racers, here is a new TEST PATCH : 0.6E7

You can read about LFS development in the main forum :
https://www.lfsforum.net/showt ... php?p=1823294#post1823294

This test patch is fully compatible with version 0.6E

You cannot upload hotlaps made with this test patch because it is only a test patch, not an official patch.

Please keep a backup of your LFS.exe from 0.6E so you can easily go back if there are any problems.


Changes from 0.6E6 to 0.6E7 :

Oculus Rift :

Added resolution and IPD to info display in view options screen
Head tracking now works in helicopter / follow / SHIFT+U modes

Fixes :

FIX : LFS crashed when changing track in Oculus Rift mode


Changes from 0.6E5 to 0.6E6 :

- External views (TV, helicopter and SHIFT+U) are now available in 3D modes. Note that the mouse control in SHIFT+U mode is not exactly correct in all modes and the autocross editor is not yet available.

- New text commands /rift [on/off/reset] e.g. /rift reset will reset the orientation. This can be assigned to a function key or a wheel button in the controls screen.

- A small amount of status information about the Oculus Rift is displayed on the right of the view options screen including head tracking values if they are available.

- FIX : Selecting 2D or 3D mode did not disable or enable the Oculus Rift if it was the selected 3D device.

- FIX : Oculus Rift now takes priority over TrackIR so there should be no problem with having a TrackIR installed on your computer.


Changes from 0.6E to 0.6E5 :

Support for stereoscopic 3D monitors, projectors, TVs and headsets
Lateral and longitudinal accelerometer values now work realistically
FIX : High frequency changes in acceleration were filtered in OutSim
FIX : Helmet stayed the same after changing driver in MP replays


HOW TO ENABLE STEREOSCOPIC 3D :

1) In the View options screen, select 3D mode on the second line.

2) Select your Display type - three options are available :

- TV / monitor / projector
- Conventional 3D headset
- Oculus Rift

Each mode has different characteristics.

- TV / monitor / projector mode - it is important to set your horizontal screen width, measured in mm. Not the diagonal, just the horizontal measurement from one side to the other. This, in conjunction with the interpupillary distance, should set the image up properly if you set the FOV to match the true horizontal view angle between your eyes and the TV edges. The virtual eye positions are affected and the centres of the two images displayed on the screen are offset by the same distance so the horizon appears to be in the distance.

- Conventional 3D headset - also has an interpupillary distance slider but in this case it only affects the virtual eye positions. I have not coded compensation for the use of wider FOV angles than actually available. So if you use wider FOV than the true horizontal FOV of the device, you will see exaggerated depth.

- Oculus Rift - this will try to load a DLL and connect to your Oculus Rift and from there it will get the interpupillary distance and other values, and head tracking should work.

3) In TV / monitor / projector or Conventional 3D headset modes, select your Format for 3D output - four options are available :

- side by side (half)
- top and bottom (half)
- side by side (full)
- top and bottom (full)

Choose the setting that works with your device. Many devices can accept different input formats.

- side by side (half) is a commonly used format that causes some loss of resolution in the horizontal direction.

- top and bottom (half) causes loss of resolution in the vertical direction. This is the best choice for passive displays with alternating polarisation horizontal scan lines. This type of display discards half of the lines if supplied with a full height image. When supplied with half height images, no further information needs to be discarded.

- side by side (full) and top and bottom (full) can output 3D at full HD resolution to a device that supports this. However, most devices do not support this output (even if they can accept full HD 3D from a Blu-ray player). In Windows XP it was possible to set your desktop across two screens and then LFS could go full screen on two screens. Then side by side (full) could be used, for example, to send output to a twin projector 3D setup. Unfortunately this possibility seems to have been removed from recent versions of Windows.

4) For Oculus Rift mode some text functions have been included.

/rift on - switch on 3D with Oculus Rift as the display type
/rift off - return to 2D mode
/rift reset - reset the orientation

You may wish to assign the command /rift reset to a CTRL + or ALT + F key (and steering wheel button) in the Controls options screen.


NOT YET DONE (some of these will be done) :

- enable predictive tracking
- position hud and menus in 3d space to allow head tracking to look around them
- move eye position depending on the orientation (simple neck model)
- include object selection buttons in SHIFT+U mode
- correct mouse dragging in SHIFT+U mode
- render mirrors in 3d


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS :

A full version of LFS 0.6E must already be installed - www.lfs.net

- Download the test patch (below). It contains an LFS exe and a DLL for the Oculus Rift.
- Open the zip file and drag the specially named LFS exe file into your LFS folder.
- For Oculus Rift support copy LFSOVRDLL.dll (new version) into your LFS folder.

NOTE : You can see if the patch is correctly installed when you run
the program. At the bottom of the entry screen : 0.6E7


DOWNLOAD :


EDIT : New test patch 0.6E8 is now available...
https://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=84776

Not sure what it was, but the new build fixed the problem for me... thanks!
(I had TrackIR up and running a LONG time ago, but can't imagine I still had anything related to it on this machine.)

The head tracking works very well and the whole experience is now fantastic!

Great! Thanks for the feedback!

Will test it tomorrow

Short feedback, the default value of vertical field of view (shouldn´t it be called horizontal?) is way too less and feels strange.
A value of 112 degrees feels much more naturally and is also around the value of 111.478 degrees which oculus uses in their sdk demos.
Everybody should change it. Maybe it becomes a new default in the next patch?

I couldn't resist and I tried it just now with the Oculus rift.

Overall the experience is great and I'm very satisfied with it. In term of VR experience it is just behind Half life 2 IMO.

I couldn't get the proportion right though. I spent some time tweaking with the vertical field of view but I couldn't get something entirely satisfying. Either the inside of the car looks out of proportion or it is the track. It is probably a native issue though as I see that in every game that have a cockpit.

I didn't get much motion sickness but I might be getting used to it (I was very sick very quickly with the first demos I tried). The jerking of the car in the fast single seater (with the road bumps) is pretty uncomfortable with the current latency.

The menu are not convenient at all
VirtualReality.io ( http://www.virtualreality.io/ ) does it right IMO but it would require quite some work I imagine and the "not appropriate" menus are hardly a determent I think.

I had a crash that happened 2 times while coming back from a race in single player (no AI). I press the end race button then I tried to change the race and crash. It happened 2 times.

Did you also move your position? What i have done:
1. Set FOV to 112°
2. Ensure that driver and steering wheel are visible
3. Move the position in x,y,z directions so that my head feels right in relation to the virtual body

glad to see you guys are still alive and working on the game, There is still HOPE!

Quote from Maelstrom :

The menu are not convenient at all
VirtualReality.io ( http://www.virtualreality.io/ ) does it right IMO but it would require quite some work I imagine and the "not appropriate" menus are hardly a determent I think.

Thanks for the testing and feedback.

About the menus, the current plan is to make them bigger and put them on a virtual screen in front of you and allow you to look around them by making them stay in place relative to the world while you move your head.

Quote from Maelstrom :

I had a crash that happened 2 times while coming back from a race in single player (no AI). I press the end race button then I tried to change the race and crash. It happened 2 times.

Was there any crash information? It can be very helpful to get the crash address and exception code. I have a map file for the program so sometimes I can track it down to the line. What exactly did you do when it crashed? It crashed when you tried to change the race but I'm not sure what that means.

Nice, yesterday the headtracking wasn't working for me. The new zip works fine now!

I haven't got an oculus rift, but I would like to say - excellent job so far, Scawen. Looking from other people feedback, looks fairly awesome. Keep up the good work!

Quote from Scawen :

Thanks for the testing and feedback.

About the menus, the current plan is to make them bigger and put them on a virtual screen in front of you and allow you to look around them by making them stay in place relative to the world while you move your head.

Was there any crash information? It can be very helpful to get the crash address and exception code. I have a map file for the program so sometimes I can track it down to the line. What exactly did you do when it crashed? It crashed when you tried to change the race but I'm not sure what that means.

Apart from the LFS 0.6e6 has stop working windows message nothing. No error code or anything.

I tried several times and the crash happened everytime.
1- I 'm in a race
2- I press escape button and I click on the "End Race " box
3 - I'm back to the menu and I press the "track" box
4 - I select another track then I press the "Ok" box. (if I don't change the track the game doesn't crash)
5 - Game crashes and I'm back to desktop

NB: If I'm in 2D mode the game doesn't crash while doing the above.

I will test further and give more feedback later on.

Quote from Maelstrom :

I tried several times and the crash happened everytime.

Thank you for the description. I can now reproduce it and I caught it in the debugger.

Quote from Maelstrom :

...
I tried several times and the crash happened everytime.
1- I 'm in a race
2- I press escape button and I click on the "End Race " box
3 - I'm back to the menu and I press the "track" box
4 - I select another track then I press the "Ok" box. (if I don't change the track the game doesn't crash)
5 - Game crashes and I'm back to desktop
...

Tried this in 0.6E6 in 3D mode, and it crashed for me, too. Thanks for fixing this, Scawen.

Quote from Scawen :

About the menus, the current plan is to make them bigger and put them on a virtual screen in front of you and allow you to look around them by making them stay in place relative to the world while you move your head.

If possible maybe the menus (and hud) can be wraped around the driver? Several demos, for example "Titans of Space" did this and it works great. It gives the whole hud a feeling like beeing rendered on a multi monitor setup.

Quote from Scawen :

About the menus, the current plan is to make them bigger and put them on a virtual screen in front of you and allow you to look around them by making them stay in place relative to the world while you move your head.

Maybe mouse tracking for pointing in menus can be replaced with headtracking. This is also some technique which works in VR pretty good.

year

we are still getting DX9, right? Sorry if mentioned somewhere didn't really follow

Hi Scawen, a few questions and suggestions.
1. Is is possible to set a custom resolution of 1920x1200 (because it has same ratio as 1280x800)? It´s been told that downsampling gives a better graphic experience on the lowres devkit.
2. Is there a way to show/log the current used IPD somewhere? I found following settings in the config file. What are they doing?
G3D_HMD_IPD 60.0
G3D_SCREEN_IPD 60.0
(info: my IPD setting in the OculusConfigUtility is set to 64,0mm)
3. Chromatic aberration seems not implemented. I thought it´s part of the SDK?
4. As you said before, a neck model is also missing (yet). Same here, I thougth its´s enabled per default when using the SDK?

Thanks again, for your effort

Feedback

Thanks very much for giving the rift tracker priority over trackir, this has solved the problem I had with headtracking not working and LFS is now easily one of my favourite rift experiences. After changing my fov to 112-115 and tweaking the head position slightly the sense of scale is also excellent and gives a really convincing illusion of inhabiting your virtual driver's body. Another thing I really like about your implementation is the fact that you extend the visible circles all the way to the sides of the screen -many demos or games I've played don't do this and consequently needlessly restrict the fov of those (like me) who wear our rifts with the lenses very close to our eyeballs. Head drift also seems to be significantly lower than just about any other rift enabled game I've tried. I'm not sure if this is due to some ninja coding on your part or just a result of the game and my rift both using the latest SDK but either way it's a big improvement (although having the ability to reset head position via a button is also very welcome and something that many other devs omit).


Feature requests

1. You've already mentioned you're looking into adding neck modelling, predictive tracking, 3d mirrors and headtracking in chase view. Could you also add tracking to the top down heli view? This would work as if your back is strapped to the base of the heli so that if your real head is looking straight forward relative to your torso, your virtual head would be looking straight down at the car. Tilting your real head up would tilt your virtual head to look at the track in front of the car whilst tilting your real head down would tilt your virtual head to look at the track behind the car.

2. Some very visually distracting moiré patterns are visible when playing LFS in the rift, particularly on the metal barriers with 4 horizontal ridges. Obviously this is due to the rift dev kit's low resolution rather than any fault of the game but perhaps a temporary fix could be implemented (until the higher res consumer version comes out) by creating a version of this texture with half the number of horizontal ridges which would automatically be used when the rift is enabled.

3. Would it be possible to add an option to display the minimap at the top center of the screen rather than just the top left/right? This would ideally enable us to display the map over the sun shade area so it's not blocking the main forward view of the track and is neither clashing with the mirror (as the top left option does) or clashing with side window struts etc (as the top right option does).

4. If you ultimately use a menu system like Hawken's (i.e. a large rectangular virtual screen locked to the world with your head positioned facing the center of the rectangle and headtracking enabled) then the ability to zoom whilst looking at the menu is likely to be useful (either by using the mouse wheel or perhaps by holding down the right mouse button). An alternative approach which could be worth experimenting with would be to map the menu to the inside surface of a hemisphere or half a cylinder (either of which might negate the need for a menu zoom option).

5. There doesn't seem to be a way to directly assign a key or wheel button to toggle the rift on or off via the controls menu. (I was able to assign rift center and toggle buttons using the text aliasing system in config files but simple "Center Rift" and "Toggle Rift" assignable options in the controls menu would be more user friendly i.e. in the same way that e.g handbrake is assignable without any typing or file editing. (I'm not sure anyone needs separate buttons for "Rift on" and "Rift off").


Tips for rift users when playing 0.6E6

-Setting the resolution in-game to 1680x1050 seems to improve image quality fairly significantly. This is the highest resolution available in-game which matches the rift's 16:10 aspect ratio and will be downscaled automatically in the rift to 1280x800, effectively giving you more anti-aliasing. (Avoid using 1920x1080 as the mismatched aspect ratio introduces warping as you roll your head).

-As just2fast mentioned you'll need to adjust your fov for best results. I find a value between 112-115 works best although this may vary slightly depending on which lenses you use and how close you set the lenses to your eyes.

-Default head positions generally seem to set your eyes directly above your neck. More natural results can be obtained by moving the head position forward slightly in the menu.

-Set FPS to display on the right of the screen. (This has the side effect of moving your race position and lap info down a bit making them more visible).

Cheers,
DD

Quote from DickDastardly :

Feedback

Thanks very much for giving the rift tracker priority over trackir, this has solved the problem I had with headtracking not working and LFS is now easily one of my favourite rift experiences. After changing my fov to 112-115 and tweaking the head position slightly the sense of scale is also excellent and gives a really convincing illusion of inhabiting your virtual driver's body. Another thing I really like about your implementation is the fact that you extend the visible circles all the way to the sides of the screen -many demos or games I've played don't do this and consequently needlessly restrict the fov of those (like me) who wear our rifts with the lenses very close to our eyeballs. Head drift also seems to be significantly lower than just about any other rift enabled game I've tried. I'm not sure if this is due to some ninja coding on your part or just a result of the game and my rift both using the latest SDK but either way it's a big improvement (although having the ability to reset head position via a button is also very welcome and something that many other devs omit).


Feature requests

1. You've already mentioned you're looking into adding neck modelling, predictive tracking, 3d mirrors and headtracking in chase view. Could you also add tracking to the top down heli view? This would work as if your back is strapped to the base of the heli so that if your real head is looking straight forward relative to your torso, your virtual head would be looking straight down at the car. Tilting your real head up would tilt your virtual head to look at the track in front of the car whilst tilting your real head down would tilt your virtual head to look at the track behind the car.

2. Some very visually distracting moiré patterns are visible when playing LFS in the rift, particularly on the metal barriers with 4 horizontal ridges. Obviously this is due to the rift dev kit's low resolution rather than any fault of the game but perhaps a temporary fix could be implemented (until the higher res consumer version comes out) by creating a version of this texture with half the number of horizontal ridges which would automatically be used when the rift is enabled.

3. Would it be possible to add an option to display the minimap at the top center of the screen rather than just the top left/right? This would ideally enable us to display the map over the sun shade area so it's not blocking the main forward view of the track and is neither clashing with the mirror (as the top left option does) or clashing with side window struts etc (as the top right option does).

4. If you ultimately use a menu system like Hawken's (i.e. a large rectangular virtual screen locked to the world with your head positioned facing the center of the rectangle and headtracking enabled) then the ability to zoom whilst looking at the menu is likely to be useful (either by using the mouse wheel or perhaps by holding down the right mouse button). An alternative approach which could be worth experimenting with would be to map the menu to the inside surface of a hemisphere or half a cylinder (either of which might negate the need for a menu zoom option).

5. I couldn't find the menu options you mentioned to enable the rift commands to be directly assigned to keys or wheel buttons. (I was able to assign rift center and toggle buttons using the text aliasing system in config files but simple "Center Rift" and "Toggle Rift" assignable options in the controls menu would be more user friendly. (I'm not sure anyone needs separate buttons for "Rift on" and "Rift off").


Tips for rift users when playing 0.6E6

-Setting the resolution in-game to 1680x1050 seems to improve image quality fairly significantly. This is the highest resolution available in-game which matches the rift's 16:10 aspect ratio and will be downscaled automatically in the rift to 1280x800, effectively giving you more anti-aliasing. (Avoid using 1920x1080 as the mismatched aspect ratio introduces warping as you roll your head).

-As just2fast mentioned you'll need to adjust your fov for best results. I find a value between 112-115 works best although this may vary slightly depending on which lenses you use and how close you set the lenses to your eyes.

-Default head positions generally seem to set your eyes directly above your neck. More natural results can be obtained by moving the head position forward slightly in the menu.

-Set FPS to display on the right of the screen. (This has the side effect of moving your race position and lap info down a bit making them more visible).

Cheers,
DD

Setting the resolution to 1680*1050 is a sure way to get a head-hick as it isn't the rift ratio. The correct resolution for this size of screen is 1600*900.

+ at 115° the car interior looks alright but the tracks looks way to thin. It kills the feeling of speed to go at 90° but the track proportion are closer to reality. The tracks are actually pretty wide. And it kills the speed feeling mostly because the resolution is low ad we can't see stuffs like the road texture moving.

I get a lot of Head drift too. But i don't think it has anything to do with the game programming.

Thanx Scawen,

Quote from Maelstrom :

Setting the resolution to 1680*1050 is a sure way to get a head-hick as it isn't the rift ratio. The correct resolution for this size of screen is 1600*900.

Actually the Rift's native resolution is 1280x800 i.e. 16:10 (not 1280x720 which would be 16:9) so 1680x1050 does scale correctly. You can easily test this yourself by comparing 16:10 resolutions in-game (which look correct) with 16:9 resolutions (which warp as you roll your head).
Cheers,
DD

Quote from Maelstrom :

+ at 115° the car interior looks alright but the tracks looks way to thin. It kills the feeling of speed to go at 90° but the track proportion are closer to reality.

I'm without a Rift, but when Rift mode is enabled, LFS changes the FOV setting to vertical field of view. As the Rift's diagonal FOV is apparently around 110°, I don't think a vertical FOV of 115° is at all correct.

Quote from PeterN :

I'm without a Rift, but when Rift mode is enabled, LFS changes the FOV setting to vertical field of view. As the Rift's diagonal FOV is apparently around 110°, I don't think a vertical FOV of 115° is at all correct.

The Tuscany Demo which comes from Oculus direct has a FOV of 111.478°.
Maybe this info helps...

Quote from just2fast :

The Tuscany Demo which comes from Oculus direct has a FOV of 111.478°.

And is that vertical, horizontal or diagonal? It makes a difference...