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 : 0.6E14

This test patch is fully compatible with version 0.6E

It now uses DirectX 9 instead of DirectX 8.1 (no graphical changes yet but some people report better frame rates)

The Oculus Rift and many 3D TVs and monitors are now supported (see "How to enable stereoscopic 3D" below)

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 0.6E13 to 0.6E14 :

Graphics :

Cars and drivers in menu screens are now antialiased
New Graphics Option : Mirror antialiasing

Oculus Rift :

New option : Antialiasing - NOTE : this reduces frame rate a lot...

Fixes :

FIX : Setup could (rarely) be corrupted when joining. Now detected and spectated with message.
FIX : NumConns was set to an invalid value of zero after disconnecting from an online host.
FIX : Arrow keys were re-enabled in the input dialog by using the code page selector.


Changes from 0.6E12 to 0.6E13 :

DirectX 9 fixes :

FIX : LFS did not get past the entry screen if Haze effect was disabled
FIX : Anisotropic filtering (Texture filtering / AF slider > 1) did not work

Other fixes :

FIX : Starting LFS in full screen set mouse cursor to top left - now centre
FIX : FOV in helicopter view is now back to the same as it was before
FIX : Credits screen had a black background


Changes from 0.6E11 to 0.6E12 :

DirectX 9 :

LFS now uses DirectX 9 instead of DirectX 8.1 (no visual changes)

Fixes :

FIX : Mirror texture is now 32-bit (as it was until recently)
FIX : Suspension view in garage did not work in 3D modes


Changes from 0.6E10 to 0.6E11 :

Oculus Rift :

Aspect ratio correction option - helps in some cases when using 1920x1080

Fixes for new bugs :

FIX : Black background in pits screen when in game
FIX : Driver was invisible in driver options screen
FIX : Distance measurement tool in SHIFT+U mode was invisible

Fixes for old bugs :

FIX : MAX ALPHA (unsorted) message after adding 900 chalk objects
FIX : LFS would crash if more than 8 game controllers were connected
FIX : Alt+F4 / X button from SHIFT+U mode after editing got stuck in game


Changes from 0.6E8 to 0.6E10 :

3D Support :

Simple HUD aspect ratio option for 3D modes in view options screen
SHIFT+U mode mouse view control now works in stereoscopic 3D modes

Oculus Rift :

Oculus Rift vertical FOV is now calculated (manual option also available)
Realistic eye positions and simple neck model moves eyes with head tracking

Fixes :

FIX : Some glitches in the movement of vertical sliders
FIX : Sliders moved twice as far as mouse in some 3D modes
FIX : Cleaner transition from track selection back to race setup screen
FIX : Rare crash that could happen when more buttons appeared on the screen


Changes from 0.6E to 0.6E8 :

Support for stereoscopic 3D monitors, projectors, TVs and headsets
Lateral and longitudinal accelerometer values now work realistically
CTRL+ and ALT+ (assign text to F keys) visible in mouse / kb mode
Improved transitions when switching between interface screens

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. There is no 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 reset - reset the orientation
/rift on - switch on 3D with Oculus Rift as the display type
/rift off - return to 2D mode
/rift toggle - switch Oculus Rift mode on or off

The /rift reset command is automatically assigned to ALT+F12
The /rift toggle command is automatically assigned to ALT+F11

You can assign ALT+F11 and ALT+F12 to wheel buttons under the ALT+ tab in the controls options screen.

5) Screen resolutions for your Oculus Rift.

Now that LFS adjusts the render target texture size to suit the output screen size, you may benefit from downsampling if you select a higher screen resolution than the native resolution of the Rift. This may produce some helpful antialiasing. Try to select a 16:10 resolution (e.g. 1920x1200) because that has the same aspect ratio as the Dev Kit's native resolution (1280x800). If you select a 16:9 resolution (e.g. 1920x1080) you should check carefully that the output image has the correct aspect ratio. This seems to vary between computers. Some have reported that the image looks the same in 1920x1200 and 1920x1080 but others report that 1920x1080 causes the image to be slightly stretched vertically. You need to make sure the dimensions appear the same as when you choose the native resolution of 1280x800. If you find the image is stretched vertically when you use 1920x1080, you can try the Aspect ratio correction option, or look at the GPU scaling setting (in your graphics card driver software).

There is a device selector in LFS which may allow you to put LFS on the Rift without it appearing on your monitor, and to do this without touching any Windows desktop settings. This is probably available when your desktop is set to extended mode. Using the device selector may make more modes available to you than when you use cloned mode.

At the bottom of the Graphics Options screen, just above the Z-buffer depth option, there is a button which has the name of your graphics card. If you click that button you may be able to select the Oculus Rift device which will be used the next time you start LFS.


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

- render mirrors in 3d
- chromatic aberration correction
- allow head tracking and wheel button instead of mouse
- replay cameras (TV view) may be put on a virtual monitor
- include object selection buttons in SHIFT+U mode


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 : 0.6E14


DOWNLOAD :

TEST PATCH 0.6E14 (if you already have 0.6E) :
www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_6E14.zip (1.0 MB)

Thanks, great updates.

Keep it up

Well done once again Scawen,

Keep it up!

Headtracking for the menu is working great. thanks for the update



why does lfs changes to window mode when looking at the server list?

Quote from halfshay :

why does lfs changes to window mode when looking at the server list?

Select No in Window while connecting

Quote from halfshay :

why does lfs changes to window mode when looking at the server list?

It's the default setting for "Window mode while connecting" in the Multiplayer screen, in case you've got Firewall pop-up while trying to show the server list.

Edit: Damn Daniel :|

Quote from Flame CZE :

[..]
Edit: Damn Daniel :|

..even with screenshot included

PS: sorry for off-topic : )

Thanks for the update... the new features are working very well!

Here's some feedback on the specific features:

4. I never experienced much (/any) drift previously, but the reset command is still very useful for setting the initial screen position (and mapping to a wheel button is just too easy!).

5. No noticeable improvement for me here. I was quite happy with the appearance of everything previously anyway, and may have some custom texture packs installed too, but it still looks very good to me!

6. The location of the setting was quite obscure, but this is a very useful feature! I found .75 to be a lot more comfortable than the default (1), but I almost completely missed the feature until I started writing this post (it might be a bit easier if it was located near the other rift sliders?).

In general, the HUD scaling and head tracking integration work really nicely. My only suggestion here would be that the "Scale" slider doesn't go far enough. The max (0.8) still requires me to keep the HUD Distance quite close (I have it at 0.4) to be able to see everything clearly, which makes it feel a little like it's "in my face". It would be nice it I could experiment with a larger HUD that was further away, as I think this might be more comfortable (to me at least).

Finally, one slightly bizarre suggestion... the title screen and menus would look pretty cool if there were any way to incorporate even some minor 3D effects there. Even if you could just bring the buttons or the LFS logo slightly forward I think it would look good, but 3d buttons and logos would be even cooler. Probably way more work than it's worth at this point, but I thought I'd mention it in case it was something easy/fun that you might want to consider.

Thanks again for another very cool update!!

Quote from Scawen :

CTRL+ and ALT+ (assign text to F keys) tabs are now visible in mouse / keyboard mode

Well, this is already possible by using Game menu, not saying it shouldn't be there but having same thing on two places

Quote from Scawen :

FIX : Computers that failed to support Rift were prevented from selecting other 3D modes

That is working now. Altought I encountered some weird problems while switching between modes couple of times, LFS.exe has stoped responding. Reproduced it couple of times, still cannot find exact way to reproduce. //laptop

On desktop PC:
-had one "stoped responding" while preloading track and pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL (I have quite a lot of hi-res textures, so it take lot longer to load)
-car in the lobby/garage is not AA-ed
-car in lobby have different look even in 2D, like you are looking it from closer (not sure if thats meant to apply to 2D also)
-you are on track, SHIFT+P, and you get black background in garage

-gravel dirt look different in mirrors (16bit?) attachment

awesome! thanks for the update!

Quote from Scawen :

I don't want to do that until I've gone through the calculations, using the official method. I am surprised you are using such a high value because the LFS Oculus Rift view does not use the full vertical FOV available on a 16:10 Rift (and that is OK because you have a helmet on). But this needs to be checked using the recommended calculations.

I can´t sleep, so here some thoughts why a vertical FOV setting around 110-112° in lfs might be correct.
I did a test with a screenshot from the game and watched that fullscreen in the Rift.
Then i have drawn red dots to mark the visible area when looked trough the lenses.
Surprisingly there are alot of rendered pixels wasted!

Now let´s assume, that the Rift has a vertical FOV of 90° which can be read often somewhere. This are around 253 pixels in the screenshots (vertical red line).
The vertical blue line is around 349 pixels long.

-->349/x=tan(lfs_FOV_angle/2)
-->253/x=tan(90°/2)

-->x=253
-->lfs_FOV_angle=2*(atan(349/253))
-->lfs_FOV_angle=108°


Edit1: x is the distance from screen to eye
Edit2: the blue vertical distance should be even a bit longer because of the distortion --> lfs_FOV_angle is even bigger than 108°

My garage background is black like daniel-cro

Quote from kdo :

My garage background is black like daniel-cro

My bad:

Quote :

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

- pits screen is currently missing its background when in game

guess that refer to both 2D and 3D

It's slight changes...

Display type: TV/monitor/projector
Format for 30 output: side by side (full)

Display type: Conventional 3D headset
Format for 30 output: side by side (full)

Display type: Oculus Rift


LFS 0.6E options-driver

LFS 0.6E8 options-driver


All 3D modes, black background garage after Shift + P.

Quote from DANIEL-CRO :

That is working now. Altought I encountered some weird problems while switching between modes couple of times, LFS.exe has stoped responding.

aha.

Also there seems to be less anti-aliasing than in 0.6E. See the attachment.

Quote from just2fast :

I can´t sleep, so here some thoughts why a vertical FOV setting around 110-112° in lfs might be correct.
I did a test with a screenshot from the game and watched that fullscreen in the Rift.
Then i have drawn red dots to mark the visible area when looked trough the lenses.
Surprisingly there are alot of rendered pixels wasted!

That looks like an extremely serious issue! I can't believe the designers of the Rift intended you to look at such a small part of the screen - resolution is low enough already without throwing away 70% of the pixels! Is this something do do with your eye position relative to the lenses, your choice of lens, something else? Are you certain that screenshot was displayed in full on the Rift's screen? I wonder if this is something you should discuss with Oculus VR technical support. It would be good to hear from someone else about this... other Rift users, can you do a similar test and see how much of the screen you can actually see?

Quote from Flame CZE :

Also there seems to be less anti-aliasing than in 0.6E. See the attachment.

That is true but that is only in the menu screens. The in game render (of world and cars) is not affected. Because the background is now drawn in a different way (so that it can be rendered as a 3D thing after the main draw) that means that 3D objects (cars / drivers) can't be drawn after the background. So the 3D object is rendered onto a render target texture and that is added to the 2D draw. So the problem is the old problem... for some unknown reason, Direct 3D will not perform antialiasing when rendering to a render target texture.

Quote from Scawen :

That looks like an extremely serious issue! I can't believe the designers of the Rift intended you to look at such a small part of the screen - resolution is low enough already without throwing away 70% of the pixels! Is this something do do with your eye position relative to the lenses, your choice of lens, something else? Are you certain that screenshot was displayed in full on the Rift's screen? I wonder if this is something you should discuss with Oculus VR technical support. It would be good to hear from someone else about this... other Rift users, can you do a similar test and see how much of the screen you can actually see?

That is true but that is only in the menu screens. The in game render (of world and cars) is not affected. Because the background is now drawn in a different way (so that it can be rendered as a 3D thing after the main draw) that means that 3D objects (cars / drivers) can't be drawn after the background. So the 3D object is rendered onto a render target texture and that is added to the 2D draw. So the problem is the old problem... for some unknown reason, Direct 3D will not perform antialiasing when rendering to a render target texture.

quick reply, because I go out with my wife ...
Using A cups, normal distance from lenses.
No, i think it´s all fine. This is known a long time ago. I would almost say this is normal.
Other games (half life, team fortress ...) for example don´t render that much on the screen.

Quote from Scawen :

That looks like an extremely serious issue! I can't believe the designers of the Rift intended you to look at such a small part of the screen - resolution is low enough already without throwing away 70% of the pixels!

Oculus wanted to use a screen around 5 inches, but the only suitable screen at the time of the first dev kit was the 800p 7", which ends up wasting most of the pixels as well as being horribly low res and physically huge. The second developer kit (unavailable to the public) uses a 1080p 5.5" panel I think. Using more of the screen as well as having a higher resolution. The consumer version will be at least that quality.

To bring up an issue from the last thread... view drift. I'm not sure how it works, but I gather that the rift has a magnetometer that can be used by developers to compensate for drift. The initial versions of the oculus SDK didn't support it so a lot of earlier demos had drift problems. I'll have to test it properly, but I don't seem to get any drift in some other titles - Lunar Flight and Oculus' own Tuscany demo for example.

Apologies if you already take advantage of the magnetometer. Maybe the sensor in my rift is faulty or something... I gather other people aren't experiencing drift at all. I bound view reset to my wheel so it's not a huge deal.

Anyway, I'm off to try E8... thanks so much for putting the time into VR mode and being responsive here!

Quote from just2fast :

Other games (half life, team fortress ...) for example don´t render that much on the screen.

Quote from acous :

Oculus wanted to use a screen around 5 inches, but the only suitable screen at the time of the first dev kit was the 800p 7", which ends up wasting most of the pixels as well as being horribly low res and physically huge. The second developer kit (unavailable to the public) uses a 1080p 5.5" panel I think. Using more of the screen as well as having a higher resolution. The consumer version will be at least that quality.

Thanks for the replies. I didn't know that they had gone with so much wasted space - I thought they had used the extra size to give more peripheral vision. But I suppose they went for this compromise just to get it out there, rather than trying to redesign lenses for a device that doesn't really represent the final design.

In that case it will be a good idea to render LFS to a smaller render target texture before the distortion (and distort to a smaller area) with no loss of quality or peripheral vision.

I'll consider this and study the notes in the SDK document - the information may be available there...

Quote from acous :

To bring up an issue from the last thread... view drift. I'm not sure how it works, but I gather that the rift has a magnetometer that can be used by developers to compensate for drift. The initial versions of the oculus SDK didn't support it so a lot of earlier demos had drift problems. I'll have to test it properly, but I don't seem to get any drift in some other titles - Lunar Flight and Oculus' own Tuscany demo for example.

Apologies if you already take advantage of the magnetometer. Maybe the sensor in my rift is faulty or something... I gather other people aren't experiencing drift at all. I bound view reset to my wheel so it's not a huge deal.

I think that is all on the side of the Rift SDK. LFS doesn't actually calculate the orientation, it just asks the SDK to provide it. I think the magnetometer is used inside the SDK. Is it possible that the magnetic fields in some people's rooms vary more than others? I don't really know how it works.

Quote from just2fast :

Other games (half life, team fortress ...) for example don´t render that much on the screen.

So that I know roughly what a good render size looks like, can you post a Rift screen shot from another game that seems to fill the entire area that you can see, but doesn't draw too many wasted pixels?

I did hear that some games render too little and you can see the edge, so it would be good to see what that looks like too...

EDIT : Thinking a bit more, it seems that the obvious choice would be to make the images meet in the middle with their curved edge, instead of being made so big that the images reach the left and right of the screen. Examples :
Torque 3D : http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22225
Half Life 2 : http://www.roadtovr.com/how-to ... ulus-rift-gameplay-video/

It looks like this method would easily cover the entire visible area shown by just2fast's red dots :
https://www.lfsforum.net/showt ... php?p=1832656#post1832656

And in that case no need for any user options...

Quote from Scawen :

Is it possible that the magnetic fields in some people's rooms vary more than others? I don't really know how it works.

Magnetometer is basically electronic compass. Purpose of it is to provide your orientation (compared to earth)

Ok, I did some testing, would be interested if anyone else can reproduce this.

I left my rift on my desk facing forwards and left my car idling in LFS. Came back 5 minutes later and there was no drift.

Next I drove a lap clockwise and my view had drifted maybe 30 pixels to the left... so I tried driving a lap in reverse and the view had moved 30 pixels to the right and was centred again.

This led me to try driving in circles anticlockwise for a minute or so (until i got dizzy) and my view had drifted to the right significantly... maybe 300 pixels.

Quote from Scawen :

So that I know roughly what a good render size looks like, can you post a Rift screen shot from another game that seems to fill the entire area that you can see, but doesn't draw too many wasted pixels?

I did hear that some games render too little and you can see the edge, so it would be good to see what that looks like too...

EDIT : Thinking a bit more, it seems that the obvious choice would be to make the images meet in the middle with their curved edge, instead of being made so big that the images reach the left and right of the screen. Examples :
Torque 3D : http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/22225
Half Life 2 : http://www.roadtovr.com/how-to ... ulus-rift-gameplay-video/

It looks like this method would easily cover the entire visible area shown by just2fast's red dots :
https://www.lfsforum.net/showt ... php?p=1832656#post1832656

And in that case no need for any user options...

The amount of the screen you actually see in the Rift is very dependent on which lens cups you're using, the distance you set the screen from your face (which is physically adjustable), how deep set your eyes are, your IPD, and which direction you're looking in (you can actually see further to the edges of the screen when looking straight ahead than you can when your eyes are rotated to the side).

I see significantly more of the screen than just2fast so please don't reduce the size of the drawn area as doing so will artificially restrict my FOV (and that of anyone else who wears the Rift with the screen very close to their eyeballs). The main reason that LFS's Rift support is leagues ahead of other implementations (including Valve's) is that your FOV is so much better so please don't change it (or if you do, at least add a menu setting to enable those who want to to retain the current size of drawn area).
Cheers,
DD

P.S. First impressions of the new patch are excellent - I love the way the HUD is now locked to the car as this makes reading the map (and the menus) much easier. I do agree with Strien, however, that it would be useful to increase the maximum HUD size (by maybe 50%). Also, thank you for adding the /rift toggle option .

Hi, I've just made an intermediate test patch which draws to less of the screen. I do understand your post, Dick Dastardly, and this will be either calculated or an option in future. But I'm just interested how this one works. It simply expands the view to reach the middle of the screens, instead of the outer edges. It still covers a lot of the screen. I'd be interested to know if you do lose some peripheral vision here. I realise that for the reasons Dick mentioned, this will vary between people. I'm sure the 90 degree default FOV is closer to correct with this patch, though it is still not calculated in any way.

The only other change is that the scale button goes up to 1.0 instead of 0.8 maximum.

http://www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_6E9.zip

Quote from Strien :

My only suggestion here would be that the "Scale" slider doesn't go far enough. The max (0.8) still requires me to keep the HUD Distance quite close (I have it at 0.4) to be able to see everything clearly, which makes it feel a little like it's "in my face". It would be nice it I could experiment with a larger HUD that was further away, as I think this might be more comfortable (to me at least).

OK, here is is, a bit bigger.

Quote from just2fast :

Then i have drawn red dots to mark the visible area when looked trough the lenses.
Surprisingly there are alot of rendered pixels wasted!

I'm guessing this patch is better for you. At least, LFS doesn't need such a big render target texture for the same resolution, so possibly the latency could be reduced. Probably not actually noticeable though.

Quote from DickDastardly :

I see significantly more of the screen than just2fast so please don't reduce the size of the drawn area as doing so will artificially restrict my FOV (and that of anyone else who wears the Rift with the screen very close to their eyeballs). The main reason that LFS's Rift support is leagues ahead of other implementations (including Valve's) is that your FOV is so much better so please don't change it (or if you do, at least add a menu setting to enable those who want to to retain the current size of drawn area).

OK, just interested to see if this version does restrict what you can see.

Quote from Scawen :

OK, just interested to see if this version does restrict what you can see.

Just tried the new patch and it does indeed restrict my view quite considerably. It's as if I'm looking through a rectangle cut in a black sheet of card held fairly close to my face i.e. the borders of my vision are now straight edged rather than the natural rounded edges you get from looking through the lenses (and I can obviously also see less of the world).

It occurs to me that a good way of setting the size of the drawn areas would be to change the colour of the undrawn areas to something very eye catching like flashing magenta when the player is dragging the corresponding slider, then they can adjust it until they can no longer see any magenta (no matter which way their eyeballs are pointing).
Cheers,
DD