This onboarding process seems to be a pain especially being an asociation. However it is not written that you need to inboard to post. But maybe it is the case for the developper forum.
Anyway I don't mind much. It looks like valve did some stuff better than oculus but not everything!
Yes, I am sure that is only for the developer forum.
My current plan is to release the LFS test patch next week. Then I'll do a Steam wallet payment, that I think will allow me to post in the public SteamVR forum to get LFS tested by a few people. It seems there are a few Vive users who want to try some more games or demos but there are not many available. It also seems that any other games and demos are only available for onboarded people.
Then I'll email my contacts at Valve to let them know we've done the implementation! Hopefully they'll like that as I guess that is the main reason for sending me a Vive!
It might be worth selling vouchers on Steam. iRacing has shown that you can do it through that mechanism. They could be input as CD-Keys or DLC that then can be added to an LFS.net account.
I'm not sure about the payment structure on Steam (in terms of revenue split), but it could be worthwhile, and open up another avenue for users to pay (as most countries do have Steam Wallet cards that you can purchase, which would allow those without debit/credit cards to purchase LFS).
It's an interesting idea. Many people have suggested it in the past, but it's never seemed to have gotten your attention. The sales are also interesting to get in on, as some developers have shown increased revenue during sales, but it might not be worthwhile for LFS.
Scawen, rule 1 of dealing with corporates, go as high as possible. Here's how to contact Gabe !
1) Go to http://www.valvesoftware.com/
2) Click on "About Valve"
3) Click on "People"
4) Click on the name of the person you'd like to contact.
5) Fill out the form.
I can think of circumstances that would make me contact Gabe Newell. But I really don't have a big problem to solve at the moment, so I won't bother him. I'm sure he's busy! I'm really happy with the LFS Vive support since Thursday evening. I believe I can pay my $5 and make a post to get LFS tested on the SteamVR forum, after releasing it here next week. I may never need to post on the developer forum.
isn´t it a bit ridiculos that one of the single most creative sim programmer in the world, with a well and proven track record, doesn´t get easy access to a simple developer forum on a platform that gave him a vr development kit in the first place?
why on earth is that forum access not bundeled with the dev hardware, as this is what it was meant for?
this is like if albert einstein liked to join a physics club and they told him, "na, first you´ll have to prove that you are really serious about quantum physics... and pay 5$"
Sweet, if everything works and Steam support reaches new levels of competency then I'm sure LFS will receive the level of support that the LFS dev's have provided to this community for many years.
Personally, I tend to very cynical, and believe that for the monkeys at 'Valve/Steam Co', if they don't see '$$$' for 'Valve/Steam Co' then they, as 'Valve/Steam Co' don't care, "LFS, Not on Steam, WTF, who cares" ?????
Gabe however, as CEO and someone who does care, is often worth emailing to resolve issues with Steam/Valve Co.
Personally, I suspect he actually has a great PA who actually reads and responds to this stuff !!!!!
The format .dds as in iRacing.
+ The game automatically attaches the license plate number and the sponsor (for example in the league), if there are any.
Thanks for your answer Scawen, I'm really waiting for this test patch, and news about Cascaded Soft Shadow Mapping.
About skin new format, I'm more up with .DDS, because LFS already converts every skins in .DDS before usage, so it will skip this step and use less disk space and will also reduce the online stutter when downloading someone's skin.
It's not about downloading, the question is about uploading. Once it is on the server it can be processed to better compression and/or converted to DDS format.
Well, there's actually a pretty good reason as to why that forum requires someone to be onboarded.
Everyone that has access to post in that forum also has the ability to add their games/demos to the SteamVR application on Steam. For you to be able to release anything on Steam, you must be onboarded for tax payment reasons. Being onboarded also means that Scawen can actually create a Steam app if he desired to release something on Steam.
The $5 thing is to attempt to prevent the increasing number of scam bots who mass-add users and send them phishing links to get their account/inventory. As well, it prevents scammers from registering mass accounts to attempt other social engineering.
Again, it seems silly at first, but both have very good reasons.
Just to be clear - I'm not bothered about the Steam forum restrictions. I'm quite pleased how the Vive thing has gone. I've managed to get it done without two way communication. At least those forums are readable and that was very important because I found some good info in there including that clue about the Flush() command. It would be nice if I could also add feedback as do like to help other people by sharing info! But I'm not allowed to, so no problem. I reckon if I had a serious issue I could get the answer somehow! I am looking forward to seeing how the Vive users like it in LFS.
It would definitely need to be 32bit format - Targa (.tga) files would work for that. The alternative would be to have a seperate jpg for effects, and some sort of naming system to tie the files together - that way you could use one channel for shine/specular, one for bump mapping, and another for some other effect, materials maybe. I believe AC does it this way, or something similar...
tga is obsoleted by png (lossless too, 32b too, better compression, free libs + usage)
What I'm more curious about (and Scawen probably too), is 32b really enough? And I don't think so... why not to go beyond glossiness; and add also normal maps for detail texturing? And the single glossiness can have not only power of reflection, but also diffraction(?) of reflection, I mean the mirror reflects almost perfectly based on the angle of view, but some materials reflect things less perfectly. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_%28computer_graphics%29 , https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/pbr-theory )
So shouldn't be the skin data prepared a bit for future, even if the current shaders will not render them fully as desired? Hmmm.. probably not worth it, as when Scawen would enhance the shaders to do more PBR-like rendering, the blindly prepared skins would need retouching anyway.
So maybe Scawen should first decide what are the target features of next version of shaders, and adjust skin format to it. If it's just one/two additional channels to rgb, 32b may suffice, and then I would personally go for png, can't see anything wrong about it.
Well going to normal maps and such, I would see those being made up of multiple images. 1 PNG for diffuse alpha for glossiness. Then a 2nd one where you use each channel for normal/etc maps. The 2nd file could then me a lower resolution possibly without losing much detail.
I read it too, it's a very interesting blog post which I recommend you Scawen.
About the skin format, if you really want it to be future proof, maybe a custom file type could be nice.
A file type that contains diffuse/albedo, specular, normal and occlusion map, and would pass them to the shaders to be correctly used by the game. And this new texture format could also be used by track textures.
