Because I have done more and more insane layout complexes, I already ran out with two issues, but this one is more "critical".

Autocross objects, Maximum 1800:

Yeah, the amount of this is pretty good, but as my imagination goes wild, I ran all the time out of ready to the max. Addictic objects to create fun layouts needs lots of objects, but this isn't big deal. Sure if possible, why not to increase even more. ( Yeah, sounds ridiculous, it was just increased by 1000! but so are the options as well! )

Z-Factor, highest possible object to add: 60

Now this is critical one, yeah, now you will think: "Why the heck I would need to increase this value if it has nothing to do with the tracks itself? You should try newest westhill etc etc etc..."

Now let me explain: Sure, they new Westhill is awesome and brilliant one, but some of you haven't thought that you can actually have WAY MUCH MORE than updated track environment. As doing "supercomplex" layouts, well it is I like to do layouts, which people can actually race, or do any other fun. I tried to make a track where you can drive upsidedown BF1 and to race a lap upsidedown. Why?

Because the virtual alcoholic is not same as real one mate!

Kidding, in real, once again, imagination and fun. Why only to be restricted racing on tarmac, if you can do it on air? Sure it isn't the thing like "This is related to be as realistic as possible". Or you would say "They does not do like this in real life and neither should be in LFS." So yeah, in cruise servers you can do the same in real life? Go to shopping to buy a car by shouting a command in the text chat in the middle of grass related on track area like nothing? "Oh I just bought new car from the westhill", there is no westhill in real life as well, not that one what it is on LFS, so sadffdsfadsfdsaffasdffasdfv IDC.

Yeah, the Z factor is too small, it should be on 100.00 as max to create more smoother things, as slabs are too rough to make things called loop ( Loops exists in real life and they do drive that with cars... ) Or, make a curved slabs to make things smoother. I bet the first option is easier what I have read and thought on the things. It quickly needs to increase the factor when placing object on another object, and making it smooth, it needs larger height. I have done 3 very good loops, and the best one is 59.25 units as high, still a bit too bumpy. Again, it is because only 6 degrees is possible to use as smallest unit difference, if somehow could make it smaller, or anything what could met in these suggested cirumstances, is absolutely welcome. But at least Z to 100.00 units.

Maximum checkpoints: 3

Nothing much to explain, this should be more than 3, at least 4. But then buttons will be a problem, hotkeys. Simply pressing 1 and the list of checkpoints will pop-up to select, cool.


Maybe I am exploiting things too much, but if it is about improving LFS as well as developing it meanwhile, I give a shot!

This is all what I have experienced. I am not waiting anything new to be added, unless an inspiration is born. Good things always come with an inspiration, the other thing is will they gone in bad.

Back to editing layouts --->


EDIT: Oh, and one more thing, which is also critical. Add possibility to have an instareset during race ( unless this is possible in cruise mode? But what if no cruise but actual racing, or "racing")

Causing yellow flag or would cause or collision - cannot reset. Instareset would do things more enjoyable. This has been noticed in server while having racing with AI's and no sense. No logic, just drive, ( lol )

No, it is not possible to have instareset while having cruise on

I revive this thread. As long as I remember, this limits were because of old pcs performance. The more objects, the lower fps. Anyway I have an I5 g630, 4gb ram and a radeon 7700, and I allways get around 100 fps. It's definitely nothing advanced.

I think the problem could be solved with larger obects. For example, instead of putting 4 wall obects, having the ability to put one x4 times larger, so you save obects. Unfortunately this is not actually possible, and could save lot of time and preserve the actual object limit.

Another, important, in my opinion, would be curved objects, so you can make jumps, wall rides, or anything you could imagine, without wasting 209348023 objects on it and destroying suspensions, making the course more "soft", therefore more playlable.

I also agree with the 60 z-factor thing, but imho the previous ones are much more important.

Scawn, let us play with this, please. I have lots of Ideas that I cannot build because the actual editor limitations. This few changes could overcome any limitation.

I beg you :/

I don't see the Z factor being increased - because for the existing tracks the sky and scenery are placed so that from the highest piece of track, there are no blank 'walls' of nothingness for you to look at.

What would be better, and would increase content (!) would be a a giant type of box.

This would be just a large (1 x 1 kilometre) base, with 4 walls, each 60 metres high, and a sky lid.

There could be different configurations, with tarmac, grass, or sand/dirt as the ground, and perimeter scenery to match.

Or if this would be difficult because of the perspective of long walls of scenery, maybe a large diameter circular 'cake tin' shaped layout, again with choice of ground type.

I'd also like to see more objects, but if this was problem, more colour choices, at least for the concrete walls and chalk lines. If you can get 6 colours of tyres, why not more than 4 for walls and lines? Especially Green!

Not sure we'll get more Autocross objects - autocross is supposed to be about proper car trials (time, etc), and not stunt layouts. Likely we'll have to wait till there's a track type editor, when we can start using other objects, like lights, lamp-posts, trees, fences, etc.

Quote from sinanju :

I don't see the Z factor being increased - because for the existing tracks the sky and scenery are placed so that from the highest piece of track, there are no blank 'walls' of nothingness for you to look at.

What would be better, and would increase content (!) would be a a giant type of box.

This would be just a large (1 x 1 kilometre) base, with 4 walls, each 60 metres high, and a sky lid.

There could be different configurations, with tarmac, grass, or sand/dirt as the ground, and perimeter scenery to match.

Or if this would be difficult because of the perspective of long walls of scenery, maybe a large diameter circular 'cake tin' shaped layout, again with choice of ground type.

I'd also like to see more objects, but if this was problem, more colour choices, at least for the concrete walls and chalk lines. If you can get 6 colours of tyres, why not more than 4 for walls and lines? Especially Green!

Not sure we'll get more Autocross objects - autocross is supposed to be about proper car trials (time, etc), and not stunt layouts. Likely we'll have to wait till there's a track type editor, when we can start using other objects, like lights, lamp-posts, trees, fences, etc.

But don't you think that allowing bigger objects (just increasing length, width) and the ability to bend them there's pretty much everything covered?

I mean, that will end the discussion of the object limit, because you could just put less but larger objects. Just imagine a 64x long block for a wall. And I don't think that's very difficult to implement.

The ability to bend them could be more challenging, I don't know, but that's also necessary.

And It's not only for stunts. I'm actually trying to make race layouts, but I have many problems when It comes to make something a bit different.

The height limit of 60m is not a arbitrary or randomly chosen number, it is 60m because of how LFS layouts store data. ( https://www.lfs.net/programmer/lyt )

The height-coordinate of an object is stored as one byte. With one byte you can count from 0 to 255.
In theory that allows to build stuff 255m in the air but the problem is that you would only be able to build in "steps" of 1 meter.
(0m, 1m, 2m, ... 255m - but not 0,1m or 2,5m)
That would be too imprecise to build anything useful, so changing zbyte by 1 moves the object by 25cm. This gives more precise placement at cost of maximum height.
For special reasons it is not 255/4 = 63,75m but 240/4, so the limit is at 60m.
Changing the zbyte variable to a more precise type is possible but it is not as trivial as merely adjusting a number. It might also break any insim programs, the existing layouts etc.


The layout files are in some way quite optimized, like this z-thing. How object-properties (color, width etc) are stored with bit masks is also a "trick."
Other things are stored in similiar ways, for example that is why length of wall only has four steps.
(But the steps are choosen in a way that you combine multiple walls to get wanted sum)
Per object three extra properties can be stored, for example for a ramp: length, width, angle. But that means no color for the ramp object. The ramp-wall can have color because it has a fixed width.

"More checkpoints:"
The sector-splits,start & finish are actually the same object.
There is excactly one byte to define the type of checkpoint and its width.
Computer thinks in 0s and 1s. The 0-or-1 thing is called bit. 8 bits make one byte:
12345678
00000000
The first two numbers define what type of checkpoint it is:
In layout documenation it reads:

So you see 00,01,10,11 are already all four possible combinations of the first two bits.
Start,split-1,2,3 plus finishline is five combinations. Start and finish line can be told apart because the startpostion has a width of zero. (it does not need it obviously)

The other six bits are used to store the width of the checkpoints:
12345678
00000000
And that limits how wide a checkpoint can be. And so on...

It might all seem quite strange but that is how it works.

It is like you went shopping and packed everything like Tetris on belt, now you are happy because everything fits so nice.

But it loses some flexibility. You can not spontaneously fit a crate of beer inbetween.
Or if you want to swap the positions of the eggs and the orange juice, that does not work without rearranging lots of other stuff.

It is maybe not nessecary to optimize layout files so tightly, but the autocross editor started as very simple system. Some stuff might have just grown the way it is now.
There is still "reserve-space" in format though.
But other things might be unlikely to change for few stuntmen who are unhappy with "only" 60m looping

(no guarantee if any of that is correct, it is just my thoughts from reading the layout info)

Quote from Gutholz :

(no guarantee if any of that is correct, it is just my thoughts from reading the layout info)

Basically that's quite close to what Scawen said in test patch thread,which introduced concrete objects - basically he wants to save place,so layouts can be loaded very quicky,so every object has very limited data - like positioning for all objects,color,size and angle for concrete objects. You can see that every concrete object has only 3 different changeable values.

One thing I would like to see - some tracks have places,where concrete objects placed at Z value of 0 still are floating over ground. Not sure,if it's possible,but would be nice to have some sort of fix there...

Quote from Gutholz :

stuff

And what about allowing larger objects? Is it possible? Like walls larger than 16x4.

I also wanted to know if introducing bent walls and slabs could be very difficult or not. Just for making jumps, U turns and stuff like that.

larger objects:
The existing wall-object might not be able to grow larger. But I could imagine for example a new object "large wall" that instead of 2,4,8,16meter lenghts would come in size of 20,40,80,160m.
With very large objects (1km x 1km plate etc) there might be problems with rendering, because maybe system is not made for that. But no idea.

other objects:
With last few patches we learned that LFS physics indeed do work upside-down, on ceiling of tunnels and all that. From that I guess types ob objects (pipes, bend stuff, circle,..) would work, too? It really depends on things we do not know.
However there is space for 255 different object tpyes, and currently less than half is used, so there is some potential.

I think the autocross stuff is meant to block unneeded roads in custom configs, adding a few jumps or bridges or so. Since it works okay for that purpose the other uses are maybe not [seen as] so important, also because it could be high work for little advantages. Giant floating roads in sky are more like interessting side effect that happens to look very spectacular.

It not only happens to look spectacular man, it's actually very fun! xD

Quote from UnknownMaster21 :

...I tried to make a track where you can drive upsidedown BF1 and to race a lap upsidedown.

Question is did you do it? Because i did

Also ran out of Z-factor space but i'd rather have slightly curved blocks and ability to change that curvature slightly than more of Z-factor space Tbh.

Curved concrete slab sections would be nice to have, like they use for Scaletrix and other slot car racing...



...where you can have maybe 3 different 22.5 degree diameter sections, each max 16 m wide, so you can join to existing concrete slabs and ramps.

Walls for these would also be great, although you would need at least 10 different sizes to fit 3 curved slabs, due to slabs being able to be resized as 2, 4, 8 and 16 m (remember; inside curve of outside object is same size as outside curve of middle object, so that's single object - red curved line between black and gray objects in image).

Very inner ring curved section probably not required as existing wedge object would be suitable as outer diameter so small, would be almost straight line anyway.

Quote from Gutholz :

The height limit of 60m is not a arbitrary or randomly chosen number, it is 60m because of how LFS layouts store data. ( https://www.lfs.net/programmer/lyt )

The height-coordinate of an object is stored as one byte. With one byte you can count from 0 to 255.
In theory that allows to build stuff 255m in the air but the problem is that you would only be able to build in "steps" of 1 meter.
(0m, 1m, 2m, ... 255m - but not 0,1m or 2,5m)
That would be too imprecise to build anything useful, so changing zbyte by 1 moves the object by 25cm. This gives more precise placement at cost of maximum height.
For special reasons it is not 255/4 = 63,75m but 240/4, so the limit is at 60m.
Changing the zbyte variable to a more precise type is possible but it is not as trivial as merely adjusting a number. It might also break any insim programs, the existing layouts etc.


The layout files are in some way quite optimized, like this z-thing. How object-properties (color, width etc) are stored with bit masks is also a "trick."
Other things are stored in similiar ways, for example that is why length of wall only has four steps.
(But the steps are choosen in a way that you combine multiple walls to get wanted sum)
Per object three extra properties can be stored, for example for a ramp: length, width, angle. But that means no color for the ramp object. The ramp-wall can have color because it has a fixed width.

"More checkpoints:"
The sector-splits,start & finish are actually the same object.
There is excactly one byte to define the type of checkpoint and its width.
Computer thinks in 0s and 1s. The 0-or-1 thing is called bit. 8 bits make one byte:
12345678
00000000
The first two numbers define what type of checkpoint it is:
In layout documenation it reads:

// bits 0 to 1 :
// 00 = Start position (if width = 0) or finish line (if width > 0)
// 01 = Checkpoint 1
// 10 = Checkpoint 2
// 11 = Checkpoint 3


So you see 00,01,10,11 are already all four possible combinations of the first two bits.
Start,split-1,2,3 plus finishline is five combinations. Start and finish line can be told apart because the startpostion has a width of zero. (it does not need it obviously)

The other six bits are used to store the width of the checkpoints:
12345678
00000000
And that limits how wide a checkpoint can be. And so on...

It might all seem quite strange but that is how it works.

It is like you went shopping and packed everything like Tetris on belt, now you are happy because everything fits so nice.

But it loses some flexibility. You can not spontaneously fit a crate of beer inbetween.
Or if you want to swap the positions of the eggs and the orange juice, that does not work without rearranging lots of other stuff.

It is maybe not nessecary to optimize layout files so tightly, but the autocross editor started as very simple system. Some stuff might have just grown the way it is now.
There is still "reserve-space" in format though.
But other things might be unlikely to change for few stuntmen who are unhappy with "only" 60m looping

(no guarantee if any of that is correct, it is just my thoughts from reading the layout info)

I always forget about how the things are first done, so I did re-re-read once more the stuff to understand it better, not only the gui.

I also did forgotten this thread.

Also it is not only for stunting, but for anything, always keep this on mind, to understand better on things.

About curved objects, +1

Edit: anyway, lock thread and make a list of these all suggestions instead