Am I the only one who's wondering what Scawen has stumbled on, that is making this test-patch stand for so long?
It was supposed to be a quick fix for a crash and a chance to fit in some other small fixes, but since it's taken longer then expected now, I am wondering what's the reason behind that.
Not being critic, just curious

He's working on better VR support:

Quote from Scawen :

Yes, I am working on VR features. As both Vive and Rift are shipping within a month, this has become the most important thing. Tyre physics can wait another month.

A good VR implementation with all the wrinkles ironed out will help bring in more users and that will be good for everyone. It's not possible to be in Steam, for reasons discussed before, but Valve have kindly supported us by sending Vives and we can be fully up to date with the software. On the Rift side, I have been in touch with Oculus and there is still a possibility of having LFS in the Oculus store. This is ongoing and I won't be able to say any more because if there was any more information, it would be under NDA. You'll just have to leave that to me, I'm working on it.

One requirement is that it must be possible to operate the game with a controller only. For the last two days I have worked on a system that draws a crosshair in the view centre and allows you to click buttons using the space bar. Obviously this "Click" function needs to be assignable to a controller button. At first I thought this task would be a few hours but the complexity is quite surprising. Various adaptations and improvements have become necessary. I think the only other buttons that are needed are "Escape" and "Show Virtual Keyboard". These will soon be available in a compatible test patch.

https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1904918#post1904918

Ah thanks, I haven't seen that particular message as I am not interested in VR my self. But I do agree that it is important to have it working flawless in LFS in order to try and get more people in.

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Test Patch 0.6M3 is now available.

For VR users it has a look and click feature and a virtual keyboard. You can assign Click, Escape and Virtual Keyboard to controller buttons so you can operate LFS without keyboard or mouse.

The virtual keyboard is also available for non-VR users, so you can control LFS without the keyboard. You will still need a mouse.

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/89160

> Mouse click on demo exit screen now exits LFS or opens www.lfs.net

I don't get it, Do you mean that now randomly demo users get their browsers opened if they click mouse button on exit randomly?

There are two buttons on the exit screen with www.lfs.net clearly visible on them.

If you click one of those, you go to our site in your browser. If you click somewhere else then you just exit.

Excuse me then, it is just wasn't clear to me in the change log

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I think so, because anything which uses the text entry dialog will have the virtual keyboard shown automatically in VR mode.

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The "Watch Out" per Button works no more right. When i press "Right View", it watch 45° out and when i press at first time "Right View" and second time "Left View" to watch 90° right out, it watch left out. Looking left works like before.

BTW: Please give the old watch out with "shoulder check" back.

Quote from matze54564 :

BTW: Please give the old watch out with "shoulder check" back.

I did fix a bug in this recently, but I think you can have what you want.

It's an option in View Options "One button look" and you can set it up to 90 degrees if you like.

Quote from cargame.nl :

Maybe I need to clarify but sometimes people text while driving... Not sure how this is possible with VR driving but well, you never know what people do... See some artwork attachments for suggestion.

Thanks, maybe it should always appear up in that high position.

I think I'll try that tomorrow.

Quote from Scawen :

I did fix a bug in this recently, but I think you can have what you want.

It's an option in View Options "One button look" and you can set it up to 90 degrees if you like.

Thats great! 90° are a little bit to much, i use now 65° and it works perfect. When using 90° is the second view 180° and 180° are to much and for 180° is the S-Button. Right View=D, Left View=A and Watch Back=S. And W not needed, but its the best configuration in all games.

Quote from Scawen :

I did fix a bug in this recently, but I think you can have what you want.

It's an option in View Options "One button look" and you can set it up to 90 degrees if you like.

I have a small query about this. So there are 3 look buttons: L, R, and Behind. Plus combinations of L and R which, depending on which is pressed first give a 180 degree "rear" view over one shoulder or the other. When LFS was young, these combination-look rear views were usable, useful, but in recent years they just give a view of the head-rest, kind of pointless, so I use another button for the basic rear-view.
I'd quite like the old L+R combination rear-views back, but I'm also curious as to why they were removed.

Found some bug running with Wine. When I use left, then left+right view button, it works as it is intended to. But when I do in opposite, I still get douple left view, instead of double right.

Yet another bug running test patch on linux. The previous one (like half a year ago maybe) is LFS inability to actually change the viewport size, rendering some garbage or just black color on the, sorry for off-topic please. Already reported, not Wine specific.

@sinbad: The point of L/R or L/R+R/L to me was always to have 1 click view of 35 degrees to have a glance at the side with ability to keep track on what's in front of me, and with 2 buttons you could look really sideways, but that is needed only for cruize mode, or maybe some crazy racing situations.

It is hard to recall the thinking behind the look changes, as it was so long ago. I can't remember what it was like before. I think some changes were made when we did the Formula BMW and we were trying to recreate some of the genuinely bad rear view capabilities of a single seater.

Probably a bug - the GUI texts are drawn over the virtual keyboard's background on screens like options, list of hosts, car selection screen etc. so it looks a bit messy.

Quote from Scawen :

Test Patch 0.6M3 is now available.

For VR users it has a look and click feature and a virtual keyboard. You can assign Click, Escape and Virtual Keyboard to controller buttons so you can operate LFS without keyboard or mouse.

The virtual keyboard is also available for non-VR users, so you can control LFS without the keyboard. You will still need a mouse.

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/89160

I had only a few minutes to test the new "look and click" feature, but WOW now lfs really is 100% VR ready!

I will continue testing tomorrow.

One first side note maybe. I think the feeling for the crosshair would be better if it wouldn´t get stuck at the edge of the virtual screen. I would still render the crosshair outside the screen, but instead of rendering to infinity when lookin at 90° I would slowly fade out the crosshair after leaving the screen area. So let´s say at around 30%-50% (measured in % of screenwidth) outside of the screen the crosshair finally is invisible. Maybe it´s hard to implement and you have better things to do at the moment .

Quote from cargame.nl :

Also wondering if central position is most ideal position. But others need to say something about it I guess.

With an VR device I find it useful to have it in the middle of the screen, because you click "with the nose".

Quote from Flame CZE :

Probably a bug - the GUI texts are drawn over the virtual keyboard's background on screens like options, list of hosts, car selection screen etc. so it looks a bit messy.

Yes, that is on my notes. It's not so much a bug but a consequence of how LFS groups up the different textures. I hope I can code something like how it keeps the messages behind the options screen selectors.

Quote from just2fast :

I had only a few minutes to test the new "look and click" feature, but WOW now lfs really is 100% VR ready!

I will continue testing tomorrow.

One first side note maybe. I think the feeling for the crosshair would be better if it wouldn´t get stuck at the edge of the virtual screen. I would still render the crosshair outside the screen, but instead of rendering to infinity when lookin at 90° I would slowly fade out the crosshair after leaving the screen area. So let´s say at around 30%-50% (measured in % of screenwidth) outside of the screen the crosshair finally is invisible. Maybe it´s hard to implement and you have better things to do at the moment .

Thanks for the testing and feedback. I've added US and German keyboards now, and have plenty more to do today!

Nice update Scawen ! Too bad I can't try LFS with VR

From what I saw while people trying LFS in VR, it seems really "harsh", no tweening, no screenfade, etc. You should consider these in the future, they greatly improve the feel of a finished product and hurt less eyes in VR (for example a screen fade on when going from menu to the start of a race).

Dunno where too put this but live host progress isn't working anymore.

few days now

I've done these Latin keyboards:

US
UK / Ireland
German
Swiss
French
Belgian
Finnish / Swedish / Norwegian / Danish
Spanish
Canadian
Dutch
Italian
Brazil
Portugal

And their dead keys (for accents) work too, also the Alt Gr key.

That does cover most LFS users though there are exceptions.
http://www.lfsworld.net/?win=racer_search&whichTab=stats

Any that are not done default to a US keyboard layout so it does work but they are missing a few keys.
Notably, non-Latin characters are not displayed at all yet.

I think that's all the keyboards I can do for now.
Tomorrow I'd better get onto some other code as time is short for VR coding...

Quote from RC-Maus :

Dunno where too put this but live host progress isn't working anymore.

few days now

Try a force refresh (Shift+F5), I had to do that after Victor fixed it.