Quote from KeiichiRX7 :

Also that's not how code works. Both will be merged to the main fork when the features are ready

Unfortunately Scawen's described the current state and there are 2 divergent branches of LFS. The currently public version and the version with new tyre physics (and I presume graphics). There isn't a "master branch" with feature branches for tyre physics and a separate branch for graphics that have been rebased with trunk frequently.

Scawen has stated he wishes to get back to a single master branch again, as currently any "critical" changes are having to be implemented twice, once in the public fork, and then again in the experimental fork

Quote from gu3st :

Sadly the night mods for AC are so impossible to setup. I got it working once and then it promptly broke

I assure you they're not. I have them working just fine.

Feel free to DM me and I'll help you out. Or just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRnipQ4f5lA

As an extra treat, here's a Daytona Prototype running Blackwood at night in AC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZzL7ceE_A

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

As an extra treat, here's a Daytona Prototype running Blackwood at night in AC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqZzL7ceE_A

Tease.... How ya been DWB? Finally a name or two i recognize

OK, my first impression was that of an overwhelming "WOW". I really wanted to jump into XRT and take it for a spin around a night South City. Unfortunately then I realized that the year is 2019 and nVidia has working consumer hardware with support for real raytracing lighting. Uhat LFS seems to have is a static lighting model with lightmaps and textures. It still looks pretty good but it is the technology of late nineties and you can tell. For instance the cockpit shot of SO looks pretty unnatural. I know that this is a WIP and things will improve until it's released but real dynamic lighting just looks better, especially when things are in motion.

Quote from KeiichiRX7 :

Finally a name or two i recognize

Damn straight, right? It was so weird seeing all these people here with pre-2010 registration dates whom I haven't heard of in years...

To be clear, the purpose of the lighting experiment is to allow any time of night or day to be selected. It is to create an acceptable result as time passes from day into night. In no way am I trying to create the best night lighting you can see in a game.

The latest technology has nothing to do with what I am trying to do here. I am trying to do sufficient lighting to allow basic functionality that allows us to share lighting between tracks and for time to pass so that realistic sun positions and 24 hour races could be possible.

I tried quite hard to avoid having to work on night lighting, but couldn't think of a way to limit shared lighting configurations to the times of day we could support, considering that sunrise and sunset times vary so much depending on the track's latitude and the time of year. The new lighting system uses realtime generated shadows so it seems a pity not to allow the sun to move in the sky as time passes, so the tracks always look a little different. This led me reluctantly down the path of the night lighting experiment. I like the results so far, and it doesn't bother me that other games have more advanced lighting systems. I would be disappointed if ours doesn't run at a better frame rate.

By the way, the headlights don't use a texture. They use a shader that calculates the effects of two cones of light with a point source at the headlights and they do diffuse lighting on the surfaces they hit.

Scawen, it's a good experiment, exponentially expanding the content already present in the game. I love the technology of this game, I just wish the new content came at a rate that didn't let the game become stale. Staleness kills fanbases.

Rip all players with potato PC have to play during day times only because of a drop in FPS at night.

At the moment I have it so shadow maps are turned off after sunset and headlights are then enabled. The result, at this point, is higher frame rate in the night because the shadow maps are so expensive. But if moonlight is enabled it would be a different story.

Now I'm talking about details before the core system is complete but I think it might be a reasonable option, if moon light is coded, to disable moon light shadows on slower computers. So people don't have to hope for moonless nights.

Quote from Scawen :

...disable moon light shadows...

So we don't get... carried away?

Seriously though, awesome looking demo. Thanks for sharing from the 'maybe' file, I know it's a risk

sounds promising

I love the idea that realtime clock would be reflected in the weather/lighting on my server.

Quote from Scawen :

At the moment I have it so shadow maps are turned off after sunset and headlights are then enabled. The result, at this point, is higher frame rate in the night because the shadow maps are so expensive. But if moonlight is enabled it would be a different story.

Now I'm talking about details before the core system is complete but I think it might be a reasonable option, if moon light is coded, to disable moon light shadows on slower computers. So people don't have to hope for moonless nights.

Sounds great, I really hope this can make it to a public version.
Will eclipses be possible like in the Shader mod + SOL mod for Assetto Corsa?

Now I have a reason to get a Fanatec setup. Lets go 24h racing??

Quote from Scawen :

So people don't have to hope for moonless nights.

Does that mean you have a full cycle of moon also in plans?

Ffb too bad for fanatec

Nice progress update, as usual

Quote from AnnieC :

Will eclipses be possible like in the Shader mod + SOL mod for Assetto Corsa?

Why ask about really small (actually useless imo) details when it's just a preview of an experiment?

I'm interested in moon cycle and even the planets, as I do have a general interest in astronomy, so one day I'd like to see the night sky looking right. But that doesn't mean it's 'in the plans'. Of course the moon and planets are a way lower priority than getting the tyres sorted out. So I don't imagine seeing the moon very soon.

At the moment I'm trying to work this into a usable system allowing real time, offset time and static time. Once the system is 'usable' (without going in the editor and manually switching things on or off) then I think I'll be having a look at how the sky could change from day to sunset and night, and making the headlights illuminate the other cars, as these are the most noticeable issues when driving.

The sky transition is one of the toughest things but I will be trying to consider a simple version that can be improved in future.

There are other technical things like separating the ambient artificial lights which are on all the time (pit garages) and lights which are on only at night (floodlights). And making these vary with the sun light and sky light in a physically plausible way, better than the rough version in the animated GIF. Of course artificial lights don't actually vary so that's more of an iris simulation. Also different colour lights and headlight power should be supported.

There are many invisible technical things to do like using the octree to reduce the CPU load of deciding which objects are lit by the headlights of multiple cars, generating the environment map in a more optimal way as the sky changes and many other things that take place behind the scenes when trying to create a convincing world from millions of vertices and triangles.

As it came up a few times now. When you talk about CPU loads (or hardware requirements in general) and optimisation / performance considerations, do you have a specific plattform in mind?
Of course having lean and fast code is always a plus, but with the new lighting system (and tire physics) I would guess some people might to upgrade their PC.

@Scawen

Glad to hear, as most of the players I know who play on cruise servers (both demo and S2) have pretty dated pc's.

I really appreciate the dev's going out of their way to keep LFS running on older systems, while pursuing development of nicer graphics and better performance optimization. This looks like a rather risky update though, like you mentioned, each system has to calculate which objects are lit from the headlights of other cars, at night. There seemed to be a lot of optimization needed...

Can't wait for the next major update, thank you for your time and effort

Okay this looks awesome and all but *for now* can you please limit it to static daytime? Give us the updated tracks to play with first. Dynamic lighting and nighttime opens a whole other can of worms that would push this patch many months further away.

Thats a good idea @5tag.
When the Updated Tracks are finished it would be nice if you could give us a "static" Day/Night Settings for the Tracks like Morning, Day, Afternoon and Night without Dynamic Changing until this System is complete

@5tag +1

@Scawen:
Did you do something to make it harder to crack this game?
especially after this big update.

Quote from three_jump :

As it came up a few times now. When you talk about CPU loads (or hardware requirements in general) and optimisation / performance considerations, do you have a specific plattform in mind?
Of course having lean and fast code is always a plus, but with the new lighting system (and tire physics) I would guess some people might to upgrade their PC.

No, I don't have any specific requirements in mind. It's really hard to say, without having loads of computers to test on. That's where the community will come in and we'll have to see how it goes when it goes into public testing. Anyone who struggles with the current LFS version will definitely need to upgrade as the shadow maps are quite heavy and the textures with shine level in the alpha channel take more memory. Also the higher mesh details are becoming a serious graphics card memory consideration. You can't reduce that by selecting half texture resolution.

I think LFS would be completely dead as a business if we only targeted the latest graphics cards. We earn an income from many customers in countries where the latest super gaming rig is just too much to afford, so I really hope that LFS will be able to run well with a lot of cars on track on computers with a few years old performance levels.

On the other hand Eric is using the new features and trying to get the graphics up to a certain level so the graphics card and CPU requirements are increasing.

Quote from 5tag :

Okay this looks awesome and all but *for now* can you please limit it to static daytime? Give us the updated tracks to play with first. Dynamic lighting and nighttime opens a whole other can of worms that would push this patch many months further away.

You seem to think Eric already has all the tracks finished and we are just waiting for me now. But that is not the case.

Quote from Bass-Driver :

@Scawen:
Did you do something to make it harder to crack this game?
especially after this big update.

Not yet but that is another project on my list.

Lighting, tyre physics and the master server protocol are my priorities.

Quote :

Not yet but that is another project on my list.

Lighting, tyre physics and the master server protocol are my priorities.

Maybe a "simple" solution:
-Guest must create a account to download LFS content.

- Demo licensed player is only allowed to download the "demo" version of the game ( Stripped version of LFS without S1/S2/S3 content. Only the nessesary cars/track for demo.

- And when the demo player payed for a license they will have access to the full game. Ofcourse with the limitations of S1/S2/S3 content.

Just my thoughts