Hello Racers,

In our last report on the website we showed some images of the updated South City and demonstrated day to night transitions and night driving. Since then, Eric has continued to work on South City and Scawen has continued to develop the graphics system. We posted some intermediate progress reports on the forum.

In this report we will link to the intermediate reports, talk about more recent updates and show some new screenshots. The information is quite technical so if you aren't that interested in the internals of game development, feel free to skip straight to the screenshots which can hopefully speak for themselves!

September Progress Report

We hope you like the pictures and videos!

wonderful
excellent reading, and beautiful pictures
SO 2.0 FTW !

Oh these picture are so nice to look at! And the technical details are also nice to read, even if I'm not a programmer

Is it just me, or all of the videos have no sound?

Glad to see the work is going well. ^^
@Sobis, the videos doesn't have sound, yes. I think it's intentional.

South City is looking hot 😳

Eric's been busy

Obligatory comparisons:

https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/01
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/02
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/03
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/04
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/05

https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/06
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/07
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/08
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/09
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/10

https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/11
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/12
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/13
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/14
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/15

https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/16
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/17
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202009/18

Nice to see the progress!

Thanks for the Update
Looking forward to do some racing on the new tracks sometimes in the future

let's scawen you can do it

Oh look a progress report! Looks good

PS: Just saw Degats' comparison.. wow :o

Quote from Degats :

Eric's been busy

Obligatory comparisons:

...

stunning
Thanks !

hello, will there be an improvement of the FFB with the update?

Quote from Nanex :

hello, will there be an improvement of the FFB with the update?

Did you try the current test patch? It has some FFB updates: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/93185-Test-Patch-U11%3A-Fixes---VR-updates

ok thanks i try this ^^

i just imagine people jumping that stairs lmao

It looks so good, you are perfect devs

Wow! a lot of information!
Blow my mind XD

Again, had translated into Chinese~

Quote from kagurazakayukari :

Again, had translated into Chinese~

Wasn't it already?


Anyway,can't wait to build cool new configurations,looks like so much potential there.

Very nice methodical improvements and results!

South city becoming a true city ! I see why it took them more time than usual.

Hopefully the core graphics engine is near completion.

no one can release a "preview version" or something? just for kill the anxiety

I loved reading all the techincal details and watching the demo videos, thanks for those South City looks really detailed now, awesome, keep the good work up!

Would love to hear the echo renderer in action

Thank you for the feedback, pleased you like the progress so far.

I have a bit more to do on the graphics, though I want to spend some time on the physics soon.

A couple of urgent things I can think of.

- I want to convert the 'individual car diffuse lighting calculated from dynamic environment map' into a compute shader so I can use it for all the cars that have an environment map. More distant cars will use the 'approximate diffuse' lighting that is currently in the paths. That's only about a day or two's work, I think, as it's a simple compute shader (and a conversion of existing code).

- The approximate lighting, for more distant cars and will also be useful for temporary objects like physics objects, layout objects and skid marks. It always was stored in the paths. But now I think it can use the occlusion octree, as that already covers all driveable areas. This sounds like a few days work.

- One obvious thing is clouds in the sky but I really don't want skies to prevent work on the physics. In my mind this can be released without clouds, but cannot be released without the physics updates.

- Various things on paper lists here but I am actually crossing them off faster than adding them now.

On Eric's side there are still plenty of holes and gaps at South City, mainly because there are really a lot of new roads and connections and he has been filling those new places up with detailed buildings. Some more holes to fill at Kyoto, and there is Fern Bay too. So both of us will still be busy for quite a while.

Quote from Degats :

Eric's been busy

Obligatory comparisons:

Thanks for the comparison shots!

Quote from kagurazakayukari :

Wow! a lot of information!
Blow my mind XD

Again, had translated into Chinese~

Thank you for that!

Great progress report. Thank you.

The other major thing was:
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1939252#post1939252

Quote from Scawen :

If I can get the graphics ready to a condition that is suitable for this release and could then get back on the physics so that is suitable in time for Eric to have finished the tracks, then this opens the possibility of working on separate physics and graphics threads.

But I guess that is maybe after the graphics are done.