The online racing simulator
Niggles so far
1
(35 posts, started )
Niggles so far
Have to say, I've had a lot of fun driving the mods in LFS and the addition is a welcome one without doubt.

Nevertheless I've encountered some teething problems which I've yet to see mentioned in full, maybe they've been touched upon in various threads but I felt the need to address them individually.

1. FFB
The ffb strength is wildly different from mod to mod, granted, when driving a kart, you would expect the FFB to be somewhat saturated and stiff, but the issue of FFB between mods I've found to be extreme. Would there be any kind of metric for mods to adhere to? I feel like FFB seems to be created to the mod makers tastes/preferences only and not to any real fixed metric that makes the mod specific FFB relative to all other cars in LFS, mods or otherwise.

2. Steering lock/ratio
I've found this to be much the same as the FFB, wildly different and in many cases, comically high amount or complete lack of steering lock or ratio.

The most evidential one I can think of is the late 60's early 70's F1 mod by Jake_Blasted where the default setting is 30degrees of steering lock within less than 360 degrees of wheel rotation. This makes the car ridiculously twitchy and impossible to enjoy, when the core vehicle dynamics feel really good, its impossible to enjoy them. But there are plenty more where the steering lock far exceeds the realistic maximum those cars would have. Anything above 45 is ludicrous unless its a drift car. I mean a hackney carriage has 43 why would a UF1? I feel like not enough effort is being put into this.

Another example is Flame_CZE's beautiful stock car mod. 20degrees maximum lock might be enough technically speaking, in the real world, but the problem is in game the ratio feels too long. Most stock car setups would run at least of 10:1 on a road course, sometimes even 8:1 on roadcourses and short ovals. I will say I don't know the mathematical calculations of such ratios are but I can feel that it's not enough and I don't know if that's the limitations within the game, or otherwise. I just know that 20degrees in that car does not feel anywhere near enough for road-course usage because even on ovals it feels too little.

3. Setups, specifically the tyre allocation
Whilst driving various cars, I noticed the slick tyres, even R4 are way to grippy for most of the mods themselves in most cases making them incredibly easy to drive and I would like to know if its possible to create a new tyre like an R5 for the mods to use, otherwise I would suggest to mod makers that despite the visual appearance, try using road_super instead of slick compounds.

My favourite mod has to be the transam mod by Chansonje but on slicks [even R4] this car was way too fast and stable and nowhere near lairy enough for the type of vehicle that it is, however on road-super it was transformed to be exactly what you'd expect from such a car and extremely enjoyable.

I just feel that the onus shouldn't be on the player to setup the car drastically to get the car to perform to expectations, almost having to undo the original mod makers preferences in steering lock or FFB just to drive and enjoy the thing.

I don't know or can't think of any methods that would solve these problems, my only hope is that bringing this up in a dedicated thread may give birth to such ideas in a way where we can really standardize at least the FFB and steering lock practices for all mods, that bring them inline with stock LFS cars generally.
Quote from BlueFlame :Another example is Flame_CZE's beautiful stock car mod. 20degrees maximum lock might be enough technically speaking, in the real world, but the problem is in game the ratio feels too long. Most stock car setups would run at least of 10:1 on a road course, sometimes even 8:1 on roadcourses and short ovals. I will say I don't know the mathematical calculations of such ratios are but I can feel that it's not enough and I don't know if that's the limitations within the game, or otherwise. I just know that 20degrees in that car does not feel anywhere near enough for road-course usage because even on ovals it feels too little.

Thanks for the feedback, I will try to adjust it as you suggested. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave a comment in the mod thread. Smile
Quote from Flame CZE :Thanks for the feedback, I will try to adjust it as you suggested. If you have any other suggestions, feel free to leave a comment in the mod thread. Smile

Will do. Its really good work though I appreciate the dedication you've shown in it
Just want to put some input here,

I do agree to a few things you mentioned like the TransAm car doesn’t need slicks, road supers match the era more and is still gripped enough and felt fun.

Force feedback between mods will always be there, due to weight, weight distribution, front suspension type, and steering rack. But yes I agree some cars have way too light steering, and some guys have fixed that, that’s what the feedback/comment section is for

Jake_Blasted F1 car is near perfect I’m sorry to say my friend, but F1 steering is very twitchy and with very minimal lock. F1 cars are about precision and any steering input will move the car around.

I feel like your expectations are too high from people that are moders not developers. That’s why there’s only a handful of staff picked cars. That’s why these are WIP not finished mods. This is till new give it some time.
Quote from BlueFlame :Have to say, I've had a lot of fun driving the mods in LFS and the addition is a welcome one without doubt.

Nevertheless I've encountered some teething problems which I've yet to see mentioned in full, maybe they've been touched upon in various threads but I felt the need to address them individually.

1. FFB
The ffb strength is wildly different from mod to mod, granted, when driving a kart, you would expect the FFB to be somewhat saturated and stiff, but the issue of FFB between mods I've found to be extreme. Would there be any kind of metric for mods to adhere to? I feel like FFB seems to be created to the mod makers tastes/preferences only and not to any real fixed metric that makes the mod specific FFB relative to all other cars in LFS, mods or otherwise.

2. Steering lock/ratio
I've found this to be much the same as the FFB, wildly different and in many cases, comically high amount or complete lack of steering lock or ratio.

The most evidential one I can think of is the late 60's early 70's F1 mod by Jake_Blasted where the default setting is 30degrees of steering lock within less than 360 degrees of wheel rotation. This makes the car ridiculously twitchy and impossible to enjoy, when the core vehicle dynamics feel really good, its impossible to enjoy them. But there are plenty more where the steering lock far exceeds the realistic maximum those cars would have. Anything above 45 is ludicrous unless its a drift car. I mean a hackney carriage has 43 why would a UF1? I feel like not enough effort is being put into this.

Another example is Flame_CZE's beautiful stock car mod. 20degrees maximum lock might be enough technically speaking, in the real world, but the problem is in game the ratio feels too long. Most stock car setups would run at least of 10:1 on a road course, sometimes even 8:1 on roadcourses and short ovals. I will say I don't know the mathematical calculations of such ratios are but I can feel that it's not enough and I don't know if that's the limitations within the game, or otherwise. I just know that 20degrees in that car does not feel anywhere near enough for road-course usage because even on ovals it feels too little.

3. Setups, specifically the tyre allocation
Whilst driving various cars, I noticed the slick tyres, even R4 are way to grippy for most of the mods themselves in most cases making them incredibly easy to drive and I would like to know if its possible to create a new tyre like an R5 for the mods to use, otherwise I would suggest to mod makers that despite the visual appearance, try using road_super instead of slick compounds.

My favourite mod has to be the transam mod by Chansonje but on slicks [even R4] this car was way too fast and stable and nowhere near lairy enough for the type of vehicle that it is, however on road-super it was transformed to be exactly what you'd expect from such a car and extremely enjoyable.

I just feel that the onus shouldn't be on the player to setup the car drastically to get the car to perform to expectations, almost having to undo the original mod makers preferences in steering lock or FFB just to drive and enjoy the thing.

I don't know or can't think of any methods that would solve these problems, my only hope is that bringing this up in a dedicated thread may give birth to such ideas in a way where we can really standardize at least the FFB and steering lock practices for all mods, that bring them inline with stock LFS cars generally.

Hey Flame,

I agree with most of what you're saying, as of right now the tire selection is limited. Hopefully some new tire additions could be released to solve some issues you listed above. During races were always talking about tire grip and specs not completely meeting standards, An example were running into right now is drag cars using slick tires cause thats the grippiest option, Theres no soft compound tires that hook or twist in some way when launching to maximize grip, or even a prepped surface on drag strip layouts for grip.

For my P166, We felt the steering lock from play testing in different servers and racing with friends feels pretty accurate to the real life version although it can always be improved. The wheel really only turns 180 - 270 degrees max in f1 giving drivers full range of turning in a small window of steering rotation. The P1 is really more of an advanced drivers car utilizing throttle control and both smooth/twitchy turning inputs to really get the max out of the car. The higher 30 degrees full lock was actually to help with correction, these cars can be twitchy and can get loose very quickly.

Id like to mention too that a lot of mod creators are hobbyist and not engineers. The amount of times I've seen wrongly setup suspension is to much to count Big grin Big grin Its so easy to obtain the correct knowledge online and research proper setup tuning from real life that can be implemented into LFS very easily, right now mod creators are still new and developing so I'm sure as time goes on people will begin to learn when they load up their new car they've worked hard to create... and it handles horribly in-game lol.

Thanks for the feedback Flame and good post! These are topics we've touched on a bunch in private calls so making it public will be good. I'm sure the team has heard the community's cry's and are coming up with some solutions to fix these issues.
I have to agree with most of what is said in this thread as well. Pardon me for also joining in on the ranting, but some mods feel like the main concern has only been importing the model into editor and maybe few adjustments here and there with little thought to the picture as a whole. Even few "tweak" mods seem like somehow the suspension got all mangled up, either present in the feeling of the car, or in the setup menu with unrealistically high motion ranges. I won't name anyone, but for example a certain coupe is essentially just a XRT with a different model. Which is a shame, that car's "real life" counterpart is one of my personal favourites. Poorly made suspension geometry also reflects on the FFB a lot and might be also the cause for the drastic difference in feel on each car, i have seen mods that have no FFB on power and all the FFB when braking(even the V8FX i'm working on was like this until i reworked it's suspension completely and then noticed that the caster was at 1 degree Big grin). Nothing should feel the exact same of course, but some consistency wouldn't hurt. What especially makes it slightly tedious is when you're sometimes changing the car you also have to adjust the FFB amount to suit the current car, when in the default content you can swap around with no issues.

As for the setups, some personal adjustment is always necessary imo, but a good initial setup wouldn't hurt either. Such is the case on the default cars of LFS too, so i don't see any problem if you have to figure out things on the setup.

This all is fairly new so it's not surprising to me that mods aren't as refined as they could be. Hope this thread can change that Big grin

Quote from Jake_Blasted :For my P166, We felt the steering lock from play testing in different servers and racing with friends feels pretty accurate to the real life version although it can always be improved. The wheel really only turns 180 - 270 degrees max in f1 giving drivers full range of turning in a small window of steering rotation. The P1 is really more of an advanced drivers car utilizing throttle control and both smooth/twitchy turning inputs to really get the max out of the car. The higher 30 degrees full lock was actually to help with correction, these cars can be twitchy and can get loose very quickly.

I haven't had the time to test an updated version of it, but the 1st one felt as if it was too sensitive. For example, here's some onboard footage of a lap at monaco with a Lotus 49C(which to me looks pretty close to what you were aiming for, maybe slightly older):


I'm not exactly sure about what steering rack the 49C has though, but i think it had almost 720 degrees of steering motion going from lock to lock and 26-30 degree turn at the wheels. I'll try to look this up as i'm not sure at all about those figures though. But in that video the steering doesn't seem as sensitive as it is with the P166 mod.

Modern F1 cars of course have 360 lock to lock(180 to side ofc Tongue) minus monaco where i think they have 450 due to the tight bends they have to navigate with the modern boats.

EDIT: found a related discussion on this - https://www.isrtv.com/forums/topic/10595-60s-70s-f1-steering-lock/
Quote from BlueFlame :
2. Steering lock/ratio
I've found this to be much the same as the FFB, wildly different and in many cases, comically high amount or complete lack of steering lock or ratio.

The most evidential one I can think of is the late 60's early 70's F1 mod by Jake_Blasted where the default setting is 30degrees of steering lock within less than 360 degrees of wheel rotation. This makes the car ridiculously twitchy and impossible to enjoy, when the core vehicle dynamics feel really good, its impossible to enjoy them. But there are plenty more where the steering lock far exceeds the realistic maximum those cars would have. Anything above 45 is ludicrous unless its a drift car. I mean a hackney carriage has 43 why would a UF1? I feel like not enough effort is being put into this.

Another example is Flame_CZE's beautiful stock car mod. 20degrees maximum lock might be enough technically speaking, in the real world, but the problem is in game the ratio feels too long. Most stock car setups would run at least of 10:1 on a road course, sometimes even 8:1 on roadcourses and short ovals. I will say I don't know the mathematical calculations of such ratios are but I can feel that it's not enough and I don't know if that's the limitations within the game, or otherwise. I just know that 20degrees in that car does not feel anywhere near enough for road-course usage because even on ovals it feels too little.


I think users should be able to edit the wheel rotation value themselves. I've made this suggestion before, but I feel it's relevant to bring it up again now that mod support is a thing. In the case that the mod creator doesn't use a value you consider correct or that you find awkward it would really help if we could just adjust it ourselves. I know this wouldn't solve everything, but it would definitely be a useful setting to have in certain cases.
Quote from nikopdr :I have to agree with most of what is said in this thread as well. Pardon me for also joining in on the ranting, but some mods feel like the main concern has only been importing the model into editor and maybe few adjustments here and there with little thought to the picture as a whole. Even few "tweak" mods seem like somehow the suspension got all mangled up, either present in the feeling of the car, or in the setup menu with unrealistically high motion ranges. I won't name anyone, but for example a certain coupe is essentially just a XRT with a different model. Which is a shame, that car's "real life" counterpart is one of my personal favourites. Poorly made suspension geometry also reflects on the FFB a lot and might be also the cause for the drastic difference in feel on each car, i have seen mods that have no FFB on power and all the FFB when braking(even the V8FX i'm working on was like this until i reworked it's suspension completely and then noticed that the caster was at 1 degree Big grin). Nothing should feel the exact same of course, but some consistency wouldn't hurt. What especially makes it slightly tedious is when you're sometimes changing the car you also have to adjust the FFB amount to suit the current car, when in the default content you can swap around with no issues.

As for the setups, some personal adjustment is always necessary imo, but a good initial setup wouldn't hurt either. Such is the case on the default cars of LFS too, so i don't see any problem if you have to figure out things on the setup.

This all is fairly new so it's not surprising to me that mods aren't as refined as they could be. Hope this thread can change that Big grin

I haven't had the time to test an updated version of it, but the 1st one felt as if it was too sensitive. For example, here's some onboard footage of a lap at monaco with a Lotus 49C(which to me looks pretty close to what you were aiming for, maybe slightly older):


I'm not exactly sure about what steering rack the 49C has though, but i think it had almost 720 degrees of steering motion going from lock to lock and 26-30 degree turn at the wheels. I'll try to look this up as i'm not sure at all about those figures though. But in that video the steering doesn't seem as sensitive as it is with the P166 mod.

Modern F1 cars of course have 360 lock to lock(180 to side ofc Tongue) minus monaco where i think they have 450 due to the tight bends they have to navigate with the modern boats.

EDIT: found a related discussion on this - https://www.isrtv.com/forums/topic/10595-60s-70s-f1-steering-lock/

Yes exactly that is one of the videos i was watching to try and base the steering off of. I think you guys hit the nail on the head about this, I found out that the steering animation that i had made was correct to correspond with many of the 70s era onboard videos i could find, but my actual steering wheel lock was set to low as the TOTAL steering lock should be greater. Was already working on the changes after Flame's original post (since its worth taking a look) + really finishing up the interior (win-win). Im going to upload tonight please let me know what you think, i may have solved the overly twitchy-ness of the steering on an already twitchy car which just added to the difficult of the car lol.

I do want to mention that you shouldn't feel that you have to make a "rant" thread post and call out mods to provide feedback/criticize something wrong about specific mods. Anytime please feel free to reach out or leave a comment, i am happy to be wrong in these cases Big grin as i want the car to feel / drive as good as it possibly can. Smile (unlike some others i can think of Wink lol)
Quote from martin18 :

Force feedback between mods will always be there, due to weight, weight distribution, front suspension type, and steering rack. But yes I agree some cars have way too light steering, and some guys have fixed that, that’s what the feedback/comment section is for



I feel like your expectations are too high from people that are moders not developers. That’s why there’s only a handful of staff picked cars. That’s why these are WIP not finished mods. This is till new give it some time.

Well of course there will be a different general feeling between suspensions but the problem I'm finding is that it doesn't feel "consistently" different, if that makes sense.

It feels like alot of modders tailor the FFB and steering feel to their own taste rather than the raw input/output. With how heavy some of the mods ffb is, NOBODY will EVER use at 100%, I doubt many people even use 100% in regular LFS cars anyway but some of the mods here are double or TRIPPLE the overall FFB force. I could appreciate having to tweak individual FFB's within 10-20% excluding things like go-karts or the e-scooter [lol] but the reality is a difference between having to run 15% in game to having to run close to or over 100%. With direct drive wheels peoples hands will break with the huge disparities that there are.

Maybe a poll is needed to account for the most commonly used FFB% for default content and then the modders should tailor their cars to perform at that FFB% in game, but I don't know if it creates more problems than it solves this way, just a suggestion.

There's no need to see my comments as a wholly negative ones, they're not. I understand that many are WIP which is exactly the reason I bring these points up in the beginning, so it doesn't go down a rabbit hole of "finished" mods that have wildly different standards when it comes to FFB, steering lock or tyre compound choice.

I would expect at the very least these things are accounted for by the people who make the mods, I'm not asking for something that's perfect in every way, just that the things that *can* be taken care of, are taken care of before we end up with a majority of mods that are never ever used.


I don't know if its possible but maybe in the editor there is a drift spec check box which determines how the mod is tagged in the list and whether or not it can have more than 30~degrees of steering lock, that would solve one of the problems. It's frustrating to see race cars that are excellent quality to have way too much lock because the steering ratio is off or visa versa. Likewise for some of the road cars. 60degrees lock I saw on a truck or such, I can't remember which. This lack of quality in details just means that you'll end up with what AC or rF1 has where you have mods for any car you can think of, but the quality isn't fully there so nobody uses them.

I know Scawen doesn't want this either by the looks of how things are developing but its well within our interests that we as players don't want it either. In a perfect scenario the only mods you won't install are of cars you don't want or like to drive and not because of quality reasons.

But I have to say the response here has been productive and exactly what I hoped when I decided to post.
A straight FFB modifier in the editor could be a nice option.. with something like the truck where there's a lot of weight on the front axle it was difficult to get the FFB anywhere near as light as I'd like. In reality you'd never run a vehicle like that without power steering so a flat FFB % modifier could simulate that.

I run 75-80% in game and agree some of the things I've tried have been wild strong.

With regards to steering lock - While I agree that the top levels i.e full 60 deg should be for modified drift cars, below that I don't think giving a vehicle slightly more is an issue.
As long as the default setup is at a realistic level, it allows freedom for users to do as they wish with the vehicle which I've always seen as a huge positive for LFS.
Quote from Cimanu :
As long as the default setup is at a realistic level, it allows freedom for users to do as they wish with the vehicle which I've always seen as a huge positive for LFS.

To an extent, but it looks silly if you made a gt3 clone and it had 60degrees of available steering. It's just pointless
Quote from Cimanu :A straight FFB modifier in the editor could be a nice option.. with something like the truck where there's a lot of weight on the front axle it was difficult to get the FFB anywhere near as light as I'd like. In reality you'd never run a vehicle like that without power steering so a flat FFB % modifier could simulate that.

Have you tried adjusting this option?

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power steering.jpg
Quote from Flame CZE :Have you tried adjusting this option?


Wow, I'm an idiot and fully missed that.

I guess the truck gets another new version..

Edit: I feel a little better - not immediately obvious, where is that setting in the editor?
Hi, that power steering I'm pretty sure doesn't do anything at the moment. Although it actually does in the development version.

In the public version there is some calculation that works out a multiplier based on a few values, but it really doesn't work with vehicles so varied as mods.

In the dev version I made it so there is a consistent force based on physics things, then that force can be reduced by power steering.

I think it may be possible to implement this into the public version. I don't know if any unexpected problems might come up but one problem is that I'm not sure how mod creators would be able to set this consistently. At least, it is part of the setup so drivers can set it to their taste. But if left at zero for some vehicles there could be a real problem.

I'll try to have a look anyway.
I think something especially nice would be the ability to save per-car FFB values like a number of other sims have. It would solve/workaround the variation in mods at least until some sort of standard is, well, standard. In addition I'd love to see a way to change the FFB strength with finer granularity, as < and > are locked to steps of 5. This is significant when the most I generally have it set to is 30 with my wheel setup, and especially so since as BlueFlame alluded to some vehicles have frankly insane FFB where even a value of 5 may be too high to enjoy, and having to back out to the options menu for a fine adjustment can make mod testing tedious.

As for power steering, it's something I've been trying to figure out since I prefer slower, friendlier road cars over grippy, tight, and altogether "physical" track cars and haven't been able to replicate a nicely self-centering steering wheel (particularly at lower speeds) like in my daily drivers. It's made me wonder if it's in LFS at all, or if so, if it's not speed-variable power assist. Overall I'd say having more tuning options for the handling of cars on a per-mod basis is fairly significant, on both the creator's side and the player's.
Quote from Zopiac :I think something especially nice would be the ability to save per-car FFB values like a number of other sims have. It would solve/workaround the variation in mods at least until some sort of standard is, well, standard.

This is already possible using LFS car scripts in data/script/[XXX].lfs. There you can put commands to be executed. So by inserting /ffb 34 into one of the files, it will use that value for the particular car.

This works for original LFS cars. I'm not sure if it would also work for mods if you created a file with the mod skin ID. Uhmm
could there please be some kind of regulation regarding mods of which the sound clips? lfs distortion is not very pleasant to hear, and most mods seem to disregard that clipping is a thing when editing the engine sound

~responding here so i dont have to make a useless thread
Quote from VladM :could there please be some kind of regulation regarding mods of which the sound clips?

It's important to rate the mods, and if the engine sound is bad then give it a low rating on that point. Then it's unlikely the mod will be approved. That's the idea anyway, but mod approval is still in early stages (W47 and the mod approval system was only released 6 days ago).
Quote from VladM :could there please be some kind of regulation regarding mods of which the sound clips? lfs distortion is not very pleasant to hear, and most mods seem to disregard that clipping is a thing when editing the engine sound

~responding here so i dont have to make a useless thread

I been helping out a lot of moders with their engine sounds, and my #1 priority is keeping the sounds from clipping. Maybe I’ll take time to make engine sounds for the better mods that’s have at least 3 stars or more
Quote from martin18 :I been helping out a lot of moders with their engine sounds, and my #1 priority is keeping the sounds from clipping.

Thanks for helping with the engine sounds! It has been fun hearing different engine sounds driving past. Although I know the sound engine is quite limited, some results can sound pretty good.

I was wondering if something should be done in code to stop the clipping. It's hard for the editor to know in advance (before allowing upload) if an engine sound will clip, as it would have to run it through the whole engine sound system.

But maybe there should be a clipping prevention system for the output waveform. One that could even deal with multiple engine sounds combining.

I'm not saying I'll definitely do that, and I can do my own research too, just thought I'd ask here in case anyone has a suggestion. Smile
Another problem: If the car has 7 speed transmission and 4WD, the torque split and final drive will be mashed together.
Attached images
dyigdytxduyktdctu.JPG
Quote from Scawen :Thanks for helping with the engine sounds! It has been fun hearing different engine sounds driving past. Although I know the sound engine is quite limited, some results can sound pretty good.

I was wondering if something should be done in code to stop the clipping. It's hard for the editor to know in advance (before allowing upload) if an engine sound will clip, as it would have to run it through the whole engine sound system.

But maybe there should be a clipping prevention system for the output waveform. One that could even deal with multiple engine sounds combining.

I'm not saying I'll definitely do that, and I can do my own research too, just thought I'd ask here in case anyone has a suggestion. Smile

Of course any time! I tried my best to make them sound realistic.

I’ve notice that a couple things make sound clip:
Going over 100mph the wind noise gets too loud and it will clip due to all the sounds. I keep all my audio setting in the middle as default settings. I turned down the wind noise in the shift A setting and it will clip easily
Header noise maxed out will sound good for race engines but it also causes sound to clip easily, have to add a lot of silencer and turn down exhaust volume to around 2.0
I've added an experimental option to prevent clipping. It uses a small function on the output waveform to map 0...infinity to 0...1

Like this:

f_out = f_in / (|f_in| + 1.0)

when f_in is very small, f_out is very little affected
when f_in would have just started to clip (1.0) f_out is 0.5
when f_in is very large, f_out approaches 1.0

So:
- it doesn't clip, regardless of how excessive the sound is or how many cars
- it is quieter, so you'll need to turn up the volume
- it is always distorted to some extent

I don't know how bad this distortion is. I couldn't see any reference to this algorithm on the internet. It's similar to Reinhard tone mapping which can be used in graphics to present an HDR image to a SDR screen.

I'd be interested to know what you think of it. So far I've only heard it on some small speakers, haven't tried headphones etc.

The option is available in Options - Audio in W50.

You can get W50 by clicking "List of Hosts" in LFS.
Another graphical problem - on Aston, there are some splits on the road surface that disappear as you get closer.
Quote from Scawen :I've added an experimental option to prevent clipping. It uses a small function on the output waveform to map 0...infinity to 0...1

Like this:

f_out = f_in / (|f_in| + 1.0)

when f_in is very small, f_out is very little affected
when f_in would have just started to clip (1.0) f_out is 0.5
when f_in is very large, f_out approaches 1.0

So:
- it doesn't clip, regardless of how excessive the sound is or how many cars
- it is quieter, so you'll need to turn up the volume
- it is always distorted to some extent

I don't know how bad this distortion is. I couldn't see any reference to this algorithm on the internet. It's similar to Reinhard tone mapping which can be used in graphics to present an HDR image to a SDR screen.

I'd be interested to know what you think of it. So far I've only heard it on some small speakers, haven't tried headphones etc.

The option is available in Options - Audio in W50.

You can get W50 by clicking "List of Hosts" in LFS.

This is super cool Scawen, gonna give this a try right away!
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Niggles so far
(35 posts, started )
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