It tries to use the first instance (in the entire model) of the special "l_" name as the light. If you have more than one instance, it will ignore all the others so they don't illuminate.
This is easily done by accident when working with sub-objects, as the colours often get duplicated when importing/exporting/merging etc. I've also had it where there were some remnants in LOD2 that took ages to track down.
I guess this is why there are several special "l_" names for certain types of light (4 indicators, 4 brakes, 3 tail. There's only 1 of the other types).
If it's not to complicated to remove the restriction of 1 per name, that would make texturing more complex lights configurations a lot less hacky.
LFS renders only upper half of environment for the reflections, so not possible in current version. Would require engine change to render+map reflections differently.
Scawen i found one interesting bug and i have no idea what to do.
The problem is that i tried to use "double sided" option to make my xrt windows visible from both side but here comes the problem.
No matter what i use - different object, different textures or same textures always some of windows are not visible when you look them from outside.
In my case i tried to use only 1 texture for all windows.
In LFS EDITOR seems everything is okey (first pic) but in game i have that issue (second pic).
As you can see on 3th when i look from front win other windows are invisible but if i look them from right side 4th pic for example some are visible some not.
Interesting is whn i check left side there is no problem 5th pic.
You can now restart using a W56 host and your setup no longer causes an OOS.
If it's only this setup causing a problem (maybe because it's a really low setup) then you might not want to bother at this point, but you can if you want to. I expect to release another one tomorrow as one of the final tests.
If you use the same texture for all these windows, as you say, then is it improved if you use the function "magic triangle sort" (in subob mode) in the editor?
Alpha sorting is always causing trouble in game development. The trouble is that with transparent triangles, the further away ones must be drawn first.
The function "magic triangle sort" tries to sort triangles within a material, so that the furthest away ones will be drawn first. I'd be interested to know if that helps.
I did not know what topic to make this offer.
In my opinion, LFS is now bombarded with a wave of mods of very dubious content, based on the original models from LFS, it seems that somewhere there is a competition for a more stupid model.
Maybe you should restrict access to editing standard cars and allow players to improve the quality of original mods? now really high-quality mods are simply sometimes lost among what is, and the forum threads are 80% about dubious edits of standard machines, it might be worth creating another branch as "Original work"? and in the list of mods, at least make a sorting completely removing modifications of standard cars.
We have "allow tweak mods" filter, to filter out all those mods that are simply edited LFS cars with slight modifications. They are fairly unpopular and I agree, they swamp the list of mods with cars that make you want to yawn and go straight to sleep. I mean, how many different power levels of an XRT do we need to see? Wow, how original, an XR GT TURBO with a different engine! OMG why didn't I think of that!
But maybe I am misunderstanding you, because I'm surprised if you haven't seen the effect of switching off "allow tweak mods" as it should be OFF by default.
Now the unchecked "Include Tweak Mods" checkbox still does not remove some cars, if you scroll through the list of mods, you will notice such cars as "UF Pickup" "FZ50 V8" and others, I think it would be nice to see the "Favorites" button in the game itself "where you could add your favorite mods, as well as the" New Cars"mark where new cars, not updated mods would be displayed.
Users are pretty aware of this, and be sure we like more original content too. I personally almost never check the "tweak mods" box, unless I specially want to see them.
I don't know if it's a good way to solve this problem or not*, but I wanted a darker tint looking inwards than outwards so I copied all my glass, moved the copy a fraction inwards, flipped the triangles.
Now I have two sets of glass that appear to be in the same place, and I can control the textures for viewing in/out separately.
(*I haven't crash-tested it yet, maybe if the two layers get mangled into each other the artefacts will return?)
My mods right now have double windows for outside and inside but this is unuseless when we have double sided option. I will check my mods when im in home about what Scawen said and reply again.
That is also an acceptable solution. You lose the convenience of double sided triangles, but it should work OK.
To get the sorting correct there is separate advice if you are using the same material or different materials for the inside and outside windows.
Same material (same texture, same shine level etc)
- Use magic triangle sort (you can click this any time, anyway, it should never harm anything)
Different material (different texture, shine level, etc)
- In this case make sure the first cutout with the inward facing triangles is higher up the list of cutouts than the first cutout with the outward facing triangles. Then the material with the inward facing triangles will be drawn first, which is what you want for the alpha sorting when you look through the car from outside (and from inside it makes no difference).
I tried "magic triangle sort" option few times but nothing happen.
Last night i tried few things:
1 - add everyone window as new subobject and add diferent textures for each
2 - add all windows as 1 subobject and diferent textures for each
3 - add all windows as 1 subobject and add one texture only
I got same issue everytime but one thing is strange. Before change anything in cutout everything was fine.
After change coordinates for textures i got that issue.
Magic triangle sort can only have the desired effect if all the windows are of the same material, and in the same subobject, or main object, as each other. Otherwise it won't be very magical.
If you make things as subobjects you may lose control of the draw order.
You need to be careful about "materials". You can use the same texture but if any of the material properties (shine level, shine type, reflection tint) are different then it is a different material (even if it uses the same texture). You can see them listed in the vehicle editor, in the "Textures" section. This will probably not be very clear though. There is also a small number, like 1, 2, 3 etc beside the cutouts (to the left of the "S" buttons). This is the material number, and becomes very vital when you are trying to control draw order. Materials are drawn in the order of this number.
You must make sure you understand what I say here:
If you use a different material for the inside windows and the outside windows, then this is how to control the draw order:
- In this case make sure the first cutout with the inward facing triangles is higher up the list of cutouts than the first cutout with the outward facing triangles. Then the material with the inward facing triangles will be drawn first, which is what you want for the alpha sorting when you look through the car from outside (and from inside it makes no difference).
I believe the windows should be part of the main object for the best control over draw order. The key is to draw the inside facing windows BEFORE the outer facing windows. This is the only way to fix the problem, and it will fix the problem.
Not mods system bug but just wanted to report about this glitch... The map disappears like in another versions before but it was fixed. Now is happening again but i am not sure if it is because of the high mod or something else
I tried everything what you said but i still have issue. Only one thing i found. It work normal when i changed textures to "alpha test" but that option destroyed the texture quality..
Alpha test is not recommended at all and should be avoided except in very exceptional circumstances.
I am sure the alpha sorting is possible. I can only conclude you are not making sure the correct materials are being drawn in the correct order (by looking at the material numbers in the list of cutouts and drawing the inside windows first). It is not really possible for me to debug your mesh by looking at screenshots.
I don't think you are talking about the same thing at all. valiugera is talking about alpha sorting, while you are talking about alpha quality?
I can't make much use of random screenshots of vehicles I don't have, of unspecified VOB mods which were never supported. If you want me to fix something, I need concrete, testable, reproducible results.
On further thought maybe it is the same thing, alpha sorting.
It could be the case if the alpha on subobjects was behind alpha on the main object (e.g. if alpha on a dashboard object is behind some glass that is part of the main object). In the past, the subobject alpha would be drawn first, but now, due to subobject merging, it is likely to be drawn after the main object's alpha.
So in that case it is a difference between the new version and the old version. But that doesn't really mean it's not working as it is supposed to.
It is an open question, whether we need some other way to control the draw order of alpha on subobjects. Currently the default draw order is main object first, then subobjects.
[Though this can vary when subobjects share the same materials as main object. In that case, triangles of the subobjects that are in the same material as triangles in the main object, will be drawn along with that material immediately after the main object's triangles in that material. In this way, triangles from subobjects can end up being drawn before some other triangles from the main object.]
Hi Scawen, good point, but i would take it even further. I been racing LFS since it first came out and i really love it. I also love 3d modeling and i been messing with mods in many different sims. Being able to finally mix modding and LFS its great! i already published one car made from scratch and really enjoy modding it.
Anyway since nothing is perfect, i found something that im concern about LFS modding so far. There is a rush from many moders that already made many unfinished mods base on 3D models made elsewhere. Maybe im becaming old but way back being a moder was about making your own content, and since you had to put effort on making it, we use to work hard in every aspect of our mods before upload.
By all this words made short i mean, such long list of unfinished mods ll end up making LFS servers full of non desirable content and might effect the sim experience in a bad way.
I know you already did the "approved" list of mod, wich is great, but anyway i feel that uploading filters should be more restrictive even in "WIP" stage. And if you think its right even i would like to see "from scratch content" filter or something like that to encourage people to stop using so many existing 3D models and rushing releases. This is not just for the model itself, in most cases this rush in making content have an impact in the "finished" mods that is aviable for download... being able to keep jumping in cars with inverted FFB since have wrong suspension geometry, lack of lods or even skins mapping ll end up making players stop trying to find good quality mods.
Hope it wont be rude for anyone, but i seen other games with millions of mods, wich very few were actually good, and those end up bad.
How does LFS generate turbulance to the car behind when following?
Does all aero part make effect and how's contuibution per each part? Common sence told me undertray should be the least.
-
Cannot use mods (Santi91)
DELETED
by Santi91 : solved
Excuse me for unsupported MOD, Scawen. It is the only way i can do it for now, i can't drop it halfway. I'll convert it with all requirements as it finished.
I didn't expect you to fix my mod, i was expecting You to explain what caused that changes.
I know about alpha sorting, and always take it in account. I didn't expect that something changed in XR "architecture".
Now i see, all subobjects are merged by LFS now, you say...
P.S. Just FYI, my DASH was made exactly XR-style (no multiple glasses. Only DIALS and ALPHA over it), but was placed in child 18 (sububject 18?), to make it possible to transfer (NOT mirror) with pedals and driver to other side for LHD. Ok, i guess i have to live with that untill i get my hands on proper mod tools.
I think it's because the subobject contains alpha and this has changed the draw order.
I don't think we need any argument here. I was under EXTREME pressure to get things finished in the past week. It was hard to stay perfectly patient, with all that was going on, as you told me it wasn't working as it was supposed to (because an unsupported VOB mod didn't work any more). When actually, it is working as designed.
What proper mod tools are you hoping for? They won't magically appear.
I say again: "It is an open question, whether we need some other way to control the draw order of alpha on subobjects. Currently the default draw order is main object first, then subobjects."
I think it'll be best to try discuss how to make the system more flexible in a simple way.
In the meantime, you can try putting all relevant transparency either as subobject, or as main object, so you have control over the order.
Wow, how original, an XR GT TURBO with a different engine! OMG why didn't I think of that! 