hi,

first, I didn't read all the post, sorry.

I think while racing online it's not necessary to have 1024-skins, because you are focused on racing.

But sometimes you watch replays or even make movies. For this case it would be nice to have an option to download 1024-skins or 2048-skins before starting the replay.

Like: "Do you wish to download hires-skins?" --> "yes" or "no"

Similar to the option to download the skin from lfs-world when a skin is missing in the replay.


A download of the 1024-skins while you are in the pit or viewing the race would maybe a solution to download while being online.

cu

[SARCASM]My suggestion to stop the bitching about silly texture sizes: integrate vector art plugin to LFS and dump bitmap skins. Lossless scalable quality and filesizes down to few kbs. That's the ticket right there! [/SARCASM]

EDIT: Before someone starts to preach to the choir about bitmap vs. vector, I put the whole thing in sarcasm mode.

Simple solution. Integrate 512 vs 1024 in with graphics settings in the game first of all so it's an end user choice for viewing.
Then, force users to host 1024 versions of their skins on their own domain, and simply submit a link to LFSWorld for this.
Just as the Unreal Tournament engine allows you to store maps on a "redirect" server so you don't lag the server if you join without the map, only yourself.

Everybody happy.

Except the developers.


EDIT: And just imagine, the people without webhosting will have "imageshack" sponsor stickers randomly on their car

512 look fine ingame. I'm not gawking at people skins until after the race anyway and honestly most of them suck. My skins folder is huge from all the skins. Most teams post up their hi res skins for download so I get them when I can.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I actually feel that is wrong, If you dont have time to take in what you are seeing you are clearly driving in a formula that is too fast for you.

I feel that is very wrong if you are looking at the rear of another car sufficently hard to notice the difference in skin quality then you seriously need to pay more attention to the road.

Quote :

I feel that is very wrong if you are looking at the rear of another car sufficently hard to notice the difference in skin quality then you seriously need to pay more attention to the road.

All of the people that I race with on a regular basis I have high quality skins for, and the difference is noticeable. It makes the game look about 2 years newer.

Quote from Tweaker :

Looks to me like the idea of having 1024 skins available is the least of their plans or worries.

Maybe not their's but for teams, its top of our list to look as sexy as possible

Majority of PC's ( I am guessing now ) due to LFS DX8 engine, can run LFS at full compacity with no problems. Hell I am running a FX5500 and running at full res with AAx2 and AFx4 and its good to go?

Do 1024 skins really they make much of a difference ( compared to if you are using Dons and Mr Political's Skies ) which are 4048 or something like that?

As you said tweak, maybe 1024 skins are to much for lfsworld, and thus should be moved to elsewhere, but then you get away from it being centralised, and going back to how it was ( not having skins shown, etc etc )

Just as long as the files are not of a stupid size ( kb's ) then I beleive 1024 skins should replace the pixaled, fuzzy 512 skins.

Just my opinion

Quote from Becky Rose :

If you dont have time to take in what you are seeing you are clearly driving in a formula that is too fast for you.

old post, yeah, but I really disagree. The paint job on the car next to you is completely irrelevant at speed

Old post = people moaning about old post.
New post = people moaning about searching for old posts

Why should I care whether YOU think 512 is enough? I don't.
I think the game is far more immersive when you can see the finest detail on the small logos on people cars, and I don't need people to tell me that I don't find it more immersive, because I do. That isn't the issue.

It's like saying you should have LOD right down on everything, uninstall all the reflection mods, all the higher texture mods, because you shouldn't be looking at nice round wheels etc when you're just about to go flying past someone because you're so super awesome


Maybe someone could write a mod that checks a 3rd party database for 1024x1024 skins and downloads and overwrites if applicable. I'll host them if needs be?

Or even something really simple that just syncs with a webfolder that everyone uploads to?

sorry for being rude but..........

........whats next ? you goin to put a bilinearfiletered tarmac and unfiltered as a jpg here and then write
"Thanks for texture filtering Scaven!!"

and then all the users of NFS will write :
"Thanks for car reflections E A !" or "thanks for antianlasing dear graphic cards producers ! "

sorry .. i had to :P illepall

Quote from Becky Rose :

All of the people that I race with on a regular basis I have high quality skins for, and the difference is noticeable. It makes the game look about 2 years newer.

Have to agree. All the skins I make for our lot, I keep a 2048^ copy for my skins folder. Maybe it's egotism, but I like to see the work I've done, as I've done it. For the rest, there are a few skins that I'd like better resolutions for but it's not THAT important. Choice is good though.

I've thought of this before when the skin autodownload feature just started.. here goes..

What do you guys think of having the driver suit as downloable skins as well?
We have car skins, then with S2 we have helmet skins, so how about driver suits as well, the suits are currently stored in a separate folder and they're editable, but they're limited to few suits only, and once you changed the suit to your own likings (e.g team suit), everyone else may be wearing the same suit as you as it's still under the same file name.

I know this idea may not be too visible as it will take up too much capacity, but wouldn't it be nice to have downloadable driver suit skins?

Quote from Dupson :

sorry for being rude but..........

........whats next ? you goin to put a bilinearfiletered tarmac and unfiltered as a jpg here and then write
"Thanks for texture filtering Scaven!!"

and then all the users of NFS will write :
"Thanks for car reflections E A !" or "thanks for antianlasing dear graphic cards producers ! "

sorry .. i had to :P illepall

No. But a realistic skin texture should be able to have small sponsor style motifs and logos.

Yes I do think physics, and driving are FAR more important, but I just don't see why everyone's objecting like it's a BAD thing, and it shouldn't ever be done. It's ISN'T a bad thing. It would make the custom skin feature perfect, which is a BIG part of racing too I think. Everyone has their unique design, and I think race cars in race paint are beautiful things.

Why is everyone seemingly against it, even though it would obviously be a selectable thing, like any graphics option.

i'm certainly not against it. I do object, however, to a suggestion that I should drive a different (read: slower) formula simply because I find texture resolution irrelevant when racing side-by-side with someone. I only need to know where they are in relation to my car.

And EeekiE, as for my 'old post, but' comment, I felt a little silly responding to Becky's old statement, but sorta had to anyhow . No qualms on the resurrection of the thread itself; i missed it the first time around :cyclops:

No worries man. I think I misread it.

I guess such a thing will be an S3 addition if at all. As as far as I'm aware, S3 is all about the media improvements or something.
The amount of high res textures, reflection mods, and skyboxes show that the player-base would like to push the visual immersion further. The wanting of high res skins is no different. Whether you think it's required or not is irrelevant. Just as I bet there are a lot of players that are more than happy with standard world textures, and standard LOD.

It's all about where you draw the line. The engine COULD just display boxes with wheels for cars, and a simple black strip with curbs layed in a big green field for tracks, and a big expanse of blue for a sky, and still handle and race exactly the same. I bet some people wouldn't mind, "as you're not supposed to be looking at car vertices, clouds, or scenery when you're racing" I think, and I bet most people think that would be rubbish though. Then I and a lot of others just go one further think the line should/could be drawn a little further on, and include car textures that allow you to use life size, readable car sponsor stickers.

Whats the problem with people saying that the request for access to the 1024 sized skins were FORCED to upload (the stupid thing wont take 512/2048 or anything else!) and allow those who WANT to download them actually download them?

We're being asked to pay for Premium pubstats by the Mb, so clearly a price tag can be put onto the downloading something from the LFS Servers, so why cant we be billed for the downloaded skins if we want to?
Nobody is demanding 1024 to replace 512, but the option just like Skin compression and half the settings in LFS are the there for the users choice, i dont hear anyone complaining about these options, so whats wrong with an option for this?

Its also really sh*tty trying to get screenshots from events when half the cars in-shot look ugly as sin because your only allowed to see the blocky 512 versions.
The 'its not a screenshot taker' people can save there comments to themselves too.

Unless the option is going to harm part of the structure or experience then why do suggestions have to be shot-down just because some people have an opposing view. It doesnt harm the folk with there slow PCs & dial up, and asside from the possible additional costs for LFSW sending the data, i dont see why as an option it has be dismissed. Rarely agree with Becky's comments as they tend to be far too serious, but for once its pretty much bang on, its one of the aspects that ages LFS, and as there arent many things we can do to improve the visual aspects this is one thing that can be worked on.

Personally i'd like to see 4 options, dont get any, get 512's, get 1024's, and user selection. Theres plenty of crappy skins i wouldnt want 1024s the 512s are bad enough, but after a race it'd be nice to be able to select certain drivers skins to download a hi-res version. If i could pick and choose which skins i wanted, then yes i'd pay a premium rate to do this, I have for LFSW Pubstats and so have many others, why not include this into LFS?
Its got to be a better & more worthwhile use of time than SMS messaging, right?

Without reading the thread....... I'll say only 5% of the skin I have seen online worth a 1024x1024 resolution. If this does happen, maybe it should only be reserved for a previleged group of skilled skinners who actually produce quality skins.

I just dont want to see blurry unreadable text and unrecogniseable small logo's around wheel arches.

Disagree with me all you like, but to sway my opinion you'll have to explain why LFS uses cars with 10,000 polygons when most of the time the most that is ever drawn is just over 1,000, instead Eric slaves away making a model with 10 times the detail, why?

Because sometimes you do see it.

You don't need... simply isn't an argument. You don't need trees, you don't need textures, you don't need gear whine sound, you don't need cars over 6 polygons for a car. It's not a case of need. If people think it's utterly unnecessary, then why haven't there been any low texture quality packs released? Why not write a pack that replaces every grass texture with a block of green, and all tarmac textures with a block of grey. You don't need them afterall. I mean, you shouldn't be spending your time looking at patches of grass when you're racing should you....?

Quote from Tweaker :

1024 was never permitted simply because it just takes up too much memory for the kind of systems this game supports. I mean... this game is DirectX 8 engine, and many 4 to 5 year old computers can still run this game, but they'd need low res textures.

I know that many people should have newer systems by now, and a 1024 option would be really nice for the people that can make it possible without performance issues... but I do remember Victor saying that the bandwidth issue on LFSW is the problem. If the 1024 skins were uncompressed and allowed on LFSW, that would mean we would have 400 to 500 kb sized skins to download, and we all know what happens when people start downloading large chunks of files online when playing in servers.... LAG. If the 1024 skins were compressed in LFSW even, it wouldn't help, skins would still tend to be around 200kb average, and not only that, you could download three to four 1024 sized skins in that time... way more efficient by having skins of that size.

As said many times before, ask someone for their hires skin if it is so important. You go and race online, and hardly need to spend time focusing on high quality skins, the low quality size is fine, looks ok within visible range when driving beside them, and on track cameras. I don't see the big need for the high quality skins other than for screenshots or if you are REALLY anal about quality of people's skins.... when the majority of public skins are crap... and only personal. Absolutely inneficient to have the global feature of downloading 1024 skins, when if you are in a dire need, ask for the skin. If you cannot get the high quality skin, so what!

For how quick and easy the quick download feature is, it is rather painless and less problematic. I would only prefer seeing the 1024 option once a new graphics engine is made... as that would suit faster computers by then.

Sometimes, a couple of years ago, somebody made a programme which could download all the skins available, to your skin folder.

Then one wouldn`t have the problem online

Maby an auto update, before connecting to a server, would solve the problems !?

Wait, don't understand this one very well...
If i set this option to "compressed", will i download other people's skin via auto download faster, and with less lagg while doing that, or what? If that's the case, than i will set to compress, because sometimes when someone joins and his skin is being downloaded, the cars are lagging.. so..

Boris, nope. You download the 512px version to your PC regardless. The skin is FURTHER compressed (if the option is selected) when applied in-game to your car. This is because the graphics card in everyone's machine is different, and LFS supports a wide range of graphics cards and capabilities. In order to view the 512px (or 1024px, if it were available) version of everyone's skins in a race, you need a graphics card with a fair amount of RAM. In a 20 car race, if I have 1024px skins for everyone's car, my FPS takes a significant hit. In one race, I had 2048px versions. The result was 1fps until all the other cars were completely out of sight. I have an XFX nVidia 6600GT with 128Mb RAM.

Some people have fat broadband connections, dual-core CPUs and SLI graphics. If they want the option to have hi-res skins, I can't argue with that. Perhaps, as time passes and bandwidth is at less of a premium, this option may be available from LFSWorld. I've no idea. If it ever becomes an option for people to choose, I think it'll be cool

Quote from SamH :

Boris, nope. You download the 512px version to your PC regardless. The skin is FURTHER compressed (if the option is selected) when applied in-game to your car. This is because the graphics card in everyone's machine is different, and LFS supports a wide range of graphics cards and capabilities. In order to view the 512px (or 1024px, if it were available) version of everyone's skins in a race, you need a graphics card with a fair amount of RAM. In a 20 car race, if I have 1024px skins for everyone's car, my FPS takes a significant hit. In one race, I had 2048px versions. The result was 1fps until all the other cars were completely out of sight. I have an XFX nVidia 6600GT with 128Mb RAM.

Some people have fat broadband connections, dual-core CPUs and SLI graphics. If they want the option to have hi-res skins, I can't argue with that. Perhaps, as time passes and bandwidth is at less of a premium, this option may be available from LFSWorld. I've no idea. If it ever becomes an option for people to choose, I think it'll be cool

Ah... ok, thanks.