I know there are countless requests about features to add to the replay mechanism, but here's one that I believe should be easy to implement and would help a lot everyone who makes videos, and league officials who have to watch replays again and again to rule on crashes and other issues. The idea would be to have the ability to fast forward automatically to the start of a given lap.

Here's how I imagine it could be done: let's say you want to watch something in lap 45. Instead of pressing F3 several times and watch the fast forward until it reaches lap 45, you would invoke the text input box and type something like "/goto 45". The screen would then freeze or show some background, while LFS would fast forward to lap 45 at maximum speed (which could be much faster without the need to display the replay at the same time). Then, when LFS detects that the selected driver enters lap 45, it would go back to normal replay.

That wouldn't be as handy as a rewind function, of course, but it would still be much handier than what we have to do at the moment and I'm pretty sure that it could be made compatible with existing replays.

This would be good but I guess this feature will come as a package with the rest of the changes to the replays.

It's a nice feature but I don't think it worths the time for developing it, since the best would be a new (incompatible) replay system.

So +1 in general, but I don't think that we'll se it soon.

That suggestion wouldn't mean changing the .spr or .mpr formats so as far as I can see it could come in a compatible patch. And I would agree, it's useful in the short term, but as KMSpeed hints, a whole new system should really be devised at some point which would be even better. It's just too much of a stop-gap measure to be worth the effort.

Yes, I'm suggesting a kind of workaround that would make our life a bit easier until the new incompatible replay system is implemented (which may still be six months or one year ahead, for what we know). As I imagined it, it would just be based on what already exists, except perhaps for the lap detection, so I hoped that maybe it could be added relatively easily.

And of course, when you have watched lap 45 you could then type "/goto 2", and the replay would automatically be restarted and then fast-forwarded to lap 2. Thus, you'd have rewindable replays, although a bit clunky: whole laps only and with delays.

Meanwhile, can't this already be done with InSim?

My suggestions for replays:
- After saving a replay i need the option to start recording again special for training servers.
- need cutting the replays
- need jumping faster to the end of the replay, 32x is not fast enough and my 3000+ is to slow for 32x. Maybe is jump over possible?

YES!! I really need this option. Jeez. I hate having to FF 50 laps but can't do it because the FPS drops to 4 when I hit 32X then resets to normal speed.

FWIW, skstibi, I found that for some reason the FPS is better during fast forward if you use the cockpit or wheels view rather than any external view.

Yeah, I know.. if you spectate the car you were in or the car of the person that the replay is from you can go faster but at points the frame rate slows way down and it resets to regular speed.

I did a quick and dirty implementation of what you are searching for. Thanks FLIP, for pointing me on this thread.

You find more information and a download link here: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=469373#post469373

Currently only for Patch W. Patch X version coming soon.

Some comments to the ideas here:
- Haven't included lap counting, so you have to live with specifiing seconds.
- No ingame commands used (like "/goto 45") only command line (dos box). But worth a thought. Could be easily implemented and I could then support a "skip x seconds" feature - currently only one stop position possible.
- The forwarding works as fast as possible without showing the action. So you will see your CPU at 100% while it is calculating all the physics until the stop point. But I have to spoil your enthusiasm: The speed you can achieve with the F3 forward is usually the best you can get anyway. At least on my system, the graphics card is handling all the displaying, but the CPU is the speed limiter with calculating all the physics. And this doesn't change substantially by turing graphic display off. Only good thing: My tool is not limited to 4x, 8x, 16x, and so on. It can also do 11x, if this is the best your CPU can do or also 160x if you happen to have a i386 compatible super computer at home

kr
Lion

Quote from TheBlackLion :

I did a quick and dirty implementation of what you are searching for.

Sounds very promising! Thank you!

Quote :

- Haven't included lap counting, so you have to live with specifiing seconds.

Is this a limitation imposed by the replays format, or could you add the option to use lap counting in the future? That'd be handier, I think.

Quote :

- No ingame commands used (like "/goto 45") only command line (dos box). But worth a thought. Could be easily implemented and I could then support a "skip x seconds" feature - currently only one stop position possible.

I would expect the new InSim buttons in patch X to make adding a UI rather easy.

Quote :

But I have to spoil your enthusiasm: The speed you can achieve with the F3 forward is usually the best you can get anyway.

Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense.

Patch X version of LFS fast forward is available.
You can find it here: 472261.

All future conversation regarding my tool should also be done there.

kr
Lion