Improvements on wind code
Now that LFS is getting more realistic with diff preload in patch X and additional physic updates in patch Y iirc, maybe it's time to look for a more realistic race environment.
Most of the times there is wind in real life, and yet if you join 95% of all the lfs servers, you won't see a server with wind on.
I think the main reason for the absence of wind on the servers is the unrealistic wind code. What do I mean with unrealistic? Well, these are the things I've discovered.
- Wind speed stays constant (wind speed changes in real life)
- Wind direction changes when you proceed to the next session, or when you do a restart. Maybe this randomness is a little bit overenthusiastic (in real life wind direction changes too, but not with 180 degrees, unless you're in the path of a tornado!)
- There's still wind from a certain direction, even though that the wind should be blocked by a huge building. So maybe making a track wind profile (places where there can't be any wind or where wind will gust through a tunnel (like a street)) might be a nice addition, but maybe a little bit too hard seeing as aerodynamics aren't really advanced in LFS.
Anyhow, I've stated the problem now, let's work on a solution.
Wind direction.
Create a random number from 0 to 3 (0 = north, 1 = east, etc.) and stick with that value for 24 hours. Create another random number from 0 to 89 to get the exact degrees which can change with each session change.
Example:
1st random number is 1, 2nd random number is 44. In this case the wind direction should be north-east. The good thing about this setup is that the direction of the wind can only change from east to north, which is only 90 degrees of possible difference instead of the 180 degrees that is possible now.
It would be nice if there would be a third random number from -8 to 7 (signed short) for use of a live degrees offset, so the wind direction changes a little bit during the sessions. You can also make an additional random number to get the amount of time when lfs needs to get a new offset number.
Wind Speed.
The code for getting a random number for the wind speed is already there, but it can be improved with a live offset that I described above.
Wind Aerodynamics.
This would be the last step to make the wind system very realistic, and it would also be the hardest one. Luckily there aren't many tracks in LFS, so maybe the devs could make this a priority when they're starting on making new tracks.
If all this is deemed too difficult, low priority or possibly even crazy, please look at this request.
Another request I think most people would like to have, is the ability to change the wind setting.
In this case the dev only needs to make the wind values visible to us, so we can change it to possibly real world values. What I mean by that is getting the wind direction and speed of Kyoto in Japan, and putting it in LFS.
The only thing this request requires are 2 additional buttons in the race settings screen and that the false start system gets it's random number somewhere else.
Anyhow, I hope you appreciate the ideas. I'm sure that the lfs realism junkies do
Now that LFS is getting more realistic with diff preload in patch X and additional physic updates in patch Y iirc, maybe it's time to look for a more realistic race environment.
Most of the times there is wind in real life, and yet if you join 95% of all the lfs servers, you won't see a server with wind on.
I think the main reason for the absence of wind on the servers is the unrealistic wind code. What do I mean with unrealistic? Well, these are the things I've discovered.
- Wind speed stays constant (wind speed changes in real life)
- Wind direction changes when you proceed to the next session, or when you do a restart. Maybe this randomness is a little bit overenthusiastic (in real life wind direction changes too, but not with 180 degrees, unless you're in the path of a tornado!)
- There's still wind from a certain direction, even though that the wind should be blocked by a huge building. So maybe making a track wind profile (places where there can't be any wind or where wind will gust through a tunnel (like a street)) might be a nice addition, but maybe a little bit too hard seeing as aerodynamics aren't really advanced in LFS.
Anyhow, I've stated the problem now, let's work on a solution.
Wind direction.
Create a random number from 0 to 3 (0 = north, 1 = east, etc.) and stick with that value for 24 hours. Create another random number from 0 to 89 to get the exact degrees which can change with each session change.
Example:
1st random number is 1, 2nd random number is 44. In this case the wind direction should be north-east. The good thing about this setup is that the direction of the wind can only change from east to north, which is only 90 degrees of possible difference instead of the 180 degrees that is possible now.
It would be nice if there would be a third random number from -8 to 7 (signed short) for use of a live degrees offset, so the wind direction changes a little bit during the sessions. You can also make an additional random number to get the amount of time when lfs needs to get a new offset number.
Wind Speed.
The code for getting a random number for the wind speed is already there, but it can be improved with a live offset that I described above.
Wind Aerodynamics.
This would be the last step to make the wind system very realistic, and it would also be the hardest one. Luckily there aren't many tracks in LFS, so maybe the devs could make this a priority when they're starting on making new tracks.
If all this is deemed too difficult, low priority or possibly even crazy, please look at this request.
Another request I think most people would like to have, is the ability to change the wind setting.
In this case the dev only needs to make the wind values visible to us, so we can change it to possibly real world values. What I mean by that is getting the wind direction and speed of Kyoto in Japan, and putting it in LFS.
The only thing this request requires are 2 additional buttons in the race settings screen and that the false start system gets it's random number somewhere else.
Anyhow, I hope you appreciate the ideas. I'm sure that the lfs realism junkies do
it is very noticeable in F view.