LFS Race Viewer

You can enjoy LFS races without searching for the action. This program searches for the closest battles and focuses on them. It stays at the battle for a x (custom) amount of seconds. Afterwards the search continues. It could happen that the camera focus on the same battle again! When a crash occurs and causes an yellow flag, the camera focuses on it immediately.
If you want to disable Race Viewer temporarily you can uncheck the "Enable Race Viewer". You can have LFS in fullscreen mode.

You can launch LFS from the program itself (if the settings are correct). Or you can do it manually :
type /insim=portnumber
* change the portnumber to the “LFS Port” you have in the Options dialog.
When Race Viewer is connect to LFS, you can play a replay or go online to watch some action!

This version of Race Viewer uses the LFS TV Camera as a base.
I’m working on some ideas for the next couple of updates.
- Custom Cameras.
- Camera focus based on priority.
- Some race statistics.

Your ideas & criticism are more that welcome.
Download
Download mirror (felplacerad)

2 screenshots:

Haven't tried it but the idea is great, if it works well then it will no doubt make replays far more interesting to watch and help movie makers/race report writers no end.

If I get time I'll try to test it out and post again.

Very interesting, just tried it, and it does indeed do exactly as it says on the tin.
Custom camera's would/will be a god send, and some sort of "race priority", so the camera tends to focus more on battles further up (or down) the current placings.
I can see how "crashes" are focused on, but how does the program determine "battles"? what things does it "look" it to decide what battle to focus on?

works pretty well already, just gave it a short test this could evolve into a really nice tool for live broadcasting or similar stuff.
will surely follow your progress on it


btw you may want to get in contact with the author of noob-tv maybe you can exchange some infos about the custom camera it is using
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=5246

Quote from danowat :

I can see how "crashes" are focused on, but how does the program determine "battles"? what things does it "look" it to decide what battle to focus on?

For now the distance between the cars. I use the difference of the nodes to calculate distance.

How does it compare to TV-director?

Pretty cool stuff. Just tried it out in CTRA Race 1.

hm i change the password to my game pass stored in the cfg.txt but i get an error message when i start the game:

insim: password does not match your multiplayer admin password

what am i doing wrong?

Seems like you have started a Server on your PC and have entered an Admin-Password.

seems like a nice idea, I'll try it

i started a server ingame some days ago but its shutting down when u leave the server/game.

Excellent app! Thank you, FireFox!

I have a few remarks about the algorithm:

- In one of the replays I watched, a drivers crashed after a few laps, pressed shift+p then return, so his car was in a garage. Then he stayed there without moving for 5 or 10 minutes (I suspect he used tab to spectate other cars or went AFK). But LFS Race Viewer stayed focused on his car, and came back to it as soon as I switched manually to another car. It's only when he spectated that LRV started showing other cars again.

- Maybe LRV could use the cars position (or use it more) when looking for a battle to show. Because in one replay, two guys near the back of the grid that weren't particularly fast nor battling stayed close to each other for a lot of laps, and LRV was showing them most of the time.

- How does it choose which car to watch at the start? It's often one near the back of the grid. It would seem more logical to me to watch the pole man until something "catches LRV's attention".

And it would be great to have a hotkey to enable/disable LRV from within LFS, so during a replay you could switch between LRV and manual control, and back.

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

Flip

Yeah, hotkeys would be nice, also, the ability to change drivers by clicking there name in the race director window.
The yellow flag / crash detection is a little flakey, sometimes it misses it altogether, other times it jumps to the incident for a fraction of a second, then switches back to the "racing", could do with some work there.

This looks very interesting! Some remarks:

- The names list suggests that you can also switch focus manually, by (double-)clicking on a name. But nothing happens, so I guess that feature isn't included. Would be very nice to add it, though. (It does conflict with the auto-switching that LRV does, tho. Maybe that should be disabled when you switch manually.)

- I like to watch the race from various views (in-car, helicopter, chase). But when LRV switches focus, it resets the view to default.

- What function do the password and prefix have (i.e., in what situation are they used)?

- Adding statistics to the player list would be very nice. For example: current lap number, fastest lap, latest split time (for each player).

- The names in list of drivers differ from the driver names in-game (account name vs. player name, I guess).

About the focus-switching algorithm:
- It should ignore cars whose speed is close to zero.
- Basing it on distance is OK, but a battle is less interesting when the cars are not in the same lap.
- "When a crash occurs and causes an yellow flag, the camera focuses on it immediately". I couldn't test it, but what does it do at the T1 carnage? Does it switch focus like mad?

Keep up the good work! This could become a really great tool.

Quote from Sven Menkhoff :

Seems like you have started a Server on your PC and have entered an Admin-Password.

Have you tried to clear the password?

Quote from FL!P :

- In one of the replays I watched, a drivers crashed after a few laps, pressed shift+p then return, so his car was in a garage. Then he stayed there without moving for 5 or 10 minutes (I suspect he used tab to spectate other cars or went AFK). But LFS Race Viewer stayed focused on his car, and came back to it as soon as I switched manually to another car. It's only when he spectated that LRV started showing other cars again.

Was there another car next to him in the pits? If so then the cars where close together. Gonna fix that in the next version. If not, could you sent the mpr file?

Quote from FL!P :

- How does it choose which car to watch at the start? It's often one near the back of the grid. It would seem more logical to me to watch the pole man until something "catches LRV's attention".

the focus is still very basic, so random battles are focussed on. I hope to get some priority in the next version.

Quote from FL!P :

And it would be great to have a hotkey to enable/disable LRV from within LFS, so during a replay you could switch between LRV and manual control, and back.

Note, gonna be in the next version.

Quote from wsinda :

This looks very interesting! Some remarks:
- The names list suggests that you can also switch focus manually, by (double-)clicking on a name. But nothing happens, so I guess that feature isn't included. Would be very nice to add it, though. (It does conflict with the auto-switching that LRV does, tho. Maybe that should be disabled when you switch manually.)

Gonna find a solution with the feature above.

Quote from wsinda :

- I like to watch the race from various views (in-car, helicopter, chase). But when LRV switches focus, it resets the view to default.

yeah, I could make the camere type random. It could choose different camera types for the focus. Driver view, Chase View, tv camera, and custom view.

Quote from wsinda :

- What function do the password and prefix have (i.e., in what situation are they used)?

I've used the password for some admin commands. Restarting the race ect. I think you can connect the local lfs without password. So I guess i can remove the Password.

Quote from wsinda :

- Adding statistics to the player list would be very nice. For example: current lap number, fastest lap, latest split time (for each player).

You can get the information from LFS itself. current lap number, split times. Another idea is to display the info in LFS with some buttons. Like F1 or CCWS. But its not high on my todo list.

Quote from wsinda :

- The names in list of drivers differ from the driver names in-game (account name vs. player name, I guess).

Correct, I used them for selecting player information. Next version will have nicknames, so when you want to focus at a racer its less trouble finding the right person.

Quote from wsinda :

About the focus-switching algorithm:
- It should ignore cars whose speed is close to zero.
- Basing it on distance is OK, but a battle is less interesting when the cars are not in the same lap.
- "When a crash occurs and causes an yellow flag, the camera focuses on it immediately". I couldn't test it, but what does it do at the T1 carnage? Does it switch focus like mad?

For now T1 is kinda pain in the ass for Race Viewer. Like you said, if there are more crashes, the camera will focus to the next one.
Because the whole field is close together, a more overview camera shot is need to view the carnage.

Quote from FireFox86 :

yeah, I could make the camere type random. It could choose different camera types for the focus. Driver view, Chase View, tv camera, and custom view.

Could LRV also leave it unchanged (= under control of the user)?

Quote :

You can get the information from LFS itself. current lap number, split times. Another idea is to display the info in LFS with some buttons. Like F1 or CCWS. But its not high on my todo list.

When I watch a race, I tend to look for fast drivers, because they are likely to overtake a few cars, and because I can admire their skill and learn from it. Since patch X it's a bit hard to find the fast guys. A stats display in LRV (plus manual control of the focus) would be handy.

Quote :

For now T1 is kinda pain in the ass for Race Viewer. Like you said, if there are more crashes, the camera will focus to the next one. Because the whole field is close together, a more overview camera shot is need to view the carnage.

When one crash is quickly followed by another, you could
- switch to helicopter view, or
- "queue" the second crash, and only switch when the first crash has been shown for a minimum amount of time (4 seconds or so).

Quote from FireFox86 :

Was there another car next to him in the pits? If so then the cars where close together. Gonna fix that in the next version. If not, could you sent the mpr file?

There was no other car next to him. Replay: http://www.gentlefoot.com/LFS/GFC6Race.mpr

Quote :

yeah, I could make the camere type random. It could choose different camera types for the focus. Driver view, Chase View, tv camera, and custom view.

That'd be great. But then I'd like a way to enable/disable some views, like a set of checkboxes in the options that would allow me to disable driver view and chase view, for example, so LRV would never use them.

Quote :

Correct, I used them for selecting player information. Next version will have nicknames, so when you want to focus at a racer its less trouble finding the right person.

Maybe you could also allow the user to reorder the names, in that list, and use this order to define priorities? For example, the replay I linked to above is a multi-class race (FOX & FO8). But as you'll see, LRV mostly shows FOX's, presumably because they tend to race closer than the FO8. So it'd be great if the drivers list also showed the car type and if the user could move the FO8's up in the list to give them a higher priority.

Main issue im having is, it seems to be missing stuff, in the race i was testing it on, on lap 1 i passed two people through a chicane, it missed it, but it did get the lead up to the pass. but missed the final bit completly.

it happend again, when i was catching someone, who then blocked on the inside and i went around the outside of him.

then a few laps later was involved in an incident, it focused on the car behind me, and could see the crash happening in the background, and finally switched to the accident as we recoverd....

So my question is, is it possible to detect a manouver, like detect gaps between cars and as they get closer and closer and predict when something is going to happen? the action will then follow that.

This version of Race Viewer is quite basic, and stupid
The algoritme looks for the closest gap of the whole field and focus at it. If you where the only one close to another car,then you would have the attention of RV. If there are other racers close together it would focus at those and not to you. Its quite hard to implement some human thinking into software. There are different aspects, how many racers are fighting close together, the position they are fighting for ect.
So I'm busy atm with Race Spectator. When thats finished I'll try to improve Race Viewer.

Join forces with Soeren and his LFS TV Director project, which is a lot more advanced already You could add some ideas to it. TV-Director has a nice automatic action catching algorithm already, plus custom cams etc.

I dont want to say, you are doing useless stuff, but in such important mods, I hate it to see work done double by very very capable coders.

Great product, I am using to show replays LFS Show style with a windows scheduled batch file, but for some reason the Race Viewer keeps stopping part way through the replay.

Sorry I can't give you a lot of info to diagnose. The program keeps running, but it seems to drop the inSim connection. The Race View box still has 'Disconnect' in read, so it seems to think it is still connected, and the names rack up when each replay is loaded.

Quote from FireFox86 :

Download

The Downloadlink doesn't work.

Can you fix it please.

It works fine here, try to hit refresh couple of times. It should start after a few seconds.

how is this coming along? i'm looking to use this for an event i'd like to live stream and would like to try a newer version which fixed the problems FL!P mentioned above.

I take my hat off to what you've done already though

I'm sorry, I haven't done a thing after i released it. Busy with other things. tbh, a 'completly' automatic race viewer would be hard to create, but a help tool to let the 'broadcaster' know where the fights/ crashes are, would be easier to create.
I hope I can find some time, but can't promise anything.