Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

How exactly does sample based work? Do they have a huge sound database matrix that pulls a sound for a given rev and throttle input?

rFactor uses 4 samples for on the throttle and 4 for off the throttle I think and crossfades them while frequency modulating them through RPMs. *

What happens with that method - atleast to me - is that after a while I can tell exactly when each sample is playing. It would take very long samples to actually get enough interesting randomness in there to pull the trick.

Quote from Christopher Raemisch :

I know LFS takes a basic sound sample makes the wave, changes the amplitude and frequency depending on throttle and rev so instead of having steps in the sounds everything flows as one sine wave.

Well the exhaust model is a bit more complex than that it seems - I can hear some ring modulation happening depending on tone settings amongst other things for example.

* and this isn't exactly "sample-based synthesis" either - it's just sample playback.

Quote from xaotik :

What happens with that method - atleast to me - is that after a while I can tell exactly when each sample is playing. It would take very long samples to actually get enough interesting randomness in there to pull the trick.



Well the exhaust model is a bit more complex than that it seems - I can hear some ring modulation happening depending on tone settings amongst other things for example.

I hear that here too. LFS syths 'sound chambers' with the intake combustion chamber and exhaust system and creates reverb, which happens in RL.

Hence why people 'tune' their exhaust in RL. The sound waves bounce back into the combustion chamber and during certain revs it will increase or decrease backpressure, effecting power output. Two strokes really see this because of their usually high revs and the usage of 'reeds' for port openings. I don't know about new two stroke engines, they may have a more sophisticated approach to valves than a flap =)

I see no need in changing the graphics.
Kids get fascinated by lots of much to strong dot-3-bumpmapping, bloom- and motion-blur shaders, depth of field, antialiasing ect. but those are just eye-candy, well I wouldn't call them so any more since it does not look good.

I think clear 3D graphics with sligh eye-candy like the faked environment-mapping on the cars looks way better (espacally for a realistic game).

IMO antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are among the few of those "fancy effects" that actually improve gameplay, because they reveal information about the track that would otherwise be unclear. But this is already available by tinkering with your graphics driver outisde of LFS.

This thread has gotten off-topic, but might as well join in.

One thing going for some of the NFS and a few other arcade games is their sound. I'm pretty sure that their best sounds are algorithmically generated, and not sampled. With or without a sample base, you need algorithms to tweak the sounds, and these algorithms can be a science in itself, similar to the old days when sounds for Yamaha's DX7 analog synthesizer were being created.

Regarding anti-aliasing, if running a monitor at 1280x960 or higher resolution, what's the point? The stair stepping effect you get at higher resolutions is minimal. I play games at 1280x960 or 1600x1200 (at 85hz) on a 20" CRT (maybe I don't notice anti-aliasing effects because a CRT can adjust the analog beam rate and width as opposed to digital up or down conversion to native resolution).

Quote from JeffR :

With or without a sample base, you need algorithms to tweak the sounds, and these algorithms can be a science in itself

I concur - and the ISI-based sims I've heard to date have very very simplistic processing which in the long run ends up with annoying sounds.

Quote from JeffR :

Regarding anti-aliasing, if running a monitor at 1280x960 or higher resolution, what's the point?

On a 22" TFT that I play nowadays I find that it helps maintain a "solid" feel and also if you have transparent textures (like folliage - the classic 2D cut-out trees or the ever-annoying 2D crowd cut-outs) with some gamma-corrected super-sampling it makes them blend in the gameworld better and not stand out too much out when seen against a lighter background (like the sky for example). In general it just plain looks smoother and I used to use it on my old 17" CRT as well at 1280x1024 for much the same reason.

Quote from JeffR :

This thread has gotten off-topic.

I'm pleased you said that, coz, i wanna say, i've seen this thread everyday since it was started, and i can't read the bloody title without getting that chuffin Kylie Minogue song ringing in me head.........and quite frankly it's starting to piss me off :grumpy:

For the sake of my sanity, would it be out of the question to ask for closure.

Which song?

Quote from March Hare :

Which song?

It's the first line of "I Should Be So Lucky"......."Is it my imagination...da da, da da da, da-da"

I don't hear it.

I'll go get the song and try again.

LFS sound engine is very challenging and interesting from an engineering point of view. It attempts to recreate the whole sound of a car from very simple sounds, like one explosion in one cylinder.

Nice, but it does not work. The sound of a car engine at 4000 RPM is not the sound of one cylinder explosion played 4*4000 times per second.
When you record a real car engine at 4000 RPM, and you look at the frequency analysis, you can see an incredible number of sounds at every frequency level mixed together.
Explosions in cylinders generate thousands of other noises because of transmission and addition of vibration in parts of the car. And these noises are not neglectable and reach the same level than the cylinder noise, and can completely change the nature of the engine noise at different RPM.
The only way for LFS sound system to produce something life-like would be to add hundreds, thousands of parameters...tiny metallic noise, muffled or not, dozens of options to decide how irregular and cyclical is the idle noise...etc.

ISI approach is in fact the same than in LFS, but try to use richer samples. They take several samples, adjust their frequency to RPM, and add them together. But instead of adding a dozen of small samples, they add 4 or 5 larger samples which already contain all these vibrations.

With CSR (Car Sound Remixer) addon for LFS, you can check yourself what becomes LFS sound with a ISI-like sound engine. The result is amazing. So much alive than default LFS sound. I found this addon today and it saved me, because I was upset with LFS sound after comparing with rFactor and Race 07. LFS diserves better.

Please try this addon, with the sound package in the thread:
http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=12863

The best solution would be to use ISI approach, but with more samples to cover the entire RPM range of the car. 4 samples is not enough.

Concerning LFS state of development:
- they are 3, they go as fast as they can, and people ask for more.
- the only way to go faster is to hire someone else, but they have to pay him/her.
- people are ready to pay for more...no doubt about that.
- hiring someone may be a risk, but according to preceding points will certainly give an increasing success. Most companies hiring are not sure at all there will be a market for their product. LFS team has an almost garanteed development if they want.

So the problem is not a problem, it's a choice. They have chosen not to risk any further development of their team because the slow-pace is part of their business model and quality of life. But on the other side they risk to have more and more customers unsatisfied and finally to collapse. On long term, no growth is always more risky than growth.

It's actually:

In my imagination
there is no complication
I dream about you all the time
in my mind a celebration
the sweetest of sensation
thinking that you could be mine

In my imagination
there is no hesitation
we walk together hand in hand
I'm dreaming...

... I suppose we all can sing a long from there.

Quote from Linsen :

It's actually:

In my imagination
there is no complication
I dream about you all the time


... I suppose we all can sing a long from there.

NO!

*Bass solo!*

When I saw this thread I couldn't get a different song out of my head:

"Is it my imagination
Or have I finally found something worth living for?
I was looking for some action
But all I found was cigarettes and alcohol
etc."

hehe - there's your antidote to Kylie

Tonight there were more than 1700 racers online! And, what's more, more than half of them were licenced racers!



Unless my memory serves me wrong, didn't the fraction of demo racers use to be higher than this prior to patch y? Seems to be around half and half on good days. Are we seeing a positive trend both in terms of total number of racers and the amount of licenced users?

Quote from Gnomie :

Unless my memory serves me wrong, didn't the fraction of demo racers use to be higher than this prior to patch y? Seems to be around half and half on good days. Are we seeing a positive trend both in terms of total number of racers and the amount of licenced users?

I wonder how much of that is due to the XRT

Quote from Gnomie :

Tonight there were more than 1700 racers online! And, what's more, more than half of them were licenced racers!



Unless my memory serves me wrong, didn't the fraction of demo racers use to be higher than this prior to patch y? Seems to be around half and half on good days. Are we seeing a positive trend both in terms of total number of racers and the amount of licenced users?

Would be awesome if it was 1700 lisenced users online
But that most likely won`t happen before S3 or so

Problem these days is that 50% of the online lisenced users are eighter drifting or crusing, making the amount of servers with good quality racing rather low. When that is said - people should be able to play how they want, but I had hopen more peopel would focus on the racing part of the game, instead of drifting and cruising, would make it more fun for the others to have more servers filled with people to race with