Is it true that the parts of a track which are darker (normally the line where most people go) have more grip? - attached pic
What about the tyre markings due to someone slipping? Do they also give more grip?
False, it just a rough idial line. Disable rubber and then press 4 in a spr or mpr. You will see that its just a texture placed above the track. Dont know what it has actually to do with the rubber feature but the only thing that is actually "building up" is the rubber itself, if only without any function yet.
The dark line can also show a terrible line, as it updates based on where people drive. So you might want to avoid the dark line on some corners. The skill is knowing when the darker line is worth following or worth ignoring... You'll be a quicker, better racer overall if you don't rely on it, because you'll otherwise struggle on new tracks, or unusual combos, or when racing with multiple cars and needing to adapt.
The rubber line starts out as a rough ideal line, but is modified by the people driving over it - becoming darker and moving around as people start to take different lines than the original one.
ok never really payed attention on it tbh. The line is changing but only within a very small area, basically where its been placed at. If you have a look at the second picture then you will see the cars between the apex and this darker area which is where the actual ideal line (for this car) is and its been used by around twenty cars (number decreasing within the race for some reason ) and is not getting dark or even changing colour at all. But still i can see no evidence that the rubber and this darker area are actually connected.
Edit: this example would also mean, and im just guessing here, that this darker area would not change at any given track if people would take a corner at the outside (using a layout for example) and so this darker area would remain on the inside, untouched and not move to the most used outside line. Correct me if im wrong.
you are
in your examples you have to take into account that the outside loaded wheels are the ones darkening the line the most
also i dont know if i still have the old lfs folder somewhere but back when i spent a lot of time drifting it had some rather funny looking rubber paths all over the tracks following my lines more or less
true, but still the inside tires remain connected to the road, meaning they are not floating or something so this would mean they will also leave some rubber. Taking 20 cars like in my example at least some colour change should be noticeable especially after a long race like this, right?
Also, does your drifting showed any evidence of a noticeable change of this darker area (or even a connection between the rubber and this area itself) at all? Meaning like explained in my example (moving from the very inside to the very outside or vise versa)
i guess it should... either way it currently doesnt and it might be one of the more subtle flaws in lfs
and now on to the power of avoiding work... i found my old drift rubber path and made a comparison of a line laid down through driving the racing line and through drifting while trying to connect those 2 corners with a line that sweeps to the right of the track (fe gold rev)
ah sweet, never thought its that detailed already. Must be that im more focusing on the races then paying attention at such features Was about time that i get this straight anyway
There are options in the lfs cfg file to darken and speed up the rate that the rubber line changes. You could bump them right up to ease testing of this feature.
I might be wrong, but the braking points etc are changing if you change settings in pits. Or then I have taken wrong pills and everything changes colour.
I don't think they update due to setup changes, but as I've only used the silly arcade line for 10 seconds I can't say for certain. If it does, it's only a precalculated AI braking point (prior to learning).
This ideal line (press 4) does no more change, but it is different for all the combos.
Just check your data\knw folder and you will understand the difference:
the .trs file is the "rubber" overlay and is updated according to your in game options while the .knw files are the AI paths, not updated dynamically.
In patch X the .knw files were updated after each AI race to simulate AI learning (but AIs were much slower and also were "learning" wrong lines, and forgetting fuel, tyres...)
I always thought the path '4' shows you represents the line the AI would take. So if you enabled the AI to take your set, and you change it, the AI (with the new set) recalculates its path too and therefor the colours and path of that line changes too
One problem I can see if they ever have this dynamic line affect grip (and I imagine the reson they haven't implemented it yet) is that due to the fact that the line is updated seperately by each client. Depending on the races people have driven the line will be different for different people which would lead to problems when online.
The only way round it really would be to have the master server hold it's own dynamic line which is updated ever so slightly each race. There would be so little variation though (with thousands of almost identical races a day) that it would kind of defeat the point of it being dynamic.
Why on the master server? It just needs to be managed by the dedi server or host. Of course this also means the current calculation code probably cannot be used, and instead has to be based on rough position/rotation/speed data the server has access to.
or you could chop the track up into small chunks (much like the old ai did) let the clients that are currently in one of these chunks update the rubber path on their own, send a small packet which contains the change in the path due to these cars back to the dedi which then relays that info back to all other clients... should give the desired result at minumum cost both computationally (just add current + client packet) and in inet traffic (not like .trs files are particularly large to begin with)
might cause some issues with incontinuous rubber lines at segment edges but im sure theres some way to catch those before they materialze
Or they could use the 'groundbreaking' Live Track Technology, whereby a predetermined and unchanging line is chosen to have more grip than the rest of the track, even if nobody drives on it. And only support it one a few tracks too.
Took a while for the GTR crowd to realise how stupid they were to shout about it. Some still shout about GTR, which makes them REALLY stupid.
It would create the slightly odd situation of having a different line for different servers, despite them being the same track.
Actually, thinking about this as I write it, obviously you're going to have a slightly different line for each type of car and also the style of driving (drift or normal, or whatever). Maybe have a central server (master server again, maybe?) that kind of amalgamates each server's input into a line that more closely reperesents a track that's being used for lots of different races. So for example, on the Fern Bay corner posted above, the line would mainly favour the 'proper' line but to some extent you'd get some extra grip elsewhere from the rubber the drifters had left. Possibly more, as the sliding sheds a lot more rubber on the track.
As I said, it would more accurately simulate driving on a multi-purpose track, instead of magic 'instance' tracks that only have a line laid for the type of racing in which you are currently engaged.
) and is not getting dark or even changing colour at all. But still i can see no evidence that the rubber and this darker area are actually connected.
