very nice tool, but there seems to be a bug: after watching a race I always have to turn off the director and start it again or it won't work in the next replay/race - camera just sits there in shift-u mode but doesn't do anything
also, to me it seems like it doesn't recognize a single car spinning or sliding, it only focusses on overtakes and cars touching, but i might be wrong there
Excellent little app! My only suggestion is: parameterise it instead of hardcoding - an extensive config file (or set of files) would be great, that way everyone can make sets of camera positioning, etc and share. Also, some way of tracking "legit" pit entry/exit would be nice (not the telepitting naturally).
Very nice app overall, so small too! One suggestion though: Focus on a lead car when there is nothing happening on the track. I tried it with a race where I drove a PB, but I missed it altogether because it was glued to the P2 car ,even when there was no action on the track, which was some way back from me.
I have to say that this looks very similar to my tool noobTV. Even the camerapositions are very similar
I was wondering what your technique is to calculate where the camera should be positioned and in what orientation? Do you use a linear model, do you take into account the angular acceleration parameter?
It was always my plan to port noobTV to C# but sadly I don't have much time for that nowadays, maybe I could assist you with the development of this tool?
That would be awsome if you guys work together. NoobTV is awsome too but in my opinion it's more for racecontroll, because of the switching you can do very easyly. and of course you can do your own cameras. LfSTVdirector is mainly a tool to watch races and don't miss the action.
so if you guys combine the possibility of placing own cameras (and providing one set for each track as well) and the awsome action-detection (what a word) i think this could get really awsome for the community.
if you need a logo or help or whatever, testing... ask me
Thanks for all your suggestions. Now some statements about things I plan to do in the future:
- Of course camera positions will not be hardcoded in the final version. This was only done for test purposes, because I still have not yet code to read a camera config file.
- I am still not satisfied with camera movement. Especially with the fast cars it looks much too nervously.
- Fight focus instead of car focus: of course, I plan to do.
- manual interface to override carfocus: The App will get a nice GUI to let you decide what cars to focus and to override the automatic focus. This will be useful for real time broadcasts where a moderator is commenting the race.
- Show the leader at least sometimes. Currently the algorithm is too simple, it is based only on distance between cars. Unfortunately the leader has no car ahead, so he gets not enough importance calculated to get the focus.
- Better event detection: I will try to detect spinning cars, off track situations and pit stops. I hope I will find solutions for proper detection.
nope... it does exactly that just when it jumps and to which car has to be improved. i like most of the cameras in this tool for blackwood. only the one before the big tire could be a bit higher though...
I'm eagerly awaiting the next version of this tool. Combined with LFSTV this could be an excellent way to watch live races without missing important events and without needing a live person (or crew of people) to manage the cameras.
Edit: A few quick suggestions of things to think about for future versions...
Prioritizing of events by the user on a 1-X scale. For instance, a car hitting a wall might have highest camera priority (1), while a car passing another has a priority of 2 or 3, a car going onto the grass has a priority of 7, a pit stop has a priority of 8, etc. So, if two events are taking place at once the program knows which to focus on. You could even have two cars X meters apart with one priority and two cars with X+10 meters apart as another, lower priority.
I'm not sure if it's possible since you're using Shift-U for the cameras, but in-car cams, bumper cams, and rearward facing cams would be nice to see as well. It would help break up the monotony of the dozen or so static track cameras.
So you mean something like the Auto Camera view you get in, well, pretty much every car game with a replay mode, where you see backwards, in car, next to the wheel views and they cycle through.
if this priority thing is happening: user should be able to set a priority profile, so on some tracks pitstop are more important then someone is going into the grass. and a user just has to set priorites in a .cfg-file such as: overtaking=1
piting=2
crashing=3
...
I'm not sure if this is related to TV Director, but now that I've tried it, when I switch to free view (shift-u) during a replay (with TV Director NOT running), the buttons are no longer displayed. The commands are still working but I can't find how to display the buttons again. What do I miss?
Update: never mind, I found that I had to press the space key.