This is a work in progress of a new multi-platform car viewer.

Novel features include the ability to load a skin from other car types (handy for XRG/XRT), the ability to view two cars at once, and a customisable light & rendering system.

I will update this top post as new versions become available.
PC Version: Version R6 : .rar Format | .zip Format
Mac Version: Version R8: .zip Format
Linux Version: Give me a week or two please
The only different between R6 PC & R8 on the Mac is better Mac compatibility.

Version R8 is a universal binary which supports both Intel and PPC Macs

I do realise that the models are not perfect this is all very early stages still (Started yesterday) - but it does basically work .

PC Screenshot (R5) - Mac Screenshot (R7)

Note 1: To select a skin you must double click.

Neat
Thankyou

i love you becky. with that i can make skins and see how they look at work with my mac!
the boss will not be happy

It would be cool to have some sceneries to choose from when you are finished with the important stuff.

looks great! good work!

I cant see any zoom function so you can never have a good view of car 2.

Apart from that and the mapping problems, its a cool app I like the 2 car thing

You can move the camera with the cursor keys, you can also hold the right button to change how the up / down keys behave (Or right shift, right command, or right alt - gotta look after the single click Mac users too ).

You may need to click into the 3D screen area before it will accept the commands for it.

I think i'm going to try and make it work with event driven input rather than polled input. This is the first time i've mixed 3D with a GUI and there are things I just didn't know about getting it to work .

Release 3 is out for the PC, it features a number of key changes:

* Switch to event driven input system - user interface is now more responsive
* Support for reflection mapping
* Included new 'fun' reflection modes "Terminator" and "Bare Metal"
* Automatically loads any in use skins that have changed - like the original LFS Car Viewer.

There is an issue where if you change reflection maps there is a chance the program will crash. I am aware of this and am working on it.

EDIT: It appears i've broken the Terminator and Bare Metal features. I'll be rewritting reflection mapping tonight in the hope of delivering a more stable version of it.

one of the key things you should add is changeable lighting for now the models are rather dark in some areas
although the reflection mapping seems to help a great deal

I think i've squashed all the bugs in the reflection mapping now and so i've uploaded release 4. The Terminator and Anodised modes are well worth checking out .

That's a good point Shotglass, it's about time I turned my attention to the lighting. I've added some lighting controls & effects to the environment panel, namely the specular lighting effect and control over ambient light.

The other thing i've changed is the way the standard light works, i've now set it to be fixed just to the right of the camera and looking in the same direction.

The 'Fixed Light' option in the environment tab it will lock the light to how it was before, but I plan on making this lock the light to it's current angle relative to the car.

Release 5 is now available for download, and I think that's probably all i'm going to do on it for today. Tomorrow I plan on trying to get to work early so I can compile it for Mac.

New screenshot

- shift + lmb on the 3d area has some weird mouse grabbing effect
- is the cursor supposed to stay visible while moving the camera ? (unlike previous versions)
- please add version numbers to the zips and rars

I'm really looking forward to the Mac version of this. Only time I restart my MacPro in to WinXP is to play LFS. But do all my skins in Mac OSX. Does it open all the current models, Cars and Helmet? Also was wondering maybe a option for the user to change the background color to something other then black.

Helmet & Background colour is a good point. It does already open all the car models .

I've uploaded release 6 which has finished lighting, the 'Fixed Light' button now leaves the light relative to the cars rotation. I've put in background colours, and an about screen with the version number.

Also i've removed the keyboard 'right clicks' as they dont seem to work with the event driven input, i'll come up with better camera controls soon.

I plan on using this version for the first build on the Macintosh tomorrow.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I've uploaded release 6 which has finished lighting, the 'Fixed Light' button now leaves the light relative to the cars rotation. I've put in background colours, and an about screen with the version number.

Also i've removed the keyboard 'right clicks' as they dont seem to work with the event driven input, i'll come up with better camera controls soon.

I plan on using this version for the first build on the Macintosh tomorrow.

Wow man (Or should I say women ^^) that skin is awesome! I love the design. Oh great tool also

I tried running natively on the Mac this morning, it 'mostly' works but I need to make some changes.

Namely the mouse rotation has gone right up the swany, the Mac seems to handle mouse input very differently to the PC. Also the terminator rendering mode just doesnt work.

I need to fix the mouse problem because it's impossible to rotate the model properly at the moment. So i'll try staying late at work tonight if they'll let me.

Quote from Becky Rose :

I tried running natively on the Mac this morning, it 'mostly' works but I need to make some changes.

Namely the mouse rotation has gone right up the swany, the Mac seems to handle mouse input very differently to the PC. Also the terminator rendering mode just doesnt work.

I need to fix the mouse problem because it's impossible to rotate the model properly at the moment. So i'll try staying late at work tonight if they'll let me.

Thanks Becky for all the hard work.

OK I got the mouse movements 'stable' enough to make it basically useable, although it's a pain in the exhaust pipe at the moment. I also see some font issues on the interface as the Mac OS font is larger.

Here's an Intel binary only version of Release 6 for now. I've got a lot of work to do to make it all properly work on the Mac and obviously personal time on a Mac whilst at work is limited, once i've got it up to spec i'll put together a proper universal binary.

Release 7 for Intel Macs, all migration issues solved. I'll be doing a universal binary tonight. Download from top post .

Screenshot of the Mac version

I've not managed to get a universal binary version of the viewer, the problem is the only PPC machine I have here is the company server and so i'm stuck in terms of 'fiddling'. As far as I can see the OpenGL 3D engine isn't working, but i'm not 100% sure of the cause.

I dont really see this as a problem though, after all most LFS users who own a Mac own an Intel Mac, as PPC machines dont have bootcamp and virtualPC is waaaaay too slow for games - so I figure that the lack of a PPC/universal binary version probably effects about zero users?

Perhaps at a later date if/when I get a normal PPC machine for use I can play some more with this, until then the Mac version will have to be Intel only.

The next challenge is to make this work under Linux. The closest i've ever been to Linux was to boot up from a Linux distro CD, i've never actually installed it (necessary for this process as my compiler requires me to make an alias of gcc4 to 3.3 which is a system modification, which I cant do without installation).

This will be a 'challenge' .

After that I figure the next step is to get it to read .cmx files natively, and then it is finished.

Quote from Becky Rose :

As far as I can see the OpenGL 3D engine isn't working, but i'm not 100% sure of the cause.

does the server even have a 3d capeable card ?

Suprisingly yes, a GeForce 6600LE. It's a G5 Power Mac so is actually a fairly able machine for a PPC.

It could be an OpenGL issue though, i'm new to OpenGL - let alone 3D on a Mac!