WARNING : THIS IS A TEST

NOTE : THIS DOES NOT CONTAIN NEW TYRE PHYSICS OR ANY NEW CONTENT

PLEASE TEST BEFORE YOU POST

PLEASE AVOID : OFF-TOPIC FEATURE REQUESTS / UNRELATED COMMENTS


Hello Racers,

Here is a new TEST PATCH : 0.6M9

- New siren sound and doppler effect on all car sounds
- A long requested feature, to filter out demo servers, has been added
- Virtual Keyboard (press backspace) so you don't need to use the keyboard
- Look and Click feature (for VR) so you don't need to use the mouse
- An improvement to the steering input of remote cars
- Input smoothing for multiplayer replays

This test patch is mainly compatible with 0.6M
- You can connect online with 0.6M
- You can play replays from 0.6M
- An M9 guest's horn or flash will not be seen on pre-M8 guests
- The host must be M8 or later to allow a guest to use a siren

You cannot upload hotlaps made with this test patch because it is only a test patch, not an official patch.

Please keep a backup of your LFS.exe from 0.6M so you can easily go back if there are any problems.


Changes from 0.6M8 to 0.6M9 :

More translation updates! Thank you translators!

Audio :

Reduced the minimum volume to play a sound (can hear further away)
Added doppler effect to all car sounds that didn't have it already
Removed doppler effect resulting from SHIFT+U mode camera velocity
Updated commands.txt with commands /cansiren /siren /ujoin /uai

Siren sound :

Command /cansiren now works on players that have not joined race
Command /cansiren username 0 now switches off username's siren

Fix :

Fixed a recently introduced bug in the /key and /button commands


Changes from 0.6M7 to 0.6M8 :

Multiplayer :

More accurate horn and flash with shorter transmission delay

Siren sound :

Text command /siren=off/fast/slow
Only allowed on cars with a horn and if allowed by host
Allow a multiplayer guest to use siren : /cansiren username 1

InSim :

New ISS state flags to notify if local PC is in dialog / text entry
New packet SMALL_LCS - set local car switches (lights, horn, siren)


Changes from 0.6M6 to 0.6M7 :

VR :

Crosshairs auto-hide in game when buttons visible (e.g. N or InSim)

Virtual keyboard :

Added Serbian / Croatian / Slovenian keyboard (QWERTZ)
Added Slovak, Turkish, Bulgarian and Romanian keyboards


Changes from 0.6M5 to 0.6M6 :

Multiplayer :

New Demo filter at bottom of List of Hosts screen

Virtual keyboard :

Czech and Hungarian keyboard layouts are now supported
Mouse button function (e.g. throttle) disabled if clicking keyboard

Look and click :

Crosshairs did not work with vertical scroll bar


Changes from 0.6M3 to 0.6M5 :

Virtual keyboard :

Can now operate assigned keys - Speed Limiter, Reset, etc.
Most Latin keyboards and Greek and Cyrillic are now supported
The key to toggle the keyboard is now backspace (or controller)
Virtual keyboard is now drawn in front of overlapping buttons
Shift and Alt Gr keys now affect the characters on keyboard
Dead keys (for diacritics / accents) are displayed in red
Virtual keyboard position moved above text entry dialog

VR :

Crosshairs can now go past the interface edge and fade out
Talk function (T key) can now be assigned to a wheel button

Fixes :

LFS could crash if interrupted while generating track
The Alt Gr key + a number could cause the text colour to change
Simultaneous Left + Right view keys were not working properly


Changes from 0.6M2 to 0.6M3 :

VR :

Look and click (with space or button) can be used instead of mouse
OpenVR SDK now 0.9.17 and supports live IPD adjustment (Vive Pre)
Removed interface aspect ratio 1:1 and added 14:9 (default)
New click and type buttons in place of some slider bars

Virtual keyboard :

Automatically displayed in VR mode below text entry dialog
Can be toggled by controller button or backslash key (VK_OEM_5)

Misc :

Input and sound are now enabled by default when LFS is not focussed
Mouse click on demo exit screen now exits LFS or opens www.lfs.net

Fixes :

Out-of-path start warning incorrectly showed local player name
Dedicated server did not search for path after out-of-path start
Non-dedicated server could crash if guest driver drove off track


Changes from 0.6M to 0.6M2 :

Multiplayer :

Reduced steering wobble each time a position packet is received
Smoothed steering / brake / throttle inputs in multiplayer replays
MPR smoothing is disabled by switching on network debug (SHIFT+F8)
Passwords hidden on Start New Host and Join Specific Host screens

Training lessons :

Previous and best times are shown during the lesson replay
SHIFT+R now restarts the lesson without returning to instructions
SHIFT+X exits from replay or lesson back to the instructions screen
Press 1 to watch or restart replay without finishing the lesson
ESC once starts the replay / another time to exit lesson

Lesson editor :

Reverse and open configurations may now be selected
Lesson image filename no longer needs to start with zzz_
Image does not need to be square (but is still shown in a square)
On entry to lesson editor the current track and config are selected
You can now select the lighting (weather) for a lesson

Misc :

Layout editor now allows unmovable objects to intersect

Fixes :

LFS could crash if a shadowed object near a paused car was deleted


INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS :

A FULL version of LFS 0.6M must already be installed

To install the PATCH using the SELF EXTRACTING ARCHIVE :

1) Move or save the patch into your main LFS folder
2) Double click the patch to extract it to that folder
3) When you see "Confirm File Replace" select "Yes to All"
4) Now you can start LFS in the normal way

NOTE : You can see if the patch is correctly installed when you run
the program (LFS.exe). At the bottom of the entry screen : 0.6M9


DOWNLOADS :

PATCH 0.6M TO 0.6M9 (SELF EXTRACTING ARCHIVE) (if you already have 0.6M) :
www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_PATCH_6M_TO_6M9.exe (1.6 MB)

PATCH 0.6M TO 0.6M9 (ALTERNATIVE ZIP) (if you already have 0.6M) :
www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_PATCH_6M_TO_6M9.zip (2.0 MB)


FOR HOSTING ONLY

DEDICATED HOST 0.6M9 (non-graphical version for hosting only) :
www.lfs.net/file_lfs.php?name=LFS_S3_DCON_6M9.zip (1.8 MB)

Were you reading my mind? I was thinking 2 days ago about how the steering ain't smooth.

Also as you're working on that, is it easy to increase the maximum packets per second on internet to be the same as on LAN?

No, there are serious issues in increasing the packets per second on the internet. Sometimes people think it is just about bandwidth (which is serious). But that is not the only problem. Every time a position packet is received, with delay, there is a CPU cost running that car from the time the position packet was sent, up to the current time. What happens then is that when a lot of packets are sent, e.g. many cars arriving at turn 1, every client computer begins to suffer excessive CPU usage, which in turn increases lag, which in turn increases CPU usage for the local computer and others. So you can end up with a much worse multiplayer experience than now.

Packets per second isn't really the main problem. Latency (I mean the time taken for a position packet to be sent from a guest, to the host, then on to another guests's computer) is the main problem, and it is not helped by increasing packets per second. On the contrary, it can be made worse. The latency is very low on a LAN, so there is not much CPU usage on prediction and that's why pps can be increased.

Oh my! The replays are so nice to watch now! Is it me or the car itself is jumping a bit less now?

Noticed that when you watching replay from in car view after rewinding replay back, camera changes to TV mode. But other than that for smoothing, very nice.

Edit: it seems to happen only in one replay on some cars, attached replay, see cars my (KingClub), InTelliEye, DM®DA BUTTON 05, Silver, 9397, MĎ Gang

I see now how it effects it. Thanks for clarifying it, and really thanks for the implement of this. Now the movement look way smoother!

..

That is an interesting question. I think it would be difficult to implement for a true spectator. You would have to be connected to the host but running just over a second behind real time. If you then joined the race, you would have to catch up 2 seconds. I don't rule it out completely but there are issues.

I was wondering about a different mode where you could be watching a host, as if watching a MPR. Someone created a program years ago, I think it was called "LFS TV" and it streamed an MPR to remote computers and you could watch it nearly live. There were problems though as it wasn't properly supported by LFS.

What I am thinking is there could be some InSim packets to stream MPR data to an InSim client, and that InSim client could have guests connected, to which it streams MPR data, for LFS to watch that as if it was an MPR (or possibly ends up as an actual MPR file). The InSim client could also request another set of current starter packets, as found at the start of an MPR file, and it would do this each time it got another new spectator.

This way, you could be watching a live stream online but a couple of seconds behind time. I guess rewind and fast forward could be available as well so that could be useful...

I have other priorities at the moment though, that sounds a bit complicated for now.

Quote from Sobis :

Oh my! The replays are so nice to watch now! Is it me or the car itself is jumping a bit less now?

That should be the case because in most cases the smoothed inputs are a more accurate representation of what actually happened between the two position packets.

Quote from K0Z3L_43V3R :

Noticed that when you watching replay from in car view after rewinding replay back, camera changes to TV mode. But other than that for smoothing, very nice.

Edit: it seems to happen only in one replay on some cars, attached replay, see cars my (KingClub), InTelliEye, DM®DA BUTTON 05, Silver, 9397, MĎ Gang

It seems that is the case for cars that joined after the start of the race. I checked in M and it's the same, so it's not new. I'll have a look to see if this can be corrected.

Nice, replay are more smooth now, too bad multiplayer is still blocky.

BTW, since we have a test patch and it's a quick thing to do, can you increase the draw distance of the reflections ? At least add an option to do so please.

I don't know what you mean by "draw distance of the reflections".

I don't know of any quick things to improve reflections.

I think he refers to the objects being distorted (and thus only nearby objects being reflected), as you mentioned at the end of this post: https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1897508#post1897508

Not sure where "quick thing to do" comes from though

Oh, I forgot that LFS uses half spherical reflection to reflect world, so object that are too far away are not rendered, you're right, not a far clip problem.

What are the things that will be developed on theses test patches now that you fixed the crash and smoothed MPRs ?

EDIT: Can you take a look on my request list that I sent by email a month ago BTW ? Thanks

I know, I'm late to the party, but there is some work for Eric to do about Rockingham.

These highlighted places aren't solid enough so the car with minimal speed (40-50 km/h) can actually go through.
The same story is at the other end of the tunnel as well.





EDIT: It would be also nice to do something about Custom view looking back, because if I'm trying to look back while driving any open wheeler with custom view (which I do), I can't see anything because it just shows what is right behind the driver... which is the seat

Quote from nacim :

What are the things that will be developed on theses test patches now that you fixed the crash and smoothed MPRs ?

I think you can just search my recent posts, where I did state some plans.

That will be more efficient than me writing down everything again.

May I suggest adding SHIFT + click in the autocross editor for the X,Y,Z arrows? Especially for Z it is useful to put objects on top of each other needing big Z adjustements (bridge pillars for example):

Quote :

leftclick : += 1;
rightclick: += 4;
shiftclick: += 16;

Also, can anyone try to reproduce the following: https://www.lfs.net/forum/thre ... sicotange-%3A-OOS---MPSYS

Quote from Scawen :

I think you can just search my recent posts, where I did state some plans.

That will be more efficient than me writing down everything again.

Done, thanks

..

512x and 1024x skins to 1024 and 2048 skins in game pls.

Quote from GT4_PL :

512x and 1024x skins to 1024 and 2048 skins in game pls.

See info at https://www.lfs.net/account/skins/upload

Quote from cargame.nl :

OK that sounds indeed way too complicated. I just brought it up in case it was something easy to do. But for smoothing you need to look ahead in time.. live->MPR->streaming is not poss... Well.. It is possible but then commentary/audio needs to be delayed/buffered as well. Way too much work for a jumpy steering wheel. Thanks for clarifying this. (and I found it, it was indeed LFS TV )

I read this and found very interesting ideia, something come up to my mind and tried something really simple that may be worth...

I just conected to a server normally, than opened a new lfs instance, go to replay and i loaded the temporary mpr file, it showed a error message "Unexpected end of file" (cause the file is being in use by the other lfs instance conected to the server) but you can watch almost real time, even if the progress bar reach the end the replay will stay rolling until the lfs that is conected to the server restarts the race, (in my case the lfs running the replay crashed). The faster you load the temp mpr file to the other lfs instance less delay you will have from real time to replay.

I think this method can be used in certains situations maybe??

best regards,

Luthiano

People have been doing that for years now

Very useful to review an action without disconnecting or stopping the mpr recording.

Quote from Whiskey :

People have been doing that for years now

Very useful to review an action without disconnecting or stopping the mpr recording.

Oh ok... I'm not so active/frequent at lfs forum so at certains subjects i'm not updated as well... ou can see that by my join date and posts numbers .
Anyway i very happy to see the recent lfs progress and looking foward to whats yet to come!

One thing to be careful of, if you start watching the temp.mpr a lot - if you are still viewing it when the race restarts, LFS can't rename it, which becomes a problem if you are using autosave. I can't remember exactly what happens to the replay from the next race (cos I avoid making that mistake now )

Just one question: How can I try the lighting weather. I cant choose that at the lesson editor. I only can choose the original windy weather :S. Otherwise the online replays are awesome. Keep it up guys