And a empty online racing environment has no merit on someone's intelligence or their common sense.

The aquarium effect that Dave mentioned must be the restrictive lateral field of view we got when having a close to reality view angle in the seated position (having our face glued on the windshield not seeing anything on our sides like a horse with blinders). A 24" monitor at around 60cm of distance for example won't give you much lateral view so some people prefer the "chase" view to have more width and knowing their surroundings. I'm no expert but seeing that he is using the chase view, he might be more uncomfortable than the average people to a restrained field of view in a seat position, which explains very much why he'd rather stay distant to a peripheral that isolates our view completely from the real world.

These days I like using on my monitor around 73 to 80 degrees (use to race with 44) with Y longitudinal adjusted to +~200mm of the default position, just enough to have the 3d mirrors working or to go up to 300 to 400mm with virtual mirror and I find it a good compromise between seeing wide and immersion factor.. on a monitor at least.

Once they drop the price on HMD and got a better field of view, it'll be hard to resist to this level of immersion for driving/flying games.

Quote from kturner :

And a empty online racing environment has no merit on someone's intelligence or their common sense.

It does, two years further, there are five people using some VR and thats it. I say something about it and I am the one who is crazy. Well, just a middle finger and some Youtube celebration if another patch comes out about VR. Lets find out how good this LFS t-shirts will burn with 100ml of fuel.

I might be crazy but it's completely retarded to recommend VR here in front of all those people and if you don't like the 2D cockpit views then you can piss off because you are just a fool. The fools here are the people who still believe in all this VR nonsense. It doesn't sell and it doesn't look like it will ever do. In the meantime sticking with Windows XP, now that's hilarious.

Im 1 of those guys dave !

VR is way too expensive to get mainstream. And still at such an high price, HTC managed to sell over 100,000 units in the first 6 months so there must be more than five people using it. I still think it can't work in most games but to a genre where your body is stationary inside the 3d world, it sounds like salvation.

So alright let's move to Windows 10 NSA edition which provides so much better visuals, stability, compatibility and of course privacy. Being Scawen I'd ditch DirectX to go for Vulcan whenever possible to increase the compatibility toward Linux and MAC to bring more users so I guess we are not on the same planet.

Banned cargame.nl for a month.
His previous post goes too far.
Better to have a break from here.

Meanwhile, I'm working on the tyre physics. The VR support really needed the 3D mirrors and that's why I did it. It really is the icing on the cake for VR support. Actually as I stated before there is something pretty bad about 2D mirrors in VR!

Will there be a test patch like always when tire physics will be ready to released?

I'm not making any test patch plans at the moment.

Right now I am working on the carcass simulation. Then I'll be working on the tread simulation. That's all I know for now.

Thats the reasons why i love LFS. A Slowly Progress like Evolution but every Option is thoughtful.

I like to age it with LFS.

Thx Scawen!

Much though I like the upgrades, is there any chance of some new tracks that we can race on, or release a track maker/editor for people to create they're own tracks as an lfs community projects, and have the best of the tracks included as part of the S1 or S2 licence, and allow the others to put their own tracks on their own servers within the lfs world. I'm sure there are many people on LFS who would be well qualified to create a track that they could then invite their friends onto to race and so bring more sales and revenue into the LFS Coffers.
A bit like Crowd funding, but more like crowd brainiacs, take some of the work load off the developers to make improvements to the game ??

your comments please ?

Quote from Scawen :

I'm not making any test patch plans at the moment.

Right now I am working on the carcass simulation. Then I'll be working on the tread simulation. That's all I know for now.

Hope u find a better way for tires but also hope u introduce track shaders soon ... anyway i liked the new mirrors (didn't think off those )

Edit typo

Quote from Scawen :

I'm not making any test patch plans at the moment.

Right now I am working on the carcass simulation. Then I'll be working on the tread simulation. That's all I know for now.

Thanks for the update Scawen. I was wondering, since you are refactoring the tyre physics simulation, it is possible to implement some multithreading, even in a basic form (physics in another thread)?

What's the refresh rate that you target for the new physics ? Staying to 100Hz or some changes to expect ?

Well 180Hz would remove stuttering for 60Hz monitor and 90Hz vs stuff.
As Multithreading I guess from very old discussion that this a big deal and not planned before tires.
Anyway keep up the good work Scawen. The realistic mirror are huge plus to my opinion and I hope you nail that tire physic!

Quote from Nats-Dad :

Much though I like the upgrades, is there any chance of some new tracks that we can race on, or release a track maker/editor for people to create they're own tracks as an lfs community projects

We have always been interested in eventually releasing track and vehicle editors and we still hope to do so. But the idea has always beem to "finish" LFS first, and that means S3 license with some more default content and with updated tyre physics. For example, there is no point letting community members loose on developing cars, when the tyre physics would be changed significantly at some point.

Quote from nacim :

Thanks for the update Scawen. I was wondering, since you are refactoring the tyre physics simulation, it is possible to implement some multithreading, even in a basic form (physics in another thread)?

I am interested to do this and it would be possible after the tyre physics is released. It is particularly difficult to do at the moment while there are two entirely separate branches of Live for Speed. It's a big task and not something I'd like to do twice.

As mentioned before, completing the tyre physics will allow many more possibilities for the future of LFS.

Quote from cargame.nl :

It does, two years further, there are five people using some VR and thats it. I say something about it and I am the one who is crazy. Well, just a middle finger and some Youtube celebration if another patch comes out about VR. Lets find out how good this LFS t-shirts will burn with 100ml of fuel.

I might be crazy but it's completely retarded to recommend VR here in front of all those people and if you don't like the 2D cockpit views then you can piss off because you are just a fool. The fools here are the people who still believe in all this VR nonsense. It doesn't sell and it doesn't look like it will ever do. In the meantime sticking with Windows XP, now that's hilarious.

...whatever you might have tried, halve the dose ffs!

Quote from Scawen :

For example, there is no point letting community members loose on developing cars, when the tyre physics would be changed significantly at some point.

By that logic there's no point in us using any of the cars we have now, either. So that's why we have the new walk feature!

I guess you are joking but, to make it quite clear anyway, I have to go through all cars reworking them after the tyre physics change. Basically giving them more realistic settings and design considerations to suit the more realistic physics.

The point is that if community made cars are available, it would be extremely difficult to rework 10,000 cars to remove all the bodges they have included to get around the flaws in the old physics.

There are so many reasons not to release community editors for an unfinished piece of software, I hope I don't need to explain it any more!

That is apart from the fact that updating editors and providing download services, compatibility checking, approval systems and so on will be many months of work, and as I keep saying, I don't want any more delays to the tyre physics.

Ok, keep the tyre/car development in house and that would allow you to the time to work on those and other features for LFS, but surely the track development and creation isn't going to be a new thing, the tracks still need to be built in the format that you are currently using, so allow other people to do the work and development of those ideas, and bring a greater variety of track/gravel roads which could be released officially, or allow people to host their own custom track for a small fee on their own servers, variety is the spice of life after all

I can only see this being a good thing and bringing people back to LFS, as I tried to look today to find an other race sim that allowed you to create your own track, and all i could find tracknations, and we all know thats a world of difference from LFS,

Lets get the user base and the LFS community behind LFS and push it to where it should be.

I'd certainly be one of the first to try my hand at track development.

Regards

The cars were only one example. that's why I said "for example". For another example, the graphical systems need further updating before releasing public track editors. For example, I would prefer to have a new shadow system in place before releasing community editors that require community members to render their tracks using the outdated shadow rendering system. When the shadows are updated, tracks will need to be updated using the new shadow system.

Once again, it all comes back to the tyre physics, because after the tyre physics are completed, I can get back to the graphical updates.

There is no higher priority than the tyre physics. Remember, tyre physics... Scirocco... many years ago...

It would be nice when you reach a playable stage with tyre physics development to start an open test patch for us to help you finding glitch and exploits that beta testers ignored or didn't found.

Nothing can be perfect, even the actual tyre model has some strange behavior which help players to get faster through an unrealistic driving technics, so I hope you will find a good compromise in a reasonable amount of time so you can bring a new life into LFS.

Yes, joking. I appreciate that you know what you're doing and the order in which it has to be done.

Thanks, everyone.

My thoughts are to get the tyre physics done without delays, without looking for perfection, just to get something out there that feels good and has a physical basis. The current public version tyre physics system uses some made-up force curves that are somewhat like real ones, and tuned to give reasonable output values, but they are not produced from an actual physical theory. The lateral and longitudinal forces are combined in a way that also is not based on physics, and was simply constructed to give a reasonable feeling.

In the new tyre physics, the forces are produced from code that follows physical laws, instead of looking up the forces from a curve. Lateral and longitudinal forces are output naturally, rather than being 'combined' in an arbitrary way.

There are assumptions involved, but they are 'known' assumptions that are there for a reason and can be improved upon in the future.

Anyway, I hope to continue with the work pace I have been doing in recent times, and don't see why this can't be the case.

Sounds like a good plan of attack to me. It doesn't need a holy grail, just another good step closer to reality.

You can use existing formula like from pacejka model if you get yourself stuck into another impossible problem, use it as a placeholder until you find a more efficient way to make the thing if its possible ofc.

Quote from k_badam :

He isn't on his own... many people would agree with him!

Indeed. And a lot of us won't use a monitor for sims now we've experienced it. Apart from the 'being in the car' aspect rather than watching, the sense of speed on a monitor is so distorted as you slow down it jars.

xxxxEdited out a bit about 3D mirrors not being in the other sims: they are there, but just don't look as convincing.xxx

The only negative about LFS' VR is that the "screen door effect" always adds a kind of aggregate greyness to the scene, and LFS does look rather grey to start with - which normally looks quite serious and professional IMO . Certainly compared with rF2, which looks like a 4 year-old's colouring book. But then ISI's graphics guy did stamp his feet and state that although he'd never tried VR, he knew he didn't want it, so there! LOL So that's not really a surprise.

One physics question that has always intrigued me is how Scawen managed to make the cars seem like the front tyres are actually connected to the track whereas In rF1, rF2, iRacing, AC, pCars, they don't. E.g. when the rear slides in other sims, it feels like the front becomes disconnected too and you're guessing what to do with the steering. iRacing is probably the worst. It's particularly visible in a tankslapper, where in other sims, cars seem to rotate about the centre instead of the rear swinging back around an axis at the front of the car. Externally, it looks like the front tyres are going one way and rears the other, Iike it's on ice. Got one in IRacing the other day, and watching the replay onboard with the Rift it looked like I was sitting in the middle of a merry-go-round. Can't be right. I'd be interested in Scawen's opinion on this difference.