Good work!

Quote from Scawen :

Histogram analysis of a render target and pass the results back to the CPU (for auto-exposure).

Well, you don't even need to pass the result back to the CPU if the only thing using it is the tonemapper post process. You can store the result of the histogram compute in a RWStructuredBuffer and read it directly in the tonemapper's pixel shader (or even compute shader, which is a more optimised way to compute post process too, especially for things like downsampling using parallel reduction (here or here)

Quote from Scawen :

Should these be possible with the D3D10 compute shaders? My understanding is compute shaders started in D3D10 and were extended in D3D11. At the moment I feel it is better to keep supporting computers with a D3D10 GPU.

Well, I think it is doable, to see what compute shader features are allowed on DX10 hardware and to what extent, I suggest you check out this link
Compute shaders in D3D10 can be limiting, but if you are willing to put the time to make your shaders work on it I think you could do some nice things, but in my opinion I don't think it is worth spending time supporting GPU that are more than 12 years old now.
If you find yourself stuck corner for a new feature, I think it would't be unreasonable to either drop support of DX10/10.1 hardware, or disable that feature depending on the feature level.

Thanks you guys ! Looks like very promising (as expected) ! Eric is is going really deep into South City it seems, you keep the best for the end ! Good luck !

Quote from Degats :

Obligatory comparisons:

https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202003/01
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202003/02
https://imx.tc-g.uk/so202003/03

@redditors:

About the increase in online activity, I've posted on simracing reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/ so if you'd like to add an upvote that would be helpful.

The post title is:
Online activity up in Live for Speed

Thanks!

Great to read through some recent progress again. Awesome work, keep it up

Quote from Scawen :

@redditors:

Upvoted and I also commented on the post, highlighting tonight's 4h endurance race

Quote from RacerAsh3 :

Curious to know if the difference in Traffic Lights means anything?

I don't think so. Maybe the old ones still needed to be re-designed

Hmm I wonder why is the score rating hidden on that post?

Quote from MandulAA :

Upvoted and I also commented on the post, highlighting tonight's 4h endurance race

Thanks!

Quote from Sobis :

Hmm I wonder why is the score rating hidden on that post?

I think it was just a time delay thing which subreddit moderators can set.

Quote from gernoff :

Would be possible? Could LFS have a feature to open a replay then drive their car in realtime inside the replay.

Do you mean "ghost car"?

Quote from Ripley :

Do you mean "ghost car"?

I think he means the same as 'Test drive' we already have in Single Player Replay.

Thanks for the huge job Scawen
This will help LFS to evolve a lot, I've been trying to promote among the Portuguese SimRacing communities and try to bring oldSchool from Portuguese SimRacing again

Appreciate the progress report, as always. Keep up the good work and hope all are staying safe these days...

Dx11, moving trees, and more frames... and and and

That are Great news.




stay healthy people....

You (the whole team) develop very cool things. I can hardly wait for the update. It is always impressive how LFS continues to develop.

Suggestion
Perhaps could you integrate a simple benchmark in the current test patch (0.6Ux)? With the benchmark you could play a given SPR file and log the smallest and largest FPS values and calculate an average. This would give you an indication of how well / badly the current LFS version is running on your own system and whether switching to D3D10 / 11 would ideally allow better FPS rates despite the more detailed tracks in the new version. In any case, I would be very interested. But there are certainly other ways to benchmark the smoothness of LFS; but not so convenient. ;-)

very impressive!

i remember the time when the Linux community just had the opportunity to speed up gaming with Gallium nine. it's nearly a native graphics layer to play DX9 games on *nix with less GPU call transition compared to the classic DX -> OpenGL -> GPU driver conversion.
back in 2014Q4, Gallium nine was just merged to the mainline open-source GPU driver (Mesa3D) a few months after the DX9 based, 0.6F version was released.
i helped the community with a bugreport and the graphical glitches were sorted out in a month. finally the Wine performance was great, i didn't have to boot up W7.
i just noted this, because with DX9 - as Scawen mentioned - nearly anybody can play the game.
sadly if the DX10+ version will in place, people will need the DXVK implementation which works for DX9, DX10 and DX11, but in this scenario Linux gamers will need a DX12/Vulkan GPU, because this implementation transforms the DX calls to Vulkan.
i know it's pretty hard to maintain two DX versions, but can't we fallback the graphical engine/DX implementation to a lower level? effects, objects might miss couple of feature and quality, but might be still renderable.

I believe with DX11 many cheap laptops might be able to run LFS
But time will tell when we can try out. Think it's a good decision to switch to DX11.

Anyway keep up the hard work Scawen. Happy with every progress report while waiting

So the idea of supporting Windows XP beyond end of life has been finally put to rest. Excellent.

will resuscitate the coronavirus the development?

I am looking forward to the day the test version will be released

Looking great scawen. hope your and your family and friends aswell as everyone else here stay's safe and well

Quote from vinibali :

very impressive!

i remember the time when the Linux community just had the opportunity to speed up gaming with Gallium nine. it's nearly a native graphics layer to play DX9 games on *nix with less GPU call transition compared to the classic DX -> OpenGL -> GPU driver conversion.
back in 2014Q4, Gallium nine was just merged to the mainline open-source GPU driver (Mesa3D) a few months after the DX9 based, 0.6F version was released.
i helped the community with a bugreport and the graphical glitches were sorted out in a month. finally the Wine performance was great, i didn't have to boot up W7.
i just noted this, because with DX9 - as Scawen mentioned - nearly anybody can play the game.
sadly if the DX10+ version will in place, people will need the DXVK implementation which works for DX9, DX10 and DX11, but in this scenario Linux gamers will need a DX12/Vulkan GPU, because this implementation transforms the DX calls to Vulkan.
i know it's pretty hard to maintain two DX versions, but can't we fallback the graphical engine/DX implementation to a lower level? effects, objects might miss couple of feature and quality, but might be still renderable.

Well if someone is fully ready to pay for LFS and at the same time being reluctant to invest into some cheap 40/50$ used GTX 660 or HD 7850 to play the game, I find that a little bit ironic...

Scawen is here to take advantage of the new features and enhancement to make his life easier, and at the same times delivering those features faster, but you guys are dragging him down with stone age hardware just because why not...

Simracing games are probably one of the most expensive genra to play properly, you need to understand that at least.

That's what you get when you want to play games on Unix. Just go for the DX11 implementation and save yourself the trouble of maintaining it for the DX10 level. Like lfsrm said, you can buy a super cheap second hand GPU that supports DX11.

If you're still using hardware or an OS that doesn't support DX10 of DX11 in 2020 it's time for an upgrade

Quote from lfsrm :

Well if someone is fully ready to pay for LFS and at the same time being reluctant to invest into some cheap 40/50$ used GTX 660 or HD 7850 to play the game, I find that a little bit ironic...

Scawen is here to take advantage of the new features and enhancement to make his life easier, and at the same times delivering those features faster, but you guys are dragging him down with stone age hardware just because why not...

Simracing games are probably one of the most expensive genra to play properly, you need to understand that at least.

HD 7850 and the entire Southern/Sea Islands family definitely won't cut it under Linux because its Vulkan support in the drivers is experimental possibly not even enabled by default on some distros. The GTX 600 series should be OK though.

Someone with a hi-tech simracing set is probably not going to run Linux on their gaming machine in the first place.

Given the bump on GPU requirements that come with DX11 I wonder if having gone straight to Vulkan instead of DX wouldn't have been a better call. Regardless, its very nice to see LFS adopting new technologies.

Quote from MadCatX :

Given the bump on GPU requirements that come with DX11 I wonder if having gone straight to Vulkan instead of DX wouldn't have been a better call. Regardless, its very nice to see LFS adopting new technologies.

It's an interesting thought but when I researched Vulkan (a bit) it seemed more complicated, with the way the program needs to carefully manage memory usage.

The hardware support for D3D11 is more widespread and it looked like a smaller jump from D3D9. As in, decision to support D3D11 has become almost a no-brainer whereas Vulkan isn't necessarily the right thing to do, specially when LFS really does rely on not aiming only at rich sim-racers.

Quote from Bose321 :

you can buy a super cheap second hand GPU that supports DX11.

MXM cards are not supercheap, let alone the people who do not have the capability to upgrade their laptop like that. Nevertheless throughout the last ten years I managed to upgrade multiple times (M3000 -> 675MX -> 965M -> M3000M) and the initial card was already DX11 ready (22.02.2011 = 3326 days old).

However, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able and do an upgrade. I noticed in Russia for example that for second hand equipment the gold price is being asked. Also in European countries itself it's difficult, the times I needed to import stuff out of Germany to Croatia I cannot count anymore. If you want complete laptops then there is the problem of the keyboard layout as well.

Dedicated gaming machine? For the last twenty years no thanks, there is more in life to be stuck in one place