This thread is not really "General LFS Discussion".

It looks like Technical Assistance and we have a special section for that: https://www.lfs.net/forum/5

I will close this thread. If you ask in Technical Assistance, please provide more detail about what you are asking, so people can try to help you.

Last edited by Scawen, Thu 20 Feb 2025, 16:32.

The new option is available for testing in the test patch forum, which I have left hidden for now.
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/110607

The trouble with test patch threads is too many people get a strange idea in their head that it is a general off topic request thread. But I'm far too busy on the development version, and cannot be distracted. If I get off topic requests on that thread, I will close it.

I will be happy to hear about any problems with the new option, or the VR update.

WARNING: THIS IS A TEST

THIS DOES NOT CONTAIN NEW TYRE PHYSICS OR THE NEW GRAPHICS SYSTEM

PLEASE TEST BEFORE YOU POST

PLEASE... NO OFF TOPIC FEATURE REQUESTS!


Hello Racers,

Here is a new test patch: 0.7F11

Please read the list of changes below.

0.7F11 is COMPATIBLE with 0.7F

- You CAN connect online with 0.7F
- You CAN play single player replays from 0.7F

You should back up or rename your LFS.exe from version F so you can revert to it if necessary.


Changes in F11:

Search button in mods screen now allows searching by Skin ID or the non-unique 4-character name


Changes in F10:

List of Hosts now has 30 lines and does not show the obsolete status text
Hover text with description when the mouse cursor is above a blob in the IP column
FIX: Stopped on "Join Specific Host" page after "Start New Host" (should immediately join)


Changes in F9:

Privacy update: Warning if you are joining a host that will log your IP address
- Your decision to trust that host is remembered, to avoid asking you again
- You can remove the "trusted" status by clicking the "trusted" button
- List of Hosts has a new IP column to indicate hosts that log your IP address

Stops on "Join Specific Host" after you click a join link on calendar or website
- You will need to click the "GO" button as if you had clicked in List of Hosts


Changes in F8:

Forces view mode is no longer applied to object mods (e.g. track mods)
FIX: Fuel and damage settings were always default on non-route configs


Changes in F7:

Improved vehicle view radius calculation (bounding sphere)
- LFS can more accurately detect if a vehicle is currently visible

LOD distance refers to distance from bounding sphere instead of object centre
- previous version did not work well for large objects, e.g. "track mods"


Changes in F6:

Force feedback:

Some steering wheels have a bug in their drivers, that cause them to seen as "First person controller" devices.
In this case, LFS does not know they are a steering wheel, so it does not enable the steering wheel bump stops.
There is a new option, in "Axes / FF" section to Enable steering wheel bump stops.
Do not use this if your controller is not a steering wheel.

VR:

It is possible for some VR headsets to have a FOV aspect ratio that is different from their pixel aspect ratio.
Until now, LFS did not deal with that case correctly, and this was apparent with the HTC Vive Pro 2.
Now, LFS uses the left, right, up, down FOV values more directly which should solve the problem.


Changes in F5:

InSim:

System to allow AI drivers to be directly controlled by a local InSim program.
Discussed here: https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/2114897#post2114897

AI drivers:

AI can now spawn in a config with an AI path even if knw has not been generated
FIX: AI now spawn in game with full fuel load if there is no path (or no knw)
FIX: Rare crash in AI code after another car spawned outside path


INSTALLATION:

Live for Speed LFS 0.7F must already be installed!

- Rename your old LFS.exe
- Copy the LFS.exe from this patch zip into your LFS folder

NOTE: You can see if the patch is correctly installed when you run LFS.
Check the version number at the bottom of the entry screen.


DOWNLOAD:

IF YOU ALREADY HAVE 0.7F:
PATCH 0.7F TO 0.7F11 (ZIP)
https://www.lfs.net/file_lfs.p ... =LFS_PATCH_7F_TO_7F11.zip (1.2 MB)

Last edited by Scawen, Mon 21 Jul 2025, 16:27.

No, it needs a warning when you select it, and I've done that now.

Apparently it's hard to believe what I'm saying, or I can't describe it well enough, so I've made a video.

This is what happens when you use the option with the wrong kind of device.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKxP4igYkRw

I hope to release a test patch this afternoon. In the development version I've been fixing various issues to get to the release and one thing was about Z buffers, according to a recent recommendation by Bokujishin which took me into the projection matrix. I had been doing other VR fixes recently, including something about lighting exposure, which I have recently updated for the regular monitor version too. I'll probably do a report about some of the updates, but haven't been in a mind to slow down.

Now with VR and projection matrix in my mind, I was reminded of a bug report by vRenegade and I've been looking at that.

So hopefully this afternoon I can release a VR fix and an option for user to override the controller device type.

Quote from rane_nbg :

My point was that endstop force is not one that can cause the joystick or whatever to oscillate from side to side - actually, the ones that do are autocenter spring force or damper for example.

The way I implemented it, it does.

Joystick is past right stop.
Receives strong left force.
Accelerates left for a while.
No longer past right point, but still has velocity.
In split second, exceeds left end stop.
Receives strong right force.
Accelerates right until no longer past left bump stop.
In split second, exceeds right end stop.
etc...

The problem is that to provide a strong enough force to be felt, the acceleration is quite fast, if you are not holding the joystick. And a joystick can move to extremes so fast that there is no time for the game to react before it's already off the other side.

If you have tried making a joystick move to specific locations, you may have experienced the same trouble I have, with wild oscillations being the usual result. Personally, I have not been motivated to try to solve such an issue. The simple method (plain force, available on all FF devices) worked well for a wheel so I simply limited it to a wheel.

But this is really off topic, I'm not going to start trying to control the motion of FF joysticks of unknown mass, force capabilities, etc.

About end stop forces, I think you sort of missed my point. I'm not saying that end stop forces are dangerous for wheels, but specifically that they could cause undesirable effects for joysticks, because of the way joysticks can flick so fast from one side to the other. That's why I enabled them for wheels but not joysticks.

But you touched on a more important point about impact forces in conjunction with direct drives, though that is a different subject.

Anyway, I've thought of a possible interface, to allow the user to override the reported device type, see attachment.

Quote from cuni :

Somehow the wheel is being recognised as a first person controller...

There's the answer!

The 'bug' is in the game controller driver software which is reporting DI8DEVTYPE_1STPERSON instead of DI8DEVTYPE_DRIVING.

LFS only implements self-centering when it is a wheel. There are two types of force that are only applied if it is a wheel.

1) After car is reset, the force slowly builds to try to centre the wheel.
2) Wheel out of bounds (end bump stops)

I believe I have done this as a safety measure or to stop LFS smashing up FF devices / children / etc. I don't really know what a DI8DEVTYPE_1STPERSON is but suppose it's a joystick, then applying a large force could fling the joystick right over the other side, when it could then receive the opposite force that flings it the other way, and you can end up with a wild flailing joystick.

I have to be a bit careful with FF devices and decided that these forces should be OK if the controller is a wheel. Of course we have a problem if the wheel manufacturers can't specify the correct device type.

Now I've got a vague memory of some direct drive wheels being reported as DI8DEVTYPE_GAMEPAD - not sure if I'm remembering correctly but I guess that will cause the same problem.

EDIT: Actually it was the Simucube, which was also reported as a 1st person controller. I got this as part of a reply when I contacted them in 2021:

Quote :

We do not see how reading DI8DEVTYPE can be considered reliable way to recognize the type of device, as there are multiple projects and many e.g. DIY projects that work in similar way. What if I have a buttonbox that also has analog axises/knobs also, but it is not a driving controller? Making such controller that has buttons and analog knobs is very easy using e.g. Arduino boards.

EDIT2: I find it a bit frustrating that DEVTYPE is not a reliable way to recognise the type of device, despite the name, and that manufacturers basically aren't bothered about that. At the moment it looks like we will have to have some kind of override option:

FF device is actually a wheel although it is not reported as one: YES / NO

I wonder if you can think of a good way to add this to the interface, clearly, without taking up too much space, and such that users are unlikely to select it if they don't have a wheel.

Last edited by Scawen, Thu 20 Feb 2025, 10:03.

This is not a bug.

You should post in Technical assistance and please post in English, even if you use google translate that would be helpful.

Google translate:

hello first of all I played this game about 1 year ago and deleted it now I reinstalled it and my old settings came back but I didn't want it and I can't change it
my problem is I don't want to use the car with the mouse and I can't change it I set the car to automatic and the car doesn't go when I press w
please help

We learned about that from a technical support email yesterday. I've only come across this forum post now.

There was some kind of connection problem. The server was restarted and then the same issue came up a few hours later, was restarted again and seems to be OK for now (around 16 hours). We don't yet know why it happened. It has been running for 3 years without a fault.

Feel free to post here again if the fault comes up again. I should get the email notification.

I don't know the cause, but it looks as if it might be related to code pages and language settings.

Do you rename the files in any other way than through the LFS menu? For example, have you copied and renamed them in Windows file manager?

How do they look in the data\misc folder?

Do you sometimes change language settings on your computer?

What is the "language for non-Unicode programs" on your computer?

Quote :

1: Open Region and Language by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking

Clock, Language, and Region, and then clicking Region and Language.

2: Click the Administrative tab, and then, under Language for non-Unicode programs, click

Change system locale.

Last edited by Scawen, Tue 18 Feb 2025, 09:01.

The failed upload attempts don't all add up, they are overwritten by the next attempt, so hopefully you don't need another slot. I can't add an extra slot as we don't have a system to do that and I can't get into coding an exception.

About the Cloudflare upload timeout, I guess you have tried the option to not include the png files, to reduce the size of the upload? I can't do anything about that at this time because for me it would be a big project to make a new upload system, and Victor isn't willing to do it.

Have you checked your email?

Just leave us in peace, we are working very hard and will update when there is something interesting to say.

In the meantime you can read the recent progress report. https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/110003

I guess that must have been a temporary glitch?

We haven't had any tech support emails and I've just tested and it seems OK, and yours seems to be running at the moment.

Do let me know if you get another problem.

I don't think it's a bug, those higher numbers represent the output mesh.

Triangles should be relatively simple, I guess some of the ones you selected are mirrored, so the output number is more than you have selected.

Points are a bit more complicated and there will be multiple points where smoothing groups or mappings meet.

For instance a simple cube with one mapping would have 4 points per side, so there would be 24 points even through they are built on only 8 editor points. 3 points at each corner, which you can see if you turn on normals (nrm). Each output, game ready vertex can only belong to one mapping or have one normal.

Thanks for the report. It was a bug in the old code, that fortunately had no other side effects.

This was not the mod team, I did this alone after we received a technical support email.

I shouldn't have included the threat of a ban, that final sentence was not needed and obviously annoyed you.

I wish we didn't constantly receive support emails about offensive political or religious logos and slogans, bad behaviour, racism, etc. We're just trying to make a nice game for people to get together and have fun.

Thank you for the report, I've fixed that now. I caused the bug when I reused the field for signup notification thread in a recent update.

Yes, the AI path doesn't store the mod's version number. It's only really about vehicle width, a wider one is likely to invalidate the path.

Great bug finding again! Thanks for working out the reason. The car is probably a fraction wider in the later version, and at some point in the generated path the car goes right up to the driveable limit.

What we actually said:

Quote :

Mod contains political flag logo with unpleasant connotations.
You must remove this logo before uploading an update.
Future use of political logos may result in a long ban.

When dealing with complaints from users we would prefer not to get involved in political judgments, but instead LFS should be free from this stuff, so we asked you to remove the logo. Not such a big deal really.

Thanks, fixed that now.

I've just done that now.
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