I decree that this is just a sociological phenomenon. Current generation is losing the ability to be patient. It's logical to be unwilling to give pertinent information when you know in advance that a delegation of trolls will be destructive no matter what you say. People don't realize that when you are writing codes (especially a sim) it's close to impossible to give an accurate release date. Only vague estimations should be given in my opinion and that's exactly what Scawen is doing.

On the other hand I can't help but feel that something could be improved communication wise. I mean if Scawen would give an interview about thermodynamics I would watch. Or if the LFS devs would go on a road trip with the VWS Maybe a little promotional clip about the latest Oculus Rift support in LFS?

Yet in the end those are just futilities and Scawen shouldn't feel morally obliged to give more inside information. As far as I'm concerned I judge the end result and so far every new version of LFS has progressed in my eyes. It's a shame Eric is being so mysterious though.

Thanks for the swift reply. I shall now work on the French translation of the 3D support

OFF-TOPIC

Quote :

This will soon be the official version so we need to fix it.

Is there any possiblity to squeeze some InSim improvements into upcoming patch? To point out an old discussion:

Quote :

Originally Posted by sicotange
I can't help myself to ask the following (since you seem to have been working on Autocross Objects recently): are there any plans to add pitch (& roll) to the IS_AXM packet? Changing the angle of the slope of the "Ramp2" object for example would be awesome but I guess this would mean you would have to reduce the minimum step of objects (25cm) too.

Originally Posted by Scawen
As there is no space for pitch and roll in the existing 8 bytes per object, that would be too much of a change at this time. I thought I might investigate one thing though - maybe I could add a single bit to the Flags that would avoid the ground level check, so an object would stay exactly where you put it (and with zero pitch and roll). I realise that the granularity of ZChar is a limitation but at lest this would allow objects to be placed in the air over physical surfaces. One more thing I was thinking might help is a simple new object, a plain rectangular flat slab of concrete. It would look like the ramp but be level. Maybe it should have the same height as the ramp and legs. Or maybe two different objects, a plain flat slab and a separate slab with legs.

It would be appreciated if you could briefly comment on this because I started coding an InSim app based on this hypothetical new feature

I may have found a little oddity. The FOV in helicopter view seems different with 0.6E12. Anyone else noticed this?

The forum is way to often a hostile place. I welcome any initiative to get rid of the obvious rotten apples who find joy in being destructive anytime they post something.

I know I would have less patience with these partycrashers than Scawen.

That's where I'm lost. In my eyes the main difficulty is the interval limitation. If you cut a corner you have to catch the event in a short amount of time. I'm not convinced the IS_MCI interval is low enough to detect a corner cut event. 40ms seems to be the LFS limit, I wonder if that's fast enough.

If the amount of nodes hammers performance to much your link seems to be an option. I wanted to visualize it for myself so I made the screenshots below, unfortunately the example below is probably a bad one, I should have taken a chicane or tighter corner. Either way I think using only a quarter of the nodes could still be enough, provided the IS_MCI interval is low enough. Unless I'm missing something I still think the MCI info updates is the key.

I made something similar, unless I didn't understand what your planning to achieve. At the moment I have a method returning a bool (InsideConvexPolygon()). I then process the players info to choose from this enum:

• ON_ROAD
• ON_ROAD_RIGHT_LANE
• ON_ROAD_LEFT_LANE
• OFF_ROAD_GRASS
• OFF_ROAD_OOB

I don't see what use it can have though except to check if a car is idle on track, driving wrong way, going off road to often.

What I don't understand is how you can do this every 4ms since the IS_MCI interval has a higher limit. Would you use "predictory points" to anticipate where a car is going to drive to based on the previous locations, heading, speed,...A few months ago I had fun making my own paths. It worked well except:
• Have to find a better way to make the custom path (using SMX perhaps?)
• Autocross checkpoints have limitations, I tried making custom checkpoints method but it had precision issues (100ms variance)

If your goal is to make new LFS .PTH files I'm all ears

Some say pixels are intimidated by his presence others say NASA is trying to hire him, all we know is that he's called Scawen and it's his birthday today

Quote :

Hi sicotange, I have not decided to ditch this idea, but I think it will not be available in this patch. As this patch can be kept compatible, it's good to avoid the disruption of an incompatible patch. I still like those ideas though and would like to do it properly at some point.

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated

If the move from XP to Windows7 is even remotely counterproductive I would revert back to XP. Don't change a winning combo springs to mind. But maybe there is also a feeling of stepping out of your comfort zone. Personally I'm on Windows 8.1 and although the metro "experience" almost resulted in me eating my mouse I have still not reverted to an older OS. Perhaps I don't realise I became an indoctrinated sheep.

The thing is pressure will eventually build up to the point that you will feel forced in some way or another to go with the flow. I'm not sure if Microsoft's strategy is sustainable. Either way I don't like the feeling of Microsoft's frigid hand on my shoulder...

So far none of the flags I made exceed 10 buttons. Granted, I haven't made the complex ones but since the size of my flags is rather small the flags details (stars, armories, etc) can't be displayed so I don't really bother.

Progress so far:

I'm glad 3D support implementation is going well so far. I suppose upcoming patch will focus solely on 3D support? There is no chance you could squeeze the little InSim improvements discussed last year (autocross: no ground level check flag, new flat slab object)? If you decided to ditch this idea could you say so please, because it is fueling some (false?) hope

This idea also caught my eye In my opinion it could be useful to display stats. I stumbled across 2 issues though:

1) It is rather difficult to ensure all the flags have the same size.
2) It can be tricky to fit the flags into small buttons.
3) You can't resize your flag.

Anyway, below is a screenshot to show what I got so far (I only made a few flags so far).

Quote :

I tried this today but it simply cannot be compiled with the compiler that LFS is using - the venerable VC6.

Quote :

For example, I recently installed Windows 7 and now I can't go full screen on a dual monitor setup.

I suppose that you resent trying out VC12.0 and/or Windows 8.1? Not implying you should (if you haven't already) but it would be interesting to hear your opinion about Microsofts latest software releases in retrospect.

Thanks for this pertinent status update Scawen Concerning InSim, are the autocross improvements (no level check) and new objects (flat slab) still in the pipeline? A while ago Victor briefly mentioned the possibility of graphical improvements, is this still being considered or a no go for now?

I think more frequent reports (even bad news) would be a good thing to cut short a big stack of speculation.

I'm very happy with the latest Dcon dedi btw

The "MAX ALPHA (unsorted)" message was spammed to several connections on my server this evening. I tried to reproduce it and I concluded that many chalk objects, 900 in this case (intersecting each other FYI) triggered it. The error message disappeared once I did "/axclear". I could only reproduce it with chalk objects.


After a quick search on the forum I found the following interesting hint:

https://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=74850

Quote :

Changes from 0.6A3 TO 0.6A4 :

Updated Commands.txt and Autocross.txt
FIX : Small documentation error in InSim.txt (ISP_X / ISF_X)
FIX : Racing line did not work again after viewing invalid car
FIX : MAX ALPHA (unsorted) after adding a lot of chalk objects

I speculate that the reason why this error message occurs is because the max amount of autocross objects rose from 800 to 900. Could it be the new limit of 900 re-introduced this bug fixed with 0.6A4?

In my opinion DCON is a step in the right direction A progress report would be welcome (although this is actually one) but if there's no vast progress to report or if there is actually regress (concerning tyre physics for example) it seems logical not to communicate about it.

Yet I agree more news is welcome even if it's bad news. No news unavoidably lead to speculation but the forum can be such a hostile place for the LFS devs that I suspect Scawen may not enjoy sharing info bluntly anymore.

Discussing road maps or schedules is risky and should not be done unless the time is ripe. How often do you see devs giving release dates and not being able to comply ?

I suspect we just have to many questions, are to curious about things and that it can be straining for Scawen to respond to these sprees of demands/questions/suggestions/insinuations/insults.

Although I also wish for more frequent news, in the end I judge the end result and so far I'm more than pleased (Z28->0.6B->0.6E->0.6E DEDI DCON)

PS.: Scawen, if by any chance you are willing/able to give a mini status update on the InSim autocross updates briefly discussed in November, that would be appreciated.

Thanks for clarifying

My server (TEST5) crashed for the 2nd time, tonight, exact same error.

Quote :

I will not say how it's done at this point! But I'll tell you that the last line of the log file when you got the crash might tell you how to to it.

I suppose you won't tell how to prevent partycrashers to cause the server to crash. (Hopefully it's not a stupid move to speculate that it is related to an InSim packet with name starting with IS_M__?:schwitz

Scawen, should we revert to LFS dedi 0.6E temporarily while awaiting TEST6 or do you think TEST6 is close enough to remain on TEST5 for now or perhaps it can still be useful to remain on TEST5 ?

Ok good to know although I still wonder what the exact distinction is. Which votetype has which conditions and if there is a difference between players spectating and players in garage. I speculate there is a distinction between spectators vs players on track (or in garage). It's not that hard to test but if someone knows for sure how it works that would be nice.

I think my report should be dismissed as I believe auto-restarts are reported by IS_VTN thus making it possible to cancel the restart if required. Doing "totalvotes required - 1" when someone spectates probably makes more sense anyway, yet it feels far-fetched and confusing but now I understand how it works so I can anticipate things InSim wise

Corrected ;-) Is it a certainty LFS votes work this way? The vote is passed when 50% or more voted? Does this vote condition apply to SHIFT + R, SHIFT + X, kick and ban votes?

Quote :

1) turn off voting
2) use IS_VTC (since 0.6B) to cancel an ongoing vote when it's not the right time to start a vote.

1) I don't think you can turn off the ability to SHIFT + R (and SHIFT + X).
2) My InSim app already cancels votes sending TINY_VTC when an IS_VTN is received (one of our admins disabled this InSim feature so in the case I reported no TINY_VTC was sent).

In the end my report intends to obtain some clarity concerning SHIFT + R voted restarts. More precisely if it's normal that a SHIFT + R vote could result in an auto restart later on when someone spectates during the race. I suppose it's not something that was introduced with TEST5. It's because I was taken by surprise I thought it was TEST5 related thus reported it. It should be fairly easy to "reproduce" if you have a bunch of racers on. Suppose 8 7 players are online and racing. If 3 players vote to restart and at some point 1 racer spectates then an auto restart could be triggered. That is if 50% (or more) of votes are required.

Last edited by sicotange, Mon, 17 Jun 2013 16:35. Reason : shameful miscalculation

It seems to be the explanation. I still wonder if this is a bug or intentional. Either way it seems unlikely to be related to TEST5. Finally, what is perhaps worth noting is that "/restart" is not reported with IS_ACR when this auto-restart happens.

Encountered a very odd issue 10 minutes ago. Server setup:

Track: AS3
Laps: 3
Cars: FXR only
Players: ~10-15

On the third lap 50m before the leader crossed the finish line the race auto restarted. No SHIFT + R votes were seen. And in my InSim logs no "/restart" was found (my InSim app logs all commands even if ACR UCID == 0).

I tend to think it's a bug so far but I might have missed something very obvious. The only thing I have so far:

Quote :

Jun 15 22:20:03 LOWERSTANDARDS™^L voted to RESTART
Jun 15 22:20:07 ClaViCo Lap PB by Brendan : 1:51.73 ^Lon AS3 (FXR) ^L[5/9]
Jun 15 22:20:07 LFSW - new FXR PB by bdog922: 1:51.73 (-0:16.18)
Jun 15 22:20:08 ClaViCo Split1 PB by MIHA® : 0:46.30 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:09 ClaViCo Lap PB by LOWERSTANDARDS™ : 1:55.72 ^Lon AS3 (FXR) ^L[7/9]
Jun 15 22:20:10 LFSW - new FXR PB by Yaboiraqui: 1:55.72 (-0:10.39)
Jun 15 22:20:21 ClaViCo Split1 PB by Ivan1337 : 0:46.59 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:27 ClaViCo Split1 PB by ^CØ^Týllý : 0:45.26 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:28 ClaViCo Split1 PB by [MRc] Nofreak : 0:45.50 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:30 ClaViCo Split1 PB by SiCo : 0:45.66 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:39 ClaViCo Split1 PB by ·^Cÿ^GîSFLdrifter : 0:46.77 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:50 ClaViCo Split1 PB by [COP]Ayrnay : 0:47.55 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:20:57 ClaViCo Split1 PB by LOWERSTANDARDS™ : 0:48.60 ^Lon AS3 (FXR)
Jun 15 22:21:07 ClaViCo Lap PB by MIHA® : 1:44.49 ^Lon AS3 (FXR) ^L[4/9]
Jun 15 22:21:19 [MRc] Nofreak : ^LDamn lol
Jun 15 22:21:21 ^CØ^Týllý : ^L: [
Jun 15 22:21:21 [MRc] Nofreak^L joined the spectators
Jun 15 22:21:24 Repaired Mesh
Jun 15 22:21:24 Repaired Mesh
Jun 15 22:21:24 Repaired Mesh
Jun 15 22:21:24 Repaired Mesh
Jun 15 22:21:26 [MRc] Nofreak^L left the pits (FXR)
Jun 15 22:21:26 ^CØ^Týllý : ^Lnooo
Jun 15 22:21:27 SiCo : ^LWHAT

Some manifestation of frustration there since the race would have been over (for the top 3) 5 seconds later

Am I right to assume that IS_ACR always reports /restart when it occurs (by vote, admin, InSim app)? Obviously I have no idea how to reproduce it.

Take this report with a grain of salt but if anyone ever encountered this I would gladly hear about it.

EDIT: I may have failed to see the obvious after all. If you look at the logs. The race restarted after the "Repaired Mesh" and especially when "[MRc] Nofreak^L left the pits (FXR)". Most importantly 1 minute before that event: "Jun 15 22:20:03 LOWERSTANDARDS™^L voted to RESTART". Could it be that when someone votes to restart race and afterwards a player spectates the amount of votes required for a race restart drops by 1 thus triggering an auto race restart after all. I suppose I'm close to dismissing this invalid bug report...Will try to reproduce it though.

Last edited by sicotange, Sat, 15 Jun 2013 20:48. Reason : EDIT: May have made a fool of myself

I'm glad the Sherlock Holmes in you found the culprit so fast Personally, I never really looked into making use of the invisible option.

OFF-TOPIC: I can't resist to ask you for a mini status update of the autocross improvements discussed a few months ago:https://www.lfsforum.net/showt ... php?p=1759364#post1759364 I'm wondering if they are still on your todos list since I'm working on my InSim application anticipating these new features

Last edited by sicotange, Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:45.