Layout Square is a great map that we can make lots of new lyt, but it is not easy to make it right if just put the cones & line 1 by 1, so I suggest that allow to input a map on the floor, so we can set up the object base on the map on the ground, just like pic

I've renamed the thread if you won't mind.

I also have a suggestion about the layout square map - it can be annoying to have the roads and intersections going through the area, because they have different heights and it can create problems when trying to make some custom track layouts. Also cars tend to dip a little when going over the roads at fast speeds. So I think it would be nice to just have a flat plane of tarmac.

Quote from Flame CZE :

I've renamed the thread if you won't mind.

I also have a suggestion about the layout square map - it can be annoying to have the roads and intersections going through the area, because they have different heights and it can create problems when trying to make some custom track layouts. Also cars tend to dip a little when going over the roads at fast speeds. So I think it would be nice to just have a flat plane of tarmac.

+1, just go flat plz

Quote from Flame CZE :

flat plane of tarmac.

...and maybe gravel version...? ;>

Quote from scania :

Layout Square is a great map that we can make lots of new lyt, but it is not easy to make it right if ...

I think that that the addition of a smaller 1km x 1km layout square might be good to have so that we can do something like this.

Maybe with just a road around the perimeter, and walled all round. The road is quite good to give you an idea of scale for getting a realistic track width.

This would still be far bigger than is available using AU1 and BL4 autocross areas.

Quote from Flame CZE :

...it can be annoying to have the roads and intersections going through the area, because they have different heights and it can create problems when trying to make some custom track layouts. Also cars tend to dip a little when going over the roads at fast speeds. So I think it would be nice to just have a flat plane of tarmac.

Maybe this on a smaller layout square, although haven't really noticed difference in track characteristics when driving, but have when placing objects. But the fact that the Z height of track is above zero, is that you can place objects below ground level (great for making strips to stop drivers cutting corners too much), then raise them back to ground height to make objects level again.

Considering a lot of drivers think LFS tracks are too smooth, would think drivers happy of a few bumps here and there to make it more challenging.

Bug:
You can't place chalk objects (maybe others too) on the ground on the crown of the roads at X=0 or Y=0.
If you place one nearby and bump the X or Y position in a way that should take it to zero, LFS gives an error "Can't move : invalid position". See attached

Quote from sinanju :

I think that that the addition of a smaller 1km x 1km layout square might be good to have so that we can do something like this.

Maybe with just a road around the perimeter, and walled all round. The road is quite good to give you an idea of scale for getting a realistic track width.

Isn't that exactly what one of the blocks in LA1 already is (minus perimeter wall)? You can confine yourself to one of those without crossing a road and they're already 1km x 1km.

Quote from Degats :

Bug:
You can't place chalk objects (maybe others too) on the ground on the crown of the roads at X=0 or Y=0.
If you place one nearby and bump the X or Y position in a way that should take it to zero, LFS gives an error "Can't move : invalid position".

Same thing happens at BL Carpark btw (bug report here).


And I have a suggestion: Enable minimap so we can see where other cars are.

One of the first things I'll do is add more cameras so they aren't quite so extremely zoomed in.

It's actually me who works on this map, in fact Eric originally built this some years back with some distant scenery to make it look nicer, but then got diverted onto all the new graphics stuff before it was finished. Recently I resurrected an old LFS track editor so I could actually save a track that can still be loaded in the public version. I removed distant scenery as there were problems trying to draw things so far away. And I added the long fences.

I wonder if the configuration system could be used for something useful. I'm not sure we need both wide grid and long grid? Or are they of some use? You can place your own start positions anyway.

I'm pretty busy on other things though. I don't know how easy it would be to allow a configuration to perhaps turn one of the 1km squares into a dirt arena. I could try to copy one or two of Eric's methods and textures and see how it looks.

What would be the purpose of being walled in to a 1km square? As Degats suggests, can't you just use an existing square? Or would it be particularly useful to use the walls as a boundary? Other questions, if I could do a dirt square, would only 1km by 1km be enough? I'm trying to limit both the workload and number of configurations, so rather not do more than is needed.

Quote from Scawen :

One of the first things I'll do is add more cameras so they aren't quite so extremely zoomed in.

It's actually me who works on this map, in fact Eric originally built this some years back with some distant scenery to make it look nicer, but then got diverted onto all the new graphics stuff before it was finished. Recently I resurrected an old LFS track editor so I could actually save a track that can still be loaded in the public version. I removed distant scenery as there were problems trying to draw things so far away. And I added the long fences.

I wonder if the configuration system could be used for something useful. I'm not sure we need both wide grid and long grid? Or are they of some use? You can place your own start positions anyway.

I'm pretty busy on other things though. I don't know how easy it would be to allow a configuration to perhaps turn one of the 1km squares into a dirt arena. I could try to copy one or two of Eric's methods and textures and see how it looks.

What would be the purpose of being walled in to a 1km square? As Degats suggests, can't you just use an existing square? Or would it be particularly useful to use the walls as a boundary? Other questions, if I could do a dirt square, would only 1km by 1km be enough? I'm trying to limit both the workload and number of configurations, so rather not do more than is needed.

grid is useful, but texture only, no bumpy plz

& road texture skin to input map on floor plz

Quote from Scawen :

...What would be the purpose of being walled in to a 1km square? As Degats suggests, can't you just use an existing square? Or would it be particularly useful to use the walls as a boundary? Other questions, if I could do a dirt square, would only 1km by 1km be enough? I'm trying to limit both the workload and number of configurations, so rather not do more than is needed.

Partly because it would be much easier to manipulate, and move about in, but also because in track naming, xx1 (eg SO1, AS1, etc) usually signifies smaller layout, and if you saw layout LA1, then you would know it was the smaller layout and not one of the larger layouts.

Walls are useful because it can save on number of autocross objects you need to use.

You need about 60 x Armco5 barriers for a full 1km run. Or 62x16m + 1x8m walls.

Quote from Degats :

Bug:
You can't place chalk objects (maybe others too) on the ground on the crown of the roads at X=0 or Y=0.
If you place one nearby and bump the X or Y position in a way that should take it to zero, LFS gives an error "Can't move : invalid position"...

I raised something similar as a track bug ... https://www.lfs.net/forum/thre ... A1-%26-LA2-Layout-Squares

You can't place an item on the edge of the large blocks on either site of the small pavement sett stones, as the item disappears.

Quote from Scawen :

I'm pretty busy on other things though. I don't know how easy it would be to allow a configuration to perhaps turn one of the 1km squares into a dirt arena. I could try to copy one or two of Eric's methods and textures and see how it looks.

What would be the purpose of being walled in to a 1km square? As Degats suggests, can't you just use an existing square? Or would it be particularly useful to use the walls as a boundary? Other questions, if I could do a dirt square, would only 1km by 1km be enough? I'm trying to limit both the workload and number of configurations, so rather not do more than is needed.

A dirt square would be proper fun! So you can add concrete on it in LY Editor and make proper Rallycross-tracks. That would be super mega!

Can I be the voice of lumpiness here?

I appreciate that surface texture is harder to make, let alone deciding how much lumpiness is right, but a mirror-smooth surface like AU1 is lacking something, IMHO. (IE, taking a track and rotating the entire thing 180 degrees would make no difference on AU1, but would make it different to drive on WE3). I'm planning to move all my favourite AU1 tracks that will fit to WE carpark for this reason.

I have on my suggestions-to-flesh-out-before-making list an idea about auto-generating a 'very nearly smooth' surface from a seed number, in order that we could have unlimited variations to fit custom tracks into, but I'm presuming that there would be too much work involved in that.

Maybe a lumpy tarmac corner next to the possible dirt corner, in with all the flatness?

1km x 1km would certainly be big enough for me for a dirt area - the two Westhill grass areas are both long enough to get a long track into, and those are only about an eighth of that each.

I wanted to suggest adding a textured ground surface to the autocross editor. Thus, new unpaved roads can be laid on the asphalt.
I have always loved autocross and rallicross.

@Developers with this configurator, will we be able to build a track from scratch, with pavement, elevation changes, grass, curbs, apex, etc? Since we have vehicle mod configurator, will we have a full track mod configurator as well?

If we do a track editor, all I can assure you at this point is that it is a very long way off. Not worth discussing at this point.

Quote from Scawen :

If we do a track editor, all I can assure you at this point is that it is a very long way off. Not worth discussing at this point.

how about lyt editor, or import map on floor?

Guys, let's stay on topic. You cannot understand the work load I am under here, trying to get the vehicle mods sorted. We already have a layout editor.

scania, I think you have already asked two times before about a map on the floor in the layout editor.

We have just released a huge system "vehicle mods" and it is not finished. So we are not doing major changes to the layout editor, or going to release a track editor in any imaginable time frame.

I'm fairly interested in the possibility of adding a dirt area to the layout square, as a selectable configuration for an incompatible test patch. But that's about it really. I'm also considering the idea of a walled 1km square area.

I'm only interested in one or two small changes to layout square, where a small change can allow a lot of possibilities. Not changes to the layout system or other difficult things.

Quote from Scawen :

Guys, let's stay on topic. You cannot understand the work load I am under here, trying to get the vehicle mods sorted. We already have a layout editor.

scania, I think you have already asked two times before about a map on the floor in the layout editor.

We have just released a huge system "vehicle mods" and it is not finished. So we are not doing major changes to the layout editor, or going to release a track editor in any imaginable time frame.

I'm fairly interested in the possibility of adding a dirt area to the layout square, as a selectable configuration for an incompatible test patch. But that's about it really. I'm also considering the idea of a walled 1km square area.

I'm only interested in one or two small changes to layout square, where a small change can allow a lot of possibilities. Not changes to the layout system or other difficult things.

Of course no worries about the layout editor let’s finish the vehicle mods and finish the new tire models and game. I just didn’t know exactly what this layout square was until now, thanks for clearing that up! Thanks again for everything that has been added we been racing with some of the mods and wow you just can’t believe this is LFS, but it is and it’s amazing. Some people still have lots of work to do for sure with their mods and some are knocking it out if the park from the start. Thank you Devs!

Quote from Scawen :

I'm fairly interested in the possibility of adding a dirt area to the layout square, as a selectable configuration for an incompatible test patch. But that's about it really. I'm also considering the idea of a walled 1km square area.

I'm only interested in one or two small changes to layout square, where a small change can allow a lot of possibilities.

Considering maximising the possibilities, it would be good to have both tarmac and dirt available in a single configuration. Layouts with transitions between surfaces could be built more easily then, without for example the need to construct paved parts from concrete slabs on a dirt-only area.
For more realism and to make things interesting, there could also be areas on the outskirts with procedurally generated bumpy tarmac and bumpy dirt, and maybe even some larger scale undulations on dirt.

Quote from w126 :

For more realism and to make things interesting, there could also be areas on the outskirts with procedurally generated bumpy tarmac and bumpy dirt, and maybe even some larger scale undulations on dirt.

That sounds like BeamNG's Gridmap V2. :-)

Quote from w126 :

it would be good to have both tarmac and dirt available in a single configuration.

I have a very early prototype I spent a short while on yesterday.

What I did is convert *one* of those squares between 4 roundabouts into a dirt area. So you can get from that into the neighbouring squares which are still concrete.

I was wondering about putting walls around it. I guess you'd say no in that case.

My own personal preference would be;

LA1 Small single walled tarmac square
LA2 Wide Grid (as is)
LA3 Converted LA2 with dirt area (as you propose)

I was going to test and get some feedback on a new LA1 Layout Square track I made, but it doesn't appear as a track choice on LFS Hosting.

Both layouts I've made for the Layout Squares are showing up in the Layouts Tab.

OK I guess that's an oversight, but suppose it doesn't stop you testing, as you can start at some other track then load LA from in game?

I'll email Victor about it though.