Its a shame there will be no shadows from streetlamps, it could've resulted in some cool things, such as streets mainly lit by those, i wonder if there will be another type of light entity usable that does cast shadows, maybe a spotlight entity too

Quote from Krunal_01 :

Its a shame there will be no shadows from streetlamps, it could've resulted in some cool things, such as streets mainly lit by those, i wonder if there will be another type of light entity usable that does cast shadows, maybe a spotlight entity too

If a spotlight could exist and cast shadow maps then the street lights could.

Quote :

Its a shame there will be no shadows from streetlamps, it could've resulted in some cool things,

Nobody says it will never happen.

Let him finish what's already there for release. After that, there's still a lot for Scawen to do, to improve, and to engage with the community. He only has two hands, after all.

Quote :

I am making decisions to get to release without getting hung up on details.

The new version will be a huge step for LFS. Whether such details are implemented or not, there will ALWAYS be something to improve... especially with such a complex program! And Scawen himself sets the bar pretty high (code optimization, resource-efficient handling, and so on). I find his work truly impressive and look forward to every update, no matter how small it may seem.

Quote from Scawen :

A quick update today, centre-weighted metering prioritises pixels nearer the...

Not a lighting question, but, the aliasing in the screenshots made me wonder.. will new version come with new anti-aliasing options? Not a high criticality thing just curious. (currently rendering the game at 6880x2880 for my 3440x1440 display, in addition to the in-game AA, to get rid of jaggies as much as possible)

Quote from Drifteris :

i noticed street lamps don't cast dynamic shadows inside the car (like sun does), is that for performance or will there be an option to have it?

This makes me wonder how the car's headlights will behave in this regard. For example, if they shine at a wall, will the light be visible on the ground behind the wall as well? I assume it will be like that based on Scawen's answer to Drifteris.

Of course, it's totally fine if it's not so advanced in the upcoming update - it's still gonna be way better than what we have now

Some method for ray or path tracing has to be implememted in order to support such features..not gonna happen any time soon.

Shadows for dynamic lights are definitely possible without ray/path tracing, using cubemap or dual paraboloid shadowing, which is basically shadow mapping for omni/spot lights (spotlights being cheaper than omni lights). However, after re-watching the night time video from the South City progress report from December 2019, headlights were not casting shadows, not sure what the plan is going forward.

Quote from OmegaX :

Not a lighting question, but, the aliasing in the screenshots made me wonder....

DLAA would be amazing, however I'm not sure that's possible with DX11.

It also comes at a huge performance cost, I would rather see dynamic lights used exclusively for cars themselves, I must admit it bothers me a little to see the whole interior being illuminated when other cars are tailing you.

But again, it's one of those things that could be improved gradually with time.

Sometimes you can't afford wasting time by rushing out things heh

Altho patienceless kid in me is happy to know that there's an exe that is already building and running(ish).

I keep coming to this forum every month for last couple years to check the progress and am posting just to say thank you to Scawen for finding time to post this.

I'm wondering if there have been any new problems and/or new challenges for Scawen in the last two months. Perhaps we'll get a glimpse into the current status of the "retro version"?

I'd certainly appreciate it... and if you don't have the time (or inclination), that's OK too.

Since the previous report in March there have been various updates. Most of the time I have worked on LFS but also had to do a few things outside of LFS.

I'm not sure how interesting it is but I can look through the list of updates I sent to Eric and add a few comments.


Towards end of March:

I worked on the render modes, which were kind of a mess and it took a while to reorganise the code a bit.

In the end I came up with 3 render modes: basic / SDR / HDR:

- basic: straight to backbuffer, no antialiasing / exposure / tonemapping
(good for lower-end GPU, uses exposure estimate based on time of day - not good in tunnels or car parks)
- SDR: uses SDR render targets, does antialiasing and exposure, no bloom or tonemapping
(exposure calculation is good but there is no glow around lights and no tonemapping to help with bright sky)
- HDR: visually the same as recent versions but now adding bloom and tonemapping in a single pass
(our best option for good GPU but there is a hit from the bloom processing and HDR render targets)

New system for different settings between VR and non-VR modes

MSAA settings "none" and 2X options in addition to 4X and 8X

Started to work on the Public build of the new version and had to work on the track selection screen. The limits are worked out differently now so some changes had to be made to align paths with map images.


Early April:

Retro tyre model:
FIX: Retro model was heating up tyres too quickly in longitudinal skids
FIX: Retro model could cause a crash with wheelspin at low speed
Implemented skid darkness from New model into Retro model

Both tyre models:
Smoke update - calculated only immediately (without temperature build-up)
Doubled intensity of dust (from dusty surfaces)
Removed the "skin temperature" thin edge on outer surface as no longer needed

Render modes:
Code cleanup allowed only downsize as much as needed for exposure in SDR mode
FIX: screen was sometimes not cleared for a few frames e.g. after pressing V

Vehicle editor:
FIX: Z buffer was not disabled when drawing wheel cross-section
FIX: Tyre cross-section was not shown if Retro model selected

Cars:
LX6 - restored public version tyre size
LX4 - restored public version tyre size / mass / engine power


Towards mid-April:

Shaders:
New compute shader included [think this was for the exposure histogram]

Exposure:
Dashboard brightness now constant regardless of exposure
Avoided black frames when changing views with V or TAB in game
- the black frames were while exposure was calculated on a hidden image
- now the screen is simply not updated during those few frames
Reduced overexposure after TAB/V/restart from dark place (e.g. tunnel)
- initial exposure attempt was then worked out from a whited out image
- the overexposed image didn't show the true excessive brightness
- issues are solved by targeting a standard brightness (after TAB/V)
Exposure is also reset and recalculated when switching Render mode
Exposure is also reset on entering or leaving Free view mode
More accurate histogram (now 256 bins - see in CTRL+E)

Graphics:
FIX: Corrupted lighting (normals) on 3D spectators with scale > 1

Misc:
Faster load of Octree when track is loading
Added progress percent for "Generating" stage

AI:
FIX: Divide by zero updating path for AI in EV (e.g. Formula XR-E @ BL1)


Early May:

I had some distractions in the second half of April but in early May sent another update:

VR: Avoided black frames when tabbing between cars in "TV in VR" view
Avoid debug message about DEFAULT lighting when car drawn as physics LOD
Added Misc option to show ms/frame instead of FPS (removed SHIFT+F5 key)
OPT: avoided setting main render target multiple times per frame
FIX: avoiding mysterious crash in SetForce after losing full screen
OUT OF BOUNDS now displayed if the spawn point is out of bounds
OPT: improved main render function saving around 0.2 - 0.3 ms per frame
FIX: Jittery freeview camera (graphics now synchronised with physics)


Summary:

I'm not intending this to try to stir up conversations, but more to illustrate all the small things I have to work on, in order to get the version finished. Most of these things, you (and I too) probably wouldn't think of but it takes a while to get everything ready after so many changes have been made in the program.

D3D11, HDR graphics, dynamic lighting, 1000 Hz physics, shadow maps, multithreading, non-path-based occlusion culling have meant a lot of changes throughout the program and while trying to get things finished, I keep encountering new things that have not been considered, or were thought of as "fix that small thing near the end" but then it is a bit harder to fix than expected.


Ongoing:

I still have to do some more work for certain headlight issues, add some weather options, finish building a releasable public version and whatever comes up in the meantime.

Eric has been doing some more work on South City and has to complete Kyoto Ring where there are still some holes around.

We still can't give a time estimate, we'll just keep doing the important things until it's ready for testing.

As expected, a lot has been happening in the background. Aside from the fact that I only understand half of it (technically), it's very impressive how much goes into it.

I wasn't expecting a possible release date for the test patch, but rather exactly what you told us. It's great, of course, that problems were resolved and not just new ones that emerged!

Very impressive, and I wish you both continued success!

Thank you for the insights and your work!

I have a recommendation for track mods on how to make them immovable, setting an object mods weight to 0 kg makes the object immovable, but sadly disables collisions too for some reason