Again, though I know that there is no performance to gain from this, I make a plea for the sake of "cleaning up" the amount of information thrown at you from the screen:

Please include an option to turn off the realistic mirrors, including those of the opponent cars, while having the virtual mirror on.

For me, there simply are too many sources of information/animation with all mirrors on, and I get a headache from it. Also, side mirrors on other cars should reflect the inside of the car (or a shiny reflection), since to be effective for the driver, they are tilted inwards.

I know that I could adjust the FOV, but that would restrict my viewing area. I also know about the radar mod, but that's so far been unreleased (and as long as you have to run it in a window, also unpractical), I think?

Quote from eobet :

For me, there simply are too many sources of information/animation with all mirrors on, and I get a headache from it. Also, side mirrors on other cars should reflect the inside of the car (or a shiny reflection), since to be effective for the driver, they are tilted inwards.

...we've gone over this a million times; and its never going to happen.. it would KILL your resources, and your FPS would drop like mad.. its not going to happen

Quote :

it would KILL your resources, and your FPS would drop like mad.. its not going to happen

Either way, you shouldn't see anything useful in the other mirrors... So a static darkened image of the driver inside the car would do nicely. How would that kill your resources?

It might kill your resources, but some people have uber fast PCs. If it's an option I can't see it being a problem.

Sorry to bring this up again.

But I want to know if there's a way to turn OFF the realistic mirrors and keep the Virtual mirror ON.
Because when I want to use the virtual mirror the realistic mirrors are still on (and it kills my fps).

Quote from Bob Smith :

It might kill your resources, but some people have uber fast PCs. If it's an option I can't see it being a problem.

AFAIK it would require shaders....dx9 shaders (or OpenGL but LFS doesn't use that). Basically what you do is use cube environement mapping and then set the surface of the mirrors with shaders so it's fully reflective. It just becomes an actual mirror. I did that in Racer once and from experience I can tell you that if that ever gets implemented, there will be a need for a "mirror-adjust" tool too because not everyone like their mirrors the same, not everyone has the same FOV......
Being at it, it makes me think that it would be nice to have an option to adjust seat position.

I've been looking in the mirrors recently WISHING they would show the body work and rear tyres (would come in handy when tyre wear/heat/condition is a visual thing and not done by graphs overlayed).

And then, if I had my way, Virtual Mirror would be removed

Fortunately for you lot, I don't have my way, so you're safe

Not all cars at all FOV's can move the mirror over so you can see it. So if the virtual mirror was gone, some of us would be running out there "blind" so to speak. I can't have the look left/right go 45 degrees to see my side mirrors or 90 degrees to see beside me at my choosing in real time. If you get rid of the virtual mirror, don't complain to me about holding you up, because I can't see you.

I agree with the original post'er. If you have virtual mirror on, turn the actual mirror off. And the side mirrors are useless anyways because they only display the same thing as the rear view mirror.

I'd like to see the mirrors on all other cars being blanked out in grey or something, as they were in S1, it looked more realistic in my opinion. It has obviously been done purely as an aesthetic thing (a gimmick would be the cynic's view I reckon) but it just doesn't look right imo, the reflection is so obviously of the wrong things. There surely isn't much aesthetic value, and so, therefore, no value at all.

I'd vote too for an option to disable/remove all mirrors except for My virtual mirror.

This way only I will have mirrors and therefore I'll win more . just kidding. mirrors take computational resources. The "real" mirrors on LFS are not usable for me (side mirrors are out of my FOV, top mirror is jumping too much to be usefull and can't be moved far enough to the left/right to get out of the FOV, other car mirrors are not functional for me).

I think with this option enabled we'll gain usability and resources.

Quote from topcat_inc :

Sorry to bring this up again.

But I want to know if there's a way to turn OFF the realistic mirrors and keep the Virtual mirror ON.
Because when I want to use the virtual mirror the realistic mirrors are still on (and it kills my fps).

so this is not possible at the moment?

@topcat_inc: No it's not possible ATM.

But how do you know that the additional mirrors kill your fps, and just the virtual one wouldn't? I agree, it would be nice to be able to turn them off, also for the other cars mirrors (cause they are plain unrealistic), but I doubt it would have a big impact on your fps.

The thing really nagging your PC is that you have to render the scene behind you again, not drawing them on the "mirror" surfaces. So drawing the scene once or three times doesn't really make a big difference at all.

What would really kill the fps is when each mirror showed a different angle of the scene behind you because then you'd have to render the scene again for each mirror, instead of just drawing different portions of the rendered image like now.

Quote from AndroidXP :

@topcat_inc: No it's not possible ATM.

But how do you know that the additional mirrors kill your fps, and just the virtual one wouldn't? I agree, it would be nice to be able to turn them off, also for the other cars mirrors (cause they are plain unrealistic), but I doubt it would have a big impact on your fps.

The thing really nagging your PC is that you have to render the scene behind you again, not drawing them on the "mirror" surfaces. So drawing the scene once or three times doesn't really make a big difference at all.

What would really kill the fps is when each mirror showed a different angle of the scene behind you because then you'd have to render the scene again for each mirror, instead of just drawing different portions of the rendered image like now.

The framerate drops like 5 frames (from about 30 in race situation to 25) with all 3 on. It's 50 with the mirrors off and around 30 with the realistic mirrors on.
So I thought that frawing a mirror 3 times instead of one killed my Fps.
But I see that you are right so I'll stick to the realistic ones (which I don't really have a problem with anyway).

"real" environment mapping doesnt kill your fps...
no need for shaders either

Of course live env mapping doesn't kill fps if it's only applied to the mirrors of the cars, but from what I've seen so far it does kill the fps if it's applied to the whole cars (and the more cars the worse it gets since they all reflect on each other). But since you have some advanced knowledge of these things, I'll take your word Orion.

at the moment we have virtual and real mirror, if they could be replaced by 2 virtual side mirrors there wouldn't be any fps drop and usability will increase a lot because the central mirror is totally unuseful and side mirrors are essential to avoid crashes! ...unfortunately, at the moment to view side mirros we are forced to use so crappy and unrealistic visuals...

Well, rear and side mirrors show the "same". The virtual mirror is actually the best because it shows the complete calculated image, while the "realistic" left/middle/right mirrors only show the corresponding portion of the rendered scene. You don't actually get more info from the side mirrors.

Quote from AndroidXP :

Well, rear and side mirrors show the "same". The virtual mirror is actually the best because it shows the complete calculated image, while the "realistic" left/middle/right mirrors only show the corresponding portion of the rendered scene. You don't actually get more info from the side mirrors.

O_____O i really don't think so! in the past i used the cockpit view with an angle that let me see both side mirrors because i needed those to see cars very close to me on one of the 2 sides...really when a car is exactly on your side central mirror don't show it, but the side mirror yes...