The online racing simulator
Game Of The Year!
(95 posts, started )
Game Of The Year!
BEST MULTIPLAYER http://www.bhmotorsports.com/awards/4/winners/335

no real comments here, its so obvious that even non-sim world would love to have such a polished code. its polished to the bone, heavily feedbacked under dev and public testing thru wip project development approach. of course it started as revolutionary idea, so a very strong base to work upon was already released on first multiplayer code generation.

BEST PHYSICS http://www.bhmotorsports.com/awards/4/winners/342

theres more math in one lfs wheel tyre, than in a 20 car isi sim race. this aint a ride-the-slo-motion-interpolated-excel-table-of-values as in all reashes of the dinossaurical isi physics engine. the only real sim that could fight it off with lfs is n2003, mostly due to the feel it translates via FF and due to the more polished aero (something lfs is still developing). Still lfs is newgen, and in future, with a more complete code for the physical model, most of what gets output now as erroneous, will output more and more closer to reality due to a more complete model. the rare physical oddities are related to the incompleteness of developement due to wip dev nature of the project.
a net is always incomplete until its done. its full strenght can only be seen then, 100%. those lucky enuff to see and understand the strong foundations that lfs has layed upon for 5 years can see that the future looks bright indeed for full S2 and S3 stages.
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
#2 - Gunn
Quote from KiDCoDEa :BEST MULTIPLAYER http://www.bhmotorsports.com/awards/4/winners/335

no real comments here, its so obvious that even non-sim world would love to have such a polished code. its polished to the bone, heavily feedbacked under dev and public testing thru wip project development approach. of course it started as revolutionary idea, so a very strong base to work upon was already released on first multiplayer code generation.

BEST PHYSICS http://www.bhmotorsports.com/awards/4/winners/342

theres more math in one lfs wheel tyre, than in a 20 car isi sim race. this aint a ride-the-slo-motion-interpolated-excel-table-of-values as in all reashes of the dinossaurical isi physics engine. the only real sim that could fight it off with lfs is n2003, mostly due to the feel it translates via FF and due to the more polished aero (something lfs is still developing). Still lfs is newgen, and in future, with a more complete code for the physical model, most of what gets output now as erroneous, will output more and more closer to reality due to a more complete model. the rare physical oddities are related to the incompleteness of developement due to wip dev nature of the project.
a net is always incomplete until its done. its full strenght can only be seen then, 100%. those lucky enuff to see and understand the strong foundations that lfs has layed upon for 5 years can see that the future looks bright indeed for full S2 and S3 stages.

Really good post.
the lfs multiplayer still has the fairly large problem of random, violent collisions, upon very soft contact between players... still needs a bit more polishing imho
^

Well deserved awards, congrats devs
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
Hands down, one of the most pleazing things to hear from BHM.... especially the physics award :up: :up:
Quote from Clownpaint :BHM definately know their stuff. Well deserved awards.

Hopefully these accolades will make people notice the game who have never tried it before, should be a boost to the community too.

its not bhms, its the sim community who votes.
where its hosted, is irrelevant for the outcome.
Quote from thisnameistaken :What have these BHMS people been smoking?

maybe they mean the race1 setups which are rather nice
Quote from thisnameistaken :That's going to be really hard to eradicate though.

Don't see why. I'm no programmer, but working out a vaguely accurate, non elastic collision is not difficult.
Yes! LFS fully deserves this award, awsome job devs
#10 - Gunn
Quote from Blowtus :Don't see why. I'm no programmer, but working out a vaguely accurate, non elastic collision is not difficult.

The distance between two cars is calculated after receiving packets of data from a client. A slight delay in receipt of a packet of data may cause slight inaccuracies. Prediction can only be accurate to a certain degree. A longer delay, or some other network anomoly (even congestion) may contribute slight inaccuracies of car distances especially when network latency (ping) is high. This is not a limitation of the software this is a limitation of the world-wide network of servers and cables that we call The Internet.
Watch a MP replay of yourself after racing on a server with a very high ping. Compare it to a MP replay from a server close by your location (low ping). You may notice that occasionally on the high ping replay that some cars seem to jump around a bit more than on the low ping replay. With a very high ping some cars may even appear to careen of the road for a second before straightening up.

I'm sure some improvements are possible but it will be probably impossible to eliminate the problem unless or until the entire world-wide network is very high speed broadband. Even then, some racers are routing through more than a dozen Internet servers before their packet of data reaches the destination. This is the imperfect nature of real-time online multiplayer gaming. I think where some network slow-down or severe lag spikes occur there will always be a chance of collisions in online racing sims.

Having said all of that, LFS has continued to improve in this area from the beginning. It is certainly a situation that effects many real time multiplayer games. As the world develops faster broadband technologies I think such things will be less apparent in future. Fingers crossed.
Quote from KiDCoDEa :theres more math in one lfs wheel tyre, than in a 20 car isi sim race.

Wonderfully put, and insanely true
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
#12 - J.B.
Quote from KiDCoDEa :
theres more math in one lfs wheel tyre, than in a 20 car isi sim race.

Signature stuff. :up:
Quote from Gunn :The distance between two cars is calculated after receiving packets of data from a client. A slight delay in receipt of a packet of data may cause slight inaccuracies. Prediction can only be accurate to a certain degree. A longer delay, or some other network anomoly (even congestion) may contribute slight inaccuracies of car distances especially when network latency (ping) is high. This is not a limitation of the software this is a limitation of the world-wide network of servers and cables that we call The Internet.

Do other games experience this level of collison randomness? I understand roughly how collision detection works, it just seems to me that it needs an extra layer of calculation. At the point of collision, calculate the vectors of each car over the last 5 packets or something. It's only an internet limitation if you view the current collision system as unchangeable...
How about so that if the server has not received a packet for a long time, and then receives it, it will not create a violent crash. Basically, if both cars speeds were very similar before normal packet transmitting stopped, then the maximum force would be lmited between the two cars after normal packet transmitting continues.

Basically, if normal packet transfer not true and car speeds similar,
then if when normal packet transfer continues and distance between both cars <0,
then max crash force 2 G-s


What do you think?
I suppose as humans we have a luxury. We have an inherent and intuitive knowledge of physics from early childhood, e.g. you throw a rock, it eventually hits the ground. When it hits the ground, it either bounces or stops depending how hard the ground is. We don't need to be told the rock's exact weight, speed, dimensions, wind resistance, rotational data or density, neither do we need to be told the density of the ground or its grip levels to have an accurate idea of what the rock will do when it hits the ground. In sports, we can even become very good at predicting what will happen when we kick or hit or throw something in all sorts of conditions. Look at maestros like Shane Warne, Tiger Woods or David Beckham. They all know precisely what they can expect when they do something a certain way but to be able to precisely explain what happens to a computer in simple, step-by-step terms would fry their brains! Especially Beckham's

Poor old computers need all this basic information input in great, mind-numbing detail, and a car collision contains many thousands of variables even when modelled simply. Add to this the inevitable lag in processing such data over internet connections of variable speed from all over the world and it suddenly seems a whole lot more complex than "car1 hits car2, car2 gets dented on the side, car1 gets dented on the front, car1 doesn't work very well anymore"...and when you include the fact that Scawen designed the LFS physics literally from the ground up, it all seems quite inconceivable that anyone could actually be bothered doing it at all But I'm sure we all appreciate it
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
Quote from Hankstar :Poor old computers need all this basic information input in great, mind-numbing detail, and a car collision contains many thousands of variables even when modelled simply.

thousands of variables for a non elastic car collision? come off it
2 vectors and relevant masses would do a decent job of providing a framework for the collision.
I think a lot of it has to do with the new damage model. Just a matter of time that it all gets better. And I think when it comes to racing simulations and this 'physics award' in general, it all is focused on the driving physics... and I think people realize that LFS is very advanced in that department, regardless of collision issues or whatnot.
Quote from thisnameistaken :Imagine you're doing 100mph (or approx. 47m/s), and you've got around 50ms latency. You could travel two metres between each snapshot the server sees. The car next to you is doing the same, there's still potential for you two to get entangled by about a metre before the server will be aware of it, and that's under pretty good network conditions.

How do you resolve that situation? You'll have to backtrack, work out the point of collision, then determine the result of that collision and skip back to the present to teleport the cars to where they ought to be. This is going to be a jarring experience for the players.

your example is an easy to understand one, but fairly pointless, as the result of a 100mph collision is always going to be rather jarring for both parties. If you have both cars doing 100mph *next to each other*, and they slowly drift into each other, (ie, perhaps a 5mph collision) there is no potential for penetration of that depth (assuming 50ms latency)

And what's more jarring... being launched skyward 100 metres, flipping end for end, taking out the field... or having the car skip a little unexpectedly?
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(thisnameistaken) DELETED by thisnameistaken
Very deserved prices in both categories!!
Congratulations once again LFS devs, for making this state of the art game, i can't even imagine how hard is to code these extraordinary physics, and this excellent multiplayer! Thank you once again for your work and your time, and for sharing it with us for this small amount of money..
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(Hankstar) DELETED by Hankstar
Surely if suggestions on how to improve the game were to result only in 'go and make a new game yourself' we wouldn't have a suggestions forum?
(not that we're in it of course... yes, go ahead, blame me for dragging this off topic )
edit: pointless post removed

My big long thing was more about trying to explain it to myself and you guys were all casualties
Quote from Blowtus :Don't see why. I'm no programmer, but working out a vaguely accurate, non elastic collision is not difficult.

muhahah. joke of the year ( as math/physics programer )...
Quote from Blowtus :I'm no programmer

You said it m8
Baisically, you have absolutely NO CLUE

Physics in a game are simply not the same as in real life. Just think about how freakin awesome and complicated LFS is. This shows clearly that Scawen can program as hell. Do you really think he can't understand m1*v1 = m2*v2 ?
Are you serious?


@kidcodea:
excellent post there! - Im still laughing
lag doesnt matter as much when it comes to the collisions ... the collision engine acts up in singlepayer too

Game Of The Year!
(95 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG