The online racing simulator
LFS weather and night
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(38 posts, started )
Quote from horrgakx :What have you seen that is better?

Being the best does not automatically equal being good.
-
(Dj-Aeri) DELETED by Dj-Aeri
I think it would be really cool to have dynamic weather and have it so the sunlight can be synchronized with the time of day. Maybe using real time weather as well a bit like in Flight Simulator X (i don't know if any of you have it, but i do :P)
Quote from horrgakx :GTR2 has wet weather and it is implimented very well. I remember a wet race at Spa Francorchamps in GTR2 and after a while a dry line appeared. I was like WTF this is awesome!

Have you ever played Grand Prix 4? It had that, along with various levels of wetness (does that word even exist?), places in the track that are wet and places dry (like if it's not raining in the whole track), some nice visual effects and other things. In 2002.

It's been a WHILE since I played GP4, but as far as I remember it had easily the best dynamic weather of all games when I used to play, and probably still has.

Point is: a good dynamic weather is very possible to do, no need for a supercomputer. Can't say how much effort it needs though.
Quote from CharlieW5025 :I think it would be really cool to have dynamic weather and have it so the sunlight can be synchronized with the time of day. Maybe using real time weather as well a bit like in Flight Simulator X (i don't know if any of you have it, but i do :P)

I have it
Good idea
*sigh*, if you read the above comments u'll see the devs said they wanted it to. Reading is an art ??
Quote from de Souza :Have you ever played Grand Prix 4? It had that, along with various levels of wetness (does that word even exist?), places in the track that are wet and places dry (like if it's not raining in the whole track), some nice visual effects and other things. In 2002.

It's been a WHILE since I played GP4, but as far as I remember it had easily the best dynamic weather of all games when I used to play, and probably still has.

Point is: a good dynamic weather is very possible to do, no need for a supercomputer. Can't say how much effort it needs though.

Learn from the right man: Prince - Temptation, grrrreat song btw.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/temptation-lyrics-prince.html

OT: I would expect the devs to implement a local weather system, where rain can occur on the starting straigth of aston while it's still bonedry through the wiggly part.
Already GP3 did implement this (in a way which would make me quite happy in LFS, especially if the system would be tripled to contain not just dampness, but also tires and dirt amount. In GP3 only the wet and tires aspect is covered, no dirt.), if my memory is not playing tricks with me.
A graphics engine like that of GRID, with dynamic weather, and very good special effects, man that would be sweet. They should license the GRID engine, or whoever owns the engine, I absolutely love it, and it could be optimized even further to include anything.
Codemasters own that engine, and I doubt they'll be handing it out to anyone even if Scavier could afford to license it.
I'd rather see something more like Forza but with a GRiD/DiRT style damage engine. Less bloom, more physics
EDIT: <WARNING> LONG POST, SKIP IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT GRAPHICS ENGINE AND PHYSICS ENGINE DISCUSSION ABOUT S3 Although if you would read, I'd really like some input/opinions on how I feel about this topic. I'd really like to hear what some of you techy fella's think about my ideas, and probably more than anything, if any of you feel they're even possible for S3.

Firstly, off topic:@ Dajmin "I agree. That was more me being wishful, I don't see how they could afford to license a graphics engine like that. They went all out(Codemasters)."

<<<GRID>>> It's so impressive, even running at 20fps it looks as though it's running 60fps, incredible. I'm not sure what kind of renderer can do this, it almost seems like, um, I'm not sure if the term is correct, but interlaced maybe, like a movie, they run at around 26-29.9 fps, but don't look choppy because of the blur type effect, is interlaced the right word? I dunno, but whatever it is they use to get this effect in movies I think they're using it, or some other form of it in the game. Which is awesome, because you can max out the graphics, which are the best graphics of any racing game/sim on PC right now, and if your system can only push 20 frames, it looks smooth, jeez it almost looks like TV. It's late now, but I'm gonna look into this tomorrow to see how they managed to do this. Interesting tho, I think this type of effect would only be useful in a racing game anyways. Also they seem to be using the same concept as NFS:Most wanted, where they use haziness and other blurring effects to reduce the amount of detail of objects and terrain in the distance, this reduces the workload of the GPU big time, only having to render nearby objects in detail, and rather than farther off objects looking poorly, they use these effects to lower the detail in a kind of realistic way, the items simply look like they normally would at a distance, hard to distinguish, I can't imagine how much CPU and GPU power this saves, allowing for great appearance and effects up close, and probably the power for physics.

Sorry for the long post, I just love how they did this, and I think ALL racing games should adopt this same concept. Even using a blur due to heat on the road surface is an excuse to save GPU power for nearer objects to look their best. Especially the racetrack, special effects when damaging the car, car reflection update rates, and the car itself, at all times has such extremely high detail, and they can get away with it by using these techniques that most people would never notice, because the distan objects look low detail, but a realistic low detail, because you wouldn't be able to focus on these distant objects anyways.

Nothing tops LFS for a realistic experience, but for only the second time, I've found an arcade racer I can actually enjoy because they put so much effort into it, reffering to GRID. The only other arcade racer I thought had pretty good physics was NFSU2, and I'm not really a fan of the series, gran turismo and PC titles always kept me away, but underground 2 had solid physics for an arcader, although still overly forgiving to RWD cars and oversteer, but at least not understeer, which made up for it, you could kind of just assume you were a good driver and never put yourself in a situation where oversteer could take you out.....WoW, what a ramble, it's cause it's so late, 5:47am, I type too much like this when I'm tired, just a bit more, if you're tired of reading, skip onto another post, I understand lol...

Anyways, Forza (Xbox360 graphics) would look nice, would never happen either, but a good idea too. I think scawen and the fella's can come up with their own engine, but I think it would require some help. In my experience creating a graphics engine is a huge amount of work, especially from scratch, which I'm sure S3 would be. S2 is what, DX 8.1(maybe first gen DX9...wait, if it's DX9, wouldn't it be easy to overhaul it to bring in the 9.0c effects), we're going to need fully 9.0c for dynamic weather and all the effects that come with it, especially if we want it optimized well and looking good, like eventually having dry areas throughout the wet surface of the track from all the cars following a line, and advanced physics that can respond to each and every track condition, sounds like hard work. I've seen no name game developers come up with decent graphics engines on their own, so I know scawen and the boys can do it.

My wish list, and most of this is incredibly unlikely. The graphics engine I've desbribed(written by the LFS ppl or a cheap licensed engine to build upon), fully DX9.0c capable, full dynamic lighting, soft shadows, full 128bit HDR support for the sun & track lights in night racing. Advanced bump mapping for rough parts of the tracks. Dynamic weather and time of day cycle, with physics to support changing track temporatures depending on amount on sunlight on any particular area of the track, wet surfaces that vary by amount of rain, and sun that may apear after a quick shower, physics that can simulate grip on these track surfaces, basic..but, dynamic tire wear, from wet to dry conditions and the cooling and warming effects as a result, from rain to shine. Tires that respond to wet and dry surfaces differently depending on wear(Not sure wear would matter) and tempurature, or would this really matter? For example, a long straight has a nice dry groove to follow, tire temps are up a bit, if not optimial at least warm from the dry groove, then running into a corner still wet from clowd cover/lack of sunlight in this area, or if ya run out of the groove into a still damp/wet area, should it cool the tire some, resluting in a small reduction in grip, because of loss of temperature? Or am I way off, and wet racing tires deal with these issues? Man I'm tired, I coud keep going a while, just wanted to run through some idea's I had, I'm wondering if these types of physics are possible, with realtime/realistic weather changing and the track temperature changing with it (ten minutes of clouds, then ten minutes of sunshine, are there physics advanced enough that the track may heat and cool is my question, and the effects, and could physics be applied to any of this. .... Would it come down to how far they're willing to take it, or is there a brick wall at which they cannot produce some of these physics? With many of us running multicore systems that can handle the workload, if the physics are possible, perhaps it woudl depend on whether they have the ability to keep it so those on less powerful systems can race. Because if the game is gonna have any of these hardcore physics, everyone would need to be able to run it. I mean, I believe by the time S3 is out, most people should have a multicore system, capable of multithreading, and I feel the best varuation of a simulator like this would be best if optimized for multiple cores. Call me out on this if I'm wrong, but how about the graphics engine running threads on one core, and the physics engine running it's threads to the second. And a good single core CPU should be able to handle both on one core, the sim will detect hw and run both engines on the one core.

Enough, I'll keep going for hours, I have to stay up I can't go to sleep, gotta leave soon for work, and when I'm tired I just keep going, forgive how long the post is. If at any point I made no sense sorry, but if I nailed any good points, would some of you with the knowledge behind this stuff tell me what's possible in a DX9.0c environment(graphics wise I'm sure it can all be done, I've seen it done), however, if both graphics and physics can be accomplished on a single core, regardless how much work it would take, multithreading support would be just, awesome.

Thoughts. Be easy on me, I'm so tired lol, and I'm so very curious about what other people may thinkg about this. I would absolutey love to see S3 take advantage of multicore systems, while still maintaining the ability to have it all function on a single core, of course phyics quality cannot be compromized in a racing game, but graphical elements can, to allow for a nice powerful engine to run incredible physics, with your choice of great graphics if you've got the power.
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LFS weather and night
(38 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG