Quote from amp88 :

Opening the temp.mpr file in multiple instances and skipping to the end so you can have several different camera views of the current race.

for multiple monitors while youre in the race? that works?

thx scawen. it works fine for me, no bugs/problems found yet


oh... and i love the ABS feature

thanks,good~~~

Quote from Shotglass :

for multiple monitors while youre in the race? that works?

Yep.

Quote from amp88 :

There are reasons to have multiple instance of LFS running (I've done it quite a bit over the years).

1. To view an MPR without leaving the server you're currently connected to.
2. Opening the temp.mpr file in multiple instances and skipping to the end so you can have several different camera views of the current race.

There are probably more but I can't think of any at the moment.

Granted, but in neither of them you need the steering to work

Quote from AndroidXP :

Why would you *ever* have two LFS instances running at the same time, though? Don't really think that counts as a bug

It's really useful if you are making an insim application, as you can have a dedi-server and several versions of LFS connected on the same machine, which makes debugging a lot easier.

I had two crashes to windows in Z5. It seemed very random: practicing alone at south sity with xfg and bf1.

Never had problems like that with lfs, but there was many other programs running so I didn't bother. But know I will focus on it more.

What info is useful in this situation? I remeber only that it was caused by some DirectX 8 *.dll (not sure though...)

Quote from pasibrzuch :

What info is useful in this situation?

Click me for goodness

Ok propably was reported/posted but if not:

If you start your own server from ingame your pb's and laps won't be counted.

Had to restore my Z version to get them back as i race mainly on my own server.

is working on demo?
so good ... buut what is new patch?


E:Live for Speed S2 Z5 rocks!

OK, I've found a way to reproduce the D3D8.dll crash.

Technical explanation follows (only for interest)

It's related to drawing parts of track that think they have a shadow on them, when there is no such shadow texture in memory.

One way to reproduce :

Switch OFF mirrors
Select BL GP REV
Add 3 AI
Join race (in 4th place)
Start race
Wait until the AI just disappear over the hill
Exit back to game setup screen

Now LFS is in the bugged state, ready to crash, when it tries to draw the land that the AI were driving on. LFS still thinks there are shadows on that land - because it was not visible when the AI registered their shadows on the land.

To get the crash :

Remove the AI from the grid
Start race
Drive over the hill

LFS will crash when the land just over the hill is drawn.

There are two bugs here, combining to produce the crash : (1) the shadows are not cleared from being registered on land unless the land is drawn and (2) when shadows are cleared from memory (e.g. exit to game setup screen) they are not removed from a list of shadows.

In fact this bug has always been in LFS, it would just not show itself because the shadows were never cleaned up from the memory. So in old versions the bug would probably appear as a momentary flash of an invalid shadow, which would then be cleared. Almost unnoticeable. But the new shadow memory cleanups have showed up this old bug, instead causing a crash.

Great you found this bug
So now you can fix it!

Good going Scavier!!

No problem to reproduce it here

Just one question, only if you have a few seconds to spare: why does it bug only when the mirrors are off?

Thanks for the information, good luck for the fixing part.

Quote from Mille Sabords :

No problem to reproduce it here

Just one question, only if you have a few seconds to spare: why does it bug only when the mirrors are off?

Well it's just that in this particular case of the way to reproduce it, the mirrors have to be off. There would be other ways to reproduce the bug even with the mirrors on.

In this case, if the mirrors are being drawn, then when you come over the hill, the world is drawn first in the mirrors. The land which the AI were originally driving on is in a list of objects to be drawn when you come over the hill.

But LFS notices that the land is not in the view of the mirrors, and in this case the registration of the shadows on that piece of land is cleared (because it attempted to draw the land, even though it did not actually draw it). So when it then draws the main view, the bug has already been removed.

EDIT : I have not tried but I guess you could reproduce it in this case with mirrors on by turning your car round and driving backwards over the hill

Since installing Test Patch Z5 I've been getting CTD's whilst in Window Mode.

I was able to reproduce it. I was in car selection screen (TBO only enabled on server) with RB4 selected. Pressed Shift+f4, download setup from Inferno, clicked back into LFS, picked different car, repicked RB4 to refresh Setups, selected new setup, clicked OK... Crashed to Desktop. I was in window mode still.

I did the same thing with the FXO. Same CTD result.

I bet it's quite a relief to get rid of a bug that was quite mysterious and appeared at seemingly random times

It's one thing to have the application crash, see a callstack from within your app and are able to deduce from that where it happened and most likely also why it happened (even better if there are clear steps to reproduce), but with the DX8 error I guess all you saw from the callstack was you calling your graphics drawing routine (or maybe even as accurate as hinting you to the shadow drawing) and then DX8 going tits up. Figuring out why one of hundreds of thousands calls to the same function fails isn't fun.

Quote from Scawen :

...
EDIT : I have not tried but I guess you could reproduce it in this case with mirrors on by turning your car round and driving backwards over the hill

Confirmed

If I remember correctly I was leaving pits in SO Chicane after switching XFG to BF1 and possibly I was playing with AA & AF meanwhile.

ps. strange thing is, I could sworn that limiter light at bf1 wasn't blinking grey-red-grey-red but darkred-red-darkred-red then, just like stop lights

1 thing I always had at my office pc.
That when I turned on to much AA it would crash and restart.
This is normal on one side since the videocard isn't able to run as much as I selected.

But though it's really bad it causes the PC to crash.
It should do other things....

But that probably won't happen anymore since my USB Harddisk just caused the processor and more to fataly die, and I'm now working on another Desktop.

E: The PC that died was my PC at work, I lost stuff as a Intranet, but also ALL my study homework at my USB Disk

Forgive me if I come late to the discussion or have missed a resolved issue, I dont pay too much attention to test patches these days but I picked up on this issue and felt I had to raise the point.

Quote :

Implemented ABS brakes in XFG / XRG / RB4 / FXO / XRT / FZ5

It has always been my understanding, from reading your [Scawens] posts that the cars in LFS represented cars in racing trim, posts such as the sound discussion with square-cut gears etc let me to this conclusion.

I note that you are intent on the inclusion of ABS on several of LFS' hybrid race-"road" cars.

It saddens me to highlight that ABS is banned in almost all racing formula, braking is part of the art of being a racing driver and seeing two whole classes move over to it removes - in my view - one of the single most important aspects of race driving from the entire rung of low-performance road styled racing cars in LFS.

I would urge that ABS, whilst a needed feature for the simulation of the VWS, should not be introduced in such a wholescale manner to a racing simulation.

Thankyou for reading my thoughts.

Quote from Becky Rose :

It saddens me to highlight that ABS is banned in almost all racing formula

ABS IS legal in alot of classes, Porsche cup for example, and others like endurance (limited time evidence in swedish http://www.blocket.se/vi/18619879.htm?ca=14_s&last=1)
But this discussion is for another thread in another subforum!

Quote from Becky Rose :

It has always been my understanding, from reading your [Scawens] posts that the cars in LFS represented cars in racing trim

I think this is where you think wrong. From what I can remember Scawen never partook in any of the setup limitation discussions, so we never had an official statement, other than noticing that the road cars gradually lost setup options over the last patches. Can you maybe point me to the posts (regarding helical/square cut gears) that left that impression on you?

IMO the reason the road cars (and I think they're supposed to be really road cars) still have so many setup options is a combination of

1. Not wanting to piss off the community / not knowing how it would react.
   Just see how carefully the post regarding the VWS setup is formulated. It's the first car where they can steer into that direction without destroying existing work/setups.
   
2. Not having the time yet to code up a system that restricts the setup options in a realistic manner. To me it seems the VWS will be easy there because most options will be completely removed, instead of restricted to steps / realistic values.
   

Quote from Becky Rose :

....................

I would urge that ABS, whilst a needed feature for the simulation of the VWS, should not be introduced in such a wholescale manner to a racing simulation.

.....

Remember that ABS still is an "option" just as autogears etc. and could probably be restricted thru scripting or even dediserver setup.
And as mentioned there are classes with allowed ABS systems.

Might be a pointer to Scawen to make it a server option ABS[Allowed/NOTAllowed]

however this is not related in this thread,since there is no BUG

Haven't had any crashes on any of these test patches, new shadows are nice, bit of a fps decrease but other than that 100% for me anyway.

I know this is off-topic but the dev's must feel pretty rubbish when half there community start moaning and crying over abs being added to the road cars, I'm sure it was a lot of work and time went into the creation of it and when people basically asked that they want an option to disable it (I can understand for leagues) it must feel pretty rubbish...

I personally use a mouse and I find that it is helpful but overall doesn't improve my times but the key point is it's helpful to some people so I wish people would stop moaning at the dev's, it's there game and they can add what they see fit.

Quote from 1Colin1 :

I personally use a mouse and I find that it is helpful but overall doesn't improve my times but the key point is it's helpful to some people so I wish people would stop moaning at the dev's, it's there game and they can add what they see fit.

I think it's definitely a good addition to the cars that should have it (you could argue the XFG and XRG shouldn't) and as long as it can be regulated either in the server confiruation or through InSim I don't think it'll be a big issue. I've only done a few laps in anger using ABS myself and have definitely found an improvement. I went out on AS2R/FXO and did a time only 0.49 seconds slower than WR. I'm not very quick in the FXO so this came as a bit of a surprise. When I was driving a few laps before without ABS I was about 0.75 secs slower. AS2R contains a couple of corners that will accentuate the difference (braking into T1 and the last turn), but in my experience it's definitely quicker.

edit: ABS is going to be quicker...if it wasn't they wouldn't have developed and used it in F1 before it was banned.