VDrift is a cross-platform, open source driving simulation made with drift racing in mind. The driving physics engine was recently re-written from scratch but was inspired and owes much to the Vamos physics engine. It is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) v2. It is currently available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Windows.
This game is in the early stages of development but is already very playable. Currently the game features:
Contributed by: on Wednesday, June 17 2009 @ 05:43 PM PDT · Views: 551
VDrift 2009-06-15 has been released for Windows and Linux (source) UPDATE: and OSX. Download links are available on the main http://vdrift.net website. There's a full list of changes below the cut, but to summarize the most noticeable ones:
* cars collide with each other in Single Race mode now
* AI is capable of much faster driving now, so added a difficulty slider
* off-road tire spin sound support (thanks to slowdan!)
* support for H-gate shifters
* improved performance
* lots of huge bugs fixed, especially car physics bugs
Contributed by: on Thursday, May 28 2009 @ 08:51 PM PDT · Views: 235
In SVN R2475, I added a command line utility called "modelconvert" in the VDrift/tools folder. At the moment, it allows conversion between OVA (a binary vertex array format I made that's not used by anything for anything), JOE (the vdrift model binary format), and OBJ (the common wavefront format supported by many, many 3d packages). Unfortunately, the blender OBJ importer can't import per-vertex normals correctly (it just ignores them), but it can export them.
Currently JOE files are only supported for reading, not writing. OBJ files can be read and written.
Contributed by: on Monday, March 23 2009 @ 07:18 PM PDT · Views: 493
VDrift is featured in AutoSimSport Magazine - Volume 5, Issue 1. Head on over to their website and check it out: http://www.autosimsport.net/
VDrift is on page 87, but don't let that stop you from reading the rest of the magazine -- it's a great read and is chock FULL of cool racing sim goodness.
Contributed by: on Sunday, February 15 2009 @ 10:05 PM PST · Views: 2,340
I've just uploaded linux source and windows releases for 2009-2-15. This is the first release with the refactored code, and I think it's a big improvement over the last release. Although there aren't any new features, there are so many bug fixes, stability enhancements, and performance improvements it's hard to make a complete list. Most of the code has been rewritten, including the car physics. Ackermann steering has been added. The in-game HUD has a new look. Font rendering has been vastly improved. More graphical options are available. The new physics numerical integrator is more stable. And so on....
Download links at the top of this page have been updated for the new release. I also created a forum thread to discuss the release: http://vdrift.net/Forum/viewtopic.php?p=8679
Thanks to all of the folks contributing code, artwork, and bug reports!
Contributed by: on Sunday, January 11 2009 @ 09:49 PM PST · Views: 715
After playing a bit of Race07 (a simbin game), I decided to try implementing a "bouncy" camera for the hood and driver views in VDrift to get a similar feel. For an example of what I mean by "bouncy" camera, check out this in-car video from Race07: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8y7tUxGiDw
The method I chose just makes the camera bouncy, though, and doesn't actually generate rough road for the car to drive on... doing that wouldn't be hard, though, so maybe I'll try that too.
Anyway, to try it out in VDrift, update to SVN R2297 or higher.
