Thoughts on the track system

[joevenzon]

Well, definitely some good ideas there. What you described about the xml file for TORCS tracks actually sounds very similar to the vamos method -- have you looked at it much, yet?

[thelusiv]

I just checked in new terrain/parametric maps for Road Atlanta and Nurburgring, in an attempt to reduce the amount of turns with higher inside elevations that outside. There are still some like this and there's not a lot I can do.Basically, I went around the entire track and drew linear gradients on it which follow the track. In the curves I drew the gradients by hand, on the straights I used the Gimp's gradient tool. It is pretty tedious to do this...regardless, after spending about an hour completely redoing the terrain around the track, I loaded it into VDrift to find that even though my tracks were "flat" at least across the width of the track, the heights of the terrain on the track is still heavily influenced by the terrain around it. This means that the track is now slighly less skew but still not all better.The TORCS method of making tracks - track editor -> XML file -> model sounds pretty good to me. It seems like we could load this model for the track and define the rest of our scene however we like in other files defining the terrain, etc., and let the track model simply rest on top of it. I am installing TORCS and the track generation utilities now to see if I can learn more about them and how we could possibly use them.edit: Here's a link to the TrackEditor

[joevenzon]

I think this idea isn't too bad, although we might be able to cut out some steps.But as I understand it, we'd want the XML file to generate a track model that could then be loaded into an editor and the rest of the level built around that model, and then the game would just draw that (but use the xml file for collision detection). Is that correct? Is that what TORCS does?

[joevenzon]

So, it seems like TORCS doesn't exactly use this system, and uses an elevation map like we're doing. I'm not saying that means we should or shouldn't continue to, but I'm having trouble understanding the TORCS track generation process. Can anyone point me to a good website about this that has things like examples of xml files? All I was able to find was this site:http://www.idiap.ch/~dimitrak/torcs/track-howto.htmland it's not very descriptive.

[joevenzon]

Also, I found this in the TORCS FAQ:

Should I start my own racing sim project?Definitively not, no! Why? Do a search on sf.net and Google, you will find between 15 and 40 open source car/driving/racing sim projects, and most of them have been "promising" and died. Instead of starting another dead project contribute to the few existing successful ones. Believe it or not, but your project will very likely be a dead one as well. The reason is quite simple, people underestimate the required effort and the change of their lives during the project lifespan, think about it. Just that you get an idea, TORCS turns now 8...

*snicker*

[Nexus6]

So, it seems like TORCS doesn't exactly use this system, and uses an elevation map like we're doing. I'm not saying that means we should or shouldn't continue to, but I'm having trouble understanding the TORCS track generation process.

Well - in the TORCS track format you specify the heights and then it gets interpolated, so it's not infered from the terrain. Rather the terrain is matched up to the track. You can supply open polyline meshs (ac3d format) to the terrain generation phase to get some control over the terrain but that is hardly a bitmap. You could probably convert the bitmap into the required inside and outside relief ac3d files. If you want to have a quick play with the track format, I suggest you get the track editor from http://katergo.rege.org/projects/trackeditor/There is a manual inside the tarball. You will need Java installed and operational. The instructions you have read are tricky to decipher if you haven't actually followed through from start to finish. The track editor does make certain things clearer.Cheers,Toby Haynes

[abs1nth]

i don't want to chime in into a discussion about a topic i understand nothing about...but is there something speaking against the track format of racer?it's well documented and there is an *HUGE* collection of *great* quality tracks (and cars) for racer. (and i would love it to use my favourite ones with vdrift)(racer homepage)http://www.racer.nl(forum where development of racer, cars and tracks occurs)http://forum.rscnet.org/forumdisplay.php?f=111(database of cars & tracks)http://www.racer-xtreme.com/

[joevenzon]

To tell you the truth, I just assumed the racer track format wouldn't be well-documented because racer is closed-source. I'll check it out.

[thelusiv]

The top10 kart racing game is mentioned in this thread by its developer. I'm not sure what happened to the project or him, but I did find this interesting document describing what looks like a pretty good track editor for top10 here: http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/rele...050120.pdf