Support more opponents

[Timo 6]

Now I just get a few crackles when in the middle of the cars, less so when reducing car numbers/sound sources. Btw, could we have the number of cars setting saved - it resets after each game. Also, I only get sound in the right channel when:
- in front of the other cars, looking back;
- behind other cars, looking forward.
It is fine at other times. I have tested in camera position 3 and 4, and with F1-02 and G4.

[berzingue]

ok, it works. Thanks a lot for support ! and nice job.

btw, my computer is probably a little bit old : fps is really low ! (around 4FPS with 4 cars on track)

I'll test soon on powerful computer, but maybe we should think about optimisations of tracks, and LOD system for cars ?

[NaN]

ow I just get a few crackles when in the middle of the cars, less so when reducing car numbers/sound sources. Btw, could we have the number of cars setting saved - it resets after each game. Also, I only get sound in the right channel when

I'll add value clamping to make sure that no crackles occur. Is the issue with the right channel new? There is some funky code to deal with stereo input which does right, left selection. But I haven't touched it. Need to test.

[NaN]

fps is really low ! (around 4FPS with 4 cars on track)

Are you running the debug version? Depending on cars/track I can run with 8 cars with 20-10fps on a notebook(with shaders disabled due to intel gpu).

I'll test soon on powerful computer, but maybe we should think about optimisations of tracks, and LOD system for cars ?

That is a complex topic. One usually runs profilers to determine bottlenecks. Vdrift has some profiling capabilities itself. Run "vdrift -profiling".

From my impression we are rather low poly already compared to current racing game titles.

My earlier test suggested that we have too many small objects(for powerful graphics cards). But this might be preferable for weak gpus as small objects can be culled better(view distance). Would be interesting to see the performance with texture atlases and batched geometry. But that sounds like a lot of work.

PS: I can speed up the simulation a bit(maybe 15%) and maybe put it into a separate thread. But then I've noticed cases where the cpu is not fully utilized.

[NaN]

could we have the number of cars setting saved - it resets after each game

I've planned that, even had some code but couldn't decide whether to store just the number or the settings for each car. :?

Should each car in the start list be editable(button)? Btw a trick to get 24 opponents with the same car quickly is to decrement drivers number.

[CrystalH]

Hmm, so did you try my code for overdrive protection, from last page's post ?
Or your last commits just fixed the issue ?

[Timo 6]

I think the stereo issue is old, I'll check later.
Having each car editable would be awesome. I had found that trick I like the way each car has a different color - nice touch.

[berzingue]

Practice alone : around 20fps
Race with 4 opponents : 4fps

I don't really know how it works to optimise tracks...About Grand Prix 4, tracks are around 450.000 polys and game tums fast...maybe tracks must be separated as sectors, and objects must not be visible over 500 meters ?

about cars, if you wish, I can quick modelise a test-car model with differents LODs...
Something like LOD1 : 10000 poly, LOD2 : 2500 polys, LOD3 : 300, LOD4 : 20 polys...

do you want to try ?

[NaN]

@berzingue
Sure. I am just a bit anxious looking at the amount of work with the cars we've got. One can update them one at a time of course.

I am curious how much difference it will make. Btw you can test it quickly by yourself. Create the lods. Do a test run with each lod mesh by replacing the meshes in the .car file manually. Post your results. :wink:

PS: Just make sure you are not running the debug build(it will be slower).

[berzingue]

Ok I'll test LODs !

Stupid questions : how to be sure I'm not running debug build ? and what is "vdrift-profiling" ? :?

[NaN]

Debug build is the vdrift-gui-dbg one. vdrift.exe is about 50MB big. Release executables are about 4MB.

If you start vdrift from command prompt you can pass additional parameters.

Open command prompt: Win7->Run->cmd.exe
Switch drive: D:
Switch to vdrift: cd vdrift
Run vdrift with profiling enabled: vdrift.exe -profiling

I will add it to the gui so that it can be enabled from within vdrift.

[berzingue]

Ok, so i didn't use debug build during my previous tests. I'm around 11fps during practices on spa 2008 track, (it can be antivirus softwares)

[Timo 6]

Yep stereo issue is there on the master branch.

[NaN]

@Timo 6
I'll try to add proper stereo calculations. Maybe we should convert engine sounds(all sound effects actually) to mono if possible.

On the other side one could maybe assume two sound sources(one for each channel) close to the engine. Not sure how correct this would be though.

[NaN]

Windows build(without data) vdrift-gui-2012-05-07.exe:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/vdrift/...%20builds/

Changes:
- Fix: Correct Widget base class ProcessInput function(bug in prev commit).
- Refactor widgets to have a more uniform look. Add text align functionality to label. Use guioption signals/slots and actions for communication.
- Add copy ctor and assignment operator and set, next, prev signals to guioption.
- Add copy ctor and assignment operator to signals.
- Add copy ctor and assignment operator to delegate.
- Fix: Clamp sound stream out and listener volume to avoid value overflow.
- Replace toggle widget with selection wheel to have a more uniform gui, simplify gui implementation.
- Fix: Check if label reference is valid before using it.

The focus of this build has been gui, especially data side(pull latest data).

There are still outstanding changes though. Buttons, color chooser and practice page have to be adapted to the new layout. Keyboard/gamepad navigation will follow(up, down, left, right, select).

I find the momentary look somewhat crude and hectic. I think it is due to the mouseover/focus rectangles. Maybe some fade in/out could help or should I drop the focus highlight rects, replace them with something else? Any ideas? Keep in mind that the background will be 3d in the future.

Btw I think we need another (more sexy) font. Current one starts to annoy me.

Please dowload/compile and test. Any feedback is very welcome, especially regarding gui look and feel.