Question for track designers

Post anything about MX Simulator here. Please. I'm begging you.
dawesy
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Post by dawesy »

popopski wrote:I have send MP has jlv but not yet answer
same
Shadow
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Post by Shadow »

Ok, I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to edit texs/track path. Is it the tilemap file that defines it or what and what program can edit it? If I import it as a RAW file into PS it's just totally black. Anyone care to elaborate on this so I can start making the disp/track. :roll:
jlv
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Post by jlv »

I just sent logins to everyone who asked. If I missed anyone let me know.
jlv
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Post by jlv »

Shadow wrote:Ok, I'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to edit texs/track path. Is it the tilemap file that defines it or what and what program can edit it? If I import it as a RAW file into PS it's just totally black. Anyone care to elaborate on this so I can start making the disp/track. :roll:
It probably won't be practical to edit that file directly. You will have a hell of a time making the tiles match their neighbors. I have a command line tool that converts a ppm to raw while also making the texture seams match. I'll try to get that posted soon.

To set the timed track path, you have to move a timing gate to each corner (or wherever you want a checkpoint). Then edit the last couple of lines in "timing_gates" to reflect the order the gates must be hit in on the first lap and on a normal lap.
nickmx
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Post by nickmx »

well i cant get the editor to work its mainly the cammand prompt thats killing me.
Shadow
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Post by Shadow »

Yeah I figured out that also. I took another look at it and noticed that it had different shades of grey instead of just black. Just curious though, would it be possible to do texture files instead of the tilemap? Eg. make a texture with a 3rd party tool say, PS or terragen, and then just sort of 'paint' it over the heightmap (not really sure how it actually works in mva editor, but something similar to like that would be good. As long as the tex resolution isn't hard-coded). It would allow doing lots of different types of texs/more detailed, unless I'm missing something and you can actually do that already.
jlv
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Post by jlv »

The texture tiles are hard coded to 1 tile per 2x2 height cells. It's not a great system but I'm sticking with it in the near term.

If I just used one texture to cover the whole track, it would take a lot of memory. For a 2050x2050 foot track with 1.5 inch texels you would need a 16384x16384 texture. That would be 805,306,368 bytes of texture memory for RGB texels. A high end card using texture compression might pull that off. Even without compression it's under 1GB. Still too much for most cards though.
rewrew421
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Post by rewrew421 »

ahh i see never thought of the size that way hmm intresting.
D.Eckels #421 "The O-G"
Coffee
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Post by Coffee »

Can I please get access to the editor an track sample?

Thank you.
MXF_Popopski
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Post by MXF_Popopski »

I can't open mx editor ??
Shadow
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Post by Shadow »

jlv wrote:For a 2050x2050 foot track with 1.5 inch texels you would need a 16384x16384 texture. That would be 805,306,368 bytes of texture memory for RGB texels. A high end card using texture compression might pull that off. Even without compression it's under 1GB. Still too much for most cards though.
Wouldn't it be possible to implement a texture streaming, so the texture is stored in harddrive and rendered as needed? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaTexture Something like that but on a lot smaller scale (Yet again, no idea how these actually work, just giving some ideas for you). Though I'll vote for 128000×128000 res texs if possible :mrgreen:
jlv
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Post by jlv »

From what Carmack has written, MegaTexture is more about using extreme image compression than streaming off the hard drive. My guess is that he's using some form of fractal compression. I did check out Quake Wars when it came out just to see how well it worked. It does look nice, but it is slow. It requires a high end system and on top of that, when you move really fast the texture goes blurry while it streams in the new data.

I plan on ditching the tile system eventually, but probably for something faster and easier than MegaTexture.
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