MX Simulator

I think a big improvement in the game would be a good erode system. Before, I think JLV mentioned that it wouldn't erode the same for everyone due to roost settings, but if the erode was just setup through the traction then you could have as much roost show up as you want. I'm not sure how much more computer power this would take, but if it was too much we could just have a separate server for erode.

Instead of having the terrain erode why not have the terrain move instead?

This would be a huge step in the game being able to make your own rut during a race then having somebody wreck it would make for some fun racing.

would be totaly epic

The problem is that the erode has to update the shading for everyone and keep the server updated with the same terrain.png and sending it to everyone else. Before decals you only had to update one file and it wasn't that hard for a computer to run. Now that we have decals the game has to update the shading for each decal and terrain and then send it to every computer. That is what I understand atleast because when you ride in singleplayer you have to go into editor and update the shading because it was to much for the game to automatically update it.

Atleast from what I understand.

Yeah, I can understand that, and I do remember having to update the shading now. There has to be a way to do it though.

dynamic shadows
















problem fixed...

The main issue is network traffic. A full gate makes things pretty busy so it has to be done in a way that uses minimal bandwidth. The only thing that needs to be sent is the height values (which would be a lot of data) or something that they could be derived from. Everything else would be recalculated on the clients.

jlv wrote:The main issue is network traffic. A full gate makes things pretty busy so it has to be done in a way that uses minimal bandwidth. The only thing that needs to be sent is the height values (which would be a lot of data) or something that they could be derived from. Everything else would be recalculated on the clients.

Could you not use the info you already have for placement of opponent bikes to calculate the erosion for each bike (on each players machine)?

jlv wrote:The main issue is network traffic. A full gate makes things pretty busy so it has to be done in a way that uses minimal bandwidth. The only thing that needs to be sent is the height values (which would be a lot of data) or something that they could be derived from. Everything else would be recalculated on the clients.

Does this mean? ITS A POSSIBILITIES?!

It's definitely possible. It's just going to be very tricky to do well. The problem with using the existing bike positions is that those packets aren't reliable data. If they get dropped the game just continues on to minimize lag. So if you used the bike position to modify the track, the track wouldn't be consistent between clients. If you had a lot of packet loss your track wouldn't be as rutted.

There are other features to add that will be easier to do and more useful so I'm not going to tackle this one now.

Thanks for coming in here and explaining (speaking gibberish ), JLV.

jlv wrote:It's definitely possible. It's just going to be very tricky to do well. The problem with using the existing bike positions is that those packets aren't reliable data. If they get dropped the game just continues on to minimize lag. So if you used the bike position to modify the track, the track wouldn't be consistent between clients. If you had a lot of packet loss your track wouldn't be as rutted.

There are other features to add that will be easier to do and more useful so I'm not going to tackle this one now.

In other words. People who skip around like me or Brazilans will have a smoother track than those who have good internet? Not Ping related but Offset related?

I was describing what would happen if you used the unreliable bike positions to do it. I wouldn't do it that way. Too inconsistent.

jlv wrote:It's definitely possible. It's just going to be very tricky to do well. The problem with using the existing bike positions is that those packets aren't reliable data. If they get dropped the game just continues on to minimize lag. So if you used the bike position to modify the track, the track wouldn't be consistent between clients. If you had a lot of packet loss your track wouldn't be as rutted.

There are other features to add that will be easier to do and more useful so I'm not going to tackle this one now.

Sure - this does sound tricky then.
Any chance we could get erode back with the dynamic shadows, even if it's only in single player mode?