2023-10-14 snapshot (Updated on 2023-10-29)

[justinas6071]

How to fix the ground?

What I did is set the settings to high detail to figure out what setting needed to be changed. Then I found that the ground texture detail will need to be set to Low+Mid+High. This worked for me, may be different for you.

I've maxed everything, except ground texture resolution which I left on 1024x1024. But the delay is still noticeable

[AtlasZoor]

How to fix the ground?

What I did is set the settings to high detail to figure out what setting needed to be changed. Then I found that the ground texture detail will need to be set to Low+Mid+High. This worked for me, may be different for you.

I've maxed everything, except ground texture resolution which I left on 1024x1024. But the delay is still noticeable

up your ground texture resolution

[ScrubDatMx]

What I did is set the settings to high detail to figure out what setting needed to be changed. Then I found that the ground texture detail will need to be set to Low+Mid+High. This worked for me, may be different for you.

I've maxed everything, except ground texture resolution which I left on 1024x1024. But the delay is still noticeable

up your ground texture resolution

Yes that as well. 2048x2048 should do it

[justinas6071]

I've maxed everything, except ground texture resolution which I left on 1024x1024. But the delay is still noticeable

up your ground texture resolution

Yes that as well. 2048x2048 should do it

I'll keep experimenting, but the Extralow+low+mid+high combination works the best so far

[Jakob Hubbard]

I'll keep experimenting, but the Extralow+low+mid+high combination works the best so far

Extralow+low+mid+high I also found to be the best for quality, however I started lagging pretty bad with around 22-24 riders in a server with erode, I tried the low+mid+high combo and it seemed to be better. If it gets even worse might need to go mid+high.

[Jakob Hubbard]

btw what are the range of values of the mx.seed function? Is it 0-65536? Just curious for documentation purposes.

[jlv]

I could be wrong but I think it might've broke earlier when you introduced the new texture generation in the 11-03-2022 snapshot. All I know is that I use the 5-19-22 snapshot for building tracks for that /toggledecals feature. It also went straight over my head I've been doing it for so long now.

When I redid the terrain texture system I rewrote so much code I inadvertently removed the part that handled toggledecals. I was meaning to fix it in this update but forgot about it.

I think I've got it working again now. It's a little more complex now with it optimizing the only overlaid decals case.

[jlv]

Whats next for ur timeline of updates and the timeframe? treadmarks are barking also

Going to finish the terrain rendering optimization next. Basically instead of drawing one triangle fan at a time it'll draw 16x16 arrays of fans. No idea on how long it'll take. Hopefully it won't be too bad.

[jlv]

Actually had a similar thing happen to me, curious on if that’s a result of the new graphics settings?

Looks like you have "ground texture levels" set to "High". That only enables the closest level. For the most detail you want to enable all levels with ExtraLow+Low+Mid+High. But that'll be slow since it has to update 5 textures (there's a lowest detail level that's always on) when a decals changes. I think having ExtraLow enabled is a waste. Really hard to see the difference at that distance.

Also, what do you guys think looks better between High+Low vs High+Mid? I was playing with it and starting to think High+Mid might be a better default.

[jlv]

Great update! Did you consider making treadmarks a default feature, which could then be overridden if desired? It's a tease to only have it on post-snapshot tracks that choose to implement it.

Also, whatever you changed in this snapshot officially made the ghost in time trial completely disappear, so thanks for that too!

Unfortunately the treadmark decals have to match the track. It'd look awful if I just dumped mismatched decals on any track. I don't know, maybe if it was just a normal map and let the original color go through? It'd be tricky to get a generic treadmark looking good.

I did break the alpha blending on the ghost when I went to OpenGL 3.1. Been meaning to try blue noise dithering for it eventually. Just gave it a quick test and it looks like the ghost is still there once it's outside the fade distance.

[jlv]

btw what are the range of values of the mx.seed function? Is it 0-65536? Just curious for documentation purposes.

Yeah but it's based off the gate drop time so while the range is 0-65535 it'll only ever produce a few hundred different values.

[Jakob Hubbard]

Also, what do you guys think looks better between High+Low vs High+Mid? I was playing with it and starting to think High+Mid might be a better default.

Hard to tell but I think I'd agree that Mid+High is probably the better default option.

[ddmx]

Great update! Did you consider making treadmarks a default feature, which could then be overridden if desired? It's a tease to only have it on post-snapshot tracks that choose to implement it.

Also, whatever you changed in this snapshot officially made the ghost in time trial completely disappear, so thanks for that too!

Unfortunately the treadmark decals have to match the track. It'd look awful if I just dumped mismatched decals on any track. I don't know, maybe if it was just a normal map and let the original color go through? It'd be tricky to get a generic treadmark looking good.

I did break the alpha blending on the ghost when I went to OpenGL 3.1. Been meaning to try blue noise dithering for it eventually. Just gave it a quick test and it looks like the ghost is still there once it's outside the fade distance.

I hadn’t looked inside the test track folder but assumed it was just a few different decals where in game were applied using a darken/burn overlay effect. I see it’s more custom than that now. The hard part is probably done with the actual placement code, maybe something fun to play around with on a rainy day.

[jlv]

Also, what do you guys think looks better between High+Low vs High+Mid? I was playing with it and starting to think High+Mid might be a better default.

Hard to tell but I think I'd agree that Mid+High is probably the better default option.

I was thinking Low+High was necessary because it has more range with adequate detail. But when Mid+High runs out of detail it's so far away it's pretty hard to notice. Going to test it some more on different tracks but I think I might change the default to Mid+High.

[jlv]

I hadn’t looked inside the test track folder but assumed it was just a few different decals where in game were applied using a darken/burn overlay effect. I see it’s more custom than that now. The hard part is probably done with the actual placement code, maybe something fun to play around with on a rainy day.

Might be possible to make something generic with a normal map and some translucent darkening like you said. I'll have to experiment with that.

The test track has 4 treadmarks which would be fairly difficult to do in a generic way:

1 for the dark native Daytona dirt. Rolling treadmark and roosting treadmark.
1 for the grass. No treadmark for rolling, uses the roost treadmark from the native dirt.
1 for the lighter imported dirt with its own rolling and roosting treadmarks.
1 for the pavement. Only leaves marks when sliding.

I should probably add a way to do non-physics changing modifications to the tileinfo without affecting the track checksum so you can patch old tracks and play them online without a new trackinfo.