2022-11-03 snapshot (updated 2022-11-24)

[jlv]

Changes:

• Fixed lean indicator not showing.
• Now uses one large texture instead of a 4x4 array for each terrain texture level.
• Max script sounds is now 4096.

This might be slower than the last version until I get incremental terrain texture updates done. So you should definitely keep your old exe around just in case. The new texturing code does make 4097x4097 tracks viable so I figured people would want to try this even without the incremental terrain texture rendering.

Windows users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mx-2022-11-03-1628.exe
Linux users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mxbin-2022-11-03-1628

Small update:

• Fixed bug where timing gate sequence could overflow its buffer.
• Increased max timing gates to 1024.
• When saving with more than 254 timing gates it will now add "version 2" to the timing gates file.
• Workaround for physics bug mostly triggered when starting gate angle is 0.

Windows users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mx-2022-11-24-1631.exe
Linux users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mxbin-2022-11-24-1631

Replace mx.exe or mxbin with one of the above files. The default location for mx.exe should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\MX Simulator". Please note that the ".exe" extension is hidden in Windows so the file will just show as an application named "mx". I'd keep a backup of the originals since these aren't well tested.

[jlv]

I made a random 4k terrain to test this. Really does feel big! You'll most likely need to turn down your ground geometric detail to get decent FPS on this. It's on elsinore.mxsimulator.com:19805 (motoball is the default but this is voteable).

https://mxsimulator.com/tracks/thousandacres.zip

[Donut MX]

LESGOOOOOOOOOO

time to jump on the editor

[Racers52]

4k terrains, a new era

[jgmtbike]

Hey JLV this seems to have made my game look a lot more blurry. The draw distance of the decals seems worse. I've adjusted lots of the graphics settings and it doesn't seem to help.

[Jakob Hubbard]

I noticed that textures were much worse on this snapshot when loading up thousand acres vs the old snapshot. Is this due to needing to implement incremental terrain texture updates or is it a bug?

Both are running the same graphics settings


5-19-22 snapshot:


11-03-22 snapshot:

[DJ99X]

Without having tried myself, I think you'd need to change ground texture resolution from 256x256 as the texture squares are much larger now

[Jakob Hubbard]

Without having tried myself, I think you'd need to change ground texture resolution from 256x256 as the texture squares are much larger now

Ahh yep, didn't even notice they were upped to 4k, which makes sense now.

[baker]

Changes:

• Fixed lean indicator not showing.
• Now uses one large texture instead of a 4x4 array for each terrain texture level.
• Max script sounds is now 4096.

This might be slower than the last version until I get incremental terrain texture updates done. So you should definitely keep your old exe around just in case. The new texturing code does make 4097x4097 tracks viable so I figured people would want to try this even without the incremental terrain texture rendering.

Windows users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mx-2022-11-03-1628.exe
Linux users: https://mxsimulator.com/snapshots/mxbin-2022-11-03-1628

Replace mx.exe or mxbin with one of the above files. The default location for mx.exe should be "C:\Program Files (x86)\MX Simulator". Please note that the ".exe" extension is hidden in Windows so the file will just show as an application named "mx". I'd keep a backup of the originals since these aren't well tested.

Connection times out for me when I try to download the windows version.

[jlv]

Without having tried myself, I think you'd need to change ground texture resolution from 256x256 as the texture squares are much larger now

Ahh yep, didn't even notice they were upped to 4k, which makes sense now.

Each texture covers more area now so it's not equivalent to the old setting. You're right that I'm definitely going to need to add incremental updates for smooth FPS with 4k terrain textures.

[jlv]

Connection times out for me when I try to download the windows version.

The server was down for a few hours this morning. Sorry about that!

[baker]

Connection times out for me when I try to download the windows version.

The server was down for a few hours this morning. Sorry about that!

I figured that was likely the case That and the key server. I’m guessing the forums server + site/key server are run off separate boxes/vms?

[jlv]

I figured that was likely the case 🙂 That and the key server. I’m guessing the forums server + site/key server are run off separate boxes/vms?

Yes. The forum is on a different hosting company.

[chaseb31]

I know nothing about this stuff and id rather leave it to you guys to figure out and master. But I noticed when the new snapshot riding a supercross track you'd only have a 4ftx4ft square of detailed dirt below you? Then as you move or ride the dirt only changes the 4x4 below you not the whole track, which probably causes people to be complaining about fps does that make your game work harder when the dirt is only changing below you instead of just loading the whole track ?

[jlv]

I know nothing about this stuff and id rather leave it to you guys to figure out and master. But I noticed when the new snapshot riding a supercross track you'd only have a 4ftx4ft square of detailed dirt below you? Then as you move or ride the dirt only changes the 4x4 below you not the whole track, which probably causes people to be complaining about fps does that make your game work harder when the dirt is only changing below you instead of just loading the whole track ?

It wouldn't be practical to do the entire track at full detail. Take the 1000 acre track in this thread. If you wanted to texture the entire terrain at a 1 inch resolution it'd take over 80 gigabytes of video memory. So you have to concentrate the detail near the camera.

The previous versions used a full texture pyramid. It'd cover the 4x4 area under the camera, then 8x8, 16x16, etc. That made the detail go down gradually which was a good thing. This version only has 3 levels. The most detailed texture covers 64x64 height elements, the next one is 256x256, and the next one covers the entire terrrain. This isn't as good as the full pyramid but hopefully with 4k textures it'll make up for it. I don't want to do the full pyramid since I'm planning on dynamically adding decals to show bike tracks and more textures will make that slower. The new code is more flexible though, so adding an option for the full pyramid would be easy enough.

Does it look OK to you if you set the terrain textures to 4096x4096? I know 4096x4096 is slow right now but it's going to get faster in future updates.