torcs-devel Mailing List for TORCS - The Open Racing Car Simulator

On the TORCS 1.3.0 Download & Installation page, there appears to be a
broken link to the binary installer package for Windows.  I am hoping
that someone could fix it.

Thanks, BC

Hello, this is a backport of the transmission/differential code from
simuv3.  Just install the .cpp files in the simuv2 and do make install.
You may want to use the included car with this patch, though it should
work OK with most other tracks. They basically fix the following bugs:

a) the way limited slip differential works (it was in fact working as an
automatically locking differential before, which is OK for 4x4 offroad
trucks but not for race cars!)

b) the calculation of rotational inertia for the drivetrain (only the
wheels' inertia was calculated so wheels could spin incredibly fast!)

The effect is a somewhat 'smoother' driving response.

Since we are in the process of updating all the cars, and the original
cars will be removed, I thought that's a good point in time to introduce
this too in simuv2.

About the fixed car1-trb1.  The only differences are:

a) the slightly beefier  rear breaks (because of the additional
requirement to break the engine)

b) Introduction of the ant-roll bar setting.

I am *not* putting these directly on cvs.  If Andrew, Bernhard, Eric
don't oppose I'll do it in the next couple of days.  I also have updated
the rest of Berhnhard's 'no name' cars and I could fix those too.

PS. The only missing feature compared to simuv3 is the momentary effect
of switching gears and using the clutch, where the moment of inertia is
maintained throughout the transition, while in simuv2 the engine speed
is magically changed to match that of the wheels.  I am not entirely
happy with the way this is currently done in simuv3.  I would appreciate
some comments on that.

I commited car.cpp from simuv3 for type cast. (compilation with VC++ 
2005 Express)

BTW: the simuv3 project (dsp file) is missing SimulationOptions.cpp but 
I did not yet updated the dsp file.

Eric.

> 
> I don't know whether this is happening as not, but I think it could be
> because
> when you're inside a car you'd expect your own engine's noise to be louder,
> and/or the noise of other cars to be dampened.  When there's several
> opponent
> cars in close proximity they do tend to drown out your own car's engine.
> 

Hm... the engine volume dropoff rate should maybe be set higher.  I
think that now engine volume maxes out at a radius of 5m too, though
that could be somewhat different in plib and openal - I used openal's
builtin volume attenuation, while I coded the plib one myself, so there
could be a mismatch.

Eric, can you specify which lib you're having this drowning-out effect with?

Eric wrote:
>> I have added a small modification to load the engine sound first from 
>> the car directory and if not found from the data/sound directory.

Thanks for doing that :)

Christos wrote:
>> Note that currently we only have customizable sounds for the engine.  Do
>> you think there might be a need to have other customizable sounds in the
>> future?  (I can't really think of anything at the moment).

Eric wrote:  
> May be, but for the cars, only the engine sound (may be we can add 
> multiple sound files for engine
> in the future), but I think that the other sounds are more related to 
> surfaces.

I'd really like to see the following:-

Engine sounds - customisable sounds for engine idle, and for using a
different
sound for camera positions inside the car & positions outside.

Surface sounds - the ability to define them in a track's XML file in the
surfaces section, and to include .wav files in a track's directory.  That
way I could, for example, make a track that had a wooden bridge & have
a corresponding sound "thump/thump/thump" sound to use when you drove across
it.

Also there could be customised collision sounds.  At the moment, the same
metallic crash noise is heard regardless of what you run into, whereas if
you're hitting something that isn't metallic - a tirewall or wooden barrier
for example, perhaps the sound might be different?

Ambient sounds might be nice as well, such as crowd noise, birds singing
& so on.  No idea how that'd be specified in the track's XML file though :)

Christos wrote:
>> PS. There was a post about the player's engine being not as loud as the
>> other cars.  This is simply not true.  However, if you are playing with
>> a behind-the-car camera view, then it is possible that another car will
>> be closer to the camera than your own car, hence louder.

Eric wrote:   
> No, no. I experience this in the inside view. After a look at the code I 
> don't yet see why it is.

I don't know whether this is happening as not, but I think it could be
because
when you're inside a car you'd expect your own engine's noise to be louder,
and/or the noise of other cars to be dampened.  When there's several
opponent
cars in close proximity they do tend to drown out your own car's engine.

cheers
Andrew

Christos Dimitrakakis a écrit :
> Eric Espie wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have added a small modification to load the engine sound first from 
>> the car directory and if not found from the data/sound directory.
>>
>>     
>
> Cheers, that'll be useful for not cluttering the main sound directory.
>
> Note that currently we only have customizable sounds for the engine.  Do
> you think there might be a need to have other customizable sounds in the
> future?  (I can't really think of anything at the moment).
>   
May be, but for the cars, only the engine sound (may be we can add 
multiple sound files for engine
in the future), but I think that the other sounds are more related to 
surfaces.
> PS. There was a post about the player's engine being not as loud as the
> other cars.  This is simply not true.  However, if you are playing with
> a behind-the-car camera view, then it is possible that another car will
> be closer to the camera than your own car, hence louder.
>   
No, no. I experience this in the inside view. After a look at the code I 
don't yet see why it is.

Eric.

Eric Espie wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have added a small modification to load the engine sound first from 
> the car directory and if not found from the data/sound directory.
> 

Cheers, that'll be useful for not cluttering the main sound directory.

Note that currently we only have customizable sounds for the engine.  Do
you think there might be a need to have other customizable sounds in the
future?  (I can't really think of anything at the moment).

PS. There was a post about the player's engine being not as loud as the
other cars.  This is simply not true.  However, if you are playing with
a behind-the-car camera view, then it is possible that another car will
be closer to the camera than your own car, hence louder.

PS2. Looking at my to-do list, I should do the split-screen multi-player
sound.  It's a tricky problem, but my current idea is as follows:

1) Do initial sound processing.
2) Get a list of sound volumes for all active camera views
3) Setup the sound parameters (doppler, filter, stereo, overall volume)
for each sample according to the camera for which it has the highest volume.
4) Prioritise the sounds according to their type and final volume
5) Project the sounds appropriately [you might want, for example to have
 sounds for one camera shifted slightly to the left].

Does that sound ok?

If you say, have two player cars passing a slower computer car then the
effect should be that you listen to the doppler-shifted other car's
engine twice.  One when the first car approaches it - where we have an
approaching engine; then, after the first car passes it we have a
receding engine; when it is exactly in between the two cameras, a switch
occurs and instead of a receding we have an approaching engine (relative
to the second camera); and finally a receding engine after the second
car has passed.

The sudden switch might be a bit detracting, but it occurs at the point
where the volume is the lowest anyway, so it may not be so bad.

Thoughts?

Hi,

I have added a small modification to load the engine sound first from 
the car directory and if not found from the data/sound directory.

Eric.

Added berniw's simuv2 patches to simuv3 for wheel.cpp

Tested all new cars (car*-trb1) with both simuv2 and simuv3; they seem
to behave quite similarly to simuv2.  The wheel.cpp fixes an instability
bug I had before.

Cheers, Bernhard!

TO-DO: Check olethros cars.

Hi all

I committed car6-trb1 to the CVS. It was created by Wolf-Dieter Beelitz and
rewoked by me.

Have fun,

Bernhard

-- 

Visit my homepage http://www.berniw.org
Official TORCS racing: The TORCS Racing Board, http://www.berniw.org/trb

Miguel Martinez wrote:

> My question is: is this an intended behaviour for punishing lazy human 
> drivers and lousy robots? If not, would new torque curves, keeping the 
> general aspects of the originals, be welcome?
> 

We do not play much with torque curves.  From most of the real car data
sheets that I have seen, however, the torque tends to be more or less
flat after a threshold rpm and then drops off relatively fast after the
maximum hp rpm.  In general the curves are not very carefully designed.
Most of the time we tried to match the curves' maximum hp and sometimes
torque values to those of the corresponding real vehicles, but the
overall _shape_ of the curve is probably not very realistic.

As for the placement of the redline, that has much to do with cooling -
I'd expect the torque to drop much faster after the redline though, than
it does in these two examples.

> Finally, an off topic question, if you don't mind. Is there a reason why 
> most cars have turbos assigned in their xml files?

I am not sure that 'most' have turbos assigned.  Certainly some.  I
don't really know which cars have a turbo in reality.  In any case,
currently turbo is just a sound effect.
> 
> Regards to everybody and sorry for a lengthy first post,
> 
> Miguel

Hey all,
=20
see the torque and power curves of the first five trb1-cars at:
=20
http:// <http://www.wdbee.gotdns.org:8080/Photos.aspx?AlbumID=3D10> =
www.wdbee.gotdns.org:8080/Photos.aspx?AlbumID=3D10
=20
Thick lines are TORCS-Definitions, thin ones polynom approx. generated =
without additional points at critical sections!
=20
cheers
wdbee

Dear folks,

I have noticed that, if one works out power from the torque curves of car2 
and car3-trb1, one gets a monotonically increasing function until (at 
least) 9000 rmp. In a table,

car2-trb1        car3-trb1

rpm    T (Nm)    P (HP) | T(Nm)    P (HP)
0       100       0     | 90       0
1000    220     31,35   | 230     32,78
2000    310     88,35   | 350     99,75
3000    370    158,18   | 450    192,38
4000    420    239,4    | 530    302,11
5000    460    327,76   | 520    370,51
6000    490    418,96   | 500    427,51
7000    500    498,76   | 475    473,82
8000    485    552,91   | 450    513,01
9000    465    596,37   | 415    532,25

The redline is located at 8500 rpm for both cars, and that berniw2 switches 
gears at around 7.8k and human.so auto-switches at 0.85*redline (slightly 
under 7.5k). This means that both berniw2 and a human using automatic 
shifting are missing over 40 HP, aconsiderable amount of power (especially 
when compared to car1-trb1). I'd also like to note that CVS car5-trb1 also 
suffers this to some extent, although it is less marked because P(8000) and 
P(9000) only differ in 7 HP.

My question is: is this an intended behaviour for punishing lazy human 
drivers and lousy robots? If not, would new torque curves, keeping the 
general aspects of the originals, be welcome?

Finally, an off topic question, if you don't mind. Is there a reason why 
most cars have turbos assigned in their xml files?

Regards to everybody and sorry for a lengthy first post,

Miguel
-- 
----------------------------------------
Miguel Martínez Canales
    Dto. Física de la Materia Condensada
    UPV/EHU
    Facultad de Ciencia y Tecnología
    Apdo. 644
    48080 Bilbao (Spain)
Fax:  +34 94 601 3500
Tlf:  +34 94 601 5437
----------------------------------------

  "If you have an apple and I have an apple and
  we exchange these apples then you and I will
  still each have one apple. But if you have an
  idea and I have an idea and we exchange these
  ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

  George Bernard Shaw

Hi Matteo

> [sorry for my english]

Do not worry, it is not my native language as well, so you are not alone;-)

> I don't know if this is the correect place to ask.
> When we'll have the network game?

I cannot give you a date, but it is on the TODO list.

> p.s. I can't write code so i can do something to help the development of
> torcs?

You know your skills, so you know better than me:-) But on the non coding front
we need content/material which complies with our licenses, so if you can create
the following things from scratch and release it under the Free Art License it
would be welcome:
- sounds
- music
- Photographs to create textures from it (ideally there are no shadows in the
image, the shot should be taken in a way which makes it easy to extract the
desired objects. As example, a tree is best shot on a hill top with blue or
white sky as background to make it easy to extract it properly, take shots from
multiple directions).
- textures
- test driving (if you have enough knowledge about racing cars)
- promotion video
- ...

I have to add on this point that I am very (!) pity about some aspects, for
example the legal aspects and the quality. So I am usually very quick in linking
to your content site, but it can take some iterations to bring something into
the TORCS distribution.

Bye, have fun,

Bernhard

-- 

Visit my homepage http://www.berniw.org
Official TORCS racing: The TORCS Racing Board, http://www.berniw.org/trb

Hi Matteo

> Can i create an italian torcs portal? 

Of course you can. But some thoughts:
- If there are more TORCS portals/forums the limited crowd of TORCS users is
spread over more places. Because of this chances to get help in a certain forum
could be lower than when the forum/portal would not exist (so it could hurt more
than help).
- If you do an Italian portal the Italian people are on their own, because
Italian is mostly known to Italians.
- If I had a choice I would prefer to combine all TORCS forums to one site
(French, Spanish, Italian, etc.), such that the community is not spread over
multiple sites.
- The advantage of an Italian TORCS forum would be of course that the Italians
can help each other and discuss in their native language.

You seem to have the infrastructure, so I think it might be worth to give it a try.

Bye, have fun

Bernhard.	

-- 

Visit my homepage http://www.berniw.org
Official TORCS racing: The TORCS Racing Board, http://www.berniw.org/trb

Can i create an italian torcs portal? 
This my lug site http://luccalug.it , i can do something similar...
My object is to find new develops for the project and create a community
than can reports bug.

Matteo Lucchesi

[sorry for my english]

I don't know if this is the correect place to ask.
When we'll have the network game?

I think that is a very important feature for this game, my friends are
very amused to play torcs but we can't play against.

p.s. I can't write code so i can do something to help the development of
torcs?

Matteo Lucchesi

Thank very much for the tip. You can also add the include path to 
Microsoft Platform SDK
in the wtorcs project properties (in the resources topic).
I did not find another more generic place to set this path.

Thanks,
Eric.

Wolf-Dieter Beelitz a écrit :
>
> Hello Eric,
>
> please try first to edit the torcs.rc file and enter the correct 
> path\filename to torcs.ico and afxres.h instead of the files names only.
>
> Regards
>
> wdbee
>
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Hello Eric,

please try first to edit the torcs.rc file and enter the correct
path\filename to torcs.ico and afxres.h instead of the files names only.

Regards

wdbee

Hi all,

I committed some modifications to have the code compile with VC++ 2005 
Express.
The project files need also modifications but I'm not sure of what files 
to commit.

I have added a README.VC2005Express file explaining the process :

In order to compile with VC++2005 express you will need to do some 
modifications in the project.

First don't forget to run the files :

setup_win32.bat
setup_win32-data-from-CVS.bat

PRIOR to anything else.

Then open the TORCS.dsw file with VC++ and do the fllowing changes :

1. Select "Release" instead of "Debug" as a configuration.

2. in wtorcs -> Source Files (Solution explorer) exclude torcs.rc

3. in client -> Source Files add the file errno.cpp to the solution 
(located in src/libs/client)

4. change in the properties of all the sub-projects :
    in "Configuration Properties -> Link Editor -> Entry : Ignore 
Specific Library"
    change LIBCD in LIBC if present.

Compile.


Note: If anyone knows how to make torcs.rc file to work (missing 
afxres.h) I would be glad to know about,
because without this file the executable don't have the TORCS icon :-(

Note 2: the default quick race is not working, robots suspensions need 
tuning.

Have fun,
Eric.

Bernhard Wymann wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I committed the simuv2 changes into the CVS:
> - Suspension improvement, car does not lift up any more magically on bumpy
>   surfaces.
> - Antirollbars are now functional.
> - Rolling resistance is now correctly working (this fixes as well the
>   "forever stuck in the sand" and the "wheel spinning like mad and
>   car stuck" problems).

Tested, it works very well.

About updating the cars, I'll do it like this:
a) update cars in main data directory
b) update cars in human/ driver
c) update cars in olethros/ driver

On another note, I am having a problem with my new TORCS install.  I
updated to Ubuntu 6, and it seems that the graphics are messed up.  Face
culling seems to work in reverse of what you'd normally expect... maybe
one the libs is bad...here are the gfx related libs.. can't recall what
I had been using in the past though..

        libplibssgaux.so.1.8.4 => /usr/lib/libplibssgaux.so.1.8.4
(0xb7e86000)
        libplibssg.so.1.8.4 => /usr/lib/libplibssg.so.1.8.4 (0xb7b2c000)
        libplibsm.so.1.8.4 => /usr/lib/libplibsm.so.1.8.4 (0xb7b29000)
        libplibsl.so.1.8.4 => /usr/lib/libplibsl.so.1.8.4 (0xb7b0b000)
        libplibsg.so.1.8.4 => /usr/lib/libplibsg.so.1.8.4 (0xb7afb000)
        libglut.so.3 => /usr/lib/libglut.so.3 (0xb7ac8000)
        libGLU.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLU.so.1 (0xb7a51000)
        libGL.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGL.so.1 (0xb79cc000)
        libpng12.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb79a9000)
        libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb7995000)
        libdl.so.2 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb7992000)
        libopenal.so.0 => /usr/lib/libopenal.so.0 (0xb7952000)
        libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb794e000)
        libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb7946000)
        libXxf86vm.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXxf86vm.so.1 (0xb7941000)
        libXmu.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXmu.so.6 (0xb792c000)
        libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb7924000)
        libXt.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXt.so.6 (0xb78d6000)
        libSM.so.6 => /usr/lib/libSM.so.6 (0xb78cd000)
        libICE.so.6 => /usr/lib/libICE.so.6 (0xb78b5000)
        libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb78a8000)
        libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb77c2000)
        libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb76ed000)
        libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb76cb000)
        libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb76c0000)
        libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb7591000)
        libGLcore.so.1 => /usr/lib/libGLcore.so.1 (0xb6dce000)
        libnvidia-tls.so.1 => /usr/lib/tls/libnvidia-tls.so.1 (0xb6dcc000)
        /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f5c000)
        libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6db9000)
        libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb6db6000)