Bump mapping

[EeekiE]

I just love it!
It would bring the roads, curbs, and tyre treads to life! (Last idea nicked from the Sauber thread)
It really would make the world of difference to the tarmac and curb stones. Plus you could also use it to visually gauge the amount of grip a certain texture of tarmac/concrete offers?

It would also make the rumble through FF when running along curbs make sense, without adding millions of polys.

[Gimpster]

Well for it to be felt thought he FF it would need to generate the millions of polys on the fly. But I have to argee.

LFS tracks feel dead to me after driving nK Pro. They feel like they are buttery smooth with no surface texture, grain or variation. Its weird. Even if it does not get represented visualy, I feel it needs to be in the rendering engine from a feeling standpoint I now completely miss this and the other feedback I get in nK, when I drive in LFS.

[himself]

+1 from me. I always wanted LFS has some sort of bum mapping and specular mapping (reflecting light from surface). :thumb: I think implementing it should change this little bit plastic world into something more real.

[XCNuse]

but you wouldnt ... see it, especially now because nothing in lfs is reflective enough..

[himself]

especially now because nothing in lfs is reflective enough..

Now it is not. After implementing specular mapping will be. In specular mapping you have 2 more textures - one bump map and a specular map showing how shiny is the surface in different places.

Just turn on and off bump maping (with specular) in Netkar Pro and see the difference. Without it it looks like LFS. (i suppose it's one key to turn it on and off but dont remember which one)

[Taavi(EST)]

but u need shaders for that, and that would take a year for one man to code :pillepall, but i'm sure we'll see that in s3

[ORION]

Even though I have said this like 300 times now, we need lightmaps more then anything else :)

[Tweaker]

Even though I have said this like 300 times now, we need lightmaps more then anything else :)
Lightmaps have always been in LFS, maybe you mean the bump maps? Two completely different things when it comes to those terms in games.

[TiJay]

Think he means real Shader 2 headlights and night racing ;)

[EeekiE]

Well for it to be felt thought he FF it would need to generate the millions of polys on the fly. But I have to argee.

I was thinking of "generic rumble", but visually supported by the bump map.

[RMachucaA]

well, with Vista coming out with DX10, scavier should start thinking about working on the new shaders to support most of the bells and whistles that it can perform, including normal mapping.... I guess when the dev's feel ready they will tackle that....

[Gabkicks]

yeah that would be awsome if they lfs with full dx10 support. maybe have two versions. one for people with lower end pcs and dx8/9 support. and for people with higher end pcs, a version with full dx10 usage graphics. that would be awsome.:thumb:

i plan on building a new pc after dx10 comes out

[himself]

but u need shaders for that, and that would take a year for one man to code

:pillepall:pillepall:pillepall

http://www.3dkingdoms.com/weekly/weekly.php?a=5

30 lines of code .... hard .... hmmm :scratchch

[RMachucaA]

lol demo racer, we all wish it was that easy. It takes a LOT more then just 30 lines of code to implement it properly, plus theres a lot more work to be done on top of that to make it look good and go hand in hand with all the other improvements and features already in the game.

[himself]

Put that "lol demo racer" up your S2 licenced a..s Gimme cash I'll buy the licence. I dont have cash now so I dont buy it now. any problem ??

And YES I know it's not that easy. I know it's just a shader code. And there's plenty of things to do to implement it but it's not a year time to do it for one person.

[ORION]

Lightmaps have always been in LFS, maybe you mean the bump maps? Two completely different things when it comes to those terms in games.
I dont see lightmaps...
We have basic shading and shadow maps under the car (and also physics objects)

[XCNuse]

Put that "lol demo racer" up your S2 licenced a..s Gimme cash I'll buy the licence. I dont have cash now so I dont buy it now. any problem ??

And YES I know it's not that easy. I know it's just a shader code. And there's plenty of things to do to implement it but it's not a year time to do it for one person.
uh dur dur dur... it is when you have 1 person testing it...

also, LFS runs fine as it is and looks fine as it is, anymore stuff to make it look realistic with effects like those of NFSMW and such no ones computer (except the people with friggen mad expensive computers) would be able to run, and would look terrible

bump maps plain wouldnt look right with LFS.. you could make a better texture and it can look just as good as a bump map, i've seen it done before.. it just takes a good texture and thats about it, no special effects

as all scientists/mechanics and writers say; the simpler, the better and more efficient

[Gabkicks]

Put that "lol demo racer" up your S2 licenced a..s Gimme cash I'll buy the licence. I dont have cash now so I dont buy it now. any problem ??

And YES I know it's not that easy. I know it's just a shader code. And there's plenty of things to do to implement it but it's not a year time to do it for one person.

hey man no need to get so personal just because you got schooled:x

it would probably take the devs a few months. i am quite ignorant on the subject myself but a guy wrote a "fake hdr" code for oblivion and that games only been out a week. i know thats quite a bit different but i doubt it would take a whole year as well. its just thats not a priority for the devs right now. the focus is on gameplay and physics

[Becky Rose]

but u need shaders for that, and that would take a year for one man to code
Shaders dont necessarily take long to code, it just takes a while to learn how to do them because it is like learning a new programming language. If the 3D engine used didn't support shaders as part of the rendering engine though that would take a lot longer to add, as would all of the suggested features.

Adding the artwork isn't a problem, adding a texture layer is usually pretty easy - but if the 3D engine doesn't support it then you've got yourself a headache.

[ORION]

Yes i'd say writing the eingine that allows using the shaders is the actual problem, not the shaders themselves.

Writing a shader is probably a bit like CSS in webdesign - you can't really call it programming, but a classic designer will have his problems with it, if he hasn't seen a single line of code yet.
I'm quite sure that we will see some people specialized only in shaders and other material-related stuff soon. The whole light physics is a very big and highly compilcated thing, but it's incredibly powerful (raytracing).

[EeekiE]

I just think it would make the world of difference. There's only so much magic a a higher rez texture can do before they look grainy.

Halo 2 had alot less polys than Halo 1, but looks far better due to the bump mapping used to give sense of depth etc on charactors. They did this as the xbox 1 wouldn't support more polys.

[Hippy Druid]

I would like to see a specular map included with the car texture.
Not sure if this could be implemented into the current UVMap or not? My expertise in that particular area is currently: fairly limited.

Even if it were a seperate file for the specular mapping that would be great.

I think that this would bring about fantastic changes to some of the custom car textures out there! Afterall, not all of us drive cars straight off of the showroom floor!! :P
Being able to adjust how shiny the car is, in parts, or not at all, would be great.

In addition, bumpmapping would be nice, for dirt flecks etc, albiet, slighty unnecessary in my humble opinion. A dirt layer for instance, would look ok without bumpmapping if you were able to adjust the specular around the "dirty" area.
However bumpmapping would have some rather nice benefits for the actual race-track itself.

Anyway, that's my 2 bob worth!

[jtw62074]

Bump mapping a road surface can look good, but it can also make it look worse. In a very early version of Virtual RC Racing we had bump mapping on the track, which looked kind of neat, but in the end we got rid of it as it sort of looked "marble-y". Maybe we just didn't do it properly or spend enough time on it (Tony West wasn't working with us yet at that point; had he done it maybe it would have looked great). Anyway, the pure texture without it looked a lot better. Not to say that other effects might not be very cool though of course!

Shaders are definitely cool though and not something that's too terribly difficult or time consuming to include. I've experiment a *tiny* bit with a shader in OpenGL and it really was fairly straightforward. Once you initialize/compile them as the program is running, you pretty much just turn them on and off and then begin rendering. All the shaders I've seen (I bought a book on them) were rather short. I was quite surprised.

But anyway, this isn't something that would probably take a year to do :p

EDIT: I'm don't have LFS on this computer (I'm Slovakia working on a notebook right now) so can't check, but it seems to me there were reflections on the cars of the surrounding world. Am I remembering wrong and imagining things? If so, that's probably a shader right there already.. If not, well, errr.... Nevermind :spin:

[Niels Heusinkveld]

I think LFS has 'environment mapping' or what's it called.. I think that was a dx7 effect?

[severin_schoepke]

I think Bump Mapping could be added in a week or so... It's really not that hard: Like it was said before, you just have to load the shader file, create a shader program from it, switch the resulting shader on and pass some arguments... And shader code for bump mapping can be found all over the net.

But for me personally LFS looks good enough for now, I just like to see a bit more detailed cockpits... Nicer lighting (bump mapping, specular mapping and HDR) can wait.
Maybe Scaven just isn't so much into graphics programming so that he doesn't bother to learn shaders, and that's perfectly fine for me...

[Woz]

well, with Vista coming out with DX10, scavier should start thinking about working on the new shaders to support most of the bells and whistles that it can perform, including normal mapping.... I guess when the dev's feel ready they will tackle that....

yeah that would be awsome if they lfs with full dx10 support. maybe have two versions. one for people with lower end pcs and dx8/9 support. and for people with higher end pcs, a version with full dx10 usage graphics. that would be awsome.:thumb:

i plan on building a new pc after dx10 comes out

Oh yes, how I want LFS ported to a DRM infected OS that eats 800Mb while idle and does not trust the user and locks them out from core areas . At least it allows the likes of Sony, RIAA, MPA in to install any DRM etc they feel like and also scan your machine when you want to use content to see if feel its secure enough to let you use the content you have purchased.

At least Sony will not have to worry about root kits any more they will have the keys to your system given to them by MS. Oh joy :)

I also dont want to be able to use any virus/malware/spyware protection apart from that created by Microsoft because we all know the great track record MS have in that area.

Sorry, but I fail to see how people get excited about Vista. Have none of you looked at "Trusted Computing" and what it ACTUALLY means to YOU the user?

This should highlight where MS are going with Vista... The new Zune system will NOT play the current batch of MS WMA DRM infected files that are covered by the MS "Plays for Sure " initiative. If you have any of those DRM infected files then tough, you need to keep hardware that plays them along with a Zune player.

Or how about the fact that MS can take months and months to release patches and bug fixes unless the issue is in their DRM system in which case they get the fix out the door in 3 days. And when that is cracked a new patch follows 2 days later.

[Bob Smith]

Indeed, Vista is one upgrade I'm not fussed about. The less software that needs it, the less software I miss out on. TBH I don't like using XP, but I have to admit it is the best OS M$ have pumped out so far, even if it is full of s**t I have to turn off. I can only imagine what nightmare Vista would be.

(btw, I've got XP down to using ~98MB of RAM at idle, I consider that a sensible figure - no need to use more!)

[severin_schoepke]

Oh yes, how I want LFS ported to a DRM infected OS that eats 800Mb while idle and does not trust the user and locks them out from core areas . At least it allows the likes of Sony, RIAA, MPA in to install any DRM etc they feel like and also scan your machine when you want to use content to see if feel its secure enough to let you use the content you have purchased.

At least Sony will not have to worry about root kits any more they will have the keys to your system given to them by MS. Oh joy :)

I also dont want to be able to use any virus/malware/spyware protection apart from that created by Microsoft because we all know the great track record MS have in that area.

Sorry, but I fail to see how people get excited about Vista. Have none of you looked at "Trusted Computing" and what it ACTUALLY means to YOU the user?

This should highlight where MS are going with Vista... The new Zune system will NOT play the current batch of MS WMA DRM infected files that are covered by the MS "Plays for Sure " initiative. If you have any of those DRM infected files then tough, you need to keep hardware that plays them along with a Zune player.

Or how about the fact that MS can take months and months to release patches and bug fixes unless the issue is in their DRM system in which case they get the fix out the door in 3 days. And when that is cracked a new patch follows 2 days later.
Just get yourself a nice Mac Pro or install Linux for all your work. Then dual-boot into a Vista partition only for gaming (if you ever need it for a game that needs DX10, which will be hopefully not before 2008 or so and till then there are maybe alternatives...)

[Woz]

Just get yourself a nice Mac Pro or install Linux for all your work. Then dual-boot into a Vista partition only for gaming (if you ever need it for a game that needs DX10, which will be hopefully not before 2008 or so and till then there are maybe alternatives...)

I am sticking with XP and that is the last MS OS I will ever buy unless they change their ways. I will just have to miss out on any DX10 only games. Apple are no better than MS as they want complete control over all online Music through their own DRM which they will not licence to anyone.

The only way to stop this madness is for enough people to BOYCOT Vista and other companies that push DRM. At present Apple and Sony are on my Boycot list and MS are about to join it. Effect the bottom line and companies change their ways.

The backlash against Starforce forced Simbin and others to drop it. All of us have the power to STOP this DRM madness and we only have ourselves to blame if we allow these companies to force this on us.

ANYONE that buys Vista is saying the following.

- I trust MS to make good anti-malware and protection software because there will be no other options. Have MS proved they are trust worthy?
- I trusting MS, RIAA and MPA will allow me to use content as I want to use it. Have Sony and the RIAA proved they are trust worthy?
- I trusting MS with its partners to decide which software I can and can't install and what that software will be allowed to do. Do you rip your CDs to MP3 and do you want to continue ripping your CDs to MP3s or do you prefer DRM infected files?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_computing

http://www.eff.org/Infrastructure/trusted_computing/20031001_tc.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1H7omJW4TI