The current max packet rate (6x) is way to choppy to make a decent movie out of a .mpr file. Additionally, every time there's a packet update, the car moves choppily to its updated location. I think we should increase the max packet rate to somehting higher (10x perhaps?), although this would be tough on servers and player connections alike; OR (this is a better idea), create some kind of packet smoothing feature so that the car doesn't look all jerky because of the lowish packet rate. This would improve possibilities for movie making and would just make the game look better.

In summary, for those who don't want to read the whole thing - Make a higher packet rate (perhaps 10x), or create a packet smoothing feature.

+1.

I play rfactor online (no flaming bananas because what i say next is true, and you all know it) and that is far superior to LFS in the way the other cars move (I am NOT saying car physics), it's perfectly smooth as if you're playing on a LAN rather than over the internet. Same goes for RACE, watching replays from both rFactor and RACE you really couldn't tell the difference if the race was over LAN or online.

I understand that all this smoothness in those games is kinda fake - cars are driven by AI with occasional correction from players driving, so to say. Is this superior? Don't think so. That doesn't mean that prediction could not be improved in LFS.

But yes replays would be easy to smoothen, as there program already knows next position.

The mpr replay shows what was recorded, so smoothing in between packets will probably lead to all kinds of sync problems. I think the easiest way of making it less choppy is to incease the packet rate. Although smooth replays are nice, I think it would be better to have larger grid sizes.

Yes, at first I was also put off by the "choppyness" of multiplayer but soon got used to it. Why? Consistency. It was choppy, but it was consistent all the way through, and that is more important than anything. If this model is more reliable than a potentially smoother model that comes down to its knees in stressful situations, then I will take this reliability any day.

Plus, if you have seen some of the .MPR videos, you can make them smooth with a few tricks.

I think this is a good idea. For people who play on LAN or who have plenty of bandwidth but don't host many cars, this could be quite useful.

a nice technique to improve replay quality, is that there could be an option to enable "High Quality Replay", applicable on lan or league servers...

this option would enable a kind of "spr" replay on each client... wich at the end of the race, will be synchronized with the server, thus creating a really really high quality .mpr replay...

although it will be really heavy on bandwith transfer in long races... it's mainly intended so you could use them over lan, and over the internet the mpr generated on the server could be then packaged then published over web.

Quote from mr_x :

+1.

I play rfactor online (no flaming bananas because what i say next is true, and you all know it) and that is far superior to LFS in the way the other cars move (I am NOT saying car physics), it's perfectly smooth as if you're playing on a LAN rather than over the internet. Same goes for RACE, watching replays from both rFactor and RACE you really couldn't tell the difference if the race was over LAN or online.

A bit off. In RACE, when a car lags, it just disappears without any visual sign. The problem is that where it disappears, the car physicly stays there, but its invisible.
So when someone in front of you starts to lag, you hit his invisible lagged car all the time. Needless to say, a full server with some lagging players is even worse than public demo ones in LFS..
Its like a slalom course, but with invisible objects... unplayable.

There should be an option for movie makers to correct the replay. There could be some sort of application that analyze a replay and is correcting positions of a car to make it move smooth. Application could correct position of a car only when there was no any contact with another cars during some short period. Then everything would look great and if there would be a contact between two cars we could see if it was a lag problem or not.
Another option it could be to correct only small "jumps".

cya on the track

Quote from madmak :

There should be an option for movie makers...

btw: this is not "Live For Moviemakers". I think "6" is enough to get the smoothest Online/LAN-experience as ever seen!

Quote from VoiD :

btw: this is not "Live For Moviemakers".

btw VoiD, explore youtube to see how many people Live For Movie. There are a lot of LFS movies (count in several thousands) and several times more viewers. So why not to satisfy them?
I often watch movies from racing games and I keep few replays on my harddisk only to make a movie with them someday. First I have to learn how to do it right.