Fixes and a few new features (and another preview build) (Patreon)

First of all, I wanted to say, it’s truly horrible what’s happening in Ukraine and this damned war. Really hoping things would get better soon.

As always, it started with me working on fixes and then getting more and more ideas for some new things to try. So, in no particular order, some details about some of new features:

Skidmarks FX has been rewritten, now using a different method of managing bits of tracks. Adaptive length, smooth addition of a new element to ensure it would never get detached from a wheel, new better blending to make sure overlapping tracks wouldn’t look strange, four different types of tracks for offroad and blown tyres. Oh, and blown tyres got a new look too (and sparks got updated, now looking more simplistic and reasonable):

Also thanks to new way of handling tracks, you can choose to save them between sessions. And tracks in dirt use tyre normals so you can use it to figure out who lost control where. :D

Spectators now also use a different rendering method, should save some CPU time. With it, they can even cast shadows now, including dynamic shadows. And also, fixed spectators created with intersecting planes can be converted to nicer spectators with a track config. Here are comparison screenshots.

Smoke got an update, now it considers speed and direction of a car to blow smoke of wheels more accurately. And, hopefully, brightness issue should be fixed as well. As for other changes, WeatherFX default script got an update with improved lighting, and there are a bunch of new custom server options, and bales of hay are now flammable, but another thing I of course want to mention here is a lot of additions to Lua scripting! Added a lot to those for all sorts of occasions.

Firstly, online scripts got a lot more powerful. Now they can control cars, move them around, assign penalties (so if you want third offroad incident to result in drivethrough penalty, for example, now it’s possible), shut off engines, grab and move cameras. As another example, here is a GIF of a small script in action locking out controls when race starts and moving camera to a car, and turning engine back on once camera is in. Some sort of Le Mans type thing. Rolling starts, warm up laps, all of that can now be set up with simple scripts (which could be written once and then reused on different servers).

Apps also got a lot more things to mess with. Reload control settings live (here is an app which uses that so you can change FFB settings live), for example, or project textures onto other textures (here is the paintshop app). Or an app to configure real mirrors live.

If you remember that YouTube thing previously, now it got nicely wrapped into some sort of Android Auto recreation. Should already be available with BMW M4 or Porsche Panamera. It might have some useful things out of the box, like a navigator, radio or a timer app, but you can also add custom apps to it which would be available in all cars that use it. And to plug is just as simple as plugging navigators from earlier. Also, guess how you can take a screenshot in it. 

Another thing where scripts got is filters. Old VHS filter has been replaced with a thing where a Lua script can set its own shaders and render passes, like this oldschool filter. This way not only a filter can be more complex, but also can be dynamic and react to state of a race. Like Tunnel Vision filter blurring out edges when car speeds up.

And also, scripts now can be added to car physics to override its controls or change a few other things. Currently not very feature-rich thing, but it should be enough to create automatic gearboxes, launch controls, remap car inputs or add extra forces from some unusual sources.

Pause menu also got updated, although for now new look is disabled by default, just in case it wouldn’t work too well with some specific cases. Oh, and now you can use D-Pad to move a mouse, and any other button to act like a left mouse button, kind of how it works in Gran Turismo. From my testing it seems to be enough to navigate starting and pause menu, and even do some setup. 

As for rain, I fixed racing line: now it should work for both drying and wettening, although it still needs a lot of tweaking to get the numbers right. Also, AIs now can drive in wet without spinning out and change tyres to wet and dry with changes in conditions. They also need more work though: currently their reaction for hydroplanning is to use the brakes and that’s not the brightest idea. 

Here is the full list of changes with all the fixes. Thank you for your fantastic support! I’ll try my best to get the next update ready sooner.