Qualche aggiornamento da Scawen - LFS forum

[Diablo]

Girovagando per il forum di LFS ho trovato qualche post di scawen che ci aggiorna sullo stato dei lavori, copio pari pari qui di seguito il piu' sostanzioso, spero vi faccia piacere.

(link al post originale: http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?p=1454911#post1454911 )

I've just scanned through the last few pages of the thread. I haven't looked at the thread for a long time, as I've been working a lot recently.

I think you are not correct about the contempt. We're just improving this simulator. I'm trying to program the tyres to behave as realistic as possible. It takes a lot of investigation and testing.

The reason I don't make progress reports is not contempt. It just doesn't make any sense to me to do, say, monthly progress reports. One of them says "I'm working on the tyre physics" and then the next month "I'm still working on the tyre physics" and so on. I just want to say something when there is something interesting to say. But the tyre physics has been a lot of development, a lot of testing and trying new things, finding it did some things well and others not so well. Changing some things, looking for reference material to refine constants, taking a break, coming up with a new idea to test, trying it out, taking some wrong turns, investigating something that turned out impossible, rewriting something, finding a better result, and so on...

Maybe you would suggest that all those twists and turns along the journey of development is exactly what I should be writing in the weekly or monthly progress reports, but actually I don't want to. When I am following a line of investigation, I don't want to say what I am looking at, instead I just want to get on with it and see if it turns out right or wrong in the end. It's kind of a private activity, not sure how to explain that.

I don't want to give any quantifiable evidence of progress at the moment. I suppose that would be a video or some graphs of tyre forces? No, I just want to get on with it. For example today I woke up with an idea to try which might have a subtle effect on the force outputs from tyres in some situations. It's a pleasing one because it can be coded in a few minutes and will be easily visible on the generated force graphs, unlike some things that take days to write. I don't want to say what it is, it's just something I'm looking into. Sorry to everyone who would like insight into every step of the tyre physics development but it's something I do for my own interest and to come up with really nice handling cars that our community will enjoy, and that's nice because it should give us more sales eventually as well. I'm not interested in doing something like writing a book on tyre physics development, if you see what I mean.

But what I can say is...

I think the tyre physics have come along a lot recently. There were some significant changes over quite a long time this year and when I found the handling was quite interesting and certain old issues were sorted, I started to look into the tyre heating, trying to get a version ready again for the testers. That meant sorting out the AI drivers, who only knew the old physics system. If they could drive well in the new tyre physics, they could drive consistent laps and so inform me if the tyre heating was working well.

The AI ended up being about three weeks of work, and I found it personally quite an interesting development time - which is good because that's what I'm here for! Anyway their grip prediction systems are a lot better and they can now drive quite close to the limit, the best and most reliable AI drivers yet seen in LFS. At some point I'd really like to work on their overtaking code, though that is not a high priority for this physics update patch.

So the AI could be crossed off that published list of big things to be done, and I feel the tyres are getting close. I've been testing them out with Eric and Victor for the last two weeks. They have been coming up with interesting comments and leading me to further investigations and improvements. I'm trying to get the version ready for our private beta testers to have a go. Also looking at notes I have here, specific comments from our testers, the last time they did some testing. I try to deal with each point then cross it off the list. No point giving them back a version that still has issues they mentioned before.

From experience I have learned that it's not worth giving the beta testers a version that I still know is flawed. While there is still plenty for me to work on full time, and Eric and Victor are pleased with what they see but are still able to demonstrate situations where they think the handling is not quite like reality, the best thing to do is just carry on. For how long, I don't know. Not everything goes as expected. Some things I try make strangely little or surprisingly large differences and sometimes they open up a new area of investigation. Personally I am surprised overall how much there has been to learn and understand about the behaviour of tyres.

Today I thought I'd just have a look at this thread, but there are too many new pages for me to read in detail. Anyway, you may be assured we have not stopped development. I guess if we stopped development then we'd make a post about it. I'm not sure how that would happen, maybe if I got run over or contracted a fatal illness or perhaps someone will come and offer me a flight to the moon but I have to train at NASA for a couple of years. Unlikely, and there's really nothing better I can do than work on this simulator. I just don't want to write about every step on the development path, so that's why there is a long time between progress reports.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Diablo

[Guest Simon Rey]

Alla fine non dice niente di nuovo....dice sempre che non va sui dettagli di ogni minimo progresso (anche se da qualche indicazione sulla fisica gestita dalle gomme, sicuramente migliorata) pero' la cosa incoraggiante e' che questo post assicura a tanta gente che Scawen & CO. non si sono dimenticati dello sviluppo, anzi.

Mi piace il modo che ha di lavorare Scawen, minuzioso e attento anche ai piu' minimi particolari dando alla fine un prodotto fatto veramente bene (anche se lo sviluppo e' un po' lentino....)

Ho solo una grande domandona per tutti voi appassionati a questo grande simulatore che e' LFS.

La domandona e':

Si sta lavorando per creare dei parametri ed una fisica delle gomme eccellente e sembrerebbe che uscira' anche un programma di editing per le piste....

Non c'e' il rischio che la fisica delle gomme e gli altri parametri saltino completamente quando la gente iniziera' a tirar fuori le piste????

Qualcuno sa se Scawen ha gia' accennato qualcosa sui particolari, non c'e' il rischio di far sballare la fisica?

[VELOCIPEDE]

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