Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you, and thank you for your support! 🎊🎉

Ilja - can we used the track config .ini to control where on a track the fireworks appear?

In addition to the dump file I sent I found that the track loads and runs OK from AC ordinary old interface it is only when I attempt to do a Drive...Go from CM that I get a problem. The same is true for a new track that I downloaded from Race Department (High Force) so it must be simply something missing from the track folder???

Tony Bew

Please try latest build, I just found a big bug with it, fixed now :)

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Oh, could you please check, would disabling Smart Shadows help with that?

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Dear Ilja, if I may ask a quick question - for VR - shadows/VAO seem to be viewpoint/head direction dependent (goes without saying), but on certain tracks, like the spectacular LA Canyons from RaceDepartment, shadows on distant mountains (and ks nords as well) go on and off dependent on miniscule head movement and LAC is just very jarring. All my graphics settings and FOV exponent and clip planes are as per recommended SOL settings https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/537716891431600148/597136378345553942/graphics.jpg Is this something you could look into please [if possible of course] or when you get a headset? Thank you very much! Just tried CM with career for the first time, and it either closes before launching any event or after exiting, would you happen to know what could be causing that, something on my end?

Max S

Nope, nothing about fireworks. https://gyazo.com/39664ac4c4024f3a344f1fafda994810

Josh Kerr

Track is Mosport 2019, over at RD. Not doing anything special, just a simple loop around the infield of the track: https://imgur.com/r7VwCHu I got it to work but it seems the mesh cant have a lot of elevation changes, mostly flat and simple works, but you try to snap it to some hilly terrain and it will stop working. Also found it to crash the game sometimes until you raise the threshold value for some reason.

Could you please send me the track to check? I won’t share it, of course. It needs to be either an open or closed loop, but when Patch tries to turn that mesh into a path, it has a lot of checks to make sure it’s not messing up. For example, if path splits at some point, whole thing would be skipped (at least for now).

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Could you please try Lua Debug app, does it mention anything about fireworks?

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Oh, no, I just disabled it for now, so option doesn’t do anything 😅 Will bring it back a bit later (I’m also thinking to try and add some extra culling, based not only on camera frustum, but with some extra clipping planes to skip rendering parts of track hidden behind forests and so on). Those adaptive mirrors were a silly idea, maybe I’ll get back to it in the future, but I’m not sure if it’s needed… It’s sort of inspired by virtual mirrors in ETS2, splitting virtual mirror in left, right and center parts and hiding parts which have visible 3D counterpart. Turned out most of 3D mirrors are not that visible, so it wasn’t that useful to make all those configs back then. :)

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

I have Fireworks on partciles_fx.ini like this: [FIREWORKS] ; hidden ENABLED=1 ; Active; 1 or 0 BEHAVIOUR=1 ; Behaviour; hidden IMPLEMENTATION=holidays ; Script used; hidden LIMIT=40000 ; Limit for particles; from 10000 to 40000, round to 10000 LIMIT_SMOKE=1000 ; Limit for smoke particles; from 100 to 2000, round to 100 SHOW_IN_MIRRORS=1 ; Render in mirrors; 1 or 0 ; SHOW_IN_REFLECTIONS=1 ; Render in reflections; 1 or 0 But the fireworks...no works for me :(

Josh Kerr

You are a genius. The black smoke for diesel was something I didn't expect. It's a great idea. I look forward to the next updates with illusion.

Josh Kerr

The animated stuff is indeed phenomenal! Just wondering if theres anything special to make an object see a path mesh. I created a path or track sort of, a box to follow it, wrapped it into a node in the config, using the code from the train example... and nothing, object wont move. Am I missing something in 3ds max? Something to do with the axis maybe?

Thank you so much for replying! So by enabling the multi threaded culling I would be inadvertently disabling the custom Node::render? Seriously, I deeply appreciate and respect the time that you took so much time to type a reply like this, thank you very much! I dont think ive noticed issues with deformable bonnets but I will test it out, thank you! One last thing please, in smart mirrors ini there is a hidden setting for adaptive virtual mirrors (VIRTUAL_MIRROR_ADAPTIVE) and there is a short explanation but its a bit confusing. Sorry for asking about hidden settings its just so curious :) Should it be left alone too?

Max S

Oh, yes, I’m trying to think of a formula to get it working, after that, will add that for sure. And black smoke for diesels, of course :) I think for a start I’ll just bind it to a mix of RPMs and gas pedal, although what confuses me is that from what I saw irl, it seems like there is more to it than that. Often standing cars would produce a lot more smoke than driving, I think sometimes I saw smoke being thrown out when car would stop accelerating… I think ideally there should be a lot of options in car’s config for all that, to try and cover most cases

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Thank you, so glad to hear you liked them! 😁 There is an option in “particles_fx.ini”, BEHAVIOUR, it’s sum of numbers: 1 for active all the time, 2 for holidays and 4 for the end of racing session. For example, with 6, it should go off on holidays and after a finish :)

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Thank you, very glad you like them! There is an option in “particles_fx.ini”, BEHAVIOUR, it’s sum of numbers: 1 for active all the time, 2 for holidays and 4 for the end of racing session. For example, with 6, it should go off on holidays and after a finish :) As for sound, it is a bit of a mess, I tried to keep it on a subtle side and not to overload anything, I’ll try to make it more reliable though. And it should whistle, but closer and more subtle, maybe I overdid the subtleness… What’s good about it is that it’s all driven by a Lua script, so there is no need to rebuild CSP to fix that. Maybe you could try this file? Just put it in extension\lua\fireworks\holidays. https://gist.github.com/37fef58d3f73fb5abeac0f535e8af265

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

So festive! Thanks.

Of course :) It will show up on holidays, but there is also an option in “particles_fx.ini”, BEHAVIOUR, sum of numbers: 1 for active all the time, 2 for holidays and 4 for the end of racing session. For example, with 6, it should go off on holidays and after a finish :) I’ll add a proper dropdown in the next update

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Oh, please send me the latest .dmp file after such crash.

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Sure! Multi-threaded culling was added a long time ago by henter, but it wouldn’t work with custom Node::render, so I disabled it for now (I don’t know enough at the moment to get it working, only now starting to get into multi-threaded programming in C++). As for separate shadow meshes, there might be a few issues with things like deformable bonnets, I’ll check it out in more detail later. I’m planning to start cutting out a lot of those options since now they become more than just optimizations (for example, custom Node::render allows to have much more events linked to different render stages, disabling it completely ruins Extra FX), and it becomes quite tricky to keep every variation working. And after that, that would be a good time to try and add some more optimization options :D I believe SHADOW_MAP_16BIT might make shadows look a bit worse, adding more self-shadowing in rare places (originally AC uses 32 bits per pixel for shadow map). Weirdly though, it seems like it might actually be worse for performance for some reason. Maybe GPUs tuned to handle 32 bits per pixel better in some cases. As for the option for 64 bits per pixel for cubemaps, to have HDR reflections, AC by default uses 64 bits per pixel, but it seems to me that 32 bits are enough, and I believe it helps with performance quite a lot (less data to pass around during update, plus texture of smaller size fits better in GPU memory cache). But if you would notice any visual difference, please let me know, and I’ll make it disabled by default. Of course, trying to fit 3 floating point numbers in just 32 bits might get a bit messy, but I think it’s compensated by the fact that in most cases, reflections are pretty dim.

Ilja Jusupov aka x4fab

Ilja, development question: it's possible to do this effect on the mufflers while the car is stopped? When we accelerate, it disappears progressively. More or less as it does in PCARS2 https://gyazo.com/3180a47869a1d4d0933ed3a022e9ceab

Josh Kerr

Fireworks were simply amazing, please make a toggle for us, just absolutely stunning to behold in VR. I need fireworks in my daily racing please lol

Max S

I miss fireworks Ilja :( btw, a detail of sound for when you put them back if is possible. I only heard the explosions and not always. It would also be good to hear the sound of the "whistle" when shot into the sky

Josh Kerr

I love the fireworks, i love the Christmas tree. Please keep it if you can, even for Christmas dates. I love fireworks and give a lot of life and immersion to AC. Merry Christmas

Josh Kerr

Will you give us the option to keep the 'Christmas Gift' as a checkbox for the future?

Animations test track crashes after loading for me.

Tony Bew

Dear Ilja, is there any reason not to have the hidden enabled optimisations such as MULTITHREADED_CULLING and SEPARATE_SHADOW_MESHES? I have had them enabled for a while with seemingly no ill effects. Is there any reason for SHADOW_MAP_16BIT=0 - hadnt tried this one. Sorry, there is just no documentation and Im very curious :) Also, could you please tell me, is the 64 bits per pixel for custom cubemaps option under reflections fx for performance or quality reasons? Thank you very much!

Max S

Happy holidays you brilliant magician Ilja!

Max S

Merry XMAS Ilja. Looking forward to whatever new magic you bring to us in 2020!

xez