Online Racing Championship

[AshMcConnell]

Hi Folks,

Just thought I'd show case ORC, I've been lurking in the Ogre forums for years. Unfortunately the project has moved to a spare time project at the moment as I've had to get a job (I was entirely self funded), I hope to get back to it as soon as possible. Anyone know rich chaps that have always liked to own a racing simulator?

...anyway, ORC is a racing simulator that concentrates on physics and networking with some social aspects. Ranking, achievements, downloadable car upgrades and an advertising system (allowing track billboards to contain real downloaded adverts) is in place. It has dynamic environment mapping (6 cameras pointed in all directions) and dynamic self shadowing. Here is a development video, the sound engine was(is) being rewritten, so the sound in the video isn't great.

[youtube]Nehuh2rasiI[/youtube]


Here are a couple of photos, to see them all have a look on our facebook page



Thanks for all the help over the years from the Ogre forums guys!
All the best,
Ash

[saejox]

i like it!

i'm in process of picking an audio api too, OpenAL sound better for me.
Gotta ask why FMOD?

[bstone]

Nicely done! What's your approach to generating the race track geometry?

[Jabberwocky]

Looks great! I definitely feel like I'm in that racecar speeding down the track.

[dudeabot]

looks awesome!

speaking of physics, what physics engine are you using?

[AshMcConnell]

Hi Guys,

@bstone Thanks! I had an artist that produced the track. I was initially adding all the track parts to a bit static geometry bucket in order to let it batch all the same materials together in order to reduce batch size. Unfortunately the artist had to take a job (as did I), so he isn't actively working on ORC any more, but the plan was that he would manually batch the same materials together and do LOD (as LOD is not possible on Ogre static geometry as far as I'm aware).

@Jabberwocky Thanks!

@Dudeabot It's a custom built physics engine by a friend who has a PhD in quantum physics. It is a constraint system, where each rod of the suspension (for example) is modelled separately as a constraint, it has an advanced tyre model, a heat model for the tyres and brakes and a number of physically correct driver aids (ABS / Traction Control / Stability Control). It really is a rather nice engine

All the best,
Ash

[AshMcConnell]

Sorry I missed your question saejox.

I chose fmod because of the richness of features and because I couldn't stop OpenAL clicking on my onboard sound card. I have problems with fmod too though, when there are lots of multiplayer cars there is a delay when I change between rev ranges leading to a gap in the sound which sounds terrible. This only seems to happen when I use the designer API, not the "normal" fmod API. I tried everything, but couldn't get it to work.

All the best,
Ash

[bstone]

Thanks for the answer. The static geometry supports LOD but with a few caveats: only auto-generated LOD is supported and you have to keep LOD distances for the batched meshes in close synch otherwise the furthest LOD distance will dominate for the whole batch and that might undermine the purpose. The LOD support comes with an extra memory price tag though.

[AshMcConnell]

Hi bstone,

Yeah, that was it My artist wanted more control to create his own LOD meshes. We didn't really have a nailed down plan, we were going to experiment to see what worked best for us.

All the best,
Ash

[CarloMaker]

Congrats for ur project ,I hope to see you soon with new images ,maybe confronting, I also work on a similar project ( i also in spare time and with a child 14 months old is not easy ... ^_^).
Looking your video, car handler seems pretty well, there will be a beta version?

[AshMcConnell]

Thanks Carlo,

I know EXACTLY what you mean, my son is also nearly 14 months (16/03/2011). It's very tough to find time while having a full time job, but I really have to finish ORC as I think it has great potential

All the best,
Ash

[AshMcConnell]

A good bit of progress recently in ORC, here is a video showing some multiplayer

A really close race, we were only 0.03 secs apart at the end!

[youtube]dUPCfBhwV8g[/youtube]

[stenyak]

Great job ash, as usual!
If you want to betatest networking, I can help with a connection from spain
Do you compute any physics to help extrapolate remote cars positions/rotations?

[AshMcConnell]

Great job ash, as usual!
If you want to betatest networking, I can help with a connection from spain
Do you compute any physics to help extrapolate remote cars positions/rotations?

Hi Stenyak,

Sure, no problem, give me a shout on MSN

Yeah, I use physics to do some smoothing of the network positions / rotations. I use a spring damper from a ghost car to the "real" car to drag it into position. It seems to work pretty well, I'm pleased with the results so far!

All the best,
Ash

[saejox]

nice!

may i suggest something?
If cockpit cam will be your main, i think you should add some post processing effects. Like dof and some distortion when going to fast. Since gforce affects pilots a lots, blurry vision wouldn't be unrealistic.
Also camera shake in grass and head blobbing in turns. I very much like racing games that simulate realistic cockpit camera.

[AshMcConnell]

Thanks saejox

I haven't really played an awful lot of graphics effects yet, I've been mostly concentrating on gameplay and physics aspects.

The head does move with g-force, it's just very subtle, perhaps a little too subtle . I'll probably make it a configurable option.

All the best,
Ash

[Slappy]

@Dudeabot It's a custom built physics engine by a friend who has a PhD in quantum physics. It is a constraint system, where each rod of the suspension (for example) is modelled separately as a constraint, it has an advanced tyre model, a heat model for the tyres and brakes and a number of physically correct driver aids (ABS / Traction Control / Stability Control). It really is a rather nice engine

This project looks really interesting - specially the physics engine!!!

[AshMcConnell]

Thanks Slappy

I am really excited about it, it's really starting to come together nicely . My friend's physics engine is really rather great! He was initially building it for an F1 team, but the team ran out of money and had to leave F1. It was checked by the team's simulator department and they were impressed. We even had an F1 driver test it

[NickM]

This is looking really good, well done all involved.

[AshMcConnell]

Thanks Nick

[AshMcConnell]

Just a little update if anyone is interested. We got a little funding to build a full track, this is about 75% of it complete, hopefully we will get it complete in the next couple of weeks. I'm trying to make it fast now! Currently about 150fps on my i5 with a 560ti, but can be quite slow on lower hardware. More screenshots are on our facebook site



[youtube]DjX6saBw_SE[/youtube]

[NotCamelCase]

Great work! Physics and networking seem very nice and smooth, working on a similar game so I envy them very much I hope and think you could find some serious sponsorship or funding using the dynamic in-game ads structure.

I've not skipped giving my one humble like on Facebook, either

[AshMcConnell]

Great work! Physics and networking seem very nice and smooth, working on a similar game so I envy them very much I hope and think you could find some serious sponsorship or funding using the dynamic in-game ads structure.

I've not skipped giving my one humble like on Facebook, either

Thanks NotCamelCase . Good luck with your game, hope it goes well!