This weekend I finally had the chance to fix a reflection bug in the external paint, and with that I no longer need to hide my bad reflections with white paint. There is a lot of tweaks needed in both the shader and the mesh to get this 100% but its such an improvement that I decided to release it in its current state.
It paves the way for custom liveries in future.
New practice mode
As some of you no doubt know by now, last weekends update got a new take on the practice runs, and I finally got round to making a short video and uploading it. It includes two bits of 'instrumentation' as text overlays. I will probably work on cockpit instruments soon. As always comments are welcome.
The graphs In the turnaround period I plot a number of graphs on the screen. I don't think its
very useful at this stage, definitely needs cleaner presentation.
green - altitude 10m - 30m, aim should be to keep that level in the chicanes.
cyan - airspeed, maybe useful in vertical turns to experiment with different lines.
blue - roll, useful to figure out if you are turning too soon or too late in a a gate.
red - G's, clips at +10. High G's uses up a lot of airspeed, especially in the vertical turns, so good way to make sure that your turns are nice and even.
High G / AOA feedback I have also done a lot of work on providing better feedback for high angle of attack flying.
By increasing the amount of cockpit shake. And that is very real, you can see the cockpit vibrate in high G turns, and cant read any instruments.
and by adding a fair amount of low frequency 'turbulent' sound. Because of the frequency you need speakers with fairly good bass performance to really hear this.
This is information that you feel with your body, both the amount of G's and the turbulent buffeting that vibrates through you. Its probably the single area that I feel needs the most amount of work to get right.
On Saturday I had the amazing opportunity to fly Mark Hensman’s MX2 aerobatics aircraft. I played around high in the sky, very tentatively ;-) , and Mark took me on a low level flight mimicking a Red Bull Air Race. That is us, at the top of the VTM.
It was mind blowing and unlike anything you can recreate on a PC. I will quickly list some of the aspects that I want to look at after this flight.
Even bigger split between flying (human experience), and replay ( tv, gopro experience). Cameras and eyes see different things. Make more effort to convey that feeling.
More layered sounds to help convey the vibration that your body feels. Tie it to small vibrations in the cockpit visuals.
The cockpit disappear, the canopy disappears. The world is rock solid in slow motion with amazing detail, wings are there and the propeller is like a caged tiger, alive and growling.
Play around with the camera, field of view, and maybe look around mode. Your head is constantly moving to watch the ground and the horizon. Maybe this side will only ever work in virtual reality.
Mark is an amazing aerobatics pilot and aircraft technician, and was part of Nigel Lamb’s team in the 2016 Red Bull Air Race series.
team-xtreme Nigel Lamb - Red Bull
Feedback
Hi,
While I have some fantastic players, with amazing race times and feedback, I need more, especially from everyone who paid and then abandoned Pylon Racer.
Somewhere in the last month it looked interesting enough that you forked out real money, yet only ....
33% of players managed to finish the first practice, including DSQ (20 seconds worth of game-play)
15% of players managed the first practice without disqualification
5% of players have finished the full course (1:30 worth of game-play)
despite promise, the game seems to be missing the mark for some of you and I would love to know why, and see if I can address it. Please post comments on the community hub.
Johan
First clean run !
Congratulations to Tonzaap on the first clean run of the complete course, and a handy lead in overall time.
