v0.32 update in the share

After reducing the AA from 8x to 4x, I didn't noticed right away the trees, as I was focusing more on the grass, but they were more transparent at a distance than they were at 8x.

And it bothered me much, as 8x was a bit too much for my system, with dips in the 20s fps.

Racing AI was out of question as well.

When I turned back AA on a week or so ago, when I posted on my blog about it, and how nicer the trees were with it at 8x (albeit a bit transparent), I first tried 4x, and it wasn't looking great, but the trees showed improvement in the way the mask appear.. so I tried 8x, and it was better, so I assumed 2x would be worse than 4x and didnt tried.

I gave 2x AA a try, and to my surprise, the trees were just perfect.  they were not transparent anymore, and were smooth as well.  However, the road dust and skybox looked horrible.

But this I knew the fix... I have fixed the trees, and most alpha mask in the track, but must have overlooked these.

The original mask simbin did at the time didn't seems to work good in the ac engine, the mask was lacking contrast, seems AC displays stuff better with a crisper mask than a blurry one.

Specially without alpha blending.

So I fixed both skybox and road dust, and raised the dust at the entry of quiddelbacher hohe, it was sticking a bit in the tarmac.

I also re-positioned the start and pit objects so the cars fit in their boxes now.

Also ran the 3d grass texture with an high pass filter, further reducing the darkness at the bottom of the texture, as stated by kill_em_all :)

I originally went with shadow/highlight, but high pass made it even better.

The optimizations to LOD have paid off big time, prior to doing it, and prior to grass, I could barely run the AI anymore, as I often had the 95% cpu usage overlay, and the game lagged a lot during that time.  Specially after I added the grooves.

Now, with all the grass on, I can race and record a replay with 6 AI (first number I tried actually, so I dunno how much I can run, but doubt I would make it to 12-15... but who knows...)

I stopped the race at the first lap cause I didn't had the time to run the 2nd one :)

Regarding the race, I had a very good start, and cleared out the red arrow in my screen before the first turn, starting from 2nd position.

So I thought I would have it easy, and the arrow wasn't there until the entrance to flugplatz... then I realized they were still rather close... (playing with no mirrors) so I became a bit nervous for a while, then opened up a can of whupass and had 8 seconds between the 2nd at the finish line :)

AI is set at 100%.

I'm actually surprised to see how good the AI is in AC.... specially considering they had no AI in netkar, and no AI at start... so it's rather in an early stage, and yet, they are pretty darn good, and race cleanly and very humanlike.

The AI trying to pass me at flugplatz shows this well.  So far, the AI never had me crash in AC...

I also tried for the 3rd or 4th time to fix the part in flugplatz that makes the ferrari evo's front hit the tarmac, and I still can't make it go away.

I tried multiple relax, multiple mesh smooth, turbosmooth, flow connect and another plugin I bought, and I can make it a tad better, but not even worth making an update with it.

Since it is the only car doing this, I will leave it like this.. if someone can suggest me something, I will give it another try, but I'm out of clues for now.

If we could lift the suspension on that ferrari a bit, it would be fine, but we can't...

Looking at the problem carefully in a replay, and you see the front wing hit the tarmac, then it bounces the car up, and often, if you are coming fast enough, the front wheel lift off, and you loose traction in the front wheel for a brief moment, ending up in the guardrail to the right.

Looking at the mesh from all angles trying to show find any roughness, but I don't see anything out of place.

There could be something wrong with the car suspension settings as well...so I don't mind so much for now.