Cars Shifter Kart 125 0.8.3

[Esotic]

My wishlist for things to fix on the way to a proper 1.0 release (if anyone has guidance):
- tire rim/hub blur
- the driver ends up "under the earth" if the kart flips over (fixed in 0.8.3)
- animation fixes for the hands/steering, control/steering arms, engine chain, and gears
- the back of the seat should be skinnable (done)
- pixel perfect UV Maps between islands that share a seam in blender (this is probably unnecessary, as I've been able to create fairly seamless skins using Gimp and some patience)

Esotic submitted a new resource:

Shifter Kart 125 - Model and Physics updates for the venerable Shifter Kart

This Kart was originally uploaded to Race Department over here, back in 2017, so many thanks to everyone that made that possible: https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/gokart.16419/

This release is my attempt to add at least one revisions worth of "upgrades" to this kart, which includes adjustments to the base model as well as three new LODs, which should help to improve framerates/fps.

This release includes a conversion of all the skins I've previously released for the...

Read more about this resource...

 

[luathas]

So much fun!

Love the sound ....and the animated driver's feet!

I noticed a few things. I went ahead and made a few changes so you can see them, first hand....hope you don't mind.
I adjusted some shaders using ext_config.ini (some things looked too bright/white, etc.) I noticed the rear axle wasn't lining up with the spindle of the rear wheels...made a couple of changes in suspension.ini. The spindle on the left front wheel is frame/axle colour, while the one on the right front wheel is wheel colour... did a quick material substitution for the right front wheel spindle through model replacement in ext_config.ini.
Added exhaust smoke (& flame), and made a simple animation so the chain sprockets look like they are rotating with the wheels. You can download the changes I made here:
https://sharemodsDOTcom/f7lic1ad7ylp/shifter_kart.rar.html (copy and paste link, and change DOT to a . ......since RD won't let me post a actual link to a 3rd party website)

May I suggest that the large sprocket be made slightly smaller, so it doesn't touch the small sprocket? Right now, they are running into one another.

Is it possible to make the LOD files smaller? They seem to be awfully large for LOD's. Edit: Oh, I see! They must have been saved as regular kn5's (i.e. with texture) If you save them as kn5 LOD, then the file sizes will be smaller (i.e textures not saved)

 

[luathas]

Are the steering control arms animated? I've noticed after a while, the control arms start to move about on their own, detaching themselves from the steering column.

 

[Esotic]

So much fun!

Love the sound ....and the animated driver's feet!

I noticed a few things. I went ahead and made a few changes so you can see them, first hand....hope you don't mind.
I adjusted some shaders using ext_config.ini (some things looked too bright/white, etc.) I noticed the rear axle wasn't lining up with the spindle of the rear wheels...made a couple of changes in suspension.ini. The spindle on the left front wheel is frame/axle colour, while the one on the right front wheel is wheel colour... did a quick material substitution for the right front wheel spindle through model replacement in ext_config.ini.
Added exhaust smoke (& flame), and made a simple animation so the chain sprockets look like they are rotating with the wheels. You can download the changes I made here:
https://sharemodsDOTcom/f7lic1ad7ylp/shifter_kart.rar.html (copy and paste link, and change DOT to a . ......since RD won't let me post a actual link to a 3rd party website)

May I suggest that the large sprocket be made slightly smaller, so it doesn't touch the small sprocket? Right now, they are running into one another.

Is it possible to make the LOD files smaller? They seem to be awfully large for LOD's. Edit: Oh, I see! They must have been saved as regular kn5's (i.e. with texture) If you save them as kn5 LOD, then the file sizes will be smaller (i.e textures not saved)

This is all great information and I'll be looking into making these corrections/adjustments.

 

[Esotic]

Are the steering control arms animated? I've noticed after a while, the control arms start to move about on their own, detaching themselves from the steering column.

If you check the steering in the CM Showroom, the control arms do move (partially through the fuel tank), so yes, I'm guessing I'll/We'll need to track down how to make those work reliably in AC sessions.

 

[Esotic]

The current kart has a separate texture for each rim. Is anyone opposed to simplifying this down to 1 texture that all the rims share?

 

[Esotic]

As an FYI, I'm not currently using CSP with karts, as it has a "feature" where it's not drawing drivers into some of the karts

CSP on

CSP off

 

[Esotic]

Esotic updated Shifter Kart 125 with a new update entry:

ffb & lod adjustments, framerate improvements

I was hoping to get some new animations into 0.8.2, but that is proving to be a much bigger task than I was initially hoping, so new animations may need to wait until 0.9 or 1.0.

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[GTAce]

Thank you, brilliant fun!

 

[Esotic]

If anyone makes a skin/livery for this kart please drop a note here in the discussion thread:

Skins - shifter kart

mactuga submitted a new resource: shifter kart - mclaren skin º 3 One more formula one skin mclaren. Enjoy and please like or review Read more about this resource...

www.racedepartment.com

Cheers,

Dave\Esotic

 

[Esotic]

@BassGaming I'm not entirely sure why you might be having low framerate, but it seems unlikely that it's directly related to the Shifter Kart mod itself, as I spent a lot of time making sure it's fairly well optimized and has a higher FPS than just about everything else in AC.

I would assume this is likely related to something with Custom Shader Patch? If you are using CSP then try turning it off and retesting. If you can narrow down why this is happening I can look deeper into fixing the issue.

 

[BassGaming]

Yeah will do. Maybe it's something about the driver being exposed and some cockpit settings interacting? Like low-res cockpits and drivers when I'm in first person.

Will definitely play around with some stuff and report back!
I was able to race with 3 Karts and it's fun stuff though so the potental is definitely there if I manage to get it working on my system.

 

[Esotic]

@Rihorac Thanks for the feedback. When I load up a session with my T300 (in any car) the wheel normally starts out a bit to the left, and when I'm driving it tends to bounce around reacting to the road texture. If I switch to keyboard and mouse and run it down the drag strip with no steering input it tends to end up going randomly left or right, probably due to whatever bumps are affecting it most on that run.

 

[Esotic]

@BassGaming The horrible FPS with the current Shifter Kart seems to be related to the Lighting FX CSP Extension in newer version of CSP. 0.1.60 does not have the issue, but 0.1.68 and greater does. I'm researching the problem, but at this point I'm not entirely sure what could be causing it.

 

[Esotic]

Esotic updated Shifter Kart 125 with a new update entry:

minor seat shader and texture changes

It had been bugging me how the textures and shaders for the seat and vinyl "sticker" on the back of the seat did not look cohesive, so those textures and shaders should now be more similar. There are no other physics or model changes, so the version number is the same, as this is a purely visual change.
View attachment 497296

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[BassGaming]

@BassGaming The horrible FPS with the current Shifter Kart seems to be related to the Lighting FX CSP Extension in newer version of CSP. 0.1.60 does not have the issue, but 0.1.68 and greater does. I'm researching the problem, but at this point I'm not entirely sure what could be causing it.

Ahh welp thanks for looking into it at least. I mean the mod is still absolutely usable for me with 2-3 people online so I can still get a lot of enjoyment out of this great mod. It only starts to fall apart with ~6 Karts ontrack at the same time.
I mean yeah, the csp documentation can be really tedious to work through, I know exactly what you mean ^^

If you do manage to fix it at some point I'll be the first to celebrate it with a huge Kart tournament.

 

[Esotic]

Ahh welp thanks for looking into it at least. I mean the mod is still absolutely usable for me with 2-3 people online so I can still get a lot of enjoyment out of this great mod. It only starts to fall apart with ~6 Karts ontrack at the same time.
I mean yeah, the csp documentation can be really tedious to work through, I know exactly what you mean ^^

If you do manage to fix it at some point I'll be the first to celebrate it with a huge Kart tournament.

I'm fairly certain this is just a CSP issue, and I would suggest disabling CSP when running Karts. The KS-76 has the same problem, so it's not just this kart that's affected.

 

[Esotic]

@Arkangel749 Hello! In reference to the review, can you provide some more specifics about the settings you are using? I've seen issues with using Lighting FX in the newer version of CSP where it tanks the framerate, but this seems to also happen with other karts like the KS-76, and the Kart 125 Shifter (at least on my machine using CSP 0.1.75). When I turn off the Lighting FX extension the problem goes away.

There's also an issue with CSP where it doesn't render all the drivers, so I generally turn CSP off when I'm driving karts:

Cars - Shifter Kart 125

My wishlist for things to fix on the way to a proper 1.0 release (if anyone has guidance): - tire rim/hub blur - the driver ends up "under the earth" if the kart flips over - animation fixes for the hands/steering, control/steering arms, engine chain, and gears - the back of the seat should be...

www.racedepartment.com

Cheers,

Dave\Esotic

 

[Arkangel749]

@Arkangel749 Hello! In reference to the review, can you provide some more specifics about the settings you are using? I've seen issues with using Lighting FX in the newer version of CSP where it tanks the framerate, but this seems to also happen with other karts like the KS-76, and the Kart 125 Shifter (at least on my machine using CSP 0.1.75). When I turn off the Lighting FX extension the problem goes away.

There's also an issue with CSP where it doesn't render all the drivers, so I generally turn CSP off when I'm driving karts:

Cars - Shifter Kart 125

My wishlist for things to fix on the way to a proper 1.0 release (if anyone has guidance): - tire rim/hub blur - the driver ends up "under the earth" if the kart flips over - animation fixes for the hands/steering, control/steering arms, engine chain, and gears - the back of the seat should be...

www.racedepartment.com

Cheers,

Dave\Esotic

I ran the tests I described in my review with the CSP 0.1.76-preview1 (Patreon only, may be that?). I tried other karts as well, specifically the rotax ones and one that I absolutely do not remember the source, (name of this kart is gokart125cc_ax30 from H22). Thing is only your kart hits this hard on the framerate of my machine. I may have failed to clarify that in free practice (thus w/o opponents) your kart runs quite smoothly. The unupgraded version of the kart 125 shifter runs like a charm.

One interesting detail that may be useful: when my PC starts tanking because I have too much opponents on track, it gives the usual CPU usage warning. i.g. if I run a race with 20 RSS Formula Hybrids.
When i reach my limit for your kart (which is 5 opponents) the CPU warning rarely comes up, while the framerate drops no matter what.

I may test your mod with the specs you suggested, but if I have to turn off CSP everytime I go for a kart race, I might as well use the older version.

 

[Esotic]

Esotic updated Shifter Kart 125 with a new update entry:

physics, model, and CSP fixes/updates

0.8.3 Updates

- Optimized/Updated the collider to better fix the shape of the car and driver. Kart should no longer flip upside down with the driver's head under the map.
- CSP FPS issues should now be fixed (bug introduced in CSP 0.1.62 now requirs lights.ini to contain at least one entry)
- Converted all PNG textures to DDS
- Brake Bias range adjusted, and Brake Power setting added

To resolve the issue of drivers dissapearing, you can add the following section to the "My...

Read the rest of this update entry...