Racer 0.5.3b1.5 review
DownloadRacer is a free car simulation project, using real car physics to get a realistic feeling.
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Racer is a free car simulation project, using real car physics to get a realistic feeling. Cars, tracks, scenes and such can be created with relative simplicity in mind (compared to other driving simulations). The 3D and other file formats are, or should be, documented. Editors and support programs are also available to get a very flexible and expandable simulator. It uses OpenGL for rendering.
It attempts to do well at the physics section, trying to create life-like cars to emphasize car control and doesn't cut back on realism in the interest of fun. If you've played Grand Prix Legends from Papyrus, you'll know what I'm talking about.
Requirements:
Mac OS X 10.2.3+ (10.1.x may work, but isn't tested, since Racer now uses force feedback).
Note that Mac OS 9 will NOT be supported (it's not Unix).
A 3D card. Software rendering is not fast enough. A nice 3D card also helps, something like a Radeon9700 or up.
Here are some key features of "Racer":
It's totally free! (for non-commercial use)
Available for multiple platforms; Windows 2/XP (95/98/ME may work but have some trouble with fonts), Linux and Mac OS X.
6 DOF models used (the car can move around freely)
Uses motion formulae from actual engineering documents from SAE for example.
Total flexibility; almost everything is customizable through ASCII files.
Commercial-quality rendering engine (with smoke, skidmarks, sparks, sun, flares, vertex-color lit tracks).
Support for Matrox' Surround Gaming. See the corresponding page on Matrox' site.
Lots of addon cars and tracks available on the web.
Easy integration of your own cars and tracks that you create in ZModeler, 3D Studio Max(tm), Maya etc.
At least 15 degrees of freedom for a regular car (6 DOF for the car body, 1 for each wheel's vertical motion and 1 for each wheel spinning, and 1 for the engine, several more for the driveline). Depending actually on how many wheels you put on the car.
Real-time internal clock; no physical dependency on framerate. Controller updates are also done independently of the framerate.
Not limited to 4 wheels; anything from 2 to 8 wheel vehicles are currently supported (but mostly untested, and some problems with hardcoded differentials for example may exist (v0.5.0)).
Not much constraints on the track data; surface info is taken from polygon data (VRML tracks), and splines are used to smooth out the track surface (polygons are too harsh for driving on just like that).
Tools to modify the cars & tracks are freely available on this site (though external utilities are recommended for best results).
Some used algorithms are explained on this site. Also, references are available. If you are programming a carsim, you might find something useful here.
Save game present! ;-)
What's New:
Sound is software again; too many problems reported with hardware sounds
Auto-reset is turned off by default
Auto-reset won't reset unnecessarily anymore on unsplined tracks
New camera system which uses keyframes. If you're using this system, ALL cameras in a track must use the system, as it's not compatible with the old trackcam system. The new camera system only works with splined tracks.
Added viscosity to the surface definitions. For gravel-type surfaces (use values ~0..1 in special.ini).
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