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Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish. Also it might be nice to have a first-person vew, maybe the camera view contributes to the

Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish. Also it might be nice to have a first-person vew, maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. I love the procedurally-generated landscapes. It really captures the feeling of driving on unfamiliar roads. I'm curious how the physics works. Is this using raycast wheels? A couple of years ago I made a racing game for Oculus Quest using Godot[0], based on Godot's "VehicleBody", and getting the physics to work satisfactorily was a major headache. But a procedural world would have made it so much cooler. [0] https://sidequestvr.com/app/1403/ghost-racing-vr-wip https://sidequestvr.com/app/1403/ghost-racing-vr-wip

xeonmc 4y ago
press c [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB6rP3KHcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB6rP3KHcc
- jstanley 4y ago
  Nice, thanks.
meheleventyone 4y ago
The author did a little write up here: https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40 https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40 By the sounds of it they’re doing a very simple sim with raycast wheels and not using a rigidbody physics engine.
- kqr 4y ago
  Interesting that they generated terrain first and then tried to fit the road onto it (with the headaches involved, like getting stuck on peninsulas) and not generated road first and then surrounded it by terrain!
  - anslo 4y ago
    I figured that was the best way to get organic-feeling roads stitched seamlessly into a far-spanning environment. I also didn't recognise at the time just how hard it would be, but I still think it was the right choice.
    - kqr 4y ago
      You are probably right! The results are stunning.
anslo 4y ago
Physics are always a major headache - mine are pretty hacky and cut a lot of corners, such as ignoring trees or preventing the car from flipping. I only height-test the wheels, progress them independently, and then resolve the chassis position from that. It's not terribly physically accurate but it gets the job done, and is pretty cheap!
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  Yeah these simple approaches are great and a bit of a lost art. Physics engines give a lot of flexibility and emergent behaviour but add a lot of complication when you want to constrain the madness. I wrote my own simple vehicle for our platform the other day which was a lot of fun: https://dotbigbang.com/game/b0e8bf8b309b44a3b0abed8f9525e335/hill-climb-challenge-?mp=brumbrum https://dotbigbang.com/game/b0e8bf8b309b44a3b0abed8f9525e335...
Gordonjcp 4y ago
The first bit I landed on looked exactly like the roads around where I grew up...
FpUser 4y ago
>"Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish" I tried it on PC, laptop (both are Windows) and on Google Pixel 6 Pro. All are very fluid. But reaction on keypress I think has slight constant delay. Not sure what's the reason. Anyways I used it on auto drive and just stared for a while.
- jstanley 4y ago
  I'm not saying it's not fluid. If anything it's too fluid! It's difficult to drive fast because the car takes so long to react to your inputs.
dahart 4y ago
> maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. Can confirm. I was physics lead on a console driving game, and we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics, and that it’s quite difficult to get the camera right. The camera can make real physics feel sluggish, cartoony, or just wrong, and a great camera can make fake physics feel real. We humans are pretty sensitive to subtle motions. Making physics feel right is also about lots of other cues too though (cues which aren’t here in this game). Sound and effects and even sometimes tactile feedback are also needed to complete the illusion. Sometimes real physics is surprisingly sluggish, and we don’t notice how slowly momentum changes until we take away the sounds and bumps and dust and skid marks.
- Jare 4y ago
  > we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics This was my experience when I made Speed Haste, a 3D racing game back in 95. I spent a few nights banging my head against my car physics code, and being frustrated and tired, I switched to tuning camera code to clear my head. Voila! Car physics and handling felt completely different. As you say, audio was huge too, even back in these primitive and (by today's standards) cartoony times. I've used this anecdote when teaching gamedev students, to hammer in their heads that games are complex because they're the sum of their parts + the sum of all the interactions between all the parts. (for the historically inclined, code for the game is available at https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc)
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    Speed haste, I remember that game maybe on a Twlight CD or an alternative? I played this game a lot when I visiting my grandpa and grandma. Good memories and a fun game, you also had that flight game, but I don't remember the name.
  - MonaroVXR 4y ago
    Another reply by me, the best racing I have played are Need for Shift 1 and 2. With velocity based motion blur and an incredible camera.
Aperocky 4y ago
I think it's because there are only full left and right and no slight turn of wheel like we do 99.9% of time in real driving.

xeonmc 4y ago

press c [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB6rP3KHcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLB6rP3KHcc

jstanley 4y ago
Nice, thanks.

meheleventyone 4y ago

The author did a little write up here: https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40 https://anslo.medium.com/slow-roads-tl-dr-a664ac6bce40 By the sounds of it they’re doing a very simple sim with raycast wheels and not using a rigidbody physics engine.

kqr 4y ago
Interesting that they generated terrain first and then tried to fit the road onto it (with the headaches involved, like getting stuck on peninsulas) and not generated road first and then surrounded it by terrain!
- anslo 4y ago
  I figured that was the best way to get organic-feeling roads stitched seamlessly into a far-spanning environment. I also didn't recognise at the time just how hard it would be, but I still think it was the right choice.
  - kqr 4y ago
    You are probably right! The results are stunning.

anslo 4y ago

Physics are always a major headache - mine are pretty hacky and cut a lot of corners, such as ignoring trees or preventing the car from flipping. I only height-test the wheels, progress them independently, and then resolve the chassis position from that. It's not terribly physically accurate but it gets the job done, and is pretty cheap!

meheleventyone 4y ago
Yeah these simple approaches are great and a bit of a lost art. Physics engines give a lot of flexibility and emergent behaviour but add a lot of complication when you want to constrain the madness. I wrote my own simple vehicle for our platform the other day which was a lot of fun: https://dotbigbang.com/game/b0e8bf8b309b44a3b0abed8f9525e335/hill-climb-challenge-?mp=brumbrum https://dotbigbang.com/game/b0e8bf8b309b44a3b0abed8f9525e335...

Gordonjcp 4y ago

The first bit I landed on looked exactly like the roads around where I grew up...

FpUser 4y ago

>"Really neat! My only complaint is that the handling is very sluggish" I tried it on PC, laptop (both are Windows) and on Google Pixel 6 Pro. All are very fluid. But reaction on keypress I think has slight constant delay. Not sure what's the reason. Anyways I used it on auto drive and just stared for a while.

jstanley 4y ago
I'm not saying it's not fluid. If anything it's too fluid! It's difficult to drive fast because the car takes so long to react to your inputs.

dahart 4y ago

> maybe the camera view contributes to the sluggish feeling. Can confirm. I was physics lead on a console driving game, and we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics, and that it’s quite difficult to get the camera right. The camera can make real physics feel sluggish, cartoony, or just wrong, and a great camera can make fake physics feel real. We humans are pretty sensitive to subtle motions. Making physics feel right is also about lots of other cues too though (cues which aren’t here in this game). Sound and effects and even sometimes tactile feedback are also needed to complete the illusion. Sometimes real physics is surprisingly sluggish, and we don’t notice how slowly momentum changes until we take away the sounds and bumps and dust and skid marks.

Jare 4y ago
> we discovered to our surprise that the camera is a critical piece of making sure the physics actually feels like physics This was my experience when I made Speed Haste, a 3D racing game back in 95. I spent a few nights banging my head against my car physics code, and being frustrated and tired, I switched to tuning camera code to clear my head. Voila! Car physics and handling felt completely different. As you say, audio was huge too, even back in these primitive and (by today's standards) cartoony times. I've used this anecdote when teaching gamedev students, to hammer in their heads that games are complex because they're the sum of their parts + the sum of all the interactions between all the parts. (for the historically inclined, code for the game is available at https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc https://github.com/TheJare/SpeedHasteSrc)
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  Speed haste, I remember that game maybe on a Twlight CD or an alternative? I played this game a lot when I visiting my grandpa and grandma. Good memories and a fun game, you also had that flight game, but I don't remember the name.
- MonaroVXR 4y ago
  Another reply by me, the best racing I have played are Need for Shift 1 and 2. With velocity based motion blur and an incredible camera.

Aperocky 4y ago

I think it's because there are only full left and right and no slight turn of wheel like we do 99.9% of time in real driving.