A note: I implemented dynamic FOV based on speed. It made a *huge* improvement in perceived motion. Good call, Danlab & PowerMacX.

you should ad another thing to make the rover more speedy

its a subtil camera movement on Y axis (up and down)
this help the player "fell the ground"
i added it in my racing game, this help to see the road when climbing hills too
the idea is to make the camera slide a little using the X angle of the car

here is a pic


i made some screenshot of extrem position to show the different position but on a ground with small change the effect is really nice

i added also a small delay to the camera to make the effect smoother
but its difficult to calibrate

That's a very good idea. I believe I will do the same... it shouldn't be too hard -- and my camera tracking system already goes through a small delay ( by averaging input ).

Thanks for the suggestion!

And, once I've got some technical details regarding stencil shadows on ATI cards worked out I'd like to post a build for people to try out.

ravuya Wrote:Wow, that looks great. Perhaps you could set the game in some sort of box canyon -- those are popular for "outdoors games" when the terrain is small.

Naturally, if you do this you'll have to make sure your rover sucks at climbing hills

I've thought about this. Right now, once you drive off the terrain you (seamlessly) pass into a sort of "inifinite" space -- it's not really infinite, but it's large enough that eventually you'll get bored Well, either you turn around, or eventually you go so far that floating point error causes ODE to blowup...

I've also considered the canyon approach -- I like the idea. Both are valid, and my stage description files allow either.

Just a suggestion from someone who worked on racing sims: the only people who care that you've used physics for every imaginable connection between parts are tru propeller-heads. the average gamer wants it to handle well, and be fun to play. If you run into framerate issues, bring down the complexity of your body system...

-d

I agree, but I'm a propeller head. For what it's worth, it does handle well, and it gets good frame rates.

But the thing is, it's *not* a racing game It's a war game, and I want the experience plausible. Which is to say, if you were driving a jeep across a lumpy/rocky field at 60 mph, you'd find it hard to aim, and you might very well find yourself flipped over at some point -- and that's what I'm trying to recreate.