Panthera Free

[Cosmo°]

The folks at Cruden recently announced Panthera Free on their website, to be released following the Automotive Testing Expo in Stuttgart (May 31 to June 2). You can find the official info here:

http://www.cruden.com/Cruden-Panthera-free-simulator-software.html

Due to a lack of communication from Ruud' side, I'm not sure what this means for Racer and the future of our content creation processes. Some of us have repeatedly tried to get in touch with them over the last year or so, without hearing back. When I visited the Expo last year, I briefly talked with Edwin de Vries (Senior Modelling & Simulation Engineer at Cruden) about where Racer was heading at the time and he had hinted at the possibility of a "re-branding" of Racer towards the Panthera brand. It seems this is now taking place.

Interpreting the press release, it looks like the physics engine might change from what we're currently using in free Racer. It's not clear to me whether what they refer to as CSVM Lite is the familiar platform or something different for us to work with.

I'm not sure yet if I can make it to the Expo this year, in order to talk to people at the Cruden booth in person. In any case, it would be really helpful to finally get some line of communication going with them again.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Can't answer half the questions in the questionnaire, how are you guys downloading this?!

At the Cruden site, you maybe have to signin and fill out a formular, then you get a Link for DL or a mail with the link, like me...

Alex

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Moin,
it feels verry good...
My fps, at default settings, are 150fps...i use a GTX970...
Öhm...is it possible to copy and paste "old"content to the "new" version? or is there some thing to change...

Alex

 

[skybh]

Moin,
it feels verry good...
My fps, at default settings, are 150fps...i use a GTX970...
Öhm...is it possible to copy and paste "old"content to the "new" version? or is there some thing to change...

Alex

For cars, i've just made copy/paste, and done

 

[Mr Whippy]

Cars with the standard shaders should work fine, as should tracks.

No such luck for custom shaders from the Rc5c vintage though


I'm not sure what to think at this stage.

There is loads of new features here in audio but I'm not sure exactly how to use them. It looks like accelerate_out and accelerate_in can do all the engine duties now, but only with one event... the engine.
What about exhaust events, so we can have an engine noise from the front, and exhaust at the back?
There is no 'holder' for those events unless you can specify many events within accelerate_out/in from what I can tell.

So maybe this Fmod support is very early, but so far it's implementation only repeats what we already have.

Is full Fmod support on the horizon?




I'm eager to hear what Ruud has planned for the very near future wrt fixing any bugs present and also his future views to what might change more for filling out all these new features.


It's really tough to want to spend the many hours making some great default content when it might all just be out-dated again in 6 months.




Ruud, if you're genuinely interested in getting a finished car implemented with all of these features as an example car, I'm happy work on one with you.
It can use all the latest features as an example, use new shaders for car paints + materials (PBR, they're already made by and large), Fmod sets for audio, scripts for special dials etc, and just generally be as good as Racer can be.

All I ask in return is that where we hit stumbling blocks, we fix the issues so anyone else making fully featured content will have a smooth time doing so!


Cheers

Dave

 

[Cosmo°]

Cruden's forum platform for Panthera Free has been open for registration for a little while now and you can get the most recent update to v8.12.14 in the following thread:

http://panthera-car.proboards.com/thread/3/panthera-free-v8-12-released

 

[Mr Whippy]

Bummer. I just dumped it over my old folder forgetting I'd been tweaking atmosphere.cg lots!

I'd documented most of it but still haha, ah well.

Still fighting to get the old asphalt shader working, and the PBR stuff, but mostly it's getting there for now.

The only thing really 'wrong' with regards getting all that stuff working is the missing/faulty TGA cube map reflection method. I've got this feeling Ruud has removed it but I can't be sure as I've not heard back from him.


Still, for cars at least we can get very nice materials working with this approach, and as a rough fix for track materials, fake an environment lighting a rough way, and when cube maps return just toggle it back on!


Hmmm

Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Meh, I seem to be getting weird green-out issues in reflection maps now, occasionally.

It seems worse the more 'mipped' the envmap is... almost like the envmap is getting out of range colours and when they're mipped they go off the scale and green-out the envmap!?

Maybe it's my squiffy shaders but there isn't too much in there that wasn't just copied across from the old ones which worked fine.


I need to do more testing across the latest versions of Panthera to see if anything was broken/is broken and figure out what.

Oh for a changelog (in detail) from version to version, then I could easily pin point possible issues and focus on them, rather than hours of poking in the dark at stuff!

Dave

 

[sti228]

 

[Mr Whippy]

Just curious if anyone has checked in on the Panthera download recently?

Is it still at the circa July 2016 release 8.12.14?

I'm too busy right now to take a look, but might do in the next few days... just curious if anyone else knew already to save me checking.

Cheers

Dave

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

Just curious if anyone has checked in on the Panthera download recently?

Is it still at the circa July 2016 release 8.12.14?

I'm too busy right now to take a look, but might do in the next few days... just curious if anyone else knew already to save me checking.

Cheers

Dave

Unfortunately, yes :'(

 

[Mr Whippy]

I remember Ruud mentioning a yearly Panthera update schedule, so perhaps we'll see a new version soon, or maybe towards summer.

Hmmm

Dave

 

[sti228]

So rad !

 

[Mr Whippy]

Soooo we're in summer 2017 and we should have a new Panthera release by now?!

Since I've lost the direct download link, and don't want to do the questionnaire again, can anyone tell me if we're still on the circa July 2016 8.12.14 version?


I'm pretty gutted that after a year Ruud has written one message here, and hasn't elaborated on the missing LDR cube/TGA maps feature in Panthera and if they'll ever appear.

Cheers

Dave

 

[Raphael Buthmann]

http://pantherafree.com/download/panthera_free.zip

And yes... unfortunately.

Soooo we're in summer 2017 and we should have a new Panthera release by now?!



Since I've lost the direct download link, and don't want to do the questionnaire again, can anyone tell me if we're still on the circa July 2016 8.12.14 version?





I'm pretty gutted that after a year Ruud has written one message here, and hasn't elaborated on the missing LDR cube/TGA maps feature in Panthera and if they'll ever appear.



Cheers



Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Haha, cheers for checking.

Lets see by August.

I emailed Ruud but no reply yet on the Panthera yearly update.

 

[Harey]

Haha, cheers for checking.

Lets see by August.

I emailed Ruud but no reply yet on the Panthera yearly update.

I guess you'll see if he even responds. I would think there would be an update coming soon here.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Well I've not heard back from Ruud still.

I'm assuming Panthera is still on v1 release too?

I'd bet Cruden are thinking of going and doing something in UDK/Unity etc... then they can focus just on the interface side of stuff rather than graphics, audio, built in physics, networking etc.


Is anyone still up for an RC5c (ish) based line in the sand to make some standardised content for?

I'd hope, maybe, if we get some solid stuff working really nicely, and there are small core issues to make it perfect (tweaks to make things work as expected, not whole re-works to add/expand features), that Ruud might help fix them for our version.


Ooor, are there enough interested parties to try something open/free in udk/unity (probably udk)?

Given the past successes of Racer, I think there is space for an 'open' racing game that's community content driven.
It just needs to have a plan that keeps multiplayer functionality at its core, and a less is more approach to the framework (ie, just spawn and do what you want, a bit like real life)

 

[Harey]

I'd be interested basically an updated 050f version (that's effectively what you're talking about here), to give us a base line to build content on.

But at the same time I could see basically rebuilding the game in something open as being a good idea going forward as well, though this way I think would give us issues in building a more or less finalized version to build on.

 

[Silver Ranger]

Yeah a base line version would be great.

 

[Mr Whippy]

I just downloaded Panthera again to see if it's been updated etc.

It looks like it's been actively updated, I think my last version was 8.x and now it's on 10.x

But if you struggled with the changelogs in Free Racer, the Panthera one is succinct to being essentially useless.

The documentation still looks like it was all from the first release. It was good documentation, but it's either not changed much (Racer core stuff), or it's not been updated.

All the back-end sim/sim link type stuff is clearly more important and is getting work.

But I'd say any chance of Panthera ever replacing any of our old Racer versions is basically zero now.


Given the new AC game is UDK and uses raytracing, going UDK with an open car sim/game seems a really smart move for the community of car modders/enthusiasts/sim drivers imo.

Hmmmm

Dave