torcs

First I wish you all and your families merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Because of low demand I did not set up a championship in 2020, but I will set up the 2021 championship soon.

Kind regards, Bernhard.

First I wish you all and your families a happy new year.

As you might heard of, Sourceforge canceled the support for CVS repositories, so I migrated to git. The migration was pretty painless, the only ugly thing is that we used the $id$ keyword replacement, which is for good reason not supported by git.

The TORCS Endurance World Championship 2017 is done, the winner is like last year the USRobotics Team owned by Andrew Sumner. Its his third championship win in a row, which is outstanding. Congratulations. Congratulations to the other competitors too, it is a decent amount of effort required to take part.

Andrew published very cool race reviews, don't miss these:

• Race 10 report
• Race 9 report
• Race 8 report
• Race 7 report
• Race 6 report
• Race 5 report
• Race 4 report
• Race 3 report
• Race 2 report
• Race 1 report

We are looking for additional competitors, if you would like to take part don't hesitate to contact us, e.g. on the championship forum. You can start from the entries of the past season, you can download them from the 2017 championship page (bottom of the page). Hope to see you next season on the track, good luck on your way to the Hall of Fame.

Enjoy, Bernhard.

TORCS version 1.3.8-test1 is available for download. The reason for this test release is the upcoming 2017 championship, I will set this up soon. We are always looking for more competitors, so just have a look at it.

The most important changes are improvements in the simulation code for extreme banking and slopes, the addition of a tire wear/temperature model, improved z collision response (matters for jumps), a brand new track and various little adjustments. The TRB can now automatically generate the racemanager configuration file, and adds random number seeds for later use.

The version is denoted as a test version, because there is some more work to do for the final release, especially the tire wear/temperature model must be parametrized for the cars. Currently the trb1 cars are working great.

The tire wear/temperature model gets accessible if you race in pro mode, have a look at this video.

Downloads

• For Windows users is an executable installer available.
• For Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris/Windows developers and Linux/FreeBSD/OpenSolaris users is a full source package available.

Enjoy, Bernhard.

Changes since 1.3.7

• Added isnan check in collision response calculation (type and dimension transformation could potentially lead to a normal with length 0) (Wolf-Dieter, Daniel, Bernhard).
• Z collisions reworked (car-road) (Bernhard).
• Improved wheel position calculation (Bernhard).
• Improved rideheight calculation (Bernhard).
• Fixed tiny graphical position offset when rendering car on strong banking (Bernhard).
• Adjusted parameters and shadow of car1-ow1 (Wolf-Dieter, Bernhard).
• Implemented caster, adjustable via setup structure and screen (Bernhard).
• Suspension slow/fast threshold is now adjustable (Bernhard).
• Changed 2.5D calculations to 3D (Bernhard).
• Fixed calculation of the angle of attack for spoilers (Bernhard).
• Added initial tire temperature/wear model (Bernhard).
• Made tire temperature/wear model data available for robots (Bernhard).
• Added tire temperature/wear temperature model data to dashboard (Bernhard).
• Added tire temperature/wear configuration parameter, "tire factor", see practice.xml as example. If the factor is 0, the temperature/wear model gets disabled (Bernhard).
• Just enable tire temperature/wear in pro mode (Bernhard).
• Added new track created by Andrew Sumner, Hidden Valley (Andrew, Bernhard).
• Added field to tPitCmd struct to control tire change (Bernhard).
• Updated pit stop screen to change tires or leave it on (Bernhard).
• Performance adjustment for car6-trb1, should now be more competitive (Wolf-Dieter, Bernhard).
• Tire change time can now be configured as parameter "all tires change time", the default is 16 seconds (Bernhard).
• Added track internal name field to TRB for XML generation (Bernhard).
• TRB adoptions, selecting driver optionally by name (previously only by index), added configuration option for "skill level default" in the "Drivers" section (Bernhard).
• Added race configuration generator for TRB (Bernhard).
• Integrated race configuration generator into TRB race submission page (Bernhard).
• Updated Windows installer for 1.3.8-test1 (Bernhard).

Today I have published a video featuring the upcoming tire temperature and wear model, you can watch it here. At the beginning you can see my car set up and controller settings, if you are curious.

The goal was the verification of the distance to wear down 2 tires completely, and to observe the progression of handling, temperature, wear and laptimes. My goal was to have these tires to last around 200-250km, it was a point landing with a covered distance of 199km (55 laps and a few hundred meters).

The best lap was lap 24 with a laptime of 1:12:37, in pro mode, as a little challenge you can post videos of your best pro mode lap there;-)