OpenRacing WIP

Tasks & Plans

Achieving OTI

This is little thinking about torcs/openracing interdependencies.. The goal of this thinking is to simplify the code, by getting rid of as much C++ as possible, especially if it is useless.

Facts

• The only hard dependency that OR does have on Torcs' C++ code is simuv2 (simuv2 works with tTrack, tCarElt and tSituation).
  • This in turn create a dependency over torcs track plugin, which is required to load a tTrack properly.
• The robot interface depends on tCarElt for compatibility with Torcs AI, this can be dropped for now (we have C# robots), and we can find a cleaner solution later on.
  • The robot itself is responsible for loading the car informations (via an XML GfParm file).
• RaceManager inits tCarElt using informations given by the Robot's XML, then associate the car with the robot (see Q1).
• RaceManager inits tSituation.

Quick remainder

• tTrack is the logical track as stored and manipulated in C++ by Torcs (i.e. track trajectory and width basically as a list of segments)
• tCarElt is the information about a car. positions of elements, wheels, fuel, driving commands, etc... (hundreds of fields in the structs)
• tSituation describe the situation of a race. List of cars, the track, some global infos.

Questions

Q1: Should the robot decide the features of his car?

It seems more natural to me to build a car then put a driver into the car (instead of the opposite). Maybe some AI are very specific to drive a particular car, let's forget about that first: we simplify!

Killing C++ Howto

• Get rid of all C++ code not needed by simuv2.
  • 1. disable legacy c++ robots
  • 2. C# code that needs to access/modify t* struct should do it through an interface (will will very probably serve as a base for OTI).
  • 3. Comment out and remove as much C++ code as possible.

• Simplify simuv2
  • simuv2 no longer manages collisions, we should be able to get rid of Solid.

Disabling C++ robots

This should allow to disable learning, robottools.

Separate C# code from current data structures

Will make changes to those easier.

Numbers

The indicator is the number of lines of C++ compiled in libsimulator.so. Goal is 0 (one day maybe).

• 22/06, 5pm. 29115 lines

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Ogre renderer

• Automatic car 3D model conversion. (can be called "automatic AC3D to Ogre conversion").
• Automatic track 3D model conversion from Torcs-NG's data (starting from trackgen). Should warn about unsupported geometry and such.

Driver

• Load sharpy's driver, make it run a car : Keith will do

User interface

• Make a GUI designed for our needs (load a track, evaluate drivers, run simulation in background, ...) : WIP
• Work on the installation process

Screenshots

Bellow, you'll find some screenshots showing work in progress of Ogre renderer and GUIs.

• OpenRacing gallery
• 

  2008-sep-08, high-quality skybox, back to stencil shadows

• 

  2008-feb-12, minimalist main menu

• 

  2008-feb-25, chasing camera

• 

  2008-mar-14, speedometer, tachometer, detect and remove alpha-blended objects

• 

  2008-mar-18, free-ride

Ogre renderer

• Make a camera follows a car (from behind) : DONE.

Core engine

• Load a complete track using C++ plugin : DONE.
• Initialize OgreDotNet graphic plugins to display the track : DONE.
• Load cars / physics engine : DONE.
• Load a C++ driver / create C# interface : DONE.

Driver

• Implement user controlled vehicle : DONE.

User interface

• Port to MyGUI's C# interface : DONE.

Merging Imre's work

Order:

• Identify hardcoded stuffs : WIP
  • openracing.in -> LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/mulder/projects/openracing/cleaned/src/libsimulator/.libs
  • src/ode/OdeLoader.cs -> mCtx.RegisterResourcePath("/home/mulder/projects/trunk/track/Barcelona/");
  • my_config doesn't have to be in the repository
  • src/core/RaceManager.cs -> InitStartingGrid
  • src/graphic/OScene.cs -> mCtx.RegisterResourcePath("/home/mulder/projects/openracing/cleaned/data/tracks/road/icy");
  • src/ode/OdeMesh.cs -> XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader("/home/mulder/projects/openracing/cleaned/data/tracks/road/icy/Mesh.mesh.xml");
• Full merge
• Clean