[Torcs-devel] Torcs-NG Newer Generation

[Jean-Christophe H. <jc...@gm...>]

Hello everyone,


I'm new to this list so please let me introduce myself. I'm
Jean-Christophe Hoelt, French man living in Beirut, Lebanon. I
currently work (approximatively) full time for private founder which
tries to improve the open-source community efficiency, so it can rule
the world (basically). This man, Keith Curtis, wrote a book which
exposes its ideas: see
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/155845.asp for
an interview and http://www.lulu.com/content/4964815 to get the book.

So why is Torcs-NG involved? Because it's the base of the project.

Our long term goal is to develop smart AI which drives your cars. To
achieve this, we plan to organize a Virtual Grand Darpa Challenge (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge for the
"non-virtual" version), which should attract lot more competitors
because no hardware (i.e. expensively equipped cars) will be required,
just a racing simulator.

The first stone of the simulator is Torcs. We are going to improve it
to give AI plugins access to "virtual cameras" and other sensors (like
GPS), which should be the only way those plugins can access the track
and cars positions.


The important technical steps we've done so far:

- We've ported the code to a new generation platform: Mono / C#. For
now, we have a Race Manager, a Graphic Plugin and a Robot Plugin
written in C#. Torcs' C++ plugins are wrapped behind C# proxies
(automagically generated using SWIG for those of you who knows it).
- We've writen a renderer based upon Ogre3D, so realistic images are
provided to virtual cameras (and to the user) -- main improvements for
now are shadows and shader based materials.


So I'd like to ask if some of you are interested by any form of
collaboration (or eventually join the project if you like), so
Torcs-NG and OpenRacing car progress together (and why not become only
one project if I can include my code beside yours). The main tasks for
good collaboration will be:

- Let me port the changes I made to interfaces headers into your
repository so it can be analyzed correctly by SWIG. (*)
- For the data: it's good if we can share them. [1] Basically artists
should provide the 3D models into a less proprietary format. (**)
Create the models with more care. (***) I also need to improve
trackgen.
- Other stuffs that probably have to be discussed....


That's it. I'm now waiting for your thoughts about this: are you
enthusiastic or skeptical? Do you have any questions? Hopefully you
understood my opinion: collaboration is the key to better open-source
projects!


Best regards,


- Jean-Christophe "Jeko" Hoelt


(*) Those changes usually doesn't imply big modifications to other
sources, an example: "nested union" are not supported by SWIG, so when
I remove one it requires many little changes around the whole
repository.
(**) Ogre3D do not open .ac files, so I had to open 3D models with
AC3D, export to OBJ, import into blender and then fix the many
conversion bugs (I spent 1 day for 1 track, so this isn't a solution)
(***) Flip the 3D models faces (for correct stencil shadows we need
faces oriented toward the outside), use only closed shapes. Provide
normal-maps...