Car World

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Pledge to support open graphics drivers!

(march 1, 2007)
Open Source or Free Software drivers are important because they enable the hardware to work out of the box on all Free operating systems, including Linux, they guarantee that the support for the hardware will not be discontinued so long as there are people using it, they guarante that functionnality of the hardware is not arbitrarily limited by factors other that technical reasons, they guarante the customer can choose the platform he uses even if he is presently tied to Windows.
This is why, I belive that responsible consumers should purchase, whenever possible, hardware with open drivers because there is no conceivable downside for the consumer, it empowers him to use his purchase as he sees fit.
One day all PC hardware will have open drivers, that day users will never need to install a driver again.
Unfortunately, today, the two dominant graphics cards manufacturers AMD and nVidia currently deny their customers the benefits of open graphics drivers for reasons that benefit them at their customer's expense.
For this reason, I have setup a pledge to support manufacturers who release open graphics drivers.

About CarWorld

CarWorld is a small driving simulator/demo I use to test various things of interest. It was mostly developed when I was a student. It is released with the full source code under the GNU General Public License.

Where I am now

I am now working at OKTAL where I work on Callas/Prosper a vehicle dynamics evaluation tool and full scale driving simulator.

The rendering

The two top pictures represent an slightly older version (v0.072) but graphically similar of CarWorld as it was presented for my project. v0.072 includes an OpenGL based renderer allowing

file input and displaying of texture mapped models with interpolated surface normals, real time projected shadows (as seen in the dino lights example).
background object
on screen command line to modify visual and simulation parameters

The mechanics

based on classical mechanics
uses standard metrics (Newtons, meters, seconds...)
there are no constraints on the environment surface
variable length time increments and variable increment number means "CarWorld time" is not dependent on frame rate.
adjustable simulation specs include: metrics, mass, moment of inertia around rotation axis, suspension pre load, compression damping, rebound damping, engine torque output, air friction, surface friction.

Screenshots



more screenshots and ports

What CarWorld needs to run

Some versions of CarWorld have been tested on Linux, HP-UNIX, IRIX and Windows95/98/NT/2k/XP, Mac OSX and BeOS but it should however compile under any OS with OpenGL and supported by the SDL. I develop under Windows and Linux. It uses the SDL librairy

for Windows you will need SDL.dll glu32.dll as well as C/C++ runtime libraries msvcr80.dll and msvcp80.dll
for Linux install the SDL rpms/debs.

history

0.243: (28/06/06) compiles with gcc 4.1, no more warnings compiling with Visual Studio .Net 2005 (8.0)
0.242: (08/06/06) compiles with Visual Studio .Net 2005 (8.0) and gcc 4.0.4
0.239: (07/04/04) Ported to SDL, compiles with VC6 and gcc 3.3.1, server mode does not work
0.223: (20/09/00) Networked mode now works under Windows95/98 (problem under NT...)
0.222: (19/07/00) truck straightened out, rpm package target added to makefile
0.219: (15/06/00) DirectX force feedback
0.215: (19/04/00) slightly better network support, first BeOS port, applied patches sent in
0.205: preliminary support for networked gaming (under UNIX/Linux only for now)
0.198: bug fixes, support for Linux joystick etc...
0.190: first release

SourceForge: developer web page
Developers: documentation generated by doc++ (old, not updated)
author/feed back: email Marcus Hewat
back to Marcus Hewat's home page
OKTAL where I am currently working on Callas/Prosper a vehicle dynamics evaluation tool and driving simulator.

Download

Download carworld