Rush Hour Version 1.1.0 Release Notes

Release Notes

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Contents

About Rush Hour

Rush Hour is an AI-powered toolkit for animating vehicles. Using the realtime physics engine of Unreal Engine, an AI driver will pilot a physically simulated vehicle across a spline-based path. You can select a number of different profiles (Racer, Frantic, Slowpoke, etc) and a profile strength to influence how the AI will behave.

Version 1.1.0 (2023/01/10) notes

This version is the first major update and brings a great deal of improvements. The biggest improvement by far is the speed and handling improvements. Rush Hour now handles banked corners as well as uphill and downhill slopes in a much more intelligent manner providing even more realistic behaviour. Also included in this version are a new path visualizer to help visualize the path at runtime, as well as see action waypoints.

Another noteworthy inclusion is experimental support for runtime path creation via blueprints.

Additions & Fixes

  • Great speed and handling improvements
  • Completely overhauled handling of banked curves, as well as uphill and downhill slopes
  • Path Visualizer allowing you to see actions at each waypoint
  • Runtime Path Visualizer to help fine tuning behaviour
  • Experimental Runtime Path Creation support via improved Blueprint API. (Note: Paths should not be changed when vehicles are already driving on them)
  • New Example Maps:
    • Jumps
    • Banked corners
    • Off-road 4x4
    • Runtime Path
  • Added Ignore Triggers option to path align-to-ground options
  • Corner radius is now measured in 2D to isolate uphill and downhill slope effects
  • Re-tuned driving profiles to improve handling
  • Lowered center of mass on chaos variant of 4x4 to improve stability
  • Moved the Light Control Component blueprint so it can now be used by both the Chaos and PhysX distributions, rather than being a duplicated blueprint.
  • Increased size of Rush Hour Path icon so it’s more clickable when further away from the start, as you are often working at quite a distance and at a large scale

Upgrade Notes

Always remember to backup projects and the current plugin version before updating

You should complete the following steps to ensure best performance from the new version of Rush Hour

  1. Delete /Content/RushHour/Blueprints/DT_DriverProfiles and /Content/RushHour/Blueprints/DT_VehiclePerformanceData if they exist
  2. Retrain any vehicle you have previously trained
  3. Click Align To Ground on any existing path to ensure the new banking and handling code works as expected

Known Issues

None at this time.