Even slow progress is progress

Hi,

I know it has been a while, but even rome wasn't built in a day. The LoD system is up and running and my work at the editors is finished for now. So I have started working on the actual game but progress is slower than expected.
One of the reasons is that Newton does not work as it should - no that is not exactly right, it is not working as fast as I would want it to. On ground with little detail it works perfectly, but on rough terrain (such as off road) with many bumps and therefore many polygons Newton has to calculate alot of collisions. The calculations are accurat, but the frame rate drops form 300 to 21 frames per second. And that with just one car. So I started to create a hybrid physics engine. The car's forces are still controlled by Newton, but the tires do not directly interact with the ground. I use raycasting for that. Or better to say: I want to use it. A rudementary raycasting engine is already implemented and suspension forces work as they should, but the tires often spin out of controll and I haven't yet found the cause.

Another thing I have been working on was the HUD:

(Most of the work was done by the designer of course, I only implemented a bit of code for this)
In the upper left corner is the time displayed. On the right you can see the current position and beneath that the current lap. In the right lower corner I placed the displays for speed, rotation speed and nitro. And on the other side we have the shady grey map overview with colored spots for the opponents.

Thats all for now,
see ya!