v0.7.3 — Pause gestures, steadier menus, and more from knuckleslee

Changes

This release is mostly contributions from knuckleslee. Thank you!

• Pause a race with a gesture (#103, #104):
  • Hold the Kinect's Pause Gesture for 3 seconds: right arm down, left arm out and down at about 45 degrees, facing the sensor.
  • On a Kinect v2, hold up the Stop Sign: an open hand in front of your face, palm towards the sensor.
  • A gauge in the lower left shows the progress.
  • SFR_PAUSE_GESTURE=0 turns it off.
• Steadier menu cursor for motion input (#100): a hand held still on a button no longer wanders.
  • Motion input > Menu cursor steadying sets how far it may wander before the cursor moves (0–30 mm, default 8; 0 turns it off).
  • Impossible limb points from the webcam's pose model are held instead of followed.
• Frame rate in the window title (Windows, #101): for example [FPS 59.8 | 16.7/41.0 ms] [Kinect 30] [Vulkan 100%]. Performance > Performance in the window title turns it off.
• Adjustment windows for the Kinect troubleshooter and Kinect Guide (#102): when the game asks for them, the Kinect preview opens over the game's sensor. With a webcam, a window opens with zoom, exposure and gain instead, kept per camera.
• Choose the save folder (#99): Game files > Save folder in the launcher. It defaults to save beside the launcher, as before.

Changes made in review (#106):

• The Pause Gesture now requires facing the sensor, because a race is ridden side-on and a leading arm forward and down looked like the pose.
• Its gauge drains four times as fast as it fills, so a pose matched now and then never adds up.
• Each Kinect player charges their own gauge.
• A pause can no longer press a button inside the pause menu.
• Adjustment windows reopened quickly can no longer hang the game.
• Untracked Kinect hands no longer pull the menu cursor.

Validation

• Unit tests:
  • CTest passed on Windows (150) and Linux (142), and the Python tests (335) passed.
  • New tests: a side-on riding stance, a pose held part of the time and an inferred hand are not pauses; untracked Kinect hands and returning players start over.
  • GitHub Actions builds passed (Windows, Linux, macOS, Android).
• Windows package: completed race checks on D3D12 and Vulkan, every pipeline prepared, the save left unchanged, and no pause gesture triggered while racing.
• Linux package: passed a Vulkan startup smoke test in WSL (all 455 pipelines prepared).
• This release's Android 10+ APK on an AYN Thor: all 455 Vulkan pipelines prepared, a race completed without errors at 59.4 fps without frame metrics.
• Real Kinect hardware: the contributor played the features on real hardware before the review changes; they have not been played on a Kinect here since. Reports are welcome.
• Android: the APKs keep the existing signing certificate.

Downloads

• Windows x64: download and extract the Windows ZIP; run FreeRidersRecompiled.exe.
• Linux x64: download and extract the Linux archive; run FreeRidersRecompiled.
• Android 10 or later: prefer android10-arm64.apk.
• Android 9: use android-arm64.apk.
• Android version code: 40. The companion licence archive applies to both APKs.
• Checksums: SHA256SUMS.txt.

Use your own game disc image. No game data, private saves or test overrides are included.

Known limitations

• Pause gestures: if a race pauses when you didn't mean it to, set SFR_PAUSE_GESTURE=0 and please tell us your stance.
• Window title statistics: Windows only.
• Physical Kinect input: Windows only.
• Online play: everyone should use the same version; tested on a home network with up to three players.
• Being investigated: the start-up crash on Vulkan 1.1 phones (Issue #88); a crash at start on a Galaxy Tab A9 (Mali-G57, Issue #1); a race crash on 4-core PCs (Issue #64).
• Relay Race: 2P vs 2P is not supported yet.
• From v0.5.0: lighting has not been compared with the Xbox 360; no camera motion inference on Linux or Android; performance varies by device.