Month: January 2009

Oblique cars in multiplayer

This is about an issue that has been reported several times in very many occasions. We’d like to take the time now and talk about the problem. It has been reported, that sometimes during online races the cars begin to drive oblique. This looks very strange and obviously neither good, nore realistic.

© Maranellofan

The issue, that cars begin to lean to one side during online gaming is known, but unfortunately, that’s not an issue we are responsible for, but a bug or rather a shortcoming of rFactor.
You see our mod has one of the most advanced physics ever developed for rFactor. Our physics-guys went into great length, to use every option available to simulate the driving as realistic as possible. We are at a point, where we touch the limits and unfortunately this tilting is one sign of rFactor giving up on us.

Basically it is caused by 3 factors:

  1. the damper settings. We have the option to either use unrealistic values to workaround a graphic-bug, or keep the realistic physics and accept the bug, which is only caused sporadically. We chose the latter.
  2. the setup: It’s not really clear how, but the setup has some influence on the problem, but it doesn’t cause it.
  3. the track: The modelling-detail of the track-mesh influences how precisely rFactor can calculate the correct position of the car-model on the track. On tracks with low surface detail, low face count and large faces, the scanning looses precision and can also cause this bug.

Obviously, we are not happy about this either, we were in contact with ISI, but obviously they won’t fix it untill a possible successor of rFactor. We also can’t do the track-modelers/-converters job, to deliver good tracks, who don’t cause problems. Also, as far as we know, we are not the only modding team having this issue.
So you have the option: either accept the bug or check for damper-settings in the physics files, play with the values and find a change, which avoids the bug, but still gives you tolerable driving.

CTDP 2006 V1.1 patch progress

I am back in full swing after an extended Xmas vacation.  We have had many reports about things from various forums, some of these things we fix.  In some cases  we’ve ignored  requests if they are not deemed serious enough, or they are simply too much work at this stage, that is mainly things like an extra or new feature.

In spite of that a substantial amount of work has already been put into the patch.  For sure we hope that we will have addressed ALL the serious issues in the new version, with a few more minor things and extra requests thrown in as well. 

I hope to see this patch close to finalisation at the end of next week ready for packaging. I still have to check with some of our physics guys how much there is to do, so it is an approximate figure, but for sure we are not talking months but weeks/days.

We now all have other things to work as well, so ultimately we have to draw the line on CTDP 2006  mod, that was such a joy, but at some point we have to say “END IT”  Hopefully that will be the 1.1 patch.  A v1.2 would only address anything that was overlooked in 1.1, or gone seriously wrong  i.e. mistakes that are “crtitical” but hopefully a 1.2 will not be needed.

I made the 3D arms addon too, so that will be ready around the same time as this patch. I have send them to one external tester to try out already, he reported no bugs in an earlier version I sent. so that addon will be delivered too.

Maintance

On friday January 16th at 8pm gmt, our host will move the servers to a new location. So we expect a downtime between 20pm to 3am. So don’t be surprised or worried when our website can’t be reached at this time. Also, don’t evenget the idea we’d be down because of another release. Infact, the site survived the release in december surprisingly well. 😉

Sometimes in Birmingham at the NEC

Look what we found at the Autosport International NEC currently held in Birmingham.

Although screen is flipped, it can’t disguise the fact very well, that we have seen the McLaren before. 😉

Update 2:10pm:

Some information about the background we found so far. This was part of a presentation for the Spanish Motorland Aragon circuit project held by Pedro de La Rosa. They recorded a lap on the track in rFactor, so far we didn’t find any videos.

Tracks: call for help

Andy has been working on the new version of Bahrain since the release of CTDP06. He is nearly finished with his work, but there is one thing he can’t do and where we need support. Our track-department is quite small at the moment, since Iggy(formerly known as Salex) has left. We miss somebody who knows his way with AIW creation for scratch-made tracks. So, if you have experience with this work and you’d like to support us, contact Andy. Please add a note on previous track projects.

Thank you for your attention.

A matter of interpretation

The last few days I had a long discussion with Marco, who modelled most of the 1994 cars and also the Benetton which I’m painting.

The most difficult thing is to get good resources, good pictures. It’s no comparison to the flood of images you can get in all kinds of quality for modern F1-cars, but working with the limited sources we have is challenge. Many images are low-resolution and captures of the races are of low quality. We often resort in using 18:1 models to get at least some base for our work. So you see there is alot of room for interpretation and actually missinterpretation.

Marco was convinced, that Benetton hat different sidepods in 1994 and upgrades them during the season. The first one being quite bulky and straight and then later become slightly more curvish. He based this on his modell and what he “saw” in the pictures. I didn’t see it at all and so it took quite some time and alot of pictures to convince him of my point of view. I’m glad he is a fair chap and listens to me, even though I can be annoying with details sometimes. You see the more accurate the model, the easier it is to paint. 8)

By the way, the Benetton in the center is the old TDG Benetton from 2003. Back then it was well-crafted, but today it’s totally out of date and too undetailed. However having the archive is a big help to compare and sort out problems like this one.

So I made Marco agree with me now and it had nothing to do with the threat of physical violence or a 4 million ¥ bribe. 🙂 He’ll be reworking the sidepod for the next weeks and in February I’ll get back painting. For me this is perfect, because I’m having exams the next few weeks anyway and so I don’t get any chance to procrastinate. 🙂

Fattura del Toro Rosso

I have been asked nicely and because I liked the idea I proceeded and wrote a little Making-of for the Toro-Rosso livery. I’d like to explain a few things about the way I made it. The car got alot of my intention, because by the time I made it in late 2006 there were very few good STRs done and so I was challenged to recreate the car as authentic and as high-quality as possible. Here is the full story with full-size illustrations.

Continue reading Fattura del Toro Rosso

So back to work it is……..

As some of you may know im a huge McLaren fan so have been trying to get my hands on a mclaren to paint for CTDP for a while now, but seeing as we only did 2006 since i’ve been in the team i’ve never had the chance. but yesterday i finally got the chance to paint the classic colours of the 1994 McLaren 🙂 heres a few shots.

Continue reading So back to work it is……..