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. πŸ˜‰

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 Back then it was well-crafted, but today it’s totally out of date and too undetailed.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 Β₯ bribe. πŸ™‚ 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. πŸ™‚

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

xerry m.mas

Right untill the last minute we worked on some stuff.Alex is working on bugfixes for a patch of F1 2006, that will be released next year. Speed is refining some of the physics settings, nothing major (I hope 8)). Andy works on one of our tracks and makes good progress as well. I did some work on the track-artworks in the last few days, actually debs did some amazing stuff for Bahrain and I have to learn see and learn how he did it for Monaco. And no, it’s still far away, but it’ just nicer to test with some proper artworks. πŸ™‚

Others are already lazy bums and enjoy their vacation, so will we the next few days. This month was great, but exhausting and so everybody will appreciate a few days off. πŸ™‚

Have a great christmas, have some nice racing, preferable with sleds and snow.

League physics requests

I have been sending out the league-physics-token in the past 2 weeks. I got more than 35 requests and I got a few things I’d like to ask for:

  • Please don’t write more than one mail. I can’t check every name and every address if I already send it, if you are already in the list or if you are new.
  • Please don’t hurry! I am a busy man and it may take 1-3 days to respond. So hurrying, won’t get you faster.
  • Talking to other members of CTDP may get you a file, but at the end it will be confusing, because I can’t check who already got the token, who mailed for it.

I caught up with all requests so far. Please mail me again, if I haven’t responded to yet.

Thanks for your attention!