CTDP Development Blog – Page 9 – Be as picky as you like

File “SimRaceWay” still not closed

So far CTDP never used this Development Blog to discuss the politics of the SimRacing community. One of the big examples in the past year was SimRaceWay. We would have liked to close the file by now, but unfortunately SRW keeps hitting us on the nose.

CTDP on SRW in November 2009 — CTDP on SRW in Nov 2009

Let’s rewind to summer last year. SimRaceWay was announced as commercial replacement for the aging rFactorCentral. Being barely moderated and discontinued, it could have been a nice restart, however the commercial aspects of the site raised questions. Were Mods driven in commercial Races? What is the business model of SRW? And most simple question, do they make money on Modders free work? Direct contact failed and the responses in their forums were often only vague formulaic answers. CTDP among other Modders were cautious and decided to withdraw their Mods from the upcoming site. We wanted to wait till the thing is launched and the site is running before participating. After all SRW had many good ideas and quite some potential if done right.

After our withdrawal, more Modding groups joined and it escalated in a boycott of the new website. I can’t say how many Modders actually went through with it. SRW didn’t make it easy.

CTDP on SRW in January 2010 — CTDP on SRW in Jan 2010

The new site was supposed to launch in early September, but apparently technical problems postponed it and the powers that be decided to only invite a fraction of the user base. Even if not intentionally, it was a great move, because no Modder could log in to see if his wish of removal of his Mods could be checked. Once CTDP had access it was clear, that our mods have not been taken down as requested (and are even available in the HTML-source to this day).

This is where the frustration kicks in. Modders, including one who’s been tweaking data models for kentucky sportsbooks to sharpen their user interfaces, just wanted a straight answer about how SRW planned to use our free work on their commercial platform and at promotional events. It’s a reasonable ask when your efforts are being monetized. Instead of engaging openly, SRW clammed up and, to this day, operates behind our backs, keeping our mods on their site and even re-adding them after we demanded removal. When SRW launched, CTDP approached it with cautious optimism, giving the platform a chance to prove its value without making wild demands. All we wanted was clarity on how our contributions—much like the transparent algorithms we’ve built for betting platforms—were being used. By dodging our requests and repeatedly ignoring us, SRW is torching any chance of collaboration with their own actions.

CTDP on SRW in February 2010 — CTDP on SRW in Feb 2010

Browsing SRW is not a bad experience. Despite some technical issues and the slow speed, they incorporated many good ideas. The site is not bad and I’m sure there is common ground. We always said we would revise our decision once the picture is clear, but the way SRW keeps disrespecting the decision we have taken so far, they don’t make it easy to reconsider. This is not a way to make us change our mind and certainly don’t make us friends. On the contrary it is disrespecting our work, downright annoying and legal steps are already being considered.

Is a little respect towards each other to much to ask?

Update 27 Feb 2010 – 12:36 GMT: SRW has reacted by taking down the linked Mods. The open question is for how long…

WIP Ferrari 1994 part 3

This is a short one as I’m still during my exams (next one in 2 hours). Marco doesn’t give me the chance to post WIPs of his work very often, but as every car is pretty much done by him anyway, that’s fine. Here is a small WIP-shot of Ferrari who just got modeled grills on the sidepod. Ferrari is one of the last cars, that are being worked on, most others are stuck in review quere, which is on hold as long as I have to learn Math.

WIP Ligier 1994 nearly finished

Last chance to take a look at the Ligier before the car goes ingame. Andy has been working, among other things on the details of the Ligier. Since the last WIP-shot all jointlines and holes have been added to the car. Note the fully modeled engine, which can be spotted through the cooling of the sidepod. The textures still sport some of the guides I lay out for Andy to make some positioning easier for him. One example is the fuel-opening.

Next station will be ingame.

WIP Jordan 1994 Part 2

Small status update. I get lost in my exams the next few weeks while Andy continues preparing cars for ingame.

Andy worked on Ligier last week and worked on some changes as we reported. These changes required some texture updates to continue. As I’m a bit out of the picture at the moment these changes are postponed for 1-2 weeks. In the meantime Andy picked up Jordan, which I reviewed and cleared last week.

Andy’s procedure is roughly this: He gets the models, which were done by Marco in zModeler and ports them to Maya, where he reworks all necessary parts to optimize the car for rFactor. This includes smoothing some edges and reworking all normals to improve the surface lighting on the cars. This is very important to get proper lighting and especially reflections on the car ingame later.

Here is a small animation showing the differences in the model before and after his tweaks. Often this requires some small remapping afterwards, this hasn’t been done yet and will follow the next few days.

This is the raw car so far without any joint lines, more work for Andy. 🙂

WIP Footwork 1994 Part 3

James ‘Juluka’ Bendy has been busy on the Footwork. He is identifying the trackversions for the first couple of GPs and is doing everything he can to get the squares right. James in his own words:

Here is the Monaco Livery. Note the changes in the matrix designs on the upper side pods of the car … those guys must have had alot of time on their hands to change squares all the time. I am beginning to refer to this car as my son calls it, the confetti car… 🙂

So here is a shot of the Monaco version:

Once the car is ready on James’ part, it’ll go the usual process of getting into my hands for review and Andy’s hands for going ingame.

Preparing number two: Ligier

I mentioned in the last post, there has been some discussion last weekend over what car will be put ingame next. McLaren was the first candidate, but it didn’t make my eagle-eye inspection. Lotus, although nearly done is getting some more attention and therefore wasn’t our next choice. Ligier was, as it features a simple livery and little to do in this regard. However as I was doing my reviews I noticed some proportion issues. I simply can’t let such things go and so I begged first Marco then Andy to address the issue. I can be a maniac with such things and I admire everyone who can work with me. 🙂

Andy was so kind and took the job, as he needed to update a few things anyway to bring the car to all it’s glory.

Here is a small gimick, a comparison animation between the car before and after the proportion update. the old car had some normal issues, the surface on the new version is much smoother. You can notice the slightly pointier nose as well. Most obvious is the longer sidepod, which begins more than 15cm closer to the front tires, as it did before. The rear sidepod was also changed slightly as some angles were too steep and are smoother now.

Click to the the animation

Andy concluded most of the work on the carbody. Next up are the jointlines between all bodywork panels on the carsurface. The textures are mostly done, but will get a small update to compensate for the mapping changes.

WIP Jordan 1994 part 1

Yesterday we hit a small wall, as Pacific was ingame and we had to decide which car was to go ingame next. As I’m busy with my semester end I needed to do some catching up on my work reviewing the cars we got finished. Finished most often means Marco did his work on the model and somebody painted a set of textures. This may look ready, but it proved to be good practice to have an eye on it before sending it ingame. This is the last chance to remove the biggest issues and so we try to catch them. Now yesterday, we didn’t have a car readily reviewed and so I spent my day working on Ligier, identifiying some issues and tweaking some stuff on the textures. Today I spent half my day doing the same on Jordan.

Jordan was modeled by Marco Büttner and he also painted the initial textures in 1024×1024. The textures were upscaled by Daniel ‘Codan’ Fredrich.The textures aren’t finished yet, as some logos need improving and the colors stand for debate.

While Ligier had some proportion issues, which Andy will address when putting the car ingame, Jordan was a clean shape without issues. Great work on this one. Marco!

Here is a comparison between the very first and the very latest texture version.

WIP Pacific 1994 part n+1

The first little big moment for the F1-1994 mod came this weekend.

Andy exported the Pacific model to rFactor and we got the first look at the car ingame. The result is promising, but not yet beautiful. The helmet is a dummy by Eugenio Faria. The driver body is also a dummy for now, as afborro planed to update his animated driver body. The tyre and rim models are pretty much final, but the textures are not. And lastly the textures on the Pacific car lack any optimization. They got their rendered shadows, but no alpha or specular map tweaking. Also the base-color for the silver car surface is not yet done. This will be the next step and Mediocre is looking into the topic, as I am busy right now with work.

Enough Disclaimer, first proper ingame shots of F1-1994:

Wrong sponsor in the wrong time

During our work on the 1994 mod, there are always new things you can learn. Apart from new experiences on the technical side like modelling joint lines, you also learn a lot about the season itself and the teams and drivers involved. Today, Dahie was told a story about the Pacific Grand Prix team, that seems to be quite a weird coincidence. It took place during the San Marino Grand Prix but as the deaths of Ratzenberger and later Senna dominated the headlines, hardly anyone has ever heard of it.

As 1994 was a time when the Formula 1 was not as professional as it is nowadays, the small teams such as Minardi, Simtek and Pacific were desperately looking for sponsorship money which resulted in different liveries from race to race, which you can see in this post concerning the Simtek team.

Cover of a package of Black Death Filter Cigarettes. It's black with white texts. In the center a white skull wearing a top hat.

For the race in Imola, Pacific Grand Prix has persuaded a cigarette company called “Black Death” to sponsor the team. Their logo featured a skull and apparently a crossbone, which cannot be seen here though.

As the stickers for the cars didn’t arrive in time, the Pacific team ran the cars without the new sponsor on Saturday, when Roland Ratzenberger died. However, they seem to have arrived later that day and were ready to be put on the racing cars but for obvious reasons, the Pacific team declined that offer by now. “It’s actually a very difficult situation.” explained Pacific’s Graeme Glew. “The backing could be a saviour, but obviously it would have been inappropriate here.”
The “Black Death” company never appeared in Formula 1 after this incident. Quite an ironic story, isn’t it?

Thanks to Felix Schönhofen who brought this story to our interest.
Sources: The AUTOSPORT Bulletin Board and Rally Racing Nr 6 June 1994

WIP Pacific Racing 1994 Part n

Andreas ‘Neidryder’ Neidhard spent the last few weeks finalizing the Pacific car. The original model was done by Marco ‘BMWFan’ Büttner and the textures were painted by Dennis ‘Mediocre’ Schmidt. Andy took over to convert the model for rFactor and add his magic. The magic being 3D modeled joint lines on the car body. This is the first time we do this, so far all joint lines were always done using textures and normal-maps. Modeling them in 3D gives much more depth and makes them sharper ingame. This comes to a price. Of course the face count increases and is not up to the same count we use for the F1-2006 mod. As the cars are much less detailed as the 2006 cars, we can spent the extra polies and these details without regrets. Pacific checks out with 27k faces.

Here are two work in progress shots within Max from this morning. (Andy did some night shifts…) One showing the full car, second one without body work. The tyre textures are dummies for now, they will be improved later. Enjoy!