Hey, thanks, Jka. From what I understand, the fastest F1 driver this year is from Finland. So... things are getting back to normal again.
Had some problems trying to create an aiw file for mschreiner's Kentucky (NASCAR) track... mostly involved edge-select problems on pit (or track) surfaces made of large triangle meshes. So... wrote some functions to test the feasibility of an alternate method to 'edge looping' for creating pre-waypoint center line splines, and drawing corridors.... and they worked really well. Going to start implementing these, and another function for moving GROUPS of pit boxes.... Check-it-out: View attachment 15857
I have NO idea how you scripting guys do this, but this looks VERY helpfull - keep up the good work, Bink
@WiZPER Not sure how other people "do this", but I started with 'high-level languages' about 35 years ago. A guy from Denmark named Anders Hejlsberg wrote an easy to use, well documented, low cost Pascal language compiler for the (then new) IBM PC. Since then, Anders was the 'major dude' in charge of making the C# language. MaxScript is very close to the C language and C#, so it was easy to learn, having a few decades of experience with C, and C++. MaxScript is really pretty easy, so you should look into it ... you can have it tell 3dsMax to make things for you that are too time consuming to do any other way (like aiw files). -- Learning a bunch of stuff by working with mschreiner's Kentucky (tri-oval speedway) the past few days. It's really a nice, highly detailed track. I've mostly written aiw~thing for road courses & F1 cars (so far), so the Kentucky speedway has shown me a number of things that need adding for Oval track, Sprint-Car races. [I'm even recording the NASCAR race at Daytona today.] One of the things I need to do to the script is add a control for selecting "Road Course" or "Oval". My existing fast-line generator does not consider any of the corners on large ovals to be 'corners'.... as F1 cars have so much down-force, the way I wrote the fast-line generator, it 'thinks' that a super-speedway is one long slightly curving straight-away. [It's a 'degrees per waypoint' issue.] So... a new control with new parameters is needed for Oval track fast lines. Besides that, there are a few other things... like the ability to 'mouse draw' where edge selection is not available, snapping collision splines to walls and barriers.... and needing an 'offset' control, as I noticed that Alt-Grid spots will sometimes need to be offset from the pit lane driving line. Not a problem, just more work I need to do.
Really looking forward to your efforts Bink. Ah, the days of Pascal. Used to love my Turbo Pascal compiler.
Any new progress Bink? Got some holidays booked in April so hoping there might be a Beta available by then.
Hi Butters, Yea.. some 'needs' in progress.. others done.. [image below] To start, the 1st rollout (aiw surfaces) now asks what type of track. Certain things in the script have to be done differently for ovals. Also added a "collision surfaces" group for selecting walls, tire barriers, walk-overs, and anything else the car can hit. Helps us (selectively) 'snap' collision splines to the road or terrain below these obstructions. Bottom of this first rollout is a new 'xPlane' group of controls. If the track already has xPlanes, the control group is skipped... otherwise, it will want you to click on the track surfaces, and will automatically make your xFinish, xPitIn, xPitOut in the places where you click. Then allows you to move and rotate the xPlane, and change the size.... puts the first gMat (and matID) it finds in the material browser onto the xPlane... a separate 3d direction arrow points in driving direction... etc... etc.. Later in the script, once track length can be established, there are functions to automatically place xSector1, and xSector2. If the user selects a script made xPlane with the aiSurf rollout open, a 'when construct' enables the xPlane size controls so you can adjust it. That's up to now... Coming week.. a function to allow the selection of multiple pit-boxes... letting you move groups of them along the offset to the pit lane's path (curved or straight). Oval tracks can have a wall between the pit boxes and garage area so.. gaps to enter / exit the garage area are needed. [Like single pitBox moves... re-branch boxes to pit lane waypoints on mouse button release.] Finally... on 'viewport follow' modes, it would be nice if the little dialog at the top of the screen has viewport elevation, and snap-to (vert / face / midEdge) controls (for modes where mouse-clicks making pit line, garage path, or corridor). View attachment 15973 edit: ... probably should change the spelling of 'course' on the rollout too...
Great work....this will be a nice tool to use when I start converting my mod over to rFactor 2 later this year.
@Butters... so simple, even Cartman can do it.. @Dave Schnare... yea... it's getting there. Working on moving multiple pit boxes lately. First try had a few issues... a second method worked well but required some infrastructure changes. Some tracks have a curved pit lane, and moving groups of pit boxes along this curve is not trivial, as they need to maintain any rotations and offsets that the user previously may have made. Also writing a "Separation" function so that you can increase / decrease the spacing between groups pit boxes during editing. All of this is being written so that it operates on pit boxes, starting grid, alt grid, and / or teleport spots. That will satisfy the need to be able to offset altGrid spots from the pit line as I learned on mschreiner's Kentucky tri-oval. Day off today... back at it tomorrow.
I saw a NASCAR race in Las Vegas the other day where the (rolling) starting grid was situated along the pit road, one car per pit box, but pointing outward at a 45 degree angle. -- If / when you make aiw for this kind of track, would you want to make the alt-Grid single file, each spot on top of a pit box, with each alt-grid spot angled at 45 degrees to the pit boxes? -- Do the trucks have a rolling start like this on oval tracks too? I'll be adding to the alt-grid code later this week (for something else), and probably should also add a 'number of columns' control (1 or 2) ... if it is a common way for them to start.
What you saw was how they park for qualifying. Otherwise it is 2 lanes 43 rows deep along pit road. Something similar to this:
cool... less work... thanks... Also... Is it legal for them to have their driving line BELOW the inside white line on that curve in the middle of the front straight? Thought I saw a bunch of them doing that at Las Vegas this weekend.
Yes they can go below the line. Only Daytona and Talladega is where they are not allowed to go below the line on the Apron to pass.
