All of these would be a welcome addition. If you haven't already I would take a look at the Patrick Giranthon's AMS version of the mod. I know there was some improvements for that conversion. Two stand out things that I noticed was updated dash displays and shift lights and a higher poly Max detail level front tires. I know there was some physic changes too. I know some things should be a copy and paste, but other things are not. Might be worth contacting him to see if a conversion of the updates would be allowed, as that is pretty much the best mod ever made, in my book.
So far I have been working on gen's, gmt's, cam's and cockpitinfo.ini files, along with textures. The only change to the .veh files are to add the material override. I will follow your idea and change the Canadian drivers nationality code to CAN. That way my mod can be an update of yours for now.
I don't have AMS, but I have just had a quick look at Patrick Giranthon's update on racedepartment. I can see the dash displays have more info than the cart factor version, although I like what I currently have it would be possible to change this in the future. The more interesting part would be the physics updates, as this is not something I know about. In terms of the tires I was going to improve the look of them once I have finished the current tasks for all chassis. Although may not be able to resist completing the Lola before then.
I forgot to mention but I have also fixed the issue of there being gaps between the tires and rims in the showroom. It turns out the tires where listed in a different instance to the hubs, resulting in the tires having camber but not their hubs. Does anybody have any suggestion on what kind of finish should be applied to the body work? I currently have the Lola set to the Car Paint preset. Are they painted or are they coated in a vinyl wrap?
I had chance to look at the Cart Extreme files and do a quick diffcheck between the physics files. Some of it the same but also lot's of tweaks to mainly the aero, suspension settings, pm files and general multipliers. Aside from a few AMS specific lines, one could conceivably copy and paste these in and give them a go. I'm not sure how much of a resulting disparity that will yield given AMS's behaviour vs RF2, would have to test it and find out I suppose? For now I'll play off of the base rfactor values, I want to work out the AI awareness and diff lock settings a bit more. Another .veh file thing, BRZ -> BRA for Brazilian drivers just to be consistent to ISO country codes. @DiggerHawk I'd assume the base car colour is car paint, and the decals applied over would be regioned out as vinyl? As least that's how it looks recommend in the docs. I would fallback to car paint logically, but I have limited experience there, hoping someone else can get back to you on it. Do you know if the car models were updated in the AMS version?
It's been a little while since I last looked at them. Only changes I believe was a higher poly front tires. Helps with the cockpit cam. And the change to the Motec/PI display. Everything else I believe is the same
Thank you for looking at the Cart Extreme files. As I understand it, AMS is based on rF1 (neither of which I have ever played) and this mod is a conversion to rF2 from the rF1 version. Something definitely doesn't seem right physics wise. For instance using the stock setup with the speedway configuration the balance seems off. On an empty Indianapolis speedway (I know this didn't happen in real life) shouldn't you be able to lap without lifting? At the moment the car seems to oversteer and understeer at the same time. I'm basing this on the Apex Indycar mod and the official Dallara DW12. This is not my area of expertise (not that graphics updates are either), so I was hoping if I improved the look someone else would improve the feel. I will change the Brazilian drivers county codes as you suggested. In terms of the paint finish I don't think I can have a different region for the vinyl areas as the Oval wings use a different material and texture than the wccarbody. Its a rF2 limitation with cars that use "Extra's" as I understand it. Although I could compromise and have the vinyl on the areas I can. Creating a region map for each car is a lot of work, maybe a later stage. I have pretty much finished updating the Lola cockpit to the PBR standard, when finished I will show a comparison pic. I don't know if anybody else has noticed but most of the driver textures are for the older driver model so their UV mapping is wrong. At some point this mod was updated to use the rF2 2013 driver model but only three of the driver textures have been updated. You can notice the affected drivers by them having the image of a hand on their left arm. So these will have to be redone at some point. I have found the photoshop template so its possible but time consuming.
It would of been handy if there was higher quality models available but I have refined the Lola model slightly and I will improve all of the tires at some point not just the front ones. What is the etiquette for releasing an update to someone else's mod? This isn't a complete repackage so it sits on top of the original and only includes files that have been modified or added.
Also regarding driver nationalities I noticed that Franchitti is listed as Scottish but Blundell is British. Surely if Franchitti is Scottish than Blundell should be English or both should be British. That's opened a can of worms. I also noticed that Helio Castoneves has his surname split which is different to how it is spelt today but looking at a broadcast from 1998 Cart season on I think ABC they split his surname. So maybe best to leave it as is for period accuracy.
How I would handle this is just add all the authors in the credits, following the Original Post. Zerocool, Pay2021, Racing Line Developments. With all this being documenting in this thread, I wouldn't worry about any body attacking. Just make sure if you borrow from anything else, they get credits as well.
Ok thank you. I really don't want to be accused of stealing others work. A little update, I have managed to remove the hans device from the driver model. Well more accurately I have stopped it being visible, as I don't have the ability to modify the driver mesh in blender with its animation rigging. In the end I just did an external material override to a clear shader. I have also added seat belts based on the older driver model but with a brand new texture and more detail. I keep thinking I am close to finishing but then I find something else to do.
Here is a video showing the visual improvements I have made to the Lola. Some of the improvements I have made include, External and cockpit PBR materials Driver including helmet now use PBR shaders PBR tyre shader including the rain tyres graphically represented Removed internal bodywork extruding through exterior and other mesh improvements Increased thickness of rear wing supports Added 3D rain light Dashboard uses Dashboard element shader (illuminates at night) Scratch made higher quality font for the dash display Added brake disc glow Removed the visibility of the hans device from driver and added remodelled belts Improved the look of rev lights at night Fixed some LOD issues affecting suspension and driver Main textures have been enlarged to current standards and made albedo compliant (as far as I understand it anyway) Tyre mesh improved so they are now round Wing mirrors remodelled to improve cockpit view Externally the mirrors now have a realistic real-time reflections based on the PBR shader Removed gaps between tyres and rims in the showroom many more smaller improvements that I can't remember If people are interested I will release it soon, with credit to those who previously created and converted it.
I've never driven the 'improved' GP circuit. Seems odd to have a safety chicane in the last corner. I guess it's safe for an INDY car to negotiate the 4 corners thousands of times per year in the run-up to and including the 500 mile race, but the immensely talented drivers and designers can't figure out how run 1 corner maybe 100 times thru the full F1 weekend. Great work btw.
This is looking great @DiggerHawk , the cockpit dash has definitely become an eyesore after driving this some more, love to see your improvements released. Made any headway on the other chassis? > Main textures have been enlarged to current standards and made albedo compliant (as far as I understand it anyway) I started looking into the region maps and the textures since you mentioned it. The original albedo was done in the old way, I think the game now uses a global AO so all we need to have mapped in the alpha layer are the darker carbon fibre portions. The McLaren MP4-8 skins are the examples I'm using to base this, they also have example region maps. Did you redraw the enlarged textures or use some of the AI enlargers? I tested a couple of them to see how a quick and dirty enlargement would look. Finally, I got the icons generated a few weeks back, they were really easy thanks to redapg's showroom and rf2tools. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/178JdITKBjc-dpEEUowcxAHGGdXFrlbYd?usp=sharing Feel free to add them to your wip update.
Great work on those icons! I will definitely add them to the update. Would it be alright if I add your HDV update as well? Currently my mod updates on top of yours, but it would be simpler if its all together on top of the original release. Talking of HDV's I noticed that by default this mod limits the repairs during pit stops to body work only, not including suspension. What are peoples opinion on this? Would it be better to have full repairs available? In terms of the main livery textures my process was to enlarge them in photoshop using 'Bicubic Smoother', remove most of the baked in AO using Studio 397's suggested technique, sharpen them slightly and then make them albedo compliant with a couple of adjustment layers, also suggested by Studio 397. That's very interesting results you got there using AI enlargers. That may be a better way of achieving the upscale. I created a custom region map to separate the painted bodywork from the carbon parts and also separated the padding around the cockpit area as this didn't look right if it was too shiny. I didn't add the sponsor logos as a different layer because as I mentioned in an earlier post it wouldn't be possible to do the same with the Wing extra texture. That's because the Wing extra material override JSON has to be used for all Liveries. Not actually a problem for the Lola as it only has one livery but it wouldn't work for any of the other chassis or if someone wanted to add their own Lola livery. I have already baked a new AO map in blender (including an edgebake) and as you mention, the alpha layer of the livery file only contains the carbon parts. This process is already part of my workflow when converting to the PBR materials. To be far you could probably just take the included Spec maps and increase the brightness so that the areas with no AO are pure white. Today I managed to make the wing mirrors independently adjustable after realising that they were non-adjustable before. As far as the other chassis go, they are all at different levels of completion. With the Penske's the furthest behind. A lot of what has been done on the Lola can be copied over with little effort to the others. In fact due to a quirk of rF2, if I load the Lola in a race the other cars with Goodyear tyres already have the PBR tyre shader applied. This is due to rF2 only allowing one instance of a material to load on a scene. This can cause weird issues with the AI having the wrong textures, so its important to give materials unique names. One of many lessons I am learning along the way. I have even managed to get the rev lights on the steering wheel to work at the same time as the tachometer bars on the dash display on the Toyota Reynard's. Before it was either one or the other.
