[REL] 37¾ Mile Isle Of Man Mountain Course - Conversion from GPL

Thanks for the kind words, really appreciated.

I have no idea how to proceed if I'm going to fix it. If updating every materials to PBR standard is the only way to fix the problem, then it means to multiplier every textures by 4 (aos/mr/nm), so that would end up with 4*4000 texture files for IOM. The amount time to properly recreate 16000 textures according to PBR standard just doesn't seem to be a viable option (the result also has to be kept as close & faithful as to the original work by Jim, this is one of the most important thing), not to mention whether average PC can handle that amount material textures.

To be honest I have lost a lot motivation after this. All content of the new RC update is very good stuff. I also had some extra plans for IOM as well, but now I don't know. Probably time to take a break.

Edit: stay safe & happy modding

 

Mate that’s not great news I feel for you. You have singlehanded created some of the best and most complex content in rf2 it must be extremely frustrating for you. Take some time off and refresh I am sure you will bounce back you have too many skills not to…

 

S.Victor,
i totally agree with Bears, your additions to the RF2 Sim, both tracks and utils/info are 1st class.Very few have given as much as you have for the advancement of the Sim, freely.
I hope you get passed this blip in your work.

 

We all have our motivational ups and downs. Take some time away. You've done a lot in the past few months on some massive projects. Better to sit back and recharge than to get fully burnt out.

 

Thank you all for the kind support & advice. I'll take some proper time off.

Works on IOM update will be continued, as well as more future plans to improve the track experience further. It's a track we all love and I hope it can be as good as it can be.

Wet surface map will likely be disabled for the next update to avoid visual problem, if situation from RC's new wet rendering has unchanged.

 

Well said: get some time off. We´ll be here to enjoy your wonderful works as usual.

 

While still working on AIW and other stuff, made a new personal best with Audi R15 TDI (13:50.978), video:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1KA4y1Q7SH

 

That is crazy fast. Nice to see someone drive it that does not suck .

 

Great time, so hard to even complete a clean, fast time.Nice driving.

 

new AIW is now nearly 90% done, and while there are still quite a lot work to do, here is a short footage showing reworked mountain mist (with AI driving):
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1MY411M76L/

 

v2.00 UPDATE

Major changes:
- Added 4 mountain rally stages. Each stage takes around 3-6 minutes to finish, and fully works with AI & race. It's highly recommended to set race type to Time and 1-2 mins race length, and set Flag Rule to either None or Full w/o DQ.
Stage info:

• Stage 1 (14.70 km): from Quarter Bridge to Cronk-Y-Voddy.
• Stage 2 (17.44 km): from Glen Helen to Ginger Hall.
• Stage 3 (15.61 km): from Ballaugh Bridge to Guthrie's Memorial.
• Stage 4 (19.26 km): from Gooseneck to Governor's Bridge.

- AI Waypoint has been fully rebuilt, including new fastest path, as well as left, right, block path for challenging races against AI. Every line & corner nodes of the new fastest path line has also been adjusted by hand for min-maxing AI performance against multiple types of vehicles, which improves AI laptime by an average of 30 seconds. The new AIW provides a very good way for learning the track, especially with driving line assist enabled. Fuel usage in setup page also has a better estimated reading now (except rally stages).


- Reconstructed entire road surface with varied physical bumps to replicate the track condition of IOM during the 90's. The new bumps are created with Jim's valuable input, as well as side by side comparison between the original GPL version.
Notable bumpy sections:

• Cronk Y Voddy (moderate bumpiness)
• Quarry Bends to Sulby (moderate bumpiness)
• Ginger Hall to Milntown (heavy bumpiness)

- Rebuilt & optimized all collision objects, to prevent vehicles from stranding inside terrain objects, or falling off the track in serious crash. Long race is now viable for both singleplayer and multiplayer, especially with low-damage setting.
This includes:

• New 120km collision wall that encloses entire drivable track area. New collision wall complexity is ten times less than before.
• New single-side collision mesh for all road posts at mountain area, which only interacts with vehicles at forward driving direction.

- Other optimization changes to surface & collision include:

• All road & sidewalk surface meshes are separated from other surface types. Other surface types no longer have realroad properties.
• Separated all visual wall objects from track surface, and no longer interact with vehicles.

Other changes:

- Brought back the authentic mountain mist that Jim has originally created for the GPL version of the track.
- Improved skybox texture for smoother transition between sky & ocean during different time of day, a clear ridge line is now visible during night.
- Added more flaggers for race starting & finishing.
- Added chimney smoke.
- Added new pit lane fence.
- Street lights glowing objects are only visible during night time.
- Fixed floating grass at Cronk Y Voddy.
- Improved mountain 3d models (less blocky).
- Improved large amount scenery objects, removed unused objects.
- Optimized SCN entries, removed unused static reflection mapper.
- Updated & optimized TDF file.
- Adjusted & improved large amount material setting.
- Removed wet road visual effect (due to the latest changes of RF2's wet rendering, wet road visual effect no longer works for this track, and it is currently not possible to fix without breaking the whole track).
- Removed wet road preset.

Additonal AIW notes:

Spoiler

Due to extreme complexity of road condition and corner combinations, the only way to achieve best AI path line for various types of vehicles, is to adjust each path nodes manually. This has been proved to be a very difficult and time consuming task.

However to consider that this track is mostly for time trial type of races, and also how dangerous the track is even without overtaking & battling, the obvious choice is to spend time working on the fastest AI path line, and to make sure it is as solid and robust as possible.

For this reason, only the fastest path line has received full manual adjustment, which this task alone has taken three months of work.

Three distinguish vehicles (917K, BT20, R15) were used for tweaking & adjusting the fastest path line. From final comparison against old AIW, all three vehicles have shown an average of laptime gain of 30 seconds with the new fastest path line, and have zero crashes.

As for the new left, right, block path lines, they were driven & recorded using R15 (high-downforce), with small amount of tweaks & adjustments. It is possible that you may see AI crashing while overtaking in a corner with a low-downforce car, since those path nodes are not optimized for low-downforce cars, which AI could bring too much speed into a corner.

Besides the path line performance, there is also a new 0.5 meter AI driving line variance (as set in acceptabledriverlinenoise). As a result, AI can drive slightly off the fastest path line, and sometimes touches a wall or grass, which could lead to a crash or spin. This helps to make AI less artificial, and have more varied behavior.

And thanks to Jim for all the help & support that made this update possible.

 

Masterpice, thx for the Hard work!!

 

looks to be a fantastic update, thanks for all your hardwork and continued input.

 

Astounding. Like all mods, I am humbled by your art.

 

Such a labour of love, and I'm so grateful and excited to try out these split stages. I find myself coming back to IoM regularly just to joyride and burn off some of the day's frustrations. rFactor 2 would be incomplete without this circuit.

 

v2.01 Rally stage update
- Added more rally stage sign boards near road side according to real life rally stage layout.
- Further optimized AI waypoint for all rally stages.
- Rally stage maps are now correctly displayed on new UI.
- Slightly moved finish line position for rally stage 3 & 4 to avoid rushing into the corner ahead at full speed.
- Fixed an issue which AI would take wrong route at the start of Rally Stage 3.
- Added race start flagger for all rally stages.

 

After big Tests
Version 2.0 has many framedrops. from 100+ to 25fps
1. Forest sector in sector1
2. Village in Sector 1/2
3. Around the Mountains Sector

 

Thanks for your feedback. Which layout are you having low fps issue?

There should be no performance downgrade from 2.00 update, but instead should have some fps gain. I have been working on AIW for 3 months and haven't experienced any performance downgrade issue.

However there is an old performance downgrade low-fps BUG that is related to "time scale & replay" since the track was released 2 years ago (as the issue had been talked about at the first few of the pages of this thread), and the bug still exists.

This issue can be described as following:
1. Set time scale that higher than normal. (note, this may not be necessary, but I can almost always reproduce low-fps bug if time scale is higher than normal)
2. Drive a long distance, then watch replay, and rewind a long way back to the early of the session.
3. Finished watching replay, go back to track and click DRIVE. Then FPS won't go over like 50fps. And the only way to get normal fps back is by exiting session and re-loading the track.

With the above steps, this low-fps bug is almost 100% reproduce-able.

And as far as I know, it is not track's fault. It should be a game engine problem or limit for super long tracks (probably something related to time/weather/realroad, etc), as this track has the second biggest road surface mesh (current version of targa florio has the biggest surface mesh).

Try avoid using none-normal "time scale" with replay should help avoid FPS drop issue.

Lemme know if this helps.

PS: also try avoid running mods that using cockpit camera LODmultiplier value that higher than 1.0, those car mods will 100% causing performance issue, which is mentioned in the first few pages of this thread. (if you are seeing floating track sections, then the car mod has higher LODmultiplier value. note: RF2's swingman camera view uses 2.0 default value, which is normal)

 

I Drive the TT Layout. No Time scale. I Start quali in the Morning 06.00 and race Sunset ca. 08.00 with 40 Cars. my graphic Card its 3090. The most of track run super smooth. I think its ah Problem with sparks and shadows.