About the next project from JM Virtual Tracks "Patreon Launched"

The plan has changed a bit from that post but understand this, it takes 6 months at least full time work to make a track like this, which by that amount that would be roughly 1084 dollars a month, that is less than minimum wage a month. Be sure to read the full thread for how this works, as long as I get enough support to see the track to finish everyone is getting the track. So if throwing in a few dollars is too rich then you can always hope there are enough others to back it.

 

First, glad you stuck around and kept reading past the post you said Bye on. $2,000 total would probably see the track done eventually but people would have to understand that I would be open to other commissions to cover more cost. As mentioned it will likely be 6 months work, how many people are willing to work 6 months for $2,000? I'm not trying to get rich here I am just trying to cover monthly expenses while I work, I am keeping this as transparent as possible. Everyone will be able to see how much I am getting from patrons monthly, and everyone involved will be able to see all progress, get test builds etc. to see that I am working and will be able to see what kind of work load is actually is to do this.

 

I'd be in for an amount per month. I love the work you've done on Gingerman. I think it's top quality; the best quality outside of ISI circuits IMO.

I'm quite happy to throw some $ your way monthly for more content of that quality.

 

I've found them to be tremendously useful for camber because most of the aerial scans have a point every meter or two unless trees are obscuring the ground return signal. Elevation accuracy is very good, far better than using Google Earth, probably better than a GPS trace; not sure how the accuracy is compared to accelerometer trace.

 

Google Earth sometimes is more accurate than gps, all the gps I have had chance to use has been pretty terrible mostly just due to losing its calibration somehow, one lap to the next will drop 2 or 3 meters in elevation thus meaning all the data is pretty much inaccurate. Only a couple times have a found enough solid to use, with the exception of bike ride or walking gps, the samples when not bound to a car seem to be way improved and top googleearth. Google earth seems to be hit and miss, I've found sometimes it to match bike ride gps sample almost perfectly and then others there just is little data at all so its a bit of pot luck. A meter LiDar would be brilliant really, not Iracing or Assetto Corsa accuracy but close enough for someone with a good eye to target the smaller details through photos and videos. Personally I would just need to find someone willing to walk me through the process of obtaining the data relevant to what I need first of all without downloading 40GB of data and then how to get that relevant data into max, if I could get the points into max I could probably turn it into a mesh that would work well for reference. Noone actually builds the visual models by LiDar data anyway, it would just be a triangulated mess, you build the track the way the game needs and use the Lidar to guide the model.

 

Hopefully helpful PM sent.

 

dunno about anyone else but im looking forward to this experiment, hope it works out!

 

I'm in for something for sure. If nothing else I would like to help make this work so I can convince you to do VIR afterwards ;-).

One thing about that one idea, and I know it was just an idea, to include cars. Personally I would prefer to have 4 cars all of the same class rather than one car each from 4 classes. One of my biggest dislikes about RF2 is that out of all of the ISI cars there aren't two different cars that can fairly race one another. Very few 3rd party cars even seem to deal with this.

 

Ok guys, finally launched the Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/JMVirtualTracks

No one pledging will actually be charged till after the first of the month, those of you who want to get in right off the start can do so. This will be a bit of a wip for the first few weeks probably, so those who join in I hope you will advise me as we go on what I can do better to make it worth your pledge and those who are waiting I'd like to hear what you would like that would make you want to pledge. This is completely new frontier for me and for this platform being used in this way period so things are going to be pretty flexible off the start. I will start spreading the news about it further over the next few days.

 

Done.

Of note, you don't live very far from me and I have access to tracks in the area (including Daytona). I'm not scheduled to run Daytona again until late this year though. If you have interest in getting data on others like CMP, VIR, Roebling Road, Road Atlanta, etc feel free to contact me. I can provide race data, video, and I typically walk the tracks in the evenings of events so I could easily take both a GPS and a camera with me ;-). I could potentially put you on my crew list so you could join for the walk and enjoy some racing too.

 

Thanks for your support, I'll be in touch about some of those other things. I'm told there is publicly available LiDar data for Road Atanta but not VIR and those are definitely two tracks I'm interested in so I would like to get some more info on VIR for sure. Possibly CMP as well, that is another Alan Wilson track whom I really should meet some day considering how many tracks he's designed that I am interested in, already modeled 2 he designed.

 

We already have a an 80% finished CMP. PM me if you are interested in helping to finish it, but I presumed not due to the fact that it's already out and free. You can look in the thread here about it, too. Wilson definitely knows what he's doing, though!

 

From the looks of it that is the conversion of the RF1 version. I don't usually work on tracks made by others as everyone has their methods and tools and its usually to tough to drop in on a project so close to completion but done by someone else. I also am not sure the accuracy or anything of the track I don't know much background on the track itself and whoever originally modeled it for RF1. However I might be interested in picking away at it a bit in my spare time if there is a ready max file available for it.

 

Sadly there is not