[WIP] CART Factor

[Berger]

It's probably because the LolaT98-00.mas file doesn't include the Firestone tires. You would have to extract them from the Reynard mas files and add them to the Lola mas.

I could not find any tires in Reynard directory
Futrher more just to add to Lola mistery. All DDS and TGA files inside Lola mas seems to be corrupted or damaged because they cannot be opened with GIMP

I have never ever encountered this problem ever with GIMP as it opens all DDS files from all MAS files without any problem

And again. It happens in all three versions of the mod (automobilista, rF, rF2)

 

[Pwal]

I have the Automobilista version, so I'm not sure if it's the same for the rF2 version, but I found the Firestone tires GMTs in the Reynard98I.mas file and the DDSs in the CART_Shared.mas file. I can open them without any problem with Photoshop, so I can't help you with GIMP.

 

[Berger]

I have the Automobilista version, so I'm not sure if it's the same for the rF2 version, but I found the Firestone tires GMTs in the Reynard98I.mas file and the DDSs in the CART_Shared.mas file. I can open them without any problem with Photoshop, so I can't help you with GIMP.

Ok, i found them.
Now what to do? I presume cart_shared is already used by all chassis. I just need to copy GMTs into Lola subfolder?

And what about yellow cockpit?

 

[Pwal]

You could try just copying the GMTs like you said, maybe it will work. But the best would be to import them into the Lola mas file. I haven't done this in a very long time, so I'm sorry if I can't be more accurate. But I'm pretty sure it can be done.

And sorry, I have no idea for the cockpit.

 

[Berger]

You could try just copying the GMTs like you said, maybe it will work. But the best would be to import them into the Lola mas file. I haven't done this in a very long time, so I'm sorry if I can't be more accurate. But I'm pretty sure it can be done.

And sorry, I have no idea for the cockpit.

Unfortunately Reynards GMT files are not working for Lola

 

[Berger]

Actually it works!
(I made spelling error in genstring Thats why I though its not working)

Thank you! One problem solved!

Now I have to solve cockpit

 

[BeGee]

Took a crack at patching some of this for my own enjoyment, I left all the removed/changed lines in the HDV with comments. If the workshop author or anyone else wants to review this that would be great. The 100% AI laptimes seem closer now.

- Updated hdv files: SemiAutomatic gearbox, remove obsolete AI options, added RadiatorDraftFract for draft to interfere with engine cooling, remove PITMENU and AIDPENALTIES appearing twice
- Slow down the OP AI: lowered AIPerfUsage, AIAimSpeedsPerWP to use existing values in talent file, added BrakeTorqueAI different brake torque for AI
- Change veh file: CDN -> CAN for Canadian drivers

Install these packages over the installed workshop mod.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qEdWo0niBGOKSps87zlfHMF1mUp1mJ9X?usp=sharing

If I get more time I might look into generating new UI thumbnails.

 

[DiggerHawk]

Took a crack at patching some of this for my own enjoyment, I left all the removed/changed lines in the HDV with comments. If the workshop author or anyone else wants to review this that would be great. The 100% AI laptimes seem closer now.

- Updated hdv files: SemiAutomatic gearbox, remove obsolete AI options, added RadiatorDraftFract for draft to interfere with engine cooling, remove PITMENU and AIDPENALTIES appearing twice
- Slow down the OP AI: lowered AIPerfUsage, AIAimSpeedsPerWP to use existing values in talent file, added BrakeTorqueAI different brake torque for AI
- Change veh file: CDN -> CAN for Canadian drivers

Install these packages over the installed workshop mod.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qEdWo0niBGOKSps87zlfHMF1mUp1mJ9X?usp=sharing

If I get more time I might look into generating new UI thumbnails.

Hi BeGee,

I have been working myself on improving this mod for my own use. Although so far my updates have been limited to graphical improvements. The problem I was originally trying to fix was that at lower car detail settings (High and Medium) the textures looked really bad. To get better performance with Studio 397's newer content I set the AI detail to medium for instance. This is fine when the textures are 4096x4096 pixels because with mipmaps that means with medium setting they load as1024x1024 pixels. Unfortunately as the liveries are 2048x2048 that results in 512x512 at medium settings. So I have rescaled the liveries to 4096, added a little sharpening and following Studio 397's advice I have reduced the baked in Ambient Occlusion.
I have also started to convert them to PBR/IBL shaders.
Along with texture updates I have reworked the steering wheels to make them less facetted and smoother and tweaked the cockpit details to look better along with retouched textures.
I have improved the dash displays with the L2dashboard shader so they illuminate at night and the digital gauges are better aligned with their background textures. Although information is hard to find on what the real displays looked like in detail and rF2 limitations I have tried to make every car have at least the speed and current gear visible. Also the LED's do not over glow at night now.
The Lola chassis has an issue with a bit of underlying body work showing through the engine cover, this has been fixed along with some other improvement to the model, bevelling edges for example.
Another issue I fixed was that the swingman camera would rotate around the rear axle, so I have moved it forward. This allows you to pan around closer to the car without cutting the nose out of view.
Some cars also suffered from the suspension disappearing at a distance so I have fixed that along with the driver models staying at a higher LOD longer so that they don't stop animating in view.
Another recent update is I have made the rear view mirrors work on the external views by replacing their material with the L2carbody shader, effectively they are now similar to chrome without the metallic look.

Most of this work has so far been carried out on the Lola chassis, the Reynard and Swift is a little bit further behind. I have yet to touch the Penske's.

I haven't tried your update yet but from what you have said the only overlap seems to be the .veh files. so maybe they can complement each other.

Mark.

 

[BeGee]

They definitely could be complementary since you're mostly in the gen/gmt files I take it. My updates were relatively minor and your visual updates sound really interesting, I would love to give them a try because any sort of quality of life upgrades to this mod would be fitting. Anything that fixes these latent bugs and optimizes for rf2's built-in abilities sounds great.

I stumbled into this because I've been enjoying converted or older mods in all its low poly glory. Feels like I'm retaining a bit of that rfactor/F1c nostalgia on better laid out tracks. As long as the game fundamentals (AI, control, basic physics) aren't completely messed up I like these conversions for the most part. I consider AMS's CART Extreme the real re-master but I think this mod has it's place.

 

[Chris Lesperance]

Hi BeGee,

I have been working myself on improving this mod for my own use. Although so far my updates have been limited to graphical improvements. The problem I was originally trying to fix was that at lower car detail settings (High and Medium) the textures looked really bad. To get better performance with Studio 397's newer content I set the AI detail to medium for instance. This is fine when the textures are 4096x4096 pixels because with mipmaps that means with medium setting they load as1024x1024 pixels. Unfortunately as the liveries are 2048x2048 that results in 512x512 at medium settings. So I have rescaled the liveries to 4096, added a little sharpening and following Studio 397's advice I have reduced the baked in Ambient Occlusion.
I have also started to convert them to PBR/IBL shaders.
Along with texture updates I have reworked the steering wheels to make them less facetted and smoother and tweaked the cockpit details to look better along with retouched textures.
I have improved the dash displays with the L2dashboard shader so they illuminate at night and the digital gauges are better aligned with their background textures. Although information is hard to find on what the real displays looked like in detail and rF2 limitations I have tried to make every car have at least the speed and current gear visible. Also the LED's do not over glow at night now.
The Lola chassis has an issue with a bit of underlying body work showing through the engine cover, this has been fixed along with some other improvement to the model, bevelling edges for example.
Another issue I fixed was that the swingman camera would rotate around the rear axle, so I have moved it forward. This allows you to pan around closer to the car without cutting the nose out of view.
Some cars also suffered from the suspension disappearing at a distance so I have fixed that along with the driver models staying at a higher LOD longer so that they don't stop animating in view.
Another recent update is I have made the rear view mirrors work on the external views by replacing their material with the L2carbody shader, effectively they are now similar to chrome without the metallic look.

Most of this work has so far been carried out on the Lola chassis, the Reynard and Swift is a little bit further behind. I have yet to touch the Penske's.

I haven't tried your update yet but from what you have said the only overlap seems to be the .veh files. so maybe they can complement each other.

Mark.

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

They definitely could be complementary since you're mostly in the gen/gmt files I take it. My updates were relatively minor and your visual updates sound really interesting, I would love to give them a try because any sort of quality of life upgrades to this mod would be fitting. Anything that fixes these latent bugs and optimizes for rf2's built-in abilities sounds great.

I stumbled into this because I've been enjoying converted or older mods in all its low poly glory. Feels like I'm retaining a bit of that rfactor/F1c nostalgia on better laid out tracks. As long as the game fundamentals (AI, control, basic physics) aren't completely messed up I like these conversions for the most part. I consider AMS's CART Extreme the real re-master but I think this mod has it's place.

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

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.

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

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?

 

[BeGee]

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?

 

[Chris Lesperance]

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

 

[DiggerHawk]

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?

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

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

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

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.

 

[Chris Lesperance]

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.

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.

 

[DiggerHawk]

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.