LiDAR circuit models

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by toodaft, Sep 28, 2011.

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  1. fanlebowski

    fanlebowski Registered

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    depend the price, of course. there are today some free leagues, or almost, and someones who cost 40$ per year. in europe, i don't know well others parts of the world for this ^^, the free leagues are not the most importants.

    i mean, as we discuss here, people have to pay for something. i think the price must be under 50$/year/member. today with the server cost the price is generally something like 25 or 30$/year.

    and, don't forget that a league as "mine" pay 1000$/year for the f..... Windows licence for his servers. make a dedicated on linux and we'll be glad to give you this money against scanned tracks :D
     
  2. DeDios

    DeDios Registered

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    and...what about an additional bonus package? for xx euros/year. Starting with just one track (like Lime Rock for example -or smaller-), and..if will be a success you can add more tracks.
     
  3. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    You can't develop to the minority if you want to stay in business.
     
  4. peterchen

    peterchen Registered

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    Hello everyone!

    I´ve read this thread with much interst as I am first of all a costumer and do some modding.
    So I like to write as a costumer first.

    And for the costumer it is not the question if laser-scanned tracks are coming or not but:
    When are they available and what will it cost!?
    And thats a marketing-question! I can´t believe that you don´t own the data of the tracks
    you scanned and renderd (?) yourself to sell to a professional customer like F1 – teams!
    That is a catastrophic management fail IMHO!
    When you work on the tracks anyway, why don´t you come in advance to the idea to sell it
    To non-Pro rFactor-users too??
    Nobody will ever know what real F1-Team is working with this version.
    So why not this advanced steps?
    I´ve read that one of you developers said something like „rF2 will break too many barriers“.
    That is something that most people wish to have in terms like accuracy!
    We do this simracing-thing because we want to simulate the reality.
    So it´s got to be realistic – it´s got to be accurate.
    So the biggest hope that I set in rF2 is that you add more expieriences and stuff that you earned with your engagement with the Pro-customers to lead the way to the real thing, to reach a new level of accuracy. And that are first of all the physics and the tracks! When you had material in stock (I thought so) you could go on and offer it as download and you would see what happend.

    And yes – on the one side this is the chance to reach a new level of overall-quaylity in „opensource“-sim racing. But on the other side I have not the opinion that this much track-stuff that appeard for rF1 with all its conversions a.s.o. is a curse. The graphical quality may be worth at one or another but this quantity gives us a higher chance to find a most accurate track in track layout. The truth is:
    We are happy if the track layout is in an acceptable way reproduceable from everything we know about the real thing.
    So if we can save the status of Spa at the 5th december 2011 at 14pm, lets do that!
    If someone´s done that and sell it, the community have an indication, a lead! Everyone know how the real thing could be! And that must be the goal of a simulating software: to simulate the reality better and better with every step!
    If you can reach this without laser-scanning – fine! But what we want is that this track must have something to do with the real thing!

    Yes – we want most accurate tracks!
    And we will pay for it! (what we do anyway)

    cheers and kind regards
    pete
     
    1 person likes this.
  5. DeDios

    DeDios Registered

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    Well, is just an optional package, not an entire game :D and..imho can be a success; anyway i'm not an expert about ;)

    GREAT post peterchen! ;) +1!
     
  6. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    lol, oh dear. I think we just hit a little bit of absurdity so I guess the 'discussion' I enjoyed is over. Oh well. :)
     
  7. DeDios

    DeDios Registered

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    Personally i don't see any absurdity here, we're just talking and discussing about an interesting argument :)
    Everyone have just personal opinion, good or bad. That's the forum. IMHO of course! :D
     
  8. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    Ok, I'll try to sum up three points one more time...

    With the subscription model of iRacing, for example, with the amount of subscribers and the cost per month/year, etc, the costs for laser scanning are not only paid by the people who buy the tracks, they are paid by the subscriptions of those who NEVER buy a track. It's effectively double-dipping. Good for them! If you want a subscription model and laser scanned tracks, there's already a product out there which does that. That's not what what this product is and unless you want a carbon copy of iRacing, it's not what you're going to get.

    The average laser scanned track BUILD (not including the scanning itself) takes iRacing maybe 2-3 months. Are you prepared to wait? Because I think the #1 thing I read, EVERY DAY, is about things not happening a quick as people want them to happen.

    The comment above about not owning the data, that's the thing I thought was absurd. :) If someone comes to you, tells you they need a track(s) scanning and tells you they'll be using your software for their simulator. Are you seriously, even in your wildest dreams, going to tell them that you demand anything? That you want to have them pay you, and then you share their information out to everyone else (including their competitors)? If they don't want that information to be used by someone else, it's not going to happen, and totally contrary to being 'catastrophic management' it's actually why a company like ISI stays in business in the current economic climate. If you won't do the scan and keep it private, someone else will. And then you don't only lose the track scan, you risk losing the simulator contract, too. There's plenty of land surveyors and software engineers out of work right now who would be happy to pickup a nice contract.

    Did you know that when ISI stopped working with EA they had to completely rewrite most of the engine? Guess why? Because they didn't own what was done while working for EA. That's how things work. Companies want work done for them, to be done ONLY for them.
     
  9. Revvin

    Revvin Registered

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    I'm sorry to say you're a bit off base there Pete. I agree with the points Tim made about teams not wanting to pass on this valuable data for others to use. I've also seen plenty of developers have to go away and re-write their code because it was owned by the publisher. The other problem is how ISI would protect their laser scanned tracks. We've seen far too many modder's with little or no respect for people's IP. It would be a pretty safe bet that someone would take ISI's laser scanned track and port it into RACE or GTR etc in very little time.

    I've not done any track modding for rFactor, I've seen some comments from members who do and others perhaps taking educated guesses but maybe Tim can answer this. Its been mentioned that iRacing doesn't use the point cloud to make a detailed visible 3d surface but uses the additional data from the point cloud to create a layer that the engine 'reads' to calculate the effect on the car from the track surface. Is rFactor 2 capable of doing this or would any detail from the laser scan have to be translated into the 3d model therefore making the track very resource heavy.
     
  10. K Szczech

    K Szczech Registered

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    That is THE question.

    Even without laser scanned data it can do a lot of good - simply because a modder could now use texture to describe surface rahter than using a sine wave. It makes things much more complicated for simulator though - it's damn easier and faster to calculate diff from sine wave :)

    That's why this is THE question - will this (or something like that) be implemented?
     
  11. feels3

    feels3 Member Staff Member

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    Good question.

    I hope that it will not be missed by Tim.
     
  12. Lazza

    Lazza Registered

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    There is a solution of course: a league, or number of leagues pooling resources (money), approach ISI with a request to scan a track and pay for the process. Having received the track, they are obviously free to use it for themselves, and could even on-sell it to other leagues/users. Since they feel very confident about the demand, they'll probably recoup a large proportion of their own costs. Great! :)
     
  13. fanlebowski

    fanlebowski Registered

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    i don't think there are lot of people here who believe ISI will bring us what you make for teams simulator. Everybody understand well that ISI will not sell to another ones something make for one or several teams.

    i think, maybe i'm wrong, rfactor's fan want just "grow up" with what we can see in IR and annonced in CARS.

    Laser scanned tracks are a step to cross in future i think, for any simulation who will want to stay on top. maybe not in 2012, sure.

    But accurates track are not all, maybe, i hope, rf2 will bring us enough to forget this point. Don't forget that people always will ask 232 scanned tracks and 526 cars for 10$ ;)

    seriously ? ;)

    do you imagine how much cost this work ? a normal track cost something like 8k for a standard finition. Add the travel, equipements, guys etc. i don't know the price of a scanned track but do you think possible to pay even 20k for some leagues for one track ? :)
     
  14. Jim Beam

    Jim Beam Registered

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    If Lindsay Lohan can get $1 million dollars to pose in playboy...anythings possible :D
     
  15. DeDios

    DeDios Registered

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    I'm not agree..i'm sure there are hundreds of people who would pay for quality work. rFactor community is not composed only by "gimme-gimme" people.
     
  16. ZeosPantera

    ZeosPantera Registered

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    Just starting in this conversation can I ask the question of How the current tracks we have in rf1 and will find in rf2 were created if not using some sort of lidar scans? Was it survey equipment and satellite images, guesswork or something else?
     
  17. fanlebowski

    fanlebowski Registered

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    sure dedios. what i mean is that we'll never have the ultimate game with all scanned tracks, best netcode, free to modding etc. we, and ISI too, have to make some choices.

    IR have his system, lot of people don't like it, CARS will have certainly some problems to play at 40 cars during online races, rf2 won't have (many) scanned tracks etc. there are disadvantages everywhere.

    sure i want scanned tracks, but i think today it's not possible with the rfactor model. even if, probably, ISI will have to look this point in future.
     
  18. fanlebowski

    fanlebowski Registered

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    tracks are made with google map (or other). with it you have good corners, and a base of work for the elevation. scanned tracks offer the good bumps, kerbs and groove movements. without it you just can estimate them.
     
  19. ZeosPantera

    ZeosPantera Registered

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    That was aimed more specifically at Tim and ISI. I know how the community makes them. If they want us to ignore the non lidar let them at least explain why we shouldn't worry.
     
  20. DeDios

    DeDios Registered

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    CAD files? Good question Zeos.
     

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