Lobethal, Australia - 1937-39 - possible WIP - expressions of interest?

W

woochoo

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I suppose now is as good a time as ever to put up a video of the Lobethal 1937-39 circuit I was working on for rF1.
I've not done any proper work on it since about 2011, besides putting it in rF2 dev mode about six months ago.

The circuit is not far East of Adelaide in Australia, and has been compared to the old Spa layout.

from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobethal_Circuit
Roughly triangular in shape, the circuit comprised temporarily closed public roads which passed through the towns of Charleston and Lobethal. Two of the four approach roads to Lobethal were utilised as was the main road through Charleston, each of these having sealed surfaces. It is the longest circuit to have been used in Australian motor racing, and the average speed for the 1939 Australian Grand Prix was the fastest of any Australian Grand Prix prior to 1956, with race winner Tomlinson averaging 84.00 mph.

A writeup about the circuit:
http://www.circuitsofthepast.nl/en-US/lobethal

Photos/description of the lap:
http://www.circuitsofthepast.nl/en-US/lobethal/laplobethal

Google Maps:
https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-34.909908,138.8957577,15z

Real-Life Revival Festival Lap:

rF1 AI Lap with the 1937GP mod:

rF1 AI trackside with the 1937GP mod:

I'm not going to have NEARLY enough time to work on it and bring it to rF2... on my own.
I'd be interested in having one, two, three or more people (at least moderately skilled modders) join in to bring this historic circuit to rF2.
It's a long track, and I expect it would take a while to finish off.

It was started in Bob's Track Builder, but has been converted into a 3ds Max project for rF2.
The road mesh density is (from memory) already ok for rF2, but it's unfinished, like the whole project.
The terrain and road are a bit rough and in certain ways and certain places they don't really meet top-notch standards these days.
All the buildings are placeholders (from Longford ;) ).
I have (long ago) bought and have clearance to use aerial photos for this project from a South Australian government department.

At the least, the current road and terrain meshes would be useful as templates for scratch building on top of.
Lots of scope for anyone who enjoys modeling small-town buildings from 19th/early 20th Century Adelaide Hills...

Anyone interested in joining in?
Send a PM
Cheers!

EDIT:
See post #17 for link to minimally functional dev mode proof-of-concept download
 
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From a user's point of view I will express my interest:
GIMME! ;)

Seriously, oh I wish I was a modder. I'd love to help out somehow.
I hope, and believe, that you'll get the help you need.
 
I'd love to see it in rF2 given my grandparents and father lived in Lobethal upon arriving from Europe back in the day ;)
 
vivemclaren said:
(Do you have some datas about Sandown Park where there are two Group C races (1984 and 1988) ? :)
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk/racingcircuits/Australia/Sandown Park 1984.gif)
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Sorry, I haven't looked into old Sandown races, but I look forward to seeing it with Prototype C ;)

hexagramme said:
Seriously, oh I wish I was a modder. I'd love to help out somehow.
Click to expand...
Don't worry, everyone is a modder. It's just that some people don't do it ;)

Travis said:
I'd love to see it in rF2 given my grandparents and father lived in Lobethal upon arriving from Europe back in the day
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It's always nice to please the people with a more direct connection to the place such as yourself :)
 
As I've already said, I'd love to see this. Hopefully you get some fellow modders on board, hopefully someone else who builds tracks will...
 
Here is a video of the lap after the onboard rF1 lap, from trackside cam group 1.
 
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When starting on the project I bought a doco DVD that was produced in conjunction with the Lobethal Grand Carnival revival festival a few years ago.
It turns out someone has posted a copy online. I'm not sure if it's still available for purchase anywhere.
(edit: it turns out that that copy has since been removed)
 
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hexagramme said:
It looks gorgeous mate.
If you need someone to do some testing at some point, count me in.
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Thanks, I'm sure some testers would be good.

At this stage I've not heard from anyone interested in taking on the actual work.
I've zipped up the project into a 1.7GB pack, including max files, terrain photos, reference photos and vids.
I've also got a zip file of the track in dev mode (63MB).
I'll send links to anyone who might want to work on the track.

I think it's a botched AIW that's stopping it working in the main game at the moment, but I don't have time to fiddle with it, so that would be one of the first things for a fresh pair of hands to tackle.
The road is probably a bit too bumpy for rF2 (plenty of polys, just quite bumpy), so a new road mesh would/might be in order (but the old mesh would still be very useful for undulation/camber/crown reference).
The verge meshes could use more polys too.

If someone is only interested in making some buildings, that would be appreciated as well. There is a pack of Street-view reference photos for every building along the side of the circuit. At some point I (or maybe someone else) could probably find the time to get to Lobethal and get some photos for textures.

It's not necessary that the same single person needs to do the whole project. I'd be fine with someone just doing a month or two and then handing it back, if that's all they wanted to do.
 
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i thought that some1 wud jump at the chance to finish it off as you have probably done heaps already
 
It's an inspiring video :)

As for the state of completion, to the standards I'd envisioned when starting (~2010), I'd want to see:
- all scratch-made, accurate, low poly, photo-texture buildings, and their associated boundary fences etc.
- power poles/power lines.
- the train lines beside the first third of the circuit.

I'll accept that level of completion if that's all anyone wants to do.
But it would be much better if someone were to do the buildings with higher poly counts, up to current standards, or even a little into the future (since it would take a while to finish them anyway ;) )
And so many people would complain about how bumpy the road is. I suppose it's possible that the road could be salvaged with some careful application of skillz.
The verge terrain could survive, for now, to an extent, with some selective poly addition and reworking in a few places.
The terrain on the outside of the fences should be (mostly) OK for a few years to come :)
Fences could perhaps do with a redo at some stage.
Road/Terrain textures can be updated later with the new Longford textures I'm working on (or someone can do their own if they want).

Other good news is, lots of the buildings in street view wouldn't have been there in the late '30s, and lots of the old houses are of the same or very similar design.
 
coops said:
if it has them bumps in the track make sure they are left there realism is important
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in rF1 with it's/realfeal's ffb they're decent big bumps, but in rF2 with it's higher fidelity response, i think they're too much. I've not measured them, in terms of cm, but i'd not expect something like that outside of a proving ground or something. To be honest, I was only assuming the real life old road surface would be somewhat bumpy/lumpy. I've no proof.

It's mainly down the middle of the road too, as with Longford. But from memory the bumps were set to be about double the magnitude of Longford, and I've had trouble with the Longford ones in rF2.
So if the middle of the road was made to be ~33% to 50% less bumpy, I'd be ok with that. The lanes of the road are probably ok as is.
 
you know what?
There's no good in me not giving away the dev mode version (that I can see, at this time...). At the least you can all enjoy the bumps :p
I've not made any efforts on the terrain texture blending, nor adjusted things to suit rF2/HDR, so, basically, this is like version Alpha 0.1, proof of concept or something.
This won't look as good as the rF1 version in some obvious ways, so focus more on the driving and challenge of the track, than the visual quality :)

rF2 Dev Mode Only:
This 'release' is not supported. Don't complain about things to me :p
I don't think the AIW works (except the spawn point).
Don't convert it to rF1 or any other games.
This is only an attempt to encourage interest in someone(s) continuing the project.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/75wzqpol93k2i0v/lobethal rF2 mod dev [2013-08-30].zip
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J9POWm_2KzjY4YDhw0elVL66RV_w9Uy1/view?usp=sharing
If anyone decides that they want to work on the project, don't bother about importing gmt files etc, I'll send a link to the whole project zip.
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time
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[edit 2024] or i'll just put them here 10 years later...
Please be aware that a number of people have attempted to progress this project in the last ten years, and none have made it to the point of an improved version for me to test.
It is not cursed. It is simply big.
I would also say that these days there may be things like freely available government lidar data that would be a much better basis for creating this track. Certainly the roads would have been redone a number of times since 1939 but with some checking of reference material and some logical conclusions modern LiDAR will produce a much better result than my initial efforts.

reference material:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jDY2WpxVTWHztDBnFm2dfPD8JkURsg47/view?usp=sharing

3dsMax file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nuEpSwaMr6X3AU-BUHBvl-SnxJiu1740/view?usp=sharing
 
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Thanks for this thread woochoo, and thanks for the Lobethal video link.
(Mind-blowing bravery, with all of those immovable eucalyptus trees)

I'm very interested, but just a casual consumer/virtual driver here.
If released it might overtake Longford in my 'favorites' short list :)
 
Cousin_Ken said:
Thanks for this thread woochoo, and thanks for the Lobethal video link.
(Mind-blowing bravery, with all of those immovable eucalyptus trees)

I'm very interested, but just a casual consumer/virtual driver here.
If released it might overtake Longford in my 'favorites' short list :)
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Thanks, it's nice to hear support for the project :)

And Tosch, it would be great if you found some time to get involved at some point :)

I may have found one pair of hands to make a start on some buildings, but more assistance would be very much welcome.
If anyone was interested in getting into modding or 3d work generally, then making a building or two would be a fair place to start.

The Cheap Alternative to Laser Scanning would also be pretty nice to try with Lobethal too. Project Video Scanner by FlyPT.
I'd be interested in having a go at that myself (but no chance at this time - and i should try it on Longford too...), but if someone else wanted to roll around Lobethal with a lappy and a couple of webcams, then that's fine with me!
I'm sure the road has been relaid a few times since the late 30's, but at worst it would be fantastic reference data. Great for positioning buildings and trees, and also useful for verges and general road characteristics (broad dips or bumps, crown, camber). There's obviously little hope of recreating the original road bump-for-bump, so any modern bumps would be about as good as it gets, and adding in a bit of manual variation should combine to make an engaging road surface. Would probably need to de-engineer some bits of modern camber/crown (where historic photos/vid is available), assuming road design philosophy and practice has evolved over 70-odd years.
 
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