Longford v0.99 Third-Party Update Now Available!

Discussion in 'News & Notifications' started by 88mphTim, Nov 8, 2015.

  1. 88mphTim

    88mphTim racesimcentral.net

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    This new version of Longford includes a number of visual updates. Textures have been adjusted for the recent updates to the lighting system. New house models have been added and the Control Tower has been updated. Night driving has been improved with adjusted settings. Road surface materials have been tweaked and some minor road mesh changes have been made. A new AIW file should accommodate a wider variety of cars and provide more satisfying racing.





    Download: 475MB

    Modders page.

    Longford_1967_v099_rF2_woochoo_017.jpg

    Changelog:
    - Road: Slight changes to road surface before pub, including what appears to be a pot hole filling, as recently noticed in ref material, and repair patch at begining of yellow pitlane line.
    - Road: Changes to road materials and specular masks.
    - Road Decals: Some small material and texture changes (higher res).
    - Control Tower: Some renovations to the rear of the tower, reconfiguration of scaffolding, addition of external doorknobs, addition of floodlights, and some basic interior fitout.
    - Control Tower: Reworked/new textures and materials as a result of above mesh updates.
    - Control Tower: Added small custom "wind" animation to awnings (it's not great, but it's something).
    - Control Tower: Added working clock.
    - Pits: Fixed an unnoticed mapping error causing broken lighting reactions, and updated sponsor signs with some new fictional advertising and updated textures and material settings.
    - Pits: Replaced names of real drivers, teams, cars (to avoid potential legal troubles).
    - Foot Bridge: Reworking of stairs, some slight extra mesh detailing, mapping changes reducing absolute texture size, and removal of fake shadow caster (visible mesh now casts shadow).
    - Tram/Police Centre: Small update to texture and material.
    - Food Stall/Toilets: Small update to textures and material.
    - Bleachers: New highpoly model with new texture (old model still used for lower detail levels).
    - Spectator Cars: Retoned paint colours and removed some details from textures to make the cars less specific.
    - Spectator Cars: Corrected a mesh error that had appeared on some station wagons.
    - Pub: Some small mesh, mapping, and texture changes.
    - Pump Station: Upgraded pump station building (driver's right after King's Bridge) with more mesh detail, new textures, and new material.
    - Houses: Upgraded house models with more polygons and new textures.
    - Houses: Some changes to house distribution based on reference photos.
    - House Fences: Small updates to the front fences of some houses, as well as brand new white picket fence after rail crossing.
    - Kerbs/Gutters: Increased mesh density for smoothing hard edges.
    - Gutter/Footpath: Remade and extended gutter/footpath on the left side of the beginning of Tannery Straight (in the town).
    - Driveway Thresholds: Added concrete ramps over gutter to footpath.
    - Haybales: Welded and smoothed bales (they look a bit better and a bit worse now - different... just different)
    - Fences: Some small changes to textures and materials of timber plank fences.
    - Railway Crossing Signs: Higher poly meshes with new textures and material.
    - Railway Signal Tower: Higher poly mesh with new textures and material.
    - Sponsor Tower Signs: New meshes and textures for global oil company sponsor signs.
    - Sponsor Signs and Banners: Replaced most real-world tradenames and imagery with fictional alternatives.
    - Sponsor Signs and Banners: Have aquired approval to use some registered tradenames and branding from the real-life events.
    - Sponsor Signs and Banners: Moved and rescaled (smaller) red cola sign at viaduct, based on photo reference.
    - Starting Lights: Fixed material animation error and changed sequence to single red light, then green light.
    - AIW: All new AIW files due to online grid errors in old version.
    - AIW: New AIW may produce faster AI laptimes (have added slight limitation on AI acceleration).
    - AIW: Removed "Historic Grid" & "Level Grid" layouts, which were having some grid troubles.
    - AIW: Changed (due to congestion) garage/pit/grid capacity to 36/12/36, down from 42/13/42.
    - AIW: Adjustments to blocking path, aimed at reducing severe blocking on the Flying Mile.
    - AIW: Added "Fast_H" fast path for Cobras, which more than any other car were cutting the turn off of Long Bridge.
    - AIW: Added "OW3_Fast" path for Skip Barber, which wasn't handling some slow-down hacks in the main fast path.
    - CAM: Moved (lowered) trackside camera in group one due to removal of perch in same location.
    - HDR: Adjustments to a number of textures (over 80 different objects) that were excessively clipping against the white point of the new build 948 HDR automation.
    - Standardisation: Slight changes to file name structures to match ISI format more closely.
    - Optimisation: Some fairly insignificant batching and/or material reduction could improve performance slightly.
    - Optimisation: Pit tents and metal fence panels now visable in high/med detail levels, may slightly reduce fps.


    ================================================== ===
    ===Known Issues, Non-Implemented Features, & Notes===
    ================================================== ===
    ===The AI
    - Sometimes they'll hop onto the dirt banks on the inside of a few corners.
    - F1 and some other cars may collide with tyre markers.


    ===Headlights
    - Some cars may not have their headlight beams rendered on road, terrain and objects correctly or consistently (includes ISI Corvette C6, Honda NSX cars)


    ===Wet Road Reflections
    - Fences and some terrain areas are not currently in the reflection list due to the nature of the reflection system.


    ===Shadows
    - Some popin, popout, and awkward shading of trees/bushes/buildings etc. In some cases this is a compromise between shaded vegetation and overly bright unshaded vegetation.


    ===Poles and Fences Flickering in the Distance
    - Distant poles and fences may flicker due to the difference between shaded and unshaded parts of the mesh. There is a constant reevalution of which part of the mesh to render into the available


    pixels, and where bright and shaded geometry is close the rendering alternates between bright and shaded pixels. Using something like nVidia's DSR should reduce flickering by rendering at higher


    resolution and then the resultant downsizing for display will have blended the brightness transitions.


    ===Bridges
    - Bridge structures don't currently extend down into the river bed mud. When bridge structures are updated, they will.


    ===Terrain Decals
    - Slight blur where grassy road-edge decals blend into terrain.


    ===Normal Mapping
    - In a couple of areas one or two of the normal maps don't seem correctly oriented with the lighting system.


    ===General Efficiency / Optimisation
    - This project was started as a beginner some time ago, and has been a learning experience. Skillz, philosophies, techniques, and technology have progressed in that time. As a result, and the size of


    the circuit, updates are a rolling process, and there isn't usually time to do all desired updates at or by a specific time.
    It is planned that the older models and textures will be updated, optimised, or replaced.


    ===Continued Development
    - The main target of development will be updates/remakes of older buildings/structures.
    - 3D trees for track-side trees are planned, but takes too long to reach my desired accuracy at this time (some unreleased work has occured but it is time-intensive).
    - Separating painted lines from road textures to separate grip levels (pitlane and grid lines are already separate).
     
  2. Jamie Shorting

    Jamie Shorting Registered

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    Nice, thanks!!
     
  3. tjc

    tjc Registered

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    Brilliant! Many thanks woo and cheers Tim. :cool:
     

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