v1.65 BETA Download link After getting many comments about updating the first post... here it is... if you haven't been following the thread, there was a 1.50 and a 1.60 update as well. You can also find them here: v1.50 BETA Download link v1.60 BETA Download link Things are getting complicated at the moment, and I might have to take an unwanted break from working on Nord. I will see how things goes in the coming days/weeks... Worth mentioning that v1.50 and above also includes the extra 24h objects, like caravans, campfires, extra crowds, security people and vehicles, etc... this is by default enabled at max track detail settings. If you do not wish to have them around, set track details to high... it will load only the default tourist objects. This is the only difference between Max and high. Med and low further removes things... with low removing most things not needed to race, as a last attempt to get the track working on lower end hardware. At the moment, the track is very heavy with the new forests, which all are using the same 2048x2048 texture. My max file have gotten out of hand with the memory usage, and I cannot work much further on the matter until a 64bit exporter plugin is released, and I will be able to work with 64bit Max, allowing me to use all my 8gb of ram, instead of ~3.3gb.. So at the moment, with my medium end computer, I can play with everything set to max, but it's missing some to be really enjoyable... setting only texture details to high help me achieve a steady 60fps in most cases and allows me to race some 16 AI (havent really tested exactly how much I can run, but with settings to med, I can run 29 AI no problems at 60 fps locked..) Donation Link (thru Paypal) Many thanks to all you that supported me during all this time, I hope the recent updates are pleasing you, on the kerbstone matter, I will lower them later if I can manage to keep working on Nord, but I can't until the 64bit plugin is released. The kerbstone are part of the terrain, and I modded the terrain a bit when I made the forest, redone a few mountains to better match reality, so I cannot get the terrain objects out of my forest max file, without breaking the forests (without importing the forests, which cause the max file to be so heavy...) Cause if I import the terrain into a new max file, and reimport my forest later, they will be broken and I will need to redo them (or I havent found a way yet... I already screwed up once when I started them) Enjoy! In the cases where I still can't work on Nord in a few months, I'll release whatever is needed for anyone to continue work on this, if anyone wishes to do so. EDIT: Oh and you will likely find the AI much harder now I've fully redone the AIW. First, let me thank the following persons: SPASKIS, Mario Morais, Tosch, Mianiak, Hoover, eth0ne, Richard, Senna12 and likely to be forgetting some. As a whole, everyone in this thread has been most helpful, and you are the reason why this has been made possible and have come this far. Thanks! Nordschleife Guide download link (Thanks to Hectari for providing this! Give this a try, it's an amazing in depth review of the track and how to race it) Version 0.97n download link (Updated lots of the lower resolution, nearby track, textures. Guardrails, metal post, all fences, wooden post, antenna tower, castle, environment texture (top down trees), and more... tweaked further the LODs, and fixed the rear view mirror mostly. Few popouts occurs near horizon line... nothing disruptive.) Version 0.97l download link (Repositioned trees, moved and removed tree lines, optmized road, curbs, and scenery objects, merging and splitting them into smaller pieces, and optimized the LODs and shadows all around. Further optimization possible with shadow groups and vis groups. Reduced bump amplification on concrete extensions. Reduced dust output on the curbs and concrete a tad further. Might be forgetting stuff as usual ) Version 0.97k (full, no update) download link (alt MediaFire link, thanks to Hectari) (new HD guardrails textures, Tosch fixed the background ordering, so the landscape should be matching now. Makes a very nice difference in game anyhow! Thanks to Richard for providing the original guardrail texture.) Version 0.97j-1 update to 0.97j download link (alt MediaFire link, thanks to Hectari) (40mb, new cam, new panoramic background and shader to bump/spec, new tatoo at track start, 5 saved real road profile, Tosch HDR profile included.) Version 0.97j download link (alt MediaFire link, thanks to Hectari) (redone all trees, desaturated and darkened grass a tad, smoothed out all fences and guardrails, redone the bump map on the road (turns out I made a mistake and wasnt using the right bump map for the detail map I had. Makes a nice difference. Amongst other things) Version 0.97g download link (major texture reworking, trees, grasses, road, guardrails, fences, and a lot more have all been redone, now much lighter and much more saturated) Version 0.97e download link (major tree work, many thanks to Tosch. Evergreen edit done by Tosch himself.) Version 0.97d download link (remove blue in the grass, trees, or tried to, improved much the road surface appearance, much darker, better specular, and reworked the tatoos from the original textures, my 1st edit was way too desaturated, modified dust output.) Version 0.97b download link (lighter trees) Version 0.97a (600mb) download link Version 0.96 download link (2x mesh smooth road mesh) Version 0.95 download link Version 0.91 download link Alternate 0.91 download link (Thanks to G.Bird) Version 0.90 download link Version 0.80 download link Alternate download link (Thanks to G.Bird) Tosch HDR Profile for v0.90 and 0.91 download link Tosch HDR Profile for v0.80 download link UPDATE #5 (v0.97a): Lots of things actually! New grasses all around (still not blended tho), new road edges textures to match the new grasses, new gravel textures, all trees redone, and all tree mats made with a different trees, now have a variety of over 50 unique trees. Bumps/spec maps redone for lots of textures. Still need to figure out the alpha channel for the road textures... if anyone can help, let me know. There is too much to recall everything, but you should see a nice improvement since the last release. The road mesh is using the 1x mesh smooth/1x tessel I was talking about. UPDATE #4 (v0.95): It's nearing 7am and I havent slept yet, was working on 0.96 after reading a nice explanations from wgeuze (did I got it right?) on mesh smooth. So I have 2x mesh smooth instead of 2x tessel the road mesh. But I think it is too smooth.. will try 1 mesh smooth 1 tessel tomorrow, and update the post with more informations on what's new You can find out most about it in my first post of today... Enjoy, 0.96 coming up in 25 mins or so if I'm still awake UPDATE #3 (v0.91): edit: tree problems isnt fixed... false hope. Fixed the trees problems. It wasnt a billboarding setup problem, but it turns out a bunch of trees were sitting way too low in the ground, some even completely hidden. Raised a dozens of tree objects by different amount, some up to 8-9 meters. Fixed the over black tarmac in some areas, including paddock. Was the result of those textures mixed up with silverstone mat properties.. Reverted to brianza's for those surface. Removed the tatoos FFB. Will work some more on this, this made it in too early, wanted to remove it, but due to a mistake I made in the scn file, I reverted to a backup, that was prior me disabling the ffb on them. Need to lower the shaking when hitting them when going thru a corner. UPDATE #2 (v0.90): Swapped all trees for billboard versions Added reflections to cars Fixed TDF (the areas which seems overly bumpy was because some road part were still defined with rF1 TDF settings, I've pretty much went all over it and fixed it) Set the smoke output according to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSVeALvU5k8 Set the rainspray according to these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_OjPNOiOXw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI5iFN_H2G8 Redone the skybox Improved the tatoos looks Improved all trees textures Added lots of objects shadows that were missing. Unfortunately, I can't go much further... I tried to extrude the fences, and do other stuff, like add vegetation from lime rock park, but without being able to load the full scene in 3dsmax, it's really hard to do things like this. There are known issues in this version: There are some billboard trees that seems to be shy when seeing from cockpit view. If you check out replays from any other view, they are fine, but some trees seems to hide. They are most of time to the left of track, and when going up a slope. I can't seem to find the problem. All trees were created the very same way, using the gMaterial tool from Mario Morais. There are one or two tree that is flickering. The skybox is clipping when viewing from the paddock, in the opposite direction of track. It is the only time where it does that. It's set to 9000 lod out, no clip.. but it doesnt happens when racing in any other place. I have tried to do the wet reflections, but there are stuff that I dont understand, and it seems that I would have to create planes in 3dsmax and stuff, so again, without having the full scene, it wont be possible for me to do. Night lighting isnt done. Again, I tried, but dont know how to. Went to dev mode yesterday, went to 5 locations from the paddock, and took coords, and added like 20m to the z axis, so the light would be positioned up in the air, but they weren't showing at the coords I took note once in game. This is something I can likely do, if I can find how to. UPDATE #1: After couple of days of intense work, I'm proud to release (early) Nordschleife Tourist layout for rFactor 2. I'm currently exhausted, so I will be taking the rest of the day easy, and will hop on it again next week. It is very much playable, raceable, and more importantly the fun factor is there! So to those of you eager to try it out, here it is! I've worked hard again all day long today, and swapped all road, grass, fences, guard rails materials properties for those of silverstone. All materials textures are swapped for silverstone's. (Not the primary texture, as it wouldnt look good, I tried... it then looks like a race circuit, instead of road circuit. To my taste, it looks really good now. About halfway between rF1 quality and rF2. At times, it feels like a scratch built track for rF2... I still have couple things to do like: -Reflections -A little track icon when you select track (loading screen is partly done, need a good screenshot of the track without cars) -Make sure real roads works, maybe it does already. -Swap more materials -Swap textures, trees and stuff giving out that this is an rF1 track -Maybe convert the other layouts included in the 2.2a release of the rF1 track. -Stuff you will mention and I can do. -Extrude fence so they cast shadows Nordschleife Tourist for rFactor 2 Original track by com8 - Converted to rF2 with love by pleclair Time to make an official thread about it, cause it *IS* happening The roads have been splitted, along with the road edges, road mesh have been increased, and it now drives smooth. There will be likely many updates to it as well, as I learn more and more, I will be improving the textures and objects over time. My goal is to have this track shine. Nordschleife is THE track, it deserves respect! In case you didnt follow my thread "At least I got it to run in dev mode", here are the screenshots of what I had prior to converting mesh. Note the yelllow tint will likely be going away since I separated roads from scenery. So realroad shaders wont tint everything around the road yellow like it did. View attachment 9086 View attachment 9087 View attachment 9088 View attachment 9089 View attachment 9090 View attachment 9091 View attachment 9092 And the youtube video (still from the same version as screenshot) Newer video (not release) Yes, you will be driving Nordschleife on rFactor 2 very soon my friend!
Looks like it may suffer from the too-few polys problem on the road surface. But this is great news if it's a version the community can work on and perfect over the coming months! Looks great already.
Did you read my post? The road mesh is already up to rF2 standard. Been working on this for the last past two days. Just completed a few hours ago, and had a test drive on it... smooth like butter EDIT: Click on the thread link in my first post.. go to last page, and you will see how the road mesh is now in 3dsmax
Woohoo, great job so far! Love your enthusiasm too, hopefully the community can help you (if you need it) turn this track into the masterpiece it deserves to be.
Thanks for the effort, but I really think that a big-huge project like this need a big team to make it so why dont you think to ask help and collaboration from other modders?!
great, thank you so much for your efforts. looking forward to a first release alot, been dying to drive the Nordschleife in rF2 since the first Beta came out.
if you're referring to my importGMT2v2 the script no import rf2 GMT. The script simply converts some rf1 shaders to rf2 shaders. The track looks good I hope the source is not from simBin About track conversion if you have the track in 3dsMAX you can use my script GmaterialTool ( is free) to do some task like swap trees, increase road mesh, copy materials, copy modifiers to select objs and more. In large tracks automatism helps to speed up the conversion.
That is great news for rF2 and all of the community! But just some questions: Did you ask the builder of the original rF1 track for permission to do the conversion? It would be sad, if a similar scenario as the one we had recently with the GMT conversion, would occur again. As it seems you want to make this project the best it can be. And as this track is really extremely huge I have to say that wajdi's proposal of building up a team would probably help to improve the result. A "butter smooth drive" doesn't sound like Nordschleife for me. I havn't been there myself but I now a lot of people that do races there and all of them tell about extremely rough bumps all over the place. Some of them that hard that you have to adjust your racing line because the theoretically fastest line has bumps that slow you down too much... So you should definitely find some beta testers that can tell you where to place bumps and how smooth the drive really is. And finally when you are redoing the road mesh, you should think of redoing the whole "Schwedenkreuz" area, as that part of the track is the part, that was a bit off from the reality in all rF1 Versions that I've driven (Except for the GTR Evo conversion - they made that part pretty good) Please don't see this as criticism. Those are just some points that you could write on your "to-do-list" and that could help to improve the result! It's great to see that we are going to get a Nordschleife for rFactor2!
Hope the track surface has some character ( without it being overdone ) Good luck with this project (-;
Agreed, Com8 seems a decent guy and was happy enough for a GSC and NKP version to be converted. It's just common decency aswell to ask for permission for the original source rather than taking the word of some that say it's fine to convert. Good luck when you do get permission, it's a big project and by the looks of things alot of work ahead, road textures will all need updating etc. Can't say i'm a fan of conversions tbh, only the VLM tracks so far have impressed me in regards to rF1 tracks in rF2 and Blancpain mod for cars. And even those i don't think are a patch on what we could see from a scratch built VLM rF2 track or GT3 mod. Maybe you can get this looking great though, would be great if so.
I believe Com8 made a clear statement when they released 2.2a. Source: http://simscreens.blogspot.de/2008/06/released-nordschleife-v22a-ring-2007.html
Great! At least that is one less thing to worry about. Good luck then getting it up to standard graphically pleclair, looks like alot of work ahead. It was a good looking track in rF1, so with some loving should look good if done properly in rF2.
Re: [WIP] Nordschleife Tourist The questions about permissions have already been addressed. This thread is the continuation of another. This version is free to be converted as stated before. It is really a pity to hear some negative posts already ( not referring to you FONismo). Dont even listen to them preclair. You have been working 30 hours a day on the track and your progress is amazing. Hope you release the first version. From me and from most people you will get enough feedback and help. I do not agree a full modding team is required to CONVERT a track. It is a long track but some tasks affect the whole track and do not depend on the length. The number of materials is not proportional to the length either, since they are reused. Scripts can help a lot as well. Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk 2
Sweet can't wait to see this version in game with working real road... That's the biggest issue with any conversion, but the Ring makes it an even larger issue because of the length of the track... Thanks for your efforts..
