Targa Florio WIP

@pilAUTO Sorry for late reply, thanks for your feedback.

Most things you have mentioned were already discussed in previous posts in this thread, including many technical issues and difficulties. You may scroll back and check earlier posts.

About PBR and WET effect:
https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/targa-florio-wip.34258/page-40#post-1107408

About real-road presets:
Real-road presets are not provided in Targa Florio (and also Isle of Man) is mainly because it takes a long time to generate proper real-road preset for giant tracks. By "proper" means to generate RRBIN file(real-road preset) according to official guide here (https://docs.studio-397.com/develop...-tracks/track-structure/real-road-files-rrbin) which ensures natural groove spreading, and that takes a lot time, even with time-acceleration it is slow due to single core AI calculation that slows down everything. There are of course faster way by using 15X real-road scale, but it will not result natural groove spread.

The game also checks all road surface mesh vertices integrity before loading RRBIN file. And if there was even just one vertex position that was changed, the game will invalidate whole RRBIN file, which means the presets are useless, and have to start over again (there are currently 17 layouts for Targa, and 9 layouts for Isle of Man). This had happened way too many times for both tracks as I was working on the new road surface in the past, which to the point I was no longer bothered to re-generate real-road presets because it's just a huge pain and waste of time.

In real life, race groove doesn't really accumulate for super long public road such as those tracks. Jim Pearson has also specifically explained about this "groove" issue in his Isle of Man Readme PDF, which worth a good read, it can be found here:
http://jrpearson.homestead.com/37MileIOMMCRelease.html

About night lights:
All street lamps, wired lamps, and warning lights from ambulances and polices car were already made to light up in night. The only one missing from your description is "headlights" from scenery cars.

About collision trees:
All trees in this track, and arguable 99% of RF2's track mods, uses either billboarding or x-boarding technique, which they are really just paper trees. It's not possible to directly apply collision on them, otherwise people will complain hitting "air wall". To make proper collision would require to create invisible cylinders that placed at position that matches trunk, which gonna be a lot work. This will certainly make the track significantly more deadly, and adding more of those cylinders models means more performance hit, which was already an issue for some users.


There are far more modding related issues behind scene, those that gets mentioned are just the tip of iceberg. Currently I've no further plan for this track, but if there any changes I will share it here.

Happy driving.
 
Thank you for taking the time to make a precise explanation, and once again thank you for having developed this track that I love as much as the Nordschleife (in another style of course).

There is just one point for which I did not find an answer in your or rather in the link that you gave, but which I assume must be in the thread (so I will go and see when I have time): it is the wet road.

Small question concerning precisely the wet road, as I assume that in any case it takes a gigantic amount of work to create the puddles of water and everything that corresponds to the expectations for the wet road, would it not be possible I do not know to make it so that there is a very basic reflective effect and provided by the game anyway on all the surfaces of the road. Currently, only when there is an excessive amount of rain at 100% for example, there are reflections on a certain part of the surfaces of the road. But on the one hand not on all surfaces, but even on the majority of surfaces on which there are reflections, for a road where it is 45 50 60 and even 75%, no effect is visible with the graphics at full. If by chance something is possible at the modding level easily on this subject that would already be very good, I am not talking about puddles and so on.

And I wanted to clarify once again that when I talk about the physics of the road that is to say the bumps of the slopes and so on, currently they are already of a good level, you have done a very good job on this side. When I mentioned this point, as the physics of the track seems to me to be the most important thing, I hoped by indicating this point that it would be possible to start from this base by improving a little more the feeling but also the impact of the blow on the driving of the road, via a whole bunch of small bumps of different sizes. Once again, the work already done seems very good to me, and for once I imagine that it is also a lot of work time to do just that.

I also noted that you were only planning to do maintenance on this superb track (I had forgotten this point that I had read a few months ago) and indeed another person that you mentioned may work on this track, it may be the Christmas present who knows.

In any case thank you very much.

I only drive offline, and at the risk of seeming reductive I exclusively use the Nordschleife, the Nürburgring Grandprix and the combined, and the Targa Florio.

In recent years I really used the Nürburgring 90%, but for a few months it has been very balanced between the two circuits.

They are simply fantastic and ultra complementary in my opinion.

Have a good day and thank you.
 
Thanks, I fully understand.

The new puddle map effect and other stuff requires PBR shader. There is significant visual difference between PBR shader and old shader, where mixing up those two shaders in one track will cause visual problems with wrong lighting and color, and not fitting them together.

The ultimate solution and answer to everything is to do a full PBR update and rebuild models and textures to bring the whole track to modern standards, similar to how Dundrod 1955 conversion was done.

But it's not something I can easily decide or dive into. For Dundrod conversion, 3 years and several thousands of hours were spent to finish up everything that was planned for Dundrod from the beginning (as of the final update 2 months ago). To quantify it, Dundrod is only 1/6 size of Targa, doing the same thing for Targa would take many years.

There are also issues with burnout and mental exhaustion while working extensively on those giant tracks. I've been in exhausted state for quite a long time and still recovering. This is the total amount time that I'd spent in RF2 since recovered my old RF2 key in steam in 2019. A little over 1K hour was from league racing, the rest was from modding stuff, while not counting the time spent in other modding programs like blender and GIMP. As you can see it is not really "healthy".
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There should still be possibilities, maybe one day I'll pick it up again, or someone else might want to continue the work. Can't promise anything, only time will tell.

Thanks again to everyone for supporting those track projects.
 

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svictor, this is meant to be a hobby, we can easily let it take over our lives. I have been modding since GP4 days in the end a couple of years ago i took a year off. i had too many deadlines to keep for others and too many promises that i could not keep. Your decision is the right one, time to enjoy your tracks and this great Sim.
regards
Phil
 
This kind of effort and dedication should be paid in money. When people gets these things for free, or if even very cheap - they don't appreciate it as they should. If it was bad - then don't use it. I am getting sick of thought of how many money is being spent on stupid rigs and accessories. While developers of sims and their content is always underappreciated, and is never good enough. I am talking mainly about 3D modelling stuff, because other stuff 99% of simracers just can't comprehend at all. This being said I am talking about official devs, and modders are on the lowest shelf.

In the case of Svictor, I can't even think of him as a modder. To me he is on a level of official dev, it is insane to think that he is not, and that he works with these free tools, that rF2 isn't even meant to be worked with. Last, but not least, even after spending all that time and energy he is able to continue to do excellent work on being a community member - wonderful tutorials and help to others, and also well put and thought out messages. Do you realize how much is all that ?

I am not saying that people should stop criticizing, stop sharing opinions and ideas. It is just that we got so insanely much and good from him, that people really should be throwing money if you want to get anything more, if he will even be able to do it again given how much resources are needed - time, health, even damn electricity and keeping up with the hardware...

Furthermore, I think for quality modding this should be expected to be a future. If people expect to get top level stuff from modders, they should pay for it. Obviously, no real names and branding anymore, maybe even designs slightly altered, everything is a metaverse. This, or forget about quality modding AT ALL!!!! when the standard is so high and continues to go up.

You might still get some relatively okayish content, ripped from somewhere, not legit conversions with permissions or scratch made creations. But it will be all fake underneath, with no love in it. If you want that kind of shit, then have it. Comparing to those, modders like Svictor, are from different world. Actually, I don't even know another one like Svictor in rF2 being active here in past five years.
 
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Besides the talent and the even greater time that I had imagined to improve this track, much more than that, the fact on the part of svictor:

To have identified that Targa Florio was IN MY OPINION (and apart from the Nurburgring) the most essential track on rFactor 2 COMPARED to the already existing content & the rally aspect of this old endurance track & the IMMENSE technicality and driving interest in using this track...

This is what I am most grateful to svictor for (also his investment in time and his technicality of course).

To repeat what mantas said, like many people I would be really delighted to give something within my reach to svictor, as long as it is within my reach it is willingly.

It is impossible to get tired of this circuit frankly.
 
Thank you guys, I appreciate all the thoughts and supports.

Please don't worry about donation or payment. All stuff that I worked with will continue and always be complete free, whether it's a conversion or scratch-made mod. It's both by conversion permission of those GPL tracks that I worked with (Targa Florio, Isle of Man, Dundrod), and also as a great GPL tradition continued from GPL content creators and pioneers who make and share things completely free for the past 25+ years, and they are still doing so. This was also my initial motivation to share those great GPL tracks to audience outside GPL community.

If there are any issues with the track, please feel free to report back, and I will see what I can do. Happy driving.
 
With kind permission from Lee Bowden, here is the original Targa Florio 1967 GPL pace notes by Lee that fully ported to RF2, and can be used in latest TinyPedal update (v2.20.0) which supports Pace Note playback.

See attachment for pace notes files (includes both normal & summer layout).

See post below for how to setup and use pace notes:
https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/37¾-mile-isle-of-man-mountain-course-conversion-from-gpl.67535/page-10#post-1147519

Link to Lee's original GPL pace notes for those interested:
http://gplmotorworks.gplworld.de/
 

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I had not used this version of the Targa Florio for about 6 or 8 months.

I notice that there have been no new updates to this track for a while (according steam).

However, I had an impression that seemed factual and not placebo that there had been many improvements between my last use and today's.

More objects, more flowers, more spectators, more trucks, all of good visual quality... that the 2D mountain scenery seems cleaner and prettier... that some details on some walls or elsewhere have been added... maybe the trees are cleaner I mean prettier... I had also forgotten how good the physical details of the track are, it adds a lot of small information in the steering wheel that gives immersion.

I drove @mantasisg newly updated 911S on the 72km of this track, at I think 8 pm with graphics maxed out, a big graphical improvement like usual from the nvidia graphics driver, a significant improvement in detail level via reshade and a slight drop in color saturation level, as well as a level of detail via mip mapping setting in the player.json file all the way to max.

The experience was absolutely amazing, I really mean amazing.

Thanks to the track and of course thanks to mantasig's absolutely incredible car.

I really feel like there have been a bunch of little improvements since i last used the track, i'm really surprised not to see any new update versions appearing on steam...

Anyway, to everyone involved in this project, especially @svictor but also @DJCruicky, a huge thank you.

You can always improve a track of course, but honestly there is only one thing, really only one that I would like to point out, everything else seems great to me :

I find that the road textures are not convincing enough :

The level of detail is relatively low, and there is something missing.

Improving this aspect would be a major improvement of the track in my opinion.

Of course, I bet it is dozens of hours of work, isn't it !

Thank you very much for everything.
 
I reread the improvements I wanted to see for this track, which I had listed a year ago.

Obviously, unsurprisingly, each of these improvements would require more or less work and sometimes absolutely gigantic work and therefore not feasible.

But an improvement that I had proposed could perhaps be considered after rereading :

Note well that I know absolutely nothing about circuit modding so I may be talking nonsense lol.

But I imagine that a version of the track in reverse but planned by the modder as such would be both extremely interesting from my point of view in any case and perhaps from the point of view of most users, and I hope so but would require a completely reasonable and fairly limited amount of work (NOTE WELL THAT I COULD BE WRONG AND THAT I KNOW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT MODDING LOL).

So maybe this point could be feasible with a minimum of work time, for a maximum of pleasure from a user point of view.

Also note that I have not reread the old messages, if I am not mistaken svictor after a gigantic and incredible work wanted to take it easy a little for personal reasons that everyone understands.

So obviously my little message here would not apply in this case, unless someone would have the technical capacity to do it, the desire and the motivation.
 
Maybe in future the track will be lucky again to get another pass of detailing. Hopefully in a way that would be much improving it, like svictor did, and not in some lower effort way that would actually make it worse just for the sake of updating, which is always a danger.

Everyone knows there is another version of TF being produced, primarily for AC. But maybe it will also get love for rF2, although rF2 must be loved to begin with. I have not driven the new one, but I just have an impression that this version has more complete vibe from artistic side. And being of such large scale, the accuracy importance is scaled in inverted way. This being said, I can not comment on how one feels vs another, as I haven't driven other, but this one is very satisfying despite having few decades old roots.

Maybe it could become redundand if Abulzz version shines through (I have not tried it yet). Or perhaps someone will again improve this track and continue on wonderful work that Svictor did. But I think we can not take everything for granted. There is so much things that can use updating, or are missing entirelly. Unfortunately the community lacks people who as @pilAUTO say "have the technical capacity to do it, the desire and the motivation". I might add that communty even more lacks people to motivate to begin with.

I don't know how well the work is going for Abulzz and what are his plans. I believe that one might be the one to put bets on, if he doesn't eventually exclude rF2, or doesn't do low effort port for rF2. Might be better to relocate resources elsewhere.
 
Thanks folks, I'm happy that you really enjoy this track.

I fully understand your wish and request, as I also would like a proper reverse layout to be playable.

However, the reason there is no reverse layout is due to some real limitations with original GPL track.

The limitation can be easily noticed if you turn off "flag rule" and drive just a few kilometer backwards, you will soon noticed that many objects would appear and disappear randomly either in front of you or in the middle air.

And the reason for that, is that this track (and all other GPL tracks) was built with only a small section of sceneries that is visible to driver's forward view, where beyond this view there is usually no model or texture created or even existing. And due to this limitation, the whole track is made around "Draw Distance" (or known as Level Of Details), which modder spent hundreds (or thousands) hours to manually tweak every object's or road section "Draw Distance" value so that each road section or object would appear at the right distance and at the right timing. And if you have ever seen the "GPL track build tool", you would be overwhelmed by the amount values from those giant tracks.

What I can say that is this was crazy amount work, I spent several months to fix LOD(Draw Distance) issue in original conversion, and that may only be a fraction of time of what original GPL track authors had put into the track. This was also the case for Jim Pearson's IOM, and the reason why unauthorized "RIPs" to those tracks are considered really "bad", because RIPPERs certainly don't care and won't spent months just to adjust LOD values to get view rendering correct.

(To those didn't know, RF2's Isle of Man conversion was RIPPED by the same guy who RIPPED Dundrod to AC in last year, and if you ever get access to that RIPPED IOM conversion, you will notice track or road sections appear in the middle of air constantly, because those RIPPERs don't care to add and adjust thousands LOD values which would otherwise require several months of hard work.)

As you may see now, to create "proper" reverse layout without broken view, that requires two fundamental things to be done first:
1. Create all missing object or terrain or road sections for reverse view, because they simply does not exist in original track.
2. Adjust each object's LOD(Draw Distance) value, so that they show at correct distance.

So, it is definitely possible to create reverse layout, but if you want a "proper reverse driving experience", then you are pretty much looking at rebuilding majority part of this Targa track. At this point, it is better just start from scratch, which the author of 73's targa florio also came to similar conclusion in his Targa thread on RD forum (as he had also worked on GPL targa conversion for AC for several years before starting his new 73's version).

As for road textures, unfortunately there are also many issues and technical limitations. I mentioned a few of those issues before, but there are also many issues that weren't mentioned. And if you start mod this track, you will sooner or later get hit by those issues and obstacles, and you may come to the same conclusion as it is far better just rebuild the whole track from scratch.

That should conclude everything, it's time for me to move on.

Wish you all happy driving.
 
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mantasisg said:
Maybe in future the track will be lucky again to get another pass of detailing. Hopefully in a way that would be much improving it, like svictor did, and not in some lower effort way that would actually make it worse just for the sake of updating, which is always a danger.

Everyone knows there is another version of TF being produced, primarily for AC. But maybe it will also get love for rF2, although rF2 must be loved to begin with. I have not driven the new one, but I just have an impression that this version has more complete vibe from artistic side. And being of such large scale, the accuracy importance is scaled in inverted way. This being said, I can not comment on how one feels vs another, as I haven't driven other, but this one is very satisfying despite having few decades old roots.

Maybe it could become redundand if Abulzz version shines through (I have not tried it yet). Or perhaps someone will again improve this track and continue on wonderful work that Svictor did. But I think we can not take everything for granted. There is so much things that can use updating, or are missing entirelly. Unfortunately the community lacks people who as @pilAUTO say "have the technical capacity to do it, the desire and the motivation". I might add that communty even more lacks people to motivate to begin with.

I don't know how well the work is going for Abulzz and what are his plans. I believe that one might be the one to put bets on, if he doesn't eventually exclude rF2, or doesn't do low effort port for rF2. Might be better to relocate resources elsewhere.
Click to expand...

The rF2 version of Targa 73 is live on the author's patreon. It's a WIP, but it's following closely the progress in the AC version.

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