Saturday, August 27, 2011

Brands Hatch 1950 & Ales

Brands Hatch 1950 Released

I have finished my initial version of Brands Hatch 1950 and released it on NoGripRacing here. It won't be available until Sunday (or about 20hrs from now)I have decided to not bother uploading to Rfactorcentral for a number of reasons. For one, I no longer wish to fund a website that pigheadedly uses user content for commercial use. When it was built for the community, for not companies.

I would like some feedback for later releases, so please comment on the Nogripracing download page or in this blog. I check both fairly regularly so I should be able to address any issues with relative speed.

Ales GP Course 1.10

I recently read about my Ales GP circuit having some issues with the pitlane and not being able to cross the finish line. I have hopefully resolved this issue as well as a few other minor changes to the textures start/finish locations and some shadowing. All relatively small updates, but they make it somewhat more complete.

If you want to download the new version, it should be available here at Nogripracing within 24hours. As with Brand Hatch 1950. If you have the old version (1.0) please remove it all (as I have stated in the readme) rather than overwrite the files. That should be about it for now.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Ales GP update and more

ALES GP 1.0 to 1.1
I was just trawling Rfactorcentral and noticed that someone had posted on my circuit Ales GP 1.0 some time ago (back in May). The told me that the pit lane has a serious error to do with timing of laps, which I am going to address and release an update, or a new version of Ales this weekend. I may also change some textures / models to reflect a nice change. I'll see as I go.

Brands Hatch 1950 1.0
Yes I will be releasing my attempt at Brands Hatch's 1950 layout this weekend also. Check back here soon for where you can download it.

Imola 1960s 1.0 to 1.15
I am planning on updating my Imola 1960s circuit very soon with some modifications and fixes. There has been an issue with the straight coming out of Acque Minerale. I suspect it is the shadow from the trees, which means they need replacing. I will also add some minor changes to the bumps and textures (as well as a few very small tweaks). Look out for this in the coming weeks.

Hey I Found A Problem!
If you have encountered a problem / glitch / error with any of my circuits. Be sure to PM me on the site that you use or through this blog. Two people have found two different errors one two different tracks in recent times, and had I not browsed around, I may have not found them in the first place. So please, let me know if you find anything that doesn't seem right!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Brands Hatch 1950s


I bought a book recently all about Brands Hatch. While I have read that the now dubbed 'indy course' was the original layout, I did not know that it ran backwards to its present day layout. I felt this was worthy of an Rfactor design.

I am still working on the New Jersey Grand Prix, however I have been building models that are taking some time, and don't want to work more on the track without buildings around it. The actual circuit is probably about 40% done, but it lacks

'life' which buildings, and models around it will provide and boost its progress up to about 55%. For now I am working on a small project of Brands Hatch 1950s. I am basing this track on the original 1950 layout. While it is a couple of weeks away from any sort of release, I can share some shots of the circuit for you all. Take a look!


And the overall map!

Thursday, August 11, 2011

New Jersey GP

I mentioned recently about my intention to develop a New Jersey GP given the recent news of F1's 'silly season' to have two world championship Grand Prix events in the USA. While this will never happen in reality (for a number of reasons), I liked the idea of building a circuit there and have set out to bring NJGP to Rfactor.

My current progress is initial. I have the layout, I have the elevation changes, camber, surfaces etc all relatively close to the actual proposed location along the banks of the Hudson river, however this is much harder than I would have liked thus far. I built a number of models in Sketchup, exported them as collenda files and converted the textures into the 2x2 system that Bob's Track Builder uses, however for some reason the models are not working in Rfactor. Once I export the circuit, it crashes during the loading (freezes, then I press 'enter' and it crashes). It is trying to load a road material, however the materials I am using are proven working materials. I have no idea why this is happening. It is very frustrating, as I feel it would be an enjoyable circuit if it had strong details around it.

For now, I have placed other models from older Xpacks I have made in as a 'guideline' for where the new buildings should go. I hope to overcome this issue, and will post some screenshots of my progress in the coming week.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Yes or No?

I, like many of you out there who follow Formula One very closely, have now seen a 'track map' of the proposed NJC Grand Prix (New Jersey) here at F1 Fanatic.

I first saw this and thought how cool it would be to play this in Rfactor before seeing it in real life in the years to come - should it go ahead of course. I am wondering if I should make this for Rfactor. I have already made two circuits based in New York City, and in particular, down around the Lower Manhattan districts. So in a way, I could use some of my models in the background. I would need to remove many faces to drop the detail level of objects that are going to be quite far away, but you get the idea.

Currently I have been working on a proposed Hockenheim layout for the early 1980s. However I have experienced many problems with placing objects and keeping the detail level high. Basically, when I export through a .3ds format from Google Sketchup, the textures / materials convert into .jpeg. This means that the negative space elements (wire frames, fences, crowds etc) all are filled with 'black' which not only adds to the level of details that must be rendered, but they look increadibly ugly.

The only option I have is to export them as collenda files. However, these then are not within the 2X2 format, and all need resizing. That is fine if the object has 5,10, 20 or 30 textures. It just takes a bit of time to the open every single texture / material in Photoshop and resize them. The problem is that the Hockenheim grandstands (you know the massive one's around the pits, final and first corners) has a whopping 120 texture faces. This become annoying to just sit there and convert one after the other. If any come out even slightly wrong, then Xpacker can't open the collenda file and crashes.

Anyway... what I am getting at, is that maybe I need to shelve this circuit for a time when I am not working (in real life) so flat out, and therefore would have sufficient time to work on my circuits.

However! I feel that a circuit from scratch is easier to make, as one does not have people breathing down their neck's telling them what is inaccurate and what doesn't feel right and what is - well to put it simply - wrong.

Let me know if you folks think I should have a genuine attempt at making the NJC GP circuit as proposed recently.

Cheers.