Mod F1 1982 for rFactor

François Remmen wrote:

Facts are all in this mod

I'm not sure what you're talking about exactly with "Facts" but if you mean cars, you're wrong.
I posted a list of cars for which nothing as far as bodywork, suspension work, etc. exists, and for which I've also been unable to find anything as far as a starting point for the modelling goes. Unfortunately, I'm nothing more than a novice as far as 3DSimEd/Blender/ZModeler goes as of now, so if I tried to create a car body, it would probably either be a "half-dozen polygon box on wheels" or "five million polygons that crash your system before you even see them" box on wheels.

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AVON tires are in the the mod for a reason because they were there in 1982 used by the Ensign team by Roberto José Guerrero, reason

I'm pretty sure Juha was referring to the Ferrari in the one photo posted by Marco. I assume the reason it's got Avon tyres and has a Gilles Villeneuve paintjob while having the new suspension arrangement is most likely because it stands in a museum somewhere.
And yeah, Avon did pull out of F1 in 1982, and the March team bought all their tyres when they did, which turned out to be a mistake.

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i realy hope the test work i did with jc will be back to the 1050NM springrates physics like in v095 LE

The problem being that it was an LE! It's no good going for a historically accurate mod when you're constantly going on about the physics improvements for version 0.95 when 0.95 basically had only one general car physics set. If I want to go the physics path, I have to use the physics from 0.93 because, at the very least, most of those cars have their own separate physics set which can be tweaked and modified.
Be the 0.95 physics based on the Tyrrell or not, they're no real good, unless there are the same sort of improvements somewhere for the other cars. 
And that's not my slice of bread at the moment, because I'm far from being any sort of physics expert. I'm the graphics guy for now, and until I find someone who goes for the physics, or through some miracle I get..idk Richard Wilks or someone else here to help me out with the physics, they're going to stand as they are.

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this mod can be a real killer if its going to be done properly!

Exactly. So I'd rather do a Mercedes and go "The best or nothing" than have a complete mod with wonky driving mechanics. Okay, "the best or nothing" is a little exaggerated, but I won't consider this a 1.0 until every car has its own physics and a well-tuned driving behaviour, with and without front wing, etc.

So I just updated the first post of this thread because it's starting to get really crowded here and I can imagine if someone new just wants to look how far this project is, they won't want to look through a ton of posts just to find an up-to-date download link (ask me how I know..)


So I guess this is an official mod thread now? Heyyy.... 

Your updates for the Williams and Alfa worked like a charm! Thank you. My bad on the later Ferrari suspension upgrade. I was using the Villeneuve car and it's only accessible with the other three drivers. Small brain fart! Also thanks for the mention in the Williams read me.
The Williams FW08B is a blast to drive. I did a few laps at the Detroit circuit with a big smile on my face.The Alfa on the other hand is beautiful to look at but difficult to drive. You weren't kidding about the under steer!I like a challenge though. Finding a reasonable setup will take some time. Amazing work !

Marco Lenarduzzi wrote:

You weren't kidding about the under steer!

Yeah, but the issue is that the understeer isn't intended behavior! 
I have no clue what causes it, and I have no clue how to fix it either.. I mean, at low speed, I could probably blame the tyres on the cars, and well, there's also something wrong with the steering in general on all cars since I personally am forced to run with ~25-28 degrees steering lock in order to have reasonable steering response. 
But at high speed.. I have absolutely no idea what could be the cause. Maybe I'm thinking too much "muh ground effect" and "muh tons of downforce" but I'm assuming that the cars should at least stick to the ground a little bit more at speed. Plus, some cars lock up the brakes under even the slightest braking like no tomorrow.. as I mentioned in countless readme files, the physics are mediocre at best and completely bonkers at worst. But I don't know how to fix it.
At the moment, I'm rather looking into trying to convert the 1979 Alfa 179 to 1982 spec, as in making it match the file structure. But that's a handful already because the GPC team did a completely different approach to modelling the cars compared to Varjanta.

Again, my tip for you and everyone else: Don't try to go for physics judging, don't try to make setups for the cars as they work now. Just..enjoy the view. The cars, most of them anyway, (I left some cars literally unchanged at the moment from their 0.93 counterpart, physics-wise) they definitely look better standing still.

Regarding the physics, the CART 1988 mod should be actually very close in that department, I mean the road tires are a good start as indycar has always been around 5 years behind in technology compared to F1, and in 1988 they had moved to radials. The loads on them will also likely be quite similar, not sure how much downforce an F1 from 1982 could produce but I am betting that around the same as an Indycar from 1988.

So you can start using the CART88 road tire and see if that improves the handling. I haven't looked at the suspensions of your F1 82 mod, but it wouldn't surprise me if they are absolute crap, with shitloads of bumpsteer front and rear and ridiculous camber curves. So go one by one when comparing, first try the car with the CART88 tires and see if it gets better, then add a suspension from a CART88, you don't need to adjust wheelbase and track, they will be automatically placed where the F1 wheels are unless you force a specific dimension in the HDV. But the most important bit is aero, that is likely what is causing the understeer. Again use the CART88 as base, should be already in the ballpark.

Also, pay attention to the engine brake curve, I have seen absolutely stupid values used there, you can rescale it easily with the physics editor. Use something that isn't much more than -100 or -150 at most.

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

Regarding the physics, the CART 1988 mod should be actually very close in that department, I mean the road tires are a good start as indycar has always been around 5 years behind in technology compared to F1, and in 1988 they had moved to radials.
So you can start using the CART88 road tire and see if that improves the handling.
So go one by one when comparing, first try the car with the CART88 tires and see if it gets better, then add a suspension from a CART88, you don't need to adjust wheelbase and track, they will be automatically placed where the F1 wheels are unless you force a specific dimension in the HDV.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly by "forcing a specific dimension in the HDV", but I did adjust the collision feelers for some cars in the HDV since they were off, namely the JS19 and FW08B.
But I just did a couple laps at Jarama (basically my designated test track) with the 182T and the CART88 Road Tyres.
One word. Yikes. Undrivable, even when carefully manipulating the car. To sum it up, a total lack of grip at all points. I'm glad if I can swing the car around the first corner without either understeering into the gravel or spinning like a fidget spinner.
Now I'm not sure if this means the CART88 tyres are too slippery by nature compared to the Alfa's Michelins, or if Varjanta got around the Ground Effect issue by adding a metric shit ton of grip to the tyres instead of doing it with the Diffuser part of the HDV, or whatever it could be. All I can say is that it spun the tyres in 3rd gear at 180 kph. 

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The loads on them will also likely be quite similar, not sure how much downforce an F1 from 1982 could produce but I am betting that around the same as an Indycar from 1988.
But the most important bit is aero, that is likely what is causing the understeer. Again use the CART88 as base, should be already in the ballpark.

I suppose so. But I'm not sure. There are no figures anywhere, plus the fact that some cars never ran a front wing to begin with puts an even bigger point on the whole Ground Effect thing.
I suppose with the cars being very heavily sprung, they should..well create quite a bit of downforce at speed, but again.. the Diffuser part.

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Also, pay attention to the engine brake curve, I have seen absolutely stupid values used there, you can rescale it easily with the physics editor. Use something that isn't much more than -100 or -150 at most.

I've been wanting to re-work the engines anyway, but I've been looking for data and power curves until now, since I don't want to do it, as we Germans say, "frei Schnauze". But I've read also that especially the turbo engines were difficult as the turbo lag also worked the other way round, AKA the engine still pushing for about a second after the driver took his foot off the pedal, and then followed a huge compression in the engine, basically apeshit engine braking. But I suppose it's going to be difficult, if not impossible to implement that sort of thing unless we're talking AMS, but that lay in the future. The far future, at best.
But as I said, all necessary files are in the core mod (and also in the Alfa fix, if you want to look at the 1260)

Talking about engine curves, I've just looked through the engines and it has come to my attention that the BMW M12, Alfa 890T, Ferrari 021 and Gordini EF1 (basically all the turbos except for the Hart 415T which isn't programmed yet) have the very same compression curve. I mean, exactly the same. And it looks bonkers to me, at least.
Also, both V12 engines, the Alfa 1260 and the Matra MS81 both have the very same compression curve, too, while both the latest DFV as well as the "older" model DFV have the same compression curve, too.

I smell a major fuck-up here.. 

Then again..there are the engine programs for the turbos, too. For some reason, the Gordini doesn't have engine programs, but I'm not sure whether that's my cup of coffee at the moment.

Those curves show excessive engine braking, which will affect how the car behaves when coasting.

The shape, well I know in earlier days people attempted to simulate better the turbo kick by playing with the engine brake curve, as the power one has to go against the former all of the time, so you got a sudden rise in power. It is nonesense, will never work well. Put there a linear curve starting at zero and ending at -100 at your max rpms and that's it.

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Varjanta got around the Ground Effect issue by adding a metric shit ton of grip to the tyres instead of doing it with the Diffuser part of the HDV

<--- That

Another set of physics you could use as base, the old GPC 1979 mod had absolutely decent and well thought suspension, aero, etc. Shove that under your cars and see how it works.

Well.. I'd still rather get all cars working in the mod first. Given that I'm currently looking at and taking apart the GPC79 version of the Alfa-Romeo 179 to check whether it'd be viable to make that thing into a 179D, I'm not even sure if I could or should use that car as a base. It's built in a completely different way, many parts from itself don't fit, the materials are completely different, and just.. I've tried to get the cockpit to work and to put it together, but since the cockpit and the body itself are two different things in the 1979 mod.. things like the gear-stick and all the tiny little details, they don't even fit into the bodywork!

Basically, a 1982 car (this example: Alfa 182) is built like this (at least as far as I've come now):

Cockpit (cockpit with parts of the venturi tunnel, roll-over bar and most of the bodywork except for the later mentioned parts)
Cockpit-interior (the interior carbon-fibre (or steel) structure around the legs and feet)
cockpit details (things like the shifter, switches, buttons)
Dash (the dashboard with moving gauges for the cockpit and exterior cams)
Driver (driver without helmet and legs)
Engine (engine with transmission, final drive and exhaust system)
Engine_Cover (engine cover)
Left Barge Board (left side skirt basically, with the steel skirt at the bottom)
Left Sidepod (left side pod with radiator and venturi tunnel)
Legs (driver legs)
Mirrors
Nose Cone

Now, the 1979 Alfa has the following parts, and I'll also tell what parts of a 1982 file structure car it has in it:

Body (cockpit, nose cone, parts of the engine cover, engine, transmission, final drive, cockpit interior, low-poly unanimated dash thing, window)
Lskirt, RSkirt (literally just the steel/rubber skirts)
LSide, RSide (side pods with barge boards and parts of the engine cover)
Cockpit (a cockpit just for the driving cam, mirrors, cockpit details, dashboard, driver legs) 

Suffice to say, as of now I've been just trying to match the 1982 file structure with this 179, and believe me it's a handful. For example, I've barely been able to find a place where to cut the nose cone off of the car without messing up a ton of triangles. The dashboard barely fits into the actual cockpit. The "body" cockpit has materials and structures that make it near impossible to place a proper "cockpit_interior" thing in, let alone a seat and a driver. The cockpit details don't fit into the cockpit at all.

Hence why I'm not even sure as to whether this will end up as just a study or maybe a base model for my 179D.

Well Pascal, indeed you seem dead set on making a good historic mod! Great so far, i might give you a hand when i have time

Richard Wilks wrote:

Well Pascal, indeed you seem dead set on making a good historic mod! Great so far, i might give you a hand when i have time

Thank you, that sounds like it's going to get good from now on, if you manage to get time to look at it  
Ayway.. Graphics before physics, as Alberto has said many many moons ago, and I'm still sharing that attitude. It might come and bite me in the arse though, as I've run out of existing models to put together when I finished the Alfa 182T. (Of course, if you want to have a look at the weird physics, that the mod currently has, while I'm scattering around the museums trying to build more cars, I won't stop you  )
I've looked at the Alfa 179 and the Brabham BT49 from the GPC79 mod, but as I mentioned before, it's unlikely i'll use those any further than just for evaluating the looks of the cars. More likely than not, all missing cars may need to be built from scratch.

Have you looked at the GP4 mod? Maybe converting may be an option.

https://www.grandprixgames.org/read.php?4,817447,page=29

Oh good lord, I haven't looked at GP4 in an eternity!
But yeah, I'll look at those. Hopefully I'll be able to get some good stuff out of it.

EDIT: Now, if only there was a working download link somewhere. I'm going through the whole mod and there's just none working. Megaupload has been dead since 2012, Rapidshare is dead too, and I'm sure it'd take a week for me to register at GP4forever.. Does anyone have the CSM/CUH file lying around by chance? I saw it has the Toleman TG181B and Ensign N181, which would be two of the ten currently missing car models.

So now I've looked a bit more at the 179, and its upgrade history.

Or whatever you want to call it. There's basically no sense in its history. 

http://www.oldracingcars.com/alfa_romeo/179d/


"After starting the 1981 season with the very disappointing Tipo 179C, Alfa Romeo introduced two new cars during the year, which can be interpreted as a Tipo 179D. However, Alfa Romeo record-keeping was so poor during 1981, these histories can only be regarded as conjecture."


Yeah, this is the best I could put it if I tried.


Autodelta, y u do dis?


So from my understanding, the 179Ds were just updated 179Cs with.. well Wikipedia says they were "lower", but does that mean lower ride height? The 179Cs were...179s with adjustable dampers?
Then there are the 179s side skirts. They look to me, at least in 3DSimEd, like they'd go through the track surface, to..simulate sliding skirts? I don't know. I'll have to look at that. 
Also, the 179Ds in 1981 had this weird front wing. Reminds me of the table front wing thing on the early March F1 cars from 1970-1971. Given that the only time a 179 raced in 1982 at Kyalami, I can just..keep the front wing away.
So I guess most parts of the 179(A) I can still use for the D? Oh..and then there's the issue with the cockpit since there are two cockpit gmt's for the car..oh man. But I'm starting to get my hope up again that the 179 may be a good base for the 179D. I may need to try and contact Shutt1e from GPC, though..at least it says in the Manual that he did the 3d models, so I hope I can reach him somehow.


Anyway, as of now, I swapped the 1979 V12 for a 1982 V12. I put period-correct 1982 Michelin Radials on the car, replacing the 1979 Goodyear Cross-Plys. Also, I took the mirrors from the "cockpit-view cockpit gmt" and moved them around and re-modelled them to fit onto the "actual cockpit gmt". So, at least now, it looks, except for the livery stuff, like it would almost be ready to be tried out on track.

Richard Coxon wrote:

Have you looked at the GP4 mod? Maybe converting may be an option.

https://www.grandprixgames.org/read.php?4,817447,page=29

Oh well..now we've gone through all that trouble, through all the hassle of enabling me to download the mod, since I saw that the developer claimed to have implemented the Ensign N181 among other cars, and now I have it installed, but there are only a couple of basic cars in there, and those that are in there are the ones I already have implemented. I only wanted to get the Ensign out of it, to try and make it available for my project, but apparently there's no way of finding it, even though it's said to be completed.
Gutted, that's all I can say. 

EDIT: Well..okay, maybe the Ensign isn't in there, but from what I see in GP4Builder, it seems like there's a BT49D in there..maybe even a 179D. An Arrows A4? Ohhh maybe even a Lotus 87..hmmm...

EDIT #2: Yeah, there's a BT49D and a 179D. Did the 179Ds ran those ugly-ass front wings at Kyalami?

EDIT #3: So since the texture names in the GP4 mod were...strangely similar to the ones in the rFactor mod, I sort of got the thought that Pedro (Ripping Corpse) had something to do with the rFactor project as well. One look into the 0.95 readme, and yep. He did the 3d models. Now I wonder, though, why does he have the respective early-round vehicles done for GP4 but they're notably absent in the rFactor version? Not that I'm overly complaining, but I'd like to have an Ensign please. Especially since the GP4 mod thread says that the car is completed..but where.

Well, well, well... would you look at that!

I totally forgot that I still had a copy of GP4Build so I had a chance to look at some cars. So far I've managed to filter out some first-round-of-the-season cars, like the Alfa 179D and Lotus 87. At least I hope those are the models, since they don't have any textures thanks to the GP4 material system. Anyway, the cars were in the "Cars\[team]\car\Kyalami" folder, so that was easy-ish to find.
Also, I found a ready model of the Brabham BT49D in the Jacarepagua folder of the Brabham team. Neat! Now..those are relatively low-poly. Very low-poly. I mean, that's good and all for the rendering, but it's gonna look like crap. But I'm glad I got those exported into 3DS format, so now I can just import them into ZModeler and export all those itty bitty objects as GMT's.
For some reason, if I import the 3DS into 3dSimEd, only half the objects get shown, which is weird. As in, only the right side wings, winglets, suspensions, etc. get shown. So thanks to ZModeler, I can solve that little issue. But now comes the funny part. Material mapping. For some reason, all materials are mapped to have a transparency value. Also, putting the actual GP4 textures for the cars (which I converted from TEX to TGA using Slimtex), they don't seem to fit well either. Seems like the UV mapping process in GP4 was another complete different story. But I guess I'll figure it out with time. Or, which I hope, I manage to somehow merge the GP4 models with the ones from the GPC79 mod so they look good AND are period-correct.. Hmmm.

Again, I don't think they ran those front wings on the 179 at Kyalami..but I haven't seen any photos.


Top: Imported 3DS out of GP4Build. Alfa-Romeo 179D Kyalami


Top: Imported 3DS from GP4Build. Brabham BT49D Brazil.


Top: Imported 3DS from GP4Build. Lotus Type 87B (I hope) from Kyalami.


EDIT:

So I've looked at the cars in 3DSimEd and compared them to the GPC79 (or in the Lotus' case, the 1982 Type 91) cars.

Why on earth are the GP4 models longer at the back? I mean, look at this!


Alfa 179D GP4 (lower half) vs. 179 rFactor (upper half) - starting from the engine cover, it just gets longer


Brabham BT49D GP4 (lower half) vs. BT49 rFactor (upper half) - not easy to see since the material mapping seems off (as if. one second.) but here too. Starting from the engine cover, behind the roll-bar, it just suddenly grows longer.


Oh buddy, here comes the Lotus. Bet you guys can't tell which one's from GP4 and which one's from the 1982 mod! Why? Because they're the exact. Same. Car.

I thought the material mapping was screwed up when comparing GP4 cars to rFactor, but I just put the rFactor Lotus 91 skin on the GP4 model and.. it just works. 
Also, it looks very much like the GP4 model isn't even a Type 87, but a Type 91. I literally can only see one TINY LITTLE difference between the two cars, and that's the shape of the bodywork behind the roll-bar, where the air intakes are. The GP4 model actually did a better job there, since there's an awkward clip thing on the rFactor 91.
So, now the question is: Was there really no visual difference betwen the 87 and the 91, or is the model I extracted from GP4 actually a 91? And should I update the rFactor Lotus with the GP4 engine cover? Oh man, oh man, oh man...

Here is the lotus 91 at Long Beach and I can confirm that the Alfa 179D with the strange looking wing was used at Kyalami and by the Long Beach GP they were using the 182 which allowed de Cesaris to qualify on pole and Giacomelli 5th.

this mod is a gp4 conversion and i remember the first car that was the renault indeed was very low poly
also they need to resize in 1 size so you don't have those weird long / wide cars, with to low or to big wings from different makes that looks "Out of shape"
how i say this they should be calibrated so all cars look the same in length height , groundspace etc

other mod like the so long anticipated 1989 cars from Vekimilijan from F1Classic are NOT calibrated and have those handicaps which is a shame

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B9j8K7HBpyouZ1lzZ2lpa1RlWnM

aswell they use very poor shaders
speaking of shaders, to polish the 1982 Pascal take a look at this
F1 1979 final chapter edited by Dave Sabre
http://tt.servegame.com:100/RFACTOR1/?search=1979

for the best visuals they used awesome shaders and textures and polish the cars materials in a very high
realistic way, a big database for materials in here
cheers and keep it going

So if I understand you right, about the length of the cars, Francois, then the 1979 models have the right length and height?

So that'd mean to me that all I'd have to do (as if that wasn't a lot already) was to get the front wing onto the 179 and to re-texture it.

In comparison, here, I actually managed to get the material mapping to work on the GP4 179D - by simply re-scaling the texture V coordinates by -1. Sometimes I'm impressed by how easy it is after looking for a solution for half an hour lol.

Anyway, I had thought that the 179D from GP4 would now be the way to go, but if I really understand it correctly, the better way would be to take the 1979 179 and slap a front wing on it? I mean, to be completely honest, it looks to me like there's a little difference in the front bodywork as well, but I can't quite tell all the way..






Both cars side by side, now with the 1979 179 having gotten itself a front wing.

It's starting to get scary how well certain skins fit together..

So I'll just come to my conclusion before trying to explain anything: The GPC79 Alfa 179 and the GP4 1982 Alfa 179D are directly related. I'm not talking IRL, but talking models, textures, mapping.

Why?

Because THIS is the GPC Alfa 179 with the GP4 skin applied to it. Sort of. The GPC skin basically consists of four livery parts in the four quarters of the dds file. The GP4 skin has the exact same looks (almost, but still very close) but is cut into four different texture files.

I'm literally getting the chills here, and I'm not sure of what sort.



I think the lighting gives it away. That's the GPC79 Alfa 179 with a D-spec front wing and the GP4 skin. Sure, it needs some fixing, and it certainly doesn't look like it's ready to roll yet, but I literally just slapped the skin on and that was the result. It started to dawn on me when I saw the Alfa_179_D1.TEX and the upper left corner of the a179.dds basically having the same coloring structure.



Talking about that.. on the left, the Alfa179.dds from the GPC79. On the right, all four Alfa_179D skins from GP4 slapped into one big dds. That's the skin I put on the 179 at the moment.

Damn..

I'll just instead go the "old-school" way of skinning.  
Thanks to Blender's UV wrapping function, I managed to get me a png file where all the polygons are put where their respective livery part belongs - and that way I can perfectly match it with the existing skin and make the car look extra-ordinarily accurate  



Almost reminds me of the time I made skins for my ETS 2 trucks.. and those shady "templates" from Modhoster 

See what you mean, digging into the GP79 vs the Varjanta 82', big time differences how each went about putting together, how each was made, the engine compression braking in both is too much, neither cars "roll", it's almost like hitting brakes when letting off throttle, sure the graph tells it, can see overall GP79 is the better mod, especially Dave's "Final Chapter" version, I'd for sure use the 79''s tires if possible they are spot on perfect dimension wise. good luck !

Well, that's all physics stuff. I'm still doing the graphical part and until that's done, I won't touch the physics. Richard Wilks said he might take a look at it, and if so, then I'll let him do that part, since I have absolutely no clue what the whole number stuff in the tyre files is, what the variables in the aerodynamics do, etc.

By the way, talking about graphics... 

She's beautiful..
Well, at least the basic template skin for the wccarbody material is done, but god dammit am I happy to see it look SO damn good! Sure, there are a few tiny bits still to fix, but I don't see how I'm gonna fix it if the problematic part overlaps with another part and that other part needs the color it has etc. etc. ...

Wow!!! The Alfa looks absolutely gorgeous !!!

Yeah..while she may be gorgeous in the spinner..



...she looks a little weird on-track. But since it uses all the physics from the 182, I assume this is because of the suspension file and the hdv collision feelers being MORE than off...



And then there are the pivot points.. because if I enable the brake glow GMT's in the GEN file, this happens:



Before, the tyres and spindles (at least on the right side, I did something wrong with the left side spindles which is easy to fix though) fit like a charm, but with the brake glow enabled...

There's still a lot of work to do. The car's general positioning seems to be quite off compared to, say, the Alfa 182. The car lays way too low, clipping through the road on multiple occasions, and the tires too are too..high. Generally, I'd probably have to re-position every single part of the car so that it at least somewhat resembles the positioning of the Alfa 182.

Suffice to say that the progress is..well, graphically, I'm probably only..half-done, at best. Plus, all the movable parts being off and just turning around wrong points is another thing, so I'm not sure how long it's gonna take to fix this.