Mod F1 1982 for rFactor

Marie de Lacrowe wrote:

The rFactor game can give an idea of how powerful these F1 cars were, but their fragility still remains a virtual sensation that cannot be felt as it happens in reality

I'd say that could explain why those cars fall apart so easily even in-game..
I mean, more often than not I have to retire from a race because I touch the wall slightly but already lose vital parts of my car.

Lukáš Vydra wrote:

Pascal Mikula wrote:

I don't know how the track itself in some parts looked like back in 1982 ...

At least the layout:

Yup.

A small step for me...


Well who am I kidding. I just wanted to show that I got the first fix underway already. The horrible mess that the virtual mirrors were, is no more.


BEFORE:



AFTER:




It's literally as simple as replacing the MIRROR.bmp inside the cmaps.mas of the mod itself with the vanilla MIRROR.bmp - for some reason the devs put a huge MIRROR.bmp in which just made it impossible to look into the virtual mirrors.

Keep it up Pascal. Before you know, you will be a top notch modder.



Timo

Timo Vermeersch wrote:

Keep it up Pascal. Before you know, you will be a top notch modder.



Timo

I WISH!

I don't even have the software to even do the slightest modding anymore, plus I'm probably very incapable of even downloading a trial version of something like 3DSimEd or whatever to try and improve the Long Beach track. But I'm trying my best with what I have. Including my very limited knowledge of things like AIW stuff.

Speaking of AIW's, I noticed (the hard way) that on the Las Vegas track, the pace car literally stands in the middle of the grid. Looking at the AIW, it sort of makes sense why, since the position of the pace car for rolling starts AND the position for the resting pace car are the same. But even the first position is wrong because the pace car stands around grid pos 18 aaaargh.

Anyway, i hope i'll have v0.95 downloaded soon so I can see what might be in need of working there. Might be that the mirror thing is fixed there, who knows.

Just finished downloading the 0.95 LE beta..

back to square one. That's, like, a whole different mod. Same devs, same cars, even more cars, some fixes, but combining the two to have some sort of HE physics thing is absolutely impossible. Holy moly.
Can't find any notes with differences between 0.93 and 0.95 either, only earlier versions. Oh Christ.
All the cars use different SFX now, different hdv's, etc. oh my God I'm just about banging my head on the desk.

I thought I could just take the added cars and put them into 0.93 so that that's at least "complete", but noooooppee.. Yikes.

Any way you could share that 0.95LE link with me ?

Pascal Mikula wrote:

Just finished downloading the 0.95 LE beta..

back to square one. That's, like, a whole different mod. Same devs, same cars, even more cars, some fixes, but combining the two to have some sort of HE physics thing is absolutely impossible. Holy moly.
Can't find any notes with differences between 0.93 and 0.95 either, only earlier versions. Oh Christ.
All the cars use different SFX now, different hdv's, etc. oh my God I'm just about banging my head on the desk.

I thought I could just take the added cars and put them into 0.93 so that that's at least "complete", but noooooppee.. Yikes.

Welcome to modding

Richard Coxon wrote:

Pascal Mikula wrote:

Just finished downloading the 0.95 LE beta..

back to square one. That's, like, a whole different mod. Same devs, same cars, even more cars, some fixes, but combining the two to have some sort of HE physics thing is absolutely impossible. Holy moly.
Can't find any notes with differences between 0.93 and 0.95 either, only earlier versions. Oh Christ.
All the cars use different SFX now, different hdv's, etc. oh my God I'm just about banging my head on the desk.

I thought I could just take the added cars and put them into 0.93 so that that's at least "complete", but noooooppee.. Yikes.

Welcome to modding

Thanks I'll have about a million coffees to-go, please!

Pascal Mikula wrote:

Thanks  I'll have about a million coffees to-go, please!

That's only about one and half day in the office in my life .

So, keep going:

Timo

Given that I've now managed to fix the issue of the pace car standing in the middle of the grid at Caesar's Palace (a simple AIW fix; however I had to switch the Y and Z coordinates from what 3DSimEd gave me..for some reason), I've started looking at Long Beach 82. Good lord help me.
You all see the *TIGHT* second corner there but I can't make out whether it was really that tight in 1982 or if it was more like the 1988 Turn 2 from the CART88 track (I've been looking at footage from the 1982 F1 Season Review and other stuff), plus the way objects and materials are distributed on the track, for example in the pit area ("pit area" huh. I'd love to be able to replace that part with something similar to the LongBeach79 pit area but if I delete that asphalt thing, half of the track is gone..) and the corners which lead into elevation changes.. it makes it very difficult for me to make out where to start.
I'm absolutely stalled here, but hopefully not for long.
Besides, I'm looking at the v0.95 LE now. Maybe there's a way to bring the 0.93 HE physics in there, but I don't see how yet.

Assuming you have an idea of what files are needed for a car to be properly displayed, my advice would be that you make a clean rfactor lite install and start porting them there one by one, creating your own naming convention for the files (One that makes sense) and thus re-building the mod slowly but with guarantees. 

I also would start with the graphics having all cars share the same HDV, PM and tires, so that you first sort it out graphically and then start adding the individual physics and upgrades.

It's long and tedious at times, but oh so gratifying when you see it starting to take shape. 

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

Assuming you have an idea of what files are needed for a car to be properly displayed, my advice would be that you make a clean rfactor lite install and start porting them there one by one, creating your own naming convention for the files (One that makes sense) and thus re-building the mod slowly but with guarantees. 

I also would start with the graphics having all cars share the same HDV, PM and tires, so that you first sort it out graphically and then start adding the individual physics and upgrades.

It's long and tedious at times, but oh so gratifying when you see it starting to take shape. 

Sounds good, I think I'll try that. Then again..it's just gonna take so incredibly long, I don't even know what a good time goal would be. One car per day? One per week? I have no idea.

As long as it takes, the first will take longer than the last. Just make sure you carefully check your work, one small typo can cause issues and leave you racking your brain wondering why something won't work.

Oh Boy It's Update Time

Richard Coxon wrote:

one small typo can cause issues and leave you racking your brain wondering why something won't work.

Oh sir, you're more than correct. I'll just say that much: "Will Not use villeneuve.veh because we could not find one or more vehicle references"
Anyway, on to the "log book"

27 April 2019, 12:38 AM


Since I'm a little bit of a perfectionist myself, I'm not going to go to the next car when the previous one isn't as good as I can make it.

Of all available cars, I've currently got both pace cars, the 0.93 Lancia Stratos and the 0.95 Lamborghini Countach, both drivable, both with engine sounds (but the light bars aren't animated in-game for some reason; I'd like to have them active and flashing when I turn the headlights on), but only the Countach as official pace car.


Of the race cars, at the moment I have only the #27 Ferrari 126C2 of Gilles Villeneuve in. It uses the 0.93 engine ini, gears ini and (as soon as I've removed the "TireBrand" entries from the LE_upgrades.ini, also the goodyear tires), but it uses 0.95 gen, hdv (edited so that it points to 0.93 HE files for engine, tires, etc.) and sfx (1.5T_F, which is the same as the 0.93 ferrari.sfx). As I said, my best bet would be to mix both versions together as I'm not that good with the whole coding stuff itself. I'm still learning, but with close to no internet access and no real way of learning other than trial-and-error (and believe me, I had more than my fair share of gMotor errors today), it's the best I can do for now.
Anyway, what annoys me the most at the moment is that the Ferrari, in the T-cam, is missing some objects while some are there. I know I have to change something in the gen file, but I don't know what. I've been comparing the ferrari.gen (0.95) with the renault.gen (0.93) because the Renault at least had the cockpit.gmt (or, you know, the part of the cockpit between the nose cone and the engine cover) in the t-cam, while still missing interior gauges and stuff.

Here's my little to-do-list in order to "finish" up with the Ferrari 126C2 and the pace cars (maybe someone can give me some subtle hints where I should look deeper. Believe me I looked into the animation data of the lights and light bars in the pace cars and I understood exactly diddly-nothing.) :

Pace Cars:

1. Find way to activate light-bar/tail light/etc. animation if headlights are turned on (especially on the Countach)
   
2. Maybe fix the Countach's FFB since it's reversed (but I suppose that I'd have to dig in the suspension files and oh boy i won't be looking forward to that)
   

Ferrari 126C2 #27 (Gilles):

1. Fix missing objects in T-cam view
   
2. Add interior gauges to T-cam view
   
3. Add 0.95 engine wear&tear (especially for engine program 5)
   
4. Check through upgrades file to ensure correct values for things like Long Beach, Kyalami, etc.
   
5. Remove references to F1_1982_LE tire brand from upgrades file
   
6. Also finish up fixing some text stuff. I don't want to have to see "F1 1982 LE" as engine or vehicle class, you know.
   

General (basically low-priority for now):

1. Maybe add one car of each team so that general template is ready (that'll take time and coffee)
   
2. Rework the in-game HUD (seriously, it's terrible. In Singleplayer you don't even have a chat box, which I assume is also the case in MP. So good luck chatting)
   
3. Replace that god damn mirror.bmp again jesus christ they didn't fix that in the update did they (should be ez pz, though)
   
4. idk get a rest or something
   

Anyway, some pictures to visualize what I mean:

 
 
 


PS: But hey, if you like fitting music, I'll have "Steve Gray - Glittering Mud" (used in the 1981 FIA Formula One Season Review) and "Andy Clark - The Starting Point" (used in the [absolute unit of reviews] 1982 FIA Formula One Season Review) in the music pack of the mod, since the 0.93 had no music, and 0.95 has (surprise, surprise) "Fleetwood Mac - The Chain".

Hey Pascal,

I an only cheer you on man. You are already lightyears ahead of me with this modding stuff: big thumbs up man .

If I were you, I would not set myself any goal timing wise. Just continue at any pace that's suitable for you, also taking into account real life and such things.

You will get there.

As to the Chain, the reason the initial modders used that, could be this:



From the late seventies through the eighties, the BBC used The Chain as intro music for their F1 coverage.

Timo

Timo Vermeersch wrote:

Hey Pascal,

I  an only cheer you on man. You are already lightyears ahead of me with this modding stuff: big thumbs up man .

If I were you, I would not set myself any goal timing wise. Just continue at any pace that's suitable for you, also taking into account real life and such things.

You will get there.

As to the Chain, the reason the initial modders used that, could be this:



From the late seventies through the eighties, the BBC used The Chain as intro music for their F1 coverage.

Timo

Thank you very much for the kind words, Timo. 
I do know about "The Chain", or rather the ending solo as the music used for Formula One coverage by BBC (I was completely hooked on that stuff for a while, many years ago) but I feel like the song is a little bit over-hyped, over-used in anything F1-related in that time period. I feel like pieces of music that I mentioned, music that is just about as 80s as wicked hair styles, is a little overlooked and overshadowed by the giant that is "The Chain". Doesn't mean I won't include it in the music pack, though. I'm gonna think about that.
Anyway, thank you for the kind words.

PS: I know we recorded some sort of talk session once while playing ETS2 and while I promised to get it done sometime soon, I unfortunately lost every single recording file along with the Sony Vegas project when I had a pretty bad PC crash a few weeks ago. I hope that's not too much a drama. 


Anyway,
I need to ask this here, too, since I've run into a little bit of trouble with it while testing some changes I made to both the LongBeach82 and Caesars Palace 82 tracks.
How do I define what the car should behave like on a new material?
The issue (at least at Cesars Palace) is that I found a second track, called Las Vegas. Literally Caesars Palace, but you know the drill. It's not that good in comparison but I LOVE the pit lane texture. It's got pit stalls, stop markings for the cars, etc. while the LasVegas82 track by and birkuc (which feels way more open and authentic than the other track which has barriers right along the road limits and little run-offs that throw your car back on track AKA out-of-bounds stuff) only has plain asphalt with yellow lines on the sides.


Anyway, I tried to make a new material in 3dSimEd3 called "PIT", which has the new texture. Replace the old texture in the track.gmt in the pit-lane with the new one, everything's fine, yada yada. However, when in-game, the new pit lane seems to be out-of-bounds and keeps resetting my car to the garage stall, which is right there, too, meaning I can't move. 
(Same happened at Las Vegas when I wanted to replace a texture in the last hairpin because you literally couldn't distinguish the road from the run-off since they had the same damn texture but I somehow managed to fix that by naming the material literally the same name as it is on another part of the track that uses the texture i used to replace the old one)
Is the car behavior (or the track behaviour) defined somewhere in the scn file, or gmt file, or anywhere? Or do I have to dig in some terrain file for that? (yikes)

So, now that the "Ferrari Template" is finished (will follow up with another CHECKPOINT later), I've imported one of the new cars from update 0.95, the March 821 (or rather, one March 821) driven by Raul Boesel.
Given that the upgrades have the names "821-RM09" and "821-RM10", I started digging deeper, searching what those things mean. 
Turns out, there are actually chassis RM07-RM11! (I haven't seen much difference between the chassis yet)
And every March in 0.95 has the updates called "RM09" and "RM10". So there's quite something to fix there, given that the "March" entry in the mod also includes cars that did not race under the "March Racing Team" (or RAM, or Rothmans Racing Team), namely L.B.T. Racing, which entered Emilio de Villota in an RM07 at the Grand Prix of Canada.
Needless to say, in order to bring the March chassis in, i'll have to get my hands dirty.

But that's all for now. Checkpoint update due in about an hour or so.

28.04.2019 00:58:38


Today has been not as productive a day as yesterday, but I think that falls under "make your own schedule".
I watched the F1 practice and qualifying sessions live (way more interesting than the whole race in China, in my opinion) before I got to work, seemingly putting the final touches on the first Ferrari.


Now, let's check what I've finished today.

Quote :

1. Fix missing objects in T-cam view 
   
   
2. Add interior gauges to T-cam view 
   
   
3. Add 0.95 engine wear&tear (especially for engine program 5) 
   
   
4. Check through upgrades file to ensure correct values for things like Long Beach, Kyalami, etc. 
   
   
5. Remove references to F1_1982_LE tire brand from upgrades file 
   
   
6. Also finish up fixing some text stuff. I don't want to have to see "F1 1982 LE" as engine or vehicle class, you know. 
   

Fixing the missing objects and dash in the T-cam view proved to be easier than I thought. I had predicted that it'd have something to do with the gen file, and indeed it did. I added basically about five lines of GMT references, two of them being variable because of upgrades which change said GMT's, namely the suspension pods and the cockpit, as those change between the 126C2 Kyalami and following variants. I also added the steering column and the interior dashboard. About the upgrades files and their drag/downforce/etc. values, I have to assume that the 0.93 values are correct and therefore don't need further adjusting. I may need to look at the engine again, though, since I can't tell at what engine program it's supposed to make the power claimed on various sources, which ranges between 580 and 610 bhp from what I read.


Any other points I finished? 

Quote :

1. Maybe add one car of each team so that general template is ready (that'll take time and coffee) 
   
   
2. Rework the in-game HUD (seriously, it's terrible. In Singleplayer you don't even have a chat box, which I assume is also the case in MP. So good luck chatting) 
   
   
3. Replace that god damn mirror.bmp again jesus christ they didn't fix that in the update did they (should be ez pz, though) 
   

I did add one March 821 after having finished the most parts of the Ferrari, but by now I know there's still something to do on the 126C2 before I can even think of working and re-working and making the five different March 821 chassis. (I hope there isn't much difference between those.)
For example, the car's mirrors were made to use that messed up MIRROR.bmp because somehow that one fit the material. Now that I replaced the old mirror.bmp with the vanilla one from rFactor, the Ferrari's (and thus, every other car's) physical mirrors will be all messed up. I tried to figure out how to fix that, but I got no idea.
Another thing that bothers me, and hasn't been fixed in 0.95, is that when you turn the mirrors off, you can look through the mirror 3d object on the road. It's not just unrealistic, but also a bother. I don't know how you can have that grey texture on the mirrors when you have them turned off, so any advice or hint would be appreciated. I tried editing the 126C2_mirrors.gmt file but somehow, just editing some faces made the mirrors wander underneath the car! I don't know what caused that but replacing the mirror gmt itself didn't help, I had to replace the whole ferrari.mas file! That's a mystery I don't know how to solve, and it could turn out to become very, very annoying if I try to fix all the mirrors of all the cars because to my knowledge, every single mirror has that problem.


Now to a little bit brighter news: 
Since the "Description" bit in the UI actually holds the driver name and not the car model, I added a "Model" parameter in the veh file and the vehicle.uit file, so when you'll click on "Information", you'll see the driver's name, then the name of the car itself, then the engine model, etc.
Also, first upgrade changes to the aforementioned March 821 of Raul Boesel are made. I couldn't just add the names of the chassis which he drove, since that broke the spinner gen because of some instances that were suddenly undefined.
So, adding to the fact I have a whole March entry list from 1982 with details to which driver had which chassis at which track, I'll be planning to recreate that, too. If a pattern appears, that'd make it even easier for me to determine when the car had a front wing, for example, and when not.
However, working on the March will become my first real challenge, since it doesn't have an own engine file, gears file, or even hdv. It's all 0.95 LE. But I should focus on the graphics part first.

The Ferrari itself, however, seems to be almost done. At least the general model which is currently used by #27, Gilles Villeneuve. (I'm not going to make a dedicated veh file for every round entered, to be honest. That'd just be silly and way too much for my caliber, at the moment. I'm content with the way it's built and I'm content with the way I'm able to improve it right now.)


So, what to do now?

Ferrari 126C2 (Gilles):

1. Find a way to adjust MIRROR material on the mirrors so they keep their proportions
   
2. Find a way to edit the mirror gmt files without the mirrors magically disappearing underneath the car!
   
3. Finish everything up, do some 1000km of test driving, and fix anything that may come up
   

March 821-RM07(-RM11):

1. Research, research and more research. Find model info, possible differences and usage of chassis RM07, RM09, RM10 and RM11 (all of which driven by Raul Boesel)
   
2. Build engine ini (or take one from 0.93) based on the Cosworth DFV, then take gears.ini too
   
3. (oh good lord) Build accurate-ish hdv, especially important aspects: aerodynamics, grip, centre of gravity, component positions (I know how much it weighed. That's a start.)
   

PICTURE TIME!
(all pictures of the Ferrari 126C2 were taken from the T-cam perspective with freemove activated)


 

 

 

 

Like the ambition!

My similar project is fixing up a DTM 1995 mod for Automobilista. Good looking models, but heavy; absolutely useless physics (1400kg, 870bhp WTF?).

Jacob Fredriksson wrote:

Like the ambition!

My similar project is fixing up a DTM 1995 mod for Automobilista. Good looking models, but heavy; absolutely useless physics (1400kg, 870bhp WTF?).

spits coffee


 



Sounds like a quad-turbo'd van to me, but not DTM! Well, have fun with that 

Pascal,

As you noted the RM07 through 11 are just individual chassis serial numbers. As near as I can tell there is no real appreciable difference between them. They were simply cars they built and took whichever was ready to the next race. i.e. Raul rain RM07 at Long Beach at the beginning of the season and then again at the Swiss GP near the end.

The Marchives doesn't really have anything on the 821 either, other than it was an evolution of the 811 which was basically a copy of the Williams FW07.

Jason Fitch wrote:

Pascal,

As you noted the RM07 through 11 are just individual chassis serial numbers. As near as I can tell there is no real appreciable difference between them. They were simply cars they built and took whichever was ready to the next race. i.e. Raul rain RM07 at Long Beach at the beginning of the season and then again at the Swiss GP near the end.

The Marchives doesn't really have anything on the 821 either, other than it was an evolution of the 811 which was basically a copy of the Williams FW07.

Hmm...

That'd mean the only real difference to make would be whether the car had a front wing or not. Thus, I'd have to change the upgrade files to go by round, not by chassis. Thanks for the info! (Didn't really plan on working today since it's Sunday, but now I gotta so I don't forget it )

Looking at the entry lists, it'd make sense to assume that chassis RM07 did not have a front wing, as it was entered (at least for Raul) at Kyalami, Hockenheim, Zeltweg, Dijon and Monza.
However, RM07 was also entered for de Villotta (it was lent away, as far as I read) in Zolder, Monte Carlo, Detroit, Montreal and Zandvoort. Tracks at which I'd at least prefer having a front wing.

But the solution to that is easy, as well. Just put a front wing on chassis RM07 in de Villotta's upgrade file. (But I'll have to find some pictures to justify that. I've seen a photo of RM07 entered by Villotta in Detroit, but without a front wing)

Ohhhhh it's starting to make sense! 

A photo I found of Raul Boesel driving the March 821-RM07 with this weird livery at Kyalami. 
Can anyone confirm this livery was only used at Kyalami? I can't find any photos of it being used anywhere else, but the name "Boesel12.dds" in the skin directory kind of confuses a little. (Round 12 having been Germany. Fun fact, i searched for pictures of Raul Boesel driving at Hockenheim when I found this.)

Also, is there a way to define a car's skin from within the upgrade file? (That'd make stuff like this much easier)

PS: Can anyone confirm whether Boesel had the "RACING" livery on during any GP? I could only find a picture of Jochen Mass' RM11 from the British Grand Prix using the "RACING" livery instead of "ROTHMANS" while a photo I found of Boesel's RM10 from the same venue seemed to have the normal Rothmans livery.
David Sabre, you maybe, since you said the British GP 1982 was the first one you attended? 

It's nice to see your passion for this Paskal, keep it up, thats how we all started