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37¾ Mile Isle Of Man Mountain Course


spyder

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Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2261065561

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Build History

This full length "37¾ Mile Isle Of Man Mountain Course" was built by Jim Pearson entirely from scratch over a period of 14 years from 2005. It is a totally different track to his much earlier "Abridged / Shortened" 20 km version.

It was released by him for the simulation Grand Prix Legends [ GPL ] in June 2019.

Jim's original PDF Readme , release files and three release videos are located here;
http://jrpearson.homestead.com/37MileIOMMCRelease.html

The release thread for GPL is located here;
http://srmz.net/index.php?showtopic=12928

Note: This track replicates the actual roads existing before Windy Corner and Brandish were opened up with much bigger radii in 2006.


Conversion Credits

Converted to rF2 by S.Victor(Xiang) with assistance from Corti(Andres).

I approached Jim in February 2020 and agreed to the conditions set out in his track Readme PDF [ See above ] He then gave me written permission to convert his track to rF2.

Amongst these conditions were assurances that the permission being granted would be limited to rF2 in this case and that no income would be derived or sought for the conversion.

Jim monitored development of this conversion throughout, providing some useful assistance as required. He has asked me to include his assessment of my work as follows;

" When approached by Xiang earlier this year, I was encouraged to grant him permission to convert my 37¾ Mile Isle Of Man Mountain Course GPL track to rF2, as he appeared to me to have the right combination of skills, dedication, high standards and respect for the original work that I was looking for.

My faith in him has been richly rewarded, as he has persevered to overcome many of the real technical difficulties inherent in translating a very complex and lengthy GPL track into a quite different rF2 rendering and surface model.

He has surpassed my expectations and I believe the results display and drive as well in rF2 as they do in GPL, the sim it was originally tailored to. I hope you enjoy the fruits of our collective labours and show due appreciation of Xiang's work on your behalf.

Credit is due!

Jim Pearson
October 2020. "



Track Info

Length: 60.72 KM / 37.75 Miles
Two configurations:
- Mountain Course,
- Mountain Mist, [ Which is the same track, but has patches of Ground Fog and Mountain Mist replicating two options available in the GPL track. ]
Max vehicle: 48
Real road (0.9-1.0m density) & 2.7%(10cm) crossfall
Hundreds street lights
Out lap timing support


Notes & Recommended Settings

Jim's original PDF Readme is highly recommended for a complete view and understanding of the original GPL track and design choices.

Draw Distance (similar to LOD):
IOM is designed specifically around Draw Distance for GPL cockpit view. Draw Distance(LOD) is important for optimization as well as showing or hiding road and scenery at proper designed distance.
RF2 conversion has kept same principle in mind. It means player with view other than cockpit may find that scenery or road sections appear too soon or in the air, due to the different camera position or LODMultiplier value. The recommended way to enjoy this track is through cockpit view.
Note, if a track piece appears in the mid of air along the forward driving direction while using cockpit view, it means the car mod is set on a higher LODMultiplier value than default 1.0 value. Additionally, the default value for Swingman view is 2.0, which also enables you to see further than the track LOD is designed for. Higher LODMultiplier value will cause significant performance issue, as more objects rendered. However there is no way to enforce LODMultiplier value from track itself, the only fix is by editing car mod camera file.

Out lap timing:
The track supports immediate out lap timing. Timing starts when car exit pitlane.
It is important to note that at the beginning of each new session, driver must wait until session timer starts to count down (except race session), and only then click RACE button to go out of garage, otherwise timing won't work. Due to the length of the track and the special out lap timing mechanism, extra caution is needed for not over speeding in pitlane (60KPH). Receiving a penalty and then jumping back to garage will result immediate DQ after you exit pit the third time (everytime you exit pit from garage counts as a lap).

Road surface & Real road:
The track surface has been re-constructed with real road in mind, with 8 square subdivision across 7.4 meter wide surface. The new surface also includes around 2.7%(10cm) crossfall for extra realism.
Due to complexity and extreme length of the track, enabling real road will result longer loading time.

Weather:
It is recommended to set weather to Default weather, or any Cloudy weather for varied illumination and immersion.
This track uses many skybox type of background, and the weather file has already set correctly to avoid white skybox bug.
However, in case of white skybox bug appears, you can fix it by: close RF2 first, then delete any AAIOM_MCs.wet & AAIOM_MISTs.wet file under “rFactor 2\UserData\player\Settings\3775mile_Isle_Of_Man” folder.
Note: the .wet file only affects Scripted Weather, and possible to manually editing 4 haze scale value.

Shadow:
The overly darkness of shadow was a concern from the beginning. With the new IBL shader, and a special IBL setting, soft shading and natural looking shadow is finally achieved. Player can still find some hardshadow (Jim created for original GPL version) which baked into road texture, and we feel that it is good to keep them.

Night lights:
Thanks to Corti's assistance, over 200 light sources are placed at various locations, for extra immersion and challenging night racing.

Collision wall:
Collision is based on terrain objects and special invisible objects, which covers most of the area. However, they will not save cars from any high speed crash.

Flagger:
In original GPL version, 2D flagger acts as marshal, and it was recreated in RF2 through digitalflag and startlight for extra nostalgia of the GPL era.

Billboards & Xboards tree:
Due to the different way of rendering between two sims as well as complexity, only a small amount trees were converted to Billboards.

Textures & Material:
The goal of this conversion has always been a faithful translation of original track, and thus most of assets that brought from the original version were unchanged. All road texture has been AI-upscaled for better resolution. New IBL shader is also used for 4000 materials, in order to achieve best results and preserve all the original texture details.

Trackside Cameras:
Cameras is converted directly from GPL, which are mostly static cameras, and works exactly same. However in order to fix an unknown crash bug with "Spectator Camera hotkey", we’ve converted all static cameras to tracking cameras.

Fuel usage:
Due to the track length, fuel estimate on setup page is not accurate.

Signpost Corner gap:
If you find yourself driving in mid air beyond the sand bag barrier of Signpost Corner, do not worry, it is not a bug.
This is a special design, as it is in GPL, in order to blend track surface smoothly with the skybox from afar.


Thanks to Jim's extensive assistance and support, as well as every friends' help!

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Version 1.01

  • - Fixed various texture & UV
  • - Further adjusted LOD distance for pitlane & various sections, improved framerate slightly
  • - Adjusted trackside cameras
  • - Removed large amount unnecessary invisible walls

Version 1.02

  • - Added fence and direction sign to Signpost Corner
  • - Fixed ambient sounds
  • - Improved trackside cameras
  • - Improved & fixed various textures
  • - Removed a bush collision wall near Bungalow

 

*** Τι έχουν κάνει τα άτομα. Καταπληκτική δουλειά.  14 χρόνια :shock3:

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v1.05 update

  • - Added retroreflectors to road posts
  • - Improved & fixed various textures and materials
  • - Fixed visual problem with road shading (recalculated all mesh normals)
  • - Cleaned up unnecessary meshes and materials
  • - Mountain mist is now only visible during day time
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  • 6 months later...

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Version 1.10

  • - Now has the newest road PBR materials from dundrod55, including full puddle map.
  • - Added unique name prefix to all 4000 materials, no more texture conflicts with other car mods.
  • - Bundled cbash & shader cache files, which improves loading time.
  • - Updated old retro reflectors to new material, removed large amount unused retro reflectors objects.
  • - Added Wet realroad preset, with new default weather preset.
  • - Tweaked a few corridor setting in AIW.
  • - Improved flaggers.
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  • 2 months later...

v2.00 UPDATE

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Major changes:

  • - Added 4 mountain rally stages. Each stage takes around 3-6 minutes to finish, and fully works with AI & race. It's highly recommended to set race type to Time and 1-2 mins race length, and set Flag Rule to either None or Full w/o DQ.

Stage info:
Stage 1 (14.70 km): from Quarter Bridge to Cronk-Y-Voddy.
Stage 2 (17.44 km): from Glen Helen to Ginger Hall.
Stage 3 (15.61 km): from Ballaugh Bridge to Guthrie's Memorial.
Stage 4 (19.26 km): from Gooseneck to Governor's Bridge.

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  • - AI Waypoint has been fully rebuilt, including new fastest path, as well as left, right, block path for challenging races against AI. Every line & corner nodes of the new fastest path line has also been adjusted by hand for min-maxing AI performance against multiple types of vehicles, which improves AI laptime by an average of 30 seconds. The new AIW provides a very good way for learning the track, especially with driving line assist enabled. Fuel usage in setup page also has a better estimated reading now (except rally stages).

 

  • - Reconstructed entire road surface with varied physical bumps to replicate the track condition of IOM during the 90's. The new bumps are created with Jim's valuable input, as well as side by side comparison between the original GPL version.

Notable bumpy sections:

Cronk Y Voddy (moderate bumpiness)

Quarry Bends to Sulby (moderate bumpiness)

Ginger Hall to Milntown (heavy bumpiness)

  • - Rebuilt & optimized all collision objects, to prevent vehicles from stranding inside terrain objects, or falling off the track in serious crash. Long race is now viable for both singleplayer and multiplayer, especially with low-damage setting.

This includes:
New 120km collision wall that encloses entire drivable track area. New collision wall complexity is ten times less than before.
New single-side collision mesh for all road posts at mountain area, which only interacts with vehicles at forward driving direction.

  • - Other optimization changes to surface & collision include:

All road & sidewalk surface meshes are separated from other surface types. Other surface types no longer have realroad properties.
Separated all visual wall objects from track surface, and no longer interact with vehicles.

Other changes:

  • - Brought back the authentic mountain mist that Jim has originally created for the GPL version of the track.
  • - Improved skybox texture for smoother transition between sky & ocean during different time of day, a clear ridge line is now visible during night.
  • - Added more flaggers for race starting & finishing.
  • - Added chimney smoke.
  • - Added new pit lane fence.
  • - Street lights glowing objects are only visible during night time.
  • - Fixed floating grass at Cronk Y Voddy.
  • - Improved mountain 3d models (less blocky).
  • - Improved large amount scenery objects, removed unused objects.
  • - Optimized SCN entries, removed unused static reflection mapper.
  • - Updated & optimized TDF file.
  • - Adjusted & improved large amount material setting.
  • - Removed wet road visual effect (due to the latest changes of RF2's wet rendering, wet road visual effect no longer works for this track, and it is currently not possible to fix without breaking the whole track).
  • - Removed wet road preset.

 

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v2.01 Rally stage update

  • - Added more rally stage sign boards near road side according to real life rally stage layout.
  • - Further optimized AI waypoint for all rally stages.
  • - Rally stage maps are now correctly displayed on new UI.
  • - Slightly moved finish line position for rally stage 3 & 4 to avoid rushing into the corner ahead at full speed.
  • - Fixed an issue which AI would take wrong route at the start of Rally Stage 3.
  • - Added race start flagger for all rally stages.

 

 

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v2.02 UPDATE

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- Added 3 new Rally Stages:
* Stage 5 (18.93 km): from Keppel Gate to Ballacraine.
* Stage 6 (15.31 km): from Greeba Castle to Rhencullen.
* Stage 7 (17.31 km): from Ginger Hall to Bungalow.

  • - Fully reworked trackside cameras with two available cam groups:
  • * Cam Group 1 includes 203 new tracking cams for complete & best viewing coverage.
  • * Cam Group 2 includes 219 static cams that were originally created by Jim from GPL version.

Note: rF2 defaults to "Cycle camera groups" that will constantly switch between tracking & static camera group. It's however better to only view one "camera group" by using "Tracking cameras" Hotkey. Cam Group 2 does not cover every area. For complete cam coverage, use Cam Group 1 instead.

  • - Added more ambient sound sources at various locations.
  • - Adjusted all ambient sound volume, range & position that blends more naturally into the track.
  • - Improved default weather preset.
  • - Added some more chimney smoke.

- Various small fixes.

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Version 2.03

  • - Significantly increased timing sector gap for full layout to avoid "no timing" bug.
  • - Removed collision surface & wall near the end of all rally stages, which AI are forced to teleport back to pit at lap end to avoid crashing.
  • - Fixed a few missing shadow objects.
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  • 4 months later...

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v2.04 FULL WET & AIW UPDATE

  • - Updated all IBL shader materials and IBL Probes setting (improved overall color & lighting) that support the latest rendering effects.
  • - Updated all road materials, re-enabled wet effect, remapped track visual groove and puddle with new hand-drawing groove & puddle textures.
  • - Fixed AIW crash issues on all layouts.
  • - Tweaked default weather preset (with a little more clouds).

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v2.05

  • - Updated puddle map texture to 4K resolution with more details, fixed wet puddle visual artifacts to work with the latest January RC build wet road rendering changes. New wet puddle visual now has a more natural and detailed look.

 

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