Legal track or not?

[Calum McLure]

Just wondering how you would find out whether a track is legal or not. Downloaded a few but they don't include "read me's" that give any info.

2 of them were Spa & Suzuka from ISR, they look too good to be rFactor conversions so I'm assuming they are ripped from something else.

Cheers in advance

 

[Ian Franssen]

I'm not an expert on them, but there are a few things where you can check usually.

1. Indeed a readme or the loading screen which say where it is from
2. Is the track also available on ISI forum - Almost all the legal tracks are available over there, if they are not that is most of the time for a reason, normally someone wants as much exposure as possible
3 Whether you can recognize the track from another game, mostly visable by people who pay attention to modding details, such as graphics, or dimensions etc. But an illegal conversion is also visible by the adverts on the side of the track, or specific details that are only in that certain game. Offcourse you would need to own a lot of games in that case if you want to check that yourself

The Spa track is probably a codemasters conversion done by McNolo who didn't intended it to have it released for the public, the japanese one I have also didn't had a readme or a loading screen and not on the ISI forums, so more than probably an illegal conversion too, but I'm not certain, but unless there is more indication it isn't, we choose not to upload the track.

 

[Calum McLure]

Cheers Ian!

 

[Marco Bijl]

Its very hard to see sometimes. When looking very thouroughly, most tracks contain something that can be defined as not 100% legal.

What disturbs me the most about tracks, is the lack of stand developers take. Recently, simbin asked a modder not to use their stuff. They asked polite, and had full right to do so. As a "reward' they got totally killed by th community. Other developers did not dare to step up and support.

Makes me wonder from time to time.....

Anyway. To see, just keep your eyes off track. Most clues are there. Compare significant buildings. Youtube can be a good help with that. Thats how I useally start.