F1 2011 Abu Dhabi Sunset.

[David O'Reilly]

I had the pleasure of doing a 100% Abu Dhabi multiplayer race on Xbox through the Club Section of RD last night. We raced a “Pro Am” where we use 2011 performance and hand the cars out in handicap order. I was able to hold off one of the fastest guys as he was in a Virgin and myself a Toro Rosso, great stuff. It’s not a favourite track of mine by any means. I find it quite an awkward mix mainly of fast straights and slow corners and can rarely get into any sort of rhythm there. I also managed to break my front wing exiting the pits chatting and forgetting to steer and brake!

I do have to report however that the graphic depiction of the day night transition is simply stunning.
You first notice the lights come on. Then darkness falls but not just in an even blanket. Turn 2 is tricky as you drive into the setting sun. The pit straight different again as the pool of light in the stands makes the track realistically appear darker. The clouds are sunlit for a while by a sun over the horizon. Then a stunning moon is visible as you enter the pit straight. The lights get brighter. The Hotel is pretty amazing as it changes colours but not so much as the life- like effects in the sky. It was so immersive that I was expecting the feel of some chilled air into my helmet and some dew on my gloved fingertips. Put some medium speed steady state corners in and I would go there more often to enjoy it!

Oh the race I was crap, was hit and had my rear wing damaged and never really got a rythym excpet for about 3 laps (of 55) on low fuel, options and fuel mix 3.

Well done to Codemasters.
I sometimes feel that we gamers can be a demanding bunch and focus almost entirely on the faults of any given game. I drove F1 2010 a lot and really liked it. In my view this one is more than twice as good. We have had 8 practice races for a League about to start with two assist levels (none and TCS/Auto only) and I can’t wait to get into it.

 

[Apex1972]

this game does have alot of good things about it but in my opinion, the bad points may not out number the good but they certainly are equal.

 

[David O'Reilly]

it didn't take long

 

[grayjonny]

love it, the game atmosphere given by the environment created is unreal, clouds coming in transition of weather all the way down to tyre rotation and spray is unbelievable and even better now i managed to get my hands on a 100hz tv and im playing off a playstation3

 

[Andrew Ford]

i was so gutted to have to leave the race to pick my gf up that i did a race with the ai 100%. not as fun as with humans but i;ll be doing abu dhabi again soon. love the day to night effects.always feel in reflective mood when the sun begins to set. this doesn't just feel like a race, it feels like you've lived a day of your life in. i'm just gutted i didn't get to crack open the champagne at the end.

 

[Michael Brown]

I did a 100% GP as Lewis Hamilton a few weeks ago, mainly because I wanted to experience to day/night transition. Took the lead on the third lap and held it for half the race until I was jumped in the pits by the Red Bulls. Last 10 laps saw me behind Webber with a 16 second gap, and Vettel with an 8 second gap. Since I wasn't faster than Vettel, I decided to bring the car home in 3rd. 5 laps to the end the gap the gap to Vettel was shrinking by over a second a lap, so I gun for it, and make a DRS pass on him on the penultimate lap. Webber didn't seems to have the same problems Vettel did, and finishes around 15 seconds ahead of me.

Yas Marina is my favourite Tilke track, and the venue itself is quite a spectacle, even more so in real life.

 

[Karl Fuss]

I had the time last night, and I couldn't make the race on Thursday since I'm in the wrong time zone, so I did a full race last night to see the sun go down. What an experience!

I think i only managed a few laps around the circuit last year due to the rogue sun, so I had to familiarize myself with the breaking points and find a setup that was tolerable. For those who don't know, the sun was setting in the wrong position on last years version and it killed the breaking zone of the second back straight.

I spent the better part of 2 hours running practice laps and finding the setup (which i'm still not happy with) then set out for qualy with AI on Legendary. managed to start 7th and had a good first few laps. Found myself in 4th and then worked up to 2nd by lap 10. Stopped for tires at lap 12 and that's where it all started to go wrong.
Clipped my front wing on pit exit and couldn't really find my footing on the outlap. The tyres we so cold and hard to keep under me. Found myself in 11th after my outlap. Managed to get back into 5th by about lap 22 and when the pit crew called me in on 25 i ignored them. Looking at the colour of my tyres on the HUD i thought i could go a couple more laps.... but i was wrong.
that error cost me 7 seconds that lap as i slid all over the track. It also cost me a penalty as i punted into the back of a slower car at the hairpin. After the pitstop for tyers and the penatly driver though i was in 17th.

I fought my way to 9th before stopping for Primes to go to the end. Then came out around 15th i think, but got another drive through for corner cutting. wound up 18th in the end.

Things i learned:
- The daylight/night transition was amazing.
- The AI are super slow in the braking zones and are easily passed there.
- Don't cut the Turn 11 corner too many times in a row.

 

[JayS]

Hello together,

does anybody know how to to edit or change the sunset time of the Abu Dhabi Circuit?
The day/night transition is very amazing, but the sunset is way to late.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Dean Pryce]

I have been wondering this too, looking at the sky_presets.xml in the Abu Dhabi folder it has settings every 6 minutes from what i can work out that seem to start changing at the sky time="16.10" mark. The settings seem to affect the amount of light is displayed but not sure if editing this could bring the transition forward.
They seem to gradually get darker as the the times go on.

eg
<sky time="16.00" sunIntensity="22.000000" mieDistanceScale="0.049500" mieFactor="0.500000" rayleighDistanceScale="665.000000" rayleighFactor="116.000000" turbidity="1.465200" phaseFuncEccentricity="-0.723000" perezScale="0.100000" perezContrib="0.400000" expScale="1.267200" desaturate="0.534600" terrainSunIntensity="4.300000" terrainRayleighDistanceScale="2000.000000" terrainMieDistanceScale="0.000000" terrainPaheFuncEccentricity="-1.000000" tFog="0.920700" tFogDens="0.297000" tFogCol="-5855578" lsunColour="-5934" lbacklightColour="-14278888" lskyColour="-6181954" lambientColour="-10396072" lsunlightWrap="0.500000" lskylightWrap="0.297090" lbacklightWrap="0.297000" lsunScale="5.000000" lbacklightScale="1.200000" lskylightScale="1.200000" lambientScale="1.200000" linteriorAmbientScale="0.000000" lbacklightLOD="0.000000" lbackLighting="false" lparticleBrightness="1.000000" lshadowstrength="0.950000" />

and
<sky time="19.00" sunIntensity="31.200001" mieDistanceScale="0.049500" mieFactor="0.500000" rayleighDistanceScale="665.000000" rayleighFactor="116.000000" turbidity="1.465200" phaseFuncEccentricity="-0.723000" perezScale="0.040000" perezContrib="0.400000" expScale="2.890800" desaturate="0.534600" terrainSunIntensity="1.700000" terrainRayleighDistanceScale="2000.000000" terrainMieDistanceScale="0.000000" terrainPaheFuncEccentricity="-1.000000" tFog="0.999900" tFogDens="1.564200" tFogCol="-15658735" lsunColour="-10320" lbacklightColour="-14278888" lskyColour="-6181954" lambientColour="-10396072" lsunlightWrap="0.500000" lskylightWrap="0.297090" lbacklightWrap="0.297000" lsunScale="0.000000" lbacklightScale="0.504900" lskylightScale="0.504900" lambientScale="0.465300" linteriorAmbientScale="0.000000" lbacklightLOD="0.000000" lbackLighting="false" lparticleBrightness="1.000000" lshadowstrength="0.950000" />

I have highlighted all the values that have change in blue (i think i got them all)

Not sure if this is the only file that needs be be edited as i don't think there is a mention of location of the sun.

Edit- Just tried copying the setting from sky time=19:00 and pasting it to 16:00 through to 17:00 and the race started under the lights and looking like dusk instead of bright sunlight like it should be.

If this is the case, then all we need to do is change the values so that instead of changing from 16:00 to 19:00, for a 20% race the changes should condense down from 16:00 to about 16:70 or something like that.

I changed the sky_presets.xml in the abu dhabi folder and made sure i ran a clear weather race, (GP mode) as overcast cloud and rain have different presets

Its getting late so alot of this might seem like nonsense

Screenshot before - 1 lap gp mode, weather clear

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/249/f12011before.jpg/

After - same settings, just 16:00 has the same settings as 19:00

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/528/f12011after.jpg/

 

[NobbyMilo]

Thanks for the tip, just opened up the skypresets and instead of copying and pasting lines of code, look at the top where it says :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<skypresets>
<settings enable="1" time="18.100000" timeofday="1" sunphi="268.399994" />
<timeofday p1_start="16.000000" p1_end="16.000000" p2_start="16.299999" p2_end="18.100000" p3_start="16.000000" p3_end="16.000000" q1_start="16.000000" q1_end="16.200001" q2_start="16.200001" q2_end="16.500000" q3_start="16.500000" q3_end="17.000000" race_start="17.100000" race_end="21.800000" />
<presets>

The bits in bold are what i have changed and in 100% races its changing day to night quicker as i have widened the time gap although it probably needs tweaking a little bit as it starts to get dark around lap 12 where I think in RL it started to get dark around lap 20 and fully dark by lap 30.
Maybe other people can play around with these values and come up with perfect settings.

 

[JayS]

Many thanks!
It's helping a lot.

 

[NobbyMilo]

Have added a modified skypreset in downloads section for anyone who has difficulty in editing these files.

 

[Dean Pryce]

Thanks for giving me credit not really needed but nice to see.

I have been a different tangent to you. I am trying to get the day/night transition on a 20% and also 50% as i don't really have the time to do a 100% and kinda feel that this is something graphically nice that i am missing.

So using a different start time and tweaking a few settings i have got a better transition in my opinion for a 20%

The screens are from a 20% GP Mode, weather set as sunny.

here is the file, if some of you could test it, that would be ideal. Note that this may mess up the light setting in practice and qually so ideally just swap the preset file for the race, use original ones for other sessions. Remember to back up you originals too.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/15/lap1a.jpg/ Lap 1

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/847/lap4.jpg/ Lap 4

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/822/lap9.jpg/ Lap 9

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/707/lap11.jpg/ Lap 11

View attachment sky_presets.rar

So far, this is the best i have got it. To get any better i think i need to find out if you can speed up the suns transition.

 

[nahsichung]

has anyone done a day/night transition mod for 30% races?

 

[samjealsha]

mod for 40% races too?