BTB Improvements?

[Brendon Pywell]

Believe it or not, I get quite a few emails with suggestions on how BTB could be improved. Rather than me simply “sorting” them in my own Inbox, I’d like to openly ask the BTB community for their suggestions, allowing suggestions to be discussed and workshopped. I have a few ideas (pages of them) myself but it's always refreshing to get other people's ideas.

Aside from the next patch, I pretty much know what I am going to include in the next version. Beyond that I also have some great ideas as I address what I perceive to be BTB’s most common “annoyances”.

So please, feel free to offer your ideas on what you’d like to see in the upcoming releases. I’ll refrain from comment, but I will be taking notes.

 

[Ghoults]

I strongly recommend that BTB does not keep checking license expiry date while it is running. I should check once, on startup. I was working in BTB when the expiry message popped up, and when I clicked on OK the program closed. Fortunately I only lost a few objects. If I had lost a lot of work, well let's just say I'd seriously consider using my caps lock key.

edit: My new license has arrived. Quick renewals are always a good thing. No caps lock here.

It could also help if btb showed somewhere how many days/hours there are left on your lisence. Now I think the only way to figure that out is to go to bobstrackbuilder.net and see there when your lisence expires.

Also it would be useful if btb could show a popup window when you start btb if there are less than 5 days left on your lisence.

I can't say it has been an issue for me. I save very often simply becase btb saves so incredibly fast. Also my experience with lisence renewals has been 100% positive. Brendon has always been super fast and if my lisence expires my downtime is never more than maybe 16-24 hours.

 

[R Soul]

Yes, to be fair I've never had any long delays with a new license, but a warning would be nice so that people who are in the zone can keep going.

 

[RichardHessels]

The ability to import GMT with their properties directly in the X-packer.

 

[R Soul]

Inbuilt support for multiple layouts would be a very nice feature. In the Export window we could list multiple Track Names (a multi-line text box for example).

All gmt files, textures and the tdf file could be placed in the 'venue name' folder (currently 'track name' is used) and each track name folder could have its own set of scn, cam, gdb and aiw files.

All BTB entities (tracks, objects, walls etc) could have an extra property allowing us to select the layouts for which the entity exists (all selected by default). This in turn would affect which scn files for which it has a reference.

For the driveline/timing and camera windows, we could have a menu at the top listing the layouts (read from the Export window). By default each set would only to the first layout (and subsequently created layouts would be missing these things), but one layout could be copied to another. This would allow for completely different layouts or very similar ones (e.g. one with chicanes, one without).

 

[RichardHessels]

Supporting multiple layouts would be a great addition.

 

[Csg2]

Textures of terrain can be rotated and follow the road like this:

 

[UPCPC-IvanThaDriver]

I don't know how BTB tells RBR where is the collision point, but it would be awesome if it could "cheat" RBR onthefly using SDS algorithm youtube.com/watch?v=ckOTl2GcS-E so quads would give smooth collision surface without the need of using extreme amounts of polygons (visuals would remain notsubdivided)

 

[R Soul]

Something suitable for high quality rendering would almost certainly be far in excess of what is suitable for a race sim, where framerate is very important. There are a few other reasons why that's not a good idea, but posting them will create the impression of a rant.

 

[UPCPC-IvanThaDriver]

Something suitable for high quality rendering would almost certainly be far in excess of what is suitable for a race sim, where framerate is very important. There are a few other reasons why that's not a good idea, but posting them will create the impression of a rant.

I wrote "visuals would remain notsubdivided" - that means I don't want to have millions of polygons displayed on screen, it isn't to affect visuals in any way. Counting xyz position of one point according to the algorithm just to tell wheels that collision happened or not doesn't kill cpu.

 

[R Soul]

They both have an impact on performance. People have reported plummeting framerates during collisions with 3d armco models which had their collision property turned on. And these weren't super high poly, just things from the existing XPacks. The most effective solution was always to turn off collision and create an invisible wall with the default, low poly cross section.

High-poly tyres continually rolling over a high poly road (even if it's invisible) will lead to more calculations. You could go up by 4 and get away with it, or maybe 16, but I still think it would be more precise than is really necessary.

Plus, you're suggesting these collision meshes should be generated on the fly (i.e. in real time). That would drop the framerate if the collision calculations didn't

 

[UPCPC-IvanThaDriver]

Algorithm itself mathematically gives infinite surface smoothness (think rather nurbs than sds steps/iterations), counting position of a point on a curve isn't the same as dividing meshes into thousands or millions of polygons

 

[Csg2]

Merge the main road with turnouts.

 

[Erwin Greven]

It would be great when BTB used a bit less resources. Sometimes BTB crashes when loading textures for the first time or building cross sections.

 

[fredfred]

Ability to export directly to .dae, .3ds or fbx formats.

 

[frasie]

Hello!
I find a problem by building a track, have do the pitline as usual, but in this track the cars must start 50 meter behind
the pitstop area and drive a road to come on the pitline ( sorry for my bad english) now what I miss is a second pitline
from the cars start position to merge with a point of the principal pitline.
It was great to have mode to put a second pitline like an string object to the track in BTB. This can be useful also on tracks with
deeper garages, to make some little extra pitlines for the cars to go directly on the pitline.
I hope Im clear, an understandable with my bad english! Sorry again.
Thank You , Cheers Franky.

 

[RichardHessels]

The ability to change the FOV in the editor. To better match photography so you can your work more accurate.

 

[AndyO]

G'Day all,
I apologise if this has already been commented but i have been trying to find information on building tracks/circuits in BTB that will be able to be used in rFactor2. I know there are ways that have been given using 3Dsimed however i am yet to be able to build a track convert it and put it in rFactor2.
I really enjoy using BTB and would like to get back into creating tracks but only if i know i will be able to install them into rFactor2 with very little hassle.

I thank all information given on this topic in advanced.

Andy O

 

[Erwin Greven]

An option that could be considered is the possibility to add objects on both sides of a track, while you fix the distance between them. For instance lighting poles, reflector posts, mile markers,

 

[banger]

deleted

 

[banger]

check ur pm ,andy0