Help in creating track from Google Earth

jr1414 · Dec 1, 2010

Hi,

New to BTB and am attempting to create a track for rFactor. My son races go karts at a temporary circuit every Saturday (during the warmer months) in Norwalk, CT USA. Being the off season now, I thought it would be really nice to use BTB to allow him to practice his lines, and get prepared for the upcoming season. I've created a path in Google Earth and imported it into BTB.

Here's where the problem begins, the track surface is imported, but it brings alot of data surrounding the paths I've created, which it considers to be part of the track surface. All of my original control points from Google Earth are there as well, but the edges of the racing surface are unclear in any view.

How can I use the existing control points to either "paint" a line to represent the edges of the track surface, or to limit the track surface area.

Thanks,

James

rdmgarcia · Dec 1, 2010

Same thing I have been doing for the last few months down here in tx!

Can it be just the width that need adjustment? Once you load the kml file, you need to edit/tweak the points considerably. One thing that helped me was to take a snapshoot of the google earth image and load it to btb to help the editing.

What mod are you using for karting?

mianiak · Dec 2, 2010

If you have access to the track, then the best thing to do is take a drive around it with a gps meter onboard and record the gps data. Google earth kml altitude filler and other sites like this go down to 90m and some to a minimum of 10m, rarely will you get anything lower.
Also the google earth images aren't absolute, they are taken at an angle and if there is a incline or decline on the road, it will look like a corner or a bend in google earth. Which means that your lat/long positions most probably aren't precise. This is where a gps will come in handy. The other thing to do is you use reference points, in pictures. It is not easy to get elevations precise and no matter what you do (unless its laser scanned), you will have to do some manual tweaking, a lot of it is trial and error.

Here is a technique I used for my latest project, I have a friend who has access to a laser scanned version of the track I'm building, I set the track up initially with information I found on the net, then sent it to him. He would do a few laps on the laser scanned track then jump straight onto mine and drive it, then he would tell me where bits were wrong. I edited the bits I got wrong and sent them to him and got him to drive it again. We kept doing this till he could drive my track the same way he could drive the laser scanned version.

Get your son to drive your track, get him to drive it like its the real one. He knows how he needs to take a corner, if he sets himself up for each corner on your track and can get in and out of it the same way he does irl then you got it pretty right. The best time to get him to drive it is just after he has come back from racing. he will know straight away if something is wrong.

But be aware, if it is not precise and he practices on it, then goes to the track, it could throw him off and cause an accident (I don't mean to cause concern, but I can't give someone advice without considering every possible scenario

). So work hard at getting it as close as you can. It is possible, but it takes a lot of hard work and focus.

jr1414 · Dec 2, 2010

Luckily, the track is setup in a beach parking lot, so there is very (and I mean VERY) little elevation change. I also drive the track, so I know all of the little nuances in the surface, there are a few little bumps and dips that can really hurt or help your time.

I'd be happy to upload the .kml file, just not quite sure how to do that on this site. It keeps telling me it's an invalid file.

jr1414 · Dec 2, 2010

Here is the file. I made two paths to outline the outside edges of the track surface. Width was set very small to try and avoid receiving too much excess data. Didn't work, but maybe I'm just missing something?

I've also taken the liverty of attaching .kmls for the grid (Track entrance) and Pit in (Track exit) sections of the course.

Thanks again!

chub_pearson · Dec 2, 2010

jr1414 said:
I made two paths to outline the outside edges of the track surface.

What you need is one path down the centre of the track.

jr1414 · Dec 2, 2010

I know I'm inexperienced at this, but I'm just not getting it. Pulled in the image from Google and made a closed track over it. (down center of track surface. I now have a very, very jagged outline of the racing surface. How do I go about smoothing the edges of the track to come up with a uniform surface with smooth edges.
Thanks,

mianiak · Dec 2, 2010

You have way to many points, if its a flat surface you really don't need that many.
Put a point at the entrance and exit of every corner then use the control arms to make your shapes.
Here is an example, see how I have set the control arms up?

jr1414 · Dec 3, 2010

Thank you... You are my hero! I've got the track surface done now, looks really good! Now on to all of the details. I'll have to go searching through the expansion packs for all of the rest of the things I need.

Looking for the following:

*Orange safety netting
*Tall, skinny orange cones (the type with the weighted rubber base and a long straight post)
*Asphalt curbing, approx 7" height. Would be nice if this is a Sobject, so I can replicate the islands in the middle of the parking lot, and the curbing surrounding the lot.
*single layer tires, laid on side to ground, varying sizes as a Sobject, preferrably for surrounding portions of the track
*Light Posts for center island lighting features
*Asphalt texture for remainer of parking lot
*Plastic barriers, preferrably blue/yellow alternating blocks as these are what we are currently lining certain corners with. Red/white would work also as some of the older barriers were red/gray

Thanks again for all the help and advice offered here, it is greatly appreciated.

mianiak · Dec 3, 2010

You can make most things with walls, get textures here http://www.cgtextures.com/ for other models you might like to start getting to know google sketchup.

jr1414 · Dec 4, 2010

Thanks again for all of the help. Still working on textures and objects, but it is coming along nicely, and should be driveable as is, right now.

I tried exporting it to RFactor, but with no luck. It shows up in the locations, but when I attempt to open the track, it does not open and I get an error. Is there some special priocess to exporting for rFactor? I'm running BTB 0.8.0.3 on Windows 7 64 bit.

Thanks,