Which Circuit Would You Like to See Digitalised in a Game or Mod?

Taruffi said:

.... That's one area where I'd say the older circuits definitely tend to have it over the newer ones, whether we're talking about Pau, Rouen, the Masaryk Ring, or the Nordschleife.

And in general, in the modern era, "technical" has become synonymous with "slow". ...

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For the past thirty years most new F1 tracks have been created by one person, who has the creativity of a Zerox machine. Hence the series of moderate speed, flat, featureless, cookie-cutter tracks we now have. But designs are also hamstrung by the draconian regulations of F1, such as:

Any kind of banking on a circuit shouldn’t go over 5.7deg; maximum permitted length for a straight section of the track is 2km; no new circuit should exceed 7km but must be longer than 3.5km; track width of at least 12m, 15m along the main straight; the gradient of the start/finish straight should also not exceed 2%; the first corner should be a change of direction of at least 45° with a radius of less than 300m; verges should be between 1m and 5m wide, a continuation of the track itself, with any transition from one to the other being very gradual; no ovals; etc etc etc.

No longer does F1 race on existing circuits, no matter how historic or well established; no, they dictate to a new venue, "build this track and we may come race on it". The only exception is that ridiculous anachronism Monaco, and it only remains because most of the F1 luminaries live there so the "race" is an expensive parade of expensive cars in their backyard and they can hang out in a casino and watch (consider, a duplicate of the Monaco circuit on a rural hillside somewhere in Europe, with all the expected spectator amenities; would F1 even consider racing there?).

One thing i enjoy in race sims is the ability to run anything anywhere, so I can have F1 at Road Atlanta or Mid-Ohio or Laguna Seca. (I recall thirty years ago when CART ran several races in Europe and FIA dictated they could not race on any circuits which F1 also used (afraid people would discover both series did similar lap times?) so I always thought "turnabout is fair play", the USGP should be on an oval ...who wouldn't like to see F1 at Talladega or Daytona? Well, in a sim we can.)

To finish off the Valencia Urbano stuff, it's kind of expected these days that the feeder/ support series will generally put on more exciting on-track racing than F1 itself.

As for tracks like Ricardo Tormo, or ovals here in the States, I can't see well enough to take advantage of getting to see large parts of the track all at once. So I really enjoy all the more how close I can get to the racing surface at a number of the classic road courses.

I'm familiar with the provisions in Appendix O of the FIA technical regulations. Please do note though, that of these are recommendations, with a "should" in the phrasing, rather than hard-and-fast rules. And the provisions aren't solely for Grade 1 circuits.

And to my point about hem being recommendations or guidelines in most cases, there are newer tracks where the full course exceeds 7 km, and that have hosted major, professional events. The 7-km thing has to do with then having to have multiple Safety Car queues, like what we see at Le Mans.

Spa and Baku sort of "cheat" on the whole 2-km straight thing. The Nordscleife simply blows right past it with the Dottinger Hohe, and they haven't chicaned it. And honestly, I wonder if that one is a relic of Ecclestone and Balestre killing off the old WSC by forcing the 3.5-liter formula upon them, and chicaning the Mulsanne.

What you gave isn't the definition for what Turn 1 on a circuit must be, but what will be defined as the first turn. here at least had been a provision that Turn 1 should have an apex speed of no more than 125 km/h, but that's been blown out of the water plenty of times at this point.

Algarve pretty clearly flouts the recommendation tht there shouldn't be elevation changes in corners/transition zones. Franly, especially in cases where it would aid the racing (uphill acceleration zones after slow(er) corners), that provision should be ignored as far as I'm concerned.

So actually, if anything, Tilke has even less excuse. It does seem to be heavily a matter of wanting to create a certain corporate/brand image with the newer F1 circuits, at least as much as anything else.

And no, Indy Cars weren't similar in lap times to F1. F1 just has a history in recent decades of trying to stifle the perceived competition. So even with them being slower, if the fans feel like IndyCar puts on a better show at F1 circuits, F1 isn't going to like that.

I wouldn't want to see F1 on an oval, particularly not one of the big, high-banked superspeedways. F1 cars aren't designed to run on ovals; they're simply not as sturdy as Indy Cars in certain respects. Also, pack racing with open-wheeled cars is unacceptably dangerous; we learned that the hard way at Las Vegas in 2011. Frankly, they should have taken the hint after the big crash at Atlanta in the IRL race back in 2001.

To get a little more back on track, the mention of Pikes Peak reminded me that there were several hillclimbs used for rounds of the old World Sportscar Championship back in the '60s, and I'm not sure how many, if any, have a representation in any of the somewhat recent sims. (That's how they were able to run the championship in Switzerland.)

Taruffi said:

To get a little more back on track, the mention of Pikes Peak reminded me that there were several hillclimbs used for rounds of the old World Sportscar Championship back in the '60s, and I'm not sure how many, if any, have a representation in any of the somewhat recent sims. (That's how they were able to run the championship in Switzerland.)

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I always liked the idea of a flat out run up a hillclimb, but what do we do while the competition does their thing? I've never been keen on randomly generated results and running at the same time is really a no no, so is there a feature that can engage the player while they're not taking their run?

jgf said:

who wouldn't like to see F1 at Talladega or Daytona?

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I tried a bunch of times to run Indycar in rF1 on their out-of-the-box superspeedway, and never once managed to figure out how to overtake past the two slipstream queues glued in their tracks side-by-side. Partly because the oval AI in rF1 really doesn't like it when anyone is crossing the AI's prescribed groove, and will not slow down for them. I should try again in newer sims, however I wonder if this experience might in fact be accurate for the sweeping-turn superspeedways. Indianapolis at least has actual corners. Gonna go watch some Indycar, I guess.

Pete Conway said:

I've never been keen on randomly generated results and running at the same time is really a no no

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I mean, games already have to solve this for AIs' qualifying or when the player retires from a race, or all the time in case of rally sims. My understanding is that games can run the simulation faster with just the AIs—without the graphics, the player's input and such. This can generate real results in a fraction of the time. Idk if it's done this way in reality: I guess with off-the-shelf engines like Unreal, the physics engine might expect the rest of the stuff to also be running—however that wouldn't be a good programming practice, if only for the reasons of testing.

GTR2 pretty obviously tried to run a simplified simulation for AIs' qualifying if the player skips the session, resulting in laptimes considerably different from those in races. A fix was to use time acceleration and run the actual game at hyperspeed. So, what you want is do this, but with just the physics engine and the AI, hoping that it runs very fast. Or simplify the physics or the AI, but not botch it like GTR2.

True, F1 does not dictate what anyone builds. But they make it evident if a track is not built to their specs they will not use it, thus creating a schedule of modern lackluster clones.

And F1 could race on ovals. Stiffen the suspension to compensate the centrifugal force of the banking, adopt asymmetric setups to balance the handling, and go for it. As for wrecks, we've seen many cartwheeling pileups in normal F1 races.

And thirty years ago CART and F1 were quite similar in overall performance. The cars were similar in size and power; F1 was about 400lbs lighter and used exotic brake systems, so braking and initial acceleration were much better than CART, and F1 was more nimble in tight corners. But CART had an edge in top speed and its ground effects meant they could carry more speed through most corners. On an average track with a mixture of turns and straights lap times would be quite close, though each cars' performance would shine in different areas. In that age many drivers got seat time in both series, even if only in testing, (Fittipaldi, Andretti, Sullivan, Teo Fabi, Nelson Piquet, Mansell, etc.); all had the same comparative assessments. CART drivers were amazed at the braking power of F1, and had trouble learning to go deep in a turn before braking, and at the instant throttle response; F1 drivers were impressed with the roadholding of the ground effects and the sheer power once the turbos wound up and the car just kept pulling and pulling.

jgf said:

F1 could race on ovals

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My understanding is, the engines would certainly blow up. Idk about the rest of the car, heard that something might fall apart too.

aasasd said:

....GTR2 pretty obviously tried to run a simplified simulation for AIs' qualifying if the player skips the session, resulting in laptimes considerably different from those in races. A fix was to use time acceleration and run the actual game at hyperspeed. So, what you want is do this, but with just the physics engine and the AI, hoping that it runs very fast. Or simplify the physics or the AI, but not botch it like GTR2.

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What happens is if the qualifying session is cut short any AI who did not go out and run laps will be assigned a qualifying time based on some internal algorithm, this is rarely realistic. This can be overridden by the "ComparativeTime=" line in the individual .car files, but you'll notice not all cars have this. The value is typically in the 101-110 range and seems to be a percentage multiplier of that car's calculated race lap (so 108 would be 108% of the car's computed race speed converted to time). You can add this line to the bottom of any car file and play with the values to get more realistic qualifying; but it's easier to just accelerate time to the end of the qualifying session, and make sure all AI are back in the pits before ending the session, even if time has expired.

aasasd said:

My understanding is, the engines would certainly blow up. Idk about the rest of the car, heard that something might fall apart too.

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The engines are computer controlled, so a simple matter of limiting them. Probably a major issue would be cooling, would the default systems be capable under sustained high speed running.

FWIW, in Europe FIA regulations state only cars created specifically for oval racing can race on ovals. A nice loophole, any car can be tweaked for oval racing.

It's not the suspension or the setup. Indy Cars are designed from the ground up to be more physically robust than F1 cars. Also, to my knowledge, Indy Cars have special anti-intrusion panels that F1 cars don't, and they added more to the cars after James Hinchcliffe's near-fatal practice crash at Indy in 2015.

Cartwheelng looks a lot worse than it is. The bad crashes are the ones where the cars basically stop moving in any one of the 3 axes, due to hitting a solid barrier. The impact forces in those sorts of crashes at superspeedways are much greater than what you see in F1 incidents. Think Luciano Burti, but 30-50 mph faster, and into a wall with even less give to it.

The substantially lower weight for an F1 car from ~30 years ago will help in the high-speed corners, too. Just look how hamstrung the Porsche 962Cs were in the old FIA WSC in 1991 with a similar amount of ballast, even with their turbos, and at a track like Mexico City (7,000+ft elevation).

You're also incorrect about ground effects. Both F1 and CART banned the side skirts after the 1982 season, but both series continued with undertray venturis. You can see them sticking out behind the rear tires in some profile images of the 1986 Ferrari F1-86, 1988 McLaren MP4/4, 1991 McLaren MP4/6, and plenty of others.

In period, the only place the Indy Cars would have gotten to use their top speed advantage is on an intermediate or large oval. I wouldn't assume a higher Vmax for the Indy Car back then, even on the straights at Road America.

F1 cars these days are designed with a lot of baseline drag. This really got going after the 1994 Imola weekend, and this intentional effort has been a major part of what's created the wake turbulence that's messed with the on-track racing ever since. But what that also means is a ridiculously strong slipstream, especially if you were to take them to a 1.5-mile oval or larger. So you'd have pack racing, and you'd need significant help to make any overtakes at all.

I don't see any loophole there. I've already noted that Indy Cars are designed differently from the start in terms of their chassis structure. Also, IndyCar, and even NASCAR, are members of the ACCUS, the committee of United States series that report to the FIA. So the FIA would enforce those regs over here, too.

Magny Cours, Phoenix (USA), Estoril, Fuji Speedway (Never seen this one on a Sim, but I like its design).

Regards

Ricardo V. Soares

Ricardo V. Soares said:

Fuji Speedway (Never seen this one on a Sim, but I like its design).

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Assetto Corsa:




Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...raRgZsKHmZiTqWJmrnMHHh323A/edit#gid=904041304

I'd also recommend consulting Gutbomb's track reviews as to which version is the best. For Fuji, Reboot Team's one predictably wins, for Magny-Cours he recommends using slider666's version. For Estoril the one by Mitja Bonca seemed to be better that Tiago Lima's at the time of the review, but I'd guess CrisT86 and others probably added some neat stuff.

Ricardo V. Soares said:

Magny Cours, Phoenix (USA), Estoril, Fuji Speedway (Never seen this one on a Sim, but I like its design).

Regards

Ricardo V. Soares

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also rF2, We should also see a new version of Fuji by Frederick Alonso this year. He has been making tremendous progress.

"In 1982, ground effect was banned in F1, only re-emerging for the new era of F1 in 2022."

"From 1983 onwards, skirts were prohibited, and the bottom of the car had to be completely flat, so the cars stopped being as fast in the corners, as they did not generate as much downforce." Remember skid blocks?

When I can see the venturis sticking out the back of the cars in actual photographs, you know, I really don't care whatever quote is saying whatever else. I can see for myself that the quote is inaccurate.

Probably what's being indicated is that the sidepods no longer had those huge tunnels built into them, but given how much more serious the wings became, the downforce loss likely wasn't so extreme.

And at least while they had the turbo engines, the straight-line speed penalty in F1 with the added drag of the wings wasn't so severe, either, because power output went from like 600 (480-530 for atmospheric engines) up to 900-1,000, and in Qualifying trim, you have figures of as much as 1,200-1,500 hp being quoted for those 1.5-liter turbo grenades.

It's a little insane when they're talking on the broadcast about top speeds of 215 mph down the Brabham Straight at Adelaide during Qualifying.

Fat-Alfie said:

I would like these four to be completed and in-game, please

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Ohhhh, the Schottenring would be awesome!! I grew up not far away from there and spent some vacations at the lake in Gedern!

faceless-snowboard said:

Ohhhh, the Schottenring would be awesome!! I grew up not far away from there and spent some vacations at the lake in Gedern!

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SchottenRing67 (from GPL) is available for GTR2, GTL too

And converted from there to AC by ACTK. Still looks very GPLy, though.

It's not a historic venue but still. I'd really like to see Bilster Berg in a game. Personally, I think it's a really nice track and so far I've never seen a mod of it somewhere.