Is Fat-Alfie working on new tracks?

[Elaphe]

Before I started downloading mods, 99% of my time with Assetto Corsa was spent in Nordschleife Tourist. When I found out the tracks by Fat-Alfie, now they have become my favorite. Deutschlandring is amazing, so beautiful with so many different kind of bends, fast and slow sections and with great performance. Same can be said about Feldbergring, which is also absolutelly awesome. Fonteny is impressive too, especially considering it's incredibly long, with the only problem of the lack of collision of many objetcs outside the track, such as trees. Do you know if this modder is currently working on new tracks inspired in old circuits or based on open roads?

 

[RasmusP]

That's hand-made, old-school 3D grass. I still think it's the best way to get the look I am after (so long as you have the time).

And thanks for the very kind gift, @ManicManzen !

Damn! It didn't really look like the csp generated grass. It looks a lot better

 

[Pietro.it]

Your circuits are just stunning and it's such a joy to drive! I'm so much looking forward to Battenbergring, although I have to admit Mugello road circuit is a pretty fascinating project and once completed it will be a dream coming true. I see that you have so many projects in the pipeline, but I have to ask: did you ever consider old Brno circuit layouts? Mainly the original ones from 1930s and 1950s? I think it could also be a kind of circuit that would be interesting for you.

 

[Ascaroth]

I sent you some beer/tea money. Thanks for your work, I adore Fonteny, and my buddies love drifting on Deutschlandring of all places... The serpentins are amazing. If only there was a way to go back down quickly without a penalty

 

[isamu]

Hi FatAlfie. It's an old thread so was just wondering are you still working on Solitude and Schottenring?

 

[Elaphe]

Last week I downloaded Bremgarten. Fantastic, as always.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Hi FatAlfie. It's an old thread so was just wondering are you still working on Solitude and Schottenring?

I've just finished working on my Battenbergring track, but haven't had time to package it together ready for release (readme, screenshots, archive photos, description, etc) but hopefully I can get it ready for this weekend.

Once that's out I will be back working on Solitude and Charade, with a bit of occasional work on Schottenring and Stradale del Mugello. Battenbergring was started in 2017 (!) so I really wanted to get that one completed and released

 

[Flakka93]

I've just finished working on my Battenbergring track, but haven't had time to package it together ready for release (readme, screenshots, archive photos, description, etc) but hopefully I can get it ready for this weekend.

Once that's out I will be back working on Solitude and Charade, with a bit of occasional work on Schottenring and Stradale del Mugello. Battenbergring was started in 2017 (!) so I really wanted to get that one completed and released

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Mate, whenever payday rolls around for me I'm gonna shout you a few pints. Absolutely love your work, everything looks gorgeous and sets a high bar for what AC modding can (and should) be.

Can't wait to try this out and check out the scenery!

 

[Reik Major]

I've just finished working on my Battenbergring track, but haven't had time to package it together ready for release (readme, screenshots, archive photos, description, etc) but hopefully I can get it ready for this weekend.

Oh dear, I just wet my pants! And I'm sure a few others will do also, right?

 

[isamu]

I've just finished working on my Battenbergring track, but haven't had time to package it together ready for release (readme, screenshots, archive photos, description, etc) but hopefully I can get it ready for this weekend.

Once that's out I will be back working on Solitude and Charade, with a bit of occasional work on Schottenring and Stradale del Mugello. Battenbergring was started in 2017 (!) so I really wanted to get that one completed and released

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WOW fantastic news and thank you for the reply good and kind sir!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those screenshots looks ASTOUNDING!!!!!! I can only imagine what Solitude will look like!!!

On a side note, I'm hoping somewhere down the line you'll take a look at Machwerk. Would absolutely love a Fat-Alfie version of that track!

 

[Elaphe]

Tomorrow I will try Battenbergring. Today I have been playing Bremgarten for hours. It has become one of my new favorite tracks. It's super fun, with all those ups and downs, different textures on the road, and lots of superb bends to cut, take risks and make your car slide.

Oh, just one problem, which I have also noticed in Feldbergring. Some (not all) spectators look solid black, with no textures at all. Any idea where could be the problem and how to fix that?

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I have spent the last week reworking my first track for AC, Thomson Road in Singapore. I was asked to increase the number of grid slots from 24 to 30 for online racing, and what started out as a quick fix turned into something slightly more in-depth once I took a look at the 5 year old track

The biggest difference between this track and my subsequent ones is the way I made the physical road mesh. Thomson road uses a copy of the quad-based visual road simply subdivided into tiny quads, noise added and then optimised to reduce the poly count. The problem with this method is that the edges of the quads remain in place, all in a line, even after adding the vertical noise. I find that the single contact point of AC's tyres can get hooked up on a particular row and cause a weird resonance through the FFB.

Old method on top, later method underneath.

As my later method uses tris not quads, the tyre contact point never gets chance to follow the same row, giving a much more natural feeling through the FFB.

I thought I would spend a little bit of time trying to document the process, in case it helps anyone new to track modding who happens to use 3ds max (sorry, Blender peeps).

First step is to split your visual road mesh into smaller chunks; each chunk will end up being a short section of physical road mesh. I use lots of small sections as it makes it easier to add a lot of variety to the road surface that way. Rather than the whole track feeling the same, chunk #1 could be very smooth, #2 could be slightly rougher, #3 could have a few bumps and pot holes, etc, etc.

So, take your short section of quad-based visual road:

Select the outer edge...

and convert that section into a new shape:

Go back to your quad section of visual road and extend the outside edge of it by a few centimetres, so it is slightly larger overall than it was originally. I used this free script: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/extend-borders

Select the new spline / shape you created from the outer edge and apply a Garment modifier to it

The default values will fill the shape with only a few tris, but we want a much more dense collection of triangles to enable lots of detail in the new physical mesh. The inset pic shows the shape filled with tris that are about 25cm on each side

The Garment modifier turns the shape we created into a flat plane, so we need to make it follow the original visual road surface again. This is where the original short section comes back into play. Making sure that the Garment object is above the visual mesh, first convert it into an editable poly and then (using this script - https://www.klaasnienhuis.nl/2011/11/align-vertices-to-a-mesh-in-3dsmax/) drop the new high-detail object onto the old visual mesh.

Without that loop of quads we added in the beginning, some of the outer verts of the new shape would miss the visual mesh and get left high:

 

[Fat-Alfie]

So now we have a nice high-poly copy of or visual mesh, but made up of lovely randomly placed tris. All we need to do now is add some natural feel to the road surface. For this I use a combination of displacement modifiers, a coarse one to give larger undulations in the road, and then a finer one to create the feeling of the tarmac surface:

coarse settings above, and fine settings below:

Then, I just optimise the mesh to throw away any tris that have no detail. I usually aim for around 15,000 tris per road section

It's hard to show the effect in pictures, but here is the same section of road with the noise amplified 10,000x

This process is then repeated around the whole track, adding less noise to sections that need to be smoother, and more noise to the parts of the road that are older or are more damaged. You can even select, say, 8 random verts and, with soft-selection enabled, apply a very coarse noise to them to create isolated bumps or dips in the road surface.

I hope that made sense, and I hope it may have helped a few people. If I didn't explain any part of it well enough, feel free and ask here or via PM and I'll try to help you out

 

[Terry Rock]

Before I started downloading mods, 99% of my time with Assetto Corsa was spent in Nordschleife Tourist. When I found out the tracks by Fat-Alfie, now they have become my favorite. Deutschlandring is amazing, so beautiful with so many different kind of bends, fast and slow sections and with great performance. Same can be said about Feldbergring, which is also absolutelly awesome. Fonteny is impressive too, especially considering it's incredibly long, with the only problem of the lack of collision of many objetcs outside the track, such as trees. Do you know if this modder is currently working on new tracks inspired in old circuits or based on open roads?

Fat-Alfie's tracks are the 'SPA' of simracing. You always feel like you are going somewhere.
I never have to read reviews before downloading them either.
I know they'll be exceptional.
I will also be smiling through labored breathing at the end of the first lap.

 

[KittX]

After that, I don't really know. I have quite a few tracks that I have started:

Solitude / 1960s / 11.4km
Schottenring / 1950s / 16.4km

Im especially looking forward for these two whenever you finish them (or if you find time/will to). My favorite tracks in gtl/rfactor1.

 

[S.Cargo]

Once that's out I will be back working on Solitude and Charade...

Did I correctly read CHARADE ? Can't wait!... but will anxiously !

 

[Jempy]

Perfectly read, my friend ! @S.Cargo

 

[Spiteful]

Inselsberg-rennen / 1920s / 33.5km
Konigswinter / 1920s / 33.2km

Wow, just had a look at the Inselsberg-rennen layout and it looks like an absolute blast!

Is there anywhere you could direct us for information on Konigswinter? All of my surface-level research has turned up very few results so far...

Love all of your work and I'm so thankful for your continued passion in saving these great circuits from the sands of time

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Hi - I don't have much information to share, unfortunately. Just a written description of the route, plus a topographic map that I have marked the route on. I haven't driven it for a quite a while, but I remember it being very twisty, and anything faster than something like a Formula Junior was pretty much suicide in AC.

"Königswinter – Nordrhein-Westfalen / 1922, 1925-1926 / motorcycles
The Goldener Kranz des Siebengebirges was a motorcycle race first held in October 1922. As was common at the time, the circuit was rather long, the 35.8 km course running via Königswinter - Niederdollendorf - Oberdollendorf - Heisterbach - Bellingshausen - Oberpreis - Brüngsberg - Hövel - Aegidienberg - Himberg - Honnef - Rhöndorf - Königswinter. The event was seemingly cancelled
in 1923, but repeated in 1925-1926. Details are missing for these years, but the former year also included a hillclimb for cars on a part of the circuit - which measured 34.6 km that year - held after the motorcycle races had finished.

In 1927, the Goldener Kranz des Siebengebirges was not a road race, but rather a motorcycle-only time trial on the 13.6 km long section of the Nürburgring between Breidscheid and start-finish (the rest of the circuit was not available due to maintenance work).

After that, the event was held as a proper race at the Nürburgring twice more, in May 1929 (on the Südschleife) and in June 1933 (on the Betonschleife), now renamed accordingly to Goldener Kranz des Nürburg-Ringes."

 

[Spiteful]

Hi - I don't have much information to share, unfortunately. Just a written description of the route, plus a topographic map that I have marked the route on. I haven't driven it for a quite a while, but I remember it being very twisty, and anything faster than something like a Formula Junior was pretty much suicide in AC.

Thanks for this, I was annoyed that I couldn't find much mention of the track anywhere, now my curiosity is somewhat satisfied.

If your previous work is anything to go by then I'm sure that this and your other WIPs will become quick favourites of many people.

 

[blanes]

Ah Fat Alfie Tracks !!! Beautiful, Breath Taking, Exhilarating & Stunning, many more superlatives could be used to describe but driving in AC on these masterpieces of craft & artwork is an incredible experience.

I just upgraded to the Pimax Crystal VR headset and wanted to pop in to say Huge Thank You to King Alfie The Fat you are the bomb my friend, simply incredible how much detail and love you pasted into these hand made masterpieces !

May you Live Long & Prosper

ps. May I dare to enquire, is Solitude still far away on the horizon ?