Misc SHO PnG Retrofit V5

[Shovas]

The Spa67 I have is from zwiss, I know he is still around.

Yes, I've got permissions from him, too. Just wanted to see if I could get a hold of others in case I want to swap out tracks.

 

[jgf]

Lol, I suspected as much. I have multiples of several tracks, usually because i cannot decide which is "best".

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Note] Testing tracks and finding issues

I've been slowly working my way through testing full qualifying and race sessions on each track.

I was naively hopeful that all tracks would just work for races but that was simplistic.

Things like:

- Skipping pace lap bugged: "Cannot wave green yet". Have to run pace lap which does work but the cars are incredibly slow going around. You also waste some of the race time going around.

- Pace lap AI lines can be wonky: AI going way off track around corners

- Races end too early. Not sure...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[abrimaal]

Can I skip the formation lap in the standard GTR2 game? It is so annoying.
In game menu I didn't find it, but maybe I should add a line to SIM___.gdb files ?

 

[Shovas]

Can I skip the formation lap in the standard GTR2 game? It is so annoying.
In game menu I didn't find it, but maybe I should add a line to SIM___.gdb files ?

Yes, press space bar. You should get that message at the top of the screen.

 

[jgf]

"- Races end too early. Not sure... "

Maybe this will help; sorry for the image, grabbed this from a pdf of an old nogrip thread (getting "correct" race lengths in GTR2 has long been an irritant).

 

[Shovas]

"- Races end too early. Not sure... "

Maybe this will help; sorry for the image, grabbed this from a pdf of an old nogrip thread (getting "correct" race lengths in GTR2 has long been an irritant).


View attachment 582085

Thank you that's interesting.

I was racing the track itself and not through the championship although those params apply to both so I'm sure something will work.

What are those params *actually* doing, though?

Is RaceTime = RaceLaps * <Average Lap Time>?

 

[jgf]

It's a bit convoluted, and usually requires a bit of tweaking through several races with the cars for the particular mod to get accurate race times/lengths.

Relying on memory here (for which I make no guarantees), GTR2 race length is based on its representation of the 2006/2007 GT seasons; races were three hours so number of laps at each track is adjusted for what those cars would run in three hours. So you can fairly accurately adjust races by number of laps or total time for the default cars; but if you use different cars the game will adjust to their speeds but now the ratio of "x laps per three hours" is no longer relevant and the race will end with either the number of laps or the allotted time, whichever comes first.

So, for example, a track has 100 laps in three hours and you want a 50 lap race, with the default cars, no problem, 50 laps will be around 90 minutes; you can select a 90 minute race or a 50 lap race and get the same thing. But if the cars in your mod are slower than the default cars the 90 minutes will be up before you've done 50 laps so your race may end at 45 laps; or if your cars are faster than the defaults and you select a 90 minute race your race will end at 50 laps even if that is only 80 minutes.

Thus you will have to compute the corresponding new lap and time values for each track for your mod and edit both in the gdb files.

 

[Shovas]

Yeah, thank you for the write-up, that's basically what I thought was happening.

That definitely gives me a way forward. I'll just run some qualifying sessions at each track and use the times to calculate some RaceTime values.

 

[jgf]

BTW, ages ago I was told that if you want all races to be a specific time, for example 2hrs each (120min), go through all tracks and set the default time to 120min and set the number of laps to something ridiculous like 500; you will always hit the 2 hours long before the 500 laps. Likewise you could set a specific number of laps then set a very long default time, like 30 hours (1800min), and you will always finish the laps before the time runs out.

I've not tried this.

 

[abrimaal]

Every time before race I press Space key and this is the problem. I just want to disable the formation lap completely, in rules, in settings (. gdb) or in the game menu (.mnu). To start without formation lap.
I turned off practice and warmup in options, but I can't find the way to turn off formation lap.

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Release] SHO PnG Retrofit V3

Version 3 (2022-07-10..2022-08-06)

Highlights:

• [Tracks] New Tracks Added:
  • Zandvoort 1967
  • Zolder 1967
  • Nordschleife 1975
  • Nordschleife 1970s
• [Tracks] Swapped in better Festbierbude.de-packaged tracks:
  • Aintree 1960s
  • Crystal Palace 1970s
  • Oulton Park 1960s
  • Silverstone 1970s
  • Snetterton 1964
  • Spa 1966
• [Championships] Updated tracks for each round after adding/updating tracks

Full...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Known Issues] Tracks, Race Length, AI Crashes/Competitiveness

I'm aware of a number of issues that impact the reality of actually running good, clean races.

Tracks can have issues like slow formation laps.

There's still issues with race length when done by time instead of laps.

There are Race vs Qualifying performance reliability issues which I plan to fix in future releases.

My mods work best as 'release early release often' so things won't be perfect right off the bat. But frequent releases keep things small, manageable, interesting, and fun in...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[M1GHTY M4VS]

Renntom has his own website focused on the Hillclimbs where he hosts rF1 and AC Tracks - http://www.toms-sim-side.de/

 

[Shovas]

Renntom has his own website focused on the Hillclimbs where he hosts rF1 and AC Tracks - http://www.toms-sim-side.de/

Very cool. I wonder if I can make hillclimbs work with Championships

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Video] SHO PnG Retrofit V3 Demonstration Video at Aintree 1960s in the 1965 Ford Mustang BSCC Gr 2

Another demonstration video, this time for V3. While there's not a lot of action in this one, this was actually a good race and AI performance was representative of their qualifying.

For V4, I'm going through existing tracks to make sure races are viable, AI race performance matches qualifying performance, races don't finish too early (RaceLaps vs RaceTime issue), and whatever else I can find to fix.

Had another good race just now at Brands Hatch 1970s but I wasn't recording...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Video] Nordschleife '75 in the '69 Alfa Romeo Giulia 1300 GTA Jr Gr 2

I found this version of Nords 1975 such a pleasure to drive in the Giulia 1300 GTA I decided to record the race.

There are still some issues with AI crashing and never disappearing from the track, particularly in qualifying, and that resulted in random gridding, but all the same most AI did pretty well and the race was pretty decent.

I'm going through tracks right now to fix them up and make sure they're in decent condition for AI races for the next release of the mod.

Grab the track even...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Shovas]

Shovas updated SHO PnG Retrofit with a new update entry:

[Release] SHO PnG Retrofit V4

Version 4 (2022-08-06..2022-09-19)

Highlights:

• [Tracks] New Added Tracks:
  • Spa 1967 by Zwiss (Replaces Spa 1966 which had unreliable AI)
  • Spa 1978 by derDumeklemmer
  • Spa 1988 by derDumeklemmer,
• [Racing] Tested every track to ensure they all provided at least a minimum acceptable racing experience. Will keep improving in the future.

Action Required:

• [Action Required] Ensure "Crash Recovery" is enabled in...

Read the rest of this update entry...

 

[Shovas]

[Help Wanted] Fixing AI who never leave pits

There are a few tracks I'd like to use where some AI never move out of the pit and set a qualifying time which results in random gridding.

These tracks include:

Spa 66
Ingliston 1987
Donington Park 1990s

The AI who have problems on these tracks seem okay on other tracks.

Any ideas?

 

[MJQT]

[Help Wanted] Fixing AI who never leave pits

There are a few tracks I'd like to use where some AI never move out of the pit and set a qualifying time which results in random gridding.

These tracks include:

Spa 66
Ingliston 1987
Donington Park 1990s

The AI who have problems on these tracks seem okay on other tracks.

Any ideas?

That's not an issue I've fixed myself, but, at one point, @AndreasFSC was grappling with this issue when creating Race Remaster. There's a few possible causes: the garagedepth value in the track's AIW file (higher values of which means the AI go straight longer before turning to exit the garage), the car's position in the garage, bugs with collidable objects in the garage in bad places, or cars with insufficient engine power at idle to reach the AI path to exit the garage.