Work started on Nordschleife

[Stelios]

Well guys, seems they started working on the laserscanned Nuerburgring Nordschleife!

https://twitter.com/Si3v73/status/475946383594119168/photo/1

I am not a huge fan myself but i find it interesting since it will be the first time this track will get laser scanned.

 

[Leemstradamus]

I don't think he was there when they scanned it...in fact I suspect that they bought the scan data from a 3rd party...but he told me he has taken a few vacations there and has driven over 50 laps personally....Our Holy Grail is in good hands; just don't get hopes too high of it somehow being graphically prettier than Forza.

To late hopes are up there lol.

But if the mod tools are here for tracks couldn't someone in theory enhance the graphics over time?

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

Not without severely upsetting Kunos....official cars and tracks are supposed to be off-limits.

Of course people are already breaking into the files now so who knows?

 

[cubadoo1]

I don't think he was there when they scanned it...in fact I suspect that they bought the scan data from a 3rd party...but he told me he has taken a few vacations there and has driven over 50 laps personally....Our Holy Grail is in good hands; just don't get hopes too high of it somehow being graphically prettier than Forza.

I dont expect it to look as good as forza, but if thats true about buying 3rd party laser scan data they have absolutely no excuse now for not making bathurst next !!

 

[Michael Hornbuckle]

I bet after Spa and the Ring Simone wants a track with no trees!!! LOL

 

[cubadoo1]

I bet after Spa and the Ring Simone wants a track with no trees!!! LOL

Yeah top gear track (if u can call that a track). That will take all of ten minutes todo

 

[Adria Perez]

T10 today just released a laser scanned Nordschleife, with GP Nurburgring, for Forza 5 as a free DLC, haven't driven it yet (hopefully tonight). They claim it took a year and 13,000 man hours! I have no idea how the scan starting now will affect the Kunos timeline for release but I also won't be holding my breath.

That makes no sense (to me). The point in laser-scanning a track is that you "only" need to drive around to build it! Obviously you still need to add the trees and textures, and there is a helluva work to refine it, but I would assume that it is faster when you can scan it than when you start from scratch.

13,000 man hours placing objects beside the tarmac and tweaking textures and vector normals seems like a ridiculous waste of time.

 

[cubadoo1]

That makes no sense (to me). The point in laser-scanning a track is that you "only" need to drive around to build it! Obviously you still need to add the trees and textures, and there is a helluva work to refine it, but I would assume that it is faster when you can scan it than when you start from scratch.

13,000 man hours placing objects beside the tarmac and tweaking textures and vector normals seems like a ridiculous waste of time.

I think they like to ham it up a bit they are yanks after all probably took an hour and a half really

 

[Georg Siebert]

I bet after Spa and the Ring Simone wants a track with no trees!!! LOL

"I see it - over there them trees!"

Predator

Yeah top gear track (if u can call that a track). That will take all of ten minutes todo

Of course it's a track. The corners were purposefully painted on the runways - designed by Lotus ,)

 

[cubadoo1]

"I see it - over there them trees!"

Predator



Of course it's a track. The corners were purposefully painted on the runways - designed by Lotus ,)

Top gear track is like the nurburgring of car parks!

 

[Rockatansky]

That makes no sense (to me). The point in laser-scanning a track is that you "only" need to drive around to build it! Obviously you still need to add the trees and textures, and there is a helluva work to refine it, but I would assume that it is faster when you can scan it than when you start from scratch.

13,000 man hours placing objects beside the tarmac and tweaking textures and vector normals seems like a ridiculous waste of time.

Without having read much on the subject I always assumed the laser scan serves mainly as a reference and maybe some of the scanned points/vertices/whatever are used for the track surface but not really for objects, geometry of those would be hard to optimise and would probably even look ugly. I'll be glad to be proven wrong, really just an assumption.

 

[Georg Siebert]

Scanning/Pointcloud

Long Beach for Forza 5

4:17

 

[Adria Perez]

Without having read much on the subject I always assumed the laser scan serves mainly as a reference and maybe some of the scanned points/vertices/whatever are used for the track surface but not really for objects, geometry of those would be hard to optimise and would probably even look ugly. I'll be glad to be proven wrong, really just an assumption.

That's my assumption too. I happened to work with some of these LADAR scanners and what you get is that, a cloud of points. You don't even get the vertices between points or faces to texture. However you can put a regular camera on top of th scanner so you know the colour of each point. With colour and 3D position you can start playing with fancy algorithms to get the faces that connect the points. Once you get that you need an army of people to correct mistakes on automatic face generation. For instance, water and any refraction-prone material will send points all over the place that you will have to correct manually.

Buildings, kerbs and any other solid object along the track should not be a problem, but again, forget of getting anything meaningful around trees, leaves, grass and any other heavily textured surface.

So yes, there is a lot of work to do to convert a cloud of points into a full track. But most of this work is basically aesthetic and vegetation-related, and you avoid the big problems of having to nail turn radius, slopes, bumps, track width, kerb height, etc. etc.

 

[Stereo]

but again, forget of getting anything meaningful around trees, leaves, grass and any other heavily textured surface.

Not just textured, but also very much not static - it's not like taking a snapshot, they spin the laser rangefinder around to hit each point one by one, and in the time between measurements trees wave around.

 

[Ben Lee]

Ok, so could it be that the forza track and the forthcoming AC track are based on the same data from a 3rd party?

 

[Damien Wintz]

Possibly, yes, but what difference would it make vs. self acquired data?
The modelling will be unique to each sim anyways so...

 

[Ben Lee]

Possibly, yes, but what difference would it make vs. self acquired data?
The modelling will be unique to each sim anyways so...

Well different scanners have different scan resolutions, but who knows.

 

[DennS]

Well if they didn't scan it themselves than it definitly wasn't their first plan/idea, they did talk about going there and maybe doing a little meet with fans at the ring... But anyway would be cool if they share more stuff about building the ring

BTW iRacing also put out a nice video about laserscanning and building it...

 

[cerebus23]

If forza spent 13000 hours over the course of a whole year, how do they release for nothing lol.

I smell marketing b.s. and i smell it thick.

Lets do some math, 13,000 hours, say they pay their one guy nothing or close to it, 12.50 an hour, that would be 162,000 in salary if it was one person. and we know video games artists are probably payed better than all that. Nm electricity office use pc time etc. that number is probably at lest double 162k salary and costs wise.

I know forza sells well and has stupidly high priced dlc walls built into it so hey they can write off a ferrari or few and release it for free for realz

 

[Rockatansky]

Well if they didn't scan it themselves than it definitly wasn't their first plan/idea, they did talk about going there and maybe doing a little meet with fans at the ring... But anyway would be cool if they share more stuff about building the ring

BTW iRacing also put out a nice video about laserscanning and building it...

This video is awesome, but I wonder about the statements about cracks and bumps being accurate to the millimetre, what exactly do they mean. It kind of doesn't add up in my mind at first thought - the 3d model they build doesn't appear to have enough detail to represent those.

Maybe there is a separate model representing the track surface as a collision object that includes those but I doubt it.

I think they are saying that cracks/small bumps are where they need to be in the textures. I wonder if that's just adding to the realistic look, but not feel. This way if you used a crack as a braking point at the real life track you can use it in the game too, but won't really feel the bumps. OR they use the texture bump map to interact with force feedback and physics, that might be an explanation.

 

[Requiem84]

You are correct:

iRacing (as well as AC!) have a separate tracks physics model (mesh) and 3 model.

What you see in game, is not what you drive on. GPU's & CPU's are not powerful enough to properly display the real physical mesh we drive on.