Very good! Jon and I gave it a thrashing around a banger oval - absolutely excellent fighting physics there, it's robust but not invincible, you can really bump, rub, nudge and push as safely as any other car, and more so than most. Two people who spent an hour a week doing this sort of thing, every week for 5 and 10 years respectively, both love it

We've got a couple of banger ovals in the tracklist at PiranMOTODestructionDerby, if you want to try it there against a good selection of other car times. (!v to vote for track, we were on Standlake). I've attached my banger set, too.

I'm going to need some help dialling this one in as a WIP I'm as close to getting the modding part right as I'm going to get by myself, so now I'm just trying to get enough time to get the modelling up to WIP standard. So, here's the background for reference, and some very quick (potato quality, sorry) clips.

The specs are from a range of coaches, but most closely the MAN Lion and its many versions and copycats. The wheelbase, track, height, width, length are to a blueprint-type illustration of a mid-year Lion, and the basic shapes are my favourite bits from a few different makes and models of that style of coach.

It seems a little narrow visually, but it's not numerically and it's still enormous, so probably best not to widen it. Maybe it's just me. The front tyres are the correct size for the Lion, the tyre pressure is MAN's recommended maximum for highway use. The rears are wider to account for not being double wheels. They get a really thorough stretching (see clip) at anything other than a snail's pace, because...

The weight is ~19 tonnes, just under the limit of 20 I found listed. Other sources say 20 to 25, but I thought best to play it safe. I was already surprised it as that heavy. I also found a COG diagram for a loaded Lion - it's very high, well above the top of the tyres. I haven't found a good guide for engine position, but it's so much weight that the engine position, even at 600kg for a 12 litre V6, is almost inconsequential

Front suspension is double-wishbone - no problem - but IRL they are mostly solid axle in the rear with some intelligent balancing or other, depending on the manufacturer. I figure for modding purposes, I can upgrade to double-wishbone rear and use anti-roll. That helps a lot with the tyre-stretching too. It can be a little boaty when you drive it hard, but the bounciness seems about right to me when it is driven gently. I have no reference for just how boaty a coach should be when hooned

The engine I have tried a million variations of, and this is in the ballpark, I think. It's got less torque and more BHP than for the Lion. I've gone with 7 gears - they are usually 6 in an auto, but up to 12 in a manual. 6 was a bit of a pain to go up through, 7 doesn't seem unreasonable. It's not exactly spec, it may be a little overpowered, but this little extra doesn't seem out of place when driving it properly, and much less really does limit you from driving it "like you stole it".

The current engine lets you just about get to 100mph/160kph... if you have enough road. You can just about get there in the entire length of the Westhill before running out of road, and you top out there briefy at KY1, but not quite on BL1. It's difficult to find a real top speed - I know it's at least 90mph from my own motorway adventures It'll lap at least as good as: KY1 in 1:09, SO3 in 1:08, BL1 in 2:16, and BL3 in 1:45.

I'm going rogue on the roof details - the weight frame has so many bars up in the top to get that COG high enough that I need some kind of justification for it to sit right in my head. So, this one has humps at both the front and the back, and I can imagine that the air-conditioners that they house are made from depleted uranium or something It's less usual to have two, but there are some out there like that.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I've got a complete mesh (as in 'lacking holes/features', not as in 'finished') that I can submit, but what little time I do get is split between this and many other projects

Against some unrestricted cars, from the line:



From an MRT & BF1:



Suspension and tyres:




Classic


Stop stop stop stop turn turn turn turn!


Mixing it with the UF1@50% boys:


They left a gap on the inside... so big you could... *ahem*

Quote from nikopdr :

on topic though its looking good so far, cant wait to race 40 grid in SO3 with these

Custom pits required

Quote from Cimanu :

The tyre model seemed to hate my truck so I thought that was the obvious next step too.. I've since got very distracted by 2 wheelers though so importing and cleaning up the model a bit is as far as mine ever got.
I went city bus to keep the height down but a coach will be more fun in VR with how much you'll see


This lad has some fantastic models for bus fans which I was originally planning to use - I couldn't get them to load in blender properly but if you have real paid for software you might have more luck ^^

We love the LCT over at PM DD, we did a round on an SO3

I have done about a million drop-test comparisons with LCT in one window and Racha in the other, so thank you for you help

I'm trying to avoid using other people's models, I don't want to pay for them and I'm not yet sure how to find a way to trust the sources of the free ones (watching that discussion closely). If I run into something I can't do with LFS editor, I'll try to learn a little blender

So, I've spent more hours than I can count on the modelling, more hours than that on the building, setups and test-driving beforehand, and more hours still just enjoying it around the roads of Westhill... not least the sound of the engine, it really growls and roars! We're not worthy, martin18

Some quick progress/testing (potato quality, sorry) clips (excuse the lumpy bits: I'm not done refining the bits that are there xD)

As you can see, it's more 240 at the rear, more 280 at the front, but neither exactly - my own take on the series rather than a replica.











Edit: Some hybrids action. The set was a bit stiff for offroad, but

Last edited by Racon, Wed, 29 Dec 2021 16:07.

I've wanted one of these for soooo long! Looks and sounds great

Quote from PeterN :

Don't really want to have to manually enter in a minimum value for each car, and it's not linear from 0 to 50% anyway.

I did exactly that with the standard cars way back when... can confirm it's a lot of faffing to obtain values that are only 'ballpark'.

Hi all, the 6th season of PiranMOTODestructionDerby Open DD events will start in 2 weeks - Friday 7th January.

In the meantime, there is of course our annual pilgrimage to the Bullring for Rony's legendary Crashmas event on Boxing day at 18:00 UTC, and a [TC] Fun Event on NYE, 31st December @ 16:30 UTC.

A very merry christmas and a happy new year to all of you, from all of us at PiranMOTO!

Last edited by Racon, Fri, 24 Dec 2021 19:14. Reason : I am not bright.

Top job as always Scawen, Victor, Eric. Everything is OK

**Tonight!** **Friday 17th** at **20:00 UTC**

The season finale arrives just in time to celebrate the arrival of the next phase of LFS - Come join us to revel in the glory of modding with **Mods in every round!**

Not only that, but finally there are no more reasons why we can't have a first official visit to Rockingham, and put the lake to good use!

** snip **

Last edited by Racon, Fri, 7 Jan 2022 13:50.

Quote from Scawen :

No... unshared edges are worse than that. Conceptually you could have a triangle with one edge, shared with another two triangle edges exactly aligned with that first edge (so the end two points are shared but the middle point is not shared) and you might think that would be OK, but actually if you move the view around you will occasionally see pixels through that edge, that are not covered by either side. In more advanced graphics (like our new graphics system) this can cause noticeable issues with light leaking (e.g. daylight pixels seen from inside a tunnel) and shadow rendering (a beam of sunlight might come through one of those pixels).

It is advisable to use the "wire" view often to check for unshared edges which may appear by mistake (they are shown in red). Of course, some unshared edges are intentional, e.g. details added on top of another surface, like a door handle on a door or an indicator object attached to some bodywork. But edges that are meant to be aligned, should use genuinely shared edges.

Got you, thanks. That was also the answer to another question I hadn't had a chance to check for previous answers to

Quote from Scawen :

Am I right that you are talking about the list of mods on the website (or maybe in game) while Ziomek was talking about the contents of the changelog tab on a mod's page?

Yes, sorry, I didn't realise he was talking about the changelog... I meant the website mods list and/or ingame mod list.

Quote from Scawen :

OK, the radial version is available in W59.

I must warn you though when it divides the edge between the selected triangles and the unselected triangles, it is only actually dividing the edge of the selected triangles. The edges of the non-selected triangles are unaffected, so you end up with unshared edges between the selected triangles and adjacent unselected ones. It was a bit to hard for my tired brain in the time available to do an edge analysis and split the adjacent non-selected triangles to share the new edges. That is so much more difficult an algorithm, compared with the initial subdivision.

Awesome, and the extra scaling options will make it a lot easier to keep things straight in 3D in my head, too.

Am I right in thinking that the unshared edges would only need to be made into shared edges for the gouroud shading? ie, if the two triangles with an unshared edge are in different groups it won't matter? (I can't test until later)

PS: I like how some people have rated the engine sound of the football

Quote from Ziomek21 :

Suggestion from a lazy man:
could we sort 'Changelog' entries from newest first? Some cars have double-digit edits, lots of scrolling down to see what's new.

I was thinking that if we could distinguish between 'date of first release' and 'date of latest update' that would help. Sometimes I want to see all recent updates, but most often I just want to see if there's anything brand new - it's tricky to know how far to scroll to be sure you haven't missed one when a bunch are being updated often.

Last edited by Racon, Wed, 15 Dec 2021 11:57. Reason : added 2nd reply

Got you, very useful again, thanks. (I promise I have been reading the docs and watching the vids, many times over... there's just lots of it )

Ahh, yes, I had missed the divider in build mode, thanks for that. The slider will be helpful, and there's more fusing options too. (At the point it appears I'm usually trying desperately to keep track of that one last point in the cloud )

I can't see a 'rotate triangles' in tri mode though?

Quote from Scawen :

1) Are these names "subdivide" and "subdivide radial" known names for these functions? If they are known names then I should stick with them. Otherwise I can make up my own names if needed.

2) The one you called "subdivide radial" looks more useful to me. I want it to quickly improve my football. Are you sure that the "subdivide" would be particularly useful? I'm not a very experienced modeller so don't really know what is most useful.

1) They're not known things, unless it is by accident. I've very little modelling experience either

2) The idea behind the first is to add smoothing with as few new triangles as possible; the idea behind the second is to divide the edges in order to add features (a fold to represent the door edge, in my case).

I think the radial version covers the uses of the first, albeit for more triangles.

The division of the edge is the most important thing, I think. Every other operation can be done easily enough manually once that edge is divided with algorithmic precision

Quote from valiugera :

The problem is that i tried to use "double sided" option to make my xrt windows visible from both side but here comes the problem.

No matter what i use - different object, different textures or same textures always some of windows are not visible when you look them from outside.

I don't know if it's a good way to solve this problem or not*, but I wanted a darker tint looking inwards than outwards so I copied all my glass, moved the copy a fraction inwards, flipped the triangles.

Now I have two sets of glass that appear to be in the same place, and I can control the textures for viewing in/out separately.

(*I haven't crash-tested it yet, maybe if the two layers get mangled into each other the artefacts will return?)

Top job again Jake, these are so much fun and a yet another new technique to master

I'm with those who would like a no shell config - seems a waste to hide all that, and my local club always have one or two without a shell in practices.

I only use /o on local insims

I love the 'fuse to average' and 'fuse to green' functions in points mode, that really helps balancing the workload between the modder and the gouraud

I thought 'subdivide' and/or 'subdivide radial' functions would be equally helpful for triangles mode, for those times you need just a tiny bit more control of the curves than you thought you would. I took some screenies of doing it manually.

They could delete the original triangles, make the new points at the average positions, make the new triangles with the same properties as the replaced one, and then select them.

If it could cope with multiple selections we could stack the operations too.

**Friday 3rd** at **20:00 UTC**

A brutal build up to mod-time, with some classic carnage-inducing tracks. *Not for the faint of heart!*

The mod round itself will be trucks on a **brand-new track!**

*Please form an orderly queue at the toll booth and come to a complete stop before paying*

**snip**

Last edited by Racon, Fri, 17 Dec 2021 14:16.

The testing went well enough to make it to my official in-progress list

Last edited by Racon, Mon, 14 Feb 2022 12:54.

Yeah, the Devil Z is another Z altogether... but you can't have too many Zs!

Slow, but steady progress on this one continues with more setup tuning, and a start to the modelling proper

That's awesome, thank you!

It goes through the gears much more naturally now, and the sound is amazing. Top job

I will add a before-and-after vid with the next update.

(I might turn the turbo sounds down a little - just personal preference, but I can hear the looping in the sample a bit too much at that mix)

iiiiiiittttttt's MOD time!

We're switching to the test patch for our DD event this week by popular demand, so that we can race mods!

Friday 26th at 20:00 UTC

So... easy-does-it with the first ever mods combo then, Jon? No, apparently not! If you thought the opener of the first Trial of Champions was crazy...

TOC#1 Review
TOC#1 Full SBTV Coverage

*Don't worry if you're on an S2 licence - we'll leave the mod round until last and leave the mods disabled until then, so you can still join the server and race a full 6 of the 7 rounds!*

*snip*

Last edited by Racon, Fri, 3 Dec 2021 09:55.

I don't think the bars affect deformation - only the suspension components and the bodywork get mangled. I appreciate it would be easier to bundle up the weight with the engine file for others, but the workaround is easy enough that it's not a show-stopper.

I'm not going by cost on anything

The engine weight is done automatically in the editor from the engine size/type - this one comes out at 150kg, but those engines are somewhere around 225kg. I couldn't see anywhere to adjust the engine weight itself (I may have missed it), but I've used the black mass-distribution bars to add weight in the engine area to compensate. (I used four side-to-side members top/bottom/front/back to adjust F/R balance and COG height to match the specs, but starting with a very chunky bottom-front for the extra engine weight).

That other engine looks and sounds good, but I don't want to go too far with the modifications or stray too far from common Z mods - taking a newer engine from a later model in the same series seems more authentic to me. There's a lot of 280s out there with 300 engines