The online racing simulator
Realistic Track-Modelling Ideas for S3
To start off this topic,
Been seeing people cry for more content in S3 for a long time. I myself would like to see more too!
Devs and especially Scawen, as you're the active dev on the forums, please do give this a read!
*For TL;DR read end of post.

I have a done up over the past couple of years, a few track models. Realistic ones, that could probably do well in LFS! Most are fictional, due to copyright and stuff on track names that would make putting it into LFS slightly problematic.
Well, here's the first one : South Beach Sydney Raceway, Australia


A short introduction to the track, pictures of the turns are in Gyazo links to reduce the length of this thread Smile
Turn 1
https://gyazo.com/fd93489320be029a649aac08e28c6703
A double apexed first corner, a brilliant overtaking spot during the race. A good exit will also see you pick the draft up into,

Turn 2
https://gyazo.com/2975842c5aae77a4d5d54ce5b6383bc5
The first part of the dog-leg turn 2-3-4 section. A wide entry will line you up for Turn 3.

Turn 3
https://gyazo.com/459167b5db8d4559929f9379f997ec0f
A flat out kink, a wide exit to line up for the final dog-leg that is the kink Turn 4,

Turn 4
https://gyazo.com/10b3442b34d8f9d9191986545914160e
Turn 4, a left kink to lead you out onto the next straight. A good draft will be needed for a pass down into the next corner.
(The horseshoe corner is the second route, the Club section, which is a shorter layout, which I will get into later on)

Turn 5,6 - The stadium section
https://gyazo.com/7f3604ebe541fd8eaa92de6e6a878fe2
Probably not illustrated here is the huge braking zone after the end of the straight. A good draft out of turn 4 will definitely lead you into a pass here at turn 5. Slow section into the stadium, turn 6 followed by a short straight before we head into,

Turn 7
https://gyazo.com/c848fe53aac39931700675b5ec89ef39
I personally name this corner Sheep's Pen, as there's a sheep's pen on the inside of the corner.
When I made this circuit, I didn't want to make it so "Official and boring". Hence, the lack of fencing, and the, well, sheep's pen. I wanted it to be more open-concept. Oh, and if you're wondering why is there a lack of background and grass fields beyond the track walls - I made this project a while back and didn't really return to it :/

Turn 8 (?)
https://gyazo.com/9683eb442d334836bc78d8a5c6fb832d
Just a slight kink before we exit onto the backstraight. A good exit off turn 7 will be needed as it will determine your draft/exit speed all the way down; and that turn 8 isn't really a corner, to be fair.

Turn 9, 10, 11
https://gyazo.com/30859ee8230c8025797530134558dd9b
This follows the idea of the Silverstone Maggots & Becketts sequence. Just that the Becketts sequence has been tightened up a little.

Turn 12
https://gyazo.com/cf29f9acc6b995312c3ca829757fc5e3
A flat out or medium speed corner, depending on the car. Smooth exit out of turn 11 will line you up for a switchback here and a nice overtaking opportunity down into the braking zone for turn 13.

Turn 13
https://gyazo.com/ef60b359ae31e7e3f1fbe4c33e1db0cb
A right corner which rewards a nice exit, as turn 14 is a flat out opening-radius corner.

Turn 14
https://gyazo.com/099694c8d477b087f1fe146f87be79dc
If you're closely following your opponent ahead you might just be able to lunge him into turn 15.
(Here is also where the Club section rejoins. The club section is meant for races with the lower horsepower cars. A nice exit out of Turn 4 of the Club track will lead you down for a overtake into turn 15)

Turn 15, 16
https://gyazo.com/bd15d17e421bf32a20cfbc67f89f44ff
A medium to slow-speed chicane in the final sector. Brilliant passing opportunity. Good exit as we head down into the final few corners.

Turn 17, 18
https://gyazo.com/76c70a5f2d1e8ef1adbe74f2e22b8b1b
A double right hander that rewards a steady entry speed. A good run off turn 18 will line you up for the final chicane,

Turn 19,20 and pit entry
https://gyazo.com/f63154ceb20fdeba8c19ea491ebb7b47
Similar to Canada's final chicane. Medium to high speed. Watch out for the exit. Onto the main straight, and that's a lap.

TL;DR
If you've made it this far, thank you. This track was just a place for me to let creativity flow. I have a couple more tracks, but none as finished as this. This is indeed a long track. But brilliant for DTM-style racing (The GTR cars, perhaps..?). Doubt the GTis would get a lap done in under 2 minutes, haha
**note, elevations are not included as the individual parts are fiddley to adjust over x-y axis Frown

Once again, thanks for taking your time off and reading this, and I do hope (well, if in any chance this is even considered) for this to be in S3. Even so, any track to make LFS better and more interesting will do a world of good.

Cheers!
#2 - BeNoM
Awesome! Big grin
Little update on this thread, 2nd track is on the way. However I see little interest and therefore willingness to carry on.. meh. Scawen where are you :/
Apparently only 1/183 people find this idea intriguing
Ya right
#5 - BeNoM
Yay, I'm the "1" Tongue
Sad, really... when the community says LFS is offering too little, and that they would help to make it better, but only you support threads like this.

Confuses me to the max Shrug
#7 - nacim
I'm actually following the thread and it inspires me. Thanks for that, and keep it up Smile
Mhm, following is one thing, and I appreciate that.

But the lack of support from not only the community but also the devs - I expected like "Thanks, this looks interesting!" or some kind of adknowledgement but it hasn't happened...

Well if let's say the interest was there I would gladly help and provide more ideas, or just plain support, but it's just gloom and really not what a racing simulator's community should be like. Plus, since it's been on the decline since the 2015 peak.

Don't know really.. Schwitz
Eric is making the tracks not the Scawen though. And i'm pretty sure he is making them the way he wants. It has been said that 2 tracks are on the way already but it does take time to design, model and test it fully.

So i highly doubt that he would take ideas from here till those are done atleast.

Don't want to disappoint you just make sure you are not wasting your time with this project.
If you really do want to make a track (be it LFS track or not), you should try and drive it. There are other sims that do allow putting mod tracks into it, so you can start from there. I tried it myself and here are some interesting notes from what I learned:

-
  • First and foremost, you should polish the pipeline up to the level when you can do cycles of <change track model, put it into the game, test with a vehicle> at least 10 minutes short, because you need to do it quite often until you're completely happy with the spline
  • The way you set up checkpoints, grid slots, pit slots, garage slots and others is different everywhere...
  • There is a big question of what is the reasonable polygon density for each game you gonna put it into. From what I learned Rfactor 2 can tolerate somewhat smaller polygon density than Assetto Corsa, but that is just empirical data, and I can't give you any numbers really. In AC, also, some people like 10..30cm polygon density for physical mesh and then much more sparse graphical mesh.
  • Right when you start doing your road/grass surface you need to manage UV layouts (the ones that maps textures onto polygons) according to the way it is done in the given engine. In Assetto Corsa, for example, there is some (not quite publically documented) neat way to make road/grass/dirt align and vary so that it really does look like a grass, not as a green carpet.
  • Making a drivable road + grass around the track is like 20% of the whole track creation process. You also need to come up with a decent scenery so that drivers wouldn't fall asleep driving on fully open terrain. This point is where I got stuck really, because here all the engine differences start to influence the whole process, because:
    1. Transparency management can be done completely different with every game (that influences net fences, trees)
    2. Shadows work different too. There can be global illumination system like in Assetto Corsa, where you do not need to care too much about the lighing, but yet you gotta set up all the shaders right (couple days googling and you done). In rf2 there is night-day cycle so you need to be even more careful about all the shaders...
    3. There is crazy amount of objects you need to model (trees, garages, grandstands, service vehicles, etc etc etc)
Why did I drop it? Mostly because I had no time. Is it hard to do? Yes, and the hard parts are even harder due to how shitty all those tools I had to use are... AC track importer is pure shit (even though it works and can produce good results if you don't die of anger in the process). RF2 is a bit better in quality, but still it is not at all convenient to work with, and not bug-free aswell.

But real point here, if you DO have a passion for it, then go and try putting it into other sims.

UPD: here are some pics where you can see my thing in 3d editor:
http://i.imgur.com/ioSijFx.png - first turn
http://i.imgur.com/tw112Be.png - last section before pit entrance
http://i.imgur.com/7zk4CNE.png - here you can see how dense my polygons are (made it so to work okayish in AC)
Quote from vitaly_m :If you really do want to make a track (be it LFS track or not), you should try and drive it. There are other sims that do allow putting mod tracks into it, so you can start from there. I tried it myself and here are some interesting notes from what I learned:

-
  • First and foremost, you should polish the pipeline up to the level when you can do cycles of <change track model, put it into the game, test with a vehicle> at least 10 minutes short, because you need to do it quite often until you're completely happy with the spline
  • The way you set up checkpoints, grid slots, pit slots, garage slots and others is different everywhere...
  • There is a big question of what is the reasonable polygon density for each game you gonna put it into. From what I learned Rfactor 2 can tolerate somewhat smaller polygon density than Assetto Corsa, but that is just empirical data, and I can't give you any numbers really. In AC, also, some people like 10..30cm polygon density for physical mesh and then much more sparse graphical mesh.
  • Right when you start doing your road/grass surface you need to manage UV layouts (the ones that maps textures onto polygons) according to the way it is done in the given engine. In Assetto Corsa, for example, there is some (not quite publically documented) neat way to make road/grass/dirt align and vary so that it really does look like a grass, not as a green carpet.
  • Making a drivable road + grass around the track is like 20% of the whole track creation process. You also need to come up with a decent scenery so that drivers wouldn't fall asleep driving on fully open terrain. This point is where I got stuck really, because here all the engine differences start to influence the whole process, because:
    1. Transparency management can be done completely different with every game (that influences net fences, trees)
    2. Shadows work different too. There can be global illumination system like in Assetto Corsa, where you do not need to care too much about the lighing, but yet you gotta set up all the shaders right (couple days googling and you done). In rf2 there is night-day cycle so you need to be even more careful about all the shaders...
    3. There is crazy amount of objects you need to model (trees, garages, grandstands, service vehicles, etc etc etc)
Why did I drop it? Mostly because I had no time. Is it hard to do? Yes, and the hard parts are even harder due to how shitty all those tools I had to use are... AC track importer is pure shit (even though it works and can produce good results if you don't die of anger in the process). RF2 is a bit better in quality, but still it is not at all convenient to work with, and not bug-free aswell.

But real point here, if you DO have a passion for it, then go and try putting it into other sims.

UPD: here are some pics where you can see my thing in 3d editor:
http://i.imgur.com/ioSijFx.png - first turn
http://i.imgur.com/tw112Be.png - last section before pit entrance
http://i.imgur.com/7zk4CNE.png - here you can see how dense my polygons are (made it so to work okayish in AC)

Yeah after hearing that, and what's on the pipeline for LFS I guess I'll drop my project too. Let's hope whatever the team comes up with that it's gonna be superb Rofl
Quote from MicroSpecV :Yeah after hearing that, and what's on the pipeline for LFS I guess I'll drop my project too. Let's hope whatever the team comes up with that it's gonna be superb Rofl

Myself I think that's the whole reason why editor is not published - first, Victor stressed hard about the tools he used (felt like he doesn't like them too much), but more like it is just not finished to the point ready to publish.

I wonder if devs do even know how shitty all those other editors are Big grin
*Eric
Quote from MicroSpecV :Mhm, following is one thing, and I appreciate that.

But the lack of support from not only the community but also the devs - I expected like "Thanks, this looks interesting!" or some kind of adknowledgement but it hasn't happened...

Well if let's say the interest was there I would gladly help and provide more ideas, or just plain support, but it's just gloom and really not what a racing simulator's community should be like. Plus, since it's been on the decline since the 2015 peak.

Don't know really.. Schwitz

No offence but there is a topic cars/track we wanna see in S3. Also i don't have idea what You expect from one person? LFS is still in alpha so maybe first let them finish this game becouse i'm sure they know very well what they want do in this game. I know You propably say 15 years and nothing? Maybe for You or some others but keep in mind as i renember good LFS is their hobby job and Scawen is the person who propably need to do all work in LFS put everything togheter so siting here or in game and laughing about 'they don't do nothing' 'game is dead no updates' is super bad idea or saying to the Devs what they should do becouse i'm sure they know what we need to want in this game already. Same thing with 45 steering range is ridiculous becouse some people can't drift with 36 and everyone know XRT don't have power to handle 45 all time but yea better idea is let's create hundreds of unless topic is always better idea to hold Scawen on forum for some time becouse for some people he doing nothing so he got a lot time for this. Also as i renember good track editor will be relased so just wait please. In my reply i don't wanna start 'war' or offend anyone but this is a bit pissed me becouse i every day see 'no updates' so i'm boring of seeing that all time so please don't be mad on me for this but i think it will better idea when Scawen will work on LFS than siting here and read this ideas every day.

Sorry for bad English.

FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG