Hello everybody, after 9 months of development, I am very proud to present you with our work!

Disclaimers: although the inspiration for this mod is of a circa 2002 model BMW E39, it is not intended to be an exact replica.

Please understand this is currently a Work in Progress, it is not yet finished, and there is a list below reflecting known-issues and items that need fixing or adjustment.

Your constructive feedback and support is welcome Please be kind and respectful if you have feedback to share, there have been hundreds of hours put into this, and you all are getting it for free, and it is public. Please be respectful.



BAVARIA A39

With three versions:

• BAVARIA A39 - 3.0L Petrol Inline 6
  
• BAVARIA D39 - 3.0L Turbocharged "Diesel" Inline 6
  
• BAVARIA N39 - 4.9L Petrol V8
  

CREDITS:

Jere - LFSW: Kanker_aap - was commissioned to build a brand new 3D model in Blender, from scratch. This includes:

• Full 3D model of interior and exterior
  
• Two wheel rims models
  
• Separate bumpers and trims for the "N" model
  
• Support with the model, as needed
  
• Provided some textures, captured from reference photos, such as the door card texture in interior
  

TheStigUSA - mod construction, texture generation, further 3D modeling, sounds, refinements, frame, handling.

• Ensured proper model dimensions, in comparison to real-world values. Re-sizing was necessary.
  
• Added various sub-objects including: brake rotors, gauge models, logo objects including setting them into the model, seat belts and buckles along with modeling them into the B-pillars, airbag cutout on dash, the model badges on the boot, bonnet, and on steering wheel, exterior door lock model, lightbar models are made by me as well.
  
• Texture work, including: various interior textures made from scratch, gauge textures made from scratch. Role-play (COP,TOW,MED) textures created by me as well
  

Autohouse Performance Project - https://discord.gg/RsjPBHgF - for Brake Caliper 3D model

Additional credits:

• SeanProdTV (LFSW: sean_drifter) for sourcing a video with sounds of a diesel variant. These are incorporated into the mod for eng .wav, intake sound, and starter. Same starter sound on all versions.
  
• CocaineCowboy (LFSW: yuylol) for project inspiration, and for providing reference materials and knowledge.
  

Project Timeline:

• Jere begins work on the model: December 2024
  
• Jere delivers model to Stig: March 2025
  
• Stig begins work on construction - March 2025
  
• Constructing the model, performing initial texturing - March through June 2025
  
• Extra detail work (seat belts, logos, placing rims and wheel sub-objects, setting up configs) - June through Early July 2025
  
• Brief hiatus - most of July 2025
  
• Final touches - Role-play skins, sound work, final model additions, quality assurance - end of July through start of August 2025
  
• WIP release: August 1, 2025
  

Known Issues:

• The rear suspension arms appear positioned low when looking near the bottom of the inner side of the wheel. I am not sure how to fix this at the moment, and may have to leave it as it is, but I will look at this in the future.
  
• Currently, have not tackled trying to make this right-hand-drive swappable, but I will take a look at this in the future.
  
• The steering wheel buttons don't look particularly great. I would like to make those appear more like they do in the real world, and reflect that by having separate buttons. The icons also come through kind of poorly, those can be modeled out in the future.
  
• I regard the steering animation as 'OK', but it is not perfect. This will see refinement when I have some time.
  
• The 'N' series mirrors could do with some extra subdividing, to make them appear more rounded.
  
• I have received feedback that the exterior logos are "small". We did measure mine versus one somebody in the community has. Mine is a radius of 2.7cm, and the real world example is 3.3cm radius. I will correct this as soon as I have time.
  

Planned features:

• Model out the gauges, so that we can illuminate them. Other interior components might also get modeled.
  
• Add headlight washers, by popular request
  
• Not making a promise here, but I plan on taking a look at doing some basic model work for the underside of the car.
  

Other technical discussion:
Downforce calculation:

Formula (informed by: https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/drag-coefficient-d_627.html):

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DEVELOPMENT SCREENSHOTS

Jere's Blender work:





























































Mod construction screenshots:

























--the logo seen here was a former one, not used in the final version--































































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ENJOY!

Wow, it was a lot of work to put together this documentation.

I also discovered that we can only have one mod in review at a time. We have the A39 model up for review at this time, but rest assured, assuming there are no issues in getting it published, the other two models will be uploaded as soon as they can be. They are all ready to go

Following up after a discussion I had with community members on the LFS discord: the model was identified to have some abnormal scaling.

Despite feeling confident about having done measurements properly, things are incorrect if you look at them visually. Most notably, the distance above the head of the driver is a bit incredible, there's too much there.

Measurement wise, the width I state confidently is correct. The length was 0.24m too long, which is very noticeable and makes things look stretched. The height seemed to have the greatest issue.

1 hit down of the forward axis rescaler gets the length of the car within 0.1m of the expected value. This should be much better now.

Although not precisely measured, two presses of the height scaler tool were done and its appearance now seems to be more as would be expected.

It's good to have caught this issue now. To fix it will have unfortunately lead to a cascade of work that needs to be done:

* Many textures will need mapping adjustments
* the frame and suspension needs adjustment now
* the steering wheel needs some rescale, which means the animation will need to also be worked on.
* also due for work is adjusting the size of the logo medallions on the bonnet and boot lids. This object should have a radius of 3.65cm, and the current one has a radius of 2.7cm.

I'll be off working on these, will upload a new package as soon as I can.


===

Images:
Left car is rescaled, right is the original.

Changelog:
Whole model rescale was done, given the above identified issues^. The model length was too long and the model height was too high, making the car look oddly stretched. This is fixed now. Almost everything had to be readjusted, textures, the frame, the suspension, the steering animation, had to re-model the gauges because they weren't circles anymore. Also took new photos and uploaded them to the mod post.

Also fixed bonnet and boot logos to be real-word size accurate.

Also, updated the mod license to a private agreement, after being notified by a moderator that this would be best.

Changelog:

A few minor changes:

* Updated lights colors for light_extra, and did some remap on the lightbar after receiving some feedback. The TOW lightbar now reflects more TOW oriented colors. Fixed an issue with the COP/MED lightbar in that some blue lights were illuminating as white.
* From another user's feedback, dropped the steering angle down to 34 degrees on all setups, but retained 1080 degree steering wheel turn. You are still able to increase the lock up to 45 degrees in custom setups.
* Fixed a bug in the dash, the low beam mapping was showing the front fog mapping. This is fixed.

Thanks for the feedback

finally. ive been waiting for this car to be published for a long time. keep up the good work. thank you

Changelog:

A few minor quality of life changes:

* Lightbar glass has been made less opaque. The lights should shine through better now.
* The interior Backlight glass has been made less opaque. You can see out of the rear-view much better.
* Adjusted position of hub objects in editor (no visible changes, just lining things up better in the editor).
* Driver's seat position increased by 0.1m. Improved road visibility and improved gauge visibility.
* Some frame adjustments to reduce the COG by 0.24m. This was done by making some higher frame bars have less mass, and increasing mass on some lower frame bars. Also lowered height of several frame points above the belt line.
* Re-set the brand logo in the steering wheel. It's now a circle, before it was an ellipse, a side-effect of the rescale that I missed fixing.
* Minor setup and suspension adjustments.
---> Increased front max height slightly, because I noticed it was crashing out too much in the hardest corners.
---> Added 1nm bump damping to front and rear.
---> Set parallel steer to 55%. Removed front toe adjustment. I found the steering was too sensitive on center with that toe adjustment in place.

COG before:


COG after:

---BAVARIA A39---
A few small changes and fixes.

Fixed:
* Rims1 COLOR3 and COLOR4 mapping only working properly on the rear-right rim. All four rims now can be colored as expected.

Changed:
* Swapped headlight and high-beam lights, to be more life-accurate.
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---BAVARIA N39---
* Initial version has been submitted for review