rFactor

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This one is all about sportscar racing. So this is your post if you like sportscar racing.



--- Sports Car Challenge ---
Here are some links highlighting the possibilities of an ALMS-like series for rFactor called the "Sports Car Challenge":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46aSv9UCfX8

This was conceptualized by NSCG, or the "North South Connection Germany." If the real footage looks and sounds familiar, that's because the real footage is likely from "Test Drive: Le Mans." Keep in mind that "TD:LM" is NOT Le Mans 24 Hours. Instead, it's the less-popular game based on the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It's still a good game, just not as good as Le Mans 24 Hours. The automobiles raced mostly consist of Le Mans racing machines between 2000 and maybe 2003. Cars in this package include the Audi R8, Cadillac Northstar LMP, Pescarolo (the 2000 model), Panoz LMP Roadster, your usual bevy of Porsches, Dodge Viper GTS-R, Chevrolet Corvette C5-R, and the BMW M3 GTR among many others. Personally, this would be a GREAT package. If anyone passionately loves sportscar racing, it's me. Imagine taking cars like these around your favorite Grand Prix-type courses. Imagine realistic fields of cars making some of the rFactor tracks look wicked sick. Imagine these cars going around Mills Metro Park, Jiading, Brianza, Orchard Lake (road course), and stuff like that. I left out Sardian Park because it could be pretty tough to pass around those streets. Golden opportunity here. There are more pictures of their WIP project at this link to NSCG's page: < http://indiana.byto.de/downloads.htm >. Since some of the cars are based on sportscars raced between 2000 and 2003, there's even the Corvette C5-R adorned with the American flag and FDNY decals. These were the sort of paint schemes when the September 11th attack on America happened in 2001.

When I did a count of all the cars in this project, here's what I found for the Sports Car Challenge by manufacturer:

* GT Class: 15 Cars
Porsche (7), Callaway (1), BMW (6), Chevrolet (1)

* GTS Class: 7 Cars
Dodge (3), Chevrolet (3), Saleen (1)

* LMP675: 5 Cars
(various makes including Lola and Reynard)

* LMP900: 14 Cars
Pescarolo (1), Panoz (2), Audi (4), Lola (1), Cadillac (3), Riley and Scott(?) (1)


Total Car Count: 41 Cars

This was sort of like the car counts when it used to be the ALMS and ELMS racing around back in 2000 and 2001 in America. So it would be a great idea to pick up some tracks that support a good number of cars. I think 20 works for most of us, 24 is also a great number, but especially something to support about 63 cars would be great. I'm actually pretty excited about this mod project. About as excited as the Radical mod (more info at: http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Radical Extreme Sports Cars ).

BY THE WAY: Here's their rfactorcentral.com link on them. I'm sorry I forgot to post this link as well! < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Sports Car Challenge >.



--- Le Mans Series ---
Or if you favor more modern ALMS or LMS action, there's apparently a mod on this too. A lot of the more recent cars and teams are included. Here's the rfactorcentral.com link: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=LMS >. This is a project by "EnduRacers." This is the French unit behind this project. Not much difference between this and the SCC project other than more recent cars in the LMS mod. I don't think there's a legit website for EnduRacers highlighting on this project.



--- NAGT (North American GT) ---
Have a look: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=NAGT >. If they look familiar, then it's likely because this is the Speed GT series, only it's North American GT. It's about as close as you can get to Speed GT. Most of the usual suspects are there. I think it's all as accurate as the 2006 season of Speed GT because there were Aston Martins, perhaps the final year of the Pontiac GTO race car, and while I didn't see it in pictures- the Nissan R34 Skyline GT-R.



(other related mods)
--- Proximus 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps ---
This features the 2006 cars: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=Proximus 24 Hours of Spa 2006 >.



So there's hope for all real sportscar racing fans who play rFactor. Thing is, there needs to be a class winning system so that it's perfectly fine to race a GT Porsche while letting prototypes and other GT cars pass by. Maybe learn from "ToCA Race Driver 3." This is something I think ISI should look into while these sportscar racing projects are still in the works.


[UPDATE #1] My Le Mans Series link lead to the World Sportscar Championship and not the Le Mans Series. But if you wanted to see the WSC, look here: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=World Sportscar Championship >. I apologize for the LMS link deal.

UPDATE #2 I checked out this site: < http://indiana.byto.de/projects.htm > and noticed there was a Callaway. I apologize for not mentioning the lone Callaway. There are seven Porsches and not eight by NSCG's project. I also learned that this is actually a conversion from "F1 Challenge" to rFactor. So there are seven Porsches and not eight.
 
Don't forget we already have the FIA GT championship cars available in RFactor. The only place I know to get it from it rtracker.org, and it's a bittorrent download. If you ever want that mod but you arn't sure about how to get thoes let me know.
 
You've been treed.

Damn you. lol
Have you tried it yet? I did with the F1 2005, Porsche Carerra Cup and TVR Tuscan cars and its really good fun. Good challenge too having a tight course like this.
 
Yeah I had a couple of races on it last night me vs an identicle opponent and it aws really good. I did a race in the Lancia 037's, I never got above 2nd gear :lol:. Good track though, lots of fun, you see the camera flashes very clearly if you race at night but there's no stadium lights over the trak so it's hard to see where you going with just your headlights. Not a hard layout to remember though.
 
I havent tried a nighttime race yet. Might give that a go later. I hope they crack on with the 2006 track now.
 
EnduRacers is the team behind the LMS project. They actually have their own forum at: < http://enduracers.easyforum.fr/ >, but I didn't post it earlier because they didn't have their own website (not forum, but website). See the "fr" in the link? That's because it's mostly in French. There is plenty of English around the place, so don't immediately sign up for French class just because you can't read any of the French material. I am still looking forward to this package. An interesting touch to the Le Mans project is that it isn't so much the Le Mans Series, but more of an... I guess you can call it an All-Star clash between the American Le Mans Series, the Le Mans Series, and some cars from the Le Mans 24 Hours. According to EnduRacers, they have a partnership with Pierre Ragues. Ragues races a Courage for Paul Belmondo Racing. This partnership between EnduRacers and Pierre Ragues is there to help test the mod as well as help out in car physics ( http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php?t=259859 ). So I can imagine that this mod is going to be incredibly successful if all works well.

Now let's look at the SCC package. This YouTube video features the Panoz LMP Roadster racing around Barber Motorsports Park in rFactor: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFmh3-Rkt_s >. This guy drives much better around this track than I do :lol:. I finally had a chance to race this track, and I'm not going to lie to you. I said this looks more like a European circuit. Well, I think this is a circuit a lot of teams around the world should race. This should have an F1GP date. It's a GREAT track. Anyhow, there aren't as many LMP projects for rFactor that's out. So imagine doing this around the rFactor version of Le Mans. Maybe you can play as Panoz and take it to Audi. Also, enjoy the roar of that engine! This is also going to be great.

So how do you choose which is better? I think it all comes down to personal preference. The SCC mod uses fairly old cars while some of the latest examples are in the LMS package. One could also say that the LMS mod has three different series involved (ALMS, LMS, and LM 24 Hours). So I think it would really come down to personal preference.


Away from that, I downloaded and raced Surfer's Paradise for rFactor. This version is a lot reminiscent of ToCA Race Driver 3 and maybe even its predecesor as well. First thing I noticed... do you know where you go past the two chicanes heading into that 90-degree turn? I overshot the corner thinking I was going to pound my Howston hard into the wall. Instead, they just moved out of the way like they were cones. The track looks very nice and should be great for any kind of racing there. Speaking of any kind of racing, I think the rF3 cars aren't as taxing to FPS rates as most of the saloon cars. I think I've had some setup issues in which I got some understeer in the corners. Maybe it's just my control setup. But this is a great track.

Carry on.
 
Here's my latest rFactor experiences.


--- The Tale of Two Le Mans ---
I downloaded Le Mans in the past. But I picked up another, recently-updated Le Mans for rFactor. The bad thing is that it loaded very slowly on my computer. The newer Le Mans I got for rFactor looks much more accurate. Most of the track really looks updated better because the older vesion of Le Mans (actually a NASCAR Racing 2003 Conversion) had the Porsche curves with much lower elevations than the Le Mans I know. So you get the best possible Le Mans at the expense of some longer loading times. I still can't wait until someone makes some kind of LMP package for rFactor. I'm not necessarily talking about the Sports Car Challenge or the Le Mans Series, but more of a... I guess you could call it, a teaser for sportscar racing. Which brings me to this...



--- Illegal Conversion? ---
Hark back to Post #191 by me: < https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2561563&postcount=191 >. Thanks to a hard time trying to find the specific thread on another message board, someone actually reported this Panoz conversion as an illegal one. Someone illegally converted a Panoz LMP-1 in rFactor to make that machine appear and race at Barber Motorsports Park in that YoutTube video. When I can find the exact thread on this other message board, I will report that in a future post.



--- A Tour of Japan ---
I wanted to get some Japanese courses going in rFactor. So what I did was download Suzuka and Autopolis. Suzuka, sadly, will not be hosting any future Grands Prix of Japan. Those honors will go to the Tilke'd up (f:censored: up) Fuji circuit. Suzuka has long been a favorite track for a number of different racers. The one I downloaded featured a number of different configurations. There's the configuration from Grand Prix 4 (it's a GP4 conversion), the East course, the West Course, the current Grand Prix course, and the Suzuka 8 Hour motorcycle course. While there are no motorcycle racing plans for rFactor at present, cars will be able to race this modified configuration. The only difference between the Grand Prix circuit and the 8-Hour circuit is that extra chicane after Hairpin Curve (the corner after Degner Curve and underneath the overpass). I still consider the Casio Triangle as one of racing's most treacherous sections in all of racing. It's as rough as the Laguna Seca Corkscrew, or that super-slow hairpin at Donnington Park. But it's a great track. It's a great that that will certainly be missed by all who thinks Suzuka is a better than than Fuji. * Now, Autopolis is next. Autopolis was an ill-fated track in Oita on the Japanese island of Kyushu (south of the southwesternmost tip of Honshu Island. It was a track that opened in 1990 and was on the preliminary F1 Grand Prix list of tracks in 1992. It was supposed to be this world-class track that could seriously cater to the rich with a collection of hotels and such. But a big problem plauged the track- financial issues. The track went bankrupt for a while. It wasn't until about 2003(?) when the (then) JGTC raced at Autopolis for the first time. The track remains one of the many challenging courses in Japan. At almost 3 miles (actually 2.094 miles/4.673 kilometers), it has all the makings of a track Formula 1 cars would race. It's a pretty tough track. This is likely the course to drive Formula cars around. Or give Autopolis their F1 dream by setting up a Formula IS race there (and to this day, I have NEVER won a Formula IS race no matter how hard I try). It's a tough track. INTERESTING FACT: I don't think there's ever been a known Japanese race on a temporary street course. If ever there was a track that would look great for a Japanese street course race, it would probably be Tokyo R246 like in Gran Turismos 3 and 4 (and maybe 5 as well).



--- Cadwell Park ---
Nestled in the city of Louth, England (or is it Louth Lincolnshire?) is a track called Cadwell Park. According to e-Tracks online's article on this course: < http://www.etracksonline.co.uk/Europe/United_Kingdom/cadwellpark04.html >, it's a legendary British club racing circuit that usually hosts motorcycle races. The thing that caught on to me for this track is the beautiful park-like atmosphere. Almost as if someone built a park, then put a competitive race track around it. The track is pretty beautiful to say the least. Imagine having a race track in a nice down home atmosphere that consists of high trees, lots of lush scenery, even a few houses around. Sounds like Heaven? It is. The track itself is kind of like a mix of Brands Hatch (GP) and Oulton Park (GP). Here are seven rFactor pictures of this course: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/screenies.cfm?ID=Cadwell Park >. It's wicked. It's a real down-home like track.



I may plan to pick up Pikes Peak now that I've downloaded (but not installed) the Historic Rally Car package. Have fun!
 
Cadwell Park is a seriously fun track, Formula 3 round it is so much fun. And install that HRC and pikes peak mod now! You wont regret it:)
 
I installed the rFactor 1.250 patch and the Historic Rally Car mod. I'll get to the 1.250 update first.

--- rFactor 1.250 ---
There have been some complaints about bugs in the 1.250 update. So far, I noted how much easier it really is to set up a race to be how I want it. It used to be that I have to click on the "Customize" deal to go to settings and modify race settings there. Then I had to go to "Control" to set up the race I want. Now, it's easier. You can simply set up your race to set variables like time, AI, race distance, what sessions you want to run for that race... it is much simpler. Not much in the way of complaints so far.



--- Historic Rally Car Mod ---
Upon the wishes of Ferrari F2007, I downloaded the HRC mod. You get a variety of rally cars from the past. The machines I started with were the Lancias. Lancia has been one of the most successful rally programs in rally history. Most people probably know the Stratos best. Some know the Deltas as well. I currently am using three cars: the Lancia Stratos (like the GT4 model), the Lancia Delta S4 (like the GT2 and GT4 model), and the Alpine A110. You also get a new track known as Alpine Mountain. I had a lot of trouble keeping the Lancias on the road. But when I used the Alpine A110, I was in love! I had a wonderful drive around the 24km rally course. I think the Alpine A110 is one of the most beautiful French cars of all time. All of the old school rally cars are designed beautifully. Trust me. You'll likely fall in love. The download is MASSIVE. It will take over 252 megabytes for you to get the installer going. Maybe it was the version I downloaded, but I had it in French. I'm terrible with French. Well, not really. But when you install it, go race! It's a rally package that can also double for some great circuit racing. Imagine having your own Goodwood Revival on any track of your choice with the cars in the game. Just great stuff. And for the record... I'm not regretting downloading this package. I don't have Pikes Peak yet. But I may pick that up and enjoy some more rallying. When you get rFactor 1.150, it's pretty loaded when you unlock everything. Think about it. You get some ovals, a variety of road courses, a street course, a wicked collection of mountain road courses with its own rally course, rally cars to use for that race, a broad spectrum of production cars, formula-type race cars... the package comes loaded out the box. It only gets better when you get bit by the mod bug. I always make correlations between this game and Sports Car GT. But let this be said- this game almost completely blows SCGT out of the water. All the customization far exceeds what you could do when SCGT was the PC game standard in customizable goodness.



--- Finally Got My Own Formula IS Ride ---
Yours truly loves blue. It has to be a rich blue color that looks cool overall. So when I learned that I've worked to eliminate this 50,000-point experience deal, I was free to pick up any Formula IS car I wanted. So I picked up the Lucas car. It's the car that's white up front and is decorated with two shades of blue in flame effects. As much as I'm glad to pick up an F1 car in the game, I still can't win with these cars. It's almost as if rF3 is the way to go for formula car racing. Speaking of rF3, I even tried to race Cadwell Park with rF3 cars. Sadly, I've been losing more bodywork than winning the race. But the cars are very agile and fun to race around there.



--- Solved My Follies Using Paint.NET ---
Paint.NET is an open-source paint program. When I learned that there was something to get the program to edit *.DDS files, I began to ditch DXTbmp to edit bitmaps with (I actually used DXTbmp to view them). I used this DDS file utility for Paint.NET to be able to edit DDS files with. But when I edited my Team Blue Howston and my own custom helmet, the file looked all messed up. So here's some advice from me to you in editing DDS art for rFactor:

When saving edited art in rFactor under Paint.NET, here are what I recommend so that your art doesn't look messed up:
* save DDS files under the DXT5 format
* compress as a Cluster Fit
* set Error Metric as Perceptual
* check "Weight Color by Alpha"
* check "Generate Mip Maps"
* Save your work!

And if you want Paint. NET, then just look it up on Google or something. Also look up the DDS plugin for Paint.NET to be able to edit as much of your DDS art as possible. It's probably best to have a few other Paint programs for the best editing results. I only wished that The Gimp had such a plugin because I could use The Gimp to make nice brush effects for cars.



And that's all. Thanks for your input and love!
 
Ive read most of the thread with quite some interest.👍 rfactor sounds like good fun. :) What I havent found is what are you using as input device.
In GT4 its a DFP or controller. 'newb query': What do you use in rfactor?

AMG.
 
This may ick out a number of people on here... but I use a Sidewinder Gamepad for rFactor. I may switch to an analog controller when I have money and time.
 
Ive read most of the thread with quite some interest.👍 rfactor sounds like good fun. :) What I havent found is what are you using as input device.
In GT4 its a DFP or controller. 'newb query': What do you use in rfactor?

AMG.
I use my DFP.
 
I had an Rfactor race the other day, Did a nice pass thought id share.

lap 38 of 40. worn tyres..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjzZWzQ0NRI

Some more battles from myself in the V8 league i race in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlkCwNiGwuk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuVShsXVSlA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gNTUPP4OXQ

Crazy crash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0yvxaEfrzE

And a hotlap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPy7QW_w8Ds

I drive with cockpit view and no aids.

I wonder how you record those vids and some great battles too +rep
 
Anybody interested in the possibility of being my teammate in an endurance racing league that has races that range from 6 to 24 hours long using RFactor?

rfactor.org will host the league. SFH (Sim Racing For Holland) is a well founded organization and they will do a good job running this. (I've raced against them in the past)

I've signed up with a team already, a good, proven team with strong leadership that I've already ran a 24 hr race with.

PM me if interested in joining the team I'm on. There's a good chance we could share the same car.
 
I struggle to fit in hour long races, so I'll politely pass.

I've downloaded the ETCC 2003 1.2 today, it just improves a bit on the ETCC 2003 mod and adds a few new teams. I love doing races in thoes cars, expecially with larger grids. I did a 20 lap race in Adelaide today after TopGear with 42 cars in the race, my highest position during the race was 6th but I overran a corner on the 17th lap trying to read a text message without pausing and had to reverse out, which put be down to 13th but I pulled back to 9th.
 
--- The European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) and Macau ---
I was thinking of picking up the ETCC mod, live4speed. I don't think I can effectively run more than 20 cars on a track. I may attempt to run 24 cars on a track. It's greatly fine to work with the ZR model that rFactor gives you. However, it's more fun (you all will likely agree) when you have more realistic cars available to race. I think you could only do so much with the ZR. Then it's just one car. I used to set up races where it was the ZR going up against the 2005 Vayline Rhez.

I was looking at the rfactorcentral.com link for the ETCC. Take a look at the first page of pictures and some of the second. Notice the city street course? Do you know what that track is? That would be the Macau circuit. While I criticize that it's an extremely tough street course, this rFactor version looks lovely. I learned that *RACE* features the Macau circuit. Here is a YouTube link to one lap of Macau in a Seat Leon: < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5C1-0lzHzE >. Please note how the video shows the game adding on polygons (even entire buildings) in the video. Either it wasn't on a powerful computer or RACE is too stringent on PC requirements (like GTR was for my PC).

See the picture gallery yourself (register and login to see full-sized pictures): http://www.rfactorcentral.com/screenies.cfm?ID=ETCC (ETCC gallery) <<< WARNING! One of the pictures on Page 1 has some explicit picture on the bonnet (hood for the rest of us) of one of the cars)

I'm going to get ETCC, then try to look for Macau if it's available for rFactor.


[UPDATE] Look at this link: < http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=ETCC >. Included in one of the comments is that of the Macau link. This megaupload.com link this guy makes is off-topic to the ETCC, but it's the link you have to copy and paste to your browser to access the Macau download link. The biggest hook of this Macau circuit from pictures is the combination of the modern city as well as the traditional Chinese architecture. It looks very nice from what I've seen. And according to some website, RACE was the first racing game to feature the Macau circuit. So now you can have some street course fun in China to go with your Jiading track for rFactor. When I get to play it and see what it's about (I know it's a challenging street course. Perhaps the Monaco GP of the Asia-Pacific in terms of a difficult street course), I'll likely talk about it in a future post.
 
I must apologize. That ETCC deal with Macau was likely an illegal conversion of Macau. Even the rfactorcentral.com link to the ETCC mod ( http://www.rfactorcentral.com/detail.cfm?ID=ETCC ) pulled the pictures of the ETCC at Macau. If we want to see Macau again for rFactor, someone will have to make either a legal conversion or a from-scratch build of it. So the reason why you probably didn't get that download, appie17, was because it was pulled from the Internet.

As far as the ETCC goes, I downloaded it all yesterday. But I ended up deleting it all because it was getting too confusing to place everything in their proper folder. So I decided to download an *.exe that should extract all the ETCC car files and such to my rFactor folder. I may want to race the Alfa Romeos first because someone on rfactorcentral.com was talking about that the Alfas are too powerful. Someone counterattacked by saying it would be ridiculous to power down the Alfa Romeos since Alfa Romeo dominated the touring car ranks (probably still does). So I'll download and install this so that I can finally get to enjoy touring car racing.

I'll let you all know how the ETCC goes when I get to race the finished product.
 
You don't need to manually place every folder one by one, of it extracts to a folder called RFactor, just drop that folder into the same folder as your poper RFactor folder, in my case it's in Program files, then it asks if you want to overwrite the folder, select yes to all and it just places the files for you.
 
John, the ETCC mod is good fun to drive. I played it online quite a bit and the racing was always close.
 
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