Detroit downtown circuit (WIP thread)

[Pavel 69]

Great progress! Have you add textures to buildings too?

[Wolf_pd]

Continuing to use my new tool to convert from real-world coordinates to Papy coordinates. Very happy to report that all these buildings fell into the right place with no trial & error and no adjustments needed!

By the way, the SG/TRK was the result of carefully measuring Google Earth and scaling the PCX in SGE.INI, so it is nice to see that it correlates well with my building placing technique. It also shows the strength of the Papy track format that, by applying some precise techniques, you can get something almost perfectly in scale.

I wish I had Google Maps and this tool when I made St Petersburg. I found the screenshots from map websites and the early Google Earth shots that I used for my first few tracks.
Then made the error to compare with the current information you can find. It hurts.

Also, brilliant progress. Hope the track and surroundings keeps that gritty look it has from the videos I saw on Youtube.

[checkpoint10]

Great progress! Have you add textures to buildings too?

No textures yet, just 3D models for now. I will go back later to add textures and detail to buildings. I could use some help drawing the textures if anyone's interested.

I wish I had Google Maps and this tool when I made St Petersburg. I found the screenshots from map websites and the early Google Earth shots that I used for my first few tracks.
Then made the error to compare with the current information you can find. It hurts.

Also, brilliant progress. Hope the track and surroundings keeps that gritty look it has from the videos I saw on Youtube.

Thanks. Do you think you'll be updating St. Pete at some point?

[checkpoint10]

Happy with how this turned out. I haven't looked at this in OPE or in the game so I'm sure the drawing order will have issues but I'm just trying to push through as many of the 3D models as possible before working on details.

[samsepi0l]

wow is that the monorail train thing? (I rode on that once)

I will help you with textures if you tell me the sizes of what you need, I hope to be back at working my regular job soon that should give me more free time to do stuff like this (and finish tamiami)

[Dennis]

When you have most of the textures together (in full color), I could make the color optimization and the palette, if you want.

[Wolf_pd]

Thanks. Do you think you'll be updating St. Pete at some point?

Unsure. Pavel made an improved sg file which is much better than what I did 17 (!!!) years ago, but too much different things and projects (Coronoa recovery, other game projects and home redecoration)going on at the moment. One big project finishes June 25th so free time will arrive then after 1,5 year of project.
I am planning to upgrade computers this year and that will be a good time to see if I can get ICR2 and the tools running again. Seeing the progress and the wealth of information compared to when I was digging around, does make me curious to edit.

[checkpoint10]

I will help you with textures if you tell me the sizes of what you need, I hope to be back at working my regular job soon that should give me more free time to do stuff like this (and finish tamiami)

When you have most of the textures together (in full color), I could make the color optimization and the palette, if you want.

Thank you. I will help coordinate these efforts once we get to that point. Dennis, good call on doing the color optimizing and not locking in a palette before we do the textures - you might help us figure out whether we have enough colors for a textured sky as well.

Other workstreams that someone could also help with, if interested.
- Menu screens (can be done anytime)
- Making the roadway markings, i.e. preparing the TSD file. This may be done in conjunction with making any final edits to the SG, although I think it is pretty close at this point.
- Texturing the walls, i.e. preparing the MRK file
- AI, pit lane and related adjustments to track.txt file (we should do this later in the process, at least after objects, brake markers and TSDs are in)
- Optimizing draw order of objects (after we're done with at least all the placeholder objects)
- Placing cameras
- Ensuring Windy and Rendition support (maybe done concurrently with the palette optimizing)

In the meantime, I will just continue to code the 3D objects.

[Dennis]

Dennis, good call on doing the color optimizing and not locking in a palette before we do the textures - you might help us figure out whether we have enough colors for a textured sky as well.

Everything is possible, only the results may vary.
It would be important, to get those images together at first, which need the highest color accuracy, to see, how it looks.

- Ensuring Windy and Rendition support (maybe done concurrently with the palette optimizing)

I had the idea also for my track, to make an extra DOS-version with the extended palette.

- Optimizing draw order of objects (after we're done with at least all the placeholder objects)
- Placing cameras

Do you want the cameras at the original locations? If yes, they could be done earlier. If not, provisional cameras are also useful, to determine the drawing order, I mainly used replays for this. The objects only need to draw right from those perspectives, which appear in the replays.
If you want, I could also searching for drawing problems, but keep in mind, I'm really accurate, so it would have the potential to cause frustration.

[checkpoint10]

Just a small update for today - upon placing the elevated rail pillars along Larned Street (i.e. the back straightaway), I realized the SG in that particular section was off by about half the road's width. I will need to go back and fix this in SGE, then I should be able to rebuild the track and post the source and compiled files for us to collaborate on.

@Dennis, cameras at their original (real-life) locations would be great. I guess there will be lots of drawing order problems to solve - since there are parts of the circuit where many objects should be visible.