400 replies to this topic

[ginetto]

My choice is gracED
Read well the readme file
You will use it together with txt2gtk which copies paste the heights back and forward to the gtk.
You can zoom a lot in graced so you can refine very well all the heights  and give a personality to your track

For what I reacall, to make gtkalt work, you need a pic in the working directory, or something like that...

A good use of both of them should be to assing cambers with gtkalt (it gives to all the traces the camber angle you want) and after start using gracED (wich is only graphical so is harder to give the right camber angle, but not impossible ).

There is a new tool HeightED, developed by electricman on the base of gracED, wich should give good performance but I didn't try it very well, so I can't tell if you'll work faster with this one

Edited by Ginetto, Mar 22 2008 - 01:41 PM.

[Tidge]

Thank you Ginetto, for the links and the insights.


The final link to gracED v0.96 from a post by norup is dead

[Bill]

It is not the 96 version but it its close
it is HERE

[S.Beuchert]

Bill, on Mar 23 2008, 01:32 PM, said:

It is not the 96 version but it its close
it is HERE

added V.096 to Bill's thread

[Tidge]

Ginetto, on Mar 22 2008, 03:38 PM, said:

My choice is gracED
Read well the readme file
You will use it together with txt2gtk which copies paste the heights back and forward to the gtk.
You can zoom a lot in graced so you can refine very well all the heights  and give a personality to your track

For what I reacall, to make gtkalt work, you need a pic in the working directory, or something like that...

A good use of both of them should be to assing cambers with gtkalt (it gives to all the traces the camber angle you want) and after start using gracED (wich is only graphical so is harder to give the right camber angle, but not impossible ).

There is a new tool HeightED, developed by electricman on the base of gracED, wich should give good performance but I didn't try it very well, so I can't tell if you'll work faster with this one

I now have gracED working and have gone all the way around my track and created  "altref.tex" using information from Google Earth.  But before I edit the altitudes I would like to "compile" the track first and see if I can drive on it while it is still flat.  

When I try to compile, I get the dreaded "Access violation" for trk23doz.exe.  But it tells me the proper .gtk information and the runtime messages tell me the track extents and that :

ini file loaded
texture list loaded
.fb loaded
section lookup calculated
VisList generated.
  

What's missing ?

[Tidge]

Nevermind,  I found my own problem.  

[ginetto]

Good you solved it

About elevations, I found useful to keep the txt files created by graced at every change.

As an example, I set the name for the input as fiorano.txt and for the output as new_fiorano.txt.
When I go to change the elevations again, I renane fiorano.txt into a progressive fiorano.txt1 and then take out the new_  part to the new file. This way, if I change something that doesn't satisfy me , I can always go back to any point of the elevation setting.

Hope it make sense to anybody besides me

Edited by Ginetto, Mar 30 2008 - 04:42 AM.

[Tidge]

Great tip, Thanks for that  Ginetto.      

[Luis Babboni]

ferraif40, on Nov 5 2007, 05:40 AM, said:

Hi

Bassically how do you make a track for GPL 1998?

Jon

Hi friends,

Im new in this affair. Tidge help me in this moments.
A question:
Wich is an acceptable gap when you join the last with the first sections to avoid the risk of freezes or jumps to the desktop?
10cm; 1cm; 1mm; 0mm ?

Thanks,
Luis.

[Saiph]

José Raúl Capanegra, on Feb 14 2009, 11:50 PM, said:

............
Wich is an acceptable gap when you join the last with the first sections to avoid the risk of freezes or jumps to the desktop?
10cm; 1cm; 1mm; 0mm ?

You should always try to get a perfect match at the start/finish line. If you have a small gap, even 1mm, then GPL will crash at some point when you drive the track. The GPL physics engine "steps" the car forward in increments of one frame (usually 1/36th second), and if the reference point of the car happens to land on the gap at the end of a frame, GPL will crash. You might be lucky for 100 laps or more, and the car will "jump" the gap. But at some point your luck will run out.

I've just started to learn how to use the "GPLTrk" editor, and the first tricky problem I had was how to make the end of the track join up properly with the start/finish line. But the tutorial on the GPLEA website gives some good tips, and the editor itself tells you if you have any longitudinal gap, lateral gap, or orientation mismatch. On both the test tracks that I've created so far, I have managed to get all three errors down to zero. It does take a little juggling, sometimes you have to go back to the last corner on the circuit to make adjustments. But if you can get all the errors down to zero, then it's worth it.

[ginetto]

Orientation always 0 on every section

Lateral try to make it 0, a few GPL units don't mess up anything but it's easy to zero them so you go easy.

Longitudinal must never be a positive gap, that means that you have a hole as Saiph described.
Longitudinal negative is probably better than zero, the amount you can keep is a few GPL units; I did Targa florio with a longitudinal negative gap of -10 between each section, last included.
-10 GPL units equal to 0.5mm of overlapping, so yo have an idea.

[Luis Babboni]

Saiph, on Feb 15 2009, 01:52 AM, said:

José Raúl Capanegra, on Feb 14 2009, 11:50 PM, said:

............
Wich is an acceptable gap when you join the last with the first sections to avoid the risk of freezes or jumps to the desktop?
10cm; 1cm; 1mm; 0mm ?

You should always try to get a perfect match at the start/finish line. If you have a small gap, even 1mm, then GPL will crash at some point when you drive the track. The GPL physics engine "steps" the car forward in increments of one frame (usually 1/36th second), and if the reference point of the car happens to land on the gap at the end of a frame, GPL will crash. You might be lucky for 100 laps or more, and the car will "jump" the gap. But at some point your luck will run out.

I've just started to learn how to use the "GPLTrk" editor, and the first tricky problem I had was how to make the end of the track join up properly with the start/finish line. But the tutorial on the GPLEA website gives some good tips, and the editor itself tells you if you have any longitudinal gap, lateral gap, or orientation mismatch. On both the test tracks that I've created so far, I have managed to get all three errors down to zero. It does take a little juggling, sometimes you have to go back to the last corner on the circuit to make adjustments. But if you can get all the errors down to zero, then it's worth it.

Thanks Saiph.

Ooops, my first test track have a gap of 10mm; 8mm and 0.1 degree!! The people doesnt know what they miss! :-))

[Luis Babboni]

Ginetto, on Feb 15 2009, 02:32 PM, said:

Orientation always 0 on every section

Lateral try to make it 0, a few GPL units don't mess up anything but it's easy to zero them so you go easy.

Longitudinal must never be a positive gap, that means that you have a hole as Saiph described.
Longitudinal negative is probably better than zero, the amount you can keep is a few GPL units; I did Targa florio with a longitudinal negative gap of -10 between each section, last included.
-10 GPL units equal to 0.5mm of overlapping, so yo have an idea.

Thank you Ginetto!
I will work on it.

[Saiph]

Ginetto, on Feb 15 2009, 04:32 PM, said:

...........
Longitudinal negative is probably better than zero, the amount you can keep is a few GPL units; I did Targa florio with a longitudinal negative gap of -10 between each section, last included.
-10 GPL units equal to 0.5mm of overlapping, so yo have an idea.

Aha, so if things get difficult, it's ok to have a negative gap/overlap? That's good to know, I'll remember that for my future editing. Thanks Ginetto!