Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Talented modder woochoo has once again outdone himself with an impressive update to the already outstanding Longford add-on track for rFactor 2 bringing the circuit up to version 0.99.
With a host of improvements and changes to the track this latest release again secures Longford's place among the very best circuit additions to rFactor 2 currently available.
This has seeming been recognised by the development team behind rFactor with woochoo proudly announcing over on ISI forums that the development team plan to release Longford in the base install of the Steam version of rFactor2 when released on the platform sometime towards the end of 2015. Congratulations woochoo!
This new version of Longford includes a number of visual updates. Textures have been adjusted for the recent updates to the lighting system. New house models have been added and the Control Tower has been updated. Night driving has been improved with adjusted settings. Road surface materials have been tweaked and some minor road mesh changes have been made. A new AIW file should accommodate a wider variety of cars and provide more satisfying racing.
About the circuit: Longford began hosting motorcycle events in the early 1950s, and car races soon after, including two Australian Grand Prix. The lineup included touring cars, sports cars, and the Tasman Series featuring a number of the top F1 drivers and teams. The circuit was last used for the 1968 event.
The public road circuit started amongst sheep paddocks, moved past the town's water tank, down a steep slope, passed under the brick arches of the railway viaduct, and onto King's Bridge over the South Esk River. The circuit approaches the town and turns in front of one of the local pubs, passes a few houses and crosses the rail line again at a level crossing. The road continues out of town between Hawthorn hedges and Plane trees and back amongst paddocks, past the disused Tannery, and turns right at a t-junction towards Long Bridge which recrosses the river. Another t-junction turns up hill and takes the cars flat-out for around two kilometers to the final corner, the slowest on the circuit, and back to the start line.
Changelog:
- Road: Slight changes to road surface before pub, including what appears to be a pot hole filling, as recently noticed in ref material, and repair patch at begining of yellow pitlane line.
- Road: Changes to road materials and specular masks.
- Road Decals: Some small material and texture changes (higher res).
- Control Tower: Some renovations to the rear of the tower, reconfiguration of scaffolding, addition of external doorknobs, addition of floodlights, and some basic interior fitout.
- Control Tower: Reworked/new textures and materials as a result of above mesh updates.
- Control Tower: Added small custom “wind” animation to awnings (it’s not great, but it’s something).
- Control Tower: Added working clock.
- Pits: Fixed an unnoticed mapping error causing broken lighting reactions, and updated sponsor signs with some new fictional advertising and updated textures and material settings.
- Pits: Replaced names of real drivers, teams, cars (to avoid potential legal troubles).
- Foot Bridge: Reworking of stairs, some slight extra mesh detailing, mapping changes reducing absolute texture size, and removal of fake shadow caster (visible mesh now casts shadow).
- Tram/Police Centre: Small update to texture and material.
- Food Stall/Toilets: Small update to textures and material.
- Bleachers: New highpoly model with new texture (old model still used for lower detail levels).
- Spectator Cars: Retoned paint colours and removed some details from textures to make the cars less specific.
- Spectator Cars: Corrected a mesh error that had appeared on some station wagons.
- Pub: Some small mesh, mapping, and texture changes.
- Pump Station: Upgraded pump station building (driver’s right after King’s Bridge) with more mesh detail, new textures, and new material.
- Houses: Upgraded house models with more polygons and new textures.
- Houses: Some changes to house distribution based on reference photos.
- House Fences: Small updates to the front fences of some houses, as well as brand new white picket fence after rail crossing.
- Kerbs/Gutters: Increased mesh density for smoothing hard edges.
- Gutter/Footpath: Remade and extended gutter/footpath on the left side of the beginning of Tannery Straight (in the town).
- Driveway Thresholds: Added concrete ramps over gutter to footpath.
- Haybales: Welded and smoothed bales (they look a bit better and a bit worse now – different… just different)
- Fences: Some small changes to textures and materials of timber plank fences.
- Railway Crossing Signs: Higher poly meshes with new textures and material.
- Railway Signal Tower: Higher poly mesh with new textures and material.
- Sponsor Tower Signs: New meshes and textures for global oil company sponsor signs.
- Sponsor Signs and Banners: Replaced most real-world tradenames and imagery with fictional alternatives.
- Sponsor Signs and Banners: Have aquired approval to use some registered tradenames and branding from the real-life events.
- Sponsor Signs and Banners: Moved and rescaled (smaller) red cola sign at viaduct, based on photo reference.
- Starting Lights: Fixed material animation error and changed sequence to single red light, then green light.
- AIW: All new AIW files due to online grid errors in old version.
- AIW: New AIW may produce faster AI laptimes (have added slight limitation on AI acceleration).
- AIW: Removed “Historic Grid” & “Level Grid” layouts, which were having some grid troubles.
- AIW: Changed (due to congestion) garage/pit/grid capacity to 36/12/36, down from 42/13/42.
- AIW: Adjustments to blocking path, aimed at reducing severe blocking on the Flying Mile.
- AIW: Added “Fast_H” fast path for Cobras, which more than any other car were cutting the turn off of Long Bridge.
- AIW: Added “OW3_Fast” path for Skip Barber, which wasn’t handling some slow-down hacks in the main fast path.
- CAM: Moved (lowered) trackside camera in group one due to removal of perch in same location.
- HDR: Adjustments to a number of textures (over 80 different objects) that were excessively clipping against the white point of the new build 948 HDR automation.
- Standardisation: Slight changes to file name structures to match ISI format more closely.
- Optimisation: Some fairly insignificant batching and/or material reduction could improve performance slightly.
- Optimisation: Pit tents and metal fence panels now visible in high/med detail levels, may slightly reduce fps.
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