Swift DB-1 for rFactor

[RDeLong]

Hi,

I'm currently working on a Swift DB-1 model to put into rFactor. I'm just working on the model and graphics - have plans to work with other modders to implement physics and sounds.

There's a thread over at race sim central but I'd rather post here at this point since I'm looking for more informed help and criticism. Too many hound dogs over there.

Anyway, attached is an image showing the work done to date. There's some measurements that I don't have any data for. Doug intends to send some measurements but I think his garage is too cold or he's just too busy. So, if anyone feels like helping out I very much appreciate it.

In additon to suspension measurements some pretty accurate measurements for rim and tire (front, rear) would be really nice also.

Thanks in advance,
Rich

[dc]

Sorry, Rich... too much newborn baby.

It's supposed to be in the low 50s here Saturday, and I'm aiming for a little garage time. Will get measurements and photos to you this weekend, for sure.

Looks great in 3D!

[na94]

Looks slick!

I've got the arms off the car right now, Ill see if I can get some time this week to break out the trammel pins and measure the arms, and post the alignment settings.

Combine that with your fixture measurements and pickup chassis measurements, you should be good to go. Do you need damper mounting coordinates?

[Keith Carter]

Awesome work! Can't wait to drive it.

[RDeLong]

Doug,

baby is a keeper... easy as pie so far. Getting lots of computer time in between feeds and diapers.

Work's getting busy this week though... need the money but damn I'm having more fun building this model.

[na94]

I measured my front LCAs tonight:

At -1.4 degrees camber (sorry I don't know castor), the front distance is 63.3cm, and the rear is 61.4cm. Distance between the 2 inboard points is 40cm.

I will need to turn up some new trammel pins to measure the UCAs and the rear lowers.

Do you have upright measurements yet? If not, camber, castor, wheelbase and internal pickup points can give you the upright dimensions. I think susprog will give you the numbers, but if not my demo version of wingeo can do it.

[RDeLong]

Thanks Na94... that's great.

I don't have any measurements other than track and wheel base - and I'm not sure those are correct. I got them from the Road & Track article.

For the model it doesn't have to be dead-exact but I'd like it to be pretty close. When it comes time to do the physics the numbers geek will want some really accurate numbers.

Thanks much...

[RDeLong]

Does anyone know a DB-1 owner that drives it at Miller Motorsports Park out here in Utah?

Would love to visit their pit and get some measurements and photos. Would really like to get this model as accurate as possible. Getting to a point where I'm having to guess at a lot of stuff.

[RDeLong]

With na94's numbers for the front LCA I was able to fix several problems with my dimensions... more than I expected. Thanks.

I've attched the blueprint I've been building the 3d model with... with recent updates. I think the inboard parts of the car are looking pretty close but the outboard stuff is still pretty iffy. I've crammed a lot on a tabloid size page so zoom in a bit to see it clearly.

Any help with getting some of the missing measurements for the suspension, track, wheels/tires and key frame segments would be greatly appreciated.

BTW. The blueprint would work well as line art for creating paint schemes... I'll post another one with just the body for you guys to use.

Edit: Opps... saved the file out wrong. Was missing the layer with body panels, tires and other bits. Double checked this one. Sorry about that.

[RDeLong]

bump... see edit in post above.

[RDeLong]

It's slowly getting there. Body and transmission are done. Just have undertray, cockpit and small details to finish up and the modelling part will be done... then the fun part, textures.

Measurement wise I still need some data on the rear hub (height) and tires (diameter, section width, tread width) front and rear.

Sill not sure who is doing the physics. Have to wait for RSC to go back live so I can contact those who have expressed interest. Would like to get them in here asking the right questions. Thanks for the help so far, please keep it comming.

[dc]

Beautiful work, Rich!

If the weather is still co-operating with me tonight, I will be in the garage and I will get you some photo and dimensions of those things you listed.

I PROMISE!

[na94]

I still need to get another trammel pin turned up (hopefully lean how to do it myself this time), then I'll measure my rears.

[RDeLong]

Getting close. Just working on some cockpit details (anyone have good photos of Shifter Assembly).

Oh, and yea the bumps on the body for the air-cleaner and the shifter aren't shown on this version... they added too many polys for the game. May include it as an upgrade for those who have really fast PCs. Developing for rFactor2 at this point so who knows, maybe it will be more efficient.

[RDeLong]

Hi Guys,

Finally finding some time to work on this again. I'm in the process of getting the model textured which shouldn't take too long (see wip below).

Looking forward I'm trying to get some data on the car for the in-game physics. I may have a contact at Honda Performance Development that is going to get me some data but I have yet to hear from him. I need a number of things and I'm hoping there's enough interest here in this project that you guys could help my out with some of it. Below is some of the data the game requests... or more specifically a tool that calculates much of the games required data.

I may need to determine a base setup to base all the numbers on. Any suggestions there would be helpfull as well.


Car
Weight distribution F/R:
Height of centre of gravity:

Tires
Width/Height/Size
Front
Rear (have rear dimensions - thanks Doug)

Zero Load rolling radii
Front

Static deflection (static load compression - have no idea if this is attainable data)
Front
rear

Front Suspension
Track
Static Roll center height
Camber
Roll camber rate
Ride Height
Bump Travel
Droop Travel

Steering (basic setup)
Kingpin inclination (degrees)
Scrub Radius
Caster (degress)
Trial
Ackerman (%)
Anti-dive (%)
Steering arm length

Rear Suspension
rocker arm/lower arm lengths (a to b to c)
Track
Static roll center height
Camber
Roll camber rate (deg/deg)
Ride Height
Bump Travel
Droop Travel
Anti-squat (%)

Contraints
Front & Rear Suspension
Upper Hard Points – maximum/minimum distance from center line
Lower hard points – maximum/minimum distance from center line

Ride & Roll
Motion ratios front rear
Pushrod Inclination from vertical (deg - this isn't relevant is it?)
Motion Ratio (wheel/spring)
Spring Rates front/rear
Damping at wheel front/rear (ratio in N/N)
Transition speed (m/s)

Roll Bars: thickness and length.


I know it's a lot but whatever you might know offhand would be great. I do have a vehicle dynamics engineer at GM that may help out too so if I have some of the basic stuff he can calculate the more complex stuff. Thanks for taking an interest and any help you can provide.

Rich

[TrackBrat]

Very nice, I am really looking forward to this. Curious for car sound files are you using the games generic file or making your own? I have noticed that a sound improvement can go a long way to improving the feel and enjoyment of the car.

[RDeLong]

Hey TrackBrat,

I haven't talked to anyone about sounds yet. That's one area I have little knowledge about. I know several guys that have done some sounds for mods and commercial sims but I haven't talked to them yet.

Thanks for mentioning it actually - it would be a good time to start discussing that. Although he can't do sounds until the final torque curves are disclosed (honda) since they affect how the sounds work. I still need to get my hands on an uprated kent dyno sheet as well - I had one at one time but can't seem to find it (several PC upgrades in past year).

I really want to inlcude both engines but I can't say if I'll have two separate sounds out of the box. Couldn't agree more about how immersive sounds can make a sim experience.

Below: got the wheels/tires mapped tonight - need to update the textures though (used some old ones for placeholder). Goodyears will probaby be default tire with the Hoosiers as an option.

[dc]

Looks awesome, Rich. Can't wait to get my hands on this mod...

[stiner0931]

Would prefer to see Goodyears instead of those Michelins :P

[RDeLong]

Would prefer to see Goodyears instead of those Michelins :P

no need to worry... those are just for placeholder since it's a texture I had done for another project. I'd like to have both Goodyear and Hoosier for the mod. Doing textures for both will be easy but getting physics that represent the tires characteristics will be the trick.

[stiner0931]

Looking great Rich. Is she in game yet?

[RDeLong]

not in game yet. We just had a baby three weeks ago so I haven't been able to do any work on the model. Although I have been getting certain aspects of the physics development done which is something I needed to do before finalizing the model anyway. Once the kid starts sleeping through the night I'll get my life back.

oh... and I also decided to make the panel seams part of the mesh rather than a bump map so that required reworking the model a bit. That's more or less done. Also added the roll-hoop cutout to the body work.

[RDeLong]

just a quick update for those that are wondering. Stayed up last night till 3:30 am so I could do some work on the model.

I got some accurate measurements for the front tire and had to redo that - off by over an inch height wise. Good news is it's very accurate (as well as the rear tire) which will pay dividends for accurate grearing/speeds in game.

Also found a bluerprint for a belly pan online which I was able to check against my model and realized that the front nose (lower frame rail) was to wide by several inches. The rest is looking close enough besides a few minor adjustments to the frame segments.

Will have to rework pretty much the entire body/frame and parts of the cockpit because of the front nose being too wide but it really shouldn't take long as I've saved all my interim steps. Not to mention I've done it so many times now I've memorized every modifier and vertex move. The part that sucks is all the texture mapping that I'll have to redo. Oh well.

Will post some renders when I get the thing together. Feels good to know the model will be an adequate base for the physics soon and I can put it to bed.

[TrackBrat]

Thats fantastic, it's amazing you are going into such detail by mere inches.

[DB4 Tim]

Those are some very cool designs....


You have a PM

[RDeLong]

Thats fantastic, it's amazing you are going into such detail by mere inches.

I suppose it's one of those things that makes it feel more authentic when you drive it in game. Plus, making the illusion flawless is the challenge and fun of it all.

Still searching for a sound guy... seems most of them have moved on or too busy. May have to work with the rTrainer sounds initially.

Got the 6-spoke wheels/tires rebuilt and retextured this morning. Had to redo the rear tire as well - somehow it got slightly out-of-round the first time I did it and it slipped past me. Been burried in baby, bottles and diapers today so hopefully I've earned some time tonight to work on mounting up the pansports with the new tires. Been dying to see those shine. They were the hardest shape so far to do in a reasonable polygon count.

[RDeLong]

pansports freashly mounted. Two colors available. Going to work gettng proper tire textures next and make sure they're mounted in the right direction.

[stiner0931]

Goodyears and/or Hoosiers PLEASE!!!

[Keith Carter]

Wow, looks fantastic!!!

[dc]

I'll have to get Rich a Goodyear and Hoosier logo for the tires.

[RDeLong]

I'll have to get Rich a Goodyear and Hoosier logo for the tires.

Update: Found good reference for the Goodyears Doug... done with front.

Hoosier more or less done... just need to do bump-maps and tweak colors a bit.

[RDeLong]

Quick question:

anyone know offhand what the measured wheelbase is for this car. I'm using 96.2" (I think) but it looks like it can change slightly based on the setup?

[stiner0931]

now THOSE are tires

[Dennis Valet]

That's seriously awesome, great job

[RDeLong]

That's seriously awesome, great job

thanks guys. Just got done with the headers today... look pretty sweet. Will have to post some sceens later.

[iamuwere]

I love the tires. The "overspray" is more than authentic!

[RDeLong]

here's the headers... won't be seen much but they will be seen. Did two textures - basic and chrome w/heat cloth. Still working on the textures a bit.

[Keith Carter]

[RDeLong]

redid the rear end (gearbox, diff & bellhousing) since I did those ages ago before hearing about what rf2 and dx10-11 will support for polygons - added more detail using a blueprint I found online for an mk9. Also made the bellhousing MUCH more accurate. Suprisingly didn't add that many polys - even added the shocks (hidden) with sway bar. The back end is pretty much done besides aligning everthing properly. Going to focus on that narrower front nose now.

[dc]

Holy crap, dude... this is amazing.