12.02.2022 Category: Site news
VIRTUAL RC RACING – THE INSIDE STORY
Episode 6: Virtual v3 Graphics
The idea was to create an r/c racing sim with realistic looking tracks and cars, but how on earth were we going to achieve that? For cars we at least had the reference material available in Serpent, the 1:8 nitro Serpent 950, and the Serpent 733 200mm nitro chassis to start with. The 1:10 and 1:12 electric on-road chassis were of a later concern. It was just a matter of sending the cars to someone who could model them in 3D, right? But who?
In an earlier episode I already revealed how I got in touch with Tony West from the UK but worked from Spain. It was through our physics ‘doc’ Todd Wasson that I was introduced to Tony. Tony and his twin brother Chris were working on a full-scale racing sim called Racing Legends, with sixties and seventies F1 cars. When I saw the first images (renders) of what Tony had already modelled for their own sim I was flabbergasted. It was simply beyond my imagination that Tony could be interested at all to offer his exceptional 3D modelling skills to a small and insignificant project as Virtual RC Racing. Except for Lothar and myself, Tony and the others in VRC v3 development, had probably never seen any serious r/c racing cars, tracks, or races. And remember, Virtual RC Racing was just an idea, nothing to show other than pictures of our Serpent products and videos of some race events. And would Tony be able to fit the work for VRC in with his own project? And how should Tony deliver the content so it could be used in VRC v3?
Game architecture
As the ‘game architect’ and lead programmer, Lothar Pantel was the central figure in the VRC v3 project. Based on my written concept for VRC v3, Lothar had designed a ‘master plan’ how this could be realized. The game architecture brings everything together, it’s the ‘overall plan’ so to say, and all parts must somehow be integrated seamlessly to become a functional game:
- Game structure and logic
- Game platform
- Graphical user interface (GUI)
- 3D Graphics engine
- Physics engine
- Replay and Dual-player mode
- Members and database
- Website integration
As this episode is about the graphics it is important to understand that 3D graphics hardware were at quite an early stage of development and had very limited performance but at least was able to efficiently render 3D content at a good enough frame rate to give the player a good sense of realism. For me the most obvious platform to release VRC on was the PC and more specific Windows 95 and later NT. Yes, there were already Xbox and Play Station game consoles, but I didn’t think these platforms were really suitable for a niche game like VRC. It also excluded the Apple Mac. I still think it was the right choice given the very limited scope, expertise, and budget we had for VRC.
We needed a 3D graphics engine to produce at least 30 frames per second on a 1280x720 screen (very much the standard in those days). You cannot compare the 3D graphics of those days with the current standard but the 3D graphics engine that Lothar had developed was doing the job and could even do some dynamic shadowing! Wowww… Unlike several years later there were no ‘out-of-the-box’ and affordable 3D graphics engines available in those days!
Tony was doing all his 3D modeling in 3D Max (by Autodesk), the graphics standard back then and probably still today. It was very much between Lothar and Tony how Tony’s 3D content could be integrated in the game architecture and the graphics engine. Much of this was totally beyond me as I had absolutely zero knowledge in this field. All I knew was that we needed a car and a track so Todd could start testing his physics engine a.s.a.p.
Chassis
After some long discussions Tony agreed to give it a go, let’s see how far we would get with VRC! Apparently, Tony could fit it in with work for Racing Legends because he was able to produce 3D content at a much faster rate than his brother Chris could with the software development. So, we sent over the Serpent 950 chassis, a Lexan body, engine etc. to Tony so he could make a start modeling a complete chassis. As we had nothing to view the 3D work in (there was no game yet…) Tony sent me ‘renders’ of what he had created. A render is a high-resolution image created by the 3D software. When Tony sent me the first renders of the Serpent 950 chassis with the clear Lexan body on it, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Of course, that hi-res output was not what we were going to see in the VRC v3 game, but it showed amazing realism, and enormous potential for VRC!
v3 Tracks
One of the first tracks we did for VRC v3 was the MACH track in Heemstede, obviously. The track was just around the corner of Serpent, and where I live, was the test track for Serpent, and we had gathered a lot of datalogger data on that track. On a side note, I had designed the MACH track back in 1980, so was excited to have ‘my’ track featured in VRC v3. (The only other track I have ever designed was the 20212 IFMAR Worlds 1:12 track in Heemstede which we have featured in VRC Pro, more on that track later).
Tony had explained to me how he models and textures a track. In short, the 3D model is what most of you know as a ‘wireframe’. In reality, a wireframe consists of thousands of polygons or triangles which make up the entire surface of the track and the surrounding. The 3D model is then ‘covered’ with textures. The textures can have all sort of properties like reflection, receive or cast shadows, etc. to create a real-world visual experience for the player. How realistic the visual experience is, depends on the quality of the 3D artwork, the capabilities of 3D graphics hardware and the features of the 3D engine. With Tony we had won the lottery!
For the 3D model (wireframe) Tony needed of course the exact dimensions of a track, including camber angles of corners and track elevations. That was a matter of measuring, and although done with quite primitive means (no laser scanning yet…) I was able to give Tony quite accurate input so he could create the 3D model of the track itself, and of the infield and the outfield. For the textures I had to take pictures of all the track details like the track surfaces (often quite a few), of the grass infield and outfield, the drivers stand, the pit area, the fencing, the buildings, anything that was present on the track itself and that could be seen from the track. I also had to take pictures standing on the drivers-rostrum so Tony could create a 360-degree horizon. Going back and forwards with Tony on what exactly he needed I learned a lot for all the other tracks we did from then on. Most tracks for VRC were done by me while I was there for Worlds or Euro events. I started collecting track reference material du8ring the 2001 IFMAR Worlds in Sydney Australia, 2002 and 2003 IFMAR Worlds in Cincinnati, US, 2005 IFMAR Worlds in Messina and at EFRA EC’s in Oslo (2001), Amstetten (2002), Fiorano (2003) and Luxembourg (2004), Lostallo (2007)
I can imagine how odd it must have looked for the r/c racers present at these tracks when I was taking my measurements and pictures… The exact lay-out of quite a few tracks was found on Google Earth believe it or not! In the beginning it wasn’t all that easy to get permission from clubs and track owners to feature their track in VRC v3 as we had nothing to show, but that changed once it became clear that VRC v3 was going to be a serious r/c racing sim!
The very first track Tony created for v3 was the Oslo track, I took a lot of reference photos at the 2001 EC but the complimentary reference material’ was provided by a member of the Oslo club, Svein-Harald Ytternes. Apparently, my instructions to Svein-Harald were good enough for him to produce a great set of reference material, measurements, and more pictures. When we first came to see the OSLO track in VRC we were all hyped up, so much realism, is it really going to happen then?
Special memories about Kissimmee…
One track I did I remember very well: Kissimmee. I am not sure when exactly, probably in 2003 or 2004, I went over to the US to visit our Miami office and had planned to visit the Kissimmee track in the Orlando area, about a 3-hour drive. I arrived at the track, totally abandoned of course, just a parking lot with a drivers stand and a fencing around it. After I was finished with taking pictures and measurements, I remembered that I passed an old war museum called ‘War Birds’ with aircrafts and helicopters, and a sign that you could book a 30-minute tour with a helicopter. I went there, booked a ‘tour’ and 10 minutes later we were hovering in an old Bell helicopter (like used in the Vietnam war) to the helicopter take-off area. It was actually a very smooth ride, much to my surprise, had expected it to be very shaky and rough. The track was almost next to this small airfield and a few minutes later we were flying over the Kissimmee track, and I could take all the overall-layout shots I needed, perfect view with that glass dome cockpit. It was the best one hundred dollar spent on VRC: best r/c track layout pictures ever taken!
As I said before, most v3 tracks I visited myself, even the Japanese tracks. More on these Japanese tracks when I let you in on the Kyosho connection with the VRC.
Track physics
When we had the Heemstede track modeled and integrated in the prototype game we soon found out that there was more to it than a good 3D model. Especially the banked corners created issues, the car could be offset by irregularities in the polygon mesh. Todd developed a special ‘smoothing’ algorithm to smooth out these irregularities so the car would not jump of the track or suddenly hit off into the air. Another 2-3 months of development gone by to tackle this problem… This smoothing algorithm is applied every time a track is loaded, in v3 and as of today, in VRC Pro. Except for off-road tracks where such irregularities are of course by purpose!
Track maps
Of course, you not only want to drive on a track, but you also want to practice and race and have your car turn-marshalled after a crash and make sure you don’t cut corners and gain time! Lothar had already developed the concept of a ‘segment map’ for the earlier versions of VRC to control this and this concept has been continued for v3 and VRC Pro. The idea of the segment map is that the track lay-out is a sequence of segments, each with its own color ID, the car must pass each segment in the right sequence, if it skips a segment, it means that you have skipped part of a track, i.e. probably cut a corner. If that happens you are warned to activate the virtual ‘turn marshal’ who then puts you back in the previous segment, else the lap will not be counted.
Lothar, Todd and Tony also developed such an ‘underlaying’ map to control grip level, for instance more grip on the ideal line and less toward the outside of a corner, and a special ‘grass map’ to identify grass areas on asphalt tracks so the cars with foam tires experience very different behavior when they end up in the grass. Additional maps were added when we started developing VRC Pro, I will discuss these when we get to VRC Pro.
More pieces of the VRC v3 puzzle were completed. How it was all put together by lead programmer Lothar Pantel is next.
Comments
Only active members can post comments
(Total posts: 3)
|
Giovanni F. D
|
I read this like a succes story of such a Steve Jobs, MarK Zuckerberg and Bill Gates with the same amount of passion and more as I was impressed by rc in my childhood before computers and it is something deep… some will say nothing to compare with this niche project exept one thing, there is no other one like this
|
|
Pieter BFounder
|
will do a pdf-book like version with many pictures.
It's a lot of work but need to do it before all this history fades away into oblivion, also for me. I think VRC as a project is seen as a professional game development project, but from this story you can learn that that it was more a 'coincidence' that it ever happened and done by people who had zero understanding of creating a game. And VRC is a very complex game as all of you start understanding after reading this story... We have done things that nobody else in our industry would have been able to do, and I doubt even a professional game studio would have achieved the same realism as we have with VRC. Very proud when looking back on all this!
|
|
Jose M MModerator
|
It is getting more and more interesting.
This story is worthy of being reflected in a book.
|
