Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

...(work in progress) Z06...

We love you!

BuddhaBing, try carfactory with real values and you should find out that it gives lot better results than trying to put suspension arms somewhere where they look like to be in real thing.

It is almost pointless to try to make mod behave without real data, it is almost same as insteading of using linux from console you would code your own apps for ls and cd blindfolded.

When you can have suspension to act closely like it does in real deal it does not matter at all what it will look like. We do simulate suspension and wheel motion, we don't need to care from anything else if we look realism of car handling.

I'm sorry if this was already asked before but I have some problems running this game. I've installed, ran it, set everything, press on single race....and the PC freeezes....I've changed graphics to the lowest, including shaders but still no luck. Race runs finely on my PC(even tho its ancient...)

Any tips?

How do I turn off auto clutch?

I want to use the brake pedal as the clutch with my DFP, but the car will use the clutch whether i do it or not.

BMW M3 Challenge\UserData\Dennis\Dennis.PLR and find a line saying Auto Clutch="1" (of course, change that to 0 to put it off)

that also disables autoblip and cut.

Quote from deggis :

BMW M3 Challenge\UserData\Dennis\Dennis.PLR and find a line saying Auto Clutch="1" (of course, change that to 0 to put it off)

that also disables autoblip and cut.

Woot, thanks! I wonder why they don't put that in options.

Why break a habit of a lifetime. Over 8000 out of 8006 options available in text files are not in the menu screens. This ensures that everyone plays the same piece of ISI crap every time.

Unfortunately, they reckoned without people who fiddle, and find these options. That means that 11 people know how to turn IS games from a steaming pile of manure into just a nasty smell. However, there are so many internet posts on the matter(s) that normal people (in which I include myself) have no idea what the best way to set a single one of them up is.

For the G25 alone there are over 502302011 suggested configurations of ini/ply file settings, none of which are any good (I've tried every one I can find).

Which leads to the obvious solution - they are crap because they are... crap. ISI/Gmotor1/2/3/3/4/4/5/23/431241243124 need to be scrapped and turned into socks. But even then the socks would have holes in them.

Having said all of this, BMW M3 Thingy is marginally better than GTR2, and slightly worse than RealFeeled, CarFactoried rFactor. Which isn't saying much as they all use the same stupid excuse of a physics engine!

Speaking of carFactory, I've completely rewritten the physics for the rFactor version of this mod using Kangaloosh's carFactory and as much real data as I have been able to glean from various sources. There was still quite a bit of guesswork and best estimates needed but the end result is pretty good I think.

To give you some idea of how the performance of the reworked mod stacks up against the real thing, here's how the numbers compare to the road test that Car & Driver did in their September 2007 issue.


[edit: download links to out of date versions removed. See later posts for most recent download links].

The download includes all of the required model, sound, physics and related files and also includes an rFm entry so adding the mod to rFactor is relatively straightforward. Installation instructions are included in the readme.

If you're looking for a new carFactory car, give this one a try. It works very nicely with RealFeel and throwing one of these things around the Nordschleife is a hoot.

Feedback, criticism and other comments welcome. I intend to keep on tweaking the performance of the car to more closely match the real thing. Any links to sources of technical information about the car would be appreciated.

Have fun!

Any chance of a different download link? Megaupload is bowl of crap.

Pretty please

Downloading, will post how it feels!

Downloaded at a steady 200kb/s, not bad.

Definately not bad for a freebie, enough has already been said about its physics, but I find them acceptable, definately good enough to have some fun times with. Does feel a lot like the new Race demo, which isn't a bad thing IMO. Feedback isn't anywhere near the level of LFS though, doesn't really tell you anything when the tyres start slipping.

deggis, thanks for the post on how to turn the auto-clutch off

Looks like it isn't able to load materials...was it wrong to delete the old conversion?
A texture for a material and 2 "global materials" are missing...

Fabri, what are the names of the missing textures?

I'll make screenshots tomorrow of the error message, now i'm not able to.

Quote from BuddhaBing :

Speaking of carFactory, I've completely rewritten the physics for the rFactor version of this mod using Kangaloosh's carFactory ....

How do you feel about carfactory made physics vs physics you made first manually?

I remember when I first time tested carfactory and realfeel in mod making and it was really big jaw drop, even I had perfectly measured suspension and even I had done my best to get it work right, it was no where near what car factory made

I tested then to make rF3 again with some guestimates and that transformed to really fun car to drive around too, however not too realistic probably, but dull boring car got life with it, something amazing, like magic, as I don't understand all of it

Quote from JTbo :

How do you feel about carfactory made physics vs physics you made first manually?

They certainly feel believable to me and I hope others agree. Whether they're accurate, I can't say for certain. The car's performance in-game compares pretty well with real-world test data but that data is quite limited in scope. There's no hard data available to measure things like steering weight, ride comfort, tendency for the back-end to come around and so on which give a car its own character so I just read reviewer's impressions about how the car handles and tried to reproduce that behaviour in-game by tweaking.

Many of the parameters carFactory needs are fairly obscure and therefore hard to come by so a lot of them were arrived at by taking best guesses based on theory, examining comparable cars or by reverse-engineering Blimey's M3 physics files.

One thing that has become very clear is that the quality of the track and especially the track surface has an enormous impact on how the car feels. If you take two roughly similar tracks with the same type of corners, elevation changes etc, on one the car can feel completely dead and uninteresting and yet on the other it springs to life and is a pleasure to throw around. Testing the M3, I found that the following tracks have a nice driving feel:

Varano
OLDRing
Nordschleife 2007 (though some parts are quite bad)
VLM Le Mans (again, some parts are better than others)
Toban
Goldenport

I've just uploaded a new version of the M3 mod for rFactor. The new version includes fixes for some issues with the AI, a proper driver model in external view, a revised rFm and the folder structure has been streamlined and cleaned up. It should also resolve the missing texture problem that Fabri91 reported earlier. This new version of the mod also has renamed classes, categories, veh files and folder names to prevent clashes with other conversions of the M3 Challenge content into rFactor.

The newest version can be downloaded from:
[edit: download links to out of date versions removed. See later posts for most recent download links].


If you downloaded the previous version of the mod yesterday, I recommend removing the older version before installing this one. To remove the old version, delete the following from your main rFactor folder:

GameData\Sounds\BMW_E92_M3
GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3
GameData\rFm (I put this folder in the wrong location when it was first released)
rFm\2008_BMW_E92_M3.rfm (if it exists)
rFm\2008_BMW_E92_M3.tga (if it exists)

If you have any comments or questions or want to provide feedback about the mod, post them here.

Have fun!

Did you up the centre of gravity? 50cm from the ground is a good bet for a performance car, though the M3 might be a bit higher even; thats guessing..

It is the ride height value + the entered cog height (i.e. something like 0.12 + 0.38).

Should make a difference as well, lots more weight transfer

Some quick damage for car. Loosing bumper not possible etc, would need to split model to separate objects to make that happen and I'm not going to do that, too much work, new mapping etc needed when you take for example mirrors apart from main body object.

Damage is rather copy-paste operation of v300, some things changed, would need lot of testing and tuning to get it good, but at least there is start for someone to play with.

If you like to use it with BuddhaBing's version rename file to BMW_E92_M3_damage.ini

I have yet to test BuddhaBing's version, tested only .pm of it so far and it was at least ton better, one suggestion when I checked files, get rid of undertray, front and rear wings and car will feel lot more like road car, there is just too much downforce with default wings at least, also springs look to be quite soft, but can't say nothing from them without testing the car, I would believe that such car might have bit stiffer wheel rate?

Quote from Niels Heusinkveld :

Did you up the centre of gravity?

Nope, carFactory indicated a CGHeight=0.1852 and this is what I've used. This did look low to me so I tried plugging in a higher value - I think it was 0.29 or thereabouts - to see how it would respond. The car's behaviour with the higher CGHeight value was very strange. It rolled over at even the slightest nudge from another car or just brushing a kerb - funny but completely unrealistic - so I shrugged my shoulders, decided that carFactory must have generated that number for a reason and stayed with it.

Quote from JTbo :

...also springs look to be quite soft...

Spring and damper rates were generated by carFactory using ride frequencies of 1.5Hz in the front and 1.65Hz in the rear. These are reasonable ride frequency values for a sporty road car.

In fact, I haven't changed any of the values generated by carFactory apart from the mass and inertia of the wheel and spindles in the PM file. All of my post-carFactory tweaks have been to the tyres, the clutch and drivetrain, brakes, steering, bumpstop rates and things like toe-in, caster and other setup params.

I haven't actually used carfactory for springs and dampers, so can't say much to how well it does it's job there, I use for v300 mod values I measured and calculated from real suspension parts and thought that these must be enough close and never bothered even trying carfactory for them

Quote from JTbo :

Some quick damage for car. ... would need lot of testing and tuning to get it good ...

I'll say. Here's what it did to my driver.

http://i12.tinypic.com/6feqema.jpg

I guess his spine and neck vertebrae must have collapsed after going over one too many big bumps at the Nordschleife!

What sort of cornering G force does it pull? If its 1.2+ it will have a fall over tendency indeed.. The C6 with the semi slicks (1.07G) can already be flipped if you hit a kerb in some (very) unlucky way..

The skidpad is a nice test track (see rfactor central) though you'd have to disable the bumps in the main terrain.tdf to make it flat and the readouts stable.

I suppose the M3 pulls some 0.95G perhaps? dunno really..

Quote from BuddhaBing :

I've just uploaded a new version of the M3 mod for rFactor. The new version includes fixes for some issues with the AI, a proper driver model in external view, a revised rFm and the folder structure has been streamlined and cleaned up. It should also resolve the missing texture problem that Fabri91 reported earlier. This new version of the mod also has renamed classes, categories, veh files and folder names to prevent clashes with other conversions of the M3 Challenge content into rFactor.

The new version can be downloaded from:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WUPB5G20
http://rapidshare.com/files/57 ... W_E92_M3_rFactor.zip.html

The zip contains a readme with installation instructions.

If you downloaded the previous version of the mod yesterday, I recommend removing the older version before installing this one. To remove the old version, delete the following from your main rFactor folder:

GameData\Sounds\BMW_E92_M3
GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3
GameData\rFm (I put this folder in the wrong location when it was first released)
rFm\2008_BMW_E92_M3.rfm (if it exists)
rFm\2008_BMW_E92_M3.tga (if it exists)

If you have any comments or questions or want to provide feedback about the mod, post them here.

Have fun!

Thx very much.
How can i remove the very first version of the car, named "BMW_M3"?

I should be able to provide lateral G, "auto" tested it against the hippo-ish S5.

EDIT: still have that error, only with the M3 E92:


Missing texture and material...couldn't make screenshot of the material missing error because it freezed...

Quote from Fabri91 :

Thx very much.
How can i remove the very first version of the car, named "BMW_M3"?

Delete the following:

GameData\Sounds\BMW_M3
GameData\Vehicles\BMW_M3
rFm\BMW_M3.rfm (if it exists)
rFm\BMW_M3.bik(if it exists)
rFm\BMW_M3.tga(if it exists)
UIData\BMW_M3_UIData

Quote from Fabri :

I should be able to provide lateral G, "auto" tested it against the hippo-ish S5.

That would be excellent!

Quote from Fabri :

EDIT: still have that error, only with the M3 E92:
Missing texture and material...couldn't make screenshot of the material missing error because it freezed...

Very strange. That texture is missing from the MAS file but I don't get that error message no matter what graphics settings I use. I wonder if it has to do with your graphics settings? Can you please show a screenshot of your in-game graphics settings and your rFConfig settings, as shown in the two screengrabs below:
http://i6.tinypic.com/682r583.jpg
http://i14.tinypic.com/5zbggzm.jpg

I'd really like to track down the root cause of this problem. In the meantime, the missing texture file is attached. Put it in the GameData\Vehicles\BMW_E92_M3_2008 folder.