ISI's (rFactor) has released many real tracks without any licence, obviously without any kind of official logo.
Monza=Brianza
Shanghai=Jiading
Silverstone=Northamptonshire
Nurburgring=Nurgurg
it's a legal trick i know, but it's feasible... i don't know if it fit to the cars.
As 3d trackmaker and LFS lover, i really hope to use this sim on real track, no matter about pixel shaders or dynamic day/night transitions or rain reflections.
The clue is the how fun is the simdriving of those cars, that is unbeatable. Stock tracks are nicely done and as 3dsmax user i see HOW a track is modeled and shaded, multimaps, a lot of vertex paint that simulates shadows, few 8 bit alphas and a lot of 1 bit alpha, nice modeling on road and kerbs.
Those track are credibles but i hope to...... one day...... spend some time on a track for this sim.
I've started with porting tracks in GTR and i've learned a lot on ISI's engines, and in January we have released the first freely licensed track for rFactor, done by scratch by myself and my mate Madhorse, gathering datas directly from the track managers, they leave us the space to gather reference photos of anything, and supporting us in any way, going around the track freely... and the final product was a hit.
Now i'm on the historic track Rouen for Virtua_LM crew.
Here it is, the track we have done in 5 months in spare time with the good mod of Brazilian Superclio Champ.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30Mb9AkSVhw
The track is here, in .max format ready to migrate, with the track managers approving.
It's perfect for drifting and small single seaters and hosts touring cars championships and Italian F3 Championship and lot of motorbike events.
I really hope on that with S3 .. but we have no hurry.
You guys are fantastic, really, this sim is awesome an deserve a little bit of quality modding in the future, not the mess that i see on rFactor.
Yes.. there are a lot of mods, but sometimes are poor on quality, so a quality check will be a nice chance to get rid of poor material, and at the same time, push the modders to create better material.
LFS need tracks, not cars i think, stock cars are fun and already cover a wide range of sim tastes.
best regards.
Gabriele Bonora AKA elwood.