hello fellow racers, hope you are all fine, making babies and drinking good wine. as for this thread, I am reviving it, but before I do that I have to say that there was little to no progress since my last post in this thread, I was busy doing other stuff and did not find time or motivation to continue doing it, sry but it's hard truth...it's been around 7 years since suggestion, imagine that wow. and since than, lot has changed. for example I've learned couple other 3D software that opened some doors for me which was closed before(we will get into it later)...in LFS, mods has been added, which sparked idea in me that even if "Nordschleife" can not be added officially due to bureaucracy, fees of simply lacking proper 3D models, it can be added as Mod as Map. imagine, if we can add cars, maybe down the line LFS will give us feature to be able users to add Tracks as well. this, this can be it where we shine, I hope so anyways. and it is crucial for me because in order me to improve map over time, I need to test drive on it. with methods I use, I simply can not make it perfect inside 3D software alone, I need testing ground, with cars driving on it. reporting, suggesting from users, so on...that is my motivation now, and I decided to restart making it, and I did.
now, shall we began?
I switched 3D software and start research from scratch, just verify and refresh my memory. surprise surprise, old project was crap, curves I pulled from wiki was complete garbage and height map I had, was not aligned properly on track. so I start hard labor and pulling images from google map, stitching them together until I had whole track perfectly aligned and start tracing road.
after I had whole track traced, than I used height map(best I could find in whole interweb) to make basic elevation changes. I spend lot of time and brain to properly align track on map, not as easy as someone might think, tricky, but I think I aligned it good for now.
and yes, we have elevation for whole surroundings as well
Next I pulled onboard video and used it to fine tune every turn, elevations, banking, curb locations, terrain overally, etc u name it. I have now video that it attached on camera in 3D that follows my road exacly as video goes, basicly I can see every part of the track am modeling in oboard video.
Next, I start adding details and pulled some drone video over famous turn "Karussell" and used new soft I learn to reconstruct correct 3D model of it(technique I used is Photogrammetry and it can be very accurate, just as accurate as Laser scanning if you have good footage), door I was talking about
so, after many hours this is what it looks like at this moment. it is overall basic shape.
I am trying to be as accurate as I can be, using every pictures and videos I can find, any sort of date. all this new work has been done in matter of week, in my spare time. so far I have desire to continue working on it and will see as time goes. any feedback would be greatly appreciated, or if u have some sources of good pictures/video I can use.
I will keep posting updates as soon as I will have some noticeable progress, let the old gods and new gods be with us. cheers