Time Trial League - Rd 1 - Sakhir

I was really honoured to be asked to be involved in a Time Trial League with my friends at F1 Virtual. I may not have time to enter every round, but I hope to enter as many as I can. The first round was in Sakhir, Bahrain just before the real GP. Prblanco has done a new dat file based on the 2020 circuit, and it's excellent. We are all using the base game performance, power and physics with only basic setup changes allowed (wing angles, brake bias and gear ratios) and starting with 10 laps of fuel.

For me, I've been doing a fair bit of time-trialing on Real Racing 3, a mobile game which features 2019 and 2020 F1 cars, and I am usually just about in the top 0.5% tier range, albeit upwards of 0.5 seconds from the ultimate pace depending on the track. But Real Racing 3 has it's own quirks that you learn to use to your advantage, particularly with kerbs and track limits which can be liberally used if you know where they are.

But for GP4, I've been modding so much, I don't actually get too much time to actually play it, let alone try and perfect my laps. And generally if you touch a kerb in GP4, you are sent spinning off. My starting point was to do a fair few laps on the keyboard. It was very much to set a base line, as I know I can get a pretty reasonable lap out of the keyboard. Driving on the keyboard is very much dependent on how good a cc-line is for a given track, and Prblanco is a master at it, so no real issues there. However, there are a few parts that are tricky. 

Braking through turn 9 and hitting the apex in turn 10 is not easy, you have to be quite precise to get the best line through there. You can lose an awful lot of time there with the slightest error. And then into turn 13 is also difficult, again  you need to be precise to carry as much speed through without running wide. With that I was able to set a time of 1:33.844. I was pretty pleased with the lap, I was aiming for a sub 1:34 time, but I knew that Gildoorf had set a time, also on keyboard, of 1:33.694, so I was a little disappointed not to match it. 

Next up was an attempt on the wheel. There are certain advantages to using a wheel and there are certain tracks where it takes seconds off your time, but I found on this track at least, that it was about the same as using the keyboard. But maybe that's my inexperience at using a wheel on GP4. I only had a few hours and though I got close, I only actually beat my keyboard time once, by 2 tenths with a 1:33.653. Amazingly, it was just a whisker ahead of Gildoorfs time, so I was really pleased with that. 

And that's how things stood, and Carl has put together a great video with all our laps in a grid. It's a really good way to analyse corner by corner where your strengths and weaknesses are. 

The first thing to notice at the end of the first straight is that we are running different wing levels, with 32bobo32 and gildoorf running the most downforce and therefore slower at the end of the straight (this will be crucial later) and Carl running the lowest wing angle. 

Coming out of turns 1,2 and 3, it's 32bobo32 who has a slight lead just ahead of me and Gildoorf. Down the straight into turn 4, and it's 32bobo32 leading with me, Prblanco and Kerley close behind. Into turn 4, and there's a bump on the inside of the corner in the dat, but I felt I could compensate for it on the wheel and take the tightest line. Coming to the first sector line and it's close:

1. Fongu - 27.026
2. Gildoorf - 27.051
3. 32bobo32 - 27.064
4. Prblanco - 27.159
5. Kerley - 27.376
6. Carl - 27.615

Turns 5, 6 and 7 are neck and neck between the top 4. Everyone hits the apex at turn 8, with Gildoorf making the most of his extra downforce and taking a wide exit with an extra 6-8 kph. Everyone manages turn 10 very well, although I carry a bit too much speed and run a little wide and Carl catches up to the pack. 

Gildoorf is first to turn 11 and carries a lot of speed around the corner, but one of the advantages of the wheel is that I can have greater steering angle and carry a bit more speed in, though it does scrub off with too much angle, which is what happens to Carl. 

Running order at Sector 2:

1. Gildoorf - 1:07.506
2. Fongu - 1:07.653
3. 32bobo32 - 1:07.850
4. Prblanco - 1:08.388
5. Carl - 1:09.035
6. Kerley - 1:11.172

Coming out of the turn 13 and its a two horse race at the front with Gildoorf ahead of me. Coming out of the final corner, and Gildoorf is franctionally ahead of me with 32bobo32 not too far behind. Prblanco and Carl are also very close together whilst Kerley also takes the final corner cleanly. If you were to pause the video around 1:38 where the real start finish line is, you'll see that it is dead even between Gildoorf and me, but crucially, I'm travelling an extra 3kph faster with my lower wing angle. When we cross the line, I'm running 5kph faster which gave me a the smallest of victory margins, out dragging Gildoorf to the finish line having come out the final corner clearly behind. 

Final Lap Times: 

1. Fongu - 1:33.658
2. Gildoorf - 1:33.694
3. 32bobo32 - 1:34.088
4. Prblanco - 1:35.286
5. Carl_gpgames 1:35.440
6. Kerleyf1 - 1:38.456

Incredibly close racing, I enjoyed it immensely, and super happy with the result and the last gasp victory. 

GP4: 2021 Aston Martin Livery (on RP20 shape) lower lods added

I wasn't intending to put much effort into this car, yet I'm on the third update! Glad for the feedback, but I really must concentrate on new work like the actual 2021 shape😄. 

Anyway, I've added lower lods to the package. I personally only run the main lods, so I've not tested these, but they should be OK. 

V1.3 is available on the same links as before: 

Tidying up my blog

In recent weeks, I've done a bit of tidying up of my blog. It was a bit of a mess, and I thought I would try and make it a bit easier to navigate and to find things, particularly my GP4 work. 

The highlights will be along the bar at the top, with a direct link to my downloads. The structure is largely the same as below:

• mods (mostly compiled by others and mostly where there are parts of my work included), 
• cars (where I've been involved in) which includes a link to a page dedicated to 1994 cars and, 
• helmets & pitcrews and other miscellaneous work. 

I've also started a list of 2021 downloads for GP4 until a full mod is released. It's not always easy to know where to find GP4 downloads, so I thought I would compile this list as I put them in my game. 

These links are also down the left side menu where there is a bit more space. 

About ads and donations

All my work is released for free for you to use, and I'm always happy to collaborate and help with conversions to other formats, just ask. 

I'm not the only one who has fell foul of having my work sold with no credit and no royalties coming back to me. 

So I'm sorry for the AdFly links, they are a way for me to generate a small amount of revenue back, though I always provide direct mirror links. This blog, though it too has ads, is nowhere near the threshold for me to actually earn anything off it yet. So there's a link to donate direct to me as a sign of your appreciation. 

About Models

By the way, apologies for the lack of updates on the model side of things. I've all but stopped collecting models now, partly down to the prices and the lack of interest in the trading market, and partly down to Brexit meaning postage has shot up to Europe. I now only keep a few models in my own personal collection. I may return to it one day, but right now I am concentrating on my GP4 work. 

GP4: 2021 Aston Martin Livery (on RP20 shape) updated again!

Apologies for the need for another update, but there was an issue with the mirrors, which is now fixed. I've also taken the opportunity to update the logos on the mirrors and a slight tweak to the top of the cockpit. 

V1.2 is available on the same links as before: 

GP4: 2021 Aston Martin Livery (on RP20 shape) updated

Just a quick update on the previously release 2021 Aston Martin livery on the 2020 RP20 car. It's just some changes to the rear wing: replaced Cognizant on the rear of the upper rear wing to Aston Martin, removed the pink and added the lime green accent. I've also touched up the front with carbon tipped leading edges. 

I've also included my full 2021 Lance Stroll helmet released last week too. 

Also a quick note on the package itself, even though I've been using 4096x4096 textures, I wasn't happy with the loss in conversion to the GP4 tex format (with this and the 1994 cars), so recently I've been using a different texture mode which reduces the loss. However, this makes the file size very large. So I've included the usual format (std DXT5) and the lossless format (Hi) - choose to install one or the other. 

V1.1 is available on the same links as before: 

GP4: Lance Stroll 2021 Aston Martin Helmet

As I had started to make this helmet, now that there are official shots of the lid, I thought I would complete it. Here's Lance Stroll's 2021 Aston Martin liveried helmet.  

Other than adding the extra logos, I've tweaked the alpha channels and the chrome reflections. 

GP4: 2021 Aston Martin Livery (on RP20 shape) download by Fongu

This is the 2020 Racing Point RP20 car with the 2021 Aston Martin livery from the launch and shakedown. This is a light version of the 2020 Racing Point car shape. There is much to do on the shape to bring it to the AMR21 shape, so you can enjoy this livery update until I have time to complete those changes.

The package includes a very quick change of colours to Lance Strolls and Sebastian Vettel’s helmets. There’s not enough pictures of the real thing to do any meaningful work on them, but at least they look OK from a distance. 

 

GP4: 2021 Aston Martin AMR21 - which green to choose?

With the return of Aston Martin and British Racing Green, I couldn't resist taking on the AMR21. The AMR21 has a number of changes to the monocoque, the sidepod inlet and side protection is much more like the 2020 Mercedes, as well as the Mercedes rear suspension and rear crash structure, so it will take some time to shape that. 

But before I do that, I couldn't help but throw a quick livery onto the RP20, but what green? Green is one of those colours that's difficult to get right, I don't know why, I remember it was the case with the Jaguar cars back in the day. The problem is really in the range of shading, and how it looks when rendered in game with the lighting engine. 

The team have not gone for a matte livery, but quite a shiny one, so I've had to adapt the alpha channel for the right level of reflection. Plus in GP4, there's a range of things that affect reflections;
i) whether you run static environment maps or dynamic (real time reflections) which make the cars more shiny,
ii) which track you are running, as they all have slightly different light settings,
iii) whether the track you are running has a sky dome, which combined with dynamic environment maps is very powerful, and then finally,
iv) the level of grey in your alpha channel (the whiter the shinier).
So for my experiment, I've chosen to run with the shiniest track, with dynamic environment maps, and a fairly middle grey. 

So here's the team logo with the Aston Martin Green underneath taken from their website. 

And if I place that colour straight onto the car (with no shadings etc) this is what the car looks like. 

As you can see, it's quite bright. If you compare that with a shot from the Silverstone filming day (considering it was a rainy grey and dark day) it just doesn't look right. 

So I've experimented with a couple of darker greens, which makes it a bit more blue. GP4's reflections seem to work best when the base colour on your texture is darker, allowing for the ingame lights to do their job. I deliberately left the logos with the original green just so I could compare the difference. 

And this is what it looks like in-game. As you can see, the green in the texture is not what you see in the game. I think it's a lot closer, though more tweaking is required to make it a little less blue. I also need to consider the dark swooshes that need to be visible, so I can't make the main green too dark either. 

Let me know what you think. 

GP4: Gezere's 2020 Alpha Tauri AT01 Texture Update

Well it's been a bumper week of downloads from me. When taking screenshots of the Gasly helmet, I thought I could do a tweak to the textures on the Alpha Tauri. It was a quick edit of the alpha channels to change the reflection on the dark blue, which is matte in real life, with the white parts of the car the classic shiny/reflective gloss. So I've tried to replicate in this little update. 

This is just a tweak to the work done by Gezere, and season updates by Gap177 and the pack only includes the textures.

GP4: 2020 Pierre Gasly Emilia Romagna GP Helmet (Senna tribute)

Well being such a nerd for the 1994 season, it would have been wrong for me not to remake this helmet, worn at Imola at the so-called Emilia Romagna GP by Pierre Gasly in his Alpha Tauri.

The yellow is iconic, and the view from the front in unmistakably Senna's iconic helmet look, particularly with the Honda logo on the visor. The Alpha Tauri logos look nice, albeit a bit too intrusive on the main design, but it's nice to have matte blue against the rest of the helmet which is classically shiny. 

There's tributes on the back to lives lost, to Ayrton Senna, to Jules Bianchi and to Anthione Hubert (maybe Roland Ratzenberger was missed because he doesn't have a fancy logo). Anyway, a lovely tribute to drivers lost doing what they loved.

Download

GP4: 2020 Lando Norris 2020 British GP Helmet

Looks like I'm in helmet mode right now. 

Here's what I thought was going to be quite a simple cut and paste job, but I think this is what cutting and pasting as a 6 year old looks like. Actually the helmet took a little bit of touching up, but I think it's pretty close to the real lid. 

Lando Norris decided to enter a each GP with a new helmet design and for the British GP, he held a competition to design one for him. The competition was won by 6 year old Eva Muttrum, and was an instant hit. 

Download

GP4: 2020 Haas Updated Liveries by Fongu & Excalibur

I wanted to update the liveries for the 2020 Haas painted by Excalibur as they were painted just before the start of the season, so this is just a small update to bring it up to date really. 

The changes are mostly very subtle. 

1. I've darkened the white a little, the reason being that I've added the white border on the nose. 
2. I've combined the front wing liveries from the launch and Barcelona test liveries. 
3. I've lightened the black stripes on the alpha channels, just to make them stand out a bit more. 
4. I've added the #WeRaceAsOne logo on the rear wing endplates. 

New default livery (Grosjean & Magnussen):

I've also added updated the livery for the final two GPs, with Pietro Fittipaldi jumping in the car for the Sakhir GP after Romain's horrific crash the previous week. 

And for the final round at Abu Dhabi, it was the Haas 100th GP, so I've added the 100GPs logo onto the nose and the airbox. 

A big thank you to Arnaud for his part in this project. 

Here's the link: 

Pre-season:

2020 season package: