GP4: 1994 Mod v4.3

It's almost exactly a year ago I last released an update to the 1994 mod, and today I'm pleased to share with you the next update. Back in 2018, I returned to Grand Prix 4 editing by working on the Ferrari 412 T1B. Seven years later, and I'm still working on this mod. There's so much new content included in this update, but yet there's still so much I intend to do. I hope that with each release, you feel a significant step forward in the mod and that is no less true with the latest release, Version 4.3 of the 1994 mod. 

This release is themed around the Pacific GP team, as it is one of the headline new cars included in this update of the mod. 

New & Updated Cars

1994 Pacific PR01

For this update, I'm proud to present to you the Pacific PR01. As is my modus operandi for this mod, I'm creating the Australian GP versions first, and so this release includes the generally forgotten low-nose car. Unlike some of the other cars I work on in GP4, I spend a lot of extra time trying to get the details right on my 1994 cars , and that takes much longer, so my release rate for 1994 cars is about one a year right now, though this car began several years ago as the project stuttered slowly in the background amongst my other creations. 

During my research, when trying to find good photos where they don't exist, I end up pouring over endless videos that show some of the parts of the car not seen on the photos, mainly around the rear end. Among these videos is a fascinating Top Gear feature from the beginning of the season where Keith Wiggins was saying his car could challenge for the top 6. 

To be fair, their main competition that year was the other new team, Simtek. Unlike Simtek, Pacific have a proven track record in the lower categories, and whilst both lacked the budget, Pacific had one more ace up its sleave. It had a Adrian Reynard F1 designed car. Back in the late 80s and 90s, Reynard was an ultra successful single seater chassis maker and had success in F3 and F3000. It's the same Adrian Reynard that BAR hired as a consultant, and based on Adrian's success, boasted they may be able to win their first race in F1. In fairness, for 1994, Reynard did just that when his car won on its Indycar debut.

The thing was, this Reynard designed car was from 1991, and wasn't quite ready enough to make the 1992 season. In fact, Pacific were not the first people to use this design, but Benetton who hired Rory Byrne and Pat Symonds from Reynard and brought the designs with them. So in reality, Reynard's car was developed and used by two teams in 1994, one that was ultra developed in the Benetton B194 and was the class of the field, and then there was this under-developed Pacific PR01, and they were comfortably the slowest car on the grid. Pacific didn't really have use of a wind tunnel, and so had to go for 'best-guess' aerodynamics based off these unfinished designs they had bought, and they struggled a lot with the nose of the car, that lead to them trying out a nose-cone using duct tape, before settling for a conventional low nose design. If you listen to Keith Wiggins' interview with Eurosport for the European GP where the nose debuted, it was created in the hope it would do better and bring stability to the car, not because of any proper research or testing, such was the difficulty in finding funding and expertise. 

The car was powered by an Ilmor engine that was two years old, and significantly under-powered by 1994 standards. 

Yep, this was the 1990s and Pacific was one of the last of this age of amateur, under-funded teams that brought about the pre-qualifying era of F1. From 1996, F1 would get serious with the 107% qualifying rule where the slowest cars would have to qualify within 7% of the pole time, and F1 got a whole more professional and safe. 

With 26 grid limit, the Pacific team would have to out-qualify the Simteks to make it to the race. Gachot managed it in Brazil, and inheritted a place on the grid in Imola following Ratzenberger's tragic accident. At Monaco, both Saubers withdrew after Wendlinger's life-changing accident in practice, and Williams and Simtek both ran one car out of respect for the fallen. In Spain, Sauber only entered one car, and Simtek's Andrea Montermini had a horrific accident in practice, breaking both his ankles. In Canada, Simtek once again, entered only one car. So basically, bar the opening race, Pacific only made it to the grid under mitigating circumstances, rather than merit, and never once made it to the finish of the race if it did. After Canada, neither Pacific troubled the back of the grid. 

It's any wonder that I would spend as much time as I did on this car, considering it's track (or lack of) record. Despite the lack of funding and resources, there are parts of the car, like the rear suspension cover area, that changed almost every race towards the end of the year, so picking one version with enough photos or videos was challenging. But the main body of the car was created reasonably quickly, but I lost motivation to continue working on this car several times, and in the end it took me nearly 3 years of on-off development to finish it, slowly chipping away at various details each time. I had to take some inspiration from the Benetton B192 and look for some junior Reynard cars to understand some of the architecture underneath the skin, even though I've modelled only a small part of the rear end internals.

In the end, I'm happy with how the car turned out, it looks just as detailed as the other cars I've worked on for the 1994 season and I've tried to make the external parts as smooth as I can whilst trying to stay within GP4 polygon limits. It may not be a car that you choose as your eleventh team often, but I hope you enjoy it for the times it does appear. 

In this release, a new high-nose version of this car appears from Hungary through to Portugal, when they changed the rear end. The low-nose cars first appears at the European GP at Jerez, which they used to the end of the season. 

Lotus 109 Updated

Thanks to Quickslick for some logo updates that I've applied to the car, including the new Shionogi logo from the French GP onwards, and a missing Elite logo at the British GP on the rear of the sidepod. 

Thanks also to David Marques from the F1C community for some new rear wings for the Lotus. This includes the version with winglets first tested, but not used, at the Portuguese GP, but eventually used at the Australian GP. He's also created a low downforce rear wing for the German and Italian rounds. 

Thanks to both for their help. 

Ligier JS39 Updated

Thanks to Quickslick again for an updated Gitanes Blondes logo, which I had used for the helmet update. Now the cars from the Spanish GP onwards have been updated with the more accurate logo. 

Sauber C13 Updated

Thanks to Matty from the Automobilista modding scene who got in touch about conversion of the cars of this mod, which I was glad to share. I'm glad the cars look good in other games, I'm all for that. He sent me some updates he had made for the Sauber, which includes the sidepod flip ups and an updated diffuser. 

It is my plan, in the fullness of time, to rework every car on the 1994 grid, so these updates serve as an interim edition. There were some compatibility issues with the late season Tissot liveries, and some alpha livery bugs, so I've tidied them up for this release. The French and British GP now have their correct rear wings, and there's two shape variants for the interim Sauber with updated from Matty, the standard update, and the Hungary rear wing that had additional elements. 

Track Specific Updates

All cars now have low downforce rear wing configurations at Hockenheim and at Monza. 

The Minardi M194 by Loren has a few new rear wing configurations. 

I've also updated my McLaren MP4/9 (Spanish GP onwards), Williams FW16B (German GP onwards) and Ferrari 412T1B (French GP onwards) with track specific versions. 

As you can see, there's loads of car updates in this update, the track specific versions are starting to come together nicely. 

Helmets

I was hoping that the last update would have all the Arai helmets completed, but I ran out of time. However, I am glad to say I have all new Arai helmets for Barrichello, Schiatarella and Noda. 

For the handful of races that Herbert and Zanardi ran the Arai helmet, they are also remade and included in this mod, but for the other races, I've chosed to use Öggo's Rheos helmet. 

There was a mistake in Olivier Panis' helmet for the non-tobacco races, so that's been fixed in this version. 

Tweaks and bug fixes

External Steering Wheels

I first added team-specific external steering wheels quite early on in the mod's development, but now I've revised them a bit. I've standardised the wheel size, and I've updated the gloves to be team-dependent as well. Due to the limitations of GP4, your selected driver in the CSM menu will load the updated wheel and gloves in to the game. 

I've also changed the way the mod handles the arm colours, preferring to update them via GPxPatch performance files rather than through Tweaker. Tweaker did not always load the correct colour arms for the Team 11 selection, where as changing the way it is loaded has made the loading of them much more reliable. It also allowed me to change the arm colours for the Larrousse drivers for the Kronenburg races in the early season. 

Physics

I noticed that CSM was not loading the physics properly in v4.2, so that is now fixed. I tried to work on the physics, based on some data shared to me by Dahie (formerly of CTDP), however there's still some bugs to iron out of that. I've not had great success in editing physics in GP4 and I'm learning to work within its boundaries. I was hoping to be able to delve back into GP2 and find some values that I could put in, but the physics editor from the older game doesn't really have any cross over with GP4 physics file. I tried to use the torque data, but that also caused issues, so more work needed here. 

However, I did receive some updated physics from jcgrj, and they are also included in this release. So there are three options for physics, choose the set of physics you like best in the CSM menu. 

Slipstream

I've spent some time working on slipstream values. I took into account the heights of tracks from sea level, general humidity values, as well as some basic variances between the drag produced by different cars and with some AI help, I was able to create some variance from team-to-team and track-to-track of the relative dirty air each car produces. In reality the differences are small, but it was nice to experiment a little with this feature. 

Pitstop Tweaks

I have also tweaked the pitstop times from the data I could find from 1994 and made them a bit more realistic. 

Another bug fix is the pit lane speed limits were not working track-to-track. The first three races did not have a speed limit, so I've set it pretty high. They then had a a couple of races at 50kph before upping that to 80kph for the rest of the season. The track specific element in Tweaker was not working for me, so now it is managed via CSM. 

Direct X

As with some of my other mods released last year, if you choose the Dx8 option, it will load an updated dll file by gplaps that fixes the z buffer bug that causes distant objects to flicker. This works great for tracks, particularly crowds in the stands, but not so much for clipping on cars. You can still choose to use the Dx9 option by crosire, which I've found is more friendly with newer graphics cards, enables 3D sound effects and allows GPxPatch to run with all cores with much less crashing. So it's up to you to decide which you would like to use. 

Mirror Options

Another feature in this mod that is available in my other recently released mods is the ability to choose to show your own car in the mirrors. I don't know why the rear wheel flickers if you do this, but I like this feature anyway. 

Transparent Visor Tweak

Thanks again to Öggo for bringing out the fix for coloured visors. This mod simply removes the coloured visors hard-coded into the game for the Arrows and Minardi drivers. I did also alter the shade of the visor and the transparency, it's subtle, but I think its more realistic now. 

Engine Sounds Updated

Thanks also goes to jcgrj for creating more engine sounds compatible with my mods. This update sees new and improved Benetton sounds. 

Hi-res Menu Fonts

Once more, Öggo was able to allow high resolution fonts in the menus. Thanks to Carl_gpgames for the upscaled GP4 fonts. 

Some New Video Backgrounds

You will notice that the first intro video has been updated by me. 

Thanks to Trevor Sports for supplying me with an AI upscaled BBC intro along with a nice, era-appropriate end card. 

I've also updated one of the main menu backgrounds for the in-game menu. 

HD Tyre Treads

You can tell who I worked with a lot on this mod! Thanks to Öggo for helping me upscale Alesi_fan's (Ulf) tyre treads. I tweaked the alpha layers manually to hopefully give a more realistic effect. 

HD Internal Visors

I have updated the internal visors in HD and added a few more track specific ones, and made the loading of them a bit more robust than before. 

Miscellaneous Fixes

There were some other bug fixes, namely the Belgian flag was incorrect on the pitboard, and there was a missing CSM preview, both of which have now been fixed. The team 11 loading is a bit more consistent after a few tweaks. 

DLL injection & Individual Meshes & Textures tweak

Thanks so much, again, to Öggo (and Carl_gpgames) for their work on the Individual Meshes and Textures dll. Whilst this works fantastic through Carl_gpgames GP4 Memory Access, now we've been able to implement it into a CSM Mod. 

Updated Zaz Tools

Please note you will need to install Öggo's updated version of Zaz Tools. This get's around a bug where if you have GP4 installed in C:\Program Files (x86)\... CSM would ignore the brackets. This simply creates a junction and updates your Zaz Tools to use this new target link to find the GP4.exe. 

This install will also add csmprocess file back into Zaz Tools that was missing in more recent versions, as this is vital for the dll injection to function. 

The will fix, for some of you, the mods that have batch files that run on starting or exiting the game, namely the IMSA v2.0 Random mod, the IMSA vs WEC mod (and variants) and the 2021 and 2022 mod, to name a few. 

CSM Tweaks

This means that the team-specific 3D rims and driver specific helmets are now controlled by this rather than by the patch.ini. Whilst the effect is the same, it is easier to manage via this new method. 

Mirrored Treads Fix

It also means that the 3D tyre treads are no longer mirrored as they were previously, which is particularly noticeable in the wet. This looks great with, as mentioned earlier, the new HD treads. 

Internal & External Cockpit Visor

There's a better internal cockpit visor now, thanks to this dll and being able to tweak the transpency an colour. 

Unrelated to the dll, but fits here, the external cockpit visors have been optomised a little. 

Driver specific Internal Cockpits

New to this mod, we now have team specific internal cockpits. Sadly this does not include the dashboard objects and it also does not include team specific steering wheels. But despite that, this is massive progress and this is the first CSM mod to showcase this working. 

To go along with this, I've created internal cockpits for each team, and I've remade the readout displays and AI upscaled. At the moment, this is more proof of concept than refined. A few years ago I had started creating team-specific dash boards, and tagging on the internal cockpits from the created cars, some had more love in this area than others. So I hope to be able to standardise the quality on these in the next update. 

If you do select a driver in the CSM menu, then that team's dash objects will work properly, but due to the current limitations, it will not load too well on other cars, or if you use the generic dash. 

Car specific Collision Meshes

Also available with this mod is the ability to have collision files for each specific car. Thanks to Öggo's collision meshes editor, I was able to create them quite quickly for each team. 

1994 Track Pack updated by Gap177

With new cars and many textures and parts upgraded to HD, the old track pack was not a fitting playground for these cars. I'm so pleased to have finally been able to get permission from Gap177 to share his HD upgrades of Plodekk & Cleberpister's updates. These are massive improvements to the originals, and is the icing on the cake of this immense update.

As you can see, purely from the length of this post, this is a massive update. 

This update brings ground breaking new modding abilities, which fits right into my ethos for this mod where I am striving to edit every possible area and seeking the highest quality for GP4. As always, I hope to bring some of these new capabilities through to other mods that I work on. 

This mod is also growing incredibly huge, so I've taken the tough decision to make this a high end only mod. That means there are no lower-resolution textures options and there are no lower lods anymore. I've also stripped out the basic mod, as there has been very little chang from v4.2 if that is your preferred mode, so if this affects you, sorry, you can always still enjoy and play the previous version. 

A massive thanks to my all the authors involved in making this mod, especially the patience of Öggo and my million and one requests, questions and testing. 

Installation Notes

You need to download this latest version of Zaz Tools, as well as GPxPatch, essential tools for your GP4. 

You will need to install this add-on to CSM (Car Set Manager), which basically adds CSMProcess.exe which was present in older versions, but has been missing in the more recent releases. The installer also offers the option to fix a common problem by creating a junction for those whose GP4 is installed in Program Files (x86). These are all vital steps to allow CSM to inject the dll. 

NEW CSM addon - CSM Process [add Zaz Tools\csmprocess.exe to your anti-virus exceptions]

Then you need to download each part below. Install the CSM mod first, then the updates (in no particular order). You need every part installed.

CSM mod
Essential CSM update part 1
Essential CSM update part 2
Essential CSM update part 3
Essential CSM update part 4
New 1994 Hi res Trackpack

Be sure to check and change the mod's configurables in CSM before running the mod. 

Have a look at previous blog entries and articles about the 1994 season and mod. 

Happy racing.