GP4: 1994 Williams FW16B Renault Australian GP Version download

Here it is, the first release of the 1994 Williams FW16B in Australian GP configuration.

As the main car uses every available polygon allowed in GP4, I've created lower lods. If you run a lower end machine, you can rename the lod_1 or lod_3 car to lod_0 to get better performance. 

I've also included a range of different sized textures, again to help you run it on a lower end machine. With the Extra-High resolution, the main texture is 4096x4096 in size, which is the same for my other 1994 cars. 

The texture pack includes a David Coulthard's car, with the white number 2 on the nose. 

Most of all, I hope you enjoy this release. Here's the link and some screenshots.

Download

For more information about this car, and a my build diary of sorts, you can find articles here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/search/label/FW16B

GP4: 1994 Williams FW16B Renault WIP update 6

I was looking back and I can't believe it's been a year to the day since my last update on this Williams. Well with a couple of smaller tweaks, I finally learned to use Photoshop and I can now paint my own cars again, which gives some motivation to mapping. The first fruits of that was the 1994 Ligier JS39B, released a few weeks back, and now it's time for the Williams FW16B. I'm still far from the best painter, shaping is still my strength I feel, but it's better than the cars having none at all. 

There's still a fair bit of work still to do on the car, but I thought I would give an update nevertheless as the bulk of the livery is done. What's quite deceptive is that a lot of the TV and photos of the time gave the impressions that the cars were quite dark, whereas they were deliberately painted quite bright to be noticed. I went down to Donington museum just before it closed, and it had one of these Williams cars on display, in Australian GP spec, and the colours were quite vibrant. Transferring that direct onto this car however made it look wrong - especially as there are some bright tracks in GP4. So it wasn't the most straight forward to choose the right palette. 

The other thing about GP4 is that although it had quite a good reflections engine, with the sky domes being added to custom tracks, it makes the cars super shiny. Testing between various tracks gave vastly different results. As I haven't tweaked the alpha layer yet (the part that manages the strength of reflections in GP4) I picked Mid-Ohio as a place for these screenshots, a mix of lovely high resolution textures and barely any reflections and shininess. 

My other issue is that I'm right on the polygon limit that GP4 allows, there's actually a bit of detail I had to leave out of the shape in order to get it to run in-game. So it does mean that whilst my model contains various onboard cameras and a couple of other nice parts, I'll have to make a decision on what the final in-game release spec will feature. 

For the time being, enjoy the screenshots, I'll release the Australian GP spec car as soon as it is ready, whilst I busily work on the other versions of the car. 

GP4: 1994 Williams FW16B Renault WIP update 5

Well, I think I'm finished with the Williams FW16B based on the Australian GP in terms of shaping now, so just to update you on the last couple of changes I've made. 

I've updated the top part of my old 2D seatbelt, and made it much thicker, as it had quite a bit of padding around the shoulder area. Back when the cockpits were more exposed and you could see more of the driver, I felt it deserved something a bit more substantial, fitted around my driver figure. 

I mentioned last time about the inside of the sidepod without taking a screenshot where you can see it, so here it is. I took quite a lot of photos of the car when it was still at the Donington Park museum just before it closed, and it revealed to me this unconventional layout.

As I mentioned last time, I've completely reworked the rear of the engine cover. There's quite a few changes in gradient, some gentle humps, and it's not easy to see when a lot of it is white. If you look at photos, the Renault logo is slightly distorted as the engine cover is shrink wrapped around the internals. I think if I was to start this area again, I could get it to look a bit smoother, but this looks OK to me.

Finally, you can see a slightly different angle of the rear of the engine cover. I've added a fuel cap, on the right hand side of the car for the Australian GP, and you can see the extinguisher handle.

So that's it, after almost a year, the car is complete and here's some final shots of the car. This is by far the most detailed shape I've created to date, and there were areas where I held back a bit (just so that it will run in GP4). I would add the camera in front of the cockpit and a coil to fit behind the steering wheel, but I personally am not going to miss them. I'd also redo the mirrors, but these ones will suffice for now. Anyway, I hope you like it and I hope you enjoyed the journey with me. Drop my a line if you want to contribute to me making my 3D cars.

Now I have a back log of cars to map before I get too tempted to start my next car.

GP4: 1994 Williams FW16B Renault WIP update 4

I've been quite busy over the past few months, but I've been doing little bits here and there on the Williams FW16B. There's still a fair bit left to do, but it's coming together quite nicely.

Not too much has changed from the front view, other than adding some onboard cameras, the mirrors have been slightly tweaked, and some work has been done on the inside of the sidepod. 

Taking off the nose cone and and you can see I've added quite a bit of detail onto the front of the monocoque. For GP4, this will have to be cut down in detail, but I quite enjoyed fitting some detail into this section of the car.

I've finished the barge boards, the number of supports seem a bit overkill to me, it was just more for me to model. 

A lot of work has been done on the cockpit and I've tried to keep it as accurate as possible. I've thrown a bit more polygons than my other 1994 cars to date, and I think it will look quite good when properly painted up. I aim to redo the seatbelts to better fit around my new driver body (from the 1995 Ferrari 412T2).

I've added the hole at the top of the rollover bar, and also added a small hole just behind the onboard camera, and on the other side, it's got the fire extinguisher hoop. Renault engined customers ran these extra inlets at the rear of the engine cover, and this carried over to the 1995 cars too. I still aim to redo the area around the rear light, it's going to be one of the last things I do on this car.

The rear suspension is complete. There's a lot less elements due to the unique rear suspension concept ran on the FW16B, where the top wishbones and the driveshaft are all encased in a wing- shaped cover.  This lowered the whole rear of the car, allowing them to run the unique anhedral lower rear wing. I've also added some body lines onto the sidepod. The rear end plate has been tweaked slightly since the last update.

Moving to the rear of the car and that's a lot more complete now. With the McLaren and Ligier, I already increased the detail around the gearbox area, but I went a little further with this car as there were clearer pictures to work from. You can see how it all integrates with the rear suspension, and you can see the exhaust on the bottom of the diffuser.

Here you can see the detail I've put in on how the rear suspension is mounted onto the gearbox casing and a selection of wires and detail have been added. Unfortunately all the detail comes at a cost and it pushes this car over the allowable polygon limit allowed for GP4, which is just over 65,000 polygons. I'm surprised I reached it so quickly, but I have been a bit more liberal with my polygon use on the detailed regions, whilst the car itself is fairly economical, certainly compared to models being created for more modern games.

1/43 Model Review: 1997 McLaren MP4/12 Mercedes

Background

McLaren kept the Mercedes engine for the third year, and the combination of Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard for a second year. The biggest change was the livery, having lost Marlboro sponsorship, the cars were no longer the distinctive red and white  for the past 23 years, but in recognition of their relationship with Mercedes ran a silver livery with West sponsorship. The team ran in traditional McLaren Orange before the livery launch. The car was very promising, but the unreliability of the Mercedes motor masked their potential. Hakkinen retired from leading positions on three occasions and Coulthard suffered the same fate in Canada.

Coulthard started the year with a race win, the second of career, and the first for McLaren since 1993. Coulthard was able to convert another race victory at the emotional Italian GP, dedicating his victory to Princess Diana's death the previous week.

The car was found to have two brake pedals for brake steering after a photographer snook a camera into the cockpit at the end of the season. The technology was soon banned, but was put in the MP4/12C road car which featured many of the F1 cars technology. Hakkinen finally won his first Grand Prix at the finale in Jerez, after coming to an agreement with Williams who was nursing a damaged Villeneuve after Schumacher tried to take him out.

Minichamps

Minichamps 530974390

Minichamps 530974310

I remember back in 1997 when one of my friends was on a family holiday in London at the same time that Mika Hakkinen was doing a signing session at the Alex Reade model shop and he bought this model and was able to get Hakkinen to sign it, I was obviously well jealous. Anyway, the model comes in the new silver race livery, which Minichamps have done a great job with, and also the pre-season orange livery. The model is a good representation of the car, no real complaints from me. I particularly like how they integrated the sidepod into the winglet and onto the rear endplate.
As with other McLaren cars, the main car is available in Mercedes box and also in Team McLaren editions.

Score: 7/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK237

Tameo TMK238

Tameo have likewise produced a pre-season orange version as well as the race car. This high end model is superior to the budget diecast Minichamps model, featuring much more detailed modelling, finer details. It's nice they have made an effort around the fuel cap opening, all the cameras on the car and the rear end is just beautifully modelled. My only tiny nitpick would be the lack of body lines around the cockpit head protection. Otherwise this model is pretty much perfect to me.
Score: 9/10

GP4: McLaren MP4/19B - Monza spec update

Back in 2004, GP4 was blessed to have many more modders and there were at least two versions of every car, and plenty of people to make track specific updates. One that was missed was the Monza specific car of the McLaren MP4/19. 

This is the car made by Wai who was a leading modeler at the time, and the early season car was painted by Bojan, again another leading painter in the community. McLaren heavily updated their car mid-season, and the B spec version of the car was updated by Wai, and the textures updated by another talented painter Ross Hunter, who I was working with on various things at the time.

One thing I love creating are noses and wings, I don't know why, but they're quite quick for me to do, so with a few hours free one evening, I was able to do a quick update. 

So the nose is done from scratch, but I had to keep the same low poly structure, otherwise it would look completely out of place. The wings themselves I could be a little more liberal with the polygon usage, but I ended up keeping it a fairly low poly philosophy.

The wider nose would be adopted permanently for the 2005 car, but it only appeared once in 2004. The tip of the nose is quite round on the top surface, transitioning to a flat surface when the nose cone joins the monocoque. Although it's not immediately obvious, but I have added the hole on the tip of the nose. The front wing supports were quite tricky to get right, as it's angled in many ways, and it took a few attempts to get it right, particularly as there were not a huge amount of photos to go off.

The only thing I have not really had time to get right was the blending of the normals. Wai used to use a technique with low poly normals, where as I would do an extra row of polygons to rectify today. Basically, he would create the nose shape, but he would delete the joining row of polygons, so that you're left with a flat row on the top of the nose, and flat row on the side of the nose. He would calculate the normals and then join the rows without re-calculating the normals. Because my nose adds an additional row to get the curvature (and time) I haven't put that last bit of effort into blend the normals with the monocoque.

The low downforce rear wing was quite straight forward, there were no curves to worry about, so that was quite quick and easy to do.

The car is mapped, but I've not done anything to amend the textures, but you can download the shape on this link:

1/43 Model Review: 1999 World Champion Mika Hakkinen (McLaren MP4/14 Mercedes)

Background

In 1999, Adrian Newey and the McLaren team produced another competitive car with refined aerodynamics from the previous contender and a powerful Mercedes engine. They had the best car, with the car almost completely overhauled from the almost dominant MP4/13. Whilst the 1998 car was smooth and sleek, the MP4/14 looked more aggressive. However reliablity, and driver errors hampered what should have been an easy championship for them. After Schumacher broke his leg at Silverstone half way through the year, Hakkinen was left fending off Irvine in the Ferrari and Frentzen in the Jordan for the championship. He spun at San Marino, Germany and Italy, where he was filmed weeping behind some trees. But 5 wins, including an impressive win fending off Schumacher in Suzuka, and another 5 podiums would secure the Finn his second Drivers' World Championship, but the Constructors' title would go to Ferrari.

This season for McLaren was a bit of an enigma. Somehow, Schumacher was able to claw his way into the 1998 championship which was decided at the last race, when McLaren should have walked away with it. If there were signs of frailty in reliability in 1998, they were worse in 1999. It wasn't until the fifth round that both McLarens made it to the end. Hakkinen also made errors, crashing out of the lead in San Marino and in Italy. Schumacher would have taken the Championship had he not had a brake failure that lead to his leg injuries keeping him out for most of the season. But McLaren made hard work of it, struggling to see off the threat of Irvine's Ferrari (who was still well off Schumacher's pace) and even Frentzen's Jordan (a midfield car for crying out loud!). Coming into the final race of the season, it was Irvine who was leading the championship.

Minichamps

Minichamps 530994301

The initial version released was part of the McLaren Collection. The shape is OK, but I don't think it quite captures the car as well as the 1998 MP4/13. To me, it just doesn't quite look as aggressive as the real car and I suppose that's down to the finer details. But the car is still of reasonable quality as you'd expect from Minichamps.

Minichamps 402989901

The car that comes with the MP4/13 two-car set comes with a livery from later in the season, which I personally prefer. The car is the same though.

Minichamps 436990001

For the World Champions Collection version, we get an updated livery and decals, but I have to admit that I prefer the original. If you look at the sidepod in particular, the blending of the silver into the black is too clean for me. I also prefer the red on the nose from the previous model. But the updated driver figure decals are a nice touch.
Score: 7/10

Formula 1 Car Collection / Ixo

This is not a great model in my opinion. The textures are really not good at all. The nose and monocoque section is not too bad, but the sidepod opening is too wide, the airbox way too big, and the upper rear wing element seems huge, or maybe it's just the size of the Mika decal. And on this version, everything seems to be slanted forward, like it's going to fall over nose first.
Score: 5/10

RBA

The RBA car is very similar to the IXO one, but there are enough differences to conclude they are different models. I don't think RBA have done a particularly good job with their other models, but I actually think this one isn't bad at all, and I prefer it over the Ixo car, both in terms of the overall shape and the detail on the decals. It's not Minichamps standard, but it's still not a bad model.
Score: 6/10

Tameo

Tameo TMK276

This Tameo version is based on the Spanish GP. This model is truly stunning, and what I missed from the diecast Minichamps car is all included in this Tameo offering. Once again the details on this car are fantastic. 

Score: 9/10

GP4: 1996 McLaren MP4/11 walkaround part 3

This is the third installment of my McLaren MP4/11 walkaround of the GP4 car originally created by Eugenio Faria and completed by me, painted by Celinho with help from Soulbringer and Quickslick.
After Hakkinen's huge accident at Adelaide in the final Grand Prix weekend of 1995, thankfully the Finn was able to take part in the 1996 season, losing none of his speed. The accident brought Mika and Ron Dennis closer together, with Coulthard claiming that Mika garnered favourable support due to their closer relationship, in part due to the accident in Adelaide.

You can see the bodylines go past some interesting curves around the car, all of which takes time to do and get right. I added the very small fin at the top of the rollover bar, something similar to the shark fins of recent years. Eugenio did some good work on the smooth radiator outlet at the rear of the sidepod, I simply resized it to match the proportions of the real car. The winglets from the rear wing are also nicely done.

You can see how the winglet is attached to the engine cover, whilst the rest of the endplate is attached to the rear wing assembly. The rear suspension and diffuser area was all added by me.

Here is a clearer shot of the rear of the car with the diffuser. The side fences of the diffuser are quite high, ensuring the air from the rear of the coke bottle shape is not disturbed by the opening for the insides of the car.

The car has a relatively simple internals, with the radiators, airbox, engine and cylinders/exhaust and rear suspension elements. The standard texture mapping means the engine is still a Renault albeit mirrored. You can see a non-textured version below:

So that's it, the 1996 McLaren MP4/11 for GP4 done. You can find this car as part of the GP4 1996 mod and converted in other games.

You can compare the car against the 1/43 model here: https://fongugp4.blogspot.com/2019/03/143-model-review-1996-mclaren-mp411.html