Accurate Elevations for France ?

Discussion in 'Tracks' started by r@m, Jun 16, 2017.

  1. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    I'm losing the will to mod, for the last couple of days I've been trying to find a good source for accurate elevations for a street circuit in France.

    I've tried every available source with every available method an none of them come close.

    I'm guessing it's down to the strm or dem data all these services use just not being accurate enough for "exact" elevations.

    Anyway, I'm just going to eyeball it, unless anyone can suggest any better method, I've wasted so much time on this.

    thx
     
  2. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    It can help if you can find some sort of topo map or use the SRTM data to get a few points around the circuit locked down height wise. Then fill in the blanks by eye. If you don't set a few key points and do it all by eye you will likely exaggerate everything. The points you fix will keep you in check. I built Riverside with a 20' topo and old video from the 60s -80s so it can be done with solid results. Just takes a ton of time and trial and error to get it right.
     
  3. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Yeah I've already done that, the closest elevations I found are from elevationmap.net so I have a vague idea what I'm doing, combined with eyeballing it.

    You can also get a reasonable approximation by relaxing the gpx/kml spline in max, it evens out the erratic levels pretty well.

    I also save out a video of the circuit as a sequence of images and map them to a camera plane that's constrained to the track path in Max, it takes a bit of tweaking but you can have a realtime view of the circuit as you work.

    Trial, error, patience and Google :)
     
  4. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    Took me a good 3+ months to be totally happy with the elevations for Riverside.

    Here is a tip I just found recently. It is a modded older version of the kseditor. The cool thing is it can be run from a batch file. So all you need to do export fbx, run batch, load sim.

    https://ascobash.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/kseditor/
     
  5. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    Willy Wale likes this.
  6. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Looks interesting, how stable/reliable is this ? What are the differences between this older version and newer versions?

    Can't seem to find any info on batch processing, are there any examples anywhere ?
     
  7. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    I can't get this to work without crashing, unhandled exception whatever I do, are you sure this is compatible with the latest version of AC?

    EDIT: nm, I got it working after ignoring the installation details from the blog.
     
  8. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    Yeah I just run it in it's own folder and still use the main editor for shader editing. Once a persistence file is saved I'll use the batch files I made as long as no shader changes are needed. Saves quite a few clicks for sure.
     
  9. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    I can't get batch to work, it keeps throwing up null texture errors, also can't seem to set the paths to my tracks folder, I'm currently dropping the fbx in the editor folder which it the only way I can get it to read the file.

    Do you have a working example of a bat file ?
     
  10. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    Code:
    "D:\Kevin Files\Desktop\AC\KsEditorAtx4fab\ksEditorAt.exe" kn5track "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\content\tracks\bridgehampton\bridgehampton.kn5" "D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\assettocorsa\content\tracks\bridgehampton\bridgehampton.fbx"
     
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  11. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Ahh...I forgot the quotes :D bollocks.

    ....cheers I'll give it another shot later.
     
  12. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Yeah it works, pretty cool stuff, thanks for the info dude.

    Now I need to find a way to automate FBX export from Max with a single click, so after edits it's just 2 clicks and I'm ready to roll.

    This is the one I use for UE4 stuff, but there's no option to export the entire selection as a single FBX, they all get saved out as separate files.

    http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/batch-exportimport
     
  13. Pixelchaser

    Pixelchaser Well-Known Member

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    ot/ you ever made a track for ue4 engine r@m ?
     
  14. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Nope, just some Arch Vis stuff and character anims.
     
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  15. Pixelchaser

    Pixelchaser Well-Known Member

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    I think soon, for our favourite racing sims/games we all going to have to learn such engines.
     
  16. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Too much coding for me, it wears you down when it's not your strength, I do meshes and textures ;)
     
  17. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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    Guys there has to be some more accurate way of getting street elevations for Paris/France, this is driving me bloody insane constantly tweaking the roads.

    Do all online sources use the same database ? GPS etc.
     
  18. Pixelchaser

    Pixelchaser Well-Known Member

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    its all the same stuff relatively speaking, and the there is lidar. and lidar is the difference you seek.
     
  19. r@m

    r@m Active Member

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  20. Pixelchaser

    Pixelchaser Well-Known Member

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    they should be pretty good I think, the tech is old now, so even cheap gps must be quite good.

    this is how tracks used to be build. I remember reading about pikes peak for dirt rally. they just made 360 degree images every 100 metres or so. and took it back and made it with that. so I think if you have good photographs and gps, there no reason it wont work out quite well.

    may I ask what you are going to model exactly?

    edit, having looked at that app. id watch out. I cant help think its maybe not what you want. but a gps device in general will help. but a proper one !
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2017
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