Ltd: Version 1.0 2009-02-13

The main presentation in on ASW's webboard, but for some more in depth technical questions I prefer to post here:

VW Golf Limited

For sure, this car isn't a rocket, it belongs to somewhere in a group with the New Beetle and the Pimped Audi. The MX-5 appears to be slower, the RX-8 and the S2000 quicker. Maybe the RS500 is a good overall match...

The car as AWD, but not using full time with a central differential but Visco coupling. This means that in normal conditions, when there is no wheel slip, only 5% of the torque go to the rear wheels, so it's basically FWD.
Only if the front wheels rotate faster than the rear, torque is send to the back (theoretically up to 100%).
Of course, we can't simulate that in Redline, so I chose a more conservative 60/40 torque split. Actually, it's 59/40, cause the car accelerates too fast and has a too high top speed.

Apart form that, I'm trying a (for me) new way to deal with the dreaded textures: extra objects just for the stickers and logos. I got that idea when examining models made for other games.

You will see that it doesn't work properly now, the rear logos have a too dark background.

Enough for now. Enjoy. Or not.

Tomte wrote:I chose a more conservative 60/40 torque split. Actually, it's 59/40, cause the car accelerates too fast and has a too high top speed.

Take note that if those numbers don't add up to 100%, you may run into some strange behavior in relation to the differentialLockCoefficient. During the first public releases of my Ford RS200, the wheels.powered added up to 0.9, but then if the differentialLockCoefficient was any higher than 30-40, it seemed like the car only had 50hp! If you don't experience any of those effects, just leave the numbers like they are now. Still, I think you should know about the issue.

C14ru5 wrote:Take note that if those numbers don't add up to 100%, you may run into some strange behavior in relation to the differentialLockCoefficient. During the first public releases of my Ford RS200, the wheels.powered added up to 0.9, but then if the differentialLockCoefficient was any higher than 30-40, it seemed like the car only had 50hp! If you don't experience any of those effects, just leave the numbers like they are now. Still, I think you should know about the issue.

That's good to know, thanks. When I reduced the power output to about 95%, the car accelerated nearly on the mark, but got also much slower in top speed. Some 25 kph were missing.
For now I used a diff lock coefficient of 0.20. It's not that we have bundles of power to deal with here.

love the ride and i know dandy will as well

leoantix wrote:love the ride and i know dandy will as well

did anybody say 'turbo easy'?

Tomte wrote:Apart form that, I'm trying a (for me) new way to deal with the dreaded textures: extra objects just for the stickers and logos. I got that idea when examining models made for other games.

I've done something similar with the Vanquish for the body seams, so that I can have a razor sharp edge on them without either pixelation or splitting otherwise seamless areas of the UV map. It costs a few dozen polys, but I think it's worth it. I plan on trying something similar with the new Corvettes.

You will see that it doesn't work properly now, the rear logos have a too dark background.

Alpha channels the same? texture file type the same?

NoNameBrand wrote:I've done something similar with the Vanquish for the body seams, so that I can have a razor sharp edge on them without either pixelation or splitting otherwise seamless areas of the UV map. It costs a few dozen polys, but I think it's worth it. I plan on trying something similar with the new Corvettes.

Yeah, I modelled the sams on the 190 as well, I thought the poly count was too low without it.

Alpha channels the same? texture file type the same?

It is the same, but the logos are on the same texture as the lights. When I switch alpha on to make the background poly of the VW logo transparent, the lights get transparent as well. That is very visible when the tires are creating smoke.
Maybe I can aviod that by applying the alpha channel selectivly.

Put them on the same texture as the body, and skip the transparency altogether. Multiple objects can be on the same UV map.

NoNameBrand wrote:Put them on the same texture as the body, and skip the transparency altogether. Multiple objects can be on the same UV map.

Or look at it from the other direction. Just because they are on the same texture as something else doesn't mean it has to be the same material as well.

slowDan wrote:

NoNameBrand wrote:Put them on the same texture as the body, and skip the transparency altogether. Multiple objects can be on the same UV map.

Or look at it from the other direction. Just because they are on the same texture as something else doesn't mean it has to be the same material as well.

The advantage of having them on the body texture is that you don't need transparency or extra #1/#2... files to get the body colour right.

As I already wrote to Tomte, this 3D model is gorgeous, and I am very impressed how much details the Redline plugin cars are getting today.

We are in a new "era" for cars, where detail is the main focus in a plugin. Thank you for this car.

Now, I feel the suspension a bit soft, but perhaps, in the '80, they were not using a stiffer one like today.

About sound. I can grab sound from the GT5's Golf R32, but, I think this is not a 1.8 litres engine... Let me know

Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. I think we had some quite detailed models for some time. Believe me, I wanted to include more details on the Golf... (the horizontal line in the metal over the wheel arches, stretching over the length of the car...).

The suspension seems a little soft, I agree (but it works). Gotta see what I can do about it. But this car was not a racer, just a very quick and luxurious Golf. It came with electric windows and such. So it's about 200 kg heavier than a normal GTi. All the videos I can find about the Limited nowadays show cars that are lowered and have stiffer suspensions, so I don't really know.

The Golf R32 is a 6 cylinder 3.2l engine, which should sound noticably different to a 4 cyl.
What I am looking for is a slightly snotty sounding engine, with a certain snarl to it. But not as much as the hooligan sounding engines in old M3's or 190 Evos. They where 50% larger in engine capacity, and you could hear it.

The Americans must think I'm mad speaking like this about small 4 pot engines...

I quite like what I can hear in this clip from about 1:00 onwards:

It has the engine I am looking for (1.8l 16 valve with centrifugal supercharger), but I haven't been able to create a good sounding engine loop out of it.

Back to the handling. I'd like to know what you think of it.

Here is my take: approaching a corner, I can destabilize the car under braking to get the back out. After downshifting to keep the revs up and pointing it into the right direction in a 4 wheel drift, I just power out onto the straight.

This is all great fun, also because it is so controllable. It is how I would imagine a well sorted rallye car would behave.
And herein lies the problem. I wouldn't expect a road going Golf to behave like this.

The thing is that I have hardly any idea what to strife (strive?) for. I guess none of the 70 owners of a Golf Limited ever wanted to find out how this car behaves on at the limit.

What I read is that the car normally understeers, but when you lay on (term?) some throttle it goes neutral around corners.
Testing it on the skidpad does not reveal anything specific, just the normal (for Redline that is) +1g cornering, in line with the 911 CS, S60 or Beetle.

Any recommendations?

we spent a lot of time yesterday with this beauty. In first, the engine sound is too much loud. It need to be reduced.

Also, this Golf fit quite well with the built-in Golf/Audi. A bit faster then the first, and a bit slower then second. Fun car!

DonaemouS wrote:we spent a lot of time yesterday with this beauty. In first, the engine sound is too much loud. It need to be reduced.

Also, this Golf fit quite well with the built-in Golf/Audi. A bit faster then the first, and a bit slower then second. Fun car!

Funny enough, I tested the engine volume in some quickraces until I could distinguish the sound with some cars around. Only in MP racing I found out that I have gone too far.
I will correct this, likely together with a different engine sound. Saying that, if anybody comes across a well fitting example, I open to take it.

Tomte wrote:I quite like what I can hear in this clip from about 1:00 onwards

There are two different types of sounds in that clip.

- Right after 1:00 you have the exhaust sound. For that, you can try some sounds I recorded (3MB) from Forza 2 @ 7000rpm (the pitch really is 105Hz=6250rpm) with three different exhaust types. Not that they're really that different - I think the sound designers just ran the same engine sound through some different equalizer settings.

- The part after 1:30 where you can hear the engine/exhaust from inside the car while accellerating. I could make a decent looping sound out of this, but it's going to sound very muddy/dull if I try to raise the bass information in the audio for the timbre to be what that most listeners would expect from an engine sound. So unless you have a really strong wish for that sound, remember that 'authentic' doesn't necessarily imply 'believable' in sound design. If I were in your shoes, my method would be to carefully try different equalizer settings on the Forza sound to mimic the in-car sound in the clip, instead of trying to give the authentic sound a believable character.

C14ru5 wrote:

Tomte wrote:I quite like what I can hear in this clip from about 1:00 onwards

- Right after 1:00 you have the exhaust sound. For that, you can try some sounds I recorded (3MB) from Forza 2 @ 7000rpm (the pitch really is 105Hz=6250rpm) with three different exhaust types.

If I were in your shoes, my method would be to carefully try different equalizer settings on the Forza sound to mimic the in-car sound in the clip, instead of trying to give the authentic sound a believable character.

Thanks a lot, this is really helpful.
I finally managed to extract a roughly looped sound form another video, but your files sound somewhat better. I will probably go with these.

Version 1.0 is out in the first post or over at ASW.

Thanks to all involved, C14ru5, ValK and Don. And all of you who commented!

To get back to the engine sound, I captured something off youtube of a G60 supercharged GTi 16V, which wasn't half bad, but sounded too dull in Redline. Probably because it was recorded in-car, as C14ru5 predicted.

So I grabbed one of the three sounds C14ru5 extracted from Forza and mixed that with the youtube clip, changing the pitch so that both sounds match in rpm. Without that it sounded like having 2 engines in the car.

The matching was actually quite easy, I just compared the mountains and valleys (or however this is called) of both clips in Amadeus Pro and changed the pitch of one of these until the gap between 2 repeating mountains of both clips was constant over the whole period. Adjusting volume -> stereo to mono, done.
That might be old news for the more experienced of you, but I learned something.

I pushed the decals and logos back to the body material (from the lights material), which made the whole transparency/alpha/environmental settings issue easier.

Ok, I bored you long enough.

now, the suspensions works better then first release. But I feel a strange behavior under braking. The car become heavily understeery. Perhaps is right, cause this front engine awd old Golf, has a front CoG.

What I absolutely love is the engine. You did an incredible work on it.

You're right, it brakes a bit like some of thomm's cars. I mean that the car wants to straighten/go straight when braking.

I have to see if I'm gonna do something about this.
Glad you like the engine sound, I wasn't sure about it until the end.