Rockingham將至

[lemans]

Dear LFS Racers,

The time has come to tell you a bit about something else we have been
working on. We had planned to announce this nearer the release date,
but a demonstration version of Rockingham was spotted in a special
version of Live for Speed, at the real Rockingham race track during the
BTCC weekend.


The story


The opportunity to get access to Rockingham and permission to develop it for LFS came in 2008, through our contact at V1 Championship.
It was clear to us that it would be very good for LFS to have a real
track. It was a great help to us that the track is located not too far
away in England, so we took the decision to go for it. Rockingham is an
interesting track with several configurations inside a four sided oval.




Laser scanning

After considering various ways to try and recreate an accurate version
of the real thing, we realised that laser scanning was the best method.
Laser scanning produces millions of points in 3d space, so we can then
build a track to line up as accurately as possible with the laser
scanning data, which is said to have an accuracy of around 2 cm. We
discussed this with apr services
in London, and were impressed by their systems including the fact that
the 3d points can also have a colour, created by matching the scanning
data with a photograph. We were pleased to ask apr to obtain and
process the data. Scans were taken from several points around the track
so that all areas were seen by the scanner and camera. This was later
combined into a single set of data which we imported into the LFS track
editor. Here are some pictures of the laser scanning data.




Development

We visited Rockingham to have a drive around, get a video of the track
and take several photos. Eric also went back on another occasion to get
some more photos of some missing details. We think the result looks
very good, not quite finished yet but we're getting there. Using the
track also gives us some more real reference data to help improve the
accuracy of the LFS physics.




License

One important thing we must mention is that to access Rockingham in
LFS, users will need an S3 license. We have added the BMW Sauber F1.06
to the S2 license and will be releasing the VW Scirocco for the S1
license as free updates. We realised that at some point we need to move
onto the S3 license and it would be better for the community to be able
to start using S3 content sooner rather than later. The current plan is
to also include another car in the initial content of the S3 license.



We cannot yet give a release date estimate. We want to get Rockingham
to you sooner rather than later, but we don't know what will come up
between now and when it is ready for release.


We hope you like the screenshots and we look forward to releasing LFS's first real race track!

總算LFS有真實的賽道,但究竟何時推出呢?