Porsches Complete

I ended up doing seven Porsches. You can't do a Group C collection of cars without a batch of 962C's. At this point in the championship Porsche had pulled out as an offical factory entry. However, as was the practice with the 917's, when the factory left, privateers took over as a quasi-factory entry. During the championship season the "short-tailed", as I called it, increasingly replaced the traditional "long-tailed", finned standard 962C. That model was still used at LeMans, probably for the areo characteristics. The model itself is predominatley an exisiting model, as I have noted previously, I merely rebuilt the rear end, then made some minor changes to accomadate some of the variance in the design. At this point various teams began to rebuild the standard 962C, mixing new parts with the standard Porsche parts. From what I understand it was mainly to stiffen what was a too flexiable chassis. I have tried to capture some of the main variations.

Joest Porsche Racing

You could probably consider Joest Racing as the unoffical factory entry for the 962C. They have a long history with Porsche and it continues today with Audi. Figure out that relationship and it would be interesting. There are three cars included in the set I have developed. The numbers 7, 8 and 9 cars in the famous Blaupunkt livery. These cars are all essentially the same with small variation in the colouring of mirrors, sun shades and some decals as was the practise within teams. It should also be noted that even between races there were variations in the livery even on the same car. In fact there are minor variations between practise sessions and the race. The models that I do I attempt to be as accurate as possible, but invariably they turn out to be a bit of a composite of the pictures I can find. In game, there exisits some very nice long tailed versions of these cars, but none of the short-tailed version, (that I know of anyway).

Porsche Kremer Racing

This is another team that has a long history with Porsche which continued well into the 90's. The Kremer porsche was designated as a 962CK6. They developed 11 cars and sold them to other teams. The main trade mark of this variation was the inclusion of skirts over the rear wheels like the Jaguar team of the day. This skirts were only used, from what I can tell is mainly at LeMans, for the areodynamics of the high speed straights. For the championship, from I can tell, they mainly used the open wheel configuration. I have built the skirts for the model and if I do some LeMans variations at the end and may do a skirted version for the game. I used the same basic model, I really didn't see too much difference, visually between the CK6 and the standard, there may be, I just don't see it. There were also vents on the rear of the car which I modelled. But ultimatley when I completed them, in game, they didn't add much value to the model so I simulated them in graphics and dropped the detailed vents.

Konrad Motorsports

Konrad was a customer to Kremer and also ran a CK6 variations. Konrad is another name in racing which has a long association with Porsche. Again there is only a slight visual difference in the number 10 and 32 CK6's. The rear wing gurney flaps have a different shape. I am not sure if was really worth the effort, in game racing, you wouldn't see it but I figure that, to me, researching and finding the difference from photogarphs is some of the enjoyment I have doing of these models. (Where's Waldo). Konrad today is more closely associated with the FIAGT series, another modelling favourite with SCGT fans, so it was interesting for me to find out a bit of the history associated with the team. Konrad usually, even until recently, retained a distinctive baby or sky blue and white based livery, must be his favourite colour or something.

Brun Motorsport

Brun Motorsport was one of the more difficult model to research for this collection. They seem to change sponsorship and livery, even going to a fin-tailed car for some races, so it was difficult to decide which one to include. I settled on the FATurbo livery, it is famous on the racing scene around that time period, so I decieded to use it as the base. When I researched the team itself, it became clearer why, Brun Motorsports was having difficulty in securing sponsership for the 1990 season and they were influx the whole season. The car itself was developed by "John Thompson". There were eight created. In a modelling sense the variations are just around the wing gurney and some little flaps around the top body escape vents. Again, I modelled them but I don't know how much value they add in game.

Richard Lloyd Racing

The final variation, which was a bit of an after thought, was the RLR, 962GTi version of the car. This is notable because there was beyond the internal changes common in the CK6 and Thompson version some real changes in the external apparence. Notably the front brake duct were repositioned to smooth out the front, a single rounded headlight configuration adopted and the rear end changes to accomadate an elonglated rear bodywork and accomadation for skirts like the CK6. Intrestingly this car had a long life moving then the US with Dyson racing and is associated with Dauer racing winning Lemans in 1994. Don't know how much of the original 962 was left by then, but it is impressive success history for a single car. The skirts again where mainly used at LeMans, from what I can see, and the rear end changed slightly between some races. The rear end variation turned out pretty good. The front headlights, not so good. The model was built to accomadate the standard square headlight covers and when I filled them in and used a mask for the new round covers, it proved to be a too abrupt transition and it produced a noticable seam. I will have to watch that in the future.

All in all, I am happy with the models. The transition for the low res model could be better and I may change them. It's not the shape as much as the graphics on the mapping. I have been using screen shots of the car and mapping them on to the low res models, sounds good in theory. However the base graphics, which are rendered through the game engine, are then placed on the model, which is then rendered again through the game engine. Basically if there is shading added on the model, it is doubled and looks too dark in the final analysis. I am going to rethink how best to do that, because the performance increase is worth the effort. I am currently running thirteen cars with no performance issues, that's good. The game can handle up to 21, depending on the track, but does start being flakey at 16. My goal is to have 16 performing well.

Porsche - Construction

Remember, 90 percent of this model is someone else's. I have just rebuilt the back-end and remapped it for the 1990, WSPC version of the cars. Now maybe I went a bit much with the hierarchy tool, but it work out fairly well. I also successfully incorporated the wheels into the scenario, (see previous posts about wheel challenges). The other support files did not work out as well. I still haven't found the trick to doing it properly. But all and all, this was a much easier construction phase, (as I call it), to the project. Now comes the busy part, painting the models. I am hoping I properly selected the "seams" for the textures, I am interested in the results, I was careful as I designed the texture areas. The first car, (three in all), is the famous Blaupunkt livery for the Joest Porsches. There is currently a LeMans version of the car in game which is a conversion from another game and is very nice. However as I say, squint your eyes, looks great.

Porsche 962 - Short Tail

The 962 is a staple of this racing era. One of the reasons I chose this year to model is the "Short Tailed Porsche", used for Championship races, but not at Le Mans. I suppose the longer tail provides stability down the Mulsanne Straight. Now this model is 90 percent someone else's and I want be sure he gets credit. I only know his handle at the forum we both frequent. Weed's. Weeds has made a huge comtribution to the SCGT community with his Group C models through the 80's time period. Prior to newer conversions from other, newer games I figure, in my opinion he set the standard for modelling along with a couple of others. With his permission, I modified his model to create the short tail variant of the 962. At this point in time I beleive there was no direct, offical factory support and the Porsche banner was carried by a number of indepenant, semi factory teams. These names are familar still today. Joest and Kremer and to a lesser extent Konrad and Brun. They all began to evolve the basic 962 into independently along slightly different lines.

Looking at the 1990 Porsches, they have multiple interpretations of the gurney flap, (I think that is what it is called, sounds better than thingy on the side). This is the most obvious difference for the short tailed porsches. What I did, because figured out the Hierachy Tool is create object for each variation that I want to release. I will map them to a common area in the texture, large enough to accomadate the largest surface area. Then, at export time, AC3D, in a 3ds format, allow the intergrity of the objects and textures to be maintained and imported into zMod 1.7. What I found out about zMod is there is a multiple file export. Select it and it will export all objects in to its own unique SCGT .vrl which can be used in game. The final step is to import the individual files, mixed and matched appropriatly, into another tool called Modeller Garage. This is the oldest tool used in SCGT. I think it was somebodies grad project in 1999 or something. Anyway it is a tempermental old thing, but it does have a great import and consolidation capability. I should be able to pick and chose which vrls I want and create the variations I need.

I have six short tailed versions currently planned. Joest had 3 cars, (just because it's easy to clone), and the Konrad, Brun and Kremer. The Kremer is a bit confusing to me. Somethimes it is referenced as a 962CK6. Now they used a skirted version a couple of times, is that the CK6 and the 962C is the open wheel well version. Not sure. I am going to have a bit of research to do. If I don't get too bored I may do a skirted variation, "ala" le Mans and a couple of the traditional fin tailed porsches. But that would be a paint job on an exisiting car model, not a modelling exercise.