rFactor Motec Plugin

[Noel Hibbard]

Thanks gtrgreg for the tip about Scale/Offset - I didn't know it. And thanks Noel for advice. However it's really strange about those negative/reversed values. First Slide Pct and now this angular velocity. I understand these are raw values from the rFactor but why negatives... Of course it's niggling but I haven't got such readings from a few other sims.

I am sure ISI has their reasons for doing it this way. Who knows what is going on on the back end. There are a bunch of things in the plugin API that are a little odd. ISI has documentation in the API that explains some of the odd ones and then says stuff like, "Don't ask" at the end. The plugin API exposes raw data, it is up to plugin developers to do what they want with the data. As Lazza said he just left stuff in the original format. Part of developing a plugin is being as efficient as possible. So you try to do as little work as possible in the plugin because a slow plugin will cause your frame rate to drop. It is very simple to flip the data in MoTeC after the fact.

I created some maths to map some of the channels to the default channel names that are in the default "Circuit" project. I also swapped a few channels, (slip and wheel rot). I also added brake pressure channels but as Lazza said it isn't really "pressure". It is just the brake pos multiplied by the bias setting.

Anyways, if you want to import my maths just click Tools/Maths then click Import on the bottom left and then browse to the XML file I am attaching to this post.

Download here:
http://www.box.com/s/0mp57t764nlt7rmlkrxi

[Davvid]

Thanks Noel for some insight and for the calculations I believe it will help many users. Obviously I'm not a programmer so there are things you mentioned I didn't take into account. But I feel such conversion could be optional in the plugin, triggered via a switch in the ini file. It must have been managed somehow for years in the old Motec plugin after all

[dlecoutre]

This is working well, I like the audio feedback that indicate if you are recording or not. You should add in the documentation that when you first install it and are using windows 7, you have to run rFactor in Administrator mode or it won't create the file MotecPlugin.ini.

[Noel Hibbard]

He did sort of have a disclaimer about admin mode in his first post.

- I don't use UAC. I don't know how it affects things.

In general you should run rFactor as admin unless you have UAC disabled. Just go to the properties of your rF icon and then click the comparability tab and then check the admin box. Then it will always run as admin.

[MaXyM]

Heh... Noel, do you remember our discussion why to not install games into program files?
Now you have a proof. How many times you have to help people who cannot manage that problems coming from UAC?
Wouldn't be easier to install it on another partition and forget about UAC?

[Noel Hibbard]

Hmm. Which is easier for a computer iliterate person? Right clicking an icon and changing one check box in the properties or explain how to repartition their disk and move there rF install to this new partition? Another option is to turn off UAC which is as simple as clicking Start, typing "UAC", hit enter then drag the bar to the bottom and hit okay. Also more easy to explain. Also, newer games don't have these permissions problems. So you would be teaching people to partition their drive for a very old game that will be replaced by rF2 which doesn't have UAC problems.

[Lazza]

Thanks Noel for some insight and for the calculations I believe it will help many users. Obviously I'm not a programmer so there are things you mentioned I didn't take into account. But I feel such conversion could be optional in the plugin, triggered via a switch in the ini file. It must have been managed somehow for years in the old Motec plugin after all

Well, Noel was right in that you first tend to leave things how they are, make them work, and worry about modifications later. The less you play with things the more chance you'll actually get it working

In this particular case, given the number of things it's already doing (nearly all values being read are scaled so that the decimal points are displayed correctly, for example) 'fixing' these particular channels so the names make more sense (higher 'sliding' actually means that, instead of the opposite [can sort of understand them not using grip though; there is current surface grip, maximum tyre grip, and a grip multiplier based on current wear... so adding another grip is just making things worse]) or the wheel rotations make more sense to us really isn't going to make much difference to CPU use.

I think it's important not to look at these as some sort of defiency or error in rFactor; everything is relative, and just as our North and South could just as easily have been the other way around (or positive and negative in electrical terms) you choose a particular coordinate system and everything comes from that. If that happens to make the wheels in a car travelling 'forwards' have a negative rotation around whichever axis that happens to be then that's how it works out. And 'Sliding Pct' is just a name - could have been 'Grip Pct' but then you get confusion with the various grip values I mentioned above, and if the rFactor physics code is more efficient when the sliding percentage is inverted (as we see it) then it makes sense to use it that way and worry about the human element later on.

For my part, I could have altered the outputs a long time ago but I obviously got it working and just dealt with them as they are - by using scales/offsets to fix the values and not thinking about it since. Plus I probably don't actually refer to those values very often.

Heh... Noel, do you remember our discussion why to not install games into program files?
Now you have a proof. How many times you have to help people who cannot manage that problems coming from UAC?
Wouldn't be easier to install it on another partition and forget about UAC?

Off-topic. You could PM Noel about this unless you want to impress others, but even then there's no reason to start a discussion here.

[MaXyM]

the latest available on Motec webpage is good enough.

[MaXyM]

New motec can't read old files. That's why DataAquisitionPlugin requires you to have older MoTeC version.
Lazza's plugin generates data in new format.

I cannot answer on second question. Just don't know.

[newtonpg]

Finally think I fixed, but not without a lot of messing about with a wide variety of less than obvious different things within I2Pro. Now I should be able to assess the new measures.

I also have experienced wrong track lenghts in one track or another, could you share how to fix?

[ivanalesi]

I installed the plugin and I think it started working, but when I press ESC to get back to the pits Rfactor crashes every time! I deleted all rFactorToMotec files, but it is keeping on crashing. May be rFactorToMotec.exe has made some changes to important files in my Rfactor directory. Can you please tell me what might be this problem?
I'm using Rfactor 1.255.

Never mind. I added a new worksheet and then added the "GPS Track" object and put a check in the driven, inner and outer check boxes. It will be cool to use this to overlay my laps to team mates to see what we can learn from one another.

Attachment 1157

One thing that is strange it the dropouts on the red line. This is an AI lap so maybe that is why it looks strange. I will have to drive some real laps when I get home tonight.

That's great job Noel! Can you please share how exactly you did it? Most importantly which channels did you use for gps long/lat? I tried with g-force long/lat and it just didn't work

[Lazza]

I installed the plugin and I think it started working, but when I press ESC to get back to the pits Rfactor crashes every time! I deleted all rFactorToMotec files, but it is keeping on crashing. May be rFactorToMotec.exe has made some changes to important files in my Rfactor directory. Can you please tell me what might be this problem?
I'm using Rfactor 1.255.

rFactorToMotec is separate to the plugin itself, and doesn't make any changes to your rFactor folder/files (it will create a folder for trackmaps if it can't find i2Pro, but that won't affect rFactor).

Are you using the standard .ini values for the plugin? If you changed the log folder or anything like that it might cause an issue of some sort. That's about all I can think of. Try deleting the plugin itself, and the .ini file in the rFactor folder, and install it again.

[fazed]

Am I doing something stupid to get the steering channel this erratic? - Not my driving honest.

Many thanks.

Steering.png

[Lazza]

More than likely you're not using the standard downloaded v1.255f rFactor.exe (G27 or some other perhaps), so when it tries to grab the current setup steering lock from memory it's getting a large value instead; which, when multiplied by current steering percentage, is wrapping around and making the final value erratic. I've been meaning to detect and adjust for the G27 .exe at least, though I see I said that back in Feb... I will get to it

(I should also make it an option to grab the steering percentage instead of, or as well as, the calculated steered angle)

[smbrm]

More than likely you're not using the standard downloaded v1.255f rFactor.exe (G27 or some other perhaps), so when it tries to grab the current setup steering lock from memory it's getting a large value instead; which, when multiplied by current steering percentage, is wrapping around and making the final value erratic. I've been meaning to detect and adjust for the G27 .exe at least, though I see I said that back in Feb... I will get to it

(I should also make it an option to grab the steering percentage instead of, or as well as, the calculated steered angle)

Would it be possible to add back in logging of x,y,z co-ordinates or even x,y,z velocity?

[Ian Mills]

Great work Lazza.

Quick Question, is there no way to get 'roll'. i can see 'yaw' but not 'roll'. Maybe i could do some maths instead to calculate this ? thanks again

[Kaine]

Sorry to ask but cannot find an answer to motec and damper velocity missing

Does rf2 not support the damper velocity, or does not export these cannels for all three wheels?

I set up everything and it works perfekt as far as I see but in the anylse template the damper velocity has no data

Or does the plugin in v 1.1 not export it for now?

Any idea?

[Kaine]

another thing to mention (not a plugin problem)
Does anybody have a look to the tire temperature of rfactor 2?
It is different to rf1 and gtr2 there you get a smooth heating throughout each corner and it seems much more realistic than in rfactor 2 ?
If you spin or hardly push the car through the corner it reaches up to 200°C or more.
Is this realistic?
How do you then setup your car with the standard 5to10°C difference from in to out if these themperatures are jumping arround?

[Davvid]

You can calculate Damper Vel from Suspension Pos. There is a tab in Motec to make it automatically (under Suspension Histogram). There are no direct Damper Vel channels in the plugin.

[PRL MerlinC]

Am I doing something stupid to get the steering channel this erratic? .....
Steering.png

More than likely you're not using the standard downloaded v1.255f rFactor.exe (G27 or some other perhaps), so when it tries to grab the current setup steering lock from memory it's getting a large value instead.....I've been meaning to detect and adjust for the G27 .exe at least, though I see I said that back in Feb... I will get to it

(I should also make it an option to grab the steering percentage instead of, or as well as, the calculated steered angle)

Have a similar issue (get no steering signal at all) with my rFactor.exe which is supposed to be 1.255f. The version number can be verified by looking at the property/details information of the exe-file. But, so far I know, there is no opportunity to identify whether the exe file is a 1.255c, 1.255f, G27,etc version. Furthermore some mods require a 4-GByte Patch which could have an influence as well.

More difficult is, that since a while, ISI is only distributing version 1.255c. Very likely the correct / working version can only be identified by comparing the file size and the compile date as well. I searched on my computer what version I have and figured out that I have three different versions of the exe file installed - because the different mods don't run with only one single version of the exe (preferable the newest one from ISI)

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1...20versions.jpg


@Laza: The telemetry plug in is a very valuable tool for the rFactor community - what is racing w/o telemetry? But the confusion with the different versions seems to bother a lot of people - and some of them might no longer use telemetry.
I would appreciate if you could think about two proposals:

(A) add a table of compatible rFactor.exe versions (including file size and compile date) at the beginning of the thread - avoids that people looking for hours what they are doing wrong.

(B) Adapting the plugin to different versions of the exe file seems to be some effort. Did you ever think about an advanced version of the plugin where the memory addresses (or whatever the reference is) where the plugin looks up the signals/channels is documented in an ini-file (with different sections for the different exe versions). If you than share your knowledge to the community how to figure out the right mem-address I'm pretty sure that issues like channels missing will be gone very soon.

Thanks in advance
Merlin