Red Bull Air Race

[Couby]

Thomas wrote me today in fact he never had any answer from RB Gmbh...

I'm not really intersted in taking time dealing with RB , all the more I discovered this today : http://macflightgear.sourceforge.net/home/addons/ .

Does someone take a tour on that FG add-on ?
I don't find any link to download it on the page, so I wrote to Tat.

I think I'll abandon the RB air race idea for a more independant one.

[Johan G]

I think I'll abandon the RB air race idea for a more independant one.

Might not be a bad idea. Maybe there can also be a race of a type similar to the Reno Air Race.

Maybe even precision navigation races (aviation, dead reckoning and pilotage), but that might be asking to much...

[Couby]

Yep, there are a lot of possibilities. Too many maybe...

I think it is important to make strategic choices, at least to allow a real take-off of such activity in eSport.

Tat races are really interesting. 2 to 4 minutes max for a race, that's great both for offline chronos and one night live events...

[Johan G]

If you're in for a race in which the contesters would have to be more strategic there is a completely different approach. A long range unlimited class race. It requires pit stops, if one fly a fast aircraft or no pit stops if one has more fuel. Like the California 1000 Air Race, as one thousand miles, or fifteen laps. However that might be too long for most, it's a 2 hour race.

[Couby]

That's interesting, thanks Johan .

Some news for my project.

On Red Bull side, i decided to write them one week ago. I don't have any answer at the moment. Maybe holidays, I don't know, we'll see.

I started working on a website dedicated to air races with FlightGear. I think I'll release it in production at the end of the month with a small one-click add-on to apply over 2.4.0 with Torsten RBAR and Tat races.

I thought a lot about these races, how to organise them... as mentioned earlier there are so many possibilities, type races as this California 1000 Air Race, aircrafts... and each race implies resources and involvement...

For the moment here is the orientations I think to adopt :
- one short class race, with RB like and small TAT races, more dedicated to agility, with track recording or monthly night events,
- one medium class race, with Reno or California 1000 Air Race, with agility and endurance, with longer races via live quarterly events,
- one long class race, sort of week-end live around the world trip, to be played with teams, relay, more strategic with fuel and weather management, to be played once per yer.

That's what I would be interested in racing in fact , but that will depend on other people and what interest you .


There will be specific topics on the dedicated website in order to sort it out with interested people.


Anyway thanks Johan to have mentioned and illustrated that race I didn't know .

[Couby]

Hi, back from the limbo of topics .

In 2011 I had to put my project in standby because of autism of my son.

In 2013 I come back on the idea looking for help through Gamesprout with Top Cups I also presented on this forum. That didn't really work .

As I said in this last topic about Red Bull Air Race, I had contact in 2011 with their team. They were interested in the project but asked me to wait real life RBAR to be back.

We are in 2014 and that's the year of RBAR come back :

So, I'll contact them again and see if something is still feasible.

I'm on holiday for 3 weeks and I think "working" on that will be my relax time .

If there are former or new people interested in that you're welcome .


I noticed the new mission system in development. That's really great. I hardly see how to put it in place and try it at the moment. This is surely the way to go, yet too early in development stage(?). Will try to dig it more but if nice soul is ready to drive me on that road, would be cool .
With the time I have some new ideas but I reckon I put too many things in what I presented. I think to focus on just some for something more modest but fun enough to be reused and grow.

Thanks for your reading, and hopefully soon.


Couby

[ludomotico]

Hi Couby,

The mission system is definitely the way to go to model a Red Bull Air Race. All the tools are already there (except a multiplayer scoring system) and a "Red Bull Air Race" mission would be a perfect way to show the possibilities of FlightGear. Probably, a mission like this could be modeled in a few days. I myself run some preliminary tests some months ago and started to research the best location for such event!

We don't need any additional technical support to define a mission like this. What we need is just a brainstorming about what the rules of this race may be!

[Couby]

Sounds really great Ludo .

If this mission is to be a "Red Bull Air Race", rules should be the RBAR one no ? Why a need of brainstorm on that ?

Yet if there is the need and next step, we could plan this brainstorm.
I can launch a framadate. Which media for such brainstorm ? Teamspeak, Google Hangout, other... ?

Any reusable things from your preliminary tests ?
Yeah I had the same question about what could be the one best location to start from. And also about the plane.

[ludomotico]

It seems the rules for the RBA have changed this year. For example, the dimensions of the cones have changed, and the cones available in the database are shorter than the current ones. In addition, we must decide if we implement all the rules (for example: the smoke violation? the limit on the load factor? the weight limit penalty?) or only the rules governing the fly through the cones.

My preliminary tests involve a precision landing competition ( viewtopic.php?f=79&t=22831 ). The first version of the competition is already available in the git repository ( viewtopic.php?f=79&t=22832 ), but it has lots of bugs. I have an updated version with most of these bugs fixed.

A procession landing involves a landing with some restrictions in the aircraft configuration (flaps up, no power, minimum altitude when flying on an obstacle...) We can easily adapt these conditions to give or subtract points if the aircraft is flying leveled or not while passing through a gate. In fact, I had in mind the RBAR while defining the precision landing challenge

Regarding the best location, I prefer one of the historical circuits. London (UK), Porto (Portugal) and Zeltweg (Austria) already have the cones in position. The scenery around Zeltweg could be better and the local airport is not modeled. Porto has most of the bridges modeled but I'm not satisfied with the rest of the area (I know the city quite well) This is the reason I think London is our safest bet for now.

[Johan G]

Setting up an air race with similar or the same rules as the Red Bull Air Race is most probably fair game, but please come up with an original (as in new) name and logotype. Using the Red Bull logotype has come up in the past (it was considered to be used on a livery for the Bell AH-1 Cobra helicopter) and someone got a email reply back from Red Bull with a friendly but firm "Thanks, but no thanks". Here is a link to the post with the reply from Red Bull.

A similar issue was brought up later when someone wanted to do a Marvel Iron Man model (which in contrast would most probably have been quite ok as a stand alone under a non-commercial license). Here is a link to a post on that topic.

[Couby]

@ludomotico :
I think we should go an agile way, order rules from the most important for immediate and easy play (rules governing the fly through the cones) to the other ones (players could access leveling up), and implementing them following the backlog.

I'll take a look on what's available on git then .

You're scenery analysis is surely good. I don't know sceneries as you do so, let's go to London .

For the cones in 2011 Thomas Spiriou allowed me to use the one he packed for the FS RBAR scenaries. I see he already updated models for his 2014 FS RBAR scenaries. It is not GNU so we can't merge it with FG git, but if he is still ok for the share we still could share a free 3rd party add-on.


@Johan G :
That's already in that topic. Yet to prevent useless discussion you're right we'd better not using RB logos provided we don't have their acknowledge (hoping I'll have contact with people as "opened" I had in 2011...).
Thanks for this reminder.

[Johan G]

That's already in that topic.

Oops. I apparently looked at this very topic in the search results failing to recognize it. It is too late in evening I guess...

[Couby]

No pb. Was like a wise voice in the deep end of the night .

[mrshr3d]

For the cones in 2011 Thomas Spiriou allowed me to use the one he packed for the FS RBAR scenaries. I see he already updated models for his 2014 FS RBAR scenaries. It is not GNU so we can't merge it with FG git, but if he is still ok for the share we still could share a free 3rd party add-on.

I started modelling the pylons as per the 2014 specs in Blender last night. Thought I would check in Flightgear forums to see if there was any activity around air races and found this thread!
Happy to provide the models once completed. First time modelling for Flightgear, just have to fiddle with the Material settings in the AC3d file, as the colours currently look washed out when viewing in FG.